April 7, 2004 - July 27, 2004
No Such Place as Safe
Posted: Tuesday, July 27, 2004
By Tim Wise
I think I've figured out what it is I hate about those "racial dialogue" groups that seem to be springing up across the country nowadays.
No, it's not the standard radical critique that they tend to amount to all talk and little action: after all, our ability to act forcefully to eradicate racial inequity requires that we understand the issues at hand, and dialogue--even divorced from direct action at first--can be a helpful starting point for that kind of thing.
And no, it's not the fact that oftentimes such dialogues become watered down "diversity-fests," where participants are encouraged to more or less hold hands, sing kumbaya and feel each other's existential pain. After all, as problematic as that kind of dialogue can be, there is always the possibility that dedicated activists can push the discussion in a more thought-provoking and uncomfortable (but necessary) direction, if and when we participate in these dialogue groups; so even that isn't too big a deal.
Rather, I think the problem, for me at least--and it's one shared by a lot of people of color with whom I've discussed the subject--is something that is typically said at the outset of these dialogue sessions, even before people are introduced, and which sets a tone for the rest of the process; a tone that is antithetical to tackling the important subject matter at hand.
It's something that many readers will be instantly familiar with, provided they have participated in one of these things before: namely, it's the part where the dialogue facilitator says something to the effect of: "We want this to be a safe space, where everyone feels free to express their views without fear of being shouted down or ridiculed for their beliefs."
Although it isn't usually made explicit, this admonition about the importance of safety is almost always really about making white people feel safe. After all, people of color rarely feel safe discussing race amongst members of the dominant group, and it's pretty unlikely that a simple sentence calling for civility would change that.
Black and brown folks know that race is a touchy subject, and yet they engage in race dialogue (whether formal or informal) as a matter of survival: they have to do it, safe or not, because the alternative is to continue neglecting an issue that is far too important to their everyday lives.
The whites in these dialogue groups, on the other hand, are often tentative to a point that is almost farcical. Nervous, afraid of saying the wrong thing, and convinced that people of color will yell at them for a slip of the tongue, whites often remain in a shell when racial dialogues begin.
This is one of the reasons that facilitators often go out of their way to create "safety." They are hoping that whites will participate more honestly if only they can be guaranteed that black people won't attack them for their ignorance.
Such a concern is, of course, preposterous, coming as it does from members of the most powerful group on the planet. I mean really now, do we, as whites believe there is any group on Earth that is safer than we are? Do we honestly think that people of color are in a position to jump our asses in a controlled workshop setting? What do we think they're going to do? Knife us for God's sakes?
If you want to see this kind of white paranoia in action, sit in a room full of white folks watching the anti-bias documentary, The Color of Fear, and you'll see what I mean.
As they watch one scene in particular, where one of the black participants in a dialogue group goes off on one of the white participants (after putting up with copious amounts of conservative, "anyone can make it if they try" silliness on the part of the latter), whites recoil from the clearly agitated black man, Victor Lewis, as if they honestly expect him to jump out of the screen and strangle them where they sit.
The funny thing being that throughout the scene, the only person really at risk was Victor Lewis himself, who knew that his indignation would mark him as the "angry Negro" in the minds of most viewers.
And that's the point: even in these racial dialogue settings, whites are always the safest persons in the room. It is black and brown folks who run the risk of being seen as "too sensitive," "too emotional," or some such thing, while whites can almost always content ourselves with the belief that we are calm, level-headed and rational, no matter how absurd the things we say may be.
In other words, the white obsession with safety is the ultimate irony given the way that our racial position and privilege tends to shelter us from the harsh judgments regularly meted out against people of color. Yet we cling to it in ways that are both silly and more than a little unbecoming; indeed our search for safety, before we are even willing to discuss racism, let alone challenge it, is the ultimate expression of white privilege in many ways.
A few months ago, while attending the fifth annual White Privilege Conference, in Pella, Iowa (the perfect place for such a conference, and a wonderful event each year), this lesson was driven home with disturbing clarity.
On the final day of the conference, attendees were to be treated, depending upon one's perspective, to a luncheon keynote by Morris Dees, co-founder of (and still lead counsel for) the Southern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery, Alabama.
The SPLC, as those at the conference knew, and as most readers will be aware, is the organization that has, for several years, engaged in pitched legal battles with assorted neo-Nazis and Klansmen, often succeeding in shutting down their operations altogether or otherwise financially crippling them. So far, so good.
And yet, for many at the conference, Dees's appearance seemed problematic.
On the one hand, there is the issue of whether or not such a person should speak at a conference on white privilege, since addressing that issue has almost nothing to do with his work or the work of his group. After all, fighting overt racists, while worthwhile, is not the same as confronting the institutional racism and structural forms of white supremacy that make a mockery of equity and justice every day, with or without burning crosses or skinheads in the picture.
Then of course there is the issue of the SPLC's own occasional duplicity: like how they send out fundraising letters to their mailing list, implying that their operations will suffer without continued financial support, even while they sit atop an endowment of over $100 million: more than enough to finance their operations forever, without another dime being raised from often cash-strapped families.
Then there's that business about "tolerance," which appears to be the Center's favorite word, as in their "teaching tolerance" materials for primary and secondary school teachers and classrooms. As many critics have noted, tolerance is a pretty weak formulation, seeing as how it means little more than putting up with someone else, allowing them to perhaps live another day, or refraining from burning down their house or church, but not much else.
But as real as these concerns were, and are, none of them were what nagged at many conference attendees this time out.
Instead, what concerned many of us was the rumor that had begun to circulate on the first day of the four day event, to the effect that Dees had required heavy security as a precondition of his appearance, including armed police officers. What's more, there would be searches of bags and backpacks coming into the venue.
Actually, I knew this was no mere rumor. Having spoken at fifty or more colleges where Dees has also made presentations, I have been told repeatedly that every time he speaks, bags are searched and he makes the same demand: No cops, no show, end of story. It is a requirement that appears as a rider of sorts in every lecture contract written for Dees, inserted either at his own insistence or that of the SPLC.
And while it is true that Dees (like many who fight racism) has had his life threatened, it is also true that people of color struggle against racism every day, having no expectation of security and feeling anything but entitled to bodyguards.
As such, many of us at the conference felt as though Dees should be confronted on his apparent sense of entitlement; his feeling that he somehow has a right to be safe as he does the work that others have to do as a matter of survival.
This challenge was not made necessary because Morris is uniquely flawed, or especially craven in his manifestations of white privilege. Indeed every white person who came to Pella for the conference had been able to take for granted that we would blend in, be accepted and welcomed, and ultimately safe, unlike people of color.
Rather, the challenge was necessary because it was, after all, a white privilege conference, and one of the principles of antiracism is to hold white allies accountable, especially when we inadvertently screw up, or fall back into old patterns that can reinforce racial hierarchy and power inequities.
Not to mention, there was something especially problematic about the fact that Dees would turn to the kinds of forces for security that often present the greatest threat to people of color: namely, cops with guns. Though most whites might feel comfortable with such folks around, it should be obvious that to people of color, the presence of police is a mixed bag, at best.
And so I asked the question.
Yet because he had been tipped off ahead of time to the question that was coming, Dees immediately became defensive upon my standing in front of the microphone, and refused to allow the proper setup for the query: the part where I was going to place his sense of entitlement within the orbit of what I and other white activists also take for granted.
Due to his pre-emption, and clear agitation, I was forced to cut to the chase. Unfortunately, this made the exchange seem more like a pissing contest between two white guys trying to "out-ally" each other, than a legitimate challenge to someone who is viewed by many as some kind of hero.
The point had been to challenge not Dees, but whites in the audience, to ask themselves what it meant that a white man doing this work would a) be able to demand protection and receive it; b) feel entitled to have that level of protection as a precondition for his doing the work, and c) think nothing of using forces which, to many people of color, are the problem, and not the solution to danger.
The point being, that this country is never safe for people of color. Its schools are not safe; its streets are not safe; its places of employment are not safe; its health care system is not safe. So why in the hell should white people feel that we have a right to something--in this case, safety--that people of color have never had?
And what does it say about us that we feel so obsessed about security that we honestly seem incapable of doing the work unless we are assured of our safety? Whether it's Morris Dees, or white folks in a workshop seeking safety to bare our souls, or cry, or some such shit.
How Dees answered the challenge, though not the point was instructive. It was as if he had never been asked the question before at all; which is frightening not for what it says about him but what it suggests about his audiences and the people with whom he has surrounded himself.
After all, how can one not see the contradictions inherent in a white man doing antiracism work being more protected than any persons of color doing the same?
Although other high profile civil rights folks, like Jesse Jackson or Julian Bond, might have occasional security around them, it is never as tight as that for Dees. Never are there eights armed officers, a personal bodyguard, and bag searches at the door. Even Louis Farrakhan surrounds himself with his own members from the Fruit of Islam, not hired guns and off-duty cops.
What white liberals must come to understand is that fighting for justice is never fully safe. Nor can it be made so; nor should safety be particularly sought.
At the same time, as whites, we are more protected in this work than any other persons on the planet. We are far less at risk, from police, from employers, from teachers, and even from crazies like the kind Dees fears, than people of color are. We should neither cower in fear that fighting racism will automatically place our lives in danger (which is another horrible message Dees's security squad implicitly sends), nor attempt to be especially protected in doing the work that needs to be done.
Checking ourselves, avoiding the replication of privilege when possible, and remaining accountable to the persons who are the targets of racism are key tenets of white antiracist ally behavior; and those of us involved in this struggle too often overlook them. Morris Dees is merely one high-profile example of the problem, though he is hardly alone.
So long as we respond defensively when challenged on this point, as long as we refuse to admit our mistakes, or to acknowledge that our actions mean more than our words, we will not deserve to be thought of as allies, we will not deserve to be keynote speakers at conferences on racism, and we most assuredly won't deserve to continue having money showered upon us and our organizations.
Tim Wise is an antiracist essayist, educator and father. He can be reached at timjwise@msn.com. His blog can be found at http://blog.zmag.org/wordwise. Hate mail, while neither appreciated nor desired, will be graded on the basis of form, content, grammar and originality.
www.zmag.org/bios/homepage.cfm?authorID=96
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Sudan's Darfur crisis and US/European concern
Posted: Wednesday, July 14, 2004
by Ayinde
Updated: July 17, 2004
Why is the U.S./Europe suddenly concerned about the racist Arab drive to kill off dark-skinned Africans in Sudan? This should be the question at the forefront of the minds of thinking people. The UN and the U.S. (both partners in crime) are aware that the entire White World policies today were built on the foundation of racism. It is the same racism that allows the U.S. and UK to lie to the world and invade Iraq without the fear that they will be charged as war criminals. Who will charge the U.S. and UK criminals? Certainly not their other European counterparts.
Look how easily France, which 'opposed' the war on Iraq, was able to join the U.S., and supported (to put it mildly) the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They did this just because he raised minimum wage, and was calling on France to pay reparations. They intend to keep Haiti as a sweatshop under the financial control of a few Whites. It matters not that they installed a Black puppet leader there. The first elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was considered unfit by a group of thugs with support from the U.S. and France. They did not care how many ordinary poor Blacks in Haiti elected their president. These racist European misleaders felt it was their decision to make.
We Black Africans, even in the West, know quite well that they get away with these abuses because other people generally do not care about Black kinky-hair Africans. They were conditioned to feel that we are incapable of organizing ourselves and managing our own economic wellbeing. When Whites want to demonstrate their paternalism over Africans, they organize these massive media charities to show they are saving the suffering helpless Blacks -- the same Blacks that both Arabs and Whites exploit, and keep in a desperate situation so they can steal or cheaply acquire labour and resources.
This takes me to my main concern. It should be made clear that the U.S. and other Europeans interest in so-called peace in Sudan, and the sudden mainstream media coverage of the racist, murderous conduct of the 'Arabs' in Sudan, is not driven by their concern for the well-being of Black Africans. As usual, it is to get control of the resources, which in this case is the oil deposits in Darfur and southern Sudan. Once again Africans are being crucified between two murdering thieves, the U.S./Europeans and the Arabs.
"Khartoum's genocidal policy in Darfur and the south is also a grab for resources. The Arab north is arid and barren, but the south is arable with vast oil deposits Khartoum covets and badly needs. In the west, in Darfur, Arabs seeking to escape the spreading desert kill and displace Africans for more productive land." - Makau Mutua
The African Union has stated that they are organizing troops to send to Sudan. This is obviously a tough issue for them to navigate. America is already running the propaganda campaign in an attempt to get to the resources first. Claiming that the AU is doing nothing is to not understand that this is a longstanding issue that the West was never interested in until this present U.S. administration's extreme drive to control all oil supplying regions. The AU will now have to quickly organize funding and troops, while they are being pressured to serve the U.S. interest in and out of Africa. We simply can look at the U.S. conduct in fueling the overthrow of the democratically elected president Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, as another example of how they are operating.
It is important that the African Union does not allow the U.S. and UK to use the racism in Sudan as a pretext to gain Black votes and sympathies, to distract from their Invasion of Iraq, and also to get control of the resources in Sudan.
Here is an important point made by Obi Nwakanma:
"Many Africans have focused singularly on the effects of the European conquest and colonisation of Africa. And Africans have often forgotten that the history of Africa is the history of double penetration: one from the East, and the other from the West."
Obi Nwakanma further explains:
"The Arabs have come to dominate the Sudan, and have consigned the indigenous Negroid population to the lowliest status, treating them as slaves, from a tradition which began as the Arabs moved into this stretch of Africa, which was once the site of Nubia, the great African civilization. Sudan has been mired in civil conflict, with the Christians rallying behind the John Garang led Sudan Peoples Liberation Army, SPLA, fighting for control of the South from the Arabs of the North.
Generally, Sudan has remained in a flux for most of its modern era. It was conquered by Egypt in 1821, which unified the northern part until the rise of the Mahdi, Muhammadu Ibn Abdalla who led a campaign of colonial resistance against the Anglo-Egyptian alliance with his party of the Ansas. This group remains the basis of the Umma party in Sudan to date led by descendants of the Mahdi."
So why the sudden U.S./European concern?
It is important to remember that greed is the root of racism.
In case there are serious Africans reading these comments, please remember that in recognizing that European countries, including the U.S., owe Africans reparations, and not charity, the Arabs should also be called upon to pay reparations.
Also read:
DAFUR: the open sore of a continent
www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/columns/c311072004.html
African Troops In Darfur By End Of July: AU
www.islam-online.net/English/News/2004-07/09/article01.shtml
Racism at root of Sudan's Darfur crisis
www.csmonitor.com/2004/0714/p09s02-coop.html
History Of Colonialist Intrigue In Sudan Remains Unabated
www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=9537&list=/home.php
The Crisis in Sudan:
When Ethnic Cleansing Becomes Respectable
www.counterpunch.org/smith06202004.html
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Acquisition of farms confirmed
Posted: Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Herald Reporters
THE Administrative Court has confirmed the acquisition by the Government of seven farms in Hwange district to resettle landless people in the area.
In a judgment made available yesterday, Mutare-based Administrative Court president Mr Francis Bere granted an application by the Government to acquire Railway Farm, formerly owned by Mr John Arnold Farr, and six other farms previously owned by Matetsi Farming Company (Private) Limited.
The application had been brought to court by the then Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement, Cde Joseph Made, in terms of section 7 of the Land Acquisition Act to determine whether the acquisition of the farms was necessary.
Matetsi Farming Company also owns 10 other farms in Masvingo.
The company had opposed the acquisition, arguing that the acquiring authority had not complied with the requirements laid down in the Act.
But in his ruling, Mr Bere said the important issue to consider was whether the acquisition of the farms was necessary.
"In my considered view, the answer must be in the affirmative. I am more than satisfied that the applicant (Cde Made) has, by and large on a balance of probabilities, established his case and accordingly judgment is granted in favour of the applicant," he said.
In terms of section 7 (4) of the Act, the Administrative Court can grant an order for land acquisition where the acquisition relates to rural land that the acquisition is necessary for utilisation; or any other land, for settlement, for agricultural or other purposes.
Mr Bere, in his judgment, accepted the evidence on the country’s land imbalances by the district administrator for Hwange Ms Sibongani Siwela.
Ms Siwela, who is also the chairperson of the district’s land identification committee, highlighted the disparity in land allocation between the black indigenous people and white commercial farmers in that area.
She told the court that there was extreme congestion in her district where 18 people occupied one hectare compared to roughly one person per hectare for white commercial farmers.
Ms Siwela also highlighted the Government’s commitment to fully supporting the land reform programme by putting in place financial and technical assistance for the farmers.
Government had also targeted the Matetsi farms for acquisition after the discovery of the additional 10 farms owned by the company in Masvingo.
In opposing the acquisition, Matetsi Farming had said the targeted farms were of bad soils contrary to the evidence of the acquiring authority that the land was suitable for farming and cattle ranching.
Although the company acknowledged that Ms Siwela’s evidence was reasonable and fair, it argued that she did not get full facts from the Department of Agricultural Technical and Extension Services (Arex) and the company’s objections to acquire the farms.
On Mr Farr’s farm, the court found there was no clear evidence led specifically to deal with it.
Mr Tatenda Mawere of Ziumbe and Mutambanengwe represented Cde Made, while lawyers Honey and Blanckenberg represented Mr Farr and Matetsi Farming Company.
In a related matter, at least 15 law officers have been identified to represent the State during the next six months in the Administrative Court as the Government steps up efforts to clear the backlog caused by land matters.
Acting Attorney General Mr Bharat Patel told The Herald yesterday that 11 of the lawyers have been taken from various Government departments who had been working as legal advisors while four are coming from the Civil Division, a department from his office.
"These lawyers will be representing the State in the Administrative Court and they will be dispatched to Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare to help clear the matters," said Mr Patel. "Four presidents of the Administrative Court will also be stationed in those cities, although two will be in Harare, to preside over the cases and it is hoped that significant progress will be achieved.
"We will be assessing the progress and should the need arise, appoint more law officers or presidents. We will be acting accordingly and again we will also be assessing if there is need to set up the Administrative Court in more centres," he said.
The Administrative Court is supposed to either confirm or decline the acquisition of a farm as provided for by the Land Acquisition Act.
Of note, Mr Patel said, is the amendment of the Administrative Court Rule with regard to the land cases where an amendment to enable the speeding of the cases has been effected.
"The land cases will now be heard not by way of trial, but by way of an application where a case will be determined after lawyers for both sides have prepared affidavits and heads of arguments instead of oral evidence being heard in court," he said. "The affidavits will form the basis of the court hearing and this is a new procedure. The Civil Division will have to reorganise itself to cater for these changes. The amendment will apply only to land cases and not other cases. So one only hopes that there will be significant progress in the disposal of all the cases."
The Acting Attorney General also admitted that although significant inroads might be achieved through the mechanisms put in place, another bottleneck was a pending case in the Supreme Court where a white commercial farmer has challenged the constitutionality of various and pertinent sections of the Land Acquisition Act.
The case, brought by George Quinell, has a bearing on some other cases as the Supreme Court has not delivered judgment. If delivered, the ruling might chart the way forward with regard to the agrarian reform.
The farmer has raised constitutional issues where he has argued in the Supreme Court that the sections which the State was relying upon in acquiring the farm were unconstitutional.
He had also argued that the ministers who had signed letters of intent to acquire the respective farms were not duly appointed as ministers because they had not been sworn in after President Mugabe was re-elected into office in March 2002.
"The Quinell case will obviously have a bearing on some cases, but that will not stop us from dealing with the cases as we are determined to see them through by December this year," Mr Patel said.
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The Black Man's Burden
Posted: Sunday, July 4, 2004
By www.rootsie.com
We take the idea of sovereign nation states for granted. Nationalism is the religion of nationhood, and its 'uplifting' emotional rhetoric can lead us to assume that the 'sense of nation' is as integral a part of the human make-up as city-building and trade, and has been around forever and forever shall be… But consider: before World War I, there were only a handful of nations in Europe; after, there were over two dozen. The first 'nation' in Europe was England, and it likes to date its nationhood from the Glorious Revolution of 1686. France became a nation in 1789 with its own revolution, and the United States in 1791. The nation state is a very recent phenomenon, and a uniquely European construct. Its devlopment goes hand in hand with the rise of capitalism.The countries of Central and Eastern Europe were constituted a mere 40 or so years before the nations of Africa. And in case we didn't notice, Davidson reminds us that much of Europe, particularly the Balkans, is in many respects in as much of a mess as Africa. The difference lies in the magnitude of the pillage to which Africa was and still is subjected.
Full Article
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Haiti After the Press Went Home
Posted: Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Chaos Upon Chaos
By LUCSON PIERRE-CHARLES
The recent disastrous floods that killed more than 2,000 people, left some 1,800 missing and 10,000 more homeless have been a tragedy of enormous proportion and unless some drastic measures are taken, this disaster could be seen as a preview of the things to strike Haiti. Such a tragedy is the consequence of years of bad policies and mismanagement inherited by the current administration. The Prime Minister's reaction to the disaster demonstrated undoubtedly that his administration is reluctant to deal with one of the most important crisis facing this impoverished nation today. He blamed deforestation for what happened and promised, among other things, to create a forest protection unit made of former soldiers of the demobilized Haitian army. Blaming deforestation as the only cause is easy but the environmental degradation is much greater than that. It is a chain-linked dilemma and until Haitians pull up their forces together, the prospect will remain grim.
The situation on the ground is dreadful. The country is in desperate need but meaningful assistance fails to materialize. Following Aristide's ouster, the United Nations called for $35 million in emergency funds from foreign donors but so far has only managed to raise about $9 million. The country is descending into chaos and to have a better understanding of what lies ahead, one needs to look no further than to the latest travel warning for Haiti issued by the Bureau of consular affairs at the State Department.
According to that statement, the "situation in Haiti remains unpredictable and potentially dangerous despite the presence of foreign security forces." This warning followed a report issued in early May by the United Nations reaching a similar conclusion.
On June 1, the U.N. troops headed by Brazil, deployed to the island in order to replace the current contingent of American, French and Canadian soldiers. According to Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, the Brazilian general who will head the U.N. contingent, this mission will be Haiti's last chance to end decades of violence. The Prime Minister, Mr. Gérard Latortue, will certainly count on these troops to disarm all rebels and gangs. Knowing that the survival of his administration depends largely upon the presence of the foreign troops, he is appealing to the Americans – even 100 troops – to extend their mission but mindful that the last American soldier will leave at the end of June, he is shifting reliance upon the new U.N. troops by inviting them to stay until February 7, 2006 when the new President will take office. The job of this latest U.N. mission is manifold but disarmament of all factions will not be part of it. This latest transfer of command is nothing more than a window dressed opportunity designed to give this puppet administration some imaginary stability in order to run a farcical election where the winner will be drawn from the same party affiliation.
The whole mission's contingent will be around 8,000 troops but so far only Brazil has provided 1,400 troops, with Chile to send 600 and Argentina, 500. Following the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1994, a contingent of 20,000 Marines failed to disarm the newly disbanded army. Hence, one must wonder where this small U.N. contingent will find the necessary means to carry out such a colossal task? In order to get a glimpse of how disarmament will take place, one needs to look at a recent incident where 8 ex-soldiers decided to parade in the capital with their heavy-loaded weapons. These so-called rebels were arrested by the American-led troops. But following protest by other ex-soldiers, they were released but refused to leave the facility without their weapons. After two days of intense negotiations, the administration and the police remarkably bowed to their request and granted them three of the weapons.
This interim administration boasts itself about being technocratic and bringing tangible change to the population. But, as it is becoming clear, these technocrats have not only embarked on a regressive trend, they have set the stage for a complete turnaround toward chaos. The security apparatus is in the verge of collapsing due to the proliferation of small arms, the mere presence of the heavily armed rebels and Aristide loyalists, the increasing gang activities, the rampant rise in kidnappings and the release of 3,000 prisoners by Guy Philippe and his squads following the ouster of Mr. Aristide. Some of the rebels will be integrated into the police force despite the fact that they killed a great number of policemen and burned down police headquarters in the lead up to the coup.
In most parts of the country, they appointed themselves as mayors, police chiefs and judges. Under Mr. Aristide's leadership, the police force was often criticized for being too heavily politicized. Under this technocratic administration, the police force will consist of convicted human rights abusers, murderers, rapists, thugs and death squads who have committed some of the worst atrocities during the first coup in 1991.
Military strategists and commanders often argue that victory – or success for that matter – is measured not only by the defeat of the enemy but most importantly by what is left behind. In 1994, 20,000 Marines were sent to return a democratically elected President to his office. They left behind a disbanded army but not disarmed, which will later be used to undermine the same democracy that the Marines went to uphold in the first place. Ten years later, the U.S.-led troops will leave behind these same ex-soldiers heavily armed once again but this time in control and set to prolong the reign of abuse and impunity. They even have plans to run the country and make laws – they recently established their own political party.
In such a context, providing security and stability – put forward as a pretext for military intervention – was never a priority for the American-led coalition. It was to get rid of a democratically elected President, establish a puppet administration – disregard the constitution for instance – and lay the groundwork for the upcoming capture of the presidency by the oligarchy. Such an intervention was to ultimately show the rest of the world that this endangered island is incapable of self-governance and to highlight such dismal legacy, disarmament must take a back seat. But if history is to repeat itself, the people will somehow find ways to overcome this challenge and portray a different story.
Lucson Pierre-Charles, a native of Haiti, now lives in Maryland. Reproduced from counterpunch.com with permission from the author.
More on Us/Haiti Coup:
www.africaspeaks.com/haiti2004/
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UK accused of ballot fraud, vote-stealing
Posted: Saturday, June 12, 2004
www.herald.co.zw
BRITAIN which - together with the United States - claims to be the champion of democracy, has been hit by allegations of ballot fraud and vote-stealing.
The two Western countries condemned Zimbabwe's 2002 Presidential election and imposed sanctions against the country yet their own elections are not perfect.
In the US, President George W. Bush's victory had to be confirmed by the Supreme Court made up mainly of judges who support his Republican Party.
Police in Britain are now investigating the claims, the latest in a series of problems to hit the controversial trial of postal voting in local, London and European elections.
All-postal ballots are being tested in the North East, North West, East Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside.
An investigation by the Times newspaper suggested a large number of voters had been intimidated into handing over blank ballot papers or forced to support a certain party.
Greater Manchester police are looking into allegations of malpractice after numerous reports of fraud, and Lancashire police are preparing to question 60 people over suspicions about 170 proxy vote applications, while officers in Tameside are also making inquiries into postal vote fraud.
In one case, an employer reportedly told his staff he would sack them all if they refused to vote Labour, the party Mr Blair heads.
Police are understood to be investigating allegations that supporters of mainstream political parties collected ballot papers door-to-door and in some instances even filled in blank papers.
Other troubles have hit the elections.
At least one local authority has said it has had to reprint nearly 250 000 ballot papers.
Another was reported to be delivering ballot packs by hand after production delays.
And in Bolton, the council is having to set up two emergency polling stations after thousands of ballot papers went undelivered.
Furthermore, two men have now been arrested in connection with an incident in Oldham two weeks ago.
A 49-year-old man was detained yesterday on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and theft of ballot papers.
The move came after a Liberal Democrat candidate was held last week after two men called at a house in Oldham and offered to look after the ballot papers for everyone at the address.
The family handed over five ballot papers.
Chief Inspector Stuart Harman of Oldham police said: "Over the last week we have received a number of allegations of election fraud, all of which are being thoroughly examined to establish if those involved have breached election protocol or broken the law.
"I hope that our response to these allegations will encourage any voters who do have any concerns to report irregularities to the police as we all work to ensure the integrity of the voting process."
A poll yesterday indicated one in seven voters in the all-postal ballot trial areas had not received ballot papers by last weekend.
However, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott defended his decision to press ahead with all-postal ballots in four English regions amid opposition Conservative Party claims of "chaos" in the voting process.
The deputy prime minister, standing in for Premier Tony Blair, who is at the Group of Eight leading industrial nations summit, said Members of Parliament should "celebrate" the fact that one million additional votes had already been cast in areas trialling all-postal ballots.
He said the scheme may have increased turnout by as much as two million by the end of tomorrow - the so-called "Super Thursday" of local, London and European elections.
But the Conservative Party deputy leader, Mr Michael Ancram, accused Mr Prescott of "breathtaking complacency".
Citing reports of electoral fraud, late delivery of ballot papers and voters who have yet to receive their voting packs, he said the government should stop "playing fast and loose" with democracy and return to the ballot box.
- Herald Reporter-The Guardian.
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Tsvangirai loses election petition
Posted: Saturday, June 12, 2004
By Fidelis Munyoro, www.herald.co.zw
THE High Court yesterday dismissed an application by MDC leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai for the nullification of the 2002 presidential poll results.
Mr Tsvangirai had, in November last year, petitioned the High Court to nullify the election after the hearing of legal arguments without getting to factual arguments of the case.
Justice Ben Hlatshwayo dismissed the application with costs because none of the arguments brought to court by Mr Tsvangirai warranted the invalidation of the election results.
"I hereby . . . dismiss with costs the preliminary points raised by the petitioner (Tsvangirai) in that none of them on its own nor all of them collectively suffice at this stage to invalidate the election . . . dismiss with costs the relief sought by the petitioner as to the constitutional validity of section 158 of the Electoral Act (Chapter 2:01) and the Electoral Act (Modification) Notice 2002, Statutory Instrument 41D of 2002 and the declaration sought that all orders made and directions given and acts done in terms of the Electoral Act (Modification) Notice 2002, SI41D are void," ruled Justice Hlatshwayo.
He also threw out with costs the objection by the Electoral Supervisory Commission that it was improperly cited as a respondent in the case.
The ruling means a date to hear the main election petition should be set within 30 days.
Now that the legal and technical objections by Mr Tsvangirai to the conduct of the election have been dis-missed, the opposition leader would be confined to leading evidence as to the extent of the alleged violence that purportedly prevailed during the poll.
President Mugabe and the ESC were cited as respondents in the case.
Mr Tsvangirai, who was represented by a team of lawyers including Advocate Jeremy Gauntlet of South Africa - Advocate Adrian de Bourbon (now based in South Africa) and Advocate Happias Zhou with Mr Bryant Elliot as attorney - had argued that the ESC was improperly constituted.
He blamed the ESC for scuttling the electoral process and challenged the constitutionality of certain sections of the Electoral Act.
Based on that assertion, Mr Tsvangirai wanted the court to invalidate the election after hearing the legal arguments at the initial stage of the proceedings.
At the hearing of the case last year, Mr Terrence Hussein of Hussein and Ranchhod, who represented President Mugabe, described the MDC petition as the weakest he had ever seen.
He said the court would make a blunder if it decided to nullify the election.
Asked about his chances of winning the case following the preliminary ruling, Mr Hussein said he could not comment as the matter was sub judice.
After noting that the issue was still under judicial consideration and, therefore, prohibited from public discussion outside the courts, he was still confident of the final outcome, saying: "I believe that my client's presidency is secure."
Mr Tsvangirai's lawyer, Mr Elliot, said he was not in a position to comment at this stage and referred all questions to the MDC leader's spokesman, Mr William Bango, who could not be reached for comment.
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Shrill Bill Cosby and the speech that shocked black America
Posted: Tuesday, June 1, 2004
Ebonics! Weird Names! $500 Shoes!
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
May 26 - June 1, 2004
I never got Fat Albert. Dumb Donald wore a lampshade for a hat, Russell dressed like a bag lady, and Bucky appeared to be the victim of a back-alley orthodontist. Bill Cosby's distorted, funny-looking kids couldn't shoot fire from their hands, and they wouldn't know a weather dominator from a flux capacitor. Instead, they were a dumb and dumpy bunch who conquered the travails of life (deodorant? candy overload?) with one simple weapon—Fat Albert's formidable moral center.
I thought about that moral center last week, when Cosby ventured down to Washington and ripped into the have-nots among us. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Ed, and the Coz had been invited to Chocolate City by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the NAACP proper, and Howard University. The triumvirate had decided to honor Cosby for having "advanced the promise of Brown." Cosby decided to do some advancing of his own.
Full Article : villagevoice.com
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Fatal Error: The Lies of Our Times
Posted: Friday, May 28, 2004
by Amy Goodman and David Goodman
www.democracynow.org
In our new book, The Exception To the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media That Love Them, we titled one chapter "The Lies of Our Times" to examine how The New York Times coverage on Iraq and its alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction helped lead the country to war. Yesterday, The New York Times, for the first time, raised questions about its own coverage in an 1,100-word editor's note. Here is an excerpt from our section of the book on the New York Times and Iraq.
"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." -- Andrew H. Card, White House Chief of Staff speaking about the Iraq war P.R. campaign, September 6, 2002
In the midst of the buildup to war, a major scandal was unfolding at The New York Times-the paper that sets the news agenda for other media. The Times admitted that for several years a 27-year-old reporter named Jayson Blair had been conning his editors and falsifying stories. He had pretended to be places he hadn't been, fabricated quotes, and just plain lied in order to tell a sensational tale. For this, Blair was fired. But The Times went further: It ran a 7,000-word, five-page expose on the young reporter, laying bare his personal and professional escapades.
The Times said it had reached a low point in its 152-year history. I agreed. But not because of the Jayson Blair affair. It was The Times coverage of the Bush-Blair affair.
When George W. Bush and Tony Blair made their fraudulent case to attack Iraq, The Times, along with most corporate media outlets in the United States, became cheerleaders for the war. And while Jayson Blair was being crucified for his journalistic sins, veteran Times national security correspondent and best-selling author Judith Miller was filling The Times' front pages with unchallenged government propaganda. Unlike Blair's deceptions, Miller's lies provided the pretext for war. Her lies cost lives.
If only The New York Times had done the same kind of investigation of Miller's reports as it had with Jayson Blair.
The White House propaganda blitz was launched on September 7, 2002, at a Camp David press conference. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood side by side with his co-conspirator, President George W. Bush. Together, they declared that evidence from a report published by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed that Iraq was "six months away" from building nuclear weapons.
"I don't know what more evidence we need," crowed Bush.
Actually, any evidence would help-there was no such IAEA report. But at the time, few mainstream American journalists questioned the leaders' outright lies. Instead, the following day, "evidence" popped up in the Sunday New York Times under the twin byline of Michael Gordon and Judith Miller. "More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction," they stated with authority, "Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today."
In a revealing example of how the story amplified administration spin, the authors included the phrase soon to be repeated by President Bush and all his top officials: "The first sign of a 'smoking gun,' [administration officials] argue, may be a mushroom cloud."
Harper's publisher John R. MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, knew what to make of this front-page bombshell. "In a disgraceful piece of stenography," he wrote, Gordon and Miller "inflated an administration leak into something resembling imminent Armageddon."
The Bush administration knew just what to do with the story they had fed to Gordon and Miller. The day The Times story ran, Vice President Dick Cheney made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows to advance the administration's bogus claims. On NBC's Meet the Press, Cheney declared that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium. It didn't matter that the IAEA refuted the charge both before and after it was made. But Cheney didn't want viewers just to take his word for it. "There's a story in The New York Times this morning," he said smugly. "And I want to attribute The Times."
This was the classic disinformation two-step: the White House leaks a lie to The Times, the newspaper publishes it as a startling expose, and then the White House conveniently masquerades behind the credibility of The Times.
"What mattered," wrote MacArthur, "was the unencumbered rollout of a commercial for war."4
Judith Miller was just getting warmed up. Reporting for America's most influential newspaper, Miller continued to trumpet administration leaks and other bogus sources as the basis for eye-popping stories that backed the administration's false premises for war. "If reporters who live by their sources were obliged to die by their sources," Jack Shafer wrote later in Slate, "Miller would be stinking up her family tomb right now."
After the war, Shafer pointed out, "None of the sensational allegations about chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons given to Miller have panned out, despite the furious crisscrossing of Iraq by U.S. weapons hunters."
Did The New York Times publish corrections? Clarifications? Did heads roll? Not a chance: Judith Miller's "scoops" continued to be proudly run on the front pages.
Here are just some of the corrections The Times should have run after the year-long campaign of front-page false claims by one of its premier reporters, Judith Miller.
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
Scoop: "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts," by Judith Miller and Michael R. Gordon, September 8, 2002. The authors quote Ahmed al-Shemri (a pseudonym), who contends that he worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program before defecting in 2000. " 'All of Iraq is one large storage facility,' said Mr. Shemri, who claimed to have worked for many years at the Muthanna State Enterprise, once Iraq's chemical weapons plant." The authors quote Shemri as stating that Iraq is stockpiling "12,500 gallons of anthrax, 2,500 gallons of gas gangrene, 1,250 gallons of aflatoxin, and 2,000 gallons of botulinum throughout the country."
Oops: As UN weapons inspectors had earlier stated-and U.S. weapons inspectors confirmed in September 2003-none of these claims were true. The unnamed source is one of many Iraqi defectors who made sensational false claims that were championed by Miller and The Times.
Scoop: "White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons," by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, September 13, 2002. The article quotes the White House contention that Iraq was trying to purchase aluminum pipes to assist its nuclear weapons program.
Oops: Rather than run a major story on how the United States had falsely cited the UN to back its claim that Iraq was expanding its nuclear weapons program, Miller and Gordon repeated and embellished the lie.
Contrast this with the lead paragraph of a story that ran in the British daily The Guardian on September 9: "The International Atomic Energy Agency has no evidence that Iraq is developing nuclear weapons at a former site previously destroyed by UN inspectors, despite claims made over the weekend by Tony Blair, western diplomatic sources told The Guardian yesterday." The story goes on to say that the IAEA "issued a statement insisting it had 'no new information' on Iraq's nuclear program since December 1998 when its inspectors left Iraq."
Miller's trumped-up story contributed to the climate of the time and The Times. A month later, numerous congressional representatives cited the nuclear threat as a reason for voting to authorize war.
Scoop: "U.S. Faulted Over Its Efforts to Unite Iraqi Dissidents," by Judith Miller, October 2, 2002. Quoting Ahmed Chalabi and Defense Department adviser Richard Perle, this story stated: "The INC [Iraqi National Congress] has been without question the single most important source of intelligence about Saddam Hussein."
Miller airs the INC's chief complaint: "Iraqi dissidents and administration officials complain that [the State Department and CIA] have also tried to cast doubt on information provided by defectors Mr. Chalabi's organization has brought out of Iraq."
Oops: Miller championed the cause of Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader who had been lobbying Washington for over a decade to support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. As The Washington Post revealed, Miller wrote to Times veteran foreign correspondent John Burns, who was working in Baghdad at the time, that Chalabi "has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD [weapons of mass destruction] to our paper."
Times readers might be interested to learn the details of how Ahmed Chalabi was bought and paid for by the CIA. Chalabi heads the INC, an organization of Iraqi exiles created by the CIA in 1992 with the help of the Rendon Group, a powerful public relations firm that has worked extensively for the two Bush administrations. Between 1992 and 1996, the CIA covertly funneled $12 million to Chalabi's INC. In 1998, the Clinton administration gave Chalabi control of another $98 million of U.S. taxpayer money. Chalabi's credibility has always been questionable: He was convicted in absentia in Jordan of stealing some $500 million from a bank he established, leaving shareholders high and dry. He has been accused by Iraqi exiles of pocketing at least $4 million of CIA funds.
In the lead-up to war, the CIA dismissed Chalabi as unreliable. But he was the darling of Pentagon hawks, putting an Iraqi face on their warmongering. So the Pentagon established a new entity, the Office of Special Plans, to champion the views of discredited INC defectors who helped make its case for war.
As Howard Kurtz later asked in The Washington Post: "Could Chalabi have been using The Times to build a drumbeat that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction?"
Scoop: "C.I.A. Hunts Iraq Tie to Soviet Smallpox," by Judith Miller, December 3, 2002. The story claims that "Iraq obtained a particularly virulent strain of smallpox from a Russian scientist." The story adds later: "The information came to the American government from an informant whose identity has not been disclosed."
Smallpox was cited by President Bush as one of the "weapons of mass destruction" possessed by Iraq that justified a dangerous national inoculation program-and an invasion.
Oops: After a three-month search of Iraq, " 'Team Pox' turned up only signs to the contrary: disabled equipment that had been rendered harmless by UN inspectors, Iraqi scientists deemed credible who gave no indication they had worked with smallpox, and a laboratory thought to be back in use that was covered in cobwebs," reported the Associated Press in September 2003.
Scoop: "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert," by Judith Miller, April 21, 2003. In this front-page article, Miller quotes an American military officer who passes on the assertions of "a man who said he was an Iraqi scientist" in U.S. custody. The "scientist" claims that Iraq destroyed its WMD stockpile days before the war began, that the regime had transferred banned weapons to Syria, and that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda.
Who is the messenger for this bombshell? Miller tells us only that she "was permitted to see him from a distance at the sites where he said that material from the arms program was buried. Clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, he pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried."
And then there were the terms of this disclosure: "This reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials. Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted." No proof. No names. No chemicals. Only a baseball cap-and the credibility of Miller and The Times-to vouch for a "scientist" who conveniently backs up key claims of the Bush administration. Miller, who was embedded with MET Alpha, a military unit searching for WMDs, pumped up her sensational assertions the next day on PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: Q: Has the unit you've been traveling with found any proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
JUDITH MILLER: Well, I think they found something more than a smoking gun. What they've found...is a silver bullet in the form of a person, an Iraqi individual, a scientist, as we've called him, who really worked on the programs, who knows them firsthand.
Q: Does this confirm in a way the insistence coming from the U.S. government that after the war, various Iraqi tongues would loosen, and there might be people who would be willing to help?
JUDITH MILLER: Yes, it clearly does.... That's what the Bush administration has finally done. They have changed the political environment, and they've enabled people like the scientists that MET Alpha has found to come forth.
Oops: The silver bullet got more tarnished as it was examined. Three months later, Miller acknowledged that the scientist was merely "a senior Iraqi military intelligence official." His explosive claims vaporized.
A final note from the Department of Corrections: The Times deeply regrets any wars or loss of life that these errors may have contributed to.
UP IN SMOKE
Tom Wolfe once wrote about a war-happy Times correspondent in Vietnam (same idea, different war): The administration was "playing [the reporter] of The New York Times like an ocarina, as if they were blowing smoke up his pipe and the finger work was just right and the song was coming forth better than they could have played it themselves." But who was playing whom? The Washington Post reported that while Miller was embedded with MET Alpha, her role in the unit's operations became so central that it became known as the "Judith Miller team." In one instance, she disagreed with a decision to relocate the unit to another area and threatened to file a critical report in The Times about the action. When she took her protest to a two-star general, the decision was reversed. One Army officer told the Post, "Judith was always issuing threats of either going to The New York Times or to the secretary of defense. There was nothing veiled about that threat."
Later, she played a starring role in a ceremony in which MET Alpha's leader was promoted. Other officers were surprised to watch as Miller pinned a new rank on the uniform of Chief Warrant Officer Richard Gonzales. He thanked her for her "contributions" to the unit. In April 2003, MET Alpha traveled to the compound of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi "at Judy's direction," where they interrogated and took custody of an Iraqi man who was on the Pentagon's wanted list-despite the fact that MET Alpha's only role was to search for WMDs. As one officer told the Post, "It's impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the mission of this unit, and not for the better."
After a year of bogus scoops from Miller, the paper gave itself a bit of cover. Not corrections-just cover. On September 28, 2003, Times reporter Douglas Jehl surprisingly kicked the legs out from under Miller's sources. In his story headlined AGENCY BELITTLES INFORMATION GIVEN BY IRAQ DEFECTORS, Jehl revealed: An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little or no value, according to federal officials briefed on the arrangement. In addition, several Iraqi defectors introduced to American intelligence agents by the exile organization and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, invented or exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government and its suspected unconventional weapons program, the officials said.
The Iraqi National Congress had made some of these defectors available to...The New York Times, which reported their allegations about prisoners and the country's weapons program. Poof. Up in smoke went thousands of words of what can only be called rank propaganda.
This Times confession was too little, too late. After an unnecessary war, during a brutal occupation, and several thousand lives later, The Times obliquely acknowledged that it had been recycling disinformation. Miller's reports played an invaluable role in the administration's propaganda war. They gave public legitimacy to outright lies, providing what appeared to be independent confirmation of wild speculation and false accusations. "What Miller has done over time seriously violates several Times' policies under their code of conduct for news and editorial departments," wrote William E. Jackson in Editor & Publisher. "Jayson Blair was only a fluke deviation.... Miller strikes right at the core of the regular functioning news machine."
More than that, Miller's false reporting was key to justifying a war. And The Times' unabashed servitude to the administration's war agenda did not end with Iraq.
On September 16, 2003, The Times ran a story headlined SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL TO LEVEL WEAPONS CHARGES AGAINST SYRIA. The stunningly uncritical article was virtually an excerpt of the testimony about to be given that day by outspoken hawk John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control. The article included this curious caveat: The testimony "was provided to The New York Times by individuals who feel that the accusations against Syria have received insufficient attention." The article certainly solved that problem.
The author? Judith Miller-preparing for the next battlefront.
Reproduced from:
www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/26/1610213
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Mugabe's land reforms get thumbs up
Posted: Sunday, May 23, 2004
Delegates at a conference of southern African liberation movements have given their backing to Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president's, stand on land reforms.
The conference in Harare has drawn representatives from South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and Tanzania.
Black empowerment groups such as the US-based December 12 Movement and the Britain-based Black United Front also attended the meeting, hosted by the ruling Zanu(PF) party.
Mugabe says his land programme has been a success but the main opposition party and aid agencies say it has severely disrupted Zimbabwe's once-prosperous agricultural sector and contributed to famine. The conference, which is also discussing international relations, democracy and good governance, has been highly critical of Western dominance and globalisation.
Reprinted for Fair Use Only from:
www.sabcnews.com/africa/southern_africa/0,2172,78497,00.html
Copyright © 2000 - 2003 SABC
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Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Posted: Monday, May 17, 2004
That Halo Over Romeo Dalliare's Head Has More Than One Hole in It!
By ROBIN PHILPOT
When International Criminal Tribunal prosecutor Carla Del Ponte learned from a Canadian newspaper in 2000 that the Rwandan Patriotic Front and its leader Paul Kagame were prime suspects in the April 6, 1994, assassination of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, she reportedly said: "If it is the RPF that shot down the plane, the history of genocide must be rewritten".
Hopefully others will be as candid as Ms Del Ponte as more and more information surfaces on events in Rwanda in the early 90s. First on that list should be retired Canadian general and former UN peacekeeper in Rwanda Romeo Dallaire. However, Dallaire may find it hard to swallow his pride after enjoying such a massive PR campaign organized for him ever since his 600-page book appeared in October 2003 (Shake Hands with the Devil, The failure of Humanity in Rwanda, Random House Canada).
Dallaire toured Canada, parts of the US, Belgium, France, Tanzania, where he witnessed for the prosecution at the ICTR, and Rwanda, where he joined Paul Kagame for commemorations in Kigali. He appeared on all the right programs, with the right people, and his verge-of-tears attitude protected him from the tough questions that reporters should have been asking him. One of his Canadian government handlers justified the enormous security for Dallaire in Tanzania by describing him as Canada's "national treasure". He is now being touted as the future Governor General of Canada.
The saintly halo carefully placed over his head has also prompted Michael Ignatieff to invite him to be a fellow of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, where paradoxically he will specialize in "conflict resolution". Ignatieff probably sees the appointment as a way to cover his own conflict-inflicting support of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Romeo Dallaire supposedly told all in his book. However, since so many people in influential positions have been bluntly contradicting Dallaire, it's time he and his ghostwriters sat down and rewrote the book. These include former the Chief of the 1994 United Nations Mission in Rwanda the Cameroonian diplomat Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh--Dallaire was only in charge of the military component , UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, Colonel Luc Marchal, the Belgian commander of UN troops in Kigali who worked under Dallaire and many more. If we accept as true half what these people have said, either most of the information in Dallaire's book can no longer be taken seriously or the book as whole should be rejected as base propaganda.
Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh was the UN Secretary General's Special Representative in Rwanda, and therefore in charge of the mission in Rwanda.
An experienced diplomat having served as Cameroon's Ambassador to France and to the former USSR, Booh-Booh was also very familiar with African politics, unlike Dallaire who admits not knowing that Rwanda was in Africa when he was appointed in 1993. Since the Rwandan tragedy, Booh-Booh has remained silent and respected the neutrality that comes with his position. (Dallaire of course never respected the obligation of neutrality). Booh-Booh broke that silence in April in an interview with the French-language monthly Africa International.
When asked to react to criticisms leveled by Dallaire, Booh-Booh replied that General Dallaire never accepted the fact that he was only a military officer reporting to the civilian authority appointed by the UN Secretary General, and that he has been inconsolable ever since because he never obtained Booh-Booh's job though he tried very hard. In the field, according to Booh-Booh, Dallaire abandoned his military responsibilities to do politics, though that was not his job, and he violated the principle of neutrality by becoming the objective ally of the RPF. Moreover, Dallaire's "duplicity" was widely known in UN mission circles. Booh-Booh adds that "from a strictly military standpoint, UNAMIR controlled absolutely nothing under Dallaire's command", citing as an example his total failure to rid Kigali of arms and militias.
Booh-Booh's comments about Dallaire's political involvement in Rwanda raise important questions, especially in light of Boutros-Ghali's statements during the 10th anniversary commemorations.
Boutros-Ghali, who told me in a 2002 interview that the Rwandan genocide was 100 percent American responsibility, also told the French daily Libération that one of the UN's problems in Rwanda was that "the Department of Peacekeeping Operations [headed by Kofi Annan at the time] was very much infiltrated by the American authorities. Since the we [the UN] lacked money, we recruited officers who were on their own government's payroll."
This statement should be considered together with Dallaire's candid boasts in his book that he violated fundamental rules of a peacekeeping mission by going over the head of the mission chief, Booh-Booh, and communicating directly to the DPKO leaders Kofi Annan and Maurice Baril at UN headquarters.
Can Dallaire's intense--and unsuccessful--involvement in Rwandan politics and his pro-RPF stance be explained by the fact that he was receiving instructions directly from US or pro-US people in the UN's peacekeeping operations department? This is very plausible since we know that from the early 1990s the United States, along with Great Britain, was openly challenging France in French-speaking Africa, and particularly in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). The English-speaking Rwandan Patriotic Front, based as it was in Uganda, was perceived as a means to accomplish that end.
On the other hand, Boutros-Ghali, whom Madeleine Albright nicknamed "Frenchie", was perceived as an obstacle, as undoubtedly was the head of the UN mission in Rwanda, Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh. Soon after the Rwandan tragedy, the US unceremoniously dumped Boutros-Ghali--Albright vetoed renewal of his mandate--and installed Kofi Annan, thereby further advancing their strategy in French-speaking Africa.
Add to this the fact that Dallaire was chosen for the position in 1993 mainly because the United States demanded a French-speaking military commander, and ideally anti-French. Obviously that excluded a French national. Anybody who follows Canadian politics knows that that type of military person can be found in Ottawa, where distrust and dislike of France are at the heart of all foreign policy.
These links help explain both Kofi Annan's and Romeo Dallaire's silence regarding the shooting down of the plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi--both have persisted in calling that SAM missile attack an "accident" or a "crash", and Kofi Annan's reaction regarding the plane's Black Box following the Bruguière revelations was frankly insulting. All information, all research and all investigations, and especially Judge Bruguière's, now point to Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front. If and when France issues international arrest warrants for the perpetrators of that crime, Kofi Annan and Romeo Dallaire will have a lot of questions to answer.
Another example of Romeo Dallaire naysayers is Colonel Luc Marchal who led the UN troops in Kigali. Unlike Dallaire who tours the world to defend Paul Kagame and the RPF, Marchal is very critical of both. "I am personally very convinced in the RPF's implication in the Rwandan tragedy", writes Marchal in a 1998 letter, "because I too had been fooled by their smart propaganda during the Arusha negotiations [in 1993]. Once I was in Kigali, the gulf that separated what was said and what was really happening became obvious. In fact the RPF movement is totalitarian and it crushes absolutely everything in its way." He also pointed out in a 2003 interview that the shooting down of President Habyarimana's plane would have required months to plan and carry out, and that the rapid deployment of RPF troops in Kigali and in the North on April 7, 1994 would also have required months to prepare. Marchal leaves no doubt that he suspects the RPF of committing that crime and considers it to be crucial to understanding what happened after.
In a much more honest book about the Rwandan events published in 2001, Marchal also clearly implicates the United States in the 10-year cover-up of the April 6, 1994, terrorist attack that triggered the terrible massacres. "Who is powerful enough to have prevented a real international inquiry from casting light upon the events that occurred when President Habyarimana was flying home from a regional summit in Dar Es-Salaam?"
Robin Philpot is a Montreal writer. His book Ça ne s'est pas passé comme ça à Kigali (That's not what happened in Rwanda) will soon appear in English. Robin Philpot can be reached at rphilpot@sympatico.ca This article was originally published at counterpunch.org
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Ethnic Cleansing In Africa
Posted: Sunday, May 9, 2004
by Linda Edwards
Once again, the painful images of bone-thin African children and their mothers on the move fill our TV screens. The headlines shout that ethnic cleansing is going on in the Southern Sudan, and that the government of the Arab north is practising a scorched earth policy to get rid of the dark skinned people of Southern Sudan. And for a moment, we are shocked. There are pious mouthings, of course, from all the right poeple, all of whom are overweight. (Aid agencies, UN rights people and so on).
So this is news? This was documented by World News Television, Channel 366 on Direct TV, three years ago. Maybe the world's policy makers do not watch that version of reality TV.
The people, it was reported on channel 366, are having their houses burned because a Canadian oil company wants them moved from its drilling area. The company, it was reported, is financing the Sudanese government's purchase of weapons for the brown Arab soldiers of the north to kill and drive off the dark skinned Africans of the Nubian area.The Canadian company official denied it, but there was film footage to back up the TV report.
At one time, the government said it wanted to build a dam there. Professor Gates of Harvard University documented that also, that they would be flooding the pyramids of the Kushite people, and their heritage would be lost under the rising water. They were being driven off, and their civilization destroyed, in the interests of modernity. I do not know what happened to the dam proposal.
Documents unearthed from Pharonic tombs show that this sort of conflict has gone on for three thousand years. Now, however the stakes are higher. There is oil in that soil, and western greed demands that Africans be sacrificed for gas guzzling modern lifestyles. Africans are quite expendable, actually. People have been trying to wipe them out for a long time, and they always come back. The Atlantic slave trade, which cleared the coast of western Africa up to a hundrd miles inland is the most horrific example. More recently there have been civil wars in Angla, Congo, Rwanda, South Africa which wipe out, and displace, millions. These have all been attempts at ethnic cleansing, and in every case it was what was under the soil that was important. In most cases the weapons-guns- were supplied by the west, and hired mercenaries trained the population in the use of them. Child soldiers are equipped for these purposes with guns that cost more than a family's annual wages.
You see, Africa is a very important continent for modern industrialists. The mother lodes of all the world's significant minerals are there. The problem is that Africans, dark skinned people who are still not recognized as fully human by others, live on top of those minerals, and they have to be moved, these stubborn people, so that we could move ahead with the business of amassing wealth. In such a case, it is easy to finance the government of Muslim Northern Sudan to eradicate the Christian south. The two peoples do not look alike. They are distinctly different. We call the conflict by many names. It is good for the business of that Canadian oil company.
Next week, I am going to hear the UN Commissioner For Human Rights, and former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson talk. Will she be concerned about this issue of three African women in the southern Sudan sharing one dress? And the stillborn children who will be expelled from their wombs due to inadequate nutrition? Maybe not. African women are so fertile, they will
recover.
Will the world pay attention to the fact that Ghanain boys, as young as six years old, living in the area of the Ashanti Gold Fields are urinating blood? Yes, pissing blood, because their vital organs are failing due to chemical pollution. This too was documented years ago by World News Television. The Ashanti Gold Fields are named for the Royal House of Ghana, but is foreign owned. Media houses should check the ownership.
Wherever African children are being forced from their homes, and dying of malnutrition and chemical poisoning, one must ask what lies under the land that they are being moved from. The answers are three: oil, gold, diamonds.
Think of this mothers of the world, as you hang that new gold chain on your neck this Mother's Day. Think of this fathers, as you drive mother to dinner at a fancy restaurant. Think of this as you give her a new ring with diamondas that are forever.
I do not say not to give the gifts. All I ask is that you think of the cost in human lives, of children, of mothers, of the unborn, of those aborted not for fashion; but because the body expels the child that is so deformed it will not live, and the child which takes too much of a toll on the nutrients it's mothers weakened body cannot provide.
This is my Mother's Day wish for all of you, in 2004. I do not mean to be kind, but to be truthful. Kindness can cloak many realities. Later, we say, "if I had known..."
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Arabs attack Africans in Sudan: report
Posted: Monday, April 26, 2004
REIGN OF TERROR: The Arab-led Sudanese government is being accused of joining Arab militias in attacks on black Africans, clearing villages and executing 'enemies'
THE GUARDIAN, DAKAR, SENEGAL
Sunday, Apr 25, 2004,Page 7
www.taipeitimes.com
Human Rights Watch on Friday issued a stinging report accusing the Arab-led Sudanese government of joining Arab militias in attacks on black Africans in the Darfur region of western Sudan, clearing villages, destroying their food supplies and executing men deemed enemies. It came on a day that the UN's top human rights body passed a resolution on human rights abuses in Darfur that the US rejected as too soft on Sudan.
In an unusually strong report, based on interviews with Sudanese refugees across the border in Chad, a four-member team of investigators described the raids by the Arab militias, or janjaweed, as "a reign of terror." The report, released to the press earlier this week, documents rapes and killings of civilians, forced displacement of black Africans from their villages and aerial bombings by Sudanese military planes.
"Attacks carried out by the armed forces of Sudan and the janjaweed reflect a disturbing pattern of disregard for basic principles of human rights and humanitarian law," the report read. It went on to say that the human rights violations reported in Darfur "may constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity."
In some places, government planes bombed villages ahead of the militias' attacks and circled overhead afterward to see if the area had been cleared, according to Human Rights Watch. Elsewhere, the military and the militias set up a joint presence, "often in the local police station," before launching an attack on a village, the group said in a statement accompanying the report.
One of the researchers, Julie Flint, who spent 25 days this month inside Darfur, said in a telephone interview from London on Friday that in a roughly 66km2 area she saw 11 of 13 villages burned, with the other two deserted. Homes and food storage areas were burned, she said. All that was left were bits of peanuts and shards of glass -- remnants of tea glasses.
One villager, she said, brought her a list of 62 mosques that had been burned. She said she collected reports of massacres during prayer time at mosques. In two sweeps in March, she reported, Sudanese soldiers detained 136 African men whom the militias massacred hours later. "They are no longer working alone," Flint said of the militias.
According to UN estimates, the attacks have displaced 900,000 people inside Darfur and roughly another 100,000 refugees who have fled across the frontier, to Chad. Low-level clashes over land between Arabs, who are herders, and black Africans, who are farmers, broke out in a full-scale war in February last year, when a rebel movement emerged.
Meanwhile, aid workers, so far restricted in their movements inside Darfur, are scrambling to ferry food, tarpaulins and other relief supplies to displaced peasants camped out across the vast, largely arid territory. Seasonal rains are likely to come in less than two months, making roads impassable. The government in Khartoum said earlier this week that it would allow a UN humanitarian assessment team to travel through the area.
Meanwhile, in Geneva, the UN's top human rights body stopped short of condemning the Khartoum government for "ethnic cleansing," choosing instead milder language to express its concern about "the scale of reported human rights abuses and the humanitarian situation in Darfur" and appointing a monitor to investigate the charges.
Fifty members of the UN Human Rights Commission backed the resolution, drafted by EU countries. Washington rejected it, calling for stronger language, and there were two abstentions. The African Union also on Friday said it would dispatch ceasefire monitors to Darfur, and peace talks between the Sudanese government and two guerrilla groups resumed in Chad.
After the vote in Geneva, Richard Williamson, head of the US delegation, called for an emergency session to review their decision after UN investigators return from a trip to Darfur. The team is in Sudan now.
Sudan's allies on the UN team this week lashed out at UN officials, calling for an investigation into the leaks. Sudan has consistently denied responsibility for the actions of the janjaweed.
The UN, which has so far received pledges of US$30 million, is calling on donor countries to provide another US$130 million in emergency aid. UN officials have lately stepped up their criticism of the government in Darfur, as have those within the Bush administration.
In a report prepared for the UN commission meeting in Geneva, the Bush administration lashed out at Khartoum for barring aid groups and human rights investigators from the hardest-hit areas of Darfur. "The government of Sudan is denying assistance from reaching its own people," the report declared. "It is time that the international community stand united and denounce the violence and ethnic cleansing taking place in Sudan."
Reproduced for Fair Use Only from:
www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/04/25/2003138028
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White Whine
Posted: Friday, April 23, 2004
Reflections on the Brain-Rotting Properties of Privilege
By Tim Wise
April 20, 2004, www.zmag.org
To truly understand a nation, a culture, or its people, it helps to know what they take for granted.
After all, sometimes the things that go unspoken are more powerful than the spoken word, if for no other reason than the tendency of unspoken assumptions to reinforce core ways of thinking, feeling and acting, without ever having to be verbalized (and thus subjected to challenge) at all.
What's more, when people take certain things for granted, anything that goes against the grain of what they perceive as "normal" will tend to stand out like a sore thumb, and invite a hostility that seems reasonable, at least to those dispensing it, precisely because their unspoken assumptions have gone uninterrogated for so long.
Thus, every February I encounter people who are apoplectic at the thought of Black History Month, and who insist with no sense of irony or misgiving that there should be no such thing, since, after all, there is no White History Month--a position to which they can only adhere because they have taken for granted that "American history" as told to them previously was comprehensive and accurate, as opposed to being largely the particular history of the dominant group.
In other words, the normalcy of the white narrative, which has rendered every month since they popped out of their momma's wombs White History Month, escapes them, and makes the efforts of multiculturalists seem to be the unique break with an otherwise neutral color-blindness.
Sorta' like those who e-mail me on a semi-regular basis to insist, as if they have just stumbled upon a truth of unparalleled profundity, that there should be an Ivory Magazine to balance out Ebony, or that we need a White Entertainment Television network to balance out BET, or a NAAWP to balance out the NAACP.
Again, these dear souls ignore what is obvious to virtually all persons of color but which remains unseen by those whose reality gets to be viewed as the norm: namely, that there are already two Ivory Magazines--Vogue and Cosmopolitan; that there are several WETs, which just so happen to go by the names of CBS, NBC and ABC; and that the Fortune 500, U.S. Congress and Fraternal Orders of Police are all doing a pretty good job holding it down for us white folks on the organizational front. Just because the norm is not racially-named, doesn't mean it isn't racialized.
Likewise the ongoing backlash against affirmative action, by those who seem to believe that opportunity would truly be equal in the absence of these presumably unjust efforts to ensure access to jobs and higher education for persons of color.
We are to believe that before affirmative action things were fine, and that were such efforts abolished now, things would return to this utopic state of affairs: to hell with the persistent evidence that people of color continue to face discrimination in employment, housing, education and all other institutional settings in the U.S.
So if the University of Michigan gives applicants of color twenty points on a 150-point admission scale, so as to promote racial diversity and balance out the disadvantages to which such students are often subjected in their K-12 schooling experience, that is seen as unfair racial preference.
But when the same school gives out 16 points to kids from the lily-white Upper Peninsula, or four points for children of overwhelmingly white alumni, or ten points for students who went to the state's "top" schools (who will be disproportionately white), or 8 points for those who took a full slate of Advanced Placement classes in high schools (which classes are far less available in schools serving students of color), this is seen as perfectly fair, and not at all racially preferential.
What's more, the whites who received all those bonus points due to their racial and class position will not be thought of by anyone as having received unearned advantages, in spite of the almost entirely ascriptive nature of the categories into which they fell that qualified them for such bonuses. No matter their "qualifications," it will be taken for granted that any white student at a college or University belongs there.
This is why Jennifer Gratz, the lead plaintiff in the successful "reverse discrimination" suit against Michigan's undergraduate affirmative action policy, found it a supreme injustice that a few dozen black, Latino and American Indian students were admitted ahead of her, despite having lower SATs and grades; but she thought nothing of the fact that more than 1400 other white students also were admitted ahead of her and her co-plaintiffs, despite having lower scores and grades.
"Lesser qualified" whites are acceptable, you see, while "lesser qualified" people of color must be eliminated from their unearned perches of opportunity. This is the kind of racist logic that people like Gratz, who now heads up the state's anti-affirmative action initiative with the financial backing of Ward Connerly, find acceptable.
This kind of logic also explains the effort of whites at Roger Williams University to start a "white scholarship fund," on the pretense that scholarships for students of color are unfair and place whites at a disadvantage.
This, despite the unmentioned fact that about 93 percent of all college scholarship money goes to whites; despite the fact that students of color at elite and expensive colleges come from families with about half the average income of whites; despite the fact that there are scholarships for pretty much every kind of student under the sun, including children of Tupperware dealers, kids whose parents raise horses, kids who are left-handed, kids whose families descend from the founding fathers: you name it, and there's money available for it.
While there are plenty of whites unable to afford college, the fault for this unhappy reality lies not with minority scholarships, but rather with the decisions of almost exclusively white University elites to raise the price of higher education into the stratosphere, to the detriment of most everyone.
But to place blame where it really belongs, on rich white people, would be illogical. After all, we take it for granted that one day we too might be wealthy, and we wouldn't want others to question our decisions and prerogatives come that day either.
Better to blame the dark-skinned for our hardship, since we can take it for granted that they're powerless to do anything about it.
Whites, as it turns out, take most everything for granted in this country; which makes perfect sense, because dominant groups usually have that privilege.
We take for granted that we won't be racially profiled even when members of our group engage in criminality at a disproportionate rate, whether the crime is corporate fraud, serial killing, child molestation, abortion clinic bombings or drunk driving. And indeed we won't be.
We take it for granted that our terrorism won't result in whites as a group being viewed with generalized suspicion. So Tim McVeigh represents only Tim McVeigh, while Mohammed Atta gets to serve as a proxy for every other person who either has his name or follows a prophet of that name.
We take it for granted that our dishonesty will be viewed in purely individualistic terms, while the dishonesty of others will result in aspersions being cast upon the entire group from which they come.
Thus, Jayson Blair's deceptions at the New York Times provoke howls of indignation at any effort to provide opportunity to journalists of color--because after all, diversity and quality are proven by this one man's exploits to be incompatible--but Jack Kelley's equally egregious fabrications and fraud at USA Today fails to prompt calls for an end to hiring white guys as reporters, or for scrutinizing them more carefully, or for closing down whatever avenues of opportunity have helped keep the profession so white for so long.
We take it for granted that we will never be viewed as one of those dreaded "special interest" groups, precisely because whatever serves our interests is presumed universal.
So, for example, while politicians who pursue the support of black, Latino, gay or other "minority" voters are said to be pandering to special interests, those who bend over backwards to secure the backing of NASCAR dads and soccer moms, whose racial composition is as self-evident as it is unmentioned, are said to be politically savvy and merely trying to connect with "normal folks."
We take it for granted that "classical music" is a perfectly legitimate term for what really amounts to one particular classical form (mostly European orchestral and piano concerto music), ignoring that there are, indeed, classical forms of all musical styles, as well as their more contemporary versions.
We take it for granted that the only controversy regarding Jesus is whether or not he was killed by Jews or Romans; or whether the depiction of his execution by Mel Gibson is too violent for children, all the while ignoring a much larger issue, which is why does Gibson (and for that matter every other white filmmaker or artist in the history of the faith) feel the need to make Jesus white: something he surely could not have been and was not, with all due apology to Michelangelo, Constantine, Pat Robertson, and the producers of "Jesus Christ Superstar."
That the only physical descriptions of Jesus in the Bible indicate that he had feet the color of burnt brass, and hair like wool, poses a slight problem for Gibson and other followers of the white Jesus hanging in their churches, adorning their crucifixes (if Catholic), and gracing the Christmas cards they send each December.
It is the same problem posed by the anthropological evidence concerning the physical appearance of first century Jews from that part of Northern Africa we prefer to call the "Middle East" (and why is that I wonder?). Namely, Jesus did not look like a long-haired version of my Ashkenazi Jewish, Eastern European great-grandfather in his prime.
But to even bring this up is to send most white Christians (and sadly, even many of color) into fits, replete with assurances that "it doesn't matter what Jesus looked like, it only matters what he did."
Which is all fine and good, until you realize that indeed it must matter to them what Jesus looked like; otherwise, they wouldn't be so averse to presenting him as the man of color he most assuredly was: a man dark enough to guarantee that were he to come back tomorrow, and find himself on the wrong side of New York City at the wrong time of night, reaching for his keys or his wallet in the presence of the Street Crimes Unit, he'd be dispatched far more expeditiously than was done at Golgotha 2000 years ago.
But never fear: we needn't grapple with that because we can merely take it for granted that Jesus had to look like us, as did Adam and Eve, and as does God himself. And indeed, most whites believe this to be true, as proven by every single picture Bible for kids made by a white person, all of which present these figures in such a way.
Consider the classic and widely distributed Robert Maxwell Bible Series for children, popularly known as the "blue books," which are found in virtually every pediatrician and OBGYN's office in the U.S. In Volume I, readers learn (at least visually speaking) that the Garden of Eden was in Oslo: a little-known fact that will stun Biblical scholars to be sure.
It would all be quite funny were it not so incontestably insane, so pathological in terms of the scope of our nuttiness. What else, after all, can explain the fact that when a New Jersey theatre company put on a passion play a few years ago with a black actor in the lead role, they received hundreds of hateful phone calls and even death threats for daring to portray Jesus as anyone darker than, say, Shaun Cassidy?
What else but a tenuous (at best) grip on reality can explain the quickness with which many white Americans ran around after 9/11 saying truly stupid shit like "now we know what it means to be attacked for who we are?"
Now we know? Hell, some folks always knew what that was like, though their pain and suffering never counted for much in the eyes of the majority.
What else but delusion on a scale necessitating medication could lead one to say--as two whites did on CNN in the wake of the first O.J. Simpson verdict--that they now realized everything they had been told about the American justice system being fair was a lie? Now they realized it! See the theme here?
That's what privilege is, for all those who constantly ask me what I mean when I speak of white privilege. It's the ability to presume that your reality is the reality; that your experiences, if white, are universal, and not particular to your racial identity.
It's the ability to assume that you belong and that others will presume that too; the ability to define reality for others, and expect that definition to stick (because you have the power to ensure that it becomes the dominant narrative).
And it's the ability to ignore all evidence to the contrary, claim that you yourself are the victim, and get everyone from the President to the Supreme Court to the average white guy on the street to believe it.
It is Times New Roman font, one inch margins, left hand justified. In other words, it is the default position on the computer of American life. And it has rendered vast numbers of its recipients utterly incapable of critical thought.
Only by rebelling against it, and insisting on our own freedom from the mental straightjacket into which we have been placed as whites by this system, can we hope to regain our full humanity, and be of any use as allies to people of color in their struggle against racism.
~~~~~~~
Tim Wise is an antiracist activist, essayist and father. He can be reached at timjwise@msn.com. Death threats, while neither appreciated nor desired, will be graded for form, content and originality.
www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-04/20wise.cfm
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Robert Mugabe and the Human Rights Imperialists
Posted: Wednesday, April 7, 2004
By Stephen Gowans, www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans
September 22, 2003
Amir Attaran and Craig Jones say Canada's Attorney-General Martin Cauchon should indict Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe for crimes against humanity.
Attaran is a lawyer and associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. Jones is a lawyer in private practice in Vancouver.
The two lawyers are emblematic of a large group of NGO's, human rights organizations and progressives in Canada, the US and the UK, who want something done about foreign leaders accused of committing crimes against humanity.
But the high dudgeon of these groups seems to fall heavily on leaders of small and weak countries that resist integration into the US dominated capitalist system, and to fall less heavily on human rights abusers who preside over privately owned economies. And their attention almost never falls on deserving figures closer to home.
For example, while citing what they call Mugabe's "racially motivated sponsorship of armed thugs to confiscate white-owned farms," Attaran and Jones have no words of condemnation for US President George W. Bush, his key advisors, and his principal backer British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
On top of operating a concentration camp at Gauntanamo Bay and carrying out extrajudicial assassinations, the Bush administration has pursued two wars of aggression, crimes for which leading Nazis were condemned to death at the Nuremberg trials. Surely, crimes of this magnitude should put Mr. Bush and his key advisors at the top of Mr. Attaran's and Mr. Jones' list.
And the list needn't stop there. It could also include former General Wesely Clark, who's making a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Clark led NATO's 78-day air war on Yugoslavia, an illegal affair from start to finish that saw the retired General order his bombers to attack bridges, roads, homes, factories, schools, hospitals, petrochemical plants, electrical power stations, an embassy and a radio-TV building, none of which had anything to do with the Yugoslav military, or its presence in Kosovo, and all of which were civilian targets, presumably safe from attack
Clark, for whom the obloquy "Butcher of Belgrade" fits like a glove, is an obvious war criminal. So why are Attaran and Jones going after Mugabe. Surely, whatever Mugabe is accused of is small potatoes next to Clark's crimes.
Indeed, Jones, a Canadian, should have an especial interest in his own Prime Minister, Jean Chretein, who approved Canada's participation in the Kosovo campaign. Ottawa once boasted that Canadian warplanes flew the third highest number of sorties in the weeks-long war, accounting for 10 percent of all the bombs dropped.
But Canada's participation in the destruction of a country is hardly something to boast about. Chretien is ultimately responsible for 10 percent of the bridges, roads, factories, and other civilian targets that were destroyed. That makes the Canadian Prime Minister party to war crimes, and certainly deserving of prosecution. Yet he doesn't make the list.
Instead, human rights groups, NGO's and lawyers like Attaran and Jones almost invariably condemn leaders of countries called hostile to the West, that is, leaders who have closed important parts of their economies to Western trade and investment, and pursue independent foreign policies. Dictators, and human rights abusers who preside over privately owned economies, escape almost unscathed.
Take Saudi Arabia, for example. It is equally, if not more so, as much a human rights nightmare as pre-war Iraq was. Yet it is rarely mentioned by the those who call for the heads of Milosevic, Hussein and Mugabe. And given the hue and cry about Hussein being a dictator, and North Korea developing nuclear weapons, you'd never know Pakistan is ruled by a military dictator and is equipped with nuclear arms. Pervez Musharraf is rarely ever mentioned, except in friendly tones.
But then there's little to be gained by Western powers targeting Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. They're already firmly ensconced in the Western orbit.
There was, however, once something to be gained by ousting Slobodan Milosevic, the Serb president of the Yugoslav federation. Yugoslavia once had a largely socially and state-owned economy. And it pursued an independent foreign policy.
Western powers encouraged the federation's republics to secede, and backed their most right-wing elements. The Serbs, led by Milosevic, resisted.
Soon enough, Milosevic was transformed into a human rights monster. A program of destabilization, economic warfare, bombing, a proxy guerilla war, and interference in elections, eventually toppled Milosevic, to the cheers of human rights liberals, convinced the Yugoslav president was Hitler-reborn.
Today, the economy has almost been wholly transformed from a socially-owned one, to one owned by Western investors.
It's no accident that the so-called "democratic opposition" in target countries, seen as champions of democracy and human rights, are, first and foremost, champions of neoliberal economics and of their country's integration into the US dominated global capitalist order.
The Democratic Opposition of Serbia, much beloved by US progressives, is firmly neoliberal.
The Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe's main opposition group, is a fervent proponent of free market economics.
And the Iraqi National Congress, pre-war Iraq's main exile opposition group, also favors penetration by US capital.
Yesterday, the puppet regime Washington installed in Iraq announced that 192 state-owned and state-controlled companies would be put on the auction bloc, up for sale to foreign investors.
Hailed as a measure that will kick-start the economy, the sell-off is hardly stimulative. It simply transfers ownership of Iraq's non-oil assets from the rightful owners -- Iraqis -- to Western firms and investors.
This is theft, pure and simple. Iraqis -- other than those handpicked by Washington -- haven't consented to it. And its Washington's masters – Wall Street – that will benefit.
So what of Zimbabwe -- what does it have to do with Iraq and Yugoslavia?
First, its land redistribution program challenges the idea of the inviolability of private property, one US administrations hold as a moral principal.
Second, it has been less than biddable where the IMF is concerned, balking at the organization's dictates. This, Yugoslavia, under Milosevic, did, as well.
And third, it has interfered with the West's proxy wars in Africa.
In short, Zimbabwe isn't playing by Washington's economic rules.
Nor, significantly, is Iran or North Korea, two countries in Washington's cross-hairs, about which human rights concerns have also been raised.
To be sure, no country is free from human rights abuses, corruption, or abuse of power, and there's much about Zimbabwe and Mugabe that can be criticized.
But before jumping aboard campaigns to take foreign leaders to task for transgressions, we should ask:
Do the charges have substance, or are they part of a propaganda program intended to build public support for intervention later on? It's easy to believe the worst of foreign leaders, especially when the mass media seem to agree unanimously on the leaders' crimes, but the Left, which prides itself on media analysis, should be wary. Often, it's not.
Does the West have an economic interest in ousting the foreign leader in question? Is he or she presiding over a largely socially or state-owned economy, resisting IMF demands to privatize state-controlled assets, or threatening Western investments?
Are there other leaders who are abusing human rights about whom little is said? If so, why not? What's the nature of their economy?
To what extent are the acts we condemn foreign leaders for – Mugabe's repression of the Western-backed press, Korea's pursuit of a nuclear weapons program, Cuba's jailing of dissidents working on behalf of Washington to restore the island to capitalism – defensive manoeuvres against pressure and interference by the West?
What about our own leaders? Are their crimes more notorious than those foreign leaders are accused of. Mugabe is accused of inspiring the racially-motivated take-over of white-owned farms, and of stealing an election. If these charges are true, they hardly compare to the crimes of pursuing wars of aggression or ordering attacks on civilian infrastructure. Where should our attention be directed? What does it say when we focus on foreign leaders that resist integration into the US-dominated capitalist system, while ignoring, or minimizing, the huge -- and imperialist -- crimes of our own leaders?
There's no question the West is pressuring Mugabe to step down, in favor of Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, who would prove far more congenial to Western economic interests. Tsvangirai has no serious plan for land redistribution, and wouldn't challenge Western interests that stand in the way. Rather than calling for Mugabe to be prosecuted, anyone genuinely interested in justice in Zimbabwe should be demanding the West support the country's land reform program, and free Harare from the IMF's neoliberal dictates.
Unfortunately, it will be said -- by the same people who cheered on the Western-backed Democratic Opposition of Serbia, backed Saddam's ouster, and are lining up behind Wesley Clark -- that not condemning Mugabe is bad politics and is no way to carry out a progressive anti-imperialism.
On the contrary, calling for Mugabe's prosecution, rather than demanding Zimbabweans be given space to deal effectively with past colonialism and current imperialism, is hardly anti-imperialist, progressive or otherwise.
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