Author: Justin Podur

Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction.

Two Haiti Notes

As promised, more on the assault on the home of Mayor Moise from Milo by UN troops; and above that, news of repression from Haiti’s ‘free trade’ zones. Just in case anyone was worried that the coup in Haiti made things less safe for the sweatshop owners, you can put your mind at east. See below.

Urgent action alert and call for solidarity with Haitian workers – Haiti Support Group, 14 June 2004

Grupo M has fired 254 workers at the Codevi free trade zone at Ouanaminthe.

Dominican soldiers have been brought in to terrorise the workers.

The management has threatened to close the factory down rather than negotiate on pay and conditions with the union.

Since the beginning of June there has been a dramatic deterioration in the situation at the Codevi free trade zone in north-east Haiti. Following an international campaign in support of the 34 union members sacked in early March, negotiations in April led to an agreement between management and workers. By mid-May, all the sacked workers were back to work but, on 4 June, a breach of the May agreement led to a one-hour warning strike. The following day, the head of the Grupo M company arrived at the Codevi plant to tell workers that the plant would probably be shut down because of the continuing labour unrest. Then, in the afternoon, after another dispute had developed when management forcibly removed the t-shirts and ID badges of a group of women, the Dominican Army was called in to expel workers from the free trade zone.

A full one-day strike then took place on Monday, 7 June. Workers agreed to return to work on 8 June despite the continuing presence of the Dominican Army because the management had agreed to negotiate with the union. However, when the workers showed up to work at 5:30am, they found that they were locked-out.

On 9 June, Grupo M announced to the media that it was abandoning production at the Codevi free trade zone and laying off all 700 workers because of what it described as “security reasons in the face of threats and violent actions by a group of activists called Batay Ouvriye.”

By the end of the week, half of the production units were closed down at Codevi and 254 workers had been arbitrarily dismissed – including the coordinator and secretary of the SOKOWA union. Over the weekend, the company started advertising new jobs at its assembly plant in Santiago, the Dominican Republic.

The actions of the Grupo M company are scandalous violations of internationally recognised workers’ rights, and immediate protests must be registered.

Please send email now. Either use the form at LabourStart: http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c= 30

or write your own emails to: Fernando Capellan, CEO of Grupo M e-mail: fcapellan@grupom.com.do telling him that Grupo M must immediately end the violence against workers; that the Dominican Armed Forces must be immediately and permanently withdrawn from the Codevi FTZ; that all management personnel found to have committed violent acts against workers must be disciplined; that negotiations in good faith with SOKOWA and the Batay Ouvriye workers’ organisation must begin; that arbitrarily fired workers must be re-instated, and that threats to close the factory must cease.

Remind him of his obligation to respect workersâ?T rights under Haitian law, of the code of conduct of their supplier Levi Strauss, and of the World Bank loan conditions.

to: Michael Kobori, Global Code of Conduct Director, Levi Strauss & Co. e-mail: mkobori@levi.com asking Levi Strauss to insist that their contractor comply with internationally-recognised workers’ rights, most especially the right to organise a union and bargain collectively. Furthermore, Leviâ?Ts should demand that the Haitian government give the SOKOWA union its legal registration, as required by law.

Remind him that Levi’s has a responsibility to work with its supplier to resolve this matter in a way that brings it into compliance with accepted standards of freedom of association.

Background: www.batayouvriye.org www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org

Contact: Charles Arthur – haitisupport@gn.apc.org

—————-

June 14, 2004 For Immediate Release

French soldiers and U.N. Troops invade the home Mayor of Milo, Jean Charles Moise.

Early reports indicate that on June 14, 2004, at around 4:00 am in the morning, a contingent of French soldiers along with some U.N. (blue helmet) soldiers invaded the home of the duly elected Mayor of Milo, Jean Charles Moise.

According to sources close to Mayor Jean Charles Moise, on finding that he was not home, the soldiers arrested his wife and took her into custody, and possibly some other adults in his house, leaving his small underage children without a mother.

The house was ransacked and damaged by the soldiers. Under Haitian law, even with a warrant and judge (Juj de pe) present, no arrest may be made between the hours of 6:pm and 6 am in Haiti.

To date, foreign troops in Haiti have absolutely refused to respect or be bound to Haitian law, Constitution or sovereignty. The U.S. soldiers and now French and U.N. soldiers seem to be establishing a record instead of terrorizing suspects in the dead-of-night and treating Haitians, even 5-year old Haitian children, as in the So Ann’s home invasion, like criminals, especially if they are affiliated with the Lavalas party in Haiti which still remains Haiti’s strongest and most popular democratic party and movement.

What is most disturbing about this pattern is the single-minded focus on arresting primarily Lavalas voices with a well-known popular support base and credible reputations. This pattern is continuing even under the new U.N.-led troops with this current hunt for the Mayor of Milo. Said Mayor, Jean Charles Moise , has been a frequent voice in the U.S. media denouncing the human right abuses taking place in Haiti since the U.S. and France forced President Aristide and the Constitutionally elected government out of office. (See Mayor Jean Charles Moise’s personal testimony “Haiti’s Murderous Army Reborn” and at and re-printed below).

Please contact Kofi Annan at the UN, the French Mission at the UN, contact Ambassador James Foley directly at the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince, call on Secretary of State Colin Powell at the US State Department in Washington, call the State Department (Haiti desk) and contact your Senators and Representatives. Call early and call often.

Raise your voices to protest this illegal arrest of the Mayor’s wife at 4:00 am in contravention of Haitian law. Protest the pattern of dead-of-night home invations, practiced solely against Lavalas officials while Guy Phillipe, Jean Tatoune and other known drug dealers, and convicted murderes run free in Haiti. Denounce the un-reported mass killings of Haitian civilians since the Coup D’etat, the reprisals, continued illegal arrests of popular leaders in the Lavalas party and this current hunt for the Mayor of Milo, Jean Charles Moise by foreign troops.

Haiti has had a long history of brutal political repression conducted by US supported dictators and their paramilitaries in the dead of night. That is why the law against such dead-of-night arrests was adopted by sincere and conscious Haitian legislators who wished to stop this pattern of injustice – such terrorizing, arbitrary and warrantless political arrests.

If the French soldiers and UN troops had a legitimate warrant to exercise, they should have exercised it at the appropriate hour and in accordance with the laws of the land and in accordance with their UN mission as peacekeepers.

Call, fax and write Secretary-General Kofi Annan, ask whether UN soldiers are now taking the place of the former bloody Haitian military and FRAPH paramilitiries, who never abided by any Haitian law whatsoever. Demand a stop to these sorts of home invations in Haiti by foreign troops there as “peacekeepers.” Demand the release of the Mayor’s wife, due compensation for the ransacked and destroyed home and a stop to this seeming systematic witch hunts for only Lavalas officials in Haiti and abroad.

Marguerite Laurent Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network

Pierre Labossiere Haiti Action Committee

CONTACT INFORMATION

Kofi Annan Secretary General United Nations New York, NY USA inquiries@un.org

Ambassador James B. Foley U.S. Embassy, Port-au-Prince, Haiti phone: 509.223.7011 or 509.222.0200 fax: 509.223.9665 email: acspap@state.gov

http://usembassy.state.gov (for address and additional phones)

Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State fax: 202.647.2283 or 202.647.5169 phone: 202.647.5291 or 202.647.7098 email via: http://contact-us.state.gov/ask_form_cat/ask_form_secretary.html

Haiti Desk Officers, U.S. State Department:

Joseph Tilghman fax: 202.647.2901 phone: 202.647.5088 email: tilghmanjf@state.gov

Lawrence Connell fax: 202.647.2901 phone: 202.647.6765 email: ConnellLF@state.gov

FLR: The French Debate

Yesterday the candidates in the Canadian election debated in French. Tonight they will debate in English. Overall, it seems to me that Paul Martin, the current Prime Minister, did not crash and burn the way I expected him to, and Stephen Harper, the contender for PM, did not score any major points. But Harper, while his french his decent, is not as comfortable in French and is also aware that he isn’t going to win anything in Quebec in any case. So tonight’s debates will have more at stake.

Continue reading “FLR: The French Debate”

UN thuggery in Haiti?

Some may remember the mayor of the Haitian town of Milo, Jean Charles Moise, who wrote about the ‘rebirth’ of Haitian army terror just after the coup of Feb/March. Moise is a Lavalas mayor who was writing from hiding. I just got this note from a Haiti reporter, who got a phone call from Haiti telling him what happened. More to come when more information can be verified.

French soldiers were snooping around, asking questions about the Mayor
of Milot, Moise Jean-Francois, approximately 1 1/2 weeks ago. At 4:00 AM
last night they and UN soldiers ransacked and “trashed” his home. He
was able to get away, but his wife was arrested and detained. No word as
yet on his children. Moise has been the mayor for nine years, and is also
the leader of a large pro-Aristide/democracy peasant union…

The arrest violates Haitian Constitution – arrests are only legal between 6 and 6, also no arrest warrant, and there were no PNH present. UN colluding with FRAPH…

There’s some action alert going out later which I’ll fwd; I’m also trying to contact UN people, CDN embassy.

Nice to know that the UN is living up to expectations…

Venezuela and the lion’s mouth

This question came in the ZNet forum system today:

I’m sure you are aware of this issue, reported by NYT recently but first reported by the Miami Herald (as far as I can tell). I noticed that the companies (both the hardware & software companies) are located in South Florida. I can understand Venezuela’s concern about having a financial interest in a company located in a region known for its Opposition support overtly and covertly.

My question is, do you know when the contract for these machines and
allied software were negotiated and signed? Was it before or after Chavez came
to power?

Once again, the short answer is no, I don’t know when the contracts were signed. But the longer answer is below.

Like so many ‘issues’ reported in the likes of the NYT and Miami Herald, this is not an issue except inasmuch as the opposition will use every means at its disposal to cheat, including machines if necessary. This is a very bad situation to be in. The best-case scenario is that Chavez wins the referendum, after which the whole process will be called ‘flawed’, it will be claimed that he cheated, and so on, providing a pretext for whatever the US does afterwards. That’s the *best* case scenario. Worse scenarios abound: the opposition cheats, in which case the government has to use repression, which will bolster the claim that it is a dictatorship. The opposition tries to create a dramatic incident with terrorism close to the voting date, forcing the government to do a repression, again helping the claim that it’s a dictatorship. The opposition wins, somehow — a combination of threats of ‘civil war’, economic attack, etc. — like the 1990 elections in Nicaragua.

The opposition can (and has) keep trying until they win. They have all the resources, support, and the empire on their side. The Chavistas get to fail once…

Venezuelanalysis.com has two interesting articles on the subject. One, by Dieterich, discusses some of the precedents for electorally ending a revolution (I don’t know enough about Russia or Georgia to assess his assessment, though I am not entirely convinced by those examples… the Nicaragua example is a warning though). Another, by Hardy, discusses the fact that the only people interested in democratic processes in Venezuela are the government and their supporters.

If they knew… would they do anything?

I gave a talk on Friday night to a local community group. Small group (usually the case for my talks). The topic was Canadian foreign policy (I’ll be publishing the talk soon). It was a smart crowd, engaged, awake, I think activist in inclination. It was actually a biweekly discussion group, and they brought in guest speakers after which they discussed things among themselves, some retiring to a local coffee shop to continue the chat.

For me a talk is mostly an excuse to get to the Question and Answer period. During the talk, you have an obligation to give something to the audience, some preparation or research that you have done, but how can you know what you can offer unless you can hear some questions, and know where the audience is at?

Anyway as I said, during question period, there were very interesting questions. Some were relating to the content of the talk itself, so I won’t go into them yet. But one of them was really very good. The talk was very informational in nature: presenting various facts, historical and contemporary, about Canada’s role in the world that very few people know. So one audience member asked: “Do you really think if people knew this, they would do something about it?”

Rather gets to the point, doesn’t it? This is actually a constant debate among Z types. I gave a rather long answer, more or less as below.

At the Z Media Institute, for example, people like Chip Berlet from Political Research Associates and Amy Goodman from Democracy Now come and give talks about the mainstream media, the political culture, etc.. These journalists, being genuine journalists, have a belief that if people knew what their government was doing they would act. The problem, to them, is that the media doesn’t keep people informed, and so they can’t make informed decisions.

Michael Albert disagrees. He doesn’t think the problem is information. In his blog, he asks:

Doesn’t sufficient evidence of deceit and destruction now exist for everyone to see it? Can the average American – much less the average citizen of England given their far better media — be unaware of the vile nature of our government’s pursuits, other than by adopting an ostrich approach that actively denies reality? There is a parade of images and rhetoric blasting into everyone’s line of sight. The spin campaign to obscure its meaning is utterly absurd, yet we know it will largely work. Why?

His answer:

I contend that at least one important factor at work is that people feel there is no alternative to the injustices that surround us and, at any rate, that they are helpless regarding altering those injustices. To become irate will buck social norms and make their lives harder, not easier. No gains, in their view, will accrue to themselves or to others either. People thus reject the uncomfortable, alienating, and in their view unproductive world of social judgments to instead focus their energies on the relatively comfortable, acceptable, and productive worlds of sports, tv, lawn care, shopping, dating, business as usual, survival, and other daily interaction with friends and family.

There is also a third. Ward Churchill expresses it in his new book, “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.” Talking about the sanctions on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands, Ward says:

As a whole, the American public greeted these revelations with yawns..

There were, after all, far more pressing things than the unrelenting misery/death of a few hundred thousand Iraqi tikes to be concerned with. Getting “Jeremy” and “Ellington” to their weekly soccer game, for instance, or seeing to it that little “Tiffany” an “Ashley” had just the right roll-neck sweaters to go with their new cords. And, to be sure, there was the yuppie holy war against ashtrays – for “our kids,” no less – as an all-absorbing point of political focus.

So there is one position (that of the journalists):

We don’t know. If we knew, we would care.

And another (Michael’s):

We know. We feel helpless. So we pretend we don’t know.

And a third (Ward’s):

We know. We don’t care.

Each has different implications. If the journalists like Amy are right, then providing the information will eventually work, contribute to making some change. If Michael is right, piling on knowledge of atrocities and analysis of the systemic nature of it all will only make people more helpless unless there is some accompanying strategy for how people can act to change it all. Strategy, examples, experiences, ideas about alternatives. If Ward is right, people don’t wake up unless there is some cost to them, and the main problem is that the cost to us has been too low: “More bluntly, the hope was – and maybe still is – that Americans, stripped of their presumed immunity from incurring any real consequences for their behavior, would comprehend and act upon a formulation as uncomplicated as “stop killing our kids, if you want your own to be safe.”

But it didn’t work: “Unfortunately, noble as they may have been, such humanitarian aspirations were always doomed to remain unfulfilled. For it to have been otherwise, a far higher quality of character and intellect would have to prevail among average Americans than is actually the case… Perhaps the strategists underestimated the impact a couple of generations-worth of media indoctrination can produce in terms of demolishing the capacity of human beings to form coherent thoughts. Maybe they forgot to factor in the mind-numbing effects of the indoctrination passed off as education in the US.”

Robert Jensen once said something similar in a talk he gave in Canada about a year ago. He said when he saw the planes hit the buildings on 9/11, he thought there are two ways for this empire to come to an end. One way is historically unprecedented, that the citizens of the empire could dismantle it from within. The other way was what he was watching on TV.

Of the three, Michael’s is the most optimistic, and probably neglected. Certainly movements pay more attention to analyzing the power structure than even to finding weaknesses within it, to say nothing of strategies to make change and alternative ideas. If Amy is right, then it’s just a matter of working away and doing more of what we’re doing. If Ward is right, we’re pretty much doomed, so we’ll have to proceed on the assumption that he’s wrong — as he is doing, since he is a rather tireless activist who is constantly trying to fight for change.

FLR: Quebec and the Canadian Elections

Quick note on the headlines today for your Canadian elections fear and loathing report. A reader complained about my not saying anything about Quebec. In Quebec, the race is not between the Conservatives and the Liberals. In fact, there’s hardly any race at all. Quebec is poised to give virtually every seat to the sovereigntists, the Bloc Quebecois. The Liberals might pick up a few seats in anglophone Montreal, but that’s about it.

[[For non-Canadian readers: Quebec is actually an amazing place with an amazing history. It is pretty clear to me that without Quebec Canada would long-since have been absorbed into the United States. The Quebecois have always sought self-determination and were historically oppressed by an anglophone elite. Much of this changed with the ‘Quiet Revolution’ in the 1950s and 1960s, a cultural and economic upsurge in Quebec. Since then, the central government has tried to meet Quebec’s aspirations for self-determination by decentralizing powers to all the provinces. For a long time, Quebec’s provincial government was ruled by the Parti Quebecois. These are sovereigntists with a fairly progressive social-democratic idea — to develop Quebec for Quebecois, with Quebecois resources. Recently, provincially, the Liberals took over, and have been slashing the public sector like one might expect. Quebec nationalism, like Canadian nationalism, doesn’t offer much to the indigenous, who have seen the Quebec government act no different towards them than any other settler government in the Americas. Still — and despite some very racist strains in the Quebec nationalist leadership (one leader said the problem in Quebec was that white women aren’t having enough babies; another in 1995 after a sovereignty referendum was lost blamed ‘money and the ethnic vote’), it is pretty clear that Quebec has been a civilizing influence on Canada. As has Saskatchewan, on which more in future FLR, perhaps]]

So on Quebec, CBC reports today that the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, Giles Duceppe, said he would bring down a Conservative minority government on the issue of abortion. Harper wants a ‘free vote’ on abortion (the Alliance platform used to include a ‘free vote’ on capital punishment as well… perhaps we could also get, after a few years, free votes on the use of the medieval rack, the guillotine, burnings… this party has no plans for a ‘free vote’ on genetically modified products though, or action on climate change, or…). He’s also said he’d break with Conservatives over Kyoto and Quebec’s aerospace (for the most part military) industries. So, once again, Quebec might possibly provide a civilizing influence (though asking for protection of military industries doesn’t exactly qualify as civilizing) on a Conservative minority government. Provided, of course, the Conservatives don’t win a majority.

The surreal world of campus activism, part III

On March 11, 2003, at Concordia University in Montreal, where a lot of ugly stuff has happened on campus over the Israel/Palestine conflict, some angry “tabling” (“tabling” is just sitting at a table that has leaflets and posters on it and giving them out to passersby) was going on. A member of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) was tabling next to a member of Hillel (see this note on Hillel). In the exchange, the SPHR member told the Hillel member: “I’ll be famous one day and you’ll be selling falafel.”

What happened next? A chain of events that led to an acquittal today.

Who was acquitted? For what? How could the rather banal exchange above lead to a criminal prosecution? See below, dear reader, for details…

Acquitted! Palestinian Concordia student Nidal Alalul cleared after bogus charges by Hillel members

MONTREAL, June 11, 2004 — This morning in Montreal’s Municipal Courthouse, Concordia student Nidal Alalul was acquitted of the charge of “uttering a death threat”. Judge Antonio Discepola, who is regarded as one of the most pro-prosecution judges in Montreal, nonetheless found Nidal not guilty with a terse four word statement: “The information is dismissed.” In his written judgement, Discepola found Nidal’s testimony very credible, while casting doubt on the accounts provided by the complainants, who were members of Hillel Concordia and Birthright.

On March 11, 2003 — several months after Benjamin Netanyahu was shut down by pro-Palestinian students at Concordia University — Nidal was arrested on campus and charged with “uttering a death threat”. Nidal, a member of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) had been in an argument with Schlomo Lifshitz, 47, of Birthright, which offers free trips to Israel to Jewish youth (in his judgement, Discepola describes Birthright as “a non-governmental organization funded by the Israeli government”). Schlomo was tabling with Hillel, and began to bait Nidal, who is a foreign student orginally from Nablus. When Schlomo said that Nidal had “a weak personality”, Nidal replied: “I’ll be famous in two years … a lawyer or a politician … and you’ll be selling falafel.”

Nidal’s comment was interpreted as a death threat, with Schlomo, members of Hillel, Concordia security, and eventually the Crown attorney assuming that Nidal meant that he wanted to be a suicide bomber. The overtly racist assumption throughout the trial was that the only way for a Palestinian youth to be famous is by becoming a suicide bomber. That racist assumption was backed by Concordia University, whose security guards detained Nidal, and did not attempt to get his side of the story. Moreover, Concordia University lawyers attended the trial, helping the Crown make her case, in a clear show of bias against Nidal. (Similarly, Concordia lawyers have been helping the Crown in cases against other pro-Palestinian students and their allies, in relation to the September 9, 2002 protests at Concordia University, with little success. In one case, a defendant has already been acquitted of five charges before even having to present a defence!)

Written complaints against Nidal were made by several members of Hillel, including Rachel Guy (who now sits on Concordia student council). Rachel testified against Nidal, but her credibility was severely weakened when she conveniently forgot to admit that she actually wrote Schlomo’s written statement to the police for him.

That Nidal was ever charged is another example of the biased treatment of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students, and their allies, by Concordia University. Nonetheless, Nidal’s acquittal — as well as other recent acquittals and dropped charges — indicates that victories are possible in court, especially when the charges are so racist and bogus in the first place.

To stay in touch about ongoing court proceedings related to Concordia University, please e-mail noii-montreal@resist.ca.

Haiti coup’s mastermind is… a prof in Canada?

This bizarre story comes from the Montreal Gazette via the National Post via a reader, and is out of the archives — it came out shortly after the coup in Haiti, March 9, 2004.

The guy’s name is Paul Arcelin and he was a professor at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal in the 1960s. He gave an interview to a Canadian media outlet. Here’s some quotes.

“Two years ago, I met Guy Philippe in Santo Domingo and we spent 10 to 15 hours a day together, plotting against Aristide,” Mr. Arcelin said in an interview at the rebel headquarters at the Hibo Lele Hotel on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.

“From time to time we’d cross the border through the woods to conspire against Aristide, to meet with the opposition and regional leaders to prepare for Aristide’s downfall.”

Nicole Roy-Arcelin, who was elected to the House of Commons as a Montreal Conservative in 1988, is married to Paul Arcelin’s brother, Andre, a doctor who came to Canada in 1964.

When the rebels took over Hinche, a city in the north, soon after the Feb. 5 start of the insurrection, Mr. Arcelin said he was in Canada, sick. But he took advantage of the visit and his sister-in- law’s political connections to meet with Pierre Pettigrew, the Health Minister, whose Montreal riding has a large Haitian population.

“I explained the reality of Haiti to him,” Mr. Arcelin said, pulling Mr. Pettigrew’s business card out of his wallet. “He promised to make a report to the Canadian government about what I had said.”

The rest of the article (below) is typical mainstream media fare — apologetics for the coup, anti-Aristide stuff, surreal and solemn proclamations of fealty to the Haitian poor, and so on. But so much of this stuff is just completely out in the open.

Author(s): Sue Montgomery Article types: News Dateline: PORT-AU-PRINCE Section: World Publication title: National Post. Don Mills, Ont.: Mar 9, 2004. pg. A.12

Copyright National Post 2004)

PORT-AU-PRINCE – A former Montreal professor is taking credit for being the political mastermind of Haiti’s rebellion.

In an exclusive interview, Paul Arcelin, a professor at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal in the 1960s, told CanWest News Service he is the political lieutenant to Guy Philippe, leader of the rebel army that toppled Jean-Bertrand Aristide last month.

“Two years ago, I met Guy Philippe in Santo Domingo and we spent 10 to 15 hours a day together, plotting against Aristide,” Mr. Arcelin said in an interview at the rebel headquarters at the Hibo Lele Hotel on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.

“From time to time we’d cross the border through the woods to conspire against Aristide, to meet with the opposition and regional leaders to prepare for Aristide’s downfall.”

Nicole Roy-Arcelin, who was elected to the House of Commons as a Montreal Conservative in 1988, is married to Paul Arcelin’s brother, Andre, a doctor who came to Canada in 1964.

When the rebels took over Hinche, a city in the north, soon after the Feb. 5 start of the insurrection, Mr. Arcelin said he was in Canada, sick. But he took advantage of the visit and his sister-in- law’s political connections to meet with Pierre Pettigrew, the Health Minister, whose Montreal riding has a large Haitian population.

“I explained the reality of Haiti to him,” Mr. Arcelin said, pulling Mr. Pettigrew’s business card out of his wallet. “He promised to make a report to the Canadian government about what I had said.”

It was around that time the international community’s attitude toward the rebels began to shift, with the U.S. embassy softening the rhetoric by referring to them as “armed elements of the north.”

Ten days ago, the Front de Liberation du Haiti, the rebel army, arrived in the capital in a convoy of SUVs and was greeted by cheering throngs of Haitians. The day before, Mr. Aristide had left the country — he claims he was ousted by the United States in what amounted to a coup d’etat — his regime in tatters and the nation a bankrupt, crumbling mess.

“My country looks like Hiroshima — dirty and destroyed like there was a war,” Mr. Arcelin said with disgust. “But there wasn’t a war. It was the destruction of the country by a president who was crazy.”

The rebels are now reaping the rewards of their three-week insurrection, denying they are interested in seizing power while basking in the glory heaped on them by the Haitian people.

The road to the Hibo Lele Hotel is a steep, potholed, narrow, winding path. There is no light, save for that coming from the candlelit shacks along the way, the jeep’s headlights and a full moon. Inside, the guests all carry guns — either over their shoulders or tucked into their jeans.

Inside a sparsely furnished room, Mr. Philippe, the self- declared military chief of the group, is sitting on a chair, naked from the waist up, a thick silver chain around his neck. He has a beer in one hand and a cellphone to his ear. As he speaks, he gazes at his image in a full-length mirror on the wall.

“Hello, my sweetie,” he says, after finishing the phone call. “What can I do for you?”

He looks much younger than his 36 years. He’s wearing brand new Docksider shoes and blue jeans. Around his right wrist is a leather strap with coloured beads that spell out the word “Gucci.”

Mr. Philippe is asked what he thinks about the political situation in his country — in particular the seven-member council that has been set up to choose an independent prime minister in the hope he will lead the country toward a free and fair election.

“If it’s something that can help the Haitian people, then it’s good,” he said. “I really think the international community will help, but it won’t help through military guys, but through food and education.”

Lurking behind Mr. Philippe is a handful of armed men, ready to use their weapons to keep the leader alive, even though he claims all eight million Haitians love him.

“I get calls from people telling me to watch out, and they call my family and friends, too,” he said, his boyish face breaking into an impish grin. “Everybody loved Jesus, too, but they killed him. They killed Martin Luther King; they killed Gandhi.”

Later, Mr. Arcelin says Mr. Philippe is, quite simply, “brilliant.”

“It’s Guy’s show; he’s the star,” Mr. Arcelin said. “He is the army head and I’m head of the political arm of the rebels. In less than 25 days, we took control of two-thirds of the country and part of the capital. We planned it in a way that the world was surprised.”

After their jubilant and peaceful arrival in the capital, the rebels announced they were laying down their arms and would respect the process put in place to lead the country to elections.

When a peaceful victory demonstration turned violent on Sunday, killing six, including Spanish television reporter Ricardo Ortega, Mr. Arcelin was outraged.

With such a heavily armed population, Mr. Arcelin worries his country will become another Somalia.

After Sunday’s bloodshed, the rebels vowed to retreat to their stronghold in the north and re-evaluate their strategy. But before leaving, Mr. Arcelin dropped by the Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince to say goodbye, introducing himself at the front desk as the Canadian ambassador.

Asked whether he will return to Canada or continue to fight, Mr. Arcelin replied: “It’s difficult to say what will happen.

“I would never say I’m going back to Canada, although I love Canada — the best years of my life were there. But it’s such an organized country compared to Haiti and I feel I owe my life to the poor and needy of my country. I am here for the rest of my life.”

(The Gazette)

FLR Report: Canadian Election Coverage!

For the next two weeks, the Killing Train will be offering special, daily coverage of the Canadian election! This part of the blog will be called the “Fear and Loathing Report”. Why that name? Because it seems that these are the two emotions that are driving the election.

If the Conservatives under Stephen Harper win, Canadians will have succumbed to their LOATHING of the ruling Liberals.

If the Liberals under Paul Martin win, Canadians will have succumbed to their FEAR of Stephen Harper’s fascism and mouth-foaming desire to destroy the public sector and take Canada into foreign adventures as quickly as possible.

Canadian readers can look for the Fear and Loathing Report in this blog, once a day, from now until June 28. Non-Canadian readers need not fear: the Killing Train will continue its other coverage as well.

And now some electoral thoughts.

Zeynep Toufe of Under the Same Sun had this question yesterday:

“Why is this happening, and why now? Especially at a time when the world’s elite is mostly trying to damage control from the Iraq War, why is Canada jumping in like this?”

In addition to Joe Emersberger’s response I would add the following.

Elections are a time when I spent a lot of time wondering how much of a say we really have. It isn’t just that politicians once they get into power ignore what the people voted for. It’s also the role of the media in picking the candidates and the winners. The media isn’t taking the NDP seriously, for example. Is that a self-fulfilling prophecy? If the NDP got into power, they would have to be domesticated quite quickly (and were, when they were in power in Ontario, for example) or fight back in ways that we haven’t figured out how to do here yet. But in any case, the media keep on saying that Martin is “plagued by scandals” and that Harper is “on the rise”. I can’t help but think that this is a factor in the fall of Martin and the rise of Harper — which brings us to Zeynep’s question: when every other elite in the world is trying to jump off a sinking ship, why is the Canadian elite preparing to put someone in power who will jump on?

I’m not sure myself why Canada has to buck the global trend of throwing out hard right regimes — India did it, Spain did it, and even the US will probably do it in November. Hell, Colombia did it halfway in October 2003 and Ontario and Toronto did so recently as well, throwing out the filthy Conservatives in provincial government and a bizarre mayor (who once said he didn’t want to go to Africa for Toronto’s olympic bid because he feared being roasted alive in a pot with snakes by natives).

It’s not just broken promises, as Joe suggested, although that’s a factor. The poll I mentioned yesterday was analyzed today in the Toronto Star. It turns out that Canadians don’t want any of the vicious right-wing policies that Harper promises. They just want to punish the Liberals electorally for their corruption. This is one of those cases where the public will say to the Liberals: “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it does you…” How strange.

The pollster said: “Canadians are somewhat aware that in the rush to punish the Liberals for real and imagined sins, they may in fact be setting the country on a course inconsistent with dominant values.”

There is something else going on — as always the real story with elections. It’s not just the population who is angry at the Liberals and wants to punish them electorally. It is the Canadian elite itself — and that’s what you’re seeing in the media. It’s hard to know why without knowing all the details of the various scandals — but it may just come down to things like corporate largesse being distributed unevenly. The Liberal party itself has had problems because of a power struggle between the “Martin faction”, that won, and all the losers who had sought the leadership. Martin was apparently not generous in victory, causing defection and dissension in the political machine.

So I guess the answer is that there are some singular local Canadian things going on that could cause Canada to buck the entire global and historical trend and put some diehard terror warriors in the saddle for the next five years, against Canadians’ own better judgement.

Stay tuned for more fear and loathing tomorrow.