Portland Indymedia is buzzing with accusations that Aristede was forced to leave by the US instead of choosing to flee the country.
And it appears that the accusations have some merit. The following article on SFGate.COM mentions:
Randall Robinson, former president of TransAfrica monitoring group, said the former Haitian president told him in a phone call that he was abducted from Haiti by U.S. troops who accompanied him on a flight to the Central African Republic.Of course, Monkey Boy's minions all vociferously deny this:"He asked that I tell the word that it is a coup," Robinson said in a statement. "That he was abducted by American soldiers and put aboard a plan, told to make no phone calls to anyone, put aboard a plane with his sister's husband and his wife."
Secretary of State Colin Powell called those allegations "absolutely baseless, absurd."Hmmm. Perhaps they just informed Aristede that (a) it really was time for him to leave, and (b) if he didn't, they would do nothing to protect him from the terrorists invading Port-au-Prince. Or maybe (c) that he was now "free" to "choose" between leaving Haiti or being delivered to his enemies at the point of a Marine rifle."He was not kidnapped," Powell told a news conference.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld added that "the idea that someone was abducted is inconsistent with everything I saw."
Somewhat more revealing is the end assessment in that AP article (emphasis added):
Aristide's departure was secured by U.S. forces at his request, U.S. officials said. Haiti's first democratically elected president, who was pressured to leave by the United States and the rebels, would travel next to South Africa, according to state radio and a senior Caribbean Community official.Which would be consistent with my hypothesis above. In which case any distinction between Aristede's departure and a kidnapping is an academic one at best.
And ya gotta love the title the corporate media chose to give that article about the joyous welcome the terrorists received. Precious. Some in Kuwait welcomed the Iraqi troops; why didn't we see headlines mentioning that fifteen years ago?
Not to mention how the terrorists are never labeled as such, which only furthers the suspicion that they have the approval of the US ruling class. One of the key principles of political propaganda is that one never calls violence one approves of "terrorism".
After typing in the previous entry, I thought to myself that the one thing that would most lend credence to the allegation that Aristede was forced out would be for it to be corroborated. It now appears that just that has happened, and by none other than Aristede himself.
And Aristede's claim is quite a bit more damning than either alternatives (b) or (c) I was hypothesizing:
"Agents were telling me that if I don't leave they would start shooting and killing in a matter of time," Aristide said during the interview, which was interrupted at times by static. It was unclear whether Aristide meant that rebels or U.S. agents would begin shooting.Asked to identify the "agents," Aristide said: "White American, white military."
"They came at night ... There were too many. I couldn't count them," he added.
Sometimes people's silly superstitions just crack me up.
One of the things I promised to do later in this entry was to show how the Greenspan's proposal to cut Social Security benefits was a most egregious example of class warfare (by the rich on everybody else). New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has just done an excellent job of doing so.
As for the unnecessary part, just repeal the damn tax cuts on the wealthy and pass a tax increase to make up for the revenue that's already been lost due to the cuts and to Monkey Boy's military misadventures. Simple. Monkey Boy was their man; their media and propaganda empires made him what he is; let the them pay for his foibles.
"I'd be deeply disappointed if he walked away from the people of the party that helped get him elected," Breaux said.I wouldn't. He's a Republican in all but name anyhow, based on his voting record. Shit by any other name still stinks just as bad.
And maybe, once he's in the GOP, the Democrats will spend some good effort on unseating him next election.
Go here and click to download the PDF document.
Though I don't think that marching with provocative slogans and getting into a few symbolic tangles with the cops is really much of an escalation beyond a legally-permitted march. And something tells me that's about all this escalation is going to amount to.
So many of the young radicals in this town look like lions to the great unwashed middle. They're actually more like pussycats.
And at this point I'm unsure as to which contingent I'll be starting with (have friends in both, one is a better fit culturally, the other politically) or if I'll even be in town at all. I may be away at the coast making money.
In Abu Sifa, a sunbaked village north of Baghdad, entire swaths of farmland have been cleared of males -- fathers, sons, brothers, cousins.Full story here.There are no men to do men's work. Women till the fields, guard the houses and hoist sacks of grapefruit on their backs.
A good chronology on recent Haitian history can be found here. Aristide's own account of what happened to him is here. Chris Floyd of the Moscow Times speculates the straw that broke the US imperialists' back might have been a recent minimum wage increase.
And yet another collection of articles on Haiti can be found here.
Was yesterday. The warm weather continued today, and should last a few more days before the inevitable relapse to cold and rain sets in. Crocuses are already past their prime, daffodils are entering it, osoberry and plum blossoms are opening, and in the wetlands the frogs are breeding like mad.
And I trust I can spare anyone reading this my standard lecture on the difference between the the biological seasons and the astronomical ones.
$150 in parts and about six hours of labor (mostly restoring files and re-installing software) later, I've mostly recovered from the hard disk that was making ominous loud clicking noises on my laptop (accompanied by system freezes and messages about disk hardware errors in the system log). As a bonus, I've upgraded from a 10 gig disk to a 40 gig one.
Unfortunately, I only remembered after the fact that I should have installed OS9 first in order to have the Classic environment available. I use Classic infrequently enough and need to focus on other more pressing needs desperately enough that I'm probably not going to worry about that for now.
A good friend of mine recently mentioned that he might have access to a large RV for this year's Burning Man arts festival.
I've often said that the only way I'd even think of going to Burning Man is if I had a large, air-conditioned RV to sleep the days in, complete with shower to wash the nasty alkaline playa dust off. This has, of course, prompted the expectation on his part that if the RV becomes available with a sleeping spot for me, I'll go.
I'll admit to feeling both ways about this. On one hand, lots of people I know go there; it's certainly my crowd. Moreover, I've always been something of a pyromaniac at heart. On the other, I am so absolutely Not A Desert Person that I'm not sure that even with an air-conditioned space to sleep the days away free from dust and infernally bright sunshine, I'd be anything but miserable. There's still plenty of dust in the air at night (and arid-land soil dust is one of my big allergies). Not to mention how I get overwhelmed by mob scenes. And I really can't afford to part with the triple-digit entry fee right now.
Basically, what he's saying is that it's crucial for the future of the world for the US to suffer a military defeat in Iraq, and as the resistance there is going to be doing the defeating, the world depends on the Iraqi resistance being successful. His interviewer kept trying to twist that into "Pilger thinks suicide bombing of the UN is OK", but Pilger didn't let him get away with that.
But Pilger is Australian, and virtually unknown outside the US. So he'll most likely be ignored. Just like he usually was when he documented the atrocities being committed in East Timor by the US-supported Suharto dictatorship.
And Pilger is right. It is crucial for the future of the world that perpetrator nations of this war of aggression be as humiliated and discredited as possible because of it. Anything less teaches the US ruling class that it's OK to become an even more aggressive superpower because we got away with it in Iraq.
Portland Indymedia has an article that's prompted an excellent discussion on yesterday's rally.
But this site seems to be one of the best rebuttals I've seen against the "should I vote or shouldn't I" false dichotomy. Though I'd raise it a little further myself, to a "direct action or electoral politics" false dichotomy: I see no contradiction in advocating both.
I ran across some unsold copies of last Sunday's New York Times in a store today and the picture on the front page grabbed me. Those cells seem scarcely larger than gym lockers! Yes, I know all about telephoto lenses and depth compression. Even with that effect, I find it hard to imagine those cells are more than three feet wide (and possibly even less). One wonders how deep they are, and if those confined even have room to lie down at night. Or even sit down.
And remember, that's in the part of Guantanamo they want you to see, the part they let photographers into. What about the parts that are off limits even to the Red Cross?
Also keep in mind that those being confined there have never been charged for any crime. They are mere suspects. And they're being held indefinitely, with no guarantee of ever having any right to a trial.
Or maybe I should say a news release from a Stalinist inner governing circle, or something, since it's unclear from the article whether the quote is coming from the conservative opposition in South Africa or the keyboard of Bert Wilkinson, the AP reporter who wrote it:
South Africa presidential spokesman Bheki Khumalo said there would be no immediate comment. Opposition leaders have said the government should not support Aristide, once hailed as a champion of democracy but now accused of corruption and violence against his opponents.To obsess like this over what little violence happened under Aristide's rule while ignoring the gross violence of those who overthrew him is, once again, a disrespect for the truth of the sort one would expect in a totalitarian society.
I finally remembered to bring some plastic bags to the Arboretum today (for purposes of collecting tender young nettle shoots). On my way to look for nettles, I found a large patch of chickweed... right next to a large patch of bedstraw. Then some large clumps of yellow violets. Salad to add to my vegetable course.
My only regret is not looking a little further for some redwood sorrel to add a little tangy zest to the salad mix. Maybe next time.
Hmmm. Maybe I shouldn't advocate going after the native plants like violets and redwood sorrel. Weedy aggressive things like nettles, chickweed, and bedstraw are another matter entirely. Though in my defense, I wasn't going to consider using the violets until I saw how plentiful they were.
Seems as if Noam Chomsky now has a blog.
Here's something I typed in response to an entry on someone else's blog about "green power" retailing:
The presence of Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (RPS) legislation in RI means that the assertions of green power actually mean more than empty promises and marketing glad words. At least a little more.For some of the dirt on Green Mountain Energy, go here. I seriously think that one of my next projects is going to be a leaflet documenting the bogus nature of green power in general (and Green Mountain Energy in particular) and leafletting the next place I discover has a GME marketing representative trying to reel in the suckers. They tend to hang around natural food stores and such.Even with that, I find the whole "green power" marketing scheme somewhat bogus.
For openers, there's the basic physics of the power grid. All the power plants dump their electricity into it, and all the consumer utilities pull power out to it to feed to their customers. Electrons are all alike; there's no way to distinguish one from a "green" plant from one from a conventional one.
So what you're plugging into is exactly the same mix of coal, natural gas, hydro, and whatnot your neighbor is. All the feel-good touchy-feely certificates from "green power" companies in the world (printed on post-consumer paper with soy inks) won't change this fact.
It's like saying a loaf of bread was made with organic flour when it fact it was made with commodity wheat (but the baker paid extra for a certificate that said his money was going to growers feeding organic grain into the commodity pool).
Except (to follow the analogy) in many cases you don't really even know if those organic farmers actually got any of the baker's money for their efforts. A common green power trick it to buy wholesale power (at prevailing market rates) from Utility X, which has say 3% of its generating capacity as small hydro, and to claim that since a) you're the only green power company signing purchasing contracts with Utility X, and b) you're purchasing less than 3% of their capacity, you're purchasing small-hydro "green power" from them.
Well, gee -- I can do that, too. I'll whip up a nice certificate on my laser printer saying as how I consume far less power than my utility generates with wind and small hydro, I'm using completely "green power" in my home. And it won't cost me any extra per kilowatt-hour! Such a deal.
Meanwhile, commercial and industrial customers -- who consume the majority of the power from most utilities -- almost never decide to pay more for green power. So even if the money trail leads back to "green" power stations, and even if the construction of new stations is spurred on by this money, you're still having a situation in which a self-selected group of customers are paying more for a tiny slice of power that's divided up between all customers.
Which probably ends up doing less for greener power than if political action was used to mandate that the utility derive an incremental fraction more of its power from "green" sources each year. That would spread the funding burden for such a transition to all customers, including the richest revenue sources.
And that self-selected group of "green-power" customers believes they've actually accomplished something significant. After all, they see the surcharge on each month's bill and have that nice certificate. So the magic of capitalism has substituted an (at most) minimally significant marketplace purchasing decision for a potentially much more significant one based on activism and organization.
That's for openers. I'll mention in closing that if the "green power" in your state has anything to do with Green Mountain Energy, you should run, not walk, from it as fast as you can. Pester me for URL's if you're interested in why.
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