Media Criticism

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.

Haiti: the coup that came out of nowhere

Yeah, right.

A friend passed this 4-year old article to me about the first stirrings of the destabilization program in Haiti. It’s quite good, from Haiti Progres (it is below).

If you’re in the mood for some serious obfuscation on the topic, take a look at the Canadian government’s official take on Haiti. All carefully written. Note the dates, for example: Canadian ‘concern’ for the human rights situation and demand that the government take care of it apparently ends when the coup happens. Canadian assistance with the situation apparently begins when the coup happens.

And it was the Liberals who did it. It is ironic — there is a lot of talk in Canada now, as the Liberals sink in the polls behind the racist, militarist, homophobic fascists of the Conservative party (I realize that isn’t a full description, but I am trying to be brief) about what kind of coalitions a minority government might form. Will the Conservatives form a coalition with the Bloc Quebecois? Will the Liberals form a coalition with the NDP? The irony is that the only coalition that makes sense in terms of policy is one between the Liberals and the Conservatives. They agree on Haiti, for example. They agree on the US and the need to help the US violate self-determination and human rights in defenceless countries. They agree on corporate Canada, that its rights must be protected above all else. I suppose the Conservatives are more extreme (see the description above).

Gee, I hope no one in the Liberals and Conservatives sees this blog and realizes that amalgamation is the best hope for their winning the election.

Below is the article on Haiti from April 2000, as promised.

Haïti Progrès 5 au 11 Avril 2000 This week in Haiti

The Assassination of Jean Dominique: Is it part of Washington’s offensive?

At 6:15 a.m. on Apr. 3, a gunman entered the courtyard of Radio Haiti Inter and shot to death pioneering radio journalist Jean Dominique, 69, as well as the station’s caretaker, Jean-Claude Louissaint. Dominique, who was just arriving by car to prepare for his hugely popular 7:00 a.m. daily news roundup, was struck by one bullet in the head and two in the neck. He was loaded with Louissaint into an ambulance, but both men were pronounced dead on arrival at the nearby Haitian Community Hospital in Pétionville.

In recent weeks, Dominique had been sharply critical of the U.S. government’s heavy-handed meddling in Haitian elections and bullying of Haitian President René Préval, to whom Dominique was a close friend and advisor.

Are agents of Washington behind Jean Dominique’s brutal murder? Is this just the opening salvo of a more violent stage in the wide-ranging campaign to intimidate the Haitian government and people into following Washington’s directives?

That is the suspicion voiced by Haitians on radio call-in shows and street corners since the killing. For them, this is just the latest act of aggression in an escalating war which Washington is waging to see that its neoliberal agenda eventually goes through in Haiti. Vilifying articles in the mainstream press, warnings from diplomats, hold-backs of international assistance, and killings by the “forces of darkness” have all been part of a growing offensive to block the return to power of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his party in what has become known as the “electoral coup d’état.”

Let’s briefly review the various elements of this offensive.

The media offensive

There are four things which Washington wants you to know about Haiti: 1) President Préval dissolved parliament in Jan. 1999; 2) a new Parliament must be elected and seated by Jun. 12, according to the Constitution; 3) Préval is former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s puppet; and 4) Préval is a dictator or close to becoming one.

Unfortunately, every one of these assertions is untrue.

1) The term of most parliamentians expired in Jan. 1999 and Préval refused to violate the constitutional ban on extending mandates; 2) Jun. 12 is merely the date a sitting Parliament is supposed to return from vacation; there is no sitting Parliament; 3) Préval remains in touch with Aristide, but Aristide and his party have often differed with and criticized Préval’s policies and decisions; 4) Préval’s administration bears no comparison to the regimes of his predecessors like Duvalier, Namphy, Avril, or Cédras; many of those who today accuse Préval were themselves members or collaborators of those truly dictatorial regimes.

Nonetheless, U.S. and Canadian mainstream newspapers, as Washington’s handmaidens, have been blaring the four lies far and wide in recent weeks. This is their way of preparing the North American public for aggressive U.S. actions.

Take for example, the Mar. 20 Miami Herald editorial “Haiti’s Elections in Peril: President Préval to Blame for Latest Holdup.” It says that “Mr. Préval is validating suspicions that he’s delaying the parliamentary elections to help his party, Fanmi Lavalas.” First, Préval is not a member of Fanmi Lavalas, Aristide’s party. Second, he has often repeated that he just wants elections which are fair and inclusive. With probably half the estimated 4.5 million-member electorate without electoral cards (nobody knows for sure how many have been issued), it is obvious that elections cannot be held. But the editorial never once refers to the lack of electoral cards. Instead, it calls Préval “contemptuous of democracy” and a “despot.”

One week later on Mar. 27, the Herald published the article “U.S. presses Haiti over elections,” by Don Bohning. The author is not embarrased to write that both the Democratic Clinton administration and the Republican Congress have their “patience growing shorter… over continued delays by Haitian officials in holding critical legislative and local elections.” Why are they impatient? Are Haitian elections being held in the U.S.?

The article contains all the usual untruths (Préval “effectively dissolved Parliament” and “June 12 [is] when Parliament is constitutionally mandated to begin its second session of the year”). Like the Herald editorial, the article never mentions the lack of electoral cards, nor the fact that the shortage can be traced back to the U.S. State Department (which funded the cards), the U.S. State Department-spawned International Foundation for Electoral Systems or IFES (which chose the contractor), and the Canadian firm, Code, Inc (which produced the card materials). In short, the Haitian government was (to its shame) not even involved.

Instead, the main purpose of Bohning’s article is to deliver the threats that the U.S. will undertake “economic and diplomatic isolation and the denial of U.S. visas to those seen as obstructing the democratic process.” Ironically, the real obstructionists are all in Washington.

The diplomatic offensive

Indeed, a constant stream of diplomats bearing threats have passed through Port-au-Prince in recent weeks. “Failure to constitute a legitimate parliament risks isolating Haiti from the community of democracies and jeapardizes future cooperation and assistance,” said Arturo Valenzuela, the White House’s National Security Council official for Latin America who visited Préval with Donald Steinberg, the State Department’s special Haiti coordinator last week.

Two weeks before it was a bipartisan letter from Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), chariman of the House International Relations Committee, along with John Conyers (D-MI) and Charles Rangel (D-NY), who threatened Préval in no uncertain terms. “The Clinton administration informs us that it will use all diplomatic means to respond to those who seek to disrupt or corrupt the electoral process,” the letter said. “The administration has our full support to so act to protect vital American interests.” So at least they are honest. They are protecting American, not Haitian, interests.

Also earlier last month, former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake visited Haiti where he met separately with Préval and Aristide to warn them of dire consequences if elections were not held before June.

Alarm in Washington grew last Friday, Mar. 31, when Préval and the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) met and agreed to postpone elections unrealistically set for Apr. 9 and to take about eight weeks to review and correct the deficiencies in the electoral machinery: recuperate all electoral registers, compile a definitive list of registration stations and authorized personnel, determine the shortfall in electoral card materials, check for duplicate registrations, verify electoral ballots with candidates, and so on. Despite this amiable accord between the only two instances concerned, State Department spokesman James Rubin used the death of Jean Dominique to reiterate U.S. pressure on Apr. 3. “From our standpoint, we believe that credible elections can be held in April and May, in time to convene the new parliament by the second Monday of June, consistent with Haitian constitutional law,” Rubin said. His “standpoint” is not relevant in a Haitian election.

Meanwhile, Albright buttonholed Foreign Minister Fritz Longchamp at the CARICOM meeting held in New Orleans, Louisiana on Mar. 29 to communicate U.S. displeasure over election delays.

The international assistance offensive

Then there are the dangled carrots. Whenever they want the Haitian government to do something, U.S. and “international community” officials inevitably announce that there are millions in international aid in jeopardy.

So last week , it was the turn of Gérard Johnson of the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) to announce that he would not release $200 million earmarked for over sixty projects until after elections were held.

The U.S. has often repeated that it has hundreds of millions more that it is ready to “unblock” as soon as a Parliament sits and passes legislation neoliberalizing Haiti’s state and economy.

The “observer” offensive

Since early March, the U.N. began deploying about 80 election observers throughout Haiti (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 17, No. 51, Mar. 8, 2000). But more central to their plan is the “Haitian” National Council of Electoral Observation (CNO) headed by Léopold Berlanger, who is director of the USAID-funded Radio Vision 2000, a frequent recipient of National Endowment for Democracy grants, and a long-time agent of Washington (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 17, No. 43, Jan. 12, 2000). Last week, Jean Dominique revealed over the airwaves of Radio Haiti Inter that Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) president Léon Manus signed an accord with Berlanger on Feb. 25, without the knowledge of any other CEP members. The deal would allow Berlanger’s CNO to pick not only the CEP’s accredited election observers but also the members of the registration stations, voting stations, and the supervisors.

Jean Dominique’s last editorial was precisely to denounce Berlanger and the secret accord which made the entirely self-appointed CNO a final arbiter of any upcoming elections.

The “opposition” offensive

For months we have reviewed how the principal currents of the opposition – the Espace de Concertation, the Patriotic Movement to Save the Nation (MPSN), the Organization of People in Struggle (OPL), the Democratic Nationalist Patriotic Assembly (RDNP), and Mochrena – have waged their war against Aristide’s party, the Lavalas Family, and the people. This week however they have upped the ante.

Evans Paul of the Espace has virtually called for civil war, seizing on chaotic street demonstrations, which closed downtown Port-au-Prince from Mar. 27-29. The anti-electoral-coup-d’état demonstrations, which were surely infiltrated by provocateurs, were blamed for breaking car and shop windows and the shooting of a policeman. “The Espace is now calling for the establishment of committees for legitimate defense,” Paul said. “The Espace asks people to identify the rioters, point out the houses where they meet, and write down their license plates. We ask for drivers to show solidarity. When rioters attack a driver, don’t run away. Instead, run down the rioters with your car.”

Meanwhile, Paul’s putschist-collaborator colleague, Serge Gilles, called for all Espace partisans in the government of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis to resign, a step toward the “Zero Option” (i.e. removal of Préval and new presidential elections without Aristide) proposed by the MPSN and the OPL over these past weeks. “The Espace asks the people it has placed in the government and which today occupy posts of minister or secretary of state to leave the Préval/Alexis government,” Gilles said. “This appeal is also addressed to all other government members who consider themselves democrats and who refuse to be seen associating with the downfall of the Lavalas power.”

The offensive of the “Forces of Darkness”

Historically, alongside all the above-mentioned visible offensives, there has always been the “invisible” pressure exerted by “forces of darkness,” that is former Tonton Macoutes, soldiers, death-squads, and assorted putschist henchmen. For example, while the U.S. formally supported the return of Aristide during the coup, the CIA set up and supported Toto Constant’s FRAPH as a network to pressure, spy on, and kill the population. Many Haitians call this CIA-Pentagon-Macoute nexus the “laboratory.”

“The assassination of Jean Dominique, it is clear as a bell, is a political assassination,” said Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the National Popular Party (PPN) in an Apr. 3 press conference. “It was carried out by the ‘forces of darkness’ and it was a warning.”

Dominique’s murder is very similar to that of Lavalas businessman and activist Antoine Izméry on Sep. 11, 1993. They were both outspoken and progressive elements from Haiti’s bourgeoisie. In both cases, their deaths sent a chill through the entire population.

Whether it was “rogue” elements of Washington’s shadowy reserve army of former thugs or whether it was an ordered hit, the killing was a “professional job.” It is almost certain that, in some way, the “laboratory” had a hand in Jean Dominique’s murder.

The “forces of darkness” are also used to infiltrate genuine demonstrations such as those last week, which were demanding the resignation of the CEP, electoral cards for all, and a single election in November. “Often in demonstrations, I have seen elements who start violent acts like breaking windows and damaging property randomly,” said Leon, a long-time Lavalas organizer. “When you question what they are doing, they won’t listen to you. They are acting under somebody else’s orders.”

Change of Strategy

Finally, the U.S. and its proxies may be now changing strategy, as outlined by Dupuy at the PPN’s Apr. 3 press conference. He noted that the Haitian people have up until now been able to thwart the original version of the “electoral coup d’état,” which was to hold an election for parliament with a limited electorate.

Now they may have shifted to a new and revised plan. Since electoral technicians have estimated they will need about two months to straighten out the current electoral mess, a new election date could be no earlier than June. If the CEP and government cling to having two elections, that leaves only 5 months for the CEP to prepare for the November presidential elections. Already it has taken them 15 months to prepare the legislative and municipal elections.

“If after 15 months we still haven’t had legislative elections, we wonder how long we will have to wait for presidential elections which are supposed to be in Nov. 2000,” Dupuy said. “That is where it seems that USAID and IFES now want to lead the country. To arrive at a point where there is not enough time to have a presidential election and then the Presidential mandate of President Préval will end [on Feb. 7, 2001], and thus they will have managed to have us arrive at a sort of ‘zero option.’ Then we will see a real catastrophe. The head of the Supreme Court, a zombie, will take control of the country, and I don’t need to tell you what kind of mess we will have. The country will be upside down. And since the proponents of the ‘zero option’ know that they can’t do much without the ‘international community,’ many of them will call for another occupation of the country and in fact, several have already made declarations in this sense.”

In short, Washington and its local agents are upping the pressure on the Haitian government and the Haitian people in every way possible. This week, even the normally submissive Prime Minister Alexis had to speak out. “I am sure that the ‘international community’ knows better than us what is really going on here,” he said. “It is very strange that certain members of the ‘international community’ were at one point pressuring us in the executive to get more involved with the CEP and today these same people are saying that we don’t want elections. That is strange.” Alexis went on to conclude that “the ‘internaitonal community’… is orienting things in a sense that is not in the general interests of the country.”

This is the essence of the problem in Haiti today. This was the very problem Jean Dominique was denouncing in his last broadcasts. And this may well be the reason why he was killed.

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.

Brazil and the NYT

When the US decided it was going to add a little extra humiliation for foreigners to the process of traveling through that country (which multinational transportation networks, especially in the Americas, have made difficult to avoid) by fingerprinting and scanning them, Brazil decided to do the same to US visitors of Brazil. This was greeted with gasps all over the world. The temerity! Galeano wrote about it, eloquently as usual:

“Many condemned this normal act as an expression of perilous insanity. Perhaps, if the world were not so misconditioned, things would be seen in another light. At bottom, what was abnormal was not what the Brazilian president Lula did but the fact that he was the only one to do so. What was abnormal was that everyone else simply accepted the conditions that Bush imposed on the rest of the world with the exception of a privileged few that were held beyond suspicion of terrorism and evil-doing.”

Well, President Lula has done it again. This time, Larry Rohter, the NYT bureau chief, accused Lula of being a drunk. His visa was cancelled.

Unlike the fingerprinting at airports, there are legitimate reasons why Lula ought not to have done this. But the private media, especially the US media, in Latin America, especially in Venezuela but also in Brazil, are instruments of destabilization. Perhaps the media and governments should consider a negotiated solution: the media will stop lying and participating in foreign attempts to overthrow democratic regimes; those regimes will stop doing things like these.

The truth is, this is the only incident of its kind I’ve heard about — for the most part, governments are fulfilling their end of the bargain. Reuters story below.

By Axel Bugge
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has run into fierce criticism at home and abroad over his decision to expel a New York Times correspondent who wrote about his heavy drinking, with one critic calling him a “dictator of a third-rate republic.”

It will be the first time a foreign journalist has been thrown out of Brazil since the end of a 1964-1985 military dictatorship. The nation’s military rulers even jailed Lula, a former militant unionist who made his name standing up for the oppressed.

The government defended its move to cancel the visa of Larry Rohter, New York Times bureau chief in Rio de Janeiro. It said the article, which ran on Sunday, offended his honour.

The government said there was no chance it would reverse the expulsion.

“The Brazilian government is not going to retreat on this issue,” Lula’s spokesman told reporters on Wednesday. “It’s our responsibility to defend Brazil.”

Many Brazilians thought the story itself unfair. But the government’s reaction was slammed by Brazil’s opposition, human rights groups and media watchdogs, who called it an attack on press freedom.

“This was absurd, an immature decision by a dictator of a third-rate republic who does not understand the role of government,” said Sen. Tasso Jereissati of the centre-right Brazilian Social Democratic Party opposition.

The furore follows other spats between Brazil and the United States over trade policy and fingerprinting at airports.

It is also another distraction for the Lula government, which has just emerged from a corruption scandal and is struggling to get Brazil’s economy back on track and make good on its electoral promises of broad social reforms.

Two former presidents backed the expulsion. But Lula’s predecessor Fernando Henrique Cardoso did not, saying there were misinformed articles all the time but “I never thought of taking reprisals against a journalist.”

“APPROPRIATE ACTION TO DEFEND HIS RIGHTS”

Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said the issue was not about press freedom. The article “was intended to diminish the figure and dimension of the president.”

The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said that the expulsion could “do irreparable damage to freedom of expression in the country.” And U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the decision was “not in keeping with Brazil’s strong commitment to freedom of the press.”

New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said there was no basis for Rohter’s expulsion and the paper “would take appropriate action to defend his rights.”

The government’s move gives Rohter, a veteran Latin American correspondent, eight days to leave Brazil once police inform him he has lost his visa. He is now travelling outside Brazil.

The reaction prompted some to question if Lula overreacted.

“What was wrong with the story was that it said Lula’s drinking was a national worry, which is wrong, but the government’s response has become a national question,” said analyst Carlos Lopes.

Lula, who took office in January 2003, is known to enjoy a drink or two and Brazil has a generally relaxed attitude toward alcohol.

Lula’s personal doctor of ten years told Reuters the president did not have a drinking problem.

“I never noticed alcohol abuse,” cardiologist Roberto Kalil said in a phone interview. “He’s a normal, healthy person.”

What makes a scandal, scandalous?

This is a question that’s been puzzling me.

This morning, Rahul Mahajan’s blog provided a link to the video footage of the helicopter pilots murdering helpless Iraqis from a distance with heavy machine guns. Rahul has also been scrupulous about republishing the photos of the abuse (don’t call it torture, whatever you do) that have been coming out in the mainstream media.

Now, I have to admit that I wasn’t surprised at all when I heard this was going on. Actually that’s not true. I was surprised, in fact — surprised that it got out into the mainstream media. That is what surprises me about these ‘scandals’. How do ‘scandals’ become ‘scandalous’? Why do the media choose to leak things when they do? And why do things that are shown become scandals?

I ask this because on April 10, weeks before the torture– oops, sorry, I meant abuse — became a scandal, and just before the Fallujah massacre — oops, I meant combat — occurred, the UTS blog published a warning. Part of that warning was a video clip that came from CNN. That clip shows a soldier murdering a wounded man as he writhes on the ground, and then screaming, celebration, and commentary afterwards. Presumably, this was broadcast on CNN without any fanfare and no ‘scandal’, and yet the clip of the helicopter shooting couldn’t be aired on most networks.

What’s the difference? I found the CNN footage more appalling, not less, than the other. How did the latter become ‘scandalous’?

Why wasn’t the invasion itself a scandal? The occupation itself? Why isn’t the imprisonment of Palestinian children a scandal, or the starvation in Gaza? Or the massacres in Colombia… or in Haiti…

There’s something here I don’t understand, I guess. Journalists sometimes believe that if some explosive piece of information were to reach the public, that something would happen. Or that if it were to reach the media, they’d break the story and something would happen. But there’s plenty of explosive information reaching the media all the time. They don’t bother to pick it up and often when they do, there’s no reaction from the public.

I suppose if I understood scandals better, I’d set about trying to make scandals out of the many scandalous events that go on constantly.

Back to factual matters tomorrow.

Some Canadian Content

So, I suppose I should talk about Canada from time to time. There are actually some very serious labour disputes going on in Canada. There is a health care strike in British Columbia and as of this morning, the government had imposed back-to-work legislation on the workers, with a very generous settlement: a 15% wage rollback, plus no cap on external contracting (ie., privatization and layoffs, ie., total job insecurity). If the workers are going to stay on strike, it will be ‘illegal’, a line Canadian unions have been loath to cross.

The same thing happened in Newfoundland recently, which is going through its own self-imposed ‘structural adjustment’ by its millionaire premier (one of the wealthiest men in Canada). There, too, labour responded by striking. There, too, the strike was declared ‘illegal’.

It is a tactic that is instantly imposed by every legislature in the country when they want to break a union or attack the public sector generally: impose a nasty agreement, wait for the strike, then declare it ‘illegal’ and impose a settlement. They are forcing unions to break the law — but until the unions are ready to fight back as hard as the state and elites are, the workers will continue to lose the gains that were won by previous generations through hard struggle.

Counterspin, Canada, US, etc.

I was on CBC’s Counterspin, a political debate show, tonight, debating a columnist from the American Enterprise Institute. The theme was “What should Paul Martin say to George Bush”, on Haiti, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Missile Defense. Kind of a strange premise: two unelected leaders (who turfed out an elected leader) deciding on the fate of the world. Not that Martin decides on the fate of the world. It was television — a medium that I don’t think is conducive to changing people’s minds, but who knows. Maybe someone hears something that does move them in some way. That’s the hope… it’s difficult to try to convey anything under such time constraints. Still, it is a bit of a shame that Counterspin is going to be off the air after two more shows… I suspect that having Fox News in Canada won’t be much of a compensation.

Globalization is Dead?

I have to admit that I have a soft spot for genuine liberals that is probably not entirely rational. One Canadian writer who falls into this category for me is John Ralston Saul, the husband of Canada’s governor general, Adrienne Clarkson. I have read all his books, and he strikes me as someone who really knows a lot more than he says. It might not be the case: I just like to think that he’s secretly a radical, even though he makes all kinds of inconsistent arguments (in Voltaire’s Bastards, for example, he says the trouble with the US methods of waging war is that they don’t work, because generalship wins battles not hardware. That might be true, but the big problem with US methods of waging war are the ends of those wars and the slaughter they bring). Anyway, he’s recently published an article proclaiming the death of globalization…

It is fun to read (phrases like: “This was the crucifixion theory of economics: you had to be killed economically and socially in order to be reborn clean and healthy.”) , but I don’t really buy it.

He pokes fun at pompous neoliberal ideologues, he provides some interesting historical context (though I’m not sure of its accuracy), and he gives novel interpretations of events. It’s also nice to hear a liberal acknowledge the genocide in the Congo and at least hint that the West had something to do with it, as he does:

“In a global world of economic and social measurement, we are bombarded daily by apparently exact statistics measuring growth, efficiency, production, reproduction, sales, currency fluctuations, comparative levels of obesity and orgasms, divorce, salaries and incomes. Yet we don’t know, or don’t care to know, whether it was a million or half a million Rwandans who were massacred. And the genocide was facilitated by Paris and Washington, using old-fashioned nation-state powers at the UN security council to block a serious international intervention. The Rwanda catastrophe then morphed into the Congo catastrophe, involving 4.7 million deaths between 1998 and 2003. Or was it 3 million? Or 5.5 million?”

And yet. As much as I enjoy the essay, it suffers from all the liberal flaws:

-Rwanda is mentioned as a ‘failure to intervene’. The ‘successful’ interventions where civilians were, and are being slaughtered (Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq…) are left untouched.

-Globalization policies ‘don’t work’. Don’t they? Or are they doing exactly what they are intended to do — distribute wealth from the poor to the rich?

-Likewise, there’s a problem with nationalism:

“What we do know is that there has been a return across Europe of 19th-century-style negative nationalism. Although usually the product of fear, it reappeared in countries that had nothing to fear: Jorg Haider in Austria speaking out against immigrants, while echoing race and monolithic national myths. Italy governed by three nationalists, one of them the leader of Mussolini’s old party. Related phenomena in Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland. A sudden revival of sectarian nationalism in Northern Ireland. The defeat of a compromise in Corsica. Everywhere these nationalists are now in coalition governments or are leading oppositions.”

The problem? John might have noted the major flag bearer (waver?) of what he calls ‘negative nationalism’ is the United States, rallying it to attack helpless countries, threaten others, etc.

That’s the trouble with this kind of politics: it makes elites seem like they’re ‘lost’ when they actually know exactly what they’re doing; it exhibits a blind spot when it comes to one’s own society; it takes on the easy battles but avoids the ones that would bring serious flak down on a good ‘public intellectual’.

Still, I’m a sucker for a liberal who can turn a phrase.

Muslim Refusenik and Me, Part II

I thought I’d publish my correspondence with Manji in parts, but now I just want to get it over with. Spending more time on someone so far beneath contempt is unjustifiable when this morning’s CBC report said there have been 280 Iraqis killed in Fallujah alone since Sunday. Western media deflate Iraqi casualties; there are more cities that the Americans are attacking; these numbers come from hospital estimates and it is guaranteed that not everyone is getting to the hospitals; in other words, there is a major massacre unfolding here. Manji is an unaffordable diversion. So, I’ll publish the entire correspondence below, and have done.

When Manji wrote me the first time, I was as much amused as anything else. She was obviously bluffing. I hadn’t read her book yet, but I had seen her speech and gone through her website carefully and it was quite clear that she was not someone who was going to put her body on the line to protect Palestinian civilians (though I didn’t realize the depths of her racism until I read her book). So, I figured I would call her bluff. Here’s what I wrote back (interspersed, her words in italics):

Dear Justin,

Greetings. Irshad here. I’m writing to explore next steps with regard to sending me on a journalistic mission under the auspices of the International Solidarity Movement. I’ve checked out both websites that you’ve given to me, and look forward to learning more.

Given my crazy schedule for the next several months, I would hope to go in the very late spring or early summer.

Late spring or early summer sounds fine. The ISM normally has a ‘freedom summer’ campaign. Should you go in late spring, you will be between campaigns, but there will still be plenty going on.

Next steps?

ISM is normally caught up in issues of the moment — house demolitions, incursions, volunteers being deported, and so on — so the Palestine-side folks won’t be able to help much until you’re there. But folks in Canada probably can, at least somewhat, at least to answer your questions — you can certainly write me to answer any questions, for example. But basically all you need to do is go through the website, follow the instructions, travel there, and attend the training and screening in the territories.

From this point on in the email, you should take this as a personal email from me and not as a note from a ‘representative’ of ISM. Having read your book, I should tell you that this mission wouldn’t be like the one you went on in July 2002 — ISM is not in a position to pay plane tickets or expenses for volunteers, who normally raise their own funds through events and so on.

Volunteers get to the occupied territories and then join the ISM for trainings and then (nonviolent) actions, reporting, etc. As you can imagine, given that many would-be volunteers have been turned away, and others have been arrested, deported, (in the case of Tom Hurndall, Brian Avery, Coimhe Butterly, and others) shot and even (in Rachel Corrie’s case) killed by Israeli authorities, ISM is quite conscious of security and has a screening and training process. It asks that participants agree to some basic principles of unity, which you can find at both sites. These include adherence to nonviolence in practice, but they also include solidarity with the rights of Palestinians under international law and others, as you can read about. If you can in good faith agree with these principles and can join ISM without endangering yourself, other ISM volunteers, or Palestinians, then you’re set to go. My own feeling, having read your book and heard your talk, is that you would not be able to accept these principles of solidarity. But it is not my decision.

Last, and again speaking not as an ISM volunteer, I have written a review of your book for a radical site called ‘ZNet’, where I’m a frequent writer. Some of those you mention or reference in your book, including Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Tariq Ali, and the late Edward Said, have writing featured on this site. Likewise a lot of progressive Israelis, notably Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Tanya Reinhart, Baruch Kimmerling, and Neve Gordon. If you’d like to respond to the review, ZNet would probably publish your reply, along with my own reply to your reply.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=4624

————-

Her next reply escalated the bluff, and admittedly had me worried. It became obvious that she did not want to debate, but instead wanted to turn this into an opportunity to attack the ISM. I should have understood that from the beginning: while for me, the invitation and the correspondence was an opportunity to show the world what a fraud she is, from her point of view, this was an opportunity to join the mainstream chorus denouncing, smearing, and slandering ISM and spitting on the grave of people like Rachel Corrie.

Here’s her next note:

Jan 2, 2004

1) I knew about your review of my book when I emailed you the first time. I’ll be posting your review on my website shortly. Ain’t democracy great?

2) I’ve gone through the ismcanada website and, unless my eyes deceive me (very possible), I’ve missed the statement of unity that you mention. Do you mean familiarizing myself with the following:

* Going For the Right Reasons
* Respecting the Spirit of the ISM

If so, I’ve read it and I’m not sure what you think is so distasteful to me. On key fronts, I want the same things that the ISM does: an independent Palestinian state alongside a sovereign Jewish state, an end to the Israeli occupation (with clear and enforceable guarantees that the Israeli people will have secure borders after a withdrawal of troops), justice for the people of Palestine (which entails ending the corruption of the PA – an issue I don’t see tackled by the ISM). What is it about any of the above that the ISM would disagree with, even if it isn’t vocal about the need to be critical of PA human rights abuses and monetary manipulations?

In the spirit of my questions above, I will not be told what to think. Indeed, the conditions under which I went on my first, CIC-sponsored, trip to Israel were a) that I would be able to ask any questions I wanted, no matter who approved or disapproved; and 2) that I would have a hand in helping to shape the itinerary.

Will both conditions be met on any trip to the Occupied Territories under the International Solidarity Movement? Will representatives of the ISM attend meetings with Zionists in Israel, just as Canada-Israel Committee reps attended meetings with anti-Zionists in the Occupied Territories (and beyond)? If so, I can go with integrity.

But if not, I won’t pander to double-standards.

The choice is the ISM’s.

——–

Between her chortle about ‘democracy’ (there is a bizarre part in her book where she, presumably quoting from Fareed Zakaria without attribution, says it was ‘democracy’ that brought the Nazis to power so democracy isn’t always good… leaving aside the fact that it wasn’t ‘democracy’ that brought the Nazis to power but a putsch, I suppose one can’t expect her to remember her own book in every email), her talking about ‘integrity’, her failure to find the ISM’s principles of unity that are more or less front and centre on the palsolidarity.org website, and her failure to understand the disproportion between Israel (that is deliberately starving hundreds of thousands in Gaza) and PA corruption, I was rather too stunned to realize a simple fact: if all she wanted to do was a ‘journalistic mission’ why would she need ISM or anyone else to co-set up an itinerary?

But when I got that note, I was quite worried that I had created a situation where ISM activists and Palestinians would suffer for my writing to Manji. She would get a little more fame, perhaps prolong her 15 minutes, and the ISM would get a little more bad press, leading to more headaches and more problems for an organization that has already been hit extremely hard by repression. So, I made a point of telling her that she wouldn’t be welcome with ISM: the ISM has a screening process, and she could consider herself screened out.

In retrospect, I could simply have laid out an itinerary for her — the real refuseniks, some real journalists with integrity (Amira Hass, Gideon Levy), some serious researchers (Jeff Halper, Tanya Reinhart, Ilon Pappe, Baruch Kimmerling), some serious peace activists (Uri Avnery) — and all this without her ever having to leave Israel’s borders. I could have told her to try to get into Rafah, and spend some time watching bulldozers slowly raze the place to the ground… perhaps take one of those embarrassing photos of herself in front of a bulldozed house or a bullet-filled building, or maybe even in the wreckage of a missile attack. But instead, I wrote this:

Jan 2, 2004

Starting with 1), and me, as opposed to ISM. On the review and your posting it — I do agree that the most open and free debate and discussion is important, that pandering to double standards is a bad thing. If you want to debate on the internet any of the points raised in the article — on your site or elsewhere, ZNet for example, feel free to engage on any of them, and we will proceed from there. I would be pleased to have our correspondence go in that direction.

I said that I didn’t think that you would fit ISM’s criteria, and let me clarify further, because I think I miscommunicated something. My intention was to let you know that ISM has an open call for volunteers and that you could easily have gone to join ISM and seen ‘the other side’, to use your expression, and were not limited to presenting the limited and distorted view of the conflict that you present because ‘no one answered your email’. If you really are interested and ISM doesn’t fit, there must be other groups that probably have delegations that are closer to what you are looking for. The Bay Area’s ewish Voice for Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org), perhaps, or a journal like MERIP, (www.merip.org), or Toronto-based groups like the CJP-IP, etc.

Having said that, I think that your going with ISM would be a waste of their time and yours, at best. At worst, I think you would endanger the lives of activists working under very difficult conditions. I also think you would end up smearing and slandering ISM and misrepresenting its views the way you have smeared people like Edward Said, Tariq Ali, and Robert Fisk, all of which is spelled out in my review of your book. ISM has been smeared and slandered before, and survived it, but it isn’t something they should have to deal with on top of everything else.

But in any case, if you took what I said at Ryerson and in my review to mean that ISM could arrange a special fact-finding mission for you, that was my mistake. It can’t. It can only afford to take sincere, principled activists who want to work in genuine solidarity with Palestinians. This includes plenty of Israelis, of course, and plenty of people who consider themselves Zionists, which should also be obvious. But again, having read your book, I don’t think it applies to you. If there is a miscommunication here, it is my fault, for misrepresenting ISM’s open call to people of conscience to be an invitation to you to go on a fact-finding mission equivalent to that of the Canada-Israel Congress. I don’t know too much about the CIC, but I suspect that their offices have not been raided, dozens of their volunteers arrested and deported, and some of them shot or killed (as I detailed in a previous email). The ISM does not have the resources to arrange a special fact-finding mission for you — it does not do fact-finding missions, it is for committed activists who want to (nonviolently) act against the occupation under very difficult conditions. A solidarity trip is different from a fact-finding trip. This has nothing to do with telling people what to think or double standards. It has to do with what the ISM does and is. Again, I take responsibility for the miscommunication.

Dealing with 2), and ISM specifically, as opposed to me, my views, and my mistakes in communication.

The relevant parts of the site for activists to decide if they can accept ISM’s call for volunteers are on the www.palsolidarity.org site. They are here:

http://www.palsolidarity.org/about/aboutISM.php

Particularly these — this is the ‘statement of unity’ you were looking for but didn’t find:

“*We support the Palestinian right to resist the occupation, as provided for by International Law;
*We call for an immediate end to the occupation and immediate compliance and implementation of all relevant UN resolutions;
*We call for immediate international intervention to protect the Palestinian people and ensure Israel’s compliance with International Law.”

But the entire page is relevant.

Also, the ISM’s mission is here:

http://www.palsolidarity.org/about/mission.php

This is highly relevant. One expression of their invitation to people of the world is this:

“Because Israeli violence against civilians in Palestine has worsened, and the repression of the Occupation has tightened, many international allies of the Palestinian cause want to do more than write letters, demonstrate, present programs, form solidarity delegations, or send humanitarian aid. They want to do something more dramatic to stop Israeli attacks on Palestinian neighbourhoods and people with bombs and bullets, or closures and curfews, and to stop the United States from massively rewarding Israel for its brutality and protecting its occupation of Palestine They want to take direct action that will oppose the Occupation and force Israel to withdraw from the West Bank East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

“If this describes your feelings, this call is for you.”

The 4 goals stated in the mission statement are as follows:

“The International Solidarity Movement aims to do four things:

1: to dramatize the terrible conditions under which Palestinians live because of the Occupation, and to protect them from physical violence from Israeli soldiers and settlers. We work under the leadership of Palestinian peace activists, supporting them in their creative resistance to the Occupation, and lending support to Israeli and other peace activist groups.

2: to pressure International news media to focus on the illegality and brutality of the Occupation, and to so change public opinion that it demands that Israel respect international law, and that America stops funding Israel with billions of dollars each year.

3: to recruit volunteers from other nations to undertake non-violent resistance to the Occupation.

4:to establish divestment campaigns in the US and Europe to put economic pressure on Israel the same way the international community put pressure South Africa during the apartheid regimes.”

These are the most relevant parts of the ISM site to help you decide if you can join the ISM. It is an open call, to people who share these goals and principles and want to act on them. Those are ISM’s criteria.

——–

And so ended my interaction with the Muslim Refusenik, who is now making money in the United States and being paraded on television as a middle east expert (she cites one op-ed from the Boston Globe on the Sudan five times when discussing Israel/Palestine). A debate with me would have been no help to her career, I suppose. It’s just as well: there is little time for this nonsense right now.