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Today's
Stories
March 3, 2004
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
Heather Williams
Marines Re-take Haiti: the US-Backed Coup Continues
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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March
3, 2004
Marines Retake Haiti
The
US-Backed Coup Continues
By HEATHER WILLIAMS
and KARL LARAQUE
With President Jean-Bertrand Aristide driven out
of Haiti U.S. officials now magnanimously declare that Haiti
can start a new chapter in its history. Declaring with the same
straight face he wore when insisting there were WMDs in Iraq,
that the U.S. and its partners in an international force will
sponsor a "responsive, functioning, non-corrupt government"
in Haiti, Secretary of State Colin Powell has dismissed charges
from Representative Maxine Waters, TransAfrica founder Randall
Robinson, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus that
what took place on Sunday morning in Port Au Prince was a palace
coup rather than a resignation. Whatever the precise circumstances
of President Aristide's exit from power, there is little question
three days later that occupying powers have every intention of
cobbling together a new ruling order from an odious collection
of armed groups with grim agendas.
In Port Au Prince, U.S. Marines appear
set to remind their partners, French gendarmes and Canadian Special
Forces, how to turn an officially humanitarian mission into a
convenient foreign-sponsored caravan of death in less than five
days. An unspecified number of U.S. soldiers--probably not exceeding
300 at the moment--are reportedly working side by side with anti-Aristide
Haitian rebels, including shady former coup-maker Guy Philippe,
to secure what news organizations are now calling a "tenuous
calm" in Port Au Prince but what Haitians in the capital
city and sharper-eyed reporters stigmatize as open chaos. Philippe,
after earlier saying for a time that the rebels would lay down
arms as soon as Aristide left, has now conveniently forgotten
that edict and declared himself new chief of the military. U.S.
military leaders dispatched to the island are quickly scrambling
to narrow their mandate from any pretenses to be establishing
"democracy". Col. David Berger, the Marine Corps commander
in charge, said this morning to the New York Times that his troops
will not act as police officers. "I have no instructions
to disarm the rebels," says the colonel.
Rebels talking to AP reporters in the
capital city say that they welcome police and international peacekeepers
but intend to enforce their own kind of justice. What this means
in effect, according to eyewitness accounts from Port Au Prince
to CounterPunch, is that killings are continuing apace. While
there are over 2000 Marines in ships off the Haitian Coast, the
multinational force approved by the U.N. is taking its time to
materialize as anything like the serious peacekeeping force that
high-minded bureaucrats professed it to be. All the while, rebels
enjoy a several-day license to kill under the pretext of neutralizing
the pro-Aristide factions and halting widespread looting. Whether
the bodies that are ending up in the streets hour by hour are
random looters or members of Aristide's Lavalas party remains
to be seen. The rebels know well that if elections are held in
the near future, presumably many from Lavalas or other popular
groups will win. Thus, it is abundantly clear that the lawlessness
serves the dual purpose of reinforcing the rebels' hand (the
goal of the remobilized Haitian army and paramilitaries) and
purging the remainder of Aristide's allies (the goal of right
wing officials in the Bush administration).
According to other eyewitnesses able
to identify individuals among the rebels and the armaments in
use, the function of the international units on the ground is
to serve as a kind of relief effort, by which rebel soldiers
with newer, more powerful weaponry exit the capital city in order
to impose control over slums and the countryside. Left behind
with the international forces, lower-level, remobilized soldiers
patrol and loot, some carrying older captured arms, which tend
to be Israeli weapons, World War II issue guns, and random sidearms.
With reporters grouped in limited areas of the capital city,
carnage is rapid and out of sight.
Thus, a grim and familiar story in Haiti
repeats itself. Whether or not Aristide's claims of kidnapping
are finally substantiated, the tone of these mid-week events
was in fact set in the debriefing given by diplomats airing the
news of his exit on Sunday. These debriefings made it clear that
the Haiti occupation had nothing to do with democracy and everything
to do with making Haitians aware of which government is ultimately
boss. Diplomatic decorum usually requires U.S. officials to make
an effort to preserve a cosmetic sobriety in their pronouncements,
but several brazenly gloated over their coup. After mouthing
a few sarcastic words about Aristide having made a "patriotic
decision" to leave power voluntarily, U.S. Ambassador to
Haiti James Foley sneered at outgoing Aristide, painting him
in their "poignant" final conversation as directionless
and pathetic. "It was as if", Foley said "he was
the last guy in the world to figure out that the country would
be better off were he to relinquish power." Meanwhile in
Washington, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, who had
pursued Aristide's exit fanatically for years, dismissed the
claims of forced removal from power as evidence that Aristide
was mentally unstable. (This, for history buffs, is a reprise
of reports Noriega helped circulate in the early 1990s when he
was Capitol Hill advisor to Senator Jesse Helms. Back then Noriega
claimed that then-exiled Aristide was crazy and unfit to be reinstalled
as the democratically elected president of Haiti.)
The exiting president was put on a plane
Sunday morning with the help of a phalanx of heavily-armed U.S.
soldiers. Though Foley claimed that he told Aristide in a final
telephone, "it's your choice" when the president inquired
what his options were for asylum, Aristide clearly was allowed
none. It was claimed that Aristide favored asylum in South Africa
but was denied sanctuary by President Thabo Mbeki's government,
and therefore chose to go to Bangui, Central African Republic.
This claim, put forward by the US State Department, that Aristide
chose to go to the Central African Republican is absurd, and
the spectacle of exile is clearly meant to humiliate the outgoing
president. It brings to mind the deliberate race-baiting in Southern
U.S. states today where legions of black prisoners are forced
to perform work on highways and in fields wearing leg-irons and
chains.
Why Aristide should have had to leave
the Western Hemisphere is an open question. Indeed, if Aristide
cannot find refuge in the Americas because of his conduct as
incompetent leader, then perhaps people ought to ask why true
monsters from Haiti's recent past walk free in the United States
today. Case in point, the architect of the murderous Front for
the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH) paramilitary squads
of the early 1990s, Emmanuel Constant, lives a free man in Queens,
New York today despite multiple homicide convictions in Haiti
and outstanding requests for his extradition from the Haitian
government.
Heather Williams
is assistant professor of politics at Pomona College. She can
be reached at hwillliams@pomona.edu
Karl Laraque can
be reached at: inductive_reasongint@hotmail.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
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