The Haiti Information Project reports that Haitian police opened fire on a Lavalas demonstration, killing 9 people, while US Marines, supposedly there to guarantee the ‘security’ of the population of Haiti, watched. Can’t verify the story but it certainly fits with everything else reported to be going on in Haiti, particularly with the attacks on Lavalas members. This is not long after the Marines blew up the gates of a grandmother’s house, handcuffed her and her 5-year old granddaughter and others, and arrested her.
Author: Justin Podur
Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction. Teach at York U's FES. Author. Writer at ZNet, TeleSUR, AlterNet, Ricochet, and the Independent Media Institute.
The US versus Holy Matrimony
With all the sanctimony about marriage being a sacred thing, one would be justified in wondering why the US is so insistent on massacring wedding parties in the countries it occupies. For example, the latest massacre of over 40 people at a wedding party in Iraq, by way of an AC-130 Gunship.
The little detail about the AC-130 in the story is actually key to understanding that it was a cold-blooded slaughter of innocents and not a mistake. I just learned about all this from reading Stan Goff’s ‘Full Spectrum Disorder’ (on which more later), where he describes the weapon. He describes it (I’m paraphrasing) as a gigantic cannon that fires huge depleted uranium rounds that can cut through anything, that essentially flies in a circular arc while maintaining the gun pointed at a target and vaporizing it. That is what was done to this wedding party. The US makes ‘no apologies’. Why? There were two dozen military-age males at the party! And they were close to the border with Syria. And they were in a rural area. Well, that’s enough for death by uranium rain. And no apology.
Remember that about two years ago, the US did another wedding party massacre, in Afghanistan (mentioned in this Fisk article).
The message: don’t get married if your country is occupied by the US. And if you are going to get married, don’t invite military aged males (MAMs, not to be confused with marriage-age males, unfortunately abbreviated the same way).
The US also raided Ahmed Chalabi’s home. Can’t say I understand that one. Chalabi was supposed to be one of their favourites. Perhaps someone in his family was planning to get married.
In related news, Israel has convicted Marwan Barghouti, in a court system famous for its fairness to Palestinians, of terrorism.
India – the fight against fascism has only just begun…
Readers have probably heard that Sonia Gandhi will not be the Prime Minister of India. In some ways this is a good thing: she was going to be the leader of India because of her last name. But she is being replaced by Manmohan Singh, the man most associated with neoliberalism in India (again it is worth remembering that Sonia Gandhi got her last name by marriage to Rajiv Gandhi, and the neoliberal opening of India begun under Rajiv Gandhi). Less important,, it would have been kind of nice that India could have a Prime Minister who was born in another country and have it be no big deal.
But of course, the BJP, now in opposition, made it a big deal. Arundhati Roy, in an interview with Amy Goodman, describes what happened:
“What has happened is that as soon as the election results were announced, the BJP, the hard-right wing members of the BJP and its goon squads started saying we’ll shave our heads. We’ll eat green gram and make a revolution in this country against this foreign woman on the one hand, and on the other hand, equally hard core corporate groups were acting — they were out on the streets. They were yelling like fundamentalists would, and all of these corporate television channels had split screens where on the one hand, you saw what is happening in Sonia Gandhi’s house and on the other half, you just had what the stockbrokers are saying. And the whole of the one billion people who had voted had just been forgotten. They had been given their photo opportunity, their journeys on elephant back and camel and whatever it was to the election booth. Now they were just forgotten. The only comments you get are what the industrialists think… and what the centrists think about Sonia Gandhi. It is an absolutely absurd kind of blackmail by fascists on the one hand and corporate fascists on the other.”
The day after the election, Sudhanva Deshpande published a ZNet Commentary analyzing the election results, the growth of the left, and the fall of the BJP. To Deshpande, it is the Indian left, of which he is a part, that is the key: If “the Left fails to grow, the historic verdict of this election will become a mere hiccup in the rise of Indian fascism.”
I think that is right. I was very happy to see the BJP gone. But the real battle for India is only just starting…
Israel continues to kill, with media help
Its impunity ratified, Israel is continuing the slaughter in Gaza, and in particular in Rafah. MSNBC calls this ‘forging ahead’ to look for ‘tunnels’. The bizarre and contorted story calls three of the people Israel killed ‘militants’, citing ‘witnesses’, then tacks on almost as an aside the fact that ‘Medics said the mangled remains of two other men were found in what looked like another missile attack.’ Then it goes on to cite the Army’s justificaiton. Then another murder: ‘Witnesses said soldiers shot dead a 39-year-old man who went onto his roof and shouted a request for water.’ Followed by equal weight for the army: ‘The army said troops “spotted a terrorist and shot him.”‘ That’s 40 people in the past 3 days of slaughter — called ‘fighting’ by MSNBC.
books
So I am back, it’s quite late, and having taken a look at my mail I despair of being able to make any sense of it. I have, in other words, lost all track of current events, and will not be able to catch up tonight. There is of course a lot going on — stuff worth commenting on has happened in India, for example; the destruction of Gaza has escalated, if that’s possible; Iraq; I have received quite a few reports on events in Haiti in the days I was away; and more. I can’t cover any of that tonight.
Gaza
I was wrong — this needs to be blogged, despite the fact that it is all over mainstream outlets. It looks like another line has been crossed, with Israel launching a missile attack into a crowd of people in Gaza, essentially a flat out massacre of civilians, without even any kind of pretext (most Israeli massacres of civilians come with a pretext). The absence of a pretext in this attack is a sign of impunity, I suppose related to the fact that the only forces that can restrain the Israeli military are the US (firmly dedicated to committing massacres with impunity and unlikely to play any restraining role) and the Israeli public (which is, actually, hopefully, less interested in these kinds of massacres).
It’s worth mentioning that apologists for Israeli atrocities always make a point of trying to differentiate Israel’s massacres of civilians from the Palestinian suicide bombers. They are not making the quantitative argument that Israel kills more civilians, which is the case, or that Israel starves Palestinians and the reverse is not true, also the case, and so on. Instead, they are saying that the Palestinian bombs are meant to kill civilians, deliberately, by design, whereas Israel kills Palestinians by accident. It was outrageous when they were using it before, but I suppose they’ll probably stop using it now.
Not that you need arguments when you have helicopter gunships and missiles.
Much more gravely, this is a glimpse of what Sharon’s ethnic cleansing plan for the Palestinians is: it has always been to use artillery against densely populated civilian areas and commit atrocities that dwarf the Jenin massacre of 2002. It is a ‘feeler’: if there isn’t a major reaction from the Israeli public or the US, there will be more such massacres, and soon.
Below is the note from the ISM.
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
For Immediate Release
ARMY FIRED MISSILES AT A CIVILIAN DEMONSTRATION IN RAFAH
13 people, mostly youths are reported killed, more than 60 injured
[Rafah, Gaza Strip] Israeli army helicopter gunships and tanks opened fire on a nonviolent civilian demonstration in Rafah early this afternoon. 13 Palestinian are repored killed, including 2 children, and 60 injured.
Approximately 3.000 Palestinian civilians from Rafah, mostly youths, were peacefully demonstrating to protest the recent military operation in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. Eyewitnesses reported that 4 missiles were fired from helicopter gunships and tanks fired shells at the crowd of unarmed civilians.
Hospitals are overflowed and cannot handle the situation, chief hospital spokesperson said.
This recent attack raised the previous death toll to 37 people in one of the bloodiest military operation since the beginning of the second Intifada.
For more information, please contact:
Mohammed Ali (English and Arabic): 972-59 841672
Adwan (English and Arabic): 972-59 304628
Dr. Ali Musa (Director of Rafah’s Hospital): +972-8-2132-616
Sa’id Zoroub (Mayor of Rafah): +972-59-408-391 or +972-8-21-37-951 (Office)
Ali Barhoum (Rafah Municipality): +972-59-815-100 or +972-8-21-37- 951
(Office)
Dr. Youssef Musa (Director UNRWA Clinic in Gaza): +972-59-410-490
ISM Media Office: +972-2.277.4602
Kanehsatake
http://www.zcommunications.org/kanehsatake-by-justin-podur
On May 20, 2004, people from all over the Ontario and Quebec will go to the Mohawk community of Kanehsatake to show their support for a peaceful resolution to a confrontation between heavily armed agents of the state and a community that rejects them. The conflict has gone on for months, with a Grand Chief ousted by the community trying repeatedly to return to power, against community opposition, at the head of a group of heavily armed police.
absence to may 19
Apologies — no blogging until May 19. See you then
… and back to Gaza
After our brief excursion into optimism, let us return to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where Israel is launching missiles, artillery, and aggression into neighbourhoods. Using the IMEMC.org newswire, a valuable resource.
There was all the home destruction in Rafah.
The shelling of residental areas.
Standard patterns of wreckage, destruction, and murder that are the daily diet of Palestinians, especially in Gaza, and especially in Rafah, courtesy of the Israeli military and the US government. These are being reported in the mainstream media as ‘retaliations’.
India’s Elections again
Thinking a little more about it, and reading Arundhati Roy and P Sainath’s pieces on the subject, I have decided that I am going to take a minute and celebrate the results of India’s elections. The result is only hitting me now. Readers have probably deduced that I am somewhat pessimistic. But this is actually a major event: the population of India has rejected fascism and neoliberalism and done so in a way that pulls the country back from the brink. I stand by what I said yesterday — the government can’t be relied upon to pull India back very far from the brink. But it’s not the distance from the brink that matters, it’s the depth of the hole. That 1/5 of the world is now a little further back from it is very good news indeed.