The Anti-Empire Project

We continue our long-overdue analysis of the right wing movement in the United States. When a friend mentioned that George Bush mentioned the Dred Scott case and the fugitive slave law in the 2nd presidential debate with John Kerry, I thought it odd. The initial suggestion was that this was an incredibly ineffective way of pandering to black voters — by coming out against slavery, 150 years after the fact. In fact, it was yet another example of Bush using code-language to speak to his constituency, as the ahead-of-the-curve (liberal) bloggers figured out immediately. The anti-abortion right’s plan is to use Supreme Court appointments to eventually overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal. They see themselves as abolitionists — just like the Dred Scott decision defined Blacks as non-human, the Roe v. Wade defines foetuses as non-human. Bush was telling his followers in code that he would use his Supreme Court appointments to overturn abortion rights. Katha Pollitt spelled this out in a Nation editorial.

And in keeping with being behind the curve, I’ll also mention that I watched Jon Stewart take on the clowns at Crossfire on CNN, and enjoyed it. It was still limited by the ridiculous format of the show, and Stewart relied as much on his quick wit and charisma as he did on a structural critique of the media that the poor “partisan hacks” (that’s what Stewart calls them) just couldn’t answer, but it was a very good 13 minutes. You can check it out here, or read the transcript on the CNN site.

It might sound implausible, but surely it is no less plausible than Kerry being to blame for the Haitian resistance? It’s true folks, the coup-installed Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue has decided that South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki is using South African territory to help “organize violence” in Haiti. Mbeki, according to Latortue, is “not respecting international law.” This raises some questions.

Continue reading “The Haitian government must massacre Haitians because of South Africa”

A bizarre story from the Haitian occupation, in which a Brazilian general whose military forces are overseeing the massacre of hundreds after ratifying a coup joins the electoral campaign on behalf of the makers of the coup in the name of the massacred.

Was that a mouthful? Let me explain. During the coup, Kerry said one of the few things that distinguished him from Bush. He accused Bush of having an “ideological and theological hatred” of Aristide. He said that “as president he
would have sent American troops to protect Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was ousted from power in February.” (This is a quote from a BBC report).

Brazilian general Augusto Heleno, who is part of the UN mission in Haiti — commanding Brazilian UN troops who are currently overseeing the slaughter of hundreds of Haitians by Haitian police, army, and paramilitary units — didn’t like that comment. He told the Brazilian news agency that “Statements made by a candidate to the presidency of the United States created false hopes among pro-Aristide supporters. His (the candidate’s) statements created the expectation that instability and a change in American policy would contribute to Aristide’s return.”

The problem? Such comments “have offered hope to Aristide’s supporters that should Mr Kerry win the US election in November the former Haitian president might be restored to power. ” And Heleno, who is using his troops to help Haiti’s dictatorship ensure that Lavalas people are dead or terrorized, says that such hopes are “completely unfounded”. He’s making sure that’s the case, too.

What a tragedy for Haitians, to have a general like this in charge of the troops who ought to be protecting their lives. A tragedy for Brazilians, too, to have its army off explicitly killing hope and explicitly siding with the more rabid of the two imperialist factions in the United States, accusing the less rabid faction of the terrible crime of making Haitians feel hope.

Some more background (it’s repetitive, but with a story like this I feel the need to provide context frequently) below.

To repeat what we know so far. There was a coup that ousted Aristide in February 2004. That coup was backed by the US and featured former Haitian military and paramilitaries invading from the Dominican Republic and US marines kidnapping Aristide himself. Following the coup the paramilitaries began to liquidate Aristide’s followers. Thousands have been killed and that process of terror and installation of dictatorship continued under US/Canadian/French occupation, and now it continues under UN-sponsored, primarily Brazilian occupation. (Brazil is, presumably, doing this as angling for a seat at the UN Security Council, where presumably it wants to try to do decent things which will, presumably be vetoed by the US.)

On September 30, 2004, these same police opened fire on a Lavalas (Aristide’s party) demonstration (as they had done in the past with US soldiers watching), killing two people. Then they arrested various public figures and politicians. The most recent arrest was on October 13, of “a Catholic priest, Father Gerard Jean-Juste, [who] the government accused of trafficking in weapons and harboring gunmen in his parish. Human rights organizations and legal experts have condemned the arrest as “arbitrary” and an effort by the authorities to repress political dissent.”

In some slums, notably Bel Air, people began to fire back. The dictatorship circulated a story that these Lavalas people were beheading police officers and calling it “Operation Baghdad”. This is suspicious. According to a Haiti Information Project report: “Two demonstrators were killed on Sept. 30th and the U.S.-backed government claimed that the headless bodies of three policemen were later discovered. The identities of the headless policemen were released at a funeral held for them earlier this week. The bodies of the headless men were reportedly cremated before journalists and human rights groups were given an opportunity to perform an independent examination of the corpses to confirm the government’s claims. ”

A feature of the police repression against poor communities where Lavalas is politically strong (ie., most of the country) is raids, often joint raids in which the UN soldiers establish a cordon and the police enter and raid. On October 15, HIP reported that Bel Air resisted such a raid: “Armed units of the Haitian
National Police (PNH) entered the pro-Ariside slum of Bel Air as thousands of residents took to streets to demand the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Marchers defied a shutdown of the capital by the business community and threats issued by the former military. Heavy gunfire erupted as the police reportedly fired shots to disperse the crowd. The police were then forced to withdraw as unidentified gunmen returned fire from surrounding buildings in a thunderous volley.”

It also said that “The morgue at the General Hospital issued an emergency
call this afternoon stating that there was no longer space for new corpses and it had reached full capacity.”

Corporate Canada has been ’tilting’ towards Israel for a long time, building roads that Palestinians can’t drive on in the territories, for example. (That link goes to the “Canada Highways Infrastructure Corporation”, a company with a contract worth hundreds of millions to build said roads).

Continue reading “Canada’s ‘Tilt’ toward Israel”

I was listening to democracy now the other day, listening to (another) rather demoralizing debate between Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ali. Hitchens seems difficult to debate. He’s very smart, he’s careful not to fall into the traps that various conservatives fall into, and he deliberately tells outright lies and makes outrageous statements interspersed with intelligent analysis. It’s very confusing and disconcerting. Tariq’s response seems to be to say what he was going to say anyway, which is not a bad way to go. At any rate, Hitchens’s opening shot was that “the United States is not going to be militarily defeated in Iraq. You can draw whatever conclusions that can be drawn from that and you should. Military superiority is something that has to be seen and felt to be really understood, and the US is not going to be defeated.”

He then inferred from this that since the US isn’t going to be defeated, the insurgency is going to be defeated — forgetting the lesson of the great villain of one of his books, Kissinger, who said “a guerrilla army wins if it doesn’t lose”. He also believes, like all the other tough guys, that the US has to stay until the insurgency is defeated.

Problem is, that word, defeat, like victory, doesn’t mean very much in this war between the US and the population of Iraq. The US can destroy the whole place, or any given place, or population for that matter, but it can’t control it. The insurgenc(ies) can prevent the US from controlling it but any social or political control it wins over any parts of Iraq is subject to physical destruction by the US.

In this context, the refusal of a group of US soldiers in Iraq to follow orders over a dangerous resupply mission is a potentially important development.

US power depends, and has always depended, on its economic power (by which it punished Vietnam for example after withdrawal), its cultural appeal (which meant until recently that everybody in the whole world loved Americans and America despite its foreign policy), and of course its military power. But military power itself rests on support in the society for militarism (of which there is plenty) and the willingness of the military to do what it’s told. In long, costly wars this support can begin to wear down — American planners called it the “Vietnam Syndrome”. The lesson they took from this was that they have to win quickly and easily without many casualties.

As invincible as the US might seem (ask Hitchens) the whole equation of power is more complicated and more delicate than it seems. US militarists will still have tremendous support. But this refusal by the reservists is a crack in that. They will be attacked as traitors who are betraying other soldiers, cowards; they will be smeared on the talk radio shows and television and spit on by the very people who traffic in myths about leftists spitting on Vietnam veterans. But it’s unlikely that they took this decision lightly, and the way they are being treated in the army is already no picnic. A quote from one of them who called home: “We had broken down trucks, non-armored vehicles and, um, we were carrying contaminated fuel. They are holding us against our will. We are now prisoners.”

Repression within the military itself is very tricky business. It was a breakdown in the military more than anything else that led to “defeat” in Vietnam (I don’t like talking about Vietnam as a “defeat” for the US, as people who follow this blog know. The Vietnamese suffered a holocaust to “defeat” the US). If the military does start to break down, it will be amazing how fast liberals stop talking about a “quagmire” that it is very hard to get out of and start talking about withdrawal in earnest, since the US military itself will be at stake and all the “difficulties” and phony concern for Iraqis that are part of the “quagmire” analysis will seem to melt away at that point.

Samer Elatrash from Concordia University in Montreal wrote a funny satirical piece about some serious issues of terrorism and free speech that were raised by the local pro-Israel group’s attempt to bring Ehud Barak to campus to speak. Samer makes a modest proposal for consistency’s sake on rabble.ca.

The above is by the talented graphic artist Tyson Kingsbury, who is responsible for many of the banners of the ZNet Watch Pages. I think you’ll find that his work is quite special in that he really creates a mood, grabs the eye without sacrificing subtlety. Every once in a while I might put up a piece of art like this, if it’s original to the blog and can’t be found anywhere else. Tyson here is invoking the film “Citizen Kane”, casting George W. Bush in the title role. If Kerry wins in November, satire like this will cease to have political value for a few years, so now is the best time to put it out there.

Now on to content promised yesterday.

C. P. Pandya mentioned in the blog today about how mercenary companies are still making massive profits in Iraq. Bombings and massacres continue to happen on a daily basis in Iraq: today’s by insurgents killed 4 American DynCorp mercenaries and 6 Iraqis inside the famed “Green Zone”. Massacres by US are reported by Seymour Hersh in talks, as this one, which comes from A Tiny Revolution via underthesamesun.org.

Iraqis don’t want this.

Do Americans?

They’ve never been asked.

But I think it would be a very good test of the antiwar movement. In Brazil in 2002 they had a people’s referendum against the FTAA in which 10 million voted and 98% of them voted against FTAA. That referendum was organized by the incredibly large and popular Landless Peasant’s Movement (MST). We have nothing remotely like the MST in the United States. But we could have a referendum on the occupation. A simple question, like: “Do you believe the United States should leave Iraq and allow self-determination for the Iraqi people?” [That’s a rough cut — the question would have to be carefully done]. It is an idea with a lot of potential.

It could emphasize reaching people in communities that are actively being disenfranchised by the main parties and showcase the sham that “democracy” is in this country.

It could, by its simplicity, be a powerful demonstration of how convoluted and absurd the electoral college system is.

In campaigning for it, it could provide an opportunity to discuss democracy here and in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Venezuela, and Colombia.

It could provide an opportunity for the antiwar movement to organize for something other than another big demonstration that will be ignored (not that a people’s referendum wouldn’t be ignored, but if it did get big, it would be hard to repress) and have debates other than on the efficacy or morality of breaking windows.

It could provide an opportunity to showcase the immorality of the war, the illegality of it, the massive suffering imposed on Iraqis, the destruction of people’s aspirations there, the resultant insecurity and bankruptcy of the US arms race with itself and the “war on terror”.

It would be good regardless of who wins in November: if Bush wins, antiwar forces will need to do something big and creative quickly. If Kerry wins, antiwar forces need to demonstrate their power and their militancy. But in either case, it would be not only a demonstration in the real sense of the word to elites, but it would also be a demonstration to the world that (hopefully) the majority of Americans are against their country’s murderous foreign policy.

There are pitfalls.

First, such a thing would be a huge project and would take tremendous effort and resources to do properly (remember it was the MST who did it in Brazil, and we don’t have such a thing in the US). Liberal groups and unions have resources but they would inevitably try to water down the question (“Should the United States withdraw but only after we’ve fixed the country up and ensured that there won’t be a civil war or any terrorists coming from there to threaten us in the foreseeable future?”) and gut the whole project of all the things that would make it important.

Second, even if the resource question could be solved, it would be incredibly important to do it all in the right way — to use it to reach constituencies that radicals (and the mainstream parties) don’t reach, to use it to actually grow the movement.

Third, I have to wonder — what if the majority votes against an end to occupation? If it started to become clear that the initiative was going to be popular and lots of people were going to vote, the establishment would kick into high gear and try to stop or discredit the whole thing. Failing that, they would try to get people to vote against withdrawal. What if that worked — the antiwar movement would have organized a referendum against the occupation and wound up helping militarists politically.

Still, I think I’d be up for such a battle.

A few days back, Gary Jackson, the president of the one of the world’s largest private armies, Blackwater USA, said that since the U.S. invasion of Iraq (and the country’s ensuing descent into chaos), the mercenary firm’s business has grown over 600%.

Continue reading “Profitable Private Armies”

So I just finished watching the last debate between John Kerry and George Bush. This seemed the most scripted piece. Lots of spin, lots of posturing and rhetoric. Not really much that was spontaneous or interesting. So, for favourite phrases, I only have a few.

From Bush, it is definitely the business about “unleashing the Armies of Compassion to Heal the Hurt”. As I mentioned in the earlier post today, a lot of this language is code words for his own constituency, and doesn’t really have much meaning other than for that constituency.

From Kerry, there was a nasty little bit during the immigration debate where he said that he had heard there were people from the Middle East coming into the country illegally. That was it — he just wanted to point that out. Just straight pandering to racism to try to score points. Whenever liberal types do this, it is odd, because they will never be able to beat the right at racism. Whenever they try, they are just handing weapons to the other side.

As usual, lots of agreement from both sides. One thing about the illegal immigration issue. Bush said that if you make 50 cents in Mexico and 5.15 in the US (minimum wage which he doesn’t want to raise, though Kerry says he does) you will want to go to the US. Fair enough — but of course NAFTA led to major decreases in average wages in Mexico and the collapse of the agricultural economy there. The real solution to “immigration problems” is to stop plundering the poor countries so that there are opportunities and hopes for people there. That would be a major overhaul of the global economy though, and of course Bush and Kerry only care about Americans.

Bush also said that health care costs were rising because consumers don’t have a say. He wants to appoint Supreme Court judges who may repeal abortion rights because he doesn’t like “activist judges” (although “activist judges” got him the presidency in the first place) and wants the people to be able to decide. Sounds like he’s advocating participatory democracy. Maybe he’d be up for a referendum on the occupation?

More on this last tomorrow.