![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
From what I've read so far, Damming the Flood by Peter Hallward is turning out to be one of the best analyses of the 2004 Haitian coup.
An alternative path would be for [Canada] to simply remain committed to the values we hold -- and to try to advocate them in the world -- regardless of the contrary direction the United States might take. [Canadian Ambassador to the US Allan] Gotlieb rejects this approach, suggesting instead that we avoid taking positions aimed at creating "counter-weights to U.S. power." Rather, Canada should simply accept U.S. power as "the dominant feature of the contemporary international order" and avoid asserting positions -- even on morally important issues -- that put us at odds with Washington. Even when the U.S. does things that offend our sensibilities and our sense of justice, Gotlieb would apparently have us keep our eyes cast demurely downward.
So if the United States chooses to invade Iraq, to launch a lawless "war on terror," to start an arms race in space or to obstruct worldwide efforts on climate change, Canada should quietly stand by her man. Similarly, we should avoid supporting causes -- like banning land mines or protecting children in combat zones -- for fear that this sort of "sanctimonious" behaviour might annoy Washington. If we want to disagree with our powerful boyfriend, we should whisper softly in his ear, not embarrass him in public. We should confine ourselves to being the manipulative little woman behind the scenes, using our wiles to get what we want from him and using our position of influence over him as our ticket to status in the outside world.
Leaving aside for a minute any skepticism about the effectiveness of such a role -- whether the manipulative little woman really does manage to influence her man -- there is the aching question of what it means for us as a nation to take on this role.
It is hard to imagine a more demeaning vision for a woman -- or a country.
— Linda McQuaig, Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the U.S. Empire
I'm enjoying this book, although I think it suffers from an unwillingness to view Canada as a nation that pursues an imperialist agenda over those nations (such as Haiti) where it has the strength to play that role. In McQuaig's worldview, when we're good, it's because Canada is Good! And when we're bad, it's because we're being sycophantic puppets of the U.S.
All this has created real confusion about what constitutes peacekeeping, and whether what is presented as peacekeeping has much to do with peace any more. It also raises questions of whether peacekeeping -- carried out either by the UN or by NATO with UN authorization -- is even a beneficial activity, or is simply a cloak for Western powers to pursue their own agendas with a veneer of international legitimacy.
Let's start by admitting that these are extremely difficult questions. Certainly, the UN has been used to further the interests of Western powers. This can be seen in Haiti, where, as noted earlier, a UN peacekeeping force helped prop up a brutal regime put in place by Washington, immediately after Washington had removed the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004. The role of the UN in this blatantly undemocratic "regime change" -- supported by Canada -- raises important questions, partly because Canadian officials seemed to regard these actions as justifiable under the principle of "responsibility to protect," a doctrine promoted by Canada and endorsed by world leaders at the UN General Assembly in 2005.
Under this doctrine, the nations of the world, acting through the UN, are considered to have a responsibility to intervene to protect civilian populations at risk of suffering severe human rights abuses such as genocide or ethnic cleansing at the hands of their own governments. The notion of the world acting collectively to protect helpless people in desperate situations has an obvious appeal. But it is also fraught with problems. It undermines a key UN principle -- the sovereignty of each nation -- by allowing nations to collectively violate the sovereignty of another nation, in the name of preventing it from carrying out severe abuses. But which abuses will be deemed worthy of intervention? What other factors may motivate the interveners? This "responsibility to protect" doctrine, for instance, could have been invoked to justify the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. And, indeed, among the key supporters of the doctrine (along with Lloyd Axworthy) has been Michael Ignatieff, who supported the invasion of Iraq as a necessary action to unseat a brutal dictator.
Disturbingly, Canada appears to have relied on the notion of "responsibility to protect" to justify the removal of Aristide's democratically-elected government. [...] "If you've been to Haiti you've seen the poor conditions in which Haitians are living and anyway from what I've seen personally there, I think that if there is one place where the principles of this 'responsibility to protect' would apply around the world, it's Haiti..." [Denis] Paradis told an interviewer in September 2004. "[I]sn't the role of the international community to make sure that the people can survive in a country, can have an economic well-being?"
— Linda McQuaig, Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the U.S. Empire
Since I have a moment, I want to say that Canada and the IDB and other donors have been targeting the rural sector in a way that is supporting infrastructure, for example, working on environmental degradation and promoting export crops and aquaculture farms. These are all worthwhile goals.
What I'm trying to get at is more of a peasant path to development that would prioritize food security. Some policies in that direction would be aimed at reducing the gap, for example, between capitalist farmers and peasant farm sectors; adapting existing modern technologies to the needs of the peasant sector given the conditions there; creating more peasant-friendly, appropriate sustainable technologies; and also, as part of this, promoting broader social and political conditions to make rural peasant production sustainable and productive.
What I mean is that it was clear to donors in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s that the liberalization of Haiti's markets and the lowering of protective tariffs on rice, for instance—the country's most basic staple—would devastate Haitian rice producers. This was well known. USAID came out with two reports, one in 1987 and another one in 1995, that said that if they lowered their tariffs, it would basically bring a loss of about $15 million a year to rice-growing peasants, further reducing their already poor standard of living. That was in a USAID report. In other words, we are advancing macro-economic policies that we know will impoverish these sectors. So maybe a “do no harm” policy would be a good way to start, regarding not decimating it further and pushing people out of rural areas into the slums of Port-au-Prince, where of course there is no employment.
The problem, obvious in retrospect, was the premise on which his entire theory rested: the idea that before healing can happen, everything that existed before needs to be wiped out. [Electro-shock experimenter Ewen] Cameron was sure that if he blasted away at the habits, patterns and memories of his patients, he would eventually arrive at that pristine blank slate. But no matter how doggedly he shocked, drugged and disoriented, he never got there. The opposite proved true: the more he blasted, the more shattered his patients became. Their minds weren't "clean;" rather, they were a mess, their memories fractured, their trust betrayed.
Disaster capitalists share this same inability to distinguish between destruction and creation, between hurting and healing. It's a feeling I had frequently when I was in Iraq, nervously scanning the scarred landscape for the next explosion. Fervent believers in the redemptive powers of shock, the architects of the American-British invasion imagined that their use of force would be so stunning, so overwhelming, that Iraqis would go into a kind of suspended animation, much like the one described in the [CIA interrogation] Kubark manual. In that window of opportunity, Iraq's invaders would slip in another set of shocks -- these ones economic -- which would create a model free-market democracy on the blank slate that was post-invasion Iraq.
But there was no blank slate, only rubble and shattered, angry people -- who, when they resisted, were blasted with more shocks, some of them based on those experiments performed on Gail Kastner all those years ago. "We're really good at going out and breaking things. But the day I get to spend more time here working on construction rather than combat, that will be a very good day," General Peter W. Chiarelli, commander of the U.S. Army's First Cavalry Division, observed a year and a half after the official end of the war. That day never came. Like Cameron, Iraq's shock doctors can destroy, but they can't seem to rebuild.
— Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine
The Prime Minister warned the Opposition yesterday that if they keep calling for an inquiry into Brian Mulroney's dealings with lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber, he would be forced to dig up Liberal skeletons too.
In comments that came close to a dare, Stephen Harper taunted the Official Opposition, refusing to reopen the Airbus file and arguing that it could set a precedent leading to probes into the business affairs of former Liberal leaders.
— "Don't play with fire, Harper tells critics", The Globe and Mail
Good god. What is wrong with these people?
Afterward: And wasn't it one of the Conservative campaign promises to bring accountability to Canadian politics?
Canada has decided to sidestep the corrupt Afghan government and ensure the safety of Canadian soldiers by paying Afghan police directly, in cash.
— "Canadians pay to bolster Afghan security", The Globe and Mail
Don't worry. There's no chance that kind of situation will be abused.
A prominent U.S. refugee advocate has been arrested by Canadian authorities as she was helping 12 Haitians seeking asylum in Canada.
Janet Hinshaw-Thomas, a director of Pennsylvania based Prime - Ecumenical Commitment to Refugees, was taken into custody around noon yesterday at the St. Bernard de Lacolle border crossing.
According to her Montreal lawyer, this is the first time in Canada a section of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act of June 2002 has been invoked against a human rights worker.
Section 117 makes it a crime to "organize, induce, aid or abet" the entry into Canada of persons who do not have a visa or passport.
[...]
Montreal lawyer Mitchell Goldberg, who is acting for Hinshaw-Thomas, said he knows of no other cases when "someone acting for humanitarian motives has been arrested" under the act. "It was designed to deter smugglers and people who are trafficking, not people who are saving lives.
The rights of non-native Canadians would have been threatened had the government not opposed an indigenous rights declaration that the United Nations overwhelmingly approved yesterday, Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said.
The Universal Declaration of Indigenous Peoples' Rights is inconsistent with Canadian legal tradition, and signing on to it would have given native groups an unfair advantage, the minister said.
— Montreal Gazette (A CanWest Global paper)
Apparently we're one of only four countries to vote no. Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand.
The police admission came after several days of accusations from the protesters and denials from police that the three men were agents trying to provoke a confrontation between protesters and police.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day continued to dismiss calls for a public inquiry on Friday, saying the RCMP has a formal complaints process.
"The thing that was interesting in this particular incident, three people in question were spotted by protesters because were not engaging in violence," Day said.
"They were being encouraged to throw rocks and they were not throwing rocks, it was the protesters who were throwing the rocks. That's the irony of this."
On Friday, politicians and protesters alike were still demanding answers about the incident.
— CBC News
This from a man who believes that dinosaurs and humans lived together.
So, um. After three days of lying about having cops among the protesters, why should we believe the new story that the police weren't there to instigate violence, but to investigate those urging violence?
This was the front-page story on the Globe yesterday, and I think it has really angered the public. But I agree with David Coles that that this story is eclipsing reporting about the SPP, which is something that the public needs to hear about.
Quebec provincial police admitted Thursday that three of their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators during the protest at the North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que.
However, the police force denied allegations its undercover officers were there on Monday to provoke the crowd and instigate violence.
— "Quebec police admit they went undercover at Montebello protest" CBC News
I've seen a few people post about this. I went to one of the Toronto Stop the SPP organizational meetings, but knew that I wasn't going to be able to take the buses to Montebello (I was just back from Haiti at the time). Sadly, I think only one person on my friends list posted about actually going.
Apparently, some of the "protesters intent on violence" are strongly suspected of being undercover cops, and there's some good video footage and conversation around the topic. I especially like this picture that shows the police wear the same shoes as the violent protesters.
Also: a CBC news story. And the cops deny it.
The Harper government has been told to stop referring to "fighting terrorism" and the Sept. 11 attacks, and to banish the phrase “cut and run” from its vocabulary if it is to persuade a skeptical public that the military mission in Afghanistan is worth pursuing.
A public-opinion report says only 40 per cent of respondents across Canada, and almost none in Quebec, support the deployment. To change the perceptions, it recommends putting the emphasis on "rebuilding," "enhancing the lives of women and children," and "peacekeeping."
— "Change tune on war, PM told", The Globe and Mail
Last April, I heard a speech about Canadians' investment in the peacekeeper myth -- that we've been so proud, in the past, about our role as peacekeepers, that we've willing to support a great deal of stuff described as peacekeeping even though we really don't do peacekeeping any more. Most Canadians don't seem to be aware that we have only a fraction of the peacekeepers we once had (I'm going by memory, but I seem to recall that we have something like 80 peacekeepers with the UN, whereas we sent 1250 to Bosnia).
Heck, we're not even peacekeeping in Haiti (although we talk as if we are). MINUSTAH is primarily made up of Brazilian and Jordanian soldiers.
The report to Foreign Affairs was prepared last month by The Strategic Counsel . It paints a bleak picture of weak public support for the military mission, for which the firm blames "unbalanced, mostly negative" media coverage of the war and misperceptions about the mission's purpose.
Only 40 per cent of Canadians support the mission, according to Strategic Counsel data. And the firm says the public views information from Ottawa "through a thick lens of cynicism."
"They feel that much of what government says is propaganda, intended simply to appeal to the voting public and to spin stories in a positive manner," the report points out.
Um. So the report recommends spinning the story as "peacekeeping" and "rebuilding" because the public is cynical of spin? That's... interesting logic.
I watched Life and Debt, a documentary about how IMF and World Bank funding works, and how the goal of that funding is government policy change to allow first world countries to access the markets and resources of third world countries; economic sustainability just isn't their problem.
The same now seems to be true of aid. Canada has committed $520 million dollars in aid to Haiti (up to 2011). I want to believe that when we say "aid", we mean "charitable gifts to another country, because they're suffering and we can afford to help." That doesn't seem to be the goal of government aid; instead aid organizations, like CIDA, are deeply involved in getting governments to agree to free trade and globalization programmes.
I think we should stop calling it "aid"; we're simply paying good money to buy the government policies of other countries, with the expectation that we're going to get return on our investment. I mean, we don't call the stock market "aid"; we call it ownership.
Our findings show that human rights violations were common in the greater Port-au-Prince area in the post-Aristide period. Our estimates suggest that about 8000 individuals were murdered, with almost half of the perpetrators identified as political actors. Sexual abuse, especially among children, was also a frequent occurrence. Our data suggest that 35 000 women and girls were raped during the time period examined; more than half of the victims were children. Death threats, threats of sexual violence, and threats of physical violence were also common occurrences. Criminals, the Haitian National Police (and other governmental security forces), and UN peacekeepers were the most identified perpetrators of threats of bodily harm. Brazilian and Jordanian peacekeepers were the most frequently identified among foreign soldiers.
-- "Human rights abuse and other criminal violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: a random survey of households" in The Lancet, a well-respected British medical journal
The article acknowledges that it doesn't have pre- and post-coup comparative numbers. Just to put 8000 murders in context, Wikipedia pegs the population of the whole country at 8,528,000 and the population of Port-au-Prince at 1,277,000.
Canada and the US created the Haitian National Police during the interim government, and its training is a big part of our "aid" to the country.
