Canada Out of Afghanistan

This Has Nothing to do with Peacekeeping
By Murray Dobbin
From Mostly Water.org

Brian Mulroney was fond of saying “Give me twenty years and you won’t recognize this country.” But he was a piker compared to Stephen Harper who is changing the ethics and political culture of this country faster than Mulroney ever dreamed.

The most obvious case in point is the vote on May 17 that extended Canada’s participation in the occupation of Afghanistan until the spring of 2009. The next step in this appalling transformation of Canada into a lap dog of US imperialism will not be far behind. We will agree to NATO’s “request” that we take over command of the whole sordid enterprise. It is almost certain to come out at some point that Mr. Harper pushed NATO to make the request.

None of this, of course, should come as any surprise from a man who is infatuated with everything American and contemptuous of his own country and what it has stood for, for decades. Harper has always detested Canada’s peacekeeping role, schooled as he was by the Yankee lovers at the Calgary School of political science and its intellectual guru, Tom Flanagan (p.s from b&r: Prof. Flanagan is also known for his anti-indigenous views, such as his assertion that aborignal people in Canada should be assimiliated; when asked about poverty among indigenous nations, he said "They should just come to the city and get jobs. What's stopping them?). How could this happen in a country that is deeply suspicious of American military adventures and committed to the principles of multilateralism?

Harper’s no Reagan
A good deal of the answer lies in the decay and political corruption of the so-called “natural governing party,” the Liberals. The danger Canada faces at the hands of Stephen Harper is not dissimilar to that experienced by the US, despite the enormous differences in political culture. I am reminded here of Ronald Reagan and one of the reasons he was so popular. Most people forget -- if they ever knew -- that in polling on actual issues, a majority of Americans disagreed with almost everything Reagan did.

So why was he so popular? Because people looked at Reagan, then looked at the Democrats, and concluded one simple thing: Reagan, at least, was a man who believed in what he was doing. Voters were so tired of the opportunism and lack of political principle on the part of the Democrats that they supported a president simply on the basis that at least he believed in something.

Trend Watch
The danger in Canada is that many have come to the same conclusion about the Liberals. They have always been a party of opportunists, with an uncanny instinct for where the middle is. Under Paul Martin they were truly a party without principle, vision or ethical core. People remember.

But Stephen Harper is no Ronald Reagan. He is mean, condescending and viscerally arrogant, and his nature will ultimately betray him. Until it does, however, he can do enormous damage. In a parliament with a separatist party, the Liberals trying to divine what the opportunistic thing to do is on any given issue, and the NDP sticking to its bizarre line that Canadians want it to “make parliament work,” Harper has been given lots of room to maneuver.

While the vote to extend the occupation is history, its consequences are not irreversible and that is just what Canadians committed to peace and the international rule of law should be working towards. Canadians are divided on this issue in part because they rightly care about the fate of soldiers’ lives, but also because the facts are elusive and the peace movement is weak. Yet the facts are overwhelmingly on the side of Canadian values and against the Afghanistan adventure. Just as the debate in the Commons began, the Polaris Institute revealed just how much this commitment has distorted Canada’s role in the world. The decision to support the US in Afghanistan (which the Liberals admit was done to appease the US over our decision to stay out of Iraq) has already cost $4.1 billion since Sept. 11, 2001.

What happened to peacekeeping?
Afghan and related operations account for 68 percent of the $6 billion spent on international missions during that time frame. Equally disturbing: according to Polaris, during that same period Canada devoted a mere $214 million, about three percent of international mission spending, on United Nations missions. Our “peacekeeping” is a joke: We now have just 59 military personnel devoted to UN missions. Canada, which virtually invented peacekeeping, once ranked among the top 10 contributors to UN missions in terms of military personnel. We are now 50th.

Equally important, however, is the actual nature of this farcical “humanitarian” effort. So few investigative journalists know the facts or will tell them, it is not surprising people are bamboozled by the warmongers. But one who does have the jam to tell the story is Middle East authority Eric Margolis. He is worth quoting:

“Afghanistan’s complexity and lethal tribal politics have been marketed to the public by government and media as a selfless crusade to defeat the ‘terrorist’ Taliban, implant democracy, and liberate Afghan women. Afghanistan is part of the ‘world-wide struggle against terrorism,’ we are told.

“None of this is true. In 1989, at the end of the Soviet occupation, Afghanistan fell into anarchy (sic) and civil war. An epidemic of banditry and rape ensued. A village prayer leader, Mullah Omar, who lost an eye in the anti-Soviet jihad, armed a group of ‘talibs’ (religious students), and set about defending women from rape. Aided by Pakistan, Taliban stopped the epidemic of rape and drug dealing that had engulfed Afghanistan, and imposed order based on harsh tribal and Sharia religious law.”

The Taliban stopped the production of opium and heroin -- except in the area controlled by the Northern Alliance: the thugs, drug pushers and rapists who are now Canada’s “allies.” The Taliban were hardly humanitarian and imposed an extremely harsh Sharia regime on the country. But with them gone, the epidemic of rape has returned and our “allies” are responsible for 80 to 90 percent of the world’s heroin.

Wrong from the start
It is important also to revisit the original relationship between the US and the Taliban and the US invasion. The US poured millions into Taliban coffers until, says Margolis, about four months before 9/11. It was only cut off when the regime refused to sign a contract with US oil giant Unocal to build a pipeline south from the Caspian Basin to Pakistan. It is also surely relevant that the Taliban knew nothing of the plan to attack the US. (The plot was hatched in Germany.) Much was made of the fact that the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden to the US. But Bin Laden was a national hero wounded six times in the anti-Soviet struggle -- which the US financed. When the Taliban offered to turn him over to an international tribunal upon seeing evidence of his guilt in 9/11, the US refused. And then invaded. This was by any international legal standard a totally illegal war, which could only have been justified if Afghanistan threatened the US. It is also an illegal occupation.

This is the “mission” that Stephen Harper, Yankee sycophant and budding warmonger, has “extended.” The mission is not intended to ever end because its purpose was and is to ensure the US permanent access to Mideast oil and Afghani land for pipelines. But end it will -- just as every other colonial occupation of Afghanistan has ended -- when the occupiers tire of bleeding. Too bad dozens of Canadian soldiers, who should be peacemakers, will have to die to teach us an old lesson.



A Brief History of U.S. Interventions

1945 to [1999]
By William Blum
From Third World Traveler
1999

The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:

* making the world safe for American corporations;

* enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;

* preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model;

* extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power."

This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not.
The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period.

China, 1945-49:
Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of Chiang Kai-shek against the Communists, even though the latter had been a much closer ally of the United States in the world war. The U.S. used defeated Japanese soldiers to fight for its side. The Communists forced Chiang to flee to Taiwan in 1949.

Italy, 1947-48:
Using every trick in the book, the U.S. interfered in the elections to prevent the Communist Party from coming to power legally and fairly. This perversion of democracy was done in the name of "saving democracy" in Italy. The Communists lost. For the next few decades, the CIA, along with American corporations, continued to intervene in Italian elections, pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars and much psychological warfare to block the specter that was haunting Europe.

Greece, 1947-49:
Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of the neo-fascists against the Greek left which had fought the Nazis courageously. The neo-fascists won and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a new internal security agency, KYP. Before long, KYP was carrying out all the endearing practices of secret police everywhere, including systematic torture.

Philippines, 1945-53:
U.S. military fought against leftist forces (Huks) even while the Huks were still fighting against the Japanese invaders. After the war, the U. S. continued its fight against the Huks, defeating them, and then installing a series of puppets as president, culminating in the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

South Korea, 1945-53:
After World War II, the United States suppressed the popular progressive forces in favor of the conservatives who had collaborated with the Japanese. This led to a long era of corrupt, reactionary, and brutal governments.

Albania, 1949-53:
The U.S. and Britain tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the communist government and install a new one that would have been pro-Western and composed largely of monarchists and collaborators with Italian fascists and Nazis.

Germany, 1950s:
The CIA orchestrated a wide-ranging campaign of sabotage, terrorism, dirty tricks, and psychological warfare against East Germany. This was one of the factors which led to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

Iran, 1953:
Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a joint U.S./British operation. Mossadegh had been elected to his position by a large majority of parliament, but he had made the fateful mistake of spearheading the movement to nationalize a British-owned oil company, the sole oil company operating in Iran. The coup restored the Shah to absolute power and began a period of 25 years of repression and torture, with the oil industry being restored to foreign ownership, as follows: Britain and the U.S., each 40 percent, other nations 20 percent.

Guatemala, 1953-1990s:
A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of death-squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling well over 100,000 victims -indisputably one of the most inhuman chapters of the 20th century. Arbenz had nationalized the U.S. firm, United Fruit Company, which had extremely close ties to the American power elite. As justification for the coup, Washington declared that Guatemala had been on the verge of a Soviet takeover, when in fact the Russians had so little interest in the country that it didn't even maintain diplomatic relations. The real problem in the eyes of Washington, in addition to United Fruit, was the danger of Guatemala's social democracy spreading to other countries in Latin America.

Middle East, 1956-58:
The Eisenhower Doctrine stated that the United States "is prepared to use armed forces to assist" any Middle East country "requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism." The English translation of this was that no one would be allowed to dominate, or have excessive influence over, the middle east and its oil fields except the United States, and that anyone who tried would be, by definition, "Communist." In keeping with this policy, the United States twice attempted to overthrow the Syrian government, staged several shows-of-force in the Mediterranean to intimidate movements opposed to U.S.-supported governments in Jordan and Lebanon, landed 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspired to overthrow or assassinate Nasser of Egypt and his troublesome middle-east nationalism.

Indonesia, 1957-58:
Sukarno, like Nasser, was the kind of Third World leader the United States could not abide. He took neutralism in the cold war seriously, making trips to the Soviet Union and China (though to the White House as well). He nationalized many private holdings of the Dutch, the former colonial power. He refused to crack down on the Indonesian Communist Party, which was walking the legal, peaceful road and making impressive gains electorally. Such policies could easily give other Third World leaders "wrong ideas." The CIA began throwing money into the elections, plotted Sukarno's assassination, tried to blackmail him with a phony sex film, and joined forces with dissident military officers to wage a full-scale war against the government. Sukarno survived it all.

British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64:
For 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths to prevent a democratically elected leader from occupying his office. Cheddi Jagan was another Third World leader who tried to remain neutral and independent. He was elected three times. Although a leftist-more so than Sukarno or Arbenz-his policies in office were not revolutionary. But he was still a marked man, for he represented Washington's greatest fear: building a society that might be a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model. Using a wide variety of tactics-from general strikes and disinformation to terrorism and British legalisms, the U. S. and Britain finally forced Jagan out in 1964. John F. Kennedy had given a direct order for his ouster, as, presumably, had Eisenhower. One of the better-off countries in the region under Jagan, Guyana, by the 1980s, was one of the poorest. Its principal export became people.

Vietnam, 1950-73:
The slippery slope began with siding with ~ French, the former colonizers and collaborators with the Japanese, against Ho Chi Minh and his followers who had worked closely with the Allied war effort and admired all things American. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of Communist. He had written numerous letters to President Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French and finding a peaceful solution for his country. All his entreaties were ignored. Ho Chi Minh modeled the new Vietnamese declaration of independence on the American, beginning it with "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with ..." But this would count for nothing in Washington. Ho Chi Minh was some kind of Communist. Twenty-three years and more than a million dead, later, the United States withdrew its military forces from Vietnam. Most people say that the U.S. lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, and poisoning the earth and the gene pool for generations, Washington had achieved its main purpose: preventing what might have been the rise of a good development option for Asia. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of communist.

Cambodia, 1955-73:
Prince Sihanouk was yet another leader who did not fancy being an American client. After many years of hostility towards his regime, including assassination plots and the infamous Nixon/Kissinger secret "carpet bombings" of 1969-70, Washington finally overthrew Sihanouk in a coup in 1970. This was all that was needed to impel Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge forces to enter the fray. Five years later, they took power. But five years of American bombing had caused Cambodia's traditional economy to vanish. The old Cambodia had been destroyed forever. Incredibly, the Khmer Rouge were to inflict even greater misery on this unhappy land. To add to the irony, the United States supported Pol Pot, militarily and diplomatically, after their subsequent defeat by the Vietnamese.

The Congo/Zaire, 1960-65:
In June 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the Congo's first prime minister after independence from Belgium. But Belgium retained its vast mineral wealth in Katanga province, prominent Eisenhower administration officials had financial ties to the same wealth, and Lumumba, at Independence Day ceremonies before a host of foreign dignitaries, called for the nation's economic as well as its political liberation, and recounted a list of injustices against the natives by the white owners of the country. The man was obviously a "Communist." The poor man was obviously doomed. Eleven days later, Katanga province seceded, in September, Lumumba was dismissed by the president at the instigation of the United States, and in January 1961 he was assassinated at the express request of Dwight Eisenhower. There followed several years of civil conflict and chaos and the rise to power of Mobutu Sese Seko, a man not a stranger to the CIA. Mobutu went on to rule the country for more than 30 years, with a level of corruption and cruelty that shocked even his CIA handlers. The Zairian people lived in abject poverty despite the plentiful natural wealth, while Mobutu became a multibillionaire.

Brazil, 1961-64:
President Joao Goulart was guilty of the usual crimes: He took an independent stand in foreign policy, resuming relations with socialist countries and opposing sanctions against Cuba; his administration passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit outside the country; a subsidiary of ITT was nationalized; he promoted economic and social reforms. And Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was uneasy about Goulart allowing "communists" to hold positions in government agencies. Yet the man was no radical. He was a millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the Virgin around his neck. That, however, was not enough to save him. In 1964, he was overthrown in a military coup which had deep, covert American involvement. The official Washington line was...yes, it's unfortunate that democracy has been overthrown in Brazil...but, still, the country has been saved from communism. For the next 15 years, all the features of military dictatorship that Latin America has come to know were instituted: Congress was shut down, political opposition was reduced to virtual extinction, habeas corpus for "political crimes" was suspended, criticism of the president was forbidden by law, labor unions were taken over by government interveners, mounting protests were met by police and military firing into crowds, peasants' homes were burned down, priests were brutalized...disappearances, death squads, a remarkable degree and depravity of torture...the government had a name for its program: the "moral rehabilitation" of Brazil. Washington was very pleased. Brazil broke relations with Cuba and became one of the United States' most reliable allies in Latin America.

Dominican Republic, 1963-66:
In February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic since 1924. Here at last was John F. Kennedy's liberal anti-Communist, to counter the charge that the U.S. supported only military dictatorships. Bosch's government was to be the long sought " showcase of democracy " that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office. Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform, low-rent housing, modest nationalization of business, and foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country and other policies making up the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise serious about civil liberties: Communists, or those labeled as such, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.
A number of American officials and congresspeople expressed their discomfort with Bosch's plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that "creeping socialism" is made of. In several quarters of the U.S. press Bosch was red-baited. In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United States, which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did nothing. Nineteen months later, a revolt broke out which promised to put the exiled Bosch back into power. The United States sent 23,000 troops to help crush it.

Cuba, 1959 to present:
Fidel Castro came to power at the beginning of 1959. A U.S. National Security Council meeting of March 10, 1959 included on its agenda the feasibility of bringing "another government to power in Cuba." There followed 40 years of terrorist attacks, bombings, full-scale military invasion, sanctions, embargoes, isolation, assassinations...Cuba had carried out The Unforgivable Revolution, a very serious threat of setting a "good example" in Latin America. The saddest part of this is that the world will never know what kind of society Cuba could have produced if left alone, if not constantly under the gun and the threat of invasion, if allowed to relax its control at home. The idealism, the vision, the talent were all there. But we'll never know. And that of course was the idea.

Indonesia, 1965:
A complex series of events, involving a supposed coup attempt, a counter-coup, and perhaps a counter-counter-coup, with American fingerprints apparent at various points, resulted in the ouster from power of Sukarno and his replacement by a military coup led by General Suharto. The massacre that began immediately-of Communists, Communist sympathizers, suspected Communists, suspected Communist sympathizers, and none of the above-was called by the New York Times "one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history." The estimates of the number killed in the course of a few years begin at half a million and go above a million. It was later learned that the U.S. embassy had compiled lists of "Communist" operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres, as many as 5,000 names, and turned them over to the army, which then hunted those persons down and killed them. The Americans would then check off the names of those who had been killed or captured. "It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands," said one U.S. diplomat. "But that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment."

Chile, 1964-73:
Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for a Washington imperialist. He could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power-an elected Marxist in power, who honored the constitution, and became increasingly popular. This shook the very foundation stones on which the anti-Communist tower was built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that "communists" can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population. After sabotaging Allende's electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970, despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the Allende government over the next three years, paying particular attention to building up military hostility. Finally, in September 1973, the military overthrew the government, Allende dying in the process. They closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown into bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that "In Chile women wear dresses!"; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their check- books. In the end, more than 3,000 had been executed, thousands more tortured or disappeared.

Greece, 1964-74:
The military coup took place in April 1967, just two days before the campaign for j national elections was to begin, elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George Papandreou back as prime minister. Papandreou had been elected in February 1964 with the only outright majority in the history of modern Greek elections. The successful machinations to unseat him had begun immediately, a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, and the American military and CIA stationed in Greece. The 1967 coup was followed immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, torture, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being done to save the nation from a "Communist takeover." Corrupting and subversive influences in Greek life were to be removed. Among these were miniskirts, long hair, and foreign newspapers; church attendance for the young would be compulsory. It was torture, however, which most indelibly marked the seven-year Greek nightmare. James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty International, wrote in December 1969 that "a conservative estimate would place at not less than two thousand" the number of people tortured, usually in the most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States. Becket reported the following: Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance: "You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans." George Papandreou was not any kind of radical. He was a liberal anti-Communist type. But his son Andreas, the heir-apparent, while only a little to the left of his father had not disguised his wish to take Greece out of the Cold War, and had questioned remaining in NATO, or at least as a satellite of the United States.

East Timor, 1975 to present:
In December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor, which lies at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, and which had proclaimed its independence after Portugal had relinquished control of it. The invasion was launched the day after U. S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia after giving Suharto permission to use American arms, which, under U.S. Iaw, could not be used for aggression. Indonesia was Washington's most valuable tool in Southeast Asia. Amnesty International estimated that by 1989, Indonesian troops, with the aim of forcibly annexing East Timor, had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. The United States consistently supported Indonesia's claim to East Timor (unlike the UN and the EU), and downplayed the slaughter to a remarkable degree, at the same time supplying Indonesia with all the military hardware and training it needed to carry out the job.

Nicaragua, 1978-89:
When the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1978, it was clear to Washington that they might well be that long-dreaded beast-"another Cuba." Under President Carter, attempts to sabotage the revolution took diplomatic and economic forms. Under Reagan, violence was the method of choice. For eight terribly long years, the people of Nicaragua were under attack by Washington's proxy army, the Contras, formed from Somoza's vicious National Guard and other supporters of the dictator. It was all-out war, aiming to destroy the progressive social and economic programs of the government, burning down schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, bombing and strafing. These were Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters." There would be no revolution in Nicaragua.

Grenada, 1979-84:
What would drive the most powerful nation in the world to invade a country of 110,000? Maurice Bishop and his followers had taken power in a 1979 coup, and though their actual policies were not as revolutionary as Castro's, Washington was again driven by its fear of "another Cuba," particularly when public appearances by the Grenadian leaders in other countries of the region met with great enthusiasm. U.S. destabilization tactics against the Bishop government began soon after the coup and continued until 1983, featuring numerous acts of disinformation and dirty tricks. The American invasion in October 1983 met minimal resistance, although the U.S. suffered 135 killed or wounded; there were also some 400 Grenadian casualties, and 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers. At the end of 1984, a questionable election was held which was won by a man supported by the Reagan administration. One year later, the human rights organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, reported that Grenada's new U.S.-trained police force and counter-insurgency forces had acquired a reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest, and abuse of authority, and were eroding civil rights. In April 1989, the government issued a list of more than 80 books which were prohibited from being imported. Four months later, the prime minister suspended parliament to forestall a threatened no-confidence vote resulting from what his critics called "an increasingly authoritarian style."

Libya, 1981-89:
Libya refused to be a proper Middle East client state of Washington. Its leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, was uppity. He would have to be punished. U.S. planes shot down two Libyan planes in what Libya regarded as its air space. The U. S . also dropped bombs on the country, killing at least 40 people, including Qaddafi's daughter. There were other attempts to assassinate the man, operations to overthrow him, a major disinformation campaign, economic sanctions, and blaming Libya for being behind the Pan Am 103 bombing without any good evidence.

Panama, 1989:
Washington's bombers strike again. December 1989, a large tenement barrio in Panama City wiped out, 15,000 people left homeless. Counting several days of ground fighting against Panamanian forces, 500-something dead was the official body count, what the U.S. and the new U.S.-installed Panamanian government admitted to; other sources, with no less evidence, insisted that thousands had died; 3,000-something wounded. Twenty-three Americans dead, 324 wounded.Question from reporter: "Was it really worth it to send people to their death for this? To get Noriega?" George Bush: "Every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it." Manuel Noriega had been an American ally and informant for years until he outlived his usefulness. But getting him was not the only motive for the attack. Bush wanted to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua, who had an election scheduled in two months, that this might be their fate if they reelected the Sandinistas. Bush also wanted to flex some military muscle to illustrate to Congress the need for a large combat-ready force even after the very recent dissolution of the "Soviet threat." The official explanation for the American ouster was Noriega's drug trafficking, which Washington had known about for years and had not been at all
bothered by.

Iraq, 1990s:
Relentless bombing for more than 40 days and nights, against one of the most advanced nations in the Middle East, devastating its ancient and modern capital city; 177 million pounds of bombs falling on the people of Iraq, the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world; depleted uranium weapons incinerating people, causing cancer; blasting chemical and biological weapon storage and oil facilities; poisoning the atmosphere to a degree perhaps never matched anywhere; burying soldiers alive, deliberately; the infrastructure destroyed, with a terrible effect on health; sanctions continued to this day multiplying the health problems; perhaps a million children dead by now from all of these things, even more adults. Iraq was the strongest military power among the Arab states. This may have been their crime. Noam Chomsky has written: "It's been a leading, driving doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent, indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price."

Afghanistan, 1979-92:
Everyone knows of the unbelievable repression of women in Afghanistan, carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, even before the Taliban. But how many people know that during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a government committed to bringing the incredibly backward nation into the 20th century, including giving women equal rights? What happened, however, is that the United States poured billions of dollars into waging a terrible war against this government, simply because it was supported by the Soviet Union. Prior to this, CIA operations had knowingly increased the probability of a Soviet intervention, which is what occurred. In the end, the United States won, and the women, and the rest of Afghanistan, lost. More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the population.

El Salvador, 1980-92:
El Salvador's dissidents tried to work within the system. But with U.S. support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral fraud and murdering hundreds of protesters and strikers. In 1980, the dissidents took to the gun, and civil war. Officially, the U.S. military presence in El Salvador was limited to an advisory capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more active role on a continuous basis. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat areas, and considerable evidence surfaced of a U.S. role in the ground fighting as well. The war came to an official end in 1992; 75,000 civilian deaths and the U.S. Treasury depleted by six billion dollars. Meaningful social change has been largely thwarted. A handful of the wealthy still own the country, the poor remain as ever, and dissidents still have to fear right-wing death squads.

Haiti, 1987-94:
The U.S. supported the Duvalier family dictatorship for 30 years, then opposed the reformist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Meanwhile, the CIA was working intimately with death squads, torturers, and drug traffickers. With this as background, the Clinton White House found itself in the awkward position of having to pretend-because of all their rhetoric about "democracy"-that they supported Aristide's return to power in Haiti after he had been ousted in a 1991 military coup. After delaying his return for more than two years, Washington finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only after obliging the priest to guarantee that he would not help the poor at the expense of the rich, and that he would stick closely to free-market economics. This meant that Haiti would continue to be the assembly plant of the Western Hemisphere, with its workers receiving literally starvation wages.

Yugoslavia, 1999:
The United States is bombing the country back to a pre-industrial era. It would like the world to believe that its intervention is motivated only by "humanitarian" impulses. Perhaps the above history of U.S. interventions can help one decide how much weight to place on this claim.

Home On Native Land

The people of Six Nations are repossessing their land
By Hillary Bain Lindsay
From Dominion
2006

According to the Six Nations Confederacy, women are the title holders of the land. Sewatis has been at the Six Nations blockade since it began on February 28. "I was the first one to encounter your enforcement officer," he says. "I was peaceful and just explained the situation. [I said] 'I cannot follow your orders because I'm not Canadian. I'm Haudenosaunee.'" The police officer he was speaking with didn't appear to know how to handle Sewatis' response to his order. Apparently, the fact that someone born and raised only a few miles from where they stood--just outside of Caledonia, Ontario--was not Canadian was a difficult concept to grasp. "So, I just told him 'You'll have to wait for my superiors to come,'" says Sewatis. "That's the kind of language they seem to understand."

I am sitting with Sewatis in his van. For over six weeks this is where he has slept. That is to say, when he has slept. Many nights he sits by the fire, keeping watch in case the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) chooses to invade the site.

From where we sit, we can see dozens of people gathered around the fire, singing, laughing and talking. To our left is a cookhouse that was recently built to feed the growing number of people that have come to support the repossession of Six Nations' land. There are several tents, a teepee and a couple of trailers scattered nearby.

It might feel like a camping trip except for the fact that we are in the middle of a construction site. There are no trees or grass and ten partially built suburban homes stand nearby. Henco Industries had hoped to build hundreds of houses here. Construction was halted on February 28 when the road to the site was blocked and Henco was informed that the land is not theirs to build on."We're here telling people that it's our land and it was illegally attained and it was illegally sold," says Sewatis. "That's just the plain and simple truth." This is not "the kind of language they seem to understand."

On April 6, the Canadian government said that the Six Nations dispute is not about land rights. "This is not a lands-claim matter," said Deirdre McCracken, a spokesperson for the Minister of Indian Affairs Jim Prentice. She also said that the blockade "has nothing to do with the federal government." But according to a statement released on March 20 by the women of Rotinoshon'non:we (meaning Iroquois or Haudenosaunee, depending on the language being spoken), the blockade has quite a lot to do with land--and with the Canadian government.

The statement outlines how "General Haldimand confirmed that Britain would affirm the right of the Six Nations to a tract of land six miles deep on either side of the Grand River, running from its mouth to its source." The piece of land immediately under dispute is only a small part of the much larger 'Haldimand Tract.'

This piece of history is not being debated. A plaque erected in Cayuga, Ontario by the Ontario Archaeological and Historic Sites Board says much the same thing. The sign also notes that the land was awarded in 1784 in recognition of the Six Nations' help to the British Crown during the American Revolution. What the plaque says next is where the stories diverge. "In later years, large areas of this tract...were sold to white settlers."

According to the women of the Rotinoshon'non:we, however, "None of this land [the Haldimand Tract] was ever legally surrendered." The women's statement carries a great deal of weight as, "Women are the 'Title Holders' of the land of Rotinoshon’non:we as recalled by Wampum 44 of the Kaianereh'ko:wa." The significance of the previous sentence will be lost on most Canadians, who will have no idea what it means. Indigenous nations have their own constitution (Kaianereh’ko:wa). "The idea that British Colonists or their descendents--like Canadians--were the only people who had 'law' is a legal fiction," says Kahentinetha Horn, a Mohawk elder from Kahnawake. Canada "has totally disrespected our laws and agreements to conduct a nation-to-nation relationship."

The Six Nations Confederacy has been called the oldest living participatory democracy on earth. Hazel Hill, one of the women active at the blockade describes how decisions are made: "There are fifty chiefs who represent the Confederacy Council and they have a clanmother with each chief. It is the people whose voice the chiefs and clanmothers carry. Any decision regarding land comes first from the women, and then to their clans; and through the process of our council, when all are in agreement, or when consensus has been reached, only then does the decision stand," she says. "In our history of the Haldimand Tract, this has never been done."

In 1924, the Band Council system was imposed by force on Six Nations. In the place of the traditional government what critics refer to as "a puppet government" was installed using the Indian Act.

Since 1924, the Canadian government has done its negotiating with the Band Council, a system that is a part of and paid for by the federal government. "The Band Council," says Horn, "does not represent the Six Nations peoples according to international law." In an open letter to local newspapers, Hill compares the government's agreements with Band Council to finding a few people in Caledonia to agree to sell their town to the people of Six Nations. "Would that be legal?" she asks.

The Band Council system does not allow the voice of the people to be heard, says Horn. If the Canadian government wants to seek legitimate discussions, negotiations must be undertaken on a nation-to-nation basis. "There could then be an orderly settlement based on an orderly investigation of the facts and an orderly identification of the laws that apply," says Horn. "The reason Canada doesn’t want to do this is because it knows full well that when the process is complete, the facts will clearly show they have illegally invaded our land."

There is a large sign at the Six Nations blockade that reads "Oh Canada, your home on native land." The play on words from something as basic as the national anthem is appropriate for a standoff that could turn the meaning of Canada on its head. "A lot of people have squatted on our land," observes Carol Bomberry. Pointing to Caledonia she continues, "This is one of the towns that is on our land."

Most Caledonians probably don't consider themselves squatters. Chances are they consider Caledonia home. What does it mean if Caledonia is not Canada?

Mike Laughing, one of the men manning the blockade, responds matter-of-factly. "Look at it this way: just imagine if all those people got to live on native land. Instead of paying taxes to the government they could be giving it to the true landlords, back to this nation," says Laughing. "If they didn't want to do that then they'd have to move. But we're not saying move away."

As for the small piece of land immediately under dispute, Bomberry has a similarly straightforward suggestion: she'd like to see the Canadian government buy the houses back from Henco Industries and restore the land to Six Nations. The Six Nations Reserve, the most populous reserve in Canada, is currently less than five per cent the size of the original Haldimand Tract. "There's a ten year waiting list for houses," Bomberry points out. "Our population is growing every year. We need more room."

Acknowledging Indigenous land rights will, of course, mean much more than establishing who lives where or who pays taxes to whom. Laughing says he's at the blockade for the sake of his kids. Canada "has been standing on the back of an Indian for too long," he says. "It's time to get off and let us stand proud of who we are."

It is not only First Nations people that stand to benefit from a just outcome to the Six Nations standoff, says Horn. Native and non-native people alike are suffering from a system that is destroying the environment. Horn believes that under Indigenous title, the land would be treated with far more respect. "According to our constitution, we have to take care of the land, in other words we're environmentalists," explains Horn. "That's why it's important [for non-native people] to help us assert our jurisdiction." People from across Canada and around the world have lent their support to the Six Nations' struggle. Hundreds of people have gathered at the site each time there has been a threat of the OPP moving in.

"The Canadian government calls themselves peaceful," says Sewatis. "I hope that they live what they say." If the OPP chooses to invade, many at the site feel that it is their duty to defend their land and defend their people. "We're not seeking violence," Sewatis says. "I seek peace first...but, I believe in what's right."

Sewatis has seen how standoffs over land rights have ended before. "They think they can make peace by having a gun and having it their way," he observes. "We want to talk about peace and the laws and jurisdiction of the lands. We are going to utilize the great law of peace. We're going to offer it one more time."

At the time this article went to print, over 50 police cruisers were gathering in Caledonia and Six Nations was on "Red Alert."

Electoral Reform

Proportional representation: making every vote count
By Murray MacAdam
From Citizens for Public Justice

Nick Loenen pulls no punches. “Politically, Canada is living a lie,” argues the Richmond, B.C. resident. “We think we are democratic, but we are not. On almost every election night, the majority of voters get neither the local representative nor the government they voted for. How democratic is that?”

What rankles Loenen, a former Social Credit MLA, is Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system. With several candidates in a typical riding, a candidate – and a party – can win with much less than majority of the vote. Only 38% of voters chose the Liberals in the 1997 federal election. Meanwhile small parties are shut out altogether. Could it be any different? Most definitely. Our ailing political system can be revived with proportional representation, ensuring that at least some seats in Parliament and our legislatures would be allocated on the basis of popular vote. Many support a system whereby half the representatives would be elected from single-member seats, as is now the case, while the other half would reflect PR. That would balance the benefits of local representation with a system in which every vote counts.

A wide range of individuals and organizations support PR, including CPJ. “If I could make one change to Canadian political institutions, it would be to reform the electoral system to bring in proportional representation,” says CPJ supporter Harold Jansen, a political scientist at the University of Lethbridge. “This would ensure that all parties are treated equitably. Currently, parties that have regionally concentrated support are rewarded by our current electoral system, while parties with a more national appeal tend to be discriminated against.”

Another benefit, notes Jansen, is that proportional representation would likely lead to more principled parties with distinct stands on issues. Now a candidate usually needs about 40% of the vote to win, and the easiest way to win that support is by appealing to the mushy ideological centre. A platform appealing to only 15% of the voters likely means winning no seats. But under PR, it would receive some seats. “Christian people in particular should favour PR because of that,” adds Nick Loenen. “Now parties are election machines. Your suppress your principles and platform in favour of images.” Nor is PR unknown to Canada. Manitoba used it from 1920 to 1953, and Alberta from 1926 to 1955. Meanwhile, it has the best chance of success in British Columbia, with its highly unpopular NDP government, elected by only 38% of the vote. “People look at this and say, why are these people in power?”, says Loenen. B.C.’s Liberal Party, widely expected to win the next provincial election, has promised to hold a referendum on PR.

The idea is being pushed by a group Loenen helped found, Fair Voting BC, and the Electoral Change Coalition. Some are concerned that a PR system will lead to instability. Yet most mature democracies have PR, including Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. In her book Imagine Democracy, journalist and PR supporter Judy Rebick calls our electoral system “an anachronism... discarded by almost every democracy in the world except Britain, Canada, and the United States.”

In May New Democrat MP Lorne Nystrom introduced a motion in the Commons urging a national discussion on PR, followed by a referendum on its introduction to the federal electoral system. “At a time when the public is increasingly cynical about politicians and about the value of their vote, the current system only makes matters worse” said Nystrom. “Introducing a measure of proportional representation into our electoral system will empower Canadian citizens.”

The NDP has good reason to champion PR. In the last election, both the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois won 11% of the vote, but the BQ ended up with more than double the number of NDP seats. Nystrom’s motion was supported by all parties, except the Liberals. In the fall it will come up again for debate before a vote is taken on it. Meanwhile the NDP is trying to drum up support.

Proportional representation may prove to be a noble yet unattainable ideal. That would be unfortunate indeed. Noting that voter turnout plummeted to only 67% in the last federal election, Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hébert recently observed: “Too many Canadians have come to think their vote counts for nothing - and that’s not good for the country.”


CPJ for proportional representation

Following is the content of a letter sent to Nathalie Des Rosiers, President of the Law Commission of Canada, May 26, 2003

Dear Ms. Des Rosiers:

Citizens for Public Justice welcomes the opportunity to express its views on electoral reform as part of your consultation. CPJ is a national Christian public advocacy organization with a 40-year history of involvement in a wide range of issues which face our country.

CPJ's interest in electoral reform grows out of our strong belief in the value of pluralism and respect for diversity. We believe that is not enough to simply allow Canadians the freedom to express a wide range of opinions and for our society to include people with a wide range of values. Those values and opinions also need to find expression in the institutions of our society, including our political institutions. Our legislatures and governments need to reflect the diversity of opinion found in the country. In particular, we have argued for 40 years that people with different beliefs need to be given public room to order their lives differently, in keeping with their fundamental perspectives on life.

Our respect for diversity and pluralism forms the basis of CPJ's longstanding belief that our current "first past the post" (FPTP) system of political representation is fundamentally flawed and should be replaced by a proportional representation (PR) model. Our current system does not, in our view, make room for the diversity of public philosophy and policy positions found within Canada. This is an issue of basic justice and of treating Canadian voters justly. It's thus one with which we are deeply concerned. Justice and equity create a compelling argument for changing our current electoral system.

CPJ does not believe that all perspectives are equally valid. Some viewpoints, such as those which advocate racist policies, are abhorrent to us. Yet we their minds as to the type of diverse views they wish to see expressed in their political system.

Therefore since the 1960s, CPJ has proposed implementation of proportional representation (PR) on numerous occasions at both federal and provincial levels. For example, CPJ responded to federal government proposals in 1991 for constitutional change with a paper, Reforming the Canadian Electoral System, which supported some form of PR for the House of Commons. More recently, CPJ members John Hiemstra and Harold Jansen outlined a detailed case for PR in their chapter "Getting What You Vote For", in the book Contemporary Political Issues, edited by Mark Charlton and Paul Barker, (Scarborough: Nelson, 2002).

The shortcomings of the current FPTP model, in which the candidate in a given riding who wins more votes than the other candidates wins a seat as MP, have become glaringly apparent in recent years. It amounts to a "winner take all" system, in which the dominant party grabs the electoral spoils at the expense of smaller parties.

The results of the 2000 federal election serve as a case in point. The Liberals won 57 percent of the seats in the House of Commons (172 of the 301 seats), with a minority of the popular vote (40.8 percent). Looking at the number of votes cast for each party and the number of MPs elected for that party shows that the notion that all parties are treated equitably under our current system is a myth. Each Liberal Member of Parliament needed an average of only 30,218 votes to get elected. Yet it took an average of 83,918 votes to elect each New Democratic MP and a whopping 130, 316 votes to elect each of the 12 Conservative MPs elected.

Some argue that PR would worsen regional divisions within Canada. Yet in fact, such divisions are deepened under the current system, which rewards parties with regionally concentrated support, while discriminating against parties with a more national appeal. For example, while the Canadian Alliance was rewarded with 64 seats for the 1.9 million votes it received across the four Western provinces, it received a mere two seats in Ontario, even though it received over one million votes in that province. Meanwhile the Liberals received about 950,000 votes in the four Western provinces – about half as many as the Alliance – but only received one-fifth as many seats as the Alliance. These distorted results reinforced common beliefs that the Alliance is a Western-based party with little support in Ontario, and that the Liberals have little support in the West. Many similar examples could be given involving other parties.

We reject the argument that proportional representation would lead to unstable, ineffective government. Versions of PR are used in more than 90 jurisdictions around the world. The vast majority of them have stable, effective governments.

The House of Commons and other legislatures should reflect the diversity of political opinion that exists within the country. Yet our current system discriminates against political parties which take distinctive stands on issues. In order to win under the "first past the post" system, a candidates usually needs about 40% of the vote in their constituency. The easiest way to win those votes is to adopt a middle-of-the-road stance. A party that runs a platform that only appeals to 15 or 20% of the voters runs the risk of winning few or no seats. Yet under PR, such a party would win some seats. The result would likely be more principled parties, thus improving the quality of representation. Voters would have a more clear idea of the mandate they are giving to MPs, and thus be better able to hold MPs accountable for their policies and political actions.

In effect, millions of Canadians wasted their votes in the last election by casting them for candidates with no chance of winning. Thus it's not surprising that voter turnout in Canada has been declining. In the 1984 and 1988 federal elections, about 75% of eligible voters cast ballots. The number dropped to 69.6% in 1993, and in 1997 to 67%. Turnout sank further in 2000, to 62.8%. This is an alarming trend. While we do not believe that a new voting system would in itself reverse this trend completely, we do believe that it is an essential ingredient for revitalizing Canadian democracy.

Given the shortcomings of our current FPTP system and declining citizen involvement in elections, it is no accident that support for electoral reform has been growing in Canada. Nor do we believe that it is an accident that a growing number of Canadians, from across the political spectrum, are calling for the adoption of some kind of proportional representation system in our country. It is the fairest and most effective way to involve Canadians in a representative democracy. Your consultation is part of this growing movement for electoral reform. As well as endorsing PR, we believe that your consultation should support a process whereby the electoral reform movement will be affirmed and acknowledged. For example, a royal commission or a citizens assembly could be established on electoral reform, with a clear mandate and deadlines.

British Columbia provides an example of one model of how such a process might work. Reflecting a strong electoral reform movement, the government of B.C. recently announced that it plans to establish a citizens assembly to consider options for how MLAs are elected in that province. If the assembly recommends a different electoral system, voters will have an opportunity to express their views through a referendum on that new electoral option, to be held on the date of the next provincial election in 2005.

Without an independent, non-partisan process that gives Canadians a meaningful opportunity to express their views, it will be all too easy for the current reform movement to get sidetracked, because parties that win power under the current system are, understandably, reluctant to change it.

We look forward to the report and recommendations from your consultation. Thank you for this opportunity to express our views on this vital issue.

Sincerely,

Harry J. Kits
Executive Director, CPJ

The Truth about Ethical Investing

What's 'green' or 'sustainable'? Funds make it hard to know.
By Paul Hawken
From The Tyee
2005

On Jan. 28 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a Canadian magazine and Innovest, an investment research firm specializing in corporate social responsibility, released a list of the "100 Most Sustainable Companies in the World." In the words of the press release, these were the "one hundred companies most open to leading the way to a more sustainable world."

On the face of it, this should have been a watershed moment. Corporations that disavowed the word "sustainability" not so many years ago were proudly showcased at the world's most prestigious conference dealing with corporate issues.

Near the top of the alphabetical list was ABB Ltd (ASEA Brown Boveri), a one-time promoter of mega-dams including the Narmada dams in India and the Arun Dam in Nepal. On July 6, 2004, ABB settled a U.S. Federal Court action for bribing government officials in Nigeria, Angola and Kazakhstan, paying $5.9 million in ill-gotten profits. On the same day, it pled guilty to violating the anti-bribery provisions of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and agreed to pay $10.5 million in fines. In Nigeria, ABB paid illicit bribes to officers of NAPIMS, a Nigerian government agency, to evaluate and approve bidders for oil and gas contracts. In Angola, it was doling out money in brown paper bags to government employees. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department continues its ongoing investigation of still more corruption.

Moving from A to B is Bristol-Myers Squibb, under investigation by the SEC for violating the FCPA in Germany following prosecutorial action there. The company was fined $150 million last year by the SEC for cooking its books; it paid $135 million in claims and settled with the Federal Trade Commission on charges that it conspired to prevent the cancer drug Taxol (which was developed by NIH and U.S. taxpayers) from becoming generic after patent expiration, costing women with breast cancer hundreds of millions of dollars (Bristol-Myers Squibb was charging $6.09 per milligram compared to foreign generic producers charging $.07 per milligram). It also paid a $535 million settlement to 29 states to settle litigation over whether it had illegally blocked generic production of BuSpar; and Bristol-Myers Squibb joined with other big pharmaceutical companies in lobbying for a provision in the new Medicare regulations prohibiting the U.S. government from negotiating with drug companies on bulk purchase discounts for drugs, what used to be called price-fixing.

Oil, gas, beer, mining...?
Included on the list of the 100 most sustainable companies were corporations in oil, gas, beer, mining, utilities, defense, soda pop, candy and hard liquor ("Did you know 43 percent of the milk produced in Ireland goes into Bailey's Irish Cream," brags Diageo, which also makes Smirnoff, Johnny Walker, Tanqueray, Cuervo and J&B). Three of the 100 companies have a business model that directly addresses the well-being of the future of the planet: Vestas and Gamesa, both manufacturers of wind turbines, and Whole Foods. There was no explanation at the time of the press release as to why these 100 were the most sustainable companies, or what sustainability means, or which criteria were applied.

Sustainability specifically means living within carrying capacity of the planet, which is to say living on current solar income. Easy to say, difficult to do, and admittedly no company of any scale is doing it. The question is whether they are moving toward or away from it.

There are companies throughout the world that are approaching sustainability; mostly they are small and owner-operated. They are providers and growers of organic food; retrofitters and developers of green buildings; designers of new materials that are biomimetic and compostable; health care providers relying on phyto-pharmaceuticals and natural healing; manufacturers of bicycles; creators of local food webs linking school lunch programs and nearby farmers; makers of hemp clothing; environmental banks; sustainable foresters; trained midwives; and hundreds of other workers and professionals who understand that the work of sustainability is not glamorous and does not accrete into transnational corporations with corporate jets and weekends in Switzerland or Palm Springs to help manage a complex web of affairs.

Opaque methods
The mindset that informed the list doesn't stop with the announcement at Davos. Innovest's research is sold to SRI (socially responsible investing) mutual fund companies so they can do ethical investing on our behalf. You can buy shares in a SRI fund, but you can't analyze the methodology, research or data. The research that Innovest and other research companies do for the SRI mutual fund industry is proprietary with heavy restrictions about disclosure. The same research that came up with ABB, Pepsi, Diageo and Bristol-Myers Squibb as the most sustainable companies in the world is used to select stocks for SRI portfolios. Investors are asked to take SRI mutual funds at their word, even though the research and methodology are hidden.

When you invest in such SRI funds as Domini, Calvert, Sierra Club and Pax, you are investing in American corporations that fight against environmental regulation; whose trade associations lobby against living wages or increases in the minimum wage; that lobby for and receive corporate welfare from Congress in the form of pork-barrel tax breaks and subsidies; create non-profit organizations to fight claims that junk food causes obesity; prevent people from getting price breaks on pharmaceuticals, whose CEOs raise millions of dollars for the Bush administration's assault on human rights and the environment, and more. You would never know this because you invest in the "language" of social responsibility, not the reality. The advertisements cater to our desire to do good things with our savings, and based on their language and promotional material, investors trust that the SRI mutual funds live up to their word.

The Sierra Club decided a few years ago to go into the mutual fund business. Why not take a great brand name and invest in environmental companies and make some money for a deserving organization?

"Who says you can't invest responsibly and still beat the S & P 500? Now You Don't Have To Choose Between Your Financial Goals And Our Planet's Future -- The myth about environmentally and socially responsible investing is that as an investor, you have to give something up--investment quality, portfolio diversification, or fund performance. At Sierra Club Mutual Funds, we beg to differ. While you do your part to protect the planet for your children and for future generations, we do ours by seeking attractive investment opportunities in well-known companies that meet strict Sierra Club social and environmental guidelines."

The language employed corresponds to a generational shift in values. There is this "myth" that to be green you have to give up financial returns, but that is not the case. You can give your money to the Sierra Club Funds and lay this myth aside. It is tantamount to saying you can be progressive and have your carrot cake and eat it. Who are the companies that meet the "strict" Sierra club guidelines? Well, that's hard to know. The Sierra Club web site doesn't don't reveal the whole portfolio, only a part of it. (Find the entire portfolio, from the fund's last report, on the Natural Capital Institute web site.)

Whiffs of Donald Trump
One of the bigger holdings in the Sierra Club Balanced Fund is Esteé Lauder, makers of Donald Trump--The Fragrance, available at Bergdorf's, Saks and Bonwit Teller. Sierra Club members can do more for the Republican Party than buy a mega-capitalist's aftershave. The Sierra Club Fund holds shares in the Outback Steakhouse. Putting aside the questions of where Outback gets its beef, how it is raised (public lands?), if it contains hormones, or if Outback's subsidiary chain Cheeseburgers in Paradise isn't your idea of socially responsible investment, it is good to know that of the $500,000 Outback donated last year to politicians, 98 percent of it went to Republicans.

If you own shares of Sierra Club funds, you will also own HRPT, which builds office buildings for the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the DEA. And then there is Celgene, whose division Celgro licenses its chiral technology for agricultural pesticides. When queried by Fortune magazine as to why Sierra Club funds didn't own any environmental companies, Garvin Jabusch, director of sustainable investing, said that their fund wasn't allowed to take "flyers on microcaps," meaning small companies with innovative environmental technologies. John Muir and David Brower, please meet George Orwell.

If big corporations are to change, they need feedback from investors, customers and citizens. In this, the whole purpose of SRI is germane and necessary. About a dozen of the 110 SRI funds in North America collaborate with nonprofits such as the As You Sow Foundation in forming shareholder resolutions that challenge management policy; this tactic has proved fruitful.

Another way companies get feedback is through their stock price. A rising stock price makes companies more powerful and makes their shareholders and executives wealthier. Falling share prices have the opposite effect. When we put our money into SRI funds, we are voting with our dollars. But we are voting with our money like they vote in corrupt countries; we walk into the room and are given a ballot that is already filled out. For sure, we can choose this SRI fund or that, but at the end of the day, that's all we can do. We can't always see our portfolio online in real time; we can't see the research; we can't see the detailed inclusion criteria.

Green in eye of beholder
SRI mutual funds do not obey or follow the same level of transparency they demand of the corporations they invest in. You can see the salary and stock options of the management of any publicly held corporation in America. CEO Peter Dolan, who presided over Bristol-Myers Squibb's $670 million of legal settlements and paid a $150 million fine for cooking the books, was paid $5.92 million in 2003 for his management skills. But how much did the CEOs of Domini, Pax and Calvert make? That's a secret.

To counter some of the recent bad publicity concerning socially responsible funds, the industry has stepped up its advertising in the progressive media. Calvert Fund's full-page advertisements in magazines such as Utne depict a bearded liberal baby-boomer saying he likes his investments "GREEN" in both senses of the word.

I went to the Calvert Capital Accumulation Fund to find out what these green investments are. According to the company web site, this Calvert fund holds the Cheesecake Factory, makers of "decadent cheesecakes perfect for any occasion." It owns Electronic Arts, makers of Battlefield, a video game for children that offers "more firepower, modernized weaponry and vehicles, and a deeper infantry experience from the jungles to the beaches of Vietnam." It owns PETsMART, a big-box retailer of pet supplies that is under attack by PETA for its treatment of exotic birds. And it owns Fossil, which announced a Dick Tracy PDA for the wrist at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. What do these companies have to do with "green?" When I asked Terry Mollner, one of the co-founders of Calvert how it was that two-thirds of the 1,000 largest corporations in America qualify as green, he asked me who did I think I was to say what was and wasn't green?

Make the choices real
My hunch is that the progressive movement would prefer to invest in the future of the planet rather than the future of Donald Trump, obesity or steakhouses. If we are to see the kind of transformation required to abate climate change, rescue our oceans, eliminate species die-off, stop the assaults on indigenous cultures, eradicate clear-cutting and restore our water, air and soils, we will need to move a lot faster and more elegantly than we are now. Will investors put financial return before conscience? Many will, and the number of people who won't compromise their values for profiteering is increasing.

To do that investors need a real choice and true transparency. It is time we had truth in labeling; in fact, it is time we had labeling. An investor should be able to visit Calvert's web site and understand how it evaluated Electronic Arts. Owners of Sierra Club mutual funds should be able to understand how Outback Steakhouse "protect(s) the planet for your children and for future generations."

To invest wisely, investors need good information. Investors and stakeholders should be able to go online and find the complete investment portfolios of SRI funds, foundations, NGOs, churches, universities and unions. They should be able to click on a company name and be given a thorough understanding of its strengths, impacts and weaknesses. The world of socially responsible investing is a bastion of secrecy. As long as information is sequestered by "professionals" and not revealed to citizenry, power is concentrated in the hands of the few..

Many SRI funds state they don't want to reveal their portfolios and research because it will give away their "secrets." That is exactly the argument big food companies used when labeling laws were first proposed. It was the same argument used by cosmetic companies when they were first required to disclose ingredients. It is what tobacco companies said when they were subpoenaed to disclose the 900 odd chemicals, additives and ingredients contained in a cigarette. None of these companies went out of business. It is time for disclosure by the SRI industry. The planet and its people deserve no less, and anything less than full transparency is unfair to conscientious investors who entrust their savings to these funds.

Export Credit Agencies Explained

From ECA Watch

What they are, how they impact development, the environment and human rights, and what the international reform campaign is doing about it.

Introduction:
What are ECAs?
Export Credit Agencies and Investment Insurance Agencies, commonly known as ECAs, are public agencies that provide government-backed loans, guarantees, credits and insurance to private corporations from their home country to do business abroad, particularly in the financially and politically risky developing world. Most industrialized nations have at least one ECA, which is usually an official or quasi-official branch of their government.

Today, ECAs are collectively among the largest sources of public financial support for foreign corporate involvement in industrial projects in the developing world. For example, ECAs are estimated to support twice the amount of oil, gas and mining projects as do all Multilateral Development Banks such as the World Bank Group. Half of all new greenhouse gas-emitting industrial projects in developing countries have some form of ECA support. ECAs often back such projects even though the World Bank Group and other multilateral banks find them too risky and potentially harmful to support.

What are the Impacts of these ECAs?
In recent years ECAs are estimated to have supported between US $50 - $70 billion annually in what are called "medium and long-term transactions," a great portion of which are large industrial and infrastructure projects in developing countries. Many of these projects have very serious environmental and social impacts. For example, ECAs finance greenhouse gas-emitting power plants, large scale dams, mining projects, road development in pristine tropical forests, oil pipelines, chemical and industrial facilities, forestry and plantation schemes, to name a few.

Because most of these projects are high risk due to their environmental, political, social and cultural impacts, most would not come to life without the support and financial backing of ECAs. Hence, ECAs are strategic development linchpins that play an enormous part in the harmful impacts of corporate globalization.

Undercutting progress, violating laws... Most ECAs only recently adopted environmental policies that benchmark against those of the World Bank Group and regional development banks (like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank). These policies resulted from an agreed set of recommendations, dubbed the "Common Approaches," which was brokered in December, 2003 at the Export Credit Group of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, France.

The environmental policies of the regional development banks have been criticized for their weaknesses, and the World Bank Group seems poised to weaken its own policies, too. Hence, weak ECA standards are benchmarked against weak regional development bank or World Bank standards, with precious little global leadership to point to.

Meanwhile, the Common Approaches agreement is rife with loopholes. For example, it states that ECA-backed projects should "in all cases" comply with World Bank, regional development bank and host country standards, unless an ECA "finds it neccessary" to apply lower standards.

The lack of adequate environmental and social policies and associated professional staff to perform due diligence also results in ECA projects that contravene the international environmental, human rights and other treaties and agreements to which these ECAs' own governments are party.

Fueling a race to the bottom... ECAs help corporations from within their own country expand into the developing world, and as a result they compete intensely with ECAs from other countries that do the same. They are quick to back projects that other ECAs and multilateral development banks will refuse on environmental and social grounds. This creates a "race to the bottom," that encourages ECA support of projects with weak or no project environmental or social safeguards.

One of the best examples of the race to the bottom is the Three Gorges Dam in China: This project of 1.8 million people, the flooding of millions of hectares of prime farmland, multi-billion dollar cost overruns, and corruption. In 1996, the German, Swiss and Canadian ECAs raced with one another to help finance this project, even though the World Bank and US Export Import Bank declined to provide support on environmental grounds. Now growing internal opposition in China is calling for a scaling down and even a halt to the gigantic dam.

Little transparency and contempt for affected communities...Another characteristic of ECAs is a wholesale lack of public disclosure of the impacts of their projects. The Common Approaches do not require ECAs to consult with affected communities and civil society in the development of the projects they finance. This lack of public discourse runs counter to decades of experience in the field of sustainable development and is antagonistic to democratic principles. This gaping hole in policy is suspect since ECAs back projects that affect people's health, environment, and their ability to maintain a sustainable local livelihood. In so doing, ECAs place the desires of private corporations and their own economic gain above the rights of citizens to protect their lives and environment.

Corruption...According to Transparency International, "Bribing foreign officials in order to secure overseas contracts for their exports has become a widespread practice in industrial countries, particularly in certain sectors such as exports of military equipment and public works. Normally these contracts are guaranteed by government - owned or - supported Export Credit Insurance (ECI) schemes (HERMES in Germany, COFACE in France, DUCROIRE in Belgium, ECGD in the UK)."

Crushing debt...ECAs for the most part also have no developmental mandate or obligations, yet they account for the single biggest component of developing country debt, consisting in 1996 some 24% of total debt and 56% of debt owed to official agencies. While proper debt management can lead to positive development impacts, ECAs often push countries to create debt to pay back loans for projects that are inconsistent with the goals of sustainable development, that have design weaknesses, and that are associated with corruption. Thus, to the extent that excessive or inappropriate developing country debt loads shackles the sustainable development process in these countries, ECAs are in large part responsible.

Arms transfers and human rights abuses...ECAs-backed projects are too-often associated with human right abuses in developing countries. For example, large hydro-electric projects can displace tens or hundreds of thousands of people (close to 1.9 million people in the case of the Three Gorges Dam), innundate vast areas of fertile farmland, and submerge historically and culturally significant sites. Typically, the people resettled are never fairly or adequately compensated, and are forced to live in unfamiliar cultural surroundings and living conditions that are worse than they had before.

ECAs are also frequently involved in supporting the export of arms and military equipment to war-torn countries, for example, UK-made Hawk fighter jets or US-made Black Hawk helicopters that are exported to countries like Indonesia and Columbia. Once out of the control of the exporters' hands and into the control of the government, these arms are potentially used to kill innocent people and otherwise violate human rights. Moreover, ECA-backed arms transfers are typically onerous debt-producing transactions for countries from the start because they are "non-productive expenditures" that are not associated with economically productive activities that can contribute to debt repayment. Hence, in addition to fostering human rights abuses, these arms transfers can create a vicious cycle that can weaken a country's economic health and in turn fuel more conflict.

Increasing risks they were designed to protect against...The ECAs' "race to the bottom" does more than harm the environment and human communities; it also results in project standards that are so low or non-existent that their absence increases some of the very political risks against which these public agencies were designed to protect. A specific example: the Antamina mine in Peru, insured by the Canadian ECA, Export Development Corporation, experienced civil disturbances such as organized picketing, blockades and strikes that target the project due to its negative impact on local peoples' fishing areas and livelihoods. Another example: ECA backing for the sale of military aircraft to Indonesia, absent adequate controls over their use, contributed to its military and political instability. As a 22 September 1999 "Financial Times" editorial pointed out, careless industrialized country export credit agencies share a major responsibility for "Violence in East Timor and economic disaster in Indonesia." ECAs' support of projects that exacerbate the very risks they were designed to protect against can be compared to a flu medicine that spreads influenza.

Assuming no responsibility...When a country's ECA lacks adequate safeguards and due diligence, which leads to project failures and heightened risks, it is often other branches of their respective governments that must respond. For example, countries' foreign ministries and militaries may be called in to help quell uprising resulting in part from local opposition to ECA-backed projects. Countries' federal treasuries may ultimately cover financial losses stemming from claims by failed ECA project sponsors. The fact that the political and financial cost of project failures and resultant external impacts is borne by parties other than the ECAs and their corporate clients is an indication of a moral hazard that encourages ECAs' harmful activities to continue.

Thanks to ECA support, private commercial banks can shirk much of their responsibilities as well. As a Midland Bank executive in charge of arms deals once described, "You see, before we advance monies to a company, we always insist on any funds being covered by the [UK] Export Credit Guarantee Department...We can't lose. After 90 days, if the Iraqis haven't coughed up, the company gets paid instead by the British Government. Either way, we recover our loan, plus interest of course. Its beautiful."

For their part, ECAs continue to resist change, managing to antagonize other government officials and agencies, including even those sympathetic of the process of corporate globalization. According to European Union Trade Secretary, Pascal Lamy: "I too am frustrated with the ECAs' lack of progress in adopting common environmental policies. Every time any of them move forward a millimeter, they stop to see if anybody else moved."

Indeed, ECAs even resist the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the countries they represent. For example, since 1996 the G-8 has issued three separate mandates for ECA environmental policy reform, and all have gone unfulfilled.

Isolating themselves...ECAs insist that they should not have adopt the same level of environmental and social safeguard policies that other mature international organizations have long accepted as normal, common practice. ECAs argue that they shouldn't have to apply such safeguards because their unique mission makes them different from other international finance institutions like the World Bank Group, different from aid agencies, and different from domestic agencies in their own countries. However, in distancing themselves from virtually every other kind of public agency in the world, ECAs isolate themselves, alienate others, and present a clearer target for citizens and government officials that are concerned about the negative impacts of corporate globalization.

Reason for hope... Despite the slow progress among ECAs in accepting reform, there are hopeful signs on the horizon for change. For example, the Common Approaches, while seriously flawed, represents the first agreement among ECAs on the need for minimal environmental policies. Some individual ECA policies go a bit further. The UK's ECGD, for example, has a set of proactive business principles that extends beyond the environment to encompass sustainable development and human rights concerns. France's ECA, COFACE, will soon discloses all non-military transactions over ten million Euro, and not just those that have high environmental impact.

The ECAs of Japan, Canada and the U.S. now have independent mechanisms for citizens to bring claims of policy violations. NGO engagement of ECAs on specific projects has resulted in some of these projects being shelved and others significantly improved. Still, there remains strong resistance to change by ECAs in many leading countries, and, where change has occurred, close monitoring is required to ensure adequate implementation.

The NGO Campaign
Since 1996, NGOs from many countries have joined forces in an international campaign to reform ECAs. The goals and demands of the campaign are best described in the Jakarta Declaration for Reform of Official Export Credit and Investment Insurance Agencies, endorsed by over 300 NGOs following a May 2000 international ECA reform strategy session in Jakarta, Indonesia. While focusing on the impacts of ECAs in Indonesia, the Jakarta Declaration has a global "call for reform" that includes:

Transparency, public access to information and consultation by ECAs and the OECD ECA Working Party;

Binding common environmental and social guidelines and standards that are no lower and less rigorous than existing international procedures and standards for public international finance such as those of the World Bank Group and OECD Development Assistance Committee;

The adoption of explicit human rights criteria guiding the operations of ECAs;

The adoption of binding criteria and guidelines to end ECA abetting of corruption;

The adoption of a commitment only to finance economically productive investments;

The adoption of comprehensive relief for developing countries for ECA debt.

What you can do:
You can join the international campaign to reform export credit agencies! Bookmark this website and come back for late-breaking news, action alerts and contact fellow campaigners near you.

Invisible Violence

Ignoring murder in post-coup Haiti
By Jeb Sprague
From Extra!
2006

In an eight-minute report in which she rode in a U.N. armored personnel carrier and extolled the bravery of U.N. soldiers, NPR[Naional Public Radio] correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro cited “human rights organizations” as saying that “things have improved since the Aristide days.”

The NPR report interviewed two members of the U.N. force, one U.S. police trainer, one Haitian police official and Gérard Latortue, the head of Haiti’s unelected interim government. It neglected to quote any victims of the violence perpetrated by the Latortue regime or any human rights organizations critical of the governmental-sponsored violence—perhaps because they might have pointed out that such violence actually increased dramatically during Latortue’s time in power.

After Haiti’s democratically elected leader, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was ousted in February 2004, the United States, Canada and France put into place an interim government made up of members of the opposition. Latortue, a wealthy Haitian-American, was installed as the head of this government.

On April 30, 2004, the United Nations, under U.N. Resolution 1542, established the U.N. Stabilization Mission to Haiti, known as MINUSTAH, grouping more than 9,000 military and police personnel from more than 40 countries under the leadership of Brazil and Canada. For more than 26 months, the interim government used former members of Haiti’s disbanded military, along with U.N.-trained paramilitary police, to crack down on the slum-dwelling supporters of the ousted government and of Fanmi Lavalas, the political party which had voted Aristide into office. During this period, the mainstream U.S. press observed a virtual blackout on the state-sponsored violence perpetrated by the U.S.-backed interim Haitian government.

Aristide under fire
For more than two-and-a-half years prior to the 2004 coup, paramilitary rebels led by former Haitian police chief Guy Philippe had attacked Haiti from bases in the Dominican Republic. They killed civilians and government officials, targeted police stations, Haiti’s largest dam and even the presidential palace, all sparking further violence. Government aid embargoes by both the Clinton and Bush administrations further stripped bare the foreign aid–dependent Haitian state.

Opposition-aligned political parties and anti-government “civil society” organizations, however, received tens of millions of dollars in training and support funds during that time from U.S., Canadian and European aid agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Canadian International Development Agency. With the Haitian currency, the gourde, plunging in value, poverty-stricken Haitians struggled under mounting prices and political destabilization.

Even under these conditions, the Aristide government continued to invest in education, medical training and a program to fight human trafficking, albeit with a yearly budget of approximately $300 million for a population of about 8 million. Daring to resist IMF calls to privatize its public industries while raising the minimum wage for Haitian garment industry workers and bringing suit against France for $21 billion in colonial reparations, the Aristide government accumulated powerful enemies.

Further political polarization resulted in violence, doggedly covered by the mainstream U.S. press throughout Aristide’s second administration (2/01–2/04). One of Aristide’s most widely publicized North American critics counted approximately 212 politically motivated deaths during Aristide’s second government, attributing 50 of those killings to the opposition (Michael Deibert, Notes From the Last Testament).

Murderous operations
By contrast, a National Lawyers Guild investigation documented that “800 bodies” had been “dumped and buried” by the morgue in Port-au-Prince in just the first week following the coup; the usual number under Aristide was less than 100 a month. The University of Miami Human Rights Investigation, a 10-day survey during the interim government, discovered piles of corpses in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince—victims of state security and paramilitary forces. World Bank official Carolyn Antsey told this reporter that “thousands died” as a result of the February 2004 events.

Alternative press agencies, human rights organizations and independent investigations, including Amnesty International, the New York University School of Law, L’Agence Haïtienne de Presse (AHP) and Dr. Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health, reported a concerted wave of interim government violence and persecution, while much of the U.S. mainstream press remained virtually silent.

Throughout 2004 and 2005, reports from the non-profit alternative news service Haiti Information Project (HIP) uncovered killings of Lavalas supporters carried out by members of the interim government’s Haitian National Police (HNP). HIP also documented murderous operations, with victims often shot in the head, committed by the Brazilian and Jordanian contingents of MINUSTAH. The University of Miami Human Rights Investigation, conducted by Boston immigration lawyer Thomas Griffin in mid-November 2004, documented mass murder by the HNP, mass graves, cramped prisons, no-medicine hospitals, corpse-strewn streets and maggot-infested morgues—the interim regime’s means of dealing with the supporters of the ousted Aristide government. Nine months after Aristide was removed, Griffin wrote,

U.S. officials blame the crisis on armed gangs in the poor neighborhoods, not the official abuses and atrocities, nor the unconstitutional ouster of the elected president. Their support for the interim government is not surprising, as top officials, including the minister of justice, worked for U.S. government projects that undermined their elected predecessors. . . . U.N. police and soldiers, unable to speak the language of most Haitians. . . resort to heavy-handed incursions into the poorest neighborhoods that force intermittent peace at the expense of innocent residents. The injured prefer to die at home untreated rather than risk arrest at the hospital. Those who do reach the hospital soak in puddles of their own blood, ignored by doctors.

A few mainstream outlets occasionally reported on individual incidents of violence perpetrated by the interim government. The Miami Herald (3/1/05) reported: “Haitian police opened fire on peaceful protesters Monday, killing two, wounding others and scattering an estimated 2,000 people marching through the capital [on February 28] to mark the first anniversary of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s ouster. . . . Peacekeepers, whose orders are to support the police, stood by as the attack occurred. The police quickly disappeared, leaving the bodies on the street.”

On March 24, 2005, the Associated Press wrote: “Police opened fire Thursday during a street march in Haiti’s capital to demand the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Witnesses said at least one person was killed. . . . Associated Press reporters saw police firing into the air and toward protesters.” Another AP dispatch (4/27/05) reported, “Police fired on protesters demanding the release of detainees loyal to Haiti’s ousted president Wednesday, killing at least five demonstrators.” On June 5, 2005, Reuters wrote, “As many as 25 people were killed in police raids on Friday and Saturday in the slums of Haiti’s capital.”

In one of the most graphic accounts to find its way into the mainstream press, the Miami Herald wrote (9/1/05): The police carried assault rifles and wore black masks. The gang they accompanied had brand-new machetes. According to witnesses and U.N. investigators, they stormed into a soccer match during halftime, ordered everyone to lie on the ground and began shooting and hacking people to death in broad daylight as several thousand spectators fled for their lives. . . . Some were handcuffed and shot in the head by police, witnesses said. Others were hacked to death.

Missing the story
But such forthright reporting was exceptional, particularly in the most prominent news outlets. Studying the last two years of coverage by three leading mainstream U.S. newspapers—the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and USA Today—along with National Public Radio, Extra! found that 98.6 percent of the pieces related to Haiti ignored the role of state-sponsored violence and persecution. The few that did mention them provided a few isolated examples, usually working to discredit the documented incidents as partisan political allegations. The human rights reports citing a high number of political prisoners and killings by the interim government’s HNP were rarely cited by the mainstream press.

Following the 2004 coup, press accounts based on interviews with interim government, MINUSTAH and U.S. government officials ensured that an official version of events prevailed. These media outlets demonized Lavalas supporters as “gangs” and “supporters of violence,” and justified the foreign-backed destabilization and overthrow of the constitutional government.

The New York Times published 642 pieces that mentioned Haiti between March 1, 2004 and May 1, 2006—close to one a day. But only four dealt with the violence against and persecution of members and supporters of the former government. While the New York Times reported on the imprisonment of Father Gerard Jean-Juste, a pro-Aristide priest imprisoned for political reasons, it failed to investigate the nearly 1,000 other political prisoners, many underfed and living in dilapidated jails for more than two years without being charged.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times had 244 pieces mentioning Haiti from March 1, 2004 to May 1, 2006, but only five discussed—briefly—the violent persecution of Lavalas supporters. At the same time, the paper managed to cover every single death of a MINUSTAH soldier.

Well over half of all the quotes in L.A. Times articles dealing entirely with Haiti came from official sources. One L.A. Times article covered the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune (7/5/05), but failed to mention the evidentiary weakness of the charges leveled against him by a U.S.-funded NGO (Baltimore Sun, 5/29/05), or that there were nearly a thousand other political prisoners languishing in the jails of the interim government.

With a smaller international section, USA Today had 13 articles specifically on Haiti between March 1, 2004 and May 1, 2006. Two were critical of the Latortue government, citing its involvement in human rights violations. One of these was followed by a rebuttal from Roger Noriega, then assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and a primary architect of the 2004 coup. USA Today’s pieces also showed an extreme source bias toward U.S. government and U.S.-installed interim government officials. In its articles, seven U.S. government officials, one U.N. official and 16 Haitian government officials were quoted, compared with only one human rights official and one member of Lavalas.

NPR, according to its website, had approximately 79 stories covering Haiti between March 1, 2004 and May 1, 2006. Only three mentioned violence against Lavalas supporters, all of these placing the majority of the blame on pro -Aristide “political and gang” violence, failing to interview victims of state-sponsored or U.N. violence. The role of MINUSTAH and the HNP was almost completely ignored.

The introductions of sources in articles covering Haiti illustrates the reliance on official sources: “diplomats say,” “an anonymous diplomat says,” “a source involved in the palace brainstorming,” “a U.S. diplomat in Port-au-Prince said,” “U.N. officials say,” “Haitian police say,” “USAID workers explain,” “a member of Haiti’s electoral council said,” “the new commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force assured,” “council members said,” “interim officials say,” “State Department officials say,” etc. Rarely, if ever, do we read what the wounded, imprisoned and exiled say—the testimonies that don’t sustain the official story.