Author: Justin Podur

Some of the details of the plan for Haiti are starting to emerge, as a meeting of various global bureaucrats and the government have made some decisions. The World Bank was front and centre.

Grassroots International, whose Haitian counterparts effectively endorsed the coup as well, has published a communique from those Haitian organizations denouncing the new economic plans as disguised colonialism. Below is an article from the Inter-Press service quoting some of the civil society groups whose voices were broadcasted loud and clear when they were attacking Aristide during and after the coup, but who now have been discarded because they don’t endorse the intensification of the economic plunder of Haiti that the coup has brought.

Since the exclusion of Haitians, their lives, their democratic will, and their aspirations, was the whole point of the coup in the first place, this economic plan and the dumping of anyone with progressive ideas from governance is just a continuation and consolidation of the coup.

POLITICS-HAITI: A DEVELOPMENT PLAN WRITTEN ‘BEHIND CLOSED DOORS’
By Jane Regan
1,310 words
22 June 2004
Inter Press Service
English
(c) 2004 Global Information Network

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jun. 21, 2004 (IPS/GIN) — Haiti has a new development plan aimed at pulling the country out of its age-old economic, social and political morass with new roads and schools, policy changes and millions upon millions of donor dollars.

The only problem, critics say, is that it was written behind closed doors, follows a neo-liberal economic recipe and is little more than “disguised colonialism” because of the large role played by international institutions like the World Bank.

The Cadre de Cooperation International (CCI) or Interim Cooperation Framework, a draft summary of which was released earlier this month, has a generally neo-liberal economic orientation that calls for more free trade zones (FTZs), stresses tourism and export agriculture, and hints at the eventual privatisation of the country’s state enterprises.

But it also promises broad social and economic interventions, including the immediate repair or building of hundreds of kilometres of roads, the promotion of alternative energy sources and a radical improvement of the education system.

The CCI — which represents the first time that donors and lenders have sat down with one another and the government to coordinate efforts in this overwhelmingly aid-dependent country — will be used to orient the aid “pledging conference” scheduled for July 19-20 in Washington, DC.

Donors and lenders like the World Bank and the European Union are expected to make financial commitments to Haiti during those two days.

The plan was developed over the past six weeks by about 300 mostly foreign technicians and consultants, some 200 from institutions like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank, and the rest mainly government cadres.

Thus, a two-year social and economic plan for a country of eight million has been drawn up by people nobody elected.

Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue and his ministers were hand-picked last March to run the country by an eight-person “Council of Eminent Persons” who had backing from the United States, France and the United Nations Security Council.

Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide allegedly resigned Feb. 29 following more than a year of protests and after an armed group took over half of the country’s police stations and marched on the capital.

The ex-president — now in exile in South Africa — continues to claim he was overthrown in a “coup d’etat” by the U.S. Haiti’s fellow members in the Caribbean Community have refused to recognise the new administration and continue to insist on a probe into what exactly happened the night Aristide was flown from his country in an American jet.

And the CCI will be carried out in a country where a U.N. peacekeeping mission of what will eventually be over 8,000 soldiers and police is in place. The Brazilian-led force is charged with providing security and stability so that elections and development projects can be carried out.

A three-page statement by critics of the program last week said the CCI plan “reinforces the structures and forms of [foreign] domination” of Haiti.

Almost no one from the country’s large and experienced national non-governmental organisation (NGO) community, the local and national peasant associations, unions, women’s groups or the hundreds of producers’ cooperatives or numerous other associations was invited to participate in the CCI’s 10 working groups.

And while the CCI documents have been available on-line for several weeks, only a tiny number of Haitians have access to the Internet. Further, the papers are written in English or French, a language that only 5-10 percent of Haitians speak and read. Most people here speak only Creole.

Even the seven-person Council of Eminent Persons, meant to serve as a kind for counter-balance for Latortue, was not aware of or invited to participate in the process.

“They didn’t ask us,” Anne-Marie Issa, one of seven “eminent people” and the director of Radio Signal FM, told IPS. “We only heard about it like everybody else, in the press after it was all over.”

On June 11, some 60 representatives of more than three-dozen organisations and NGOs met at a religious retreat to learn about the CCI and to launch a counter-offensive. The room was full of anger, according to Joseph Georges, director of the Society for the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), an NGO that works with community radio stations.

“We thought we were finished with the habit of exclusion,” he told IPS, referring to Haiti’s previous governments, including the recent Aristide administration.

“The document is completely lacking in any kind of nationalist vision. It calls for privatisation, for development only for tourism areas. And it was drawn up by ‘experts’, most of them from overseas. You can’t plan the country’s development without including the peasants,” Georges said.

Among those organisations not invited to the table are groups like the National Association of Haitian Agronomists (ANDAH), the Haitian Platform for an Alternative Development (PAPDA), the Papaye and the Tet Kole peasant movements and women’s associations, he added.

Georges was among the signatories of the three-page document denouncing the CCI as “disguised colonialism” developed without “any concern for transparency,” which “took place in a context of a growing loss of sovereignty.”

“The CCI is on the way to becoming the provisional government’s program,” the groups said. “But so far, except for the ministries of agriculture and health, the Boniface Alexandre-Latortue government has not told the nation what its overall policy orientation will be for what remains of its 18-month mandate. This information deficit is all the more worrying since it is occurring while there is no sitting parliament.”

Government officials reject the criticisms.

Minister of Economy and Finances Henri Bazin told IPS critics are misreading the CCI if they say it calls for privatisation.

A summary of the CCI released in early June calls for audits, training for directors and “the engagement of private management of certain public enterprises,” but not privatisation, he said. Bazin said he was “overall very satisfied” with the plan’s orientation.

Minister of Planning Roland Pierre, who helped coordinate the CCI, also rejected the criticism, and described it as “a Haiti-led effort”.

“Ministry employees who have worked for the government 10 or 20 years oriented the CCI,” he said in an interview.

The economic orientation of the CCI is not much different from the broad economic lines followed by the governments of Aristide and Rene Preval. Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically chosen ruler, was president from 1991-1995, although that term was interrupted by a three-year coup, and from 2000 until his recent resignation. Preval, his former prime minister, ruled from 1995 to 2000.

Both administrations pursued neo-liberal – or unfettered free-enterprise – economic policies. In the mid-nineties, Aristide and Preval began the process of privatising state enterprises with the sale of the country’s flour mill and cement plant, and Aristide lowered tariffs on imported agricultural goods to zero or near-zero. During his second term, Aristide vowed to open 14 FTZs around the country.

Still, it is also clear the CCI planning process excluded most sectors, although Pierre told IPS he and other planners gave groups ample time to make their criticisms known.

“The documents are available at various ministries,” noted the minister, adding that at meetings he attended, he heard little criticism, nor has anyone offered alternative ideas.

But consultative meetings took place in late May or June, after the bulk of the CCI documents were written, and the ones in the countryside were very poorly attended, according to Georges. Groups like SAKS and ANDAH have not yet been invited to give their opinions, he added, and are working on an alternative proposal.

I am often several months behind the curve. For example, I watched “The Fog of War” on video just last night, despite its release half a year ago. I watched it because several friends who I respect told me it was very revealing (I will be skeptical of their judgement from now on). It is Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, talking to the camera, interspersed with a little footage here and there.

McNamara looks into the camera and lies. Or maybe he didn’t know: most are lies of omission. But he lies about the Tonkin Gulf resolution; he lies about the US terrorism against Cuba. He presents false dichotomies: did ‘we’ have to firebomb Japanese cities and kill hundreds of thousands? He says, the alternative was having our troops invade Japan and die in the hundreds of thousands. Oh really? Did anyone look into the possibility of not invading Japan? He says, I can’t remember if I ordered the use of Agent Orange. Certainly it was used when I was secretary of defense. We don’t have any laws against the uses of particular chemicals. I certainly wouldn’t have ordered the use of anything illegal.

Basically, the movie was filthy lies and apologetics for the genocidal campaign against the Vietnamese. He actually went to Vietnam and berated the Vietnamese, asking them: “Was it worth it, making us kill 3.4 million of you?” As if it was the Vietnamese who chose to be slaughtered. He presents Castro as if he was insane because of his behaviour during the Cuban missile crisis, as if McNamara himself and Kennedy were not the aggressors. He forgets the missiles in Turkey pointed at the USSR that made the USSR want to answer with missiles in Cuba.

If the Nazis had won world war II, if one of the Nazis in the bureaucracy at the time had sat down 40 years later with a sympathetic director and talked about all the close shaves that he had lived through in his life, you would have something like this film. I wouldn’t recommend it. Neither do the various leftists who reviewed it at the time, like Alex Cockburn.

The NewStandard is trying a novel approach to trying to get the US Army to provide some details on a torture case their paper is following. They want readers to contact the US Army directly and pressure them to provide the information they are refusing to provide. You can find out how to help them here.

First, I was alerted to an interesting piece by Uri Avnery by Samer Elatrash who wrote a similar piece. Both pieces treat the myth of the ‘generous offer’ that Israel gave the Palestinians. I find Tanya Reinhart’s book, Israel/Palestine, to be the best antidote to this myth, but the new pieces treat an admission by a senior Israeli official to the same effect.

A friend in Nablus who did some blogging a few months back sent some Ha’aretz articles of interest around as well. One discusses opposition in Palestinian militant groups to the plan to have Egypt take over the occupation of Gaza. Another is a ‘field guide to the new right’ in Israel.

As scary as it is to read about the right, sometimes it’s scarier to hear about the public. The last article was about public opinion in Israel, where 64% of the Jewish public supports encouraging Israeli Arabs to leave; 55% of whom believe Israeli Arabs endanger national security, 45% of whom want to revoke Arabs’ right to vote or hold political office, 72% of whom support entry restrictions on foreign workers, and about a quarter of whom would support an ultra-right wing nationalist party in elections.

If this is the state of public opinion in Israel, Palestinians might start to feel like there is no partner for peace.

The young fellow and I have completely different approaches to almost everything — some might say, charitably, that they are complementary approaches. But the truth is we have a lot in common as well. And I have a lot of respect for him, which is why I’ve been helping him out in whatever small ways I’ve been able to — mostly with (what I think is reasonable) advice which he may or may not take. Perhaps because our approaches are so different I didn’t think to promote his reports here, in spite of the fact that I am working with him on his project. But an email from a mutual friend convinced me otherwise. For the rest, I will let him speak with his own words.

My friend Tarek Loubani is in Iraq right now. This is his blog. Take a look.

I was just reading the various pieces that ZNet republished from New Politics on the US elections. I would in particular recommend Steve Shalom’s piece. Steve has a way of summarizing all the arguments on all sides in a sympathetic way, and then presenting the last word on the topic, that is really impressive. Years ago when I was confused about drugs, his piece on the subject clarified things for me in a similar way.

I also enjoyed the harshness of Michael Hirsch’s piece on ‘Left Posturing’. Some quotes from it:

“Any politics has to start from an analysis of social forces. Social movements are weak, but not because their leaders failed to resist the siren call of access to the White House or the governor’s mansion. Idle chatter about “the class” or “the youth” or “the labor bureaucracy” and its misleaders only reinforces the left’s alienation from its own base because it substitutes assertions for analysis.”

…

“What is the left putting out — even that left that believes in realigning the Democratic Party? “U.S. Troops Out of Iraq,” or “Support Gay Marriages,” or “Defend Abortion Rights” are reactive programs that do not get to the heart of the American empire, harm the war makers where they live or deliver a body blow to sexual fundamentalists.”

“There is no left national agenda to guide any elected officials, though municipalities from Santa Monica and San Francisco to New York are better served and activists clearer about housing, health care, wages and other local needs.”

…

“Holding to a “socialist politics” without putting any forward means acting like émigrés in your own country, when the truth is there is no socialist politics, principled or otherwise, unless you make it so.”

I think these rebukes are well taken. Shalom’s piece is not as harsh, but the message is similar. He also thoughtfully addresses the “worse the better” claim that Bush may be the lesser evil because he is overstretching the empire. Both pieces are of value because they start from where we actually are, and deal with the actual balance of forces that we are facing in North America, without sacrificing principles.

Some more loathsome and fearful news on the Canadian elections. Harper’s conservatives were leading in the polls but now, apparently, the Liberals and Conservatives are ‘neck and neck’ in a ‘nail biting tug of war’.

The Conservatives tried to exploit a brutal murder of a child in Toronto by claiming the Liberals are soft on child pornography (the murderer said he was motivated to rape and kill the child because of child pornography). My own reaction is to think the Conservatives are defiling the child’s memory by exploiting her brutal murder for electoral ends. But ‘conservatives’ like these are adept at making such vile acts work for them.

Michael Moore told Canadians not to vote for Harper, saying as so many of us have been saying that it would be a tragedy for Canada to move in that direction as the rest of the world is trying to move away from that direction. I don’t share Michael Moore’s rosy view of Canada, but I have traveled enough in both countries and have had enough American friends visit me here to understand how he can feel a difference he doesn’t want to lose.

Moore’s analysis of the Canadian political situation isn’t far off though. Witness the fear of the Conservatives:

“I hope this doesn’t happen. Bush is going to throw a party (after the Canadian election). He’s going to be a happy man. (Harper) has a big pair of scissors in his hand. He wants to snip away at your social safety net. He’d like this to be the 51st State.”

And the loathing of the Liberals:

“They moved to the right (under Martin), which then validated the right.”

He wants his film (coming out on the 25th) to influence the election (on the 28th)

“Moore said the distributors here originally thought of delaying the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 until after the Canadian federal election, to avoid influencing the outcome — even though the film makes almost no mention of Canada.”

“And I said, no, no, no. Even if it’s just four days before the election, you’ve got to get something out there to inspire people to do the right thing here.

“This movie should say to Canadians, you want to join the Coalition of the Willing? Get ready to send your kids over to die for nothing, so that Bush’s buddies can line their pockets.””

There was a period a few months ago when there were many alternative and decent journalists in Iraq: Dahr Jamail (who is still there), Rahul Mahajan, Andrea Schmidt, Naomi Klein, and others. This coincided with the US invasion of Fallujah and a tremendous amount of news coverage of Iraq everywhere. Today though, there isn’t as much coverage of what’s going on. Alternative media (notably Dahr) are still there, there are still reports coming out on Iraq, but somehow, it isn’t dominating the news. And yet it seems like there is as much happening there as ever. The body count has certainly not abated, as the insurgents mount bombing attacks and the US forces continue to slaughter their way through civilian areas, including Fallujah.

Things seem to be happening in Afghanistan, a place that never made much news even when it was being invaded by the US and can hardly make news now that it’s only occupied, starving, and has insurgents making moves against the occupiers.

The last non-news item is Israel/Palestine, which is going through one of those periods of ‘calm’ when only Palestinians are being killed. There is a compilation of assassinations of Palestinians by Israel for September to April. The Israelis killed another two people, ‘suspected militants’ as the saying goes, in Nablus in an assassination with a car bomb on June 15. I read somewhere that the Israeli secret service conducted an assassination in Jenin earlier this week as well, though I haven’t been able to track down the source.

Showing their deep concern about armed factions in Haiti Canadians under the US mission in Haiti kicked down another Haitian door, this time of Dany Toussaint, a politician, and recovering some weapons.

Maybe they’ll do something about the heavy weapons the coup makers got in order to overthrow Aristide’s regime a few months back. Oh — wait — where did those weapons come from again? Hmmm… Stan Goff has some ideas.

In other Haitian door kicking news, ZNet’s posted an article by Haiti Action activists on the raid on the mayor of Milo by the UN troops, blogged here previously. Between these and the arrest of Lavalas activist and grandmother Annette Auguste, the UN is compiling an impressive record of raiding.

No doubt Haitians are feeling very safe.

Technicality: the troops conducting the raid on Dany Toussaint were Canadian, and none of the Canadian politicians said anything about it, so this will serve as the Fear and Loathing Report today.

Note 2: I just got a note from Justin Felux, who has written very good stuff on Haiti for ZNet (take a look at it on ZNet’s Haiti Watch) about the victim of this raid. It seems that the UN’s raids on So Anne and Mayor Moise were different from this one…

———-

Justin,

Dany Toussaint is a thug that has probably been an asset of the CIA for a long time. Haiti would be better off if those Canadian troops had shot him. While Toussaint has pretended to be a supporter of Lavalas since the 1991 coup, he has shown his true colors over the past few years.

In the 1980s he received training at the SOA and was a member of the hated Haitian military. When Washington restored Aristide in 1994, they were pushing Toussaint as one of Haiti’s new leaders. They clearly saw him as someone that would be useful to them in the future. The CIA made several overtures toward him in the late 1990s.

Toussaint was behind the murder of journalist Jean Dominique, and his gangs have been stirring up trouble in Port-au-prince for years now. This has all resulted in a lot of chaos and destabilization, as well as a fracturing of Lavalas, which is probably what it was designed to do.

Since then Toussaint has openly aligned himself with the opposition and has a close working relationship with Guy Philippe.