Haiti after Aristide's return

Kim Ives

From SocialistWorker.org

http://socialistworker.org/2011/03/23/haiti-after-aristides-return

March 23, 2011

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Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has returned to the country he was kidnapped from in a U.S.-backed coup just over seven years ago. Despite massive pressure brought to bear by the U.S. government, Aristide boarded a small plane with his family in South Africa on March 17 and arrived in Haiti the next day.

The country he returned to has been ravaged by last year's massive earthquake and the terrible aftermath, during which the U.S. and its allies broke their promises to provide desperately needed aid. Two months before, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, the notorious former dictator who was driven into exile by a mass rebellion in 1986, also returned to Haiti.

Aristide arrived just ahead of a run-off election on March 20 for Haiti's president that the U.S. hoped would ratify its plans for a country subjugated to Washington's neoliberal agenda. Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas, was excluded from the election. Results of the run-off were still being calculated on March 22.

Kim Ives, a journalist and editor with Haiti Liberté [1], returned to Haiti ahead of Aristide's arrival. He provided this live report from Port-au-Prince via phone to a panel discussion on March 19--the day before the election--at the Left Forum in New York City.

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I AM standing near a tent camp here in Port-au-Prince. About 1,500 internally displaced people have been living here since just after the earthquake.

This place is a poster child for Haitian poverty and misery. The people here find minimal shelter under scattered tarps and tents, beneath a blazing sun and near a cesspool which floods anytime it rains, sending waste and foul water into people's tents. It's a breeding ground for mosquitoes. It's filled with garbage and stinks to high heaven. It is truly a miserable place.

The tent camp is sandwiched between an assembly factory where many of the residents of this camp work and a food relief operation. That relief operation doesn't provide enough food for these people. The camp's residents are practically starving. You see children with swollen bellies mixed with the miserable adults.

This is really a microcosm of Haiti--a completely impoverished working class sandwiched between these NGOs and sweatshops. The NGOs provide less than minimal nutrition to them. In fact, the Red Cross, which has been providing water to this camp, is set to cut it off next week. The sweatshops take advantage of this misery. People consider it a privilege to accept a wage of $1 or $2 a day in an attempt to hold on to a precarious existence.

This is the context in which President Jean-Bertrand Aristide arrived yesterday. The reception was absolutely extraordinary. People say it wasn't a "lavalas," which in Creole means a cleansing flood--it was a tsunami. A wall of humanity poured down out of the streets and slums and stormed out of the city toward the airport.

This was impressive because the Duvalierists, neo-Duvalierists and international embassies did a major campaign to try to confuse people. They kept repeating, "No, he's not coming back until the 22nd, or "It's not clear when he's coming back." We were doing interviews in front of the palace, and we'd have people jump in and repeat these claims.

So people all across Haiti were confused. When Aristide's plane landed, Radio Télé Ginen was the only television station that showed up. All of the press boycotted the arrival, even though everybody knew he was returning. It was streaming live on Democracy Now!--Amy Goodman was sending pictures out from the plane. But most of the radio here owned by the bourgeoisie was not on hand.

The international press was there in force, though, and it was a frantic scramble. After Aristide arrived, as many of you have seen already, he gave a speech. It was, I would say, better than many had hoped, because he spoke clearly, and what he said was like a match to a fuse.

He said, "Exclusion is the problem, inclusion is the solution." He was talking not just about political the exclusion of his party Fanmi Lavalas from the elections that are going to take place tomorrow. He also meant social exclusion--the fact that the people, living in this camp, living in the slums around here, working in these factories, working and living and in many cases dying because of the poor conditions, are excluded from the riches that exist in this country.

He did not only mean the agricultural richness that Haiti once produced in rice, sugar, coffee and other crops. He also meant the exclusion from benefiting from the mineral wealth that is being discovered here. He spoke about the exclusion from newly found uranium, oil, gold, silver, marble, calcium carbonate and other resources. Those are some of interests that drive these rampaging foreign corporations, which are trying to seize control of the state apparatus now through the election.

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BUT LET'S turn back to the day itself. The people were waiting outside the gates of the airport. Security inside the airport was extremely tight. We were shuttled by buses out to where the plane flew in. It flew in about 20 minutes early so the press was taken somewhat unaware, but immediately, all the barricades and fences were swept away by the press, which just ran up to the plane. Aristide descended into a pool of press. And on leaving the airport, he descended into an ocean of people.

It was quite extraordinary. It was beyond joyous--I would almost call it rapturous. Margaret Prescott of Women's Strike for Peace called it a "tsunami of love." People jogged alongside Aristide's motorcade as it brought him back to his home in Tabarre, about two or three miles from the airport.

When we arrived at the home, the plan, I think, was that the motorcade would enter, and the people would stay outside, but that's not what happened. An ocean of people surged into the compound.

The Aristides are living there, but they don't have electricity, they don't have Internet, they don't have telephones, they don't have water. They're camping out in the shell of their former home, which was torn apart by the rebels that came, looted and broke whatever they could back in 2004. But it has been painted and repaired. This crowd, this ocean of people, carried the Aristide delegation into the compound. People were climbing up trees and walls to get a glimpse of Aristide. They were on top of the house. They were dancing, they were singing, they were yelling. It was bedlam. It was pandemonium.

The press was bobbing around, like little floats in this ocean, with their microphones and cameras, trying to capture it, but it was like trying to capture a waterfall with a teaspoon. It was just extraordinary.

Finally, after about five or six hours, people started to fade away, and eventually, some police came in and cleared the yard. Inside the house, a number of Lavalas supporters gathered from around the country and around the U.S. I should also say around the world, because CLR James' widow Selma James was there. She runs an organization in London called "Women's Crossroads." There was Pierre LaBossiere from the Haiti Action Committee, Margaret Prescott from Women Strike for Peace, Amy Goodman and Sharif Abdel Kouddous from Democracy Now!

It was a very relaxed, very happy occasion. It was so emotional to watch. Tears were streaming down cheeks of Aristide and his family as they came into their home. You have to imagine what it was like for his two daughters. They have essentially grown up in South Africa. Cristina, the oldest, was seven years old when the coup happened. Between the ages of 7 and 14, she really didn't know about her father and what a symbol he was in Haiti--somewhat like the Haitian Nelson Mandela. So she was learning now as a teenager about her father's significance. It was touching to watch the emotion and pride on her face, and that of her sister Mikaela.
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ALL IN all, I can say that the return has set the stage for a political confrontation. The Lavalas movement burst onto the scene 20 years ago and essentially seized power from the Duvalierists and neo-Duvalierists in 1990. Now we see a similar confrontation emerging decades later, but the roles are reversed. It's Lavalas--or what I would call the neo-Lavalas, the bourgeiosified Lavalas--which is in power. This is what the Duvalierists are now challenging, above all, through the candidacy of Michel Martelly.

Inside this tent camp, where I am standing, Martelly has built a base of Duvalierists. I just overheard a guy on the phone saying "Jean-Claude Duvalier, that's who I believe in, because he doesn't take any shit. He's the man." So the thugs of the bourgeoisie and the big landowners are trying to capitalize on people's misery, gather supporters and hoist themselves into power for the first time through elections.

We have to remember that Duvalierists tried to take power over the past 20 years through coup d'états, one in 1991 and another in 2004. Neither of those worked because they were military coups, and the people resisted. But they've diversified their weaponry and are now coming to power through an electoral coup.

I call the election a coup because it is completely illegal. The Institute for Justice and Democracy has issued a study that lays out how completely phony and bogus the elections are. Nevertheless, this is how Michel Martelly will ascend into power.

The people are divided. Do we go with Martelly? Do we try to boycott? Most of the Lavalas base was despairing, but with Aristide's return, it's now been emboldened and invigorated, and I think that the boycott movement has been given an effective jolt of energy. I think we may see a strong boycott. Will it be reported? Will it succeed in discrediting the elections? That remains to be seen.

We heard the debate in the Lavalas base inside the compound yesterday. Some would say, "I'm going to vote Sweet Micky," meaning Michel Martelly. But those people would always be interrupted by others who supported a boycott, saying, "No, there was no first round, there will be no second round."

So this is the debate going on between the Lavalas forces that support a boycott and the neo-Duvalierists who are trying to come to power through an electoral coup. This is the battle we are seeing, and I think Aristide's arrival in the country has brought it to a new phase.

How will Aristide handle it? How he will navigate in these narrows remains to be seen. He has in past years tried to do what they call in Creole "marronage," which is to compromise, and wheel and deal his way through such situations. That strategy has often alienated sectors of the left that had supported him because he was the people's choice, but were frustrated with his compromises.

But I think Aristide has changed to some extent. If you read his statements in exile, particularly from this past December, he has apparently become harder and more anti-imperialist. The speech he gave yesterday at the airport spoke clearly to the question of inclusion and exclusion. He didn't avoid political questions completely as he might have in the past.

Although not as combative as some might have wished, his speech was enough to send a strong message to the people. I think in the days and weeks ahead, we're going to see a confrontation begin to take shape between a neo-Duvalierist regime, most likely led by Martelly, and a counter-attack by Aristide and the Lavalas base.

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1. [1] http://www.haitiliberte.com
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Koch Industries or Koch Crimes?

Koch And Native-American Reservation Oil Theft

By Dave Johnson

Created 03/20/2011 - 8:00pm

Published on OurFuture.org (http://www.ourfuture.org)

Just what is this Koch Industries? Should it be called a "company?" If so we need to re-think the idea of what a company and a business is supposed to be. Even the brother of Koch Industries owners David and Charles Koch called the company an "organized crime" operation.

Koch money is a key driver of the conservative movement. Almost every [1]rock [2] you turn over [3] has Koch money [4] crawling around [5] under it. As the movement becomes more and more of a pay-to-play operation, conservatives of every stripe do more and more to protect and enrich the Koch operation. This has included blocking, disrupting and avoiding official investigations of accusations. It also includes funding front groups to advance the political and financial interests of the company and its owners. conservative-movement

Theft Of Oil From Reservations

Oppose The Future [6] has the story of how Koch Oil [7] was caught stealing oil from an Indian Reservation, reducing or removing the incomes of so many poor residents.

At some point in 1987, Thurmon Parton’s royalty checks for the three oil wells he inherited from his mother suddenly dropped from $3,000 a month to a little over $1,000. He and his sister, Arnita Gonzalez, members of the Caddo tribe, lived near Gracemont, Oklahoma, a town of a few hundred people on a small grid on the prairie.

Those modest royalties were the only source of income each of them had.

. . . What happened to Mr. Parton, Ms. Gonzales and Ms. Limpy had nothing to do with the wells or how they were producing. Their oil was being stolen. And all of the evidence pointed to the same culprit: Koch Oil, a division of Koch Industries.

This is an important story today because it helps us understand the nature of the Koch operation, which has so much influence over our politics and even livelihoods today. It also helps us understand why our government not only appears to be influenced, but often to be outright corrupted. From the story,

In the spring of 1989, a Special Committee on Investigations of the United States Senate’s Select Committee on Indian Affairs was formed to look into concerns that the path to tribal self-rule was impeded by fraud, corruption and mismanagement from all sides.

... Within a span of months, the Special Committee determined that “Koch [Oil] was engaged in systematic theft, stealing millions in Oklahoma alone.” BLM, even with a tip that Koch was behaving improperly, hadn’t done a thing.

Oppose The Future [7] lays out the story and details of the oil theft. There is also story of the years following.

"A Broad Pattern Of Criminal Behavior"

Back in 1996 Business Week looked into the relationship between then-Senator and Presidential Candidate Bob Dole and Koch Industries and an apparent pattern of influence by the company, in BOB DOLE'S OIL-PATCH PALS [8]. Here are some excerpts from their investigation, [emphasis added]

Koch has had a history of run-ins with the Justice Dept. and other federal agencies. In 1989, a special congressional committee looked into charges that Koch had routinely removed more oil from storage tanks on Indian tribal lands ... Dole tried to influence the Senate committee to soft-pedal the probe. Nevertheless, after a yearlong investigation, the committee said in its final report, "Koch Oil, the largest purchaser of Indian oil in the country, is the most dramatic example of an oil company stealing by deliberate mismeasurement and fraudulent reporting." The report triggered a grand jury probe. The inquiry was dropped in March, 1992, which provoked outrage by congressional investigators.

Then in April, 1995, the Justice Dept. filed a $55 million civil suit against Koch for causing more than 300 oil spills over a five-year period. Dole and other Senators, however, sponsored a bill ... that critics charge would help Koch defend itself ... legal sources say the government's ultimate goal is to use evidence in the two actions to establish that Koch has engaged in a broad pattern of criminal behavior.

... From Apr. 19, 1991, through Nov. 2, 1992, David Koch and the Koch Industries political action committee together contributed $7,000 to Nickles' campaign war chest. Around the same time, [Oklahoma Republican Senator Don] Nickles sponsored Timothy D. Leonard, an old friend of Nickles, for the post of U.S. Attorney in Oklahoma City. ... initially, questions were raised in the U.S. attorney's office about whether Leonard should recuse himself because Koch Industries purchased oil from wells in which Leonard and his family had royalty interests ... Then-Deputy Attorney General William P. Barr granted him a waiver to participate in the case ... In March, 1992, after an 18-month investigation, the U.S. Attorney's office terminated the grand jury probe and informed Koch it anticipated no indictments. ... As the grand jury investigation was winding down, Nickles sponsored Leonard for a federal judgeship. He was nominated by President Bush in November, 1991, and confirmed by the Senate the following August.

Business Week lays out the evidence [8] in detail. The timing, with Republican administration/committee/agency/department after administration/committee/agency/department impeding and/or dropping investigations into Koch activities is also clear.

In 2000, CBS' 60 Minutes ran a segment, Blood And Oil And Environmental Negligence [9] looking at the activities of the Koch brothers and their private company Koch Industries,

As we told you when we first reported this story last November, the Koch family of Wichita, Kansas is among the richest in the United States, worth billions of dollars. Their oil company, Koch Industries, is bigger than Intel, Dupont or Prudential Insurance, and they own it lock stock and barrel.

William Koch, brother of company owners David and Charles, called the company an "organized crime" operation:

Koch says that Koch Industries engaged in "(o)rganized crime. And management driven from the top down."

"It was – was my family company. I was out of it," he says. "But that’s what appalled me so much... I did not want my family, my legacy, my father’s legacy to be based upon organized crime."

In March, 2001 the incoming Bush administration repealed the "responsible contractor rule" that barred companies that chronically defraud the government and/or violate federal pollution, wage and other rules from receiving federal contracts.

Then, in 2002 the Bush II administration awarded Koch the contract [10] to supply oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. (There were accusations that the government bought oil when prices were high, and sold it when prices were low.) The contract was renewed in 2004. Koch received tens of millions [11] in other government contracts during the Bush years.

The story [12] and timeline of the Koch operation (and its front-groups) go on[13] and on [14], organizing and funding [15] climate-denial front groups [16], front-groups run and funded by the Koch Brothers [17] organizing and funding the Tea Party [18]. (Please click the links.)

Think Progress [19] in particular has been following the activities of this "company" [20] and its front groups [21], and it is certainly worth taking a look. See REPORT: How Koch Industries Makes Billions By Demanding Bailouts And Taxpayer Subsidies (Part 1) [22],

Koch funds both socially conservative groups and socially liberal groups. However, Koch’s financing of front groups and political organizations all have one thing in common: every single Koch group attacks workers’ rights, promotes deregulation, and argues for radical supply side economics.

Aristide returns to Haiti

http://www.peoplesworld.org/aristide-returns-to-haiti-calls-for-inclusion-of-poor-and-disenfranchised/

Aristide returns to Haiti, calls for inclusion of poor and disenfranchised

by: Emile Schepers

March 18 2011

Former Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti this morning after a seven-year period of exile in South Africa. Speaking at the airport in the Haitian capital, Port au Prince, Aristide used the French, Spanish, English and Zulu languages to address the crowd. Zulu was a gesture of gratitude to his former South African hosts whose President, Jacob Zuma, is a Zulu speaker. Aristide had been studied African languages while in exile.

Aristide did not comment directly on the flawed general elections in Haiti, the second round of which is due to take place this Sunday, March 20. Instead he focused on the need to replace "exclusion" of the mass of the Haitian poor with "inclusion" through educational and economic improvements. "Today there are not even two doctors per 11 thousand Haitians; that is the result of exclusion...Haiti lives in extreme poverty, hunger, unemployment, drugs and injustice and exclusion."

He made a point of thanking Cuba for its solidarity work after last year's earthquake in the Puerto Prince area, which killed 300,000 people, and the current cholera epidemic, which has killed another 4,000.

Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, had been a strong critic of the brutal dictatorship of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who has also returned to Haiti after a long exile in France. Aristide was elected president in 1991, but was almost immediately overthrown by the Duvalierist military, which proceeded to massacre thousands of poor Aristide supporters.

In 1994, Aristide obtained the armed support of the Clinton administration to return him to Haiti, in exchange for which he accepted most of the "Washington Consensus" plan of "free trade" (which, in practice, meant eliminating import tariffs on U.S. taxpayer subsidized rice and other imports), privatization and austerity. As a result, thousands of Haitian farmers were driven off the land because they could not compete with U.S. imports, while American rice producers, based in Clinton's home state of Arkansas, reaped a bonanza.

Aristide did succeed in abolishing the army, which had been such a source of instability and human rights abuses in the past. After a period out of power, Aristide was elected again in 2001, with the support of militant poor people's organizations that sometimes constituted themselves as armed militias to fight against the rich and against Aristide's opponents.

In 2004, he was overthrown again by violent right-wing gangs supported by the Bush administration and the French government. Aristide accuses the United States of being directly involved in his overthrow. France was angry with Aristide for demanding reparations for money that France had extorted from Haiti in the 19th and 20th centuries, and thus is seen to have connived in the coup.

Since then there has been a UN peacekeeping contingent in Haiti, which itself has become controversial because of clashes with poor Haitians. Aristide's enemies and the Bush administration made accusations against Aristide of corruption and abuse of power, but his supporters see this as mere propaganda.

Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas, very popular among poor Haitians, was excluded from the elections under the pretext of a technicality. As a result, there was to be a runoff between Merlande Manigat, a right-wing candidate with Duvalierist connections, and Jude Celestin, the candidate of the Inte (Unity) party of President Rene Preval. However, the elections were deeply flawed and the United States, Canada and France pressured Preval's government to push Celestin out of the runoff, and instead permit Michel "Sweet Mickey" Martelly, another Duvalierist who has promised to restore the army, to run against Manigat in the runoff. Martelly, who is a popular singer, has pulled ahead of Manigat in the polls.

The United States had been trying to pressure South Africa into keeping Aristide out of Haiti until after the elections. This was the topic of a last minute phone call by President Obama to President Zuma of South Africa yesterday. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon had also asked for South Africa to block Aristide's return The South African Foreign Ministry angrily retorted that his country would have no part in "holding [Aristide] hostage" and facilitated his flight to Haiti, in which Aristide was accompanied by his U.S. lawyer, Ira Kurzbahn, and actor Danny Glover.

Aristide may have timed the trip because no matter who wins the election, they would be likely to take action to prevent his return, by cancelling his passport (given to him by the current government headed by Rene Preval) or other means, perhaps including violence.

So perhaps it was now or never.

Liberal Hypocrisy

When, for example, ‘radical’ academics demand full rights for immigrants and the opening of borders to them, are they aware that the direct implementation of this demand would, for obvious reasons, inundate the developed Western countries with millions of newcomers, thus provoking a violent racist working-class backlash that would then endanger the privileged position of these very academics? Of course they are, but they count on the fact that their demand will not be met—in this way, they can hypocritically retain their clear radical conscience while continuing to enjoy their privileged position. (The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, pp. 43-44)

Haiti needs the world's support

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/02/haiti-election-open-letter-noam-chomsky

Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Slavoj Žižek and others call on the US, France and Canada to keep out of Haiti's democratic process in an open letter to the Guardian

Over the next few years, much of Haiti will be rebuilt and much of its economy restructured. In response to last year's earthquake an unprecedented amount of money has been promised for reconstruction. It's more important than ever before that Haiti be governed by an administration that reflects the true will and interests of its people, rather than the concerns of foreign governments and corporations.

In 2004, the US, France and Canada, in alliance with members of Haiti's business community and demobilised soldiers of the Haitian army, overthrew the last Haitian government to enjoy genuine popular support: the party that led this government, Fanmi Lavalas, was elected with around 75% of the vote. This past November, these same powers imposed and funded an illegitimate electoral process in Haiti, one that blocked the participation of Fanmi Lavalas. Only 23% of Haitian voters participated, scarcely a third of the proportion who voted in the last presidential election.

In recent weeks, the US and its proxies have brazenly interfered in the interpretation of this election's first round of results. The flawed November vote was not only inconclusive and unrepresentative, its outcome was also unlawful. If the second round of these elections goes ahead as planned on 20 March, it is now sure to result in the unconstitutional selection of a president with closer ties to the powers that sponsored and manipulated them than to the people meant to participate in them.

At the same time, the powers that dominate Haiti have facilitated the return of the former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier while discouraging the return of the twice-elected president (and Fanmi Lavalas leader) Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These powers, with their allies in the Haitian business community, have made it clear that they seek to delay Aristide's return until after 20 March. They will only allow Aristide to return after a suitably pliant new government has been installed, to preside over the imminent reconstruction process.

We the undersigned call on the Haitian government to make the security arrangements that will enable Aristide's immediate return, and we call on the international community to support rather than undermine these efforts. We call on the Haitian government to cancel the second-round vote scheduled for 20 March and to organise a new round of elections, without exclusions or interference, to take place as soon as possible.

Signed:

Marie-Célie Agnant, writer

Tariq Ali, writer

Andaiye, Red Thread, Guyana

Roger Annis, Canada Haiti Action Network

Reginald Antoine, PEVEP

Alain Badiou, Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris)

Brian Becker, National Co-ordination, Answer Coalition

Emile Wilnes Brumer, Mas Popilè Site Solèy

Jean-Claude Cajou, community activist

Sara Callaway, Women of Colour/Global Women's Strike, UK

Yves Camille, Haiti Liberté

Noam Chomsky, MIT

Ramsey Clark, former US attorney general

Brian Concannon, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti

Dan Coughlin, executive director, Manhattan Neighborhood Network

Ezili Dantò, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network

Mike Davis, UC Riverside

Castro Desroches, SUNY

Rea Dol, SODUPEP

Berthony Dupont, Haiti Liberté

Ben Dupuy, Haiti Progrès & Parti Populaire National

Darren Ell, Montreal-Haiti Solidarity Committee

Joe Emersberger, writer

Yves Engler, writer

Anthony Fenton, journalist

Weiner Kerns Fleurimond, Haiti Liberté

Pierre L Florestal, Fanmi Lavalas - NY

Daniel Florival, Tèt Kole Oganizasyon Popilè yo

Sara Flounders, International Action Center

Laura Flynn, Aristide Foundation for Democracy board

Danny Glover, actor & activist, board chair, TransAfrica Forum

Leah Gordon, photographer and curator

Manu Goswami, NYU

Greg Grandin, NYU

Thomas Griffin, lawyer

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton

Peter Hallward, Kingston University London

Georges Honorat, Haiti Progrès

Kim Ives, Haiti Liberté

Selma James, Global Women's Strike, UK

Dr G Carlo Jean, retired public school teacher

Marlène Jean-Noel, Fanmi Lavalas Baz NY

Tony Jean-Thénor, Veye Yo

Frantz Jerome, Coalition Against Occupation and Sham Elections

Evelt Jeudi, Fanmi Lavalas Miami

Mario Joseph, Office of International Lawyers (BAI)

Farah Juste, representative of Fanmi Lavalas for Florida & the Bahamas

Michelle Karshan, Aristide Foundation for Democracy

Katharine Kean, film-maker

Ira Kurzban, Counsel for the Republic of Haiti from 1991-2004

Pierre Labossière, Haiti Action Committee

Ray Laforest, International Support Haiti Network

Frantz Latour, Haiti Liberté

Andrew Leak, University College London

Didier Leblanc, Haiti Liberté

Jacques Elie Leblanc, Haiti Liberté

Maude Leblanc, Haiti Progrès

Richard Ledes, film director

Nicole Lee, President, TransAfrica Forum

Nina López, Legal Action for Women, UK

Gardy Lumas, PEVEP

Isabel Macdonald, journalist

Albert Maysles, film-maker

Yves Mésidor, Mas Popilè Site Solèy

Johnny Michel, Mas Popilè Site Solèy

Melinda Miles, Let Haiti Live

Georges Mompremier, Fanmi Lavalas Baz NY

Fednel Monchery, Jeunesse pour la République (JPR)

Joia S. Mukherjee, Chief Medical Officer, Partners In Health

Nick Nesbitt, Princeton University

Harry Numa, community activist

Vanel Louis Paul, Mas Popilè Site Solèy

Gladys Timmer Phillpotts, Fanmi Lavalas Baz St Francis

Fritzner Pierre, radio host of Dyalog Popilè

Wadner Pierre, Haitianalysis.com

Yves Pierre-Louis, Tèt Kole Oganizasyon Popilè yo

Kevin Pina, Haiti Information Project

Margaret Prescod, Women of Colour/Global Women's Strike, US

Jackson Rateau, Haiti Liberté

Roosevelt René, engineer

Claude Ribbe, author and filmmaker

Corey Robin, Brooklyn College & CUNY

William Robinson, UCSB

Nicolas Rossier, film-maker

Robert Roth, Haiti Action Committee

Jean Saint-Vil, writer

Alina Sixto, Radio Fanmi Lavalas New York

Mark Snyder, International Action Ties

Jeb Sprague, UCSB

Irwin Stotzky, University of Miami Law School

Lucie Tondreau, community activist

Eddy Toussaint "Tontongi", Revi Tanbou

Harold Valentin, Oganizasyon Jen Salomon (OJESA)

Burt Wides, former counsel to Haiti's constitutional government; Special Counsel to President Carter for oversight of all US Intelligence agencies

Cécile Winter, Collectif politique sida en Afrique

Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana

Israel’s best hope lies in a single state

Source: New Statesman

http://www.newstatesman.com/middle-east/2011/03/jewish-girls-israel-arab-state

Slavoj Žižek

Published 04 March 2011

In East Jerusalem, vigilantes prowl, hunting for Jewish girls who consort with Arab men. Slavoj Žižek argues that what Israel needs is not segregation, but unity and free contact between its peoples.

In Israel, there is a growing number of initiatives - from official bodies and rabbis to private organisations and groups of local residents - to prevent interracial dating and marriage. In East Jerusalem, vigilante-style patrols work to stop Arab men from mixing with local Jewish girls. Two years ago, the city of Petah Tikva created a hotline that parents and friends can use to inform on Jewish women who mix with Arab men; the women are then treated as pathological cases and sent to a psychologist.

In 2008, the southern city of Kiryat Gat launched a programme in its schools to warn Jewish girls about the dangers of dating local Bedouin men. The girls were shown a video called Sleeping With the Enemy, which describes mixed couples as an "unnatural phenomenon". Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu once told a local newspaper that the "seducing" of Jewish girls is “another form of war" and a religious organisation called Yad L'Achim conducts military-style rescues of women from "hostile" Arab villages, in co-ordination with the police and army. In 2009, a government-backed television advertising campaign, later withdrawn, urged Israeli Jews to report relatives abroad who were in danger of marrying non-Jews.

It is no wonder that, according to a poll from 2007, more than half of all Israeli Jews believe that intermarriage should be equated with "national treason". Adding a note of ridicule late last year, Rabbi Ari Shvat, an expert on Jewish law, allowed for an exception: Jewish women are permitted to sleep with Arabs if it is in order to gather information about anti-Israel activity - but it is more appropriate to use unmarried women for this purpose.

The first thing that strikes one here is the gender asymmetry. The guardians of Jewish purity are bothered that Jewish girls are being seduced by Palestinian men. The head of Kiryat Gat's welfare unit said: "The girls, in their innocence, go with the exploitative Arab." What makes these campaigns so depressing is that they are flourishing at a time of relative calm, at least in the West Bank. Any party interested in peace should welcome the socialising of Palestinian and Jewish youth, as it would ease tensions and contribute to a shared daily life.

Until recently, Israel was often hit by terror attacks and liberal, peace-loving Jews repeated the mantra that, while they recognised the injustice of the occupation of the West Bank, the other side had to stop the bombings before proper negotiations could begin. Now that the attacks have fallen greatly in number, the main form that terror takes is continuous, low-level pressure on the West Bank (water poisonings, crop burnings and arson attacks on mosques). Shall we conclude that, though violence doesn't work, renouncing it works even less well?

If there is a lesson to be learned from the protracted negotiations, it is that the greatest obstacle to peace is what is offered as the realistic solution - the creation of two separate states. Although neither side wants it (Israel would probably prefer the areas of the West Bank that it is ready to cede to become a part of Jordan, while the Palestinians consider the land that has fallen to Israel since 1967 to be theirs), the establishment of two states is somehow accepted as the only feasible solution, a position backed up by the embarrassing leak of Palestinian negotiation documents in January.

What both sides exclude as an impossible dream is the simplest and most obvious solution: a binational secular state, comprising all of Israel plus the occupied territories and Gaza. Many will dismiss this as a utopian dream, disqualified by the history of hatred and violence. But far from being a utopia, the binational state is already a reality: Israel and the West Bank are one state. The entire territory is under the de facto control of one sovereign power - Israel - and divided by internal borders. So let's abolish the apartheid that exists and transform this land into a secular, democratic state.

Losing faith

None of this implies sympathy for terrorist acts. Rather, it provides the only ground from which one can condemn terrorism without hypocrisy. I am more than aware of the immense suffering to which Jews have been exposed for thousands of years. What is saddening is that many Israelis seem to be doing all they can to transform the unique Jewish nation into just another nation.

A century ago, the writer G K Chesterton identified the fundamental paradox facing critics of religion: "Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church . . . The secularists have not wrecked divine things but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them." Does the same not hold for the advocates of religion? How many defenders of religion started by attacking contemporary secular culture and ended up forsaking any meaningful religious experience?

Similarly, many liberal warriors are so eager to fight anti-democratic fundamentalism that they will throw away freedom and democracy if only they may fight terror. Some love human dignity so much that they are ready to legalise torture - the ultimate degradation of human dignity - to defend it. As for the Israeli defenders of Jewish purity: they want to protect it so much that they are ready to forsake the very core of Jewish identity.

From The Coming Insurrection

The full text is available for free online at:

http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/texts/the-coming-insurrection/

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Seventh Circle

“We are building a civilized space here”

The first global slaughter, which from 1914 to 1918 did away with a large portion of the urban and rural proletariat, was waged in the name of freedom, democracy, and civilization. For the past five years, the so-called “war on terror” with its special operations and targeted assassinations has been pursued in the name of these same values. Yet the resemblance stops there: at the level of appearances. The value of civilization is no longer so obvious that it can brought to the natives without further ado. Freedom is no longer a name scrawled on walls, for today it is always followed, as if by its shadow, with the word “security.” And it is well known that democracy can be dissolved in pure and simple “emergency” edicts – for example, in the official reinstitution of torture in the US, or in France’s Perben II law.

In a single century, freedom, democracy and civilization have reverted to the state of hypotheses. Our leaders’ work from here on out will consist in shaping the material and moral as well as symbolic and social conditions in which these hypotheses can be more or less validated, in configuring spaces where they can seem to function. All means to these ends are acceptable, even the least democratic, the least civilized, the most repressive. This is a century in which democracy regularly presided over the birth of fascist regimes, civilization constantly rhymed – to the tune of Wagner or Iron Maiden – with extermination, and in which, one day in 1929, freedom- showed its two faces: a banker throwing himself from a window and a family of workers dying of hunger. Since then – let’s say, since 1945 – it’s taken for granted that manipulating the masses, secret service operations, the restriction of public liberties, and the complete sovereignty of a wide array of police forces were appropriate ways to ensure democracy, freedom and civilization. At the final stage of this evolution, we see the first socialist mayor of Paris putting the finishing touches on urban pacification with a new police protocol for a poor neighborhood, announced with the following carefully chosen words: “We’re building a civilized space here.” There’s nothing more to say, everything has to be destroyed.

Though it seems general in nature, the question of civilization is not at all a philosophical one. A civilization is not an abstraction hovering over life. It is what rules, takes possession of, colonizes the most banal, personal, daily existence. It’s what holds together that which is most intimate and most general. In France, civilization is inseparable from the state. The older and more powerful the state, the less it is a superstructure or exoskeleton of a society and the more it constitutes the subjectivities that people it. The French state is the very texture of French subjectivities, the form assumed by the centuries-old castration of its subjects. Thus it should come as no surprise that in their deliriums psychiatric patients are always confusing themselves with political figures, that we agree that our leaders are the root of all our ills, that we like to grumble so much about them and that this grumbling is the consecration that crowns them as our masters. Here, politics is not considered something outside of us but as part of ourselves. The life we invest in these figures is the same life that’s taken from us.

If there is a French exception, this is why. Everything, even the global influence of French literature, is a result of this amputation. In France, literature is the prescribed space for the amusement of the castrated. It is the formal freedom conceded to those who cannot accommodate themselves to the nothingness of their real freedom. That’s what gives rise to all the obscene winks exchanged, for centuries now, between the statesmen and men of letters in this country, as each gladly dons the other’s costume. That’s also why intellectuals here tend to talk so loud when they’re so meek, and why they always fail at the decisive moment, the only moment that would’ve given meaning to their existence, but that also would’ve had them banished from their profession.

There exists a credible thesis that modern literature was born with Baudelaire, Heine, and Flaubert as a repercussion of the state massacre of June 1848. It’s in the blood of the Parisian insurgents, against the silence surrounding the slaughter, that modern literary forms were born – spleen, ambivalence, fetishism of form, and morbid detachment. The neurotic affection that the French pledge to their Republic – in the name of which every smudge of ink assumes an air of dignity, and any pathetic hack is honored – underwrites the perpetual repression of its originary sacrifices. The June days of 1848 – 1,500 dead in combat, thousands of summary executions of prisoners, and the Assembly welcoming the surrender of the last barricade with cries of “Long Live the Republic!” – and the Bloody Week of 1871 are birthmarks no surgery can hide.

In 1945, Kojeve wrote: “The “official” political ideal of France and of the French is today still that of the nation-State, of the ‘one and indivisible Republic.’ On the other hand, in the depths of its soul, the country understands the inadequacy of this ideal, of the political anachronism of the strictly “national” idea. This feeling has admittedly not yet reached the level of a clear and distinct idea: The country cannot, and still does not want to, express it openly. Moreover, for the very reason of the unparalleled brilliance of its national past, it is particularly difficult for France to recognize clearly and to accept frankly the fact of the end of the ‘national’ period of History and to understand all of its consequences. It is hard for a country which created, out of nothing, the ideological framework of nationalism and which exported it to the whole world to recognize that all that remains of it now is a document to be filed in the historical archives.”

This question of the nation-state and its mourning is at the heart of what for the past half-century can only be called the French malaise. We politely give the name of “alternation” to this twitchy indecision, this pendulum-like oscillation from left to right, then right to left; like a manic phase after a depressive one that is then followed by another, or like the way a completely rhetorical critique of individualism uneasily co-exists with the most ferocious cynicism, or the most grandiose generosity with an aversion to crowds. Since 1945, this malaise, which seems to have dissipated only during the insurrectionary fervor of May 68, has continually worsened. The era of states, nations and republics is coming to an end; this country that sacrificed all its life to these forms is still dumbfounded. The firestorm caused by Jospin’s simple sentence “the state can’t do everything” allowed us to glimpse the one that will ignite when it becomes clear that the state can no longer do anything at all. The feeling that we’ve been tricked is like a wound that is becoming increasingly infected. It’s the source of the latent rage that just about anything will set off these days. The fact that in this country the obituary of the age of nations has yet to be written is the key to the French anachronism, and to the revolutionary possibilities France still has in store.

Whatever their outcome may be, the role of the next presidential elections will be to signal the end of French illusions and the bursting of the historical bubble in which we are living – and which makes possible events like the anti-CPE movement, which was puzzled over by other countries as if it were some bad dream that escaped the 1970s. That’s why, deep down, no one wants these elections. France is indeed the red lantern of the western zone.

Today the West is the GI who dashes into Fallujah on an M1 Abrams tank, listening to heavy metal at top volume. It’s the tourist lost on the Mongolian plains, mocked by all, who clutches his credit card as his only lifeline. It’s the CEO who swears by the game Go. It’s the young girl who chases happiness in clothes, guys, and moisturizing creams. It’s the Swiss human rights activist who travels to the four corners of the earth to show solidarity with all the world’s rebels – provided they’ve been defeated. It’s the Spaniard who couldn’t care less about political freedom once he’s been granted sexual freedom. It’s the art lover who wants us to be awestruck before the “modern genius” of a century of artists, from surrealism to Viennese actionism, all competing to see who could best spit in the face of civilization. It’s the cyberneticist who’s found a realistic theory of consciousness in Buddhism and the quantum physicist who’s hoping that dabbling in Hindu metaphysics will inspire new scientific discoveries.

The West is a civilization that has survived all the prophecies of its collapse with a singular stratagem. Just as the bourgeoisie had to deny itself as a class in order to permit the bourgeoisification of society as a whole, from the worker to the baron; just as capital had to sacrifice itself as a wage relation in order to impose itself as a social relation – becoming cultural capital and health capital in addition to finance capital; just as Christianity had to sacrifice itself as a religion in order to survive as an affective structure – as a vague injunction to humility, compassion, and weakness; so the West has sacrificed itself as a particular civilization in order to impose itself as a universal culture. The operation can be summarized like this: an entity in its death throws sacrifices itself as a content in order to survive as a form.

The fragmented individual survives as a form thanks to the “spiritual” technologies of counseling. Patriarchy survives by attributing to women all the worst attributes of men: willfulness, self-control, insensitivity. A disintegrated society survives by propagating an epidemic of sociability and entertainment. So it goes with all the great, outmoded fictions of the West maintaining themselves through artifices that contradict these fictions point by point.

There is no “clash of civilizations.” There is a clinically dead civilization kept alive by all sorts of life-support machines that spread a peculiar plague into the planet’s atmosphere. At this point it can no longer believe in a single one of its own “values”, and any affirmation of them is considered an impudent act, a provocation that should and must be taken apart, deconstructed, and returned to a state of doubt. Today Western imperialism is the imperialism of relativism, of the “it all depends on your point of view”; it’s the eye-rolling or the wounded indignation at anyone who’s stupid, primitive, or presumptuous enough to still believe in something, to affirm anything at all. You can see the dogmatism of constant questioning give its complicit wink of the eye everywhere in the universities and among the literary intelligentsias. No critique is too radical among postmodernist thinkers, as long as it maintains this total absence of certitude. A century ago, scandal was identified with any particularly unruly and raucous negation, while today it’s found in any affirmation that fails to tremble.

No social order can securely found itself on the principle that nothing is true. Yet it must be made secure. Applying the concept of “security” to everything these days is the expression of a project to securely fasten onto places, behaviors, and even people themselves, an ideal order to which they are no longer ready to submit. Saying “nothing is true” says nothing about the world but everything about the Western concept of truth. For the West, truth is not an attribute of beings or things, but of their representation. A representation that conforms to experience is held to be true. Science is, in the last analysis, this empire of universal verification. Since all human behavior, from the most ordinary to the most learned, is based on a foundation of unevenly formulated presuppositions, and since all practices start from a point where things and their representations can no longer be distinguished, a dose of truth that the Western concept knows nothing about enters into every life. We talk in the West about “real people,” but only in order to mock these simpletons. This is why Westerners have always been thought of as liars and hypocrites by the people they’ve colonized. This is why they’re envied for what they have, for their technological development, but never for what they are, for which they are rightly held in contempt. Sade, Nietzsche and Artaud wouldn’t be taught in schools if the kind of truth mentioned above was not discredited in advance. Containing all affirmations and deactivating all certainties as they irresistibly come to light-such is the long labor of the Western intellect. The police and philosophy are two convergent, if formally distinct, means to this end.

Of course, this imperialism of the relative finds a suitable enemy in every empty dogmatism, in whatever form of Marxist-Leninism, Salifism, or Neo-Nazism: anyone who, like Westerners, mistakes provocation for affirmation.

At this juncture, any strictly social contestation that refuses to see that what we’re faced with is not the crisis of a society but the extinction of a civilization becomes an accomplice in its perpetuation. It’s even become a contemporary strategy to critique this society in the vain hope of saving this civilization.

So we have a corpse on our backs, but we won’t be able to rid ourselves of it just like that. Nothing is to be expected from the end of civilization, from its clinical death. In and of itself, it can only be of interest to historians. It’s a fact, and it must be translated into a decision. Facts can be conjured away, but decision is political. To decide on the death of civilization, then to work out how it will happen: only decision will rid us of the corpse.

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