And why shouldn’t he? When “Operation Defensive Shield” happened in March/April 2002, there was at least the idea that while Powell meandered his way around the world, by the time he got to Israel Sharon would have to slow the massacre down. MSNBC says 58 have been killed in Gaza so far, around the same number cited for the Jenin slaughter in 2002. But Sharon has vowed to continue doggedly, as if this is some kind of act of courage, and not a slaughter of a an already starving population of refugees.
Author: Justin Podur
Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction.
And just in case 2 invasions weren’t enough…
So we know the US is hammering Samarra. We know Israel is hammering Gaza, missile strikes and all, 74 killed in the past 4 days, 330 injuries, at leats, and counting.
But, let us not forget the Americas, since it seems every repressive US ally wants to get in on the act.
Take Colombia, for example, whose troops invaded Ecuador in a group of 70, searching houses and firing weapons, according to the FARC’s site ANNCOL. The Colombian Army is back to its old tricks of assassinations on the Venezuelan border as well, after a brief peace was made between Colombian President Uribe and Venezuelan President Chavez in July.
And why shouldn’t the coup-installed Haitian police get in on the action? In the Port-Au-Prince slum of Bel Air, Haitian police are besieging the place, killing people, taking bodies away — reports the Haiti Information Project (I’ll attach the report below). The United Nations, the same HIP reports, is playing a constructive role, standing around while the police provoke and commit violence.
HIP reports below.
————
October 2, 2004
Haiti slum under siege
Haiti Information Project (HIP)
Port au Prince,Haiti (HIP)– A slum in the capital is under siege from the Haitian National Police (HNP) following three days of violence and unrest. Heavily armed units of the HNP attempted to enter the slum of Bel Air at 9:00 p.m. last night and were met with armed resistance. Shots could be heard throughout the area for several hours as residents fought a pitched battle with the police who were forced to withdraw under heavy fire.
Bel Air is a slum in the capital of Port au Prince that has served as a launching site for recent demonstrations commemorating the thirteenth anniversary of the 1991 military coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide. On September 30th the police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators provoking an attack against a unit of the Unite de Securite Presidentielle (U.S.P), a special security detail assigned to Interim President Boniface Alexandre. Members of the special police unit were seen firing on demonstrators and collecting bodies before masked gunmen returned fire killing three and wounding a fourth who later died in the hospital.
Residents of Bel Air claim that six persons were wounded and one killed during last night’s police raid. There are no reports of casualities from the police who have yet to acknowledge the nighttime raid. Partisans of Aristide’s Lavalas political party, who are calling for his return following his forced ouster on February 29th, stated they are preparing for further actions by the police and the possibility of UN troops being used against them in Bel Air.
———
October 1, 2004
Haiti Protests: UN/Brazilian Troops stand-by as Haitian police provoke
violence
Haiti Information Project
Port au Prince, Haiti (HIP) – Last September 11th more than 10,000 Lavalas militants took to the streets to demand the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The marchers were accompanied by a large contingent of Haitian police who returned fire when unidentified gunmen shot at the demonstration as it passed the Office of National Insurance on Delmas 17. The crowd immediately took up the chant, “Down with the army. Long live the police!”
Another march was planned for September 30th marking the thirteenth anniversary of the military coup that overthrew Aristide in 1991. Although organizers for the march received permits from the Haitian National Police (PNH) it was clear from the beginning something was amiss. The first noticeable difference was the absence of police escorts that normally ride shotgun at the head and tail of these types of sanctioned demonstrations. These days the police are also aided by roving UN vehicles that monitor the negotiated route of the demonstration. They were conspicuously absent as well.
By 10:00 am it was evident this wasn’t going to be business as usual on the streets of Port au Prince. More than 10,000 singing and chanting Lavalas militants had already started pouring out of the slums of Bel Air and were marching towards the national palace. It was certain that if it the march continued it would swell to even greater numbers by midday despite reports that Lavalas militants from the Cite Soleil slum had just been ambushed by police and blocked from joining the march.
As the crowd approached the capital’s center known as “Champ Mars”, three armored personnel vehicles and an impressive line of Brazilian soldiers in full riot gear blocked their access to the street in front of the national palace. Despite the hurtling of a few insults by the crowd, intended for the UN troops Lavalas considers to be occupiers of Haiti, the march passed without incident and continued towards the old section of Port au Prince known as “La Ville.”
As the demonstration passed a street leading to the National Penitentiary, heavily armed units of the police SWAT team opened fire without warning on the crowd. People panicked and scattered in all directions knocking over goods of the local market place women in an effort to seek cover from the gunfire. The shooting continued sporadically for nearly twenty minutes as angry marchers began to break out car windows as they fled. On another side street a pickup truck with four policemen could be seen shooting and then stopping to collect the bodies of two of their victims. It was at this moment everything changed.
Up to this point, in what had been a peaceful demonstration, not a single weapon was brandished or seen among the marchers. Suddenly, according to witnesses, five men in masks appeared out of nowhere with small firearms. They surrounded the police in the small pickup truck and began to return fire. Despite the fact they were heavily outgunned by automatic weapons, they managed to catch the police in a deadly crossfire. Witness’s say that two of the police were killed almost immediately while a third died of his wounds in the hospital and the US-backed government is claiming a fourth was kidnapped by demonstrators. Justice Minister Bernard Gousse claims that there were no deaths reported among the marchers although several witnesses dispute this. This is understandable given that Lavalas marchers now collect bodies as they fall because they do not trust the current government to allow the families to give them a proper burial.
The official version being put out by the UN is that “a gunfight broke out between Aristide supporters and security guards at shops looted during the march” to cover the fact that the Haitian National Police provoked the incident by firing on unarmed demonstrators. Observers note this may also be to protect the Brazilian troops from embarrassment and explaining why they stood by as the Haitian police provoked the conflict. At the same time the UN is claiming that the violence occurred before the marchers reached the national palace, witnesses including many in the press, say this is not the case.
Gaza (or is it Fallujah?): The massacre has begun
This morning wire services were reporting 200 tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and bulldozers were massed on the Gaza border. “Troops were setting up makeshift camps, apparently in preparation for an extended operation.”
Keep in mind this was after 28 Palestinians had already been killed, and 139 wounded, the day before. That was before the “major operation” that is already underway. 10 more have been killed since.
The first killings were in the refugee camp of Jabaliya, with aircraft firing into a crowd. Two Israeli soldiers were wounded in fighting.
Haaretz is making the obvious comparison to March/April 2002, when Israel slaughtered its way through Jenin and Nablus:
“Thursday’s deaths marked the highest one-day Palestinian toll since April 2002 when 35 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, during Operation Defensive Shield.”
It can only be coincidence that as Israel is mounting major offensive operations in Gaza, that the US is mounting major offensive operations in Fallujah and Samarra in Iraq? That these occupying armies are smashing through civilian neighbourhoods and camps with ultra modern high-tech weaponry? That the media is rationalizing all these actions as ‘self-defence’?
As happens often when Israel and the US compete for atrocities, the US is winning hands down: it has killed over 100 already.
Intervention in Sudan?
I have appreciated David Peterson’s blogging about the ‘humanitarians’ and their ‘interventions’ about Sudan. So when I read his latest, referring to my own recent piece on the subject (a piece which made good use of his own previous blogging), I thought it a good time to blog on the topic myself.
I think David, like Ed Herman, is a very forceful and well-informed anti-interventionist. He takes the hard cases (Sudan, Kosovo) and relentlessly goes after even the more sympathetic liberal interventionists — folks like Samantha Power, Louise Arbour, Human Rights Watch — for their genuine inconsistencies that seem always to favour the powerful. My own instincts are also pretty much always in the anti-interventionist direction. There are various reasons. One is the old moral truism (where have I heard that phrase before?) that we should hold ourselves (or our own societies) to the same standards we claim to hold others. Another is that the US and the West are by far the most powerful, and that makes them the most dangerous, and the stakes very high, even for people outside.
But, if David’s recent post exposes the double-standards of the interventionists, in my own response I’d like to ask a more difficult question of ourselves. Why are those of us who are, for what I think are right reasons, anti-intervention — why are we so ineffective?
Why did we anti-interventionists fail so badly to convince even the whole ‘left’ about Kosovo? Or Afghanistan? And, upcoming, Sudan? We have to examine this carefully. Part of it is our lack of a megaphone and the power of propaganda, of course. Part of it might also be that if we can’t get ‘beyond hypocrisy’, meaning beyond accusing the hypocrites we both cite (Powell, Blair, etc.) of hypocrisy, we allow the interventionists to claim the high ground, in this sense: they can say “all you are saying about Palestine might be true and it might not, but I am the only one with a plan to address what is happening in Sudan — or Kosovo, etc. — right now. You can call me a hypocrite for not caring about Haitians, Palestinians, Iraqis, or whoever, but what about the Sudanese (Albanians), now?”
At which point, in fact, our own side — the anti-interventionist side — divides. Some of us become apologetic for the crimes that are going on, minimizing them or trying to put them in context (“What would the US do if a violent secessionist movement arose in Texas?”). Others repudiate the crimes, declare stridently things like “Milosevic is a thug” (You remember that line, right?) but that that doesn’t justify intervention. I think maybe our weakness in situations like these is that we don’t actually press our competitive advantage over the interventionists.
Our competitive advantage is that we *actually* care about the victims of crimes, because we are against crimes, while they are selectively indignant and only care about crimes of other people. In rebutting them, we usually feel the need to emphasize our own side’s crimes to the same degree that they emphasize the crimes of others, and de-emphasize others crimes to the same degree they de-emphasize US crimes. That might be a mistake, because it makes us a mirror image of their callousness: we care about all people, but we sound like we only care about some. They care about none, but because they have more outlets and scream louder, they sound like they care about all. This doesn’t mean we have to start our every discussion with ritual denunciation of the Sudanese regime (or Slobodan Milosovec, or the Taliban, or Saddam, or Zarqawi, or Bin Laden, etc. etc.). But maybe we have to do something differently.
BushKerry
So yes, I watched the debate between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry yesterday. Well, I watched what I could stomach, which wasn’t much. I have only a few impressions.
The Venezuelan Referendum Ends: Chavez Wins and the Balancing Act Continues
Z magazine, October 2004
Continue reading “The Venezuelan Referendum Ends: Chavez Wins and the Balancing Act Continues”
Consolidating the Paramilitaries
Friends in Colombia will be helping me blog from time to time. This friend is Enzo, and he is reporting on something happening in the Colombian press. The following are his interpretations of what is going on. Here goes:
Something orchestrated and intentional is happening as of sunday (Sept 26). It is a mediatic action regarding the paramilitaries. The three largest written media were totally dedicated to this issue on sunday. El Tiempo, El Espectador and Semana. The issue was the paramilitarization of the country. It was presented in a well planned way. Showing evidence of a phenomenon that everyone knows to be a fact as a sudden concern that was just unveiled. The paramilitary strategy is visibilized beyond the paramilitaries.
At the same time, during recent weeks, the different factions are being cleansed and unified. The groups that have oposed Castanio and Mancuso are being massacred or beheaded. Of course, all this began with the “disappearance” of Carlos Castanio (who was said to be sent to Istrael through Panama with the assistance of US intelligence -his brother Fidel, a Drug lord and founder of paramilitarism in Colombia, was seen in Tel-Aviv not that long ago-). Just last week, Arroyave, the commander of the Bloque Centauros, in direct oposition to the AUC, controlled by the President himself and by Mancuso, was killed by his own men. In other words, The paramilitaries are being unified by Uribe and his supporters (always US forces and the CIA) to be placed under his control.
These death squads are a component of a comprehensive National Strategy for Transnational Capital, which uses terror as its main weapon, articulated to political infiltration of the country, control of public budgets and programs, propaganda and drug production and trade (arms trade included).
The paramilitary strategy is a weapon of the globalized right to take over the resources of a country (and its neighbours) and transfer these to the government, which is already under US military and corporate control. This explains the weekend propaganda blitz. Uribe is known to be a paramilitary and wants to rid himself of this image. A perfect action: attack the other paramilitaries and unify the troops of assasins and present these actions as a government’s battle against paramilitarism. Expose the corruption that allows government funds to flow into paramilitarism as a threat that the government is fighting, but which is difficult to defeat and include here the para-narco connection. Present yourself as a victim of this machinery and call for foreign (US) help to fight this huge enemy, while in fact, you (Uribe and his allies) have created these enterprises with the paras to take public funds and invest them into funding paramilitarism, while becoming involved in drug trade.
Uribe himself has been shown to be a drug lord and a paramilitary (see Joseph Contrera’s book, La Biografia No Autorizada de Alvaro Uribe Velez). In fact, paramilitary factions have funded themselves through extorsion, government funds and drug trade for years. What changes now is that someone, somewhere has ordered a unification of these groups within the government, in it and under the President himself. They will keep funding themselves in the same way, but become the government and a single group.
Present this unification as a war between the Government and the paras and in the end the public will be convinced that when the Government becomes the paras, the paras will have been defeated. Colombia is being delivered to death squads, drug lords, corrupt thieves, linked to US and corporate interests. In the meantime a ‘peace process’ advances in San Jose de Ralito, Cordoba between government and paras. This site for negotiations gathers wealthy Colombians, members of Congress and other personalities. The site borders by two haciendas. One is owned by one of the largest landlords in Colombia: Alvaro Uribe Velez. The other one by his longstanding neighbour: Mancuso, the commander of the paramilitaries.
Two final notes:
1. None of this is limited to Colombia. It is being extended into Venezuela and Ecuador, and arguably the globe, wherever multinational interests are at stake.
2. The Government has become a criminal machinery on behalf of private national and multinational interests and its job is to persecute and punish those who opose the para-narco-corporate-US interests. This explains why, for example many health institutions for the poor that exist in the country are under the control of paramilitaries and do not fund health programs, but transfer these funds for the death squads to buy weapons and recruit new troops. This also explains why the Government under paramilitary rule, uses public services, such as the entire judicial system, to criminalize those who opoese its interests. There are many examples, but the most recent one involves Alcibiades Escue, probably the most important and respected indigenous leader in Colombia. Alcibiades is CEO of an Indigenous Health Institution owned by the communities in Cauca, South West Colombia. The paras attempted extorsion on him and the leaders refused to pay. As a result, Alcibiades was jailed and the media quickly condemned him and his communities as a paramilitary terrorist supporter who transferred funds for the health of the poor into the hands of death squads. In other words, the only one who refused to join the paras, was punished for this. Alcibiades is now out of jail, but the President announced that he would personally deal with this case.
Imagine this: the President of your country is a commander of a unified Death Squad that rules the nation through fear. The Government serves this machinery of fear for profit for the sake of transnational interests under US guidance. Most of the funding comes from drug trade. The rest is taken away through taxes from the people to be used against them. All this, leads to a regime that delivers wealth to corporate interests. The victims who refuse to tolerate this, are then either murdered or disappeared by death squads (indistinguishable) or accused of crimes committed by the regime. The Victims are chased after by the Criminals on behalf of Justice.
In the midst of the consolidation of this death squad corporate nation, indigenous people stand up peacefully and march to establish a new popular government, weaving popular autonomies for Life, Justice, Happiness and Freedom. Now, back to where we began. Why this media strategy? Who is behind it? Official terror uses propaganda, but official today in Colombia means global, multinational and US. If the Colombian State is being consolidated as a corporate-narco-terrorist machine, it is only emulating the largest corporate-terrorist-narco government in the world. And resistance comes from indigenous-popular coalitions now weaving a new project that calls for the concioussness and action of the world.
This unbelievable reality is truth. It is so unbeleivably true that most choose to ignore it, while the assasins take over the wealth and the life of the planet.
Beating Peacemakers Senseless in Palestine — and much worse to come
On September 29, Christian Peacemaker Teams volunteers Kim Lamberty and Christopher Brown were attacked by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian West Bank town of Hebron and beaten senseless. Lamberty ended up with a broken arm and knee, Brown with broken ribs and a contusion on his head and temple.
They were escorting Palestinian children to school. The settlers (unlike today’s bombers in Iraq and US and Israeli bombers in Iraq and Palestine in recent days) spared the children a beating today, focusing strictly on the peacemakers.
But Israeli missiles did not spare anyone in their path in Gaza. Israel launched tank shells into the densely populated refugee camp of Jabaliya, killing at least 7 and wounding at least 20, including several children. Israeli troops stormed the place, firing weapons and killing 14 and wounding 85. Three Israelis — a soldier and two settlers — were killed in Gaza by Palestinian fighters. Israeli soldiers returned fire and killed one or more gunmen. Israeli forces targeted power lines, leaving the camp of 120,000 without electricity. This invasion followed a rocket attack that killed two Israeli children on Wednesday. Israeli soldiers killed six Palestinians in one raid, and a single Palestinian child in another attack.
And Sharon’s plans for Gaza make today’s massacre seem like a picnic. It’s to be called “Operation Penitence” and its intent is to “exact a price”, according to Ha’aretz’s quotation of Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. “Exacting a price” from a population for an attack by a specific group is mass reprisal, illegal, immoral, terrorism — and already underway.
Perhaps the weirdest justification for it came from The chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud), who, according to Ha’aretz:
called for an IDF takeover of the entire Gaza Strip, saying, “Israel should wage operation Defensive Shield number two in Gaza, take control of the entire Strip in a wide-spread operation over a period of a few weeks to gather information, destroy the terrorist organizations’ infrastructure and wipe out any slicks of arms as well as the foundations for manufacturing Qassam rockets.”
Steinitz added that he would bring these issues up in planned meetings with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. “Since the technology for laser interception of missiles has yet to be realized, We must significantly damage terrorist infrastructures – it is our only option to ease the situation.”
I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I think he is saying that because Bush’s weaponization of space program isn’t yet implemented, Israel has to invade Gaza and smash civilians. Any reader who can make sense of this, feel free to email me.
Jenin was re-invaded days ago. Israel is promising something terrible and huge in Gaza. Are we helplessly watching the unfolding of another massive atrocity like ‘Defensive Shield’ of 2002?
Food Grab
Is it not a scandal when an extremely wealthy country with a social safety net like Canada still has large numbers of people hungry? It should be.
The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty has decided that it is, and has decided to take action to say so. Not just to take action, but to take food — from a grocery store — and present the government with the bill. Hunger is, after all, everybody’s problem, and a public problem requires a public solution. A public solution, in our society, means government intervention, and the destruction of the welfare state over the past couple of decades must be reversed.
Until that happens, OCAP wants to make it clear that hungry people will do what they have to to feed themselves. The note, below:
OCAP TAKES $3500+ WORTH OF GROCERIES AND DISTRIBUTES SUCCESSFULLY
In this Wednesday’s food grab from a high-end grocery store, members of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty walked away with $3525.00 worth of food and tolietries.
The haul of goods included chicken, beef roasts, racks of ribs, rice, coffee, bricks of cheese, diapers, shampoo and other necessities that people in this province simply cannot afford. As one of the OCAP crew noted, “I’ve never shopped like this before in my life – instead of searching for the cheapest items, I could go for the expensive quality stuff.” [Photos are available at www.ocap.ca/ocapnews/foodgrabphotos.html]
OCAP members were able to walk easily away from the grocery store, food in hand. The food was then distributed to people living in the city’s downtown east end yesterday evening.
It is worth noting that while people go hungry, grocery baron Galen Weston is the second richest person in all of Canada. In fact, the Weston family is the 43rd richest in the entire world. Most remarkable is the fact that the Westons control 50% of the food distribution market in Ontario. It was one of the Weston’s many supermarkets that was targeted yesterday.
It is not enough just to say that the current rate of welfare and disability payments makes it impossible to pay rent and put decent, healthy food on the table for the entire month. It is not enough just to talk about the dire need for a 40% increase to social assistance rates, to reflect the actual cost of living in Ontario. Saturday, October 2nd marks the one-year anniversary of the Liberal Government coming to power – we have ended this year of inaction and insult by actually taking back some of what people living in poverty in Ontario have long been owed.
So, it is to the Liberal government in office that we will send the bill – both for the food we took, and for that which is owed to people trying to survive on welfare and disability incomes.
Come out for a free meal and to present the bill:
Tuesday October 5th
12:00 noon
Allan Gardens
(corner of Carlton and Sherbourne)
So now they can send you off to be tortured — legally
I got this via Empire Notes, but it comes from Obsidian Wings.
Do read it. It’s quite extraordinary. The idea is that it will be completely legal for the US to send foreigners to countries where they will be tortured after this bill is passed. And you know the Congress is eager to pass these things. Readers in the US can make a difference, Rahul of Empire Notes thinks:
Continue reading “So now they can send you off to be tortured — legally”