[p2p-research] Fwd: ZNet Daily Commentary: Zinn & Haiti By William Blum

[Michel Bauwens]

interesting background to haiti in the middle of the text,

Michel

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Zinn & Haiti

February 9, 2010 By *William Blum*

William Blum's ZSpace Page<http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/williamblum>/
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"In America you can say anything you want - as long as it doesn't have any
effect." - Paul Goodman

Progressive activists and writers continually bemoan the fact that the news
they generate and the opinions they express are consistently ignored by the
mainstream media, and thus kept from the masses of the American people. This
disregard of progressive thought is tantamount to a definition of the
mainstream media. It doesn't have to be a conspiracy; it's a matter of who
owns the mainstream media and the type of journalists they hire - men and
women who would like to keep their jobs; so it's more insidious than a
conspiracy, it's what's built into the system, it's how the system works.
The disregard of the progressive world is of course not total; at times some
of that world makes too good copy to ignore, and, on rare occasions,
progressive ideas, when they threaten to become very popular, have to be
countered.

So it was with Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Here's
Barry Gewen an editor at the New York Times Book Review, June 5, 2005
writing of Zinn's book and others like it:

There was a unifying vision, but it was simplistic. Since the victims and
losers were good, it followed that the winners were bad. From the point of
view of downtrodden blacks, America was racist; from the point of view of
oppressed workers, it was exploitative; from the point of view of conquered
Hispanics and Indians, it was imperialistic. There was much to condemn in
American history, little or nothing to praise. ... Whereas the Europeans who
arrived in the New World were genocidal predators, the Indians who were
already there believed in sharing and hospitality (never mind the profound
cultural differences that existed among them), and raped Africa was a
continent overflowing with kindness and communalism (never mind the profound
cultural differences that existed there).

One has to wonder whether Mr. Gewen thought that all the victims of the
Holocaust were saintly and without profound cultural differences.

Prominent American historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. once said of Zinn: "I
know he regards me as a dangerous reactionary. And I don't take him very
seriously. He's a polemicist, not a historian."

In the obituaries that followed Zinn's death, this particular defamation was
picked up around the world, from the New York Times, Washington Post, and
the leading American wire services to the New Zealand Herald and Korea
Times.

Regarding reactionaries and polemicists, it is worth noting that Mr.
Schlesinger, as a top advisor to President John F. Kennedy, played a key
role in the overthrow of Cheddi Jagan, the democratically-elected
progressive prime minister of British Guiana (now Guyana). In 1990, at a
conference in New York City, Schlesinger publicly apologized to Jagan,
saying: "I felt badly about my role thirty years ago. I think a great
injustice was done to Cheddi Jagan." 1 This is to Schlesinger's credit,
although the fact that Jagan was present at the conference may have awakened
his conscience after 30 years. Like virtually all the American historians of
the period who were granted attention and respect by the mainstream media,
Schlesinger was a cold warrior. Those like Zinn who questioned the basic
suppositions of the Cold War abroad, and capitalism at home, were regarded
as polemicists.

One of my favorite Howard Zinn quotes: "The chief problem in historical
honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important
data. The definition of 'important', of course, depends on one's values." 2
A People's History and his other writings can be seen as an attempt to make
up for the omissions and under-emphases of America's dark side in American
history books and media.

Haiti, Aristide, and ideology

It's a good thing the Haitian government did virtually nothing to help its
people following the earthquake; otherwise it would have been condemned as
"socialist" by Fox News, Sarah Palin, the teabaggers, and other
right-thinking Americans. The last/only Haitian leader strongly committed to
putting the welfare of the Haitian people before that of the domestic and
international financial mafia was President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Being of
a socialist persuasion, Aristide was, naturally, kept from power by the
United States - twice; first by Bill Clinton, then by George W. Bush, the
two men appointed by President Obama to head the earthquake relief effort.
Naturally.

Aristide, a reformist priest, was elected to the presidency, then ousted in
a military coup eight months later in 1991 by men on the CIA payroll.
Ironically, the ousted president wound up in exile in the United States. In
1994 the Clinton White House found itself in the awkward position of having
to pretend - because of all their rhetoric about "democracy" - that they
supported the democratically-elected Aristide's return to power. 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 after his term ended he would not remain in office to make up
the time lost because of the coup; that he would not seek to help the poor
at the expense of the rich, literally; 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
starvation wages, literally. If Aristide had thoughts about breaking the
agreement forced upon him, he had only to look out his window - US troops
were stationed in Haiti for the remainder of his term. 3

On February 28, 2004, during the Bush administration, American military and
diplomatic personnel arrived at the home of Aristide, who had been elected
to the presidency once again in 2002, to inform him that his private
American security agents must either leave immediately to return to the
United States or fight and die; that the remaining 25 of the American
security agents hired by the Haitian government, who were to arrive the next
day, had been blocked by the United States from coming; that foreign and
Haitian rebels were nearby, heavily armed, determined and ready to kill
thousands of people in a bloodbath. Aristide was then pressured into signing
a "letter of resignation" before being kidnaped and flown to exile in Africa
by the United States. 4 The leaders and politicians of the world who
pontificate endlessly about "democracy" and "self-determination" had
virtually nothing to say about this breathtaking act of international
thuggery. Indeed, France and Canada were active allies of the United States
in pressing Aristide to leave. 5

And then US Secretary of State Colin Powell, in the sincerest voice he could
muster, told the world that Aristide "was not kidnaped. We did not force him
onto the airplane. He went onto the airplane willingly. And that's the
truth." 6 Powell sounded as sincere as he had sounded a year earlier when he
gave the UN his now-famous detailed inventory of the chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons that Saddam Hussein was preparing to use.

Howard Zinn is quoted above saying "The chief problem in historical honesty
is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data."
However, that doesn't mean the American mainstream media don't create or
perpetuate myths. Here's the New York Times two months ago: "Mr. Aristide,
who was overthrown during a 2004 rebellion ..." 7 Now what image does the
word "rebellion" conjure up in your mind? The Haitian people rising up to
throw off the shackles put on them by a dictatorship? Or something staged by
the United States?

Aristide has stated that he was able to determine at that crucial moment
that the "rebels" were white and foreign. 8 But even if they had been
natives, why did Colin Powell not explain why the United States disbanded
Aristide's personal security forces? Why did he not explain why the United
States was not protecting Aristide from the rebels, which the US could have
done with the greatest of ease, without so much as firing a single shot? Nor
did he explain why Aristide would "willingly" give up his presidency.

The massive US military deployment to Haiti in the wake of the earthquake
has been criticized in various quarters as more of an occupation than a
relief mission, with the airport in the capital city now an American
military base, and with American forces blocking various aid missions from
entering the country in order, apparently, to serve Washington's own
logistical agenda. But the large military presence can also serve to
facilitate two items on Washington's political agenda - preventing Haitians
from trying to emigrate by sea to the United States and keeping a lid on the
numerous supporters of Aristide lest they threaten to take power once again.

That which cannot be spoken

"The purpose of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction," writes Fareed
Zakaria, a leading American foreign-policy pundit, editor of Newsweek
magazine's international edition, and Washington Post columnist, referring
to the "underwear bomber", Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and his failed attempt
to blow up a US airliner on Christmas day. "Its real aim is not to kill the
hundreds of people directly targeted but to sow fear in the rest of the
population. Terrorism is an unusual military tactic in that it depends on
the response of the onlookers. If we are not terrorized, then the attack
didn't work. Alas, this one worked very well." 9

Is that not odd? That an individual would try to take the lives of hundreds
of people, including his own, primarily to "provoke an overreaction", or to
"sow fear"? Was there not any kind of deep-seated grievance or resentment
with anything or anyone American being expressed? No perceived wrong he
wished to make right? Nothing he sought to obtain revenge for? Why is the
United States the most common target of terrorists? Such questions were not
even hinted at in Zakaria's article.

At a White House press briefing concerning the same failed terrorist attack,
conducted by Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland
Security John Brennan, veteran reporter Helen Thomas raised a question:

Thomas: "What is really lacking always for us is you don't give the
motivation of why they want to do us harm. ... What is the motivation? We
never hear what you find out on why."

Brennan: "Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton
slaughter of innocents. ... [They] attract individuals like Mr.
Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a
sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted
Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that [they're] able to
attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and
death."

Thomas: "And you're saying it's because of religion?"

Brennan: "I'm saying it's because of an al Qaeda organization that uses the
banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way."

Thomas: "Why?"

Brennan: "I think ... this is a long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined
to carry out attacks here against the homeland."

Thomas: "But you haven't explained why." 10

American officials rarely even make the attempt to explain why. And American
journalists rarely press them to explain why; certainly not like Helen
Thomas does.

And just what is it that has such difficulty crossing the lips of these
officials? It is the idea that anti-American terrorists become anti-American
terrorists to retaliate for what the United States has done to countries or
people close to them or what Israel has done to them with unequivocal
American support.

Osama bin Laden, in an audiotape, also commented about Abdulmutallab: "The
message we wanted you to receive through him is that America shall not dream
about security until we witness it in Palestine." 11

We have as well the recent case of Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a
Jordanian doctor-turned-suicide bomber, who killed seven CIA employees at a
base in Afghanistan December 30. His widow later declared: "I am proud of
him. ... My husband did this against the U.S. invasion." Balawi himself had
written on the Internet: "I have never wished to be in Gaza, but now I wish
to be a ... car bomb that takes the lives of the biggest number of Jews to
hell." 12

It should be noted that the CIA base attacked by Balawi was heavily involved
in the selection of targets for the Agency's remote-controlled aircraft
along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, a program that killed more than 300
people in the previous year. 13

There are numerous examples of terrorists citing American policies as the
prime motivation behind their acts 14, so many that American officials, when
discussing the newest terrorist attack, have to tread carefully to avoid
mentioning the role of US foreign policy; and journalists typically fail to
bring this point home to their reader's consciousness.

It works the same all over the world. In the period of the 1950s to the
1980s in Latin America, in response to a long string of hateful Washington
policies, there were countless acts of terrorism against US diplomatic and
military targets as well as the offices of US corporations.

The US bombing, invasion, occupation and torture in Iraq and Afghanistan,
the bombing of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, and the continuing Israeli-US
genocide against the Palestinians have created an army of new anti-American
terrorists. We'll be hearing from them for a terribly long time. And we'll
be hearing American officials twist themselves into intellectual and moral
knots as they try to avoid confronting these facts.

In his "State of the Union" address on January 27, President Obama said:
"But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down
premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare
for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know." Well, ending
America's many wars would free up enough money to do anything a rational,
humane society would want to do. Eliminating the military budget would pay
for free medical care for everyone. Free university education for everyone.
Creating a government public works project that could provide millions of
decently-paid jobs, like repairing the decrepit infrastructure and healing
the environment to the best of our ability. You can add your own favorite
projects. All covered, just by ending the damn wars. Imagine that.

Notes

1. The Nation, June 4, 1990, pp.763-4 ?

2. "Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian" (1993), p.30 ?

3. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/haiti2.htm ?

4. Statement of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, March 5, 2004, from exile in the
Central African Republic, Pacific News Service (San Francisco); David
Swanson, "What Bush Did to Haiti", January 18, 2010; William Blum, "Rogue
State", pp.219-20) ?

5. Miami Herald, March 1, 2004 ?

6. CNN, March 1, 2004 ?

7. New York Times, November 27, 2009 ?

8. Aristide statement, op. cit. ?

9. Newsweek, January 18, 2010, online January 9 ?

10. White House press briefing, January 7, 2010 ?

11. ABC News, January 25, 2010 ?

12. Associated Press, January 7, 2010 ?

13. Washington Post, January 1, 2010 ?

14. Rogue State, chapter 1, "Why do terrorists keep picking on the United
States?"; this chapter ends in 2005; some later examples can be provided by
the author.



William Blum is the author of:

- Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2

- Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

- West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir

- Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
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