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 Ice
Cube 
 "Bush's
lame response to North Korea has made it quite clear that all he
wants is to invade Iraq again. North Korea may be more dangerous
in fact, but there's no oil there, and it simply doesn't figure
in the grand eschatological design of Bush's theocratic circle.
Pyongyang isn't even in the Bible!" "Well,
well, well. President George was in one hell of bind when
it turned that that Saudi Arabia funded Al Qaeda, not Iraq.
Realizing we'd invaded the wrong country, Bush did the honorable
thing: he's come out against gay marriages."
 "There's
some thing in our psyche, this kind of right or privilege
to resolve our conflicts with violence. There's an arrogance
to that concept. To actually have to sit down and talk, to
listen, to compromise, that's hard work. To go for the gun,
that's the cowardly act."
 "Word
comes that brother Cat Stevens refuses to lend his support
to our virtuous jihad. May this turncoat's Peace Train be
laden with explosives and rammed into the Mountain of Mohammed,
peace be upon him."
 "You
need gas money and a car that works. Of course, my preference
is to do it in the middle of the night! Leave them little
presents, you know what I'm saying? Like the Easter bunny."
 "There
is no one thing to know in Lord of the Rings more
important than the fact that everything is disappearing,
and disappearing fast. Jackson's final film in his peerless
trilogy tenaciously latches onto this theme and never
lets go."
 "There
was some-thing truly visceral about Cube's voice that made his ever-present snarl that much more serious. As he barked on Death Certificate and Amerikkka's, he was the nigga you love to hate as well as the wrong one to fuck with."  "Even
though Sonic Youth grabbed Cobain by his hypodermic
needles and helped foist him into the spotlight, alterna-fans
du jour didn't return the favor when the New York
noisemakers lobbed this bottom-soaked missile their
direction." "People
are more aware of the world that they want to live in,
and now they have to realize that they can actually
create that world and fight for the things that are
worth fighting for and not feel apathetic. We are all
going to die. There is no point in holding anything
back."
 "There's
a scene in Richard Link-later's Waking Life
where the protagonist crouches down to read a note
in the street that says, 'Look to your right,' which
he does, only to come face to face with a speeding
car aiming right for his head. That's what it's like
to listen to Mars Volta's De-loused in the Comatorium
for the first time."
 "By
the time this page fully loads, Guided By
Voices' Robert Pollard will have probably
composed, performed, mixed and pressed yet
another tightly coiled pop-rock nugget."
 "Unless
his friends and neighbors turn bitch and
completely bail on him, the hyperskilled
Lyrics Born will be here later this day,
that day or whatever day, until he's too
old to physically rhyme or sing anymore.
In that, perhaps he can take some solace,
dropping that baggage off at the door in
the process."
 "There
is no doubt in my mind -- and in this
I seem to have a lot of company -- that
Transatlanticism is Death Cab For
Cutie's best album so far, not bad for
a group that's been professionally plugging
away for just over four years now. And
there is also no doubt that Ben Gibbard
is one of pop music's finest talents.
."
 "The
surreal-ists wouldn't know what to do with Harvey Birdman. Its ingenious brand of adult animation owes as much to absurdists like Ionesco and Duchamp as it does to Bugs Bunny and Bullwinkle. Same goes with the other shows in Adult Swim's lineup."  "The
idea -- if we may use so flattering a term -- was that the
Pentagon would monitor the site and the betting, and thus
get a jump on terrorist acts to come. After all, as the theory
goes (and never mind the whole dot.com fiasco), if people
are willing to put money on something, they must have a pretty
good idea what they're doing."
 "Gregory
Peck, in what may have been divine justice died
comfortably in his sleep, old age finally having
caught up with him. His soul, like his formidable
legacy, was one of peace, so it is poetic that he
left this world in such a manner. But the times
he has left behind for his unknown sons and daughters
resembles the dystopia of Boys From Brazil
more each day." |
by Myshel Prasad If former Catholic Priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, known for the stirring sermons he delivered to the poor in the slums of Port-au-Prince, has really become the violent dictator that many in the mainstream press have implied, it is unlikely that his ouster would have been supported by the United States. After all, the Duvaliers, the dictators of Haiti that reigned from 1957-1986, were perfectly acceptable as far as the U.S. was concerned. So the issue taken with Aristide and his Lavalas party certainly lies elsewhere. Aristide is in fact the first -- and the only -- democratically elected leader Haiti has ever had. Aristide was able to balance the Haitian budget and reduce its bureaucracy shortly upon taking office. He would eventually double the minimum wage, fund health care and education and, with extremely limited resources, build new schools, playgrounds, hospitals, and raise the literacy rate. But his popularity as a democratic and populist leader did not endear him to the United States; rather, it was quite the opposite. An unnamed U.S. official “with extensive experience in Haiti” is quoted by Paul Quinn-Judge in the Boston Globe as saying, “Aristide -- slum Priest, grass-roots activist, exponent of liberation theology -- represents everything that the CIA, DOD, and FBI think they have been trying to protect this country against for the past 50 years.” Aristide has struggled to remain true to his democratic principles throughout his tenure, even where his most serious opposition was concerned. He has always tried to keep the dialogue open between his government and those who oppose it and has invited opposition forces to participate in elections. However, perhaps because they had little to no hope of actually winning in an election, his opposition has instead turned to military force. President Aristide was not a perfect leader, but regardless of his flaws he was re-elected in 2000 with an astounding 90% of the vote; his Lavalas party won Senate seats in 17 out of 18 districts. The crippling U.S. (and EU-supported) embargo of Haiti began shortly after, justified by accusations of violence and election fraud, charges that were particularly ironic given the electoral controversy in the United States surrounding its own elections that same year.
The charges of fraud in Haiti were not aimed at the presidential election, however, which was boycotted by his opposition. It was the calculation methods in the Senate districts that were in question. Upon examination, the calculation methods of eight of the districts were determined to be invalid and Aristide requested that those eight senators stand down. He then attempted to create a new and corrected electoral commission, but his opposition would accept nothing less than his resignation. As for the charges of violence, they were not supported by the conclusions of the International Coalition of Independent Observers, whose extensive report stated that “fair and peaceful elections were held.” The embargo, which greatly contributed to the already volatile nation’s further destabilization, nevertheless continued. It deprived the impoverished nation of over $650 million in approved loans for developmental assistance (clean water and literacy) from InterAmerican Bank and left the Haitian government and Aristide little to work with. Paul Farmer, an American physician working in Haiti, wrote that “the embargo has targeted the northern hemispheres most vulnerable population, the poorest people with the most fragile economy, ecology and society.” U.S. Representative Barbara Lee has strongly denounced the embargo, stating that the Bush administration “has decided to leverage political change in a country by embargoing loans that the Bank has a contractual obligation to disburse.” This recent coup was the second staged against Aristide throughout his tenure and involves many of the same players and tactics as the first, although the aggressive and coercive methods employed by the U.S. administration removing him from Haiti is a bold new innovation. The Bush administration had refused Aristide’s calls for military protection, claiming that it would wait for a “political solution” before intervening. Yet, despite the fact that no political solution had been reached (Aristide accepted the U.S. peace proposal but the opposition did not), U.S. forces entered Port-au-Prince via helicopter and took Aristide into exile; there are now about 2000 U.S. Marines stationed in Haiti. In recent conversations with Ira Kurzban -- general counsel to the Haitian government since 1991 -- and U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, Aristide and his wife have characterized their departure from Haiti as a “kidnapping,” not an authentic resignation. “He did not resign," Waters told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. “He said he was forced out.” Aristide was not taken away bound and gagged, of course. It was more like he was made an offer that he couldn’t refuse.
Commenting on the groups spearheading the opposition to Aristide, Kurzban told Amy Goodman that he believed that “this is a group that is armed by, trained by, and employed by the intelligence services of the United States.” He notes the contingency plans made for Guantanamo as a sign that the “U.S. knew what was coming about two weeks before this military operation started.” He also notes that Aristide’s 3000 member National Police Force was severely outnumbered and outgunned. Kurzban lists the sophisticated weaponry possessed by the opposition groups, which include M.-16’s, M-60’s, armor-piercing weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. “I don’t think there’s any question about the fact that the weapons they have did not come from Haiti...They’re organized as a military commando strike force...It’s not a rag-tag group of liberators as has been put in the press.” The U.S. already has a record of attempting to oust Aristide. Its involvement was clearly established in the first coup against the democratic leader in 1991. But why would the U.S. support not just one but two coups against Aristide? Why would France demand, with the opposition forces, that Aristide step down? Why would the U.S. punish Haiti with an embargo that resulted in devastation and then intervene to physically oust its president? After all, unlike in Iraq or Venezuela, there’s no oil to be had in Haiti. Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry answered this question quite bluntly when asked by editors of the New York Times to explain the Bush Administration’s policy on Haiti. “They hate Aristide,” he said. Where does this hatred come from? Some of the enmity is no doubt partly due to his recalcitrance in implementing the “structural reforms” that the U.S. demanded when he was re-installed in 1994 after the first coup. The Clinton administration was under political pressure to resolve the refugee crisis as the boats, filled with Haitians fleeing the murderous oppressions of the Haitian military and paramilitaries, landed on Florida’s shores. The pressure, unfortunately, was not entirely humanitarian in its nature. There was a concern about keeping “the Zulus off Miami Beach,” as one-time presidential candidate Pat Buchanan put it, revealing a racism that is persistent in U.S. relations with Haiti. After the coup had slaughtered a great many of the people who belonged to the popular movement that had supported him, Aristide was returned to Haiti in the company of the 20,000 U.S. troops on the condition that he adopt a new economic policy. This meant accepting a World Bank/IMF adjustment package, which focused on debt repayment, included the usual government layoffs and cuts on national tariff protections, as well as the abandonment of his redistributive program.
Aristide complied with some of these demands but not all, especially the demand that he privatize state-owned resources. Unfortunately, his attempt to walk a middle ground, trying to follow through on his own policies while acceding to some of the reform demands, lost him some of his previous supporters in Haiti awhile failing to satisfy the business interests arrayed against him. It is also very likely that this enmity towards Aristide has been fueled by the tendency of the U.S. to launch embargos and interventions against any nation who, in Noam Chomsky’s words, might pose “the threat of a good example” regardless of its actual strategic importance (Cuba and Chile are two examples among many). But his most significant actions, beyond raising the minimum wage of a nation that the world still seems to want to return to slavery, were his courageous dismantling of the Haitian military, or FAD’H, in 1995 -- which had the unfortunate effect of leaving about 7000 previous members frustrated, unemployed, and armed -- and his public demand in April of 2003 that France pay Haiti $21,685,135,571.48 in restitution. Certainly, this demand would be viewed as a dangerous precedent, enough to bring the former Gulf War adversaries together. Haiti’s current debt is about $1.1 billion, nearly 80% of it accumulated by the military dictatorship of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier. International debt accrual under such dictatorships is not uncommon in Central and South America. In fact, instead of suffering sanctions for their human rights abuses, aid to such regimes often increases; financial aid flowed to the brutal Generales in Argentina, for example, and the debts they accrued eventually surfaced in the infamous IMF loan default. The primary source of Haiti’s debt and impoverishment, however is unique -- and appalling. France colonized Haiti in the 17th century. The original Taino Indian inhabitants of Hispanola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) had already been massacred or worked to death as slave labor after being “discovered” by Christopher Columbus, so the French brought slaves from Africa to work on their sugar and coffee plantations. These African slaves rebelled in 1804, gained their own independence, and became the first independent black republic. But, in order to gain official recognition of Haitian independence from the French, Haiti was forced to accept a debt to France of 150 million francs, or what amounts to about $28.3 million American dollars today.
In other words, self-liberated slaves were required to pay reparations to their former masters, the plantation owners. Haiti did pay back 90 million francs; it is this money that Aristide was asking France to return, arriving at the curious number by converting the francs to dollars and adjusting for interest and inflation. In 1825, to begin making these indemnity payments Haiti first needed to accept a loan from France to pay its reparations (and later, payments on the loan) on time. But in 1915 (25 years after Wounded Knee), the U.S. Marines arrived and began a 19-year occupation of Haiti. U.S. bond creditors had assumed loans extended to Haiti and it has been noted by J. Damu of Final Call News that, under the occupation, “Maximum attention was given to paying off Haiti’s U.S. creditors, with little to no attention given to developing the economy." FAD’H, Haiti's army, was created under this occupation, primarily as an internally repressive force. Even when the U.S. military departed in 1934, U.S. financial administrators remained and dominated the economy, and FAD’H continued its role as a protector of economic elites. The first Duvalier seized power in 1957; the ensuing Duvalier dynasty was despised by the Haitian people but supported by the United States. After all, Jean-Claude Duvalier supported an economic program that Paul Farmer, in The Uses of Haiti, describes as “a programme featuring private investments from the United States that would be drawn to Haiti by such incentives as no customs taxes, a minimum wage kept very low, the suppression of labor unions, and the right of American companies to repatriate their profits.” When Duvalier was overthrown by the pro-democracy movement in 1986, he exited Haiti safely under the protection of the Reagan Administration.Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected in December of 1990, winning 67.5% of the vote and beating Marc Bazin -- the former World Bank official finance minister under Duvalier -- who took second place with 14.2% of the vote. Aristide’s popular grass-roots victory took the world by surprise. He officially took office in February of 1991 and was ousted in September of that same year. Just before the coup, a Haitian businessman told a reporter that, “Everyone who is anyone is against Aristide. Except the people.”
“Everyone who is anyone” relied on FAD’H and FRAPH -- a death-squad paramilitary group led by admitted CIA employees Emmanuel Constant and Raoul Cedras -- to launch the first coup against Aristide. Joseph Jodel Chamblain was also a prominent member of the group. FRAPH carried out political assassinations and terrorist operations against the Aristide government and its supporters from 1991 though 1994. Constant (sometimes known as “Toto”) and other Haitian paramilitaries, like Guy Phillipe, received training from U.S. Special Forces in Ecuador in those years. Constant, who claimed that U.S. Colonel Patrick Collins from the U.S. Embassy in Haiti contacted and encouraged him to set up an operation that would “balance the Aristide movement,” was given political amnesty after the U.S. returned Aristide to power in 1994, and is said to be currently living in New York. Chamblain, who was convicted and given a life sentence of hard labor for the 1994 April massacre in Raboteau and the 1993 assassination of Antoine Izmery, a democracy activist, escaped justice and until recently, was living in exile in the Dominican Republic. The charismatic Guy Phillipe, who recently rolled in to Port-au-Prince like a king, was originally absorbed into the National Police Force after FAD’H was dissolved. He has a violent record and has been under heavy investigations for drug trafficking in northern Haiti. If the names of Chamblain and Phillipe are familiar, it is because these former FRAPH and FAD’H members and murderers, like Jean Tatun, have reappeared as leaders of the current Aristide opposition under the misleading (to say the least) name of "The Convergence for Democracy." This is an opposition who, after the 1991 coup, embarked on a systematic and continuing campaign to stamp out the vibrant civil society that has taken root in Haiti since the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship. Chamblain has now returned to Haiti with a commando force, armed with what are clearly U.S. weapons (M-16s and M-60s) that reporter Kevin Pena, currently in Haiti, has seen in their hands. These weapons, in numbers approximating 20,000, were shipped from the U.S. to the Dominican Republic, ostensibly for “border control.” Another group that has worked against Aristide -- going by the enigmatic name of “Group 184" -- is led by Andy Apaid. Apaid is a strange character, a U.S. citizen falsely claiming to have been born in Haiti who owns 15 sweatshop factories there. Apaid strongly opposed Aristide’s efforts to raise the minimum wage; he also founded Tele-Haiti, one of the primary Haitian news sources to which many western press outlets have turned to for information. Of Apaid, sometimes referred to as the “leader of the opposition,” Maxine Waters has stated, “Apaid is attempting to instigate a bloodbath in Haiti and then blame the government for the resulting disaster in the belief that the United States will aid the so-called protestors against Aristide and his government.”
Are we supposed to believe that all of these people have undergone miraculous and democratic changes of heart in the last 10 years? Are we supposed to believe that this is a populist movement? Far from it -- this is another military coup, designed to destroy the progress of democracy, not advance it. It may be impossible for Aristide to return to office, and some feel that it is for the best that he is gone, but his disappearance from the scene is certainly no magic solution to this conflict; the political quagmire in Haiti is only worse for his departure. “Will the international community stand by and allow a democracy in this hemisphere to be terminated by a brutal military coup of persons who have a very, very sordid history of gross violations of human rights?” Ira Kurzban asks. Amnesty International’s February 16th press release asked the same question -- “The last thing the country needs is for those who committed abuses in the past to take up leadership positions in the armed opposition.” Western nations grew rich off of African slave labor at home and abroad. But Haiti is the poorest country in the western Hemisphere and the fourth poorest country in the world. Approximately 85% of Haitians already live on less than one dollar a day. Indeed, this coup is the last thing that Haiti needs. Special thanks to articles by Yifat Susskind, Amy Goodman, Kevin Skerrett, Kevin Pena, Peter Hallward, and especially “Bringing Hell to Haiti,” by David Cromwell and David Edwards. 16 March 04  Now
a full-fledged Morphizm columnist, Myshel Prasad is the fearless leader
of the indie rock outfit, Space
Team Electra, as well as one hell of a poet, actress, Lollapalooza
slammer and hoops shit-talker. Space Team Electra's latest album, The
Intergalactic Torch Song, is available from Sonic Halo Records.
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Copyright 2001-2003, Morphizm.com. All Rights Reserved. |
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Rally round the flag. "Haiti is the poorest country in the western Hemisphere and the fourth poorest country in the world. Approximately 85% of Haitians already live on less than one dollar a day. Indeed, this coup is the last thing that Haiti needs." (Photo: AFP/Roberto Schmidt)
This is not Iraq. "Are we supposed to believe that all of these people have undergone miraculous and democratic changes of heart in the last 10 years? Are we supposed to believe that this is a populist movement?" (Photo: Reuters/Eliana Aponte)
Free market zone. "Jean-Claude Duvalier supported an economic program that Paul Farmer, in The Uses of Haiti, describes as 'a programme featuring private investments from the United States that would be drawn to Haiti by such incentives as no customs taxes, a minimum wage kept very low, the suppression of labor unions, and the right of American companies to repatriate their profits.'" (Photo: Reuters/Jorge Silva)
I wanna get Apaid! "Apaid is a strange character, a U.S. citizen falsely claiming to have been born in Haiti who owns 15 sweatshop factories there." (Photo: Reuters/Carlos Villalon)
Guy Phillipe gives back to the community. "The charismatic Phillipe, who recently rolled in to Port-au-Prince like a king, has a violent record and has been under heavy investigations for drug trafficking in northern Haiti." (Photo: Reuters/Daniel Morel)
Bridge over troubled Waters. "'He did not resign,' Maxine Waters told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. 'He said he was forced out.' Aristide was not taken away bound and gagged, of course. It was more like he was made an offer that he couldn’t refuse." (Photo: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Top Films of 2003
