Empire Notes

March 5, 6:11 pm EST. I think pretty much everyone to the left of, say, Dennis Hastert, has been speculating about whether the Bush administration has held back on trying to get Osama bin Laden. There are two reasons they might do that: one is, of course, timing, but the other is that catching bin Laden might give many people a sense of closure (which would be silly, because the question is of al-Qaeda and related organizations, not of the figurehead at the top) and thus blunt enthusiasm for U.S. aggression.

Well, we no longer have to speculate. Check this out: CNN tells us that the United States is about to implement 24-7 "high-tech snooping." They will soon be phasing in high-altitude U2 surveillance flights. Remember how they told us they were doing everything possible to catch bin Laden? Apparently, they weren't.

On top of this, NBC News recently reported that the United States turned down several opportunities to attack Zarqawi before the war on Iraq, because it didn't want to undercut its excuses for the war.

March 5, 3:50 pm EST. According to Reuters, 10,000 Aristide supporters demonstrated in the streets of Port-au-Prince, calling for an end to the U.S.-French occupation and for the restoration of Aristide. They did this even though they are justly terrified of reprisals by the paramilitaries that ousted Aristide.

Over the past year, there has been ample media coverage of anti-Aristide protests (although you rarely see estimates of the numbers involved). At the same time, there have been very few reports of pro-Aristide or pro-Lavalas demonstrations. Was this because Lavalas had no support? Check out an interesting article by Kevin Pina from last year for a different explanation.

March 4, 12:55 pm EST. The Bush administration has just increased the amount of a requested exemption from the 1987 Montreal Protocol on preservation of the ozone layer. The protocol calls for a phaseout of methyl bromide production by 2005. Last year, the administration requested an exemption of 21.9 million pounds of methyl bromide in 2005 and 20.8 in 2006. It's just increased its 2005 request by another 1.1 million pounds, because of the important needs of the cut flower industry.

Unlike with carbon emissions, where the Kyoto Protocol was a pitiful bandaid solution and where compliance even with that has been unimpressive, the Montreal Protocol was shaping up to be a real success story. The effects of a reduction in production of ozone-depleting gases don't kick in for a few decades (the length of time it generally  takes for those gases to get up near the ozone layer), and so the ozone hole has been growing worse since 1987, but production of those gases is sharply down (for example, since 1999, when the methyl bromide phaseout was to start, industrialized countries have cut methyl bromide production by 70%).

Naturally, a global environmental treaty that actually works would be a prime target for the Bush administration. Presumably it hasn't pulled out because its requests for exemption are being granted.

March 4, 12:45 pm EST. More evidence of the Bush administration's dedication to dealing with the problem of terrorism. After two and a half years, only one person has actually been convicted in connection with the 9/11 attacks -- Mounir el Motassadeq, a Moroccan citizen convicted in Germany and sentenced to the legal maximum of 15 years. He was apparently part of a Hamburg cell of al-Qaeda, quite obviously a greater threat to Western targets than an al-Qaeda member in Afghanistan.

Well, his conviction has been set aside and he will be given a new trial. Why? Because his lawyer wanted testimony from Ramzi Binalshibh, who is in U.S. custody, and the United States, citing "national security" concerns, never produced Binalshibh. Here's a quote from the Washington Post article:

The appeals court concluded that it "will not make any decision whether the United States has the right to withhold the witness or not," said Motassadeq lawyer Josef Graessle-Muenscher after the ruling. In his view, "if the United States does not deliver the witness, they have to bear the consequences."

Hmm. Perhaps to make inroads against a worldwide organization, which Bush administration officials have repeatedly said may reside in up to 60 countries, international cooperation is essential? And perhaps in order to get that, one must remember that some countries, unlike ours, still respect the notion of due process?

March 3, 1:15 pm EST. My letter to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution regarding their editorial. Hard to cover the territory in 150 words.

March 3, 12:40 pm EST. Another gem of media coverage, this time from an editorial by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

It is also important to note that Aristide was not a democratically elected leader whom the United States was in some way obligated to keep in power. Over time, he had lost whatever credibility he once enjoyed by choosing to rule his country through violence, not the rule of law. In 2000, he and his supporters fixed elections to the Haiti Parliament, and when Aristide was himself "re-elected" later that year, he got 92 percent of the vote in an election in which only 5 percent of the eligible voters participated.

He ruled the country through violence by disbanding the Haitian military in 1995, so that for the first time in history Haitians could speak their minds without fear of heavy state repression. The 2000 parliamentary elections, as I've previously mentioned, involved minor irregularities in giving eight candidates election when they had a plurality but not a majority; more important, everyone has always conceded that Fanmi Lavalas, Aristide's party, had far more electoral support than all other parties put together. On the presidential elections, turnout numbers are contested; the government claimed far higher numbers. The main point, though, is that the opposition boycott happened because no other candidate could get a fraction of the support Aristide had. None of these points are even contested in Haiti.

Not only that, the candidates whose elections were contested stepped down and there were runoff elections within two months. It's always worth repeating, these elections beat the hell out of certain other elections held in 2000.

To send letters to the AJC, click here.

March 3, 12:30 pm EST. Some fair and balanced coverage of Aristide, from Fox’s “The Big Story with John Gibson,” on March 2:

JOHN GIBSON: Folks in Haiti getting used to life without Jean-Bertrand Aristide. As for Aristide, he is in exile pushing the idea that he is the victim of a coup. Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano has more on the hazards of being a dictator. Well, one of the hazards is you get run out of the country.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO, FOX NEWS SENIOR JUDICIAL ANALYST: Absolutely. And you get run to a country which may turn on you. I mean, this Central African Republic has a horrific history of housing dictators. Emperor Bokassa I, who was reputed to be a cannibal.

GIBSON: He was actually acquitted of that charge.

NAPOLITANO: Acquitted of the cannibalism but convicted of murder. When the Central Africa Republic got tired of supporting his lavish lifestyle sent him back to the country out of which he had been kicked. They tried him for murder, sentenced him to 20 years. He was let out after a couple years and eventually died. So we don't know what life will be like for Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

So Aristide has already become a dictator, and will soon be a cannibal.

March 3, 12:15 pm EST. On Super Tuesday (yesterday), California held district elections. Orange Country and San Diego Country, both of which use electronic voting machines (San Diego County's are provided by the infamous Diebold), had major problems. In Orange Country, voters were routinely given ballots for the wrong district; one district, the 35th Senate district, did not appear on the ballots at all. In San Diego County, the Diebold machines didn't allow election workers access initially; an hour after polls opened, 10% of machines were still not operating. No one knows how many people left without voting. The claims are that Orange County's problems are because of the errors of election workers, but, of course, systems should be designed around human error, which is inevitable.

On the plus side, at least the machines are privately-owned, mostly by Republican-dominated corporations, leave no paper trail, and are wildly inaccurate. Best of all, Diebold refuses to divulge its vote-tabulating algorithm because it claims that is proprietary.

March 3, 11:22 am EST. The next step in the Bush administration's cynical game on Haiti has now arrived. Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, summoning his best air of hypocrisy, has rejected Guy Philippe's claim that he is now the head of Haiti's military and insisted, in the words of the AP, that the rebels "permit an orderly transfer of power from ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide."

Not only do they seek to distance themselves from their own catspaw (just because he's a murderer, previously attempted a coup in Haiti, and most likely a drugrunner as well?), they simultaneously want to say that the guys who took over are a bunch of thugs but that their ouster of Aristide is legitimate.

Why not call on the rebels to permit the return of the democratically elected Aristide, the only legitimate head of state for Haiti right now, instead of calling for an "orderly transfer of power?"

March 2, 7:35 pm EST. Definition for the New World Order Lexicon.

autocrat (n): A democratically-elected head of state who doesn't always obey U.S. orders. Usually, one who allows the media in his or her own country complete freedom to criticize him or her and who holds no political prisoners.

March 2, 3:10 pm EST. Aristide was broadcast on CNN last night, in a phone interview. From the transcript:

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE, FMR. PRESIDENT, HAITI: As I said, I called this coup d'etat in a modern way, to have modern kidnapping. And the way I described what happened...

COOPER: Who are you saying has kidnapped you?

ARISTIDE: Forces in Haiti. They were not Haitian forces. They were (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and Americans and Haitians together, acting to surround the airport, my house, the palace. And then, despite of diplomatic conversations we had, despite of all we did in a diplomatic way to prevent them to organize that massacre which would lead to a bloodshed, we had to leave and spent 20 hours in an American plane. And not knowing where we were going with force, until they told us that 20 minutes before they landed in Central African Republic.

COOPER: Mr. Aristide, Mr. Aristide, the night you left, you signed a document in which you said, "For that reason, tonight I am resigning in order to avoid a blood bath. I accept to leave with the hope there will be life and not death."

This is a document you have signed. I have a copy of it here. Are you saying -- did you, in fact, sign this? And what does it mean?

ARISTIDE: Well, I should see what they give to you, because these people lie. And when they lie, I need to see the paper before saying this is exactly what I wrote. And in what I wrote, I explained that if I am forced to leave to avoid bloodshed, of course I will leave to avoid bloodshed. But as I said, I should see the kind of paper they give to you, because they lied to me, and they may lie to you, too.

COOPER: Well, I have it in French, the document. I could read it to you if you'd like, but it basically, says that "I took an oath to respect and have the constitution respected. This evening, February 28, I'm still determined to respect and have the constitution respected."

It goes on. Are you saying that you wish you were still -- that if it was up to you, you would still be on the ground in Haiti, that you did not leave of your own free will?

ARISTIDE: Exactly that.

COOPER: I have a statement from Secretary of State Colin Powell, who earlier today said, in regards to you, he says, "He was not kidnapped. We did not force him on the airplane. He went on the airplane willingly. And that is the truth."

Are you saying that Colin Powell is lying?

ARISTIDE: He said what he wanted to say. And I told you the truth. If you pay attention to all what I described, you'd see the truth. You will see the huge difference between the two versions.

COOPER: Are you going to seek refuge in the Central African Republic?

ARISTIDE: Well, I am here. So far, I don't have contact with the highest authority in the country. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) ministers to meet with me, and I'm very delighted the way they welcomed me here. But I need to have contact with him to know exactly what I should be doing.

COOPER: Why did you go with the Marines? If you are saying you did not go of your own free will, you had your own security detail, quite an extensive security detail. I've seen it up close myself. Why did you leave?

ARISTIDE: I made that point for you. I had 19 Americans providing security to the government, and that (UNINTELLIGIBLE). They were all told and forced to leave based on what (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on February 28.

They were supposed to have the day after 18 of 25 American agents to reinforce (ph) them, based on an agreement which was signed with the Haitian government. They told me that night the U.S. prevented them to go to Haiti.

So on the American side, as on the Haitian side, we all have the same picture. People, foreign people with arms in the streets in Port-au-Prince, surrounding the airport, the palace, my residence, and ready to attack, which would lead to the bloodshed. And we would have thousands of people killed.

We couldn't let that happen. We had the responsibility to protect lives and not to let people kill thousands of people. When now you compare Haiti to what they told me before, they still continue to burn houses, my house, killing people, and waged what they intended to do.

COOPER: Mr. Aristide, was your departure in the best interest of Haiti?

ARISTIDE: Of course not, because no one should force an elected president to move in order to avoid bloodshed. Why they are still killing people, burning houses? And the contradiction in talking is very eloquent.

COOPER: Mr. Aristide, I am having trouble reconciling the two statements, the statements that you have made and the statement the U.S. government has made through Secretary Colin Powell, who, again, has said that you were not kidnapped, that we, the United States, did not force you on to the airplane, that you went on to the airplane willingly. And they say that is the truth. You say -- your story is categorically the opposite of that.

ARISTIDE: Of course, because I am telling you the truth.

COOPER: Why do you believe the American government -- or why are you saying the American government is lying about this?

ARISTIDE: You could ask them the same question, and you can find the answer of your question through the answers I cautiously shared with you.

Aristide is still being held, under the authority of the French and Americans. In his incredibly difficult position, he can't quite come out and say that Colin Powell is lying, but it's pretty clear. If Aristide had actually left of his own free will, he'd hardly cancel any benefits of leaving by speaking out in this way.

March 2, 1:45 pm EST. There's been a series of coordinated attacks on Shi'a, with at least 41 dead in Quetta, Pakistan, at least 58 dead in the bombing of Musa al-Kadhim mosque (the chief Shi'a shrine in Baghdad, which houses the remains of Musa al-Kadhim, the 7th Shi'a Imam), and at least 85 dead in Kerbala, the town where the Shi'a Imam Hussein was killed and which is one of the holiest cities in the world for them.

These killings were done on Ashoura, which is the day when Shi'a around the world commemorate, in a very public way, the death of Hussein. In Quetta and Kerbala, processions of people on the street were attacked, and in Baghdad, four different suicide bombers tried to enter the mosque.

I'm very much afraid that this is just the beginning. In Iraq, it continues the policy seen earlier in the bombing of the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf (done to assassinate Ayatollah Bakir al-Hakim, but it killed over 100 others) and the bombing of KDP and PUK headquarters in Erbil. The policy is clearly to exacerbate Kurd vs. Arab and Sunni vs. Shi'a tensions and plunge the country into chaos. The attack in Pakistan may be independent, but it seems more likely that it's part of the same strategy.

Pakistan-Afghanistan and Iraq also happen to be the two primary loci of U.S. intervention post-9/11. Every day it becomes clearer that U.S. intervention increases the threat of al-Qaeda and similar organizations; that threat is actually greatest in the Islamic world itself, but is obviously not negligible in Europe and the United States as well.

March 1, 7:15 pm EST. This just in. Aristide has just spoken with the Associated Press, courtesy of Jesse Jackson. An excerpt from the article:

When asked if he left Haiti on his own, Aristide quickly answered: "No. I was forced to leave.

"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 brief interview via speaker phone. He spoke with a thick Haitian accent and was interrupted at times by static.

When asked who the agents were, he responded: "White American, white military.

"They came at night. ... There were too many, I couldn't count them," he added.

Aristide told reporters that he signed documents relinquishing power out of fear that violence would erupt in Haiti if he didn't comply with the demands of "American security agents."

The White House has denounced this claim as a "conspiracy theory." The White House has also recently discovered in Iraq sarin-filled uranium centrifuges being transported in mobile biological weapons labs to unmanned aerial vehicles that will be used in missions targeting the United States.

March 1, 4:00 pm EST. Reuters is now reporting the claims that Aristide was abducted. Without, of course, any reference to Democracy Now, which broke the story.

Randall Robinson of Transafrica, Rep. Charles Rangel, and Rep. Maxine Waters all say Aristide told them he was abducted. Reuters reports Robinson saying, "The president said to me that he had been abducted from his home by about 20 American soldiers in full battle gear with automatic weapons and put on a plane."

I think we can trust that in fact Aristide told them he was abducted. So it's his word against Scott McClellan's. And we know how honest the Bush administration is.

Of course, it makes little difference. He left at gunpoint. That's the key.

March 1, 2:40 pm EST. Scott McClellan on Haiti: This long-simmering crisis is largely of Mr. Aristide's making.

Ari Fleischer on Venezuela (April 12, 2002): We know that the action encouraged by the Chavez government provoked this crisis.

Oddly, in both cases, the United States was involved through the National Endowment for Democracy (which is still meddling in the question of the recall election in Venezuela) in provoking a crisis. And in both cases the United States has presented a forcible ouster of a democratically-elected head of state as a victory for democracy. And, of course, both Chavez and Aristide, who are routinely excoriated in the elite-dominated media of their own countries and who don't hold political prisoners, are described as "autocratic."

George W. Bush, who was elected through the denial to 58,000 people of their Fifteenth Amendment rights and who regularly strongarms mild critics of his administration into recanting (and who, unlike Chavez and Aristide, is not faced with imminent overthrow), is never described as autocratic.

March 1, 1:50 pm EST. Last night, the Security Council, acting in truly unseemly haste (the Council met for three minutes), unanimously passed Resolution 1529, dealing with Haiti. Even though the language of the resolution authorizes a multinational peacekeeping force, the resolution was passed under Chapter VII, authorizing the use of force, not Chapter VI, which deals with peacekeeping. Of course, the United States does not believe in participating in Chapter VI forces, which are constrained in what they're allowed to do -- for example, they can't initiate violence.

The resolution, amazingly, describes what is happening in Haiti as part of a "constitutional process" (Bush, presumably on advice of State Department lawyers, also used this catchphrase). I haven't read Haiti's constitution lately, but it's hard to imagine that the constitution recognizes the legitimacy of armed takeover by a foreign-funded and supplied paramilitary organization as a way to transfer power.

All of this is meant to completely bury the fact that Aristide was elected in 2000 in elections whose validity no one has contested, and that the Haitian constitution calls for him to hold office through 2006.

Somehow, the same forces that could see the illegality of U.S.-backed regime change in Iraq can't see the illegality of U.S.-backed regime change in Haiti. Can it be they think Aristide is worse than Saddam Hussein?

March 1, 12:32 pm EST. Check out Bush's remarks on Haiti. Without quite saying it, he makes it sound as if Aristide's forcible ouster is a positive development and creates new hope for the country. The State Department hailed the U.S.-backed coup attempt in Venezuela in the same way, but got a black eye when everyone else realized that a coup is an infringement of the democratic process. Haiti has no oil, no other country needs Haiti, so it's looking as if the administration will get away with it this time.

March 1, 11:25 pm EST. Links to my past posts on Haiti: March 1, February 29, February 27, February 26 1, February 26 2, February 25 1, February 25 2, February 16, February 14, February 12.

March 1, 11:00 am EST. Democracy Now reports that Aristide did not resign; he was kidnapped. Randall Robinson of the Transafrica Forum and Rep. Maxine Waters both claim to have spoken with Aristide. They report that he is surrounded by military right now, as if he was in jail. They also say that he was threatened that if he didn't leave, Guy Philippe's forces would storm the palace and kill Aristide.

With Aristide out of the country, their thugs in power, and the Marines in Haiti, expect the United States to call for new elections. Aristide's term runs through 2006, but apparently he is never to be allowed to complete one of his terms. Aristide himself earlier offered new elections, but was never taken up on that for the obvious reason that he and Lavalas had overwhelming support.

In the original disputed elections in May of 2000, Lavalas won an overwhelming victory, including 18 of 19 Senate seats. The dispute was over the vote-counting method.  Instead of requiring that the winning candidate get a majority of all votes cast, the electoral council counted only the votes cast for the top four candidates and required that the winner get a majority of those (in many countries, you don't need a majority of votes cast, you just need to get more votes than any other candidate). This affected the election of 7 Lavalas Senate candidates and one not from Lavalas.

After initial resistance, the Haitian government conceded the issue, the 7 Senators resigned, and runoff elections were held.

In the fall of 2000, Aristide was elected president with 91.69% of the vote. The main potential opposition boycotted the election, but no one has ever suggested that Aristide wouldn't have won overwhelmingly no matter what. This was the same year that George W. Bush stole the elections in the United States, which has somehow never generated international pressure on this country.

That's it. Very minor irregularities by a party which had and has the support of the overwhelming mass of the country.

Elections now would be a different matter -- Aristide forced out, well-armed U.S.-backed thugs projecting terror throughout the country, and heavy U.S. intervention in building and holding together the "opposition" parties. There is no way that elections could be fair; even if they could, Aristide has the right to finish his term.

February 29, 11:00 pm EST. Aristide has left Haiti. Initial media reports suggest that he left by his own decision. Of course, the same media reported that Chavez had resigned after the April 11, 2002, coup attempt in Venezuela.

I find it odd that he left in an American transport. Also that his prime minister (who has the actual power, according to the Haitian constitution) didn't leave with him.

It makes little difference. He clearly left under the combination of the threat from the probably U.S.-armed militia and from the Bush administration, which has been saying for a few days now that Aristide should step down. The reason he should step down, the international community agrees, is that so much violence is being done by anti-Aristide forces.

It's been infuriating, and surreal, to see Aristide repeatedly blamed for the actions of the "rebels."

The next call will presumably be for "elections." Of course, elections with the former elements of the military and FRAPH in charge will be a joke; the only legitimate call is for the goons to leave and Aristide to come back -- and especially for the U.S. Marines, who are now in Haiti, to leave.