|
February
13, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
February
8, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ashcroft
the Bigot
Molly
Secours
Racism
and Real Estate
Wole Akande
World
Economic Forum:
The Aftermath
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Dita
Sari Tells Reebok
to "Shove It"
February
7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban's
War on Chess
John Chuckman
Howdee,
Dick!
Tariq
Ali
Mullahs
and Heretics
February
6, 2002
Amira
Hass
On
the Edge of the
Non-Violent Demonstrations
Vivian
Berger
Sentenced
to Rape
Vladimir Georgiyev
Russian Intelligence:
War on Iraq Begins in Sept.
Tom Turnipseed
"Axis
of Evil" a Cover for Corporate Corruption?
David
Vest
The
Enron Creature
February
5, 2002
Norman
Madarasz
Dispatch
from Pôrto Alegre
Tom Malinowski
What
to do with
Our "Detainees"?
Dita Sari
Why
I Rejected the
Reebok Human Rights Award
February
4, 2002
Eric Miller/Beth
Daley
Five
Weapons Systems
That Bilk the Taxpayers
Kenneth
Roth
Dear
Condoleezza,
You've Misstated the
Geneva Convention
Robert
Jensen
The
Occupation Must End
Shahid
Alam
How
Different Are
Islamic Societies?
David
Vest
Everybody
Says I Loathe You
John Chuckman
American
Politics of Grief
February
3, 2002
Zoltan
Grossman
War
and New Military Bases
February
2, 2002
Francis
Schor
Carlucci's
Strange Career
February
1, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
The
Great Ashcroft Cover Up
Jeremy
Voas
Why
We're Suing Ashcroft
David
Vest
10
Things I Know About Him
January
31, 2002
Rahul
Mahajan
The
State of the Union:
A New Cold War
Dave Marsh
Miles
Copeland, War
and the Future of Music
John Pilger
The
Colder War
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Killer Dog, Weird Couple
Dr. Susan
Block
Blowback
and Daniel Pearl
January
30, 2002
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Linda
Lay, Hill and Knowlton and the Tears of a Clown
Jack McCarthy
Free
Noelle Bush!
Michael
Ratner
Memo
to Bush: Adhere to
the Geneva Convention
Jay Moore
Proud
to be an American?
Susan
Block
The
Great Pretzel Swallower
and Guantanamo Porn
January
29, 2002
Gary Leupp
Why
This War Was, and Remains, Utterly Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Birds of Kandahar
Patrick
Cockburn
Afghan
Opium Trade
Back in Business
January
28, 2002
Larry
Chin
Brosnahan
for the Defense
Mokhiber/Weissman
Tyranny
of the Bottom Line
George
E. Curry
Civil
Rights Nominee Called Affirmative Action "Racist"
Sen. Russ
Feingold
Campaign
Finance Reform?
Think Enron
John Chuckman
Liberal?
Media?
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
February 14,
2002
Resisting the Assassins' Power
By Russell Mokhiber and
Robert Weissman
Why does the movement against corporate globalization
protest at meetings like those of the World Economic Forum, recently
completed in New York? What does the movement for global justice
want?
There are a million ways to answer these
questions. One set of compelling answers is contained in Walking
on Fire: Haitian Women´s Stories of Survival and Resistance,
a wonderful new book by Beverly Bell (Cornell University Press).
Walking on Fire is a collection of interviews with Haitian women,
with astute synthesizing text by Bell.
Relying on the words of a broad cross-section
of Haitian society, from former Prime Minister Claudette Werleigh
to desperately poor women like Yolande Mevs who are struggling
day-to-day to provide enough food to calm their children´s
aching bellies, Walking on Fire illustrates how the dynamics
of corporate globalization overlay with local hierarchies, prejudices
and systems of patriarchy to impoverish and marginalize women.
Most searingly, Walking on Fire reveals
the raw violence embedded in these overlapping systems of domination.
The women in Walking on Fire recount stomach-churning stories
of childhood slavery and abuse, rape and immiseration.
Alerte Belance relates a horrifying tale
of brutality at the hands of the FRAPH, the CIA-supported paramilitary
force that terrorized Haiti during the coup period of the 1990s,
when democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide
was forced into exile.
A local organizer who supported Aristide´s
lavalas movement (as did the majority of the country), Belance
went into hiding when Aristide was deposed. After the Governor´s
Island Accord promised Aristide would return to power in October
1993, Belance came out of hiding.
"They came for me on October 15,"
she recounts, "several days after I´d returned from
hiding."
"The vicious ones chopped me up
during the nightç I spent a night in the weeds bleeding.
They sliced me into pieces with machete strokes. They cut out
my tongue and my mouth: my gums, plates, teeth, and jaw on my
right side. They cut my face open, my temple and cheek totally
open. They cut my eye open. They cut my ear open. They cut my
body, my whole shoulder and neck and back slashed with machete
blows. They cut off my right arm. They slashed my left arm totally
and cut off the ends of all my fingers of my left hand. ... The
death squad was so convinced that I died that they dragged me
further away to dump me."
Left for dead by the death squad, she
survived by luck and will, dragging herself from the bushes to
the road, from where she was eventually taken to medical care.
Rosemie Belvius explains the multiple
types of violence experienced by peasant women in Haiti. There
is the structural violence of coerced theft and dispossession
imposed by landlords. "If you harvest 100 cannisters of
rice, the big man gets 50, you get 50. This is even though you
spent the money, you bought the fertilizer that sells for $60
per sack, and you bought the labor for three dollars a day to
hoe the garden."
And, in Haiti, there is, too often, the
more overt violence directed against peasants who challenge landlords´
power. When Belvius and area farmers constructed a cooperatively
owned corn silo, the Tonton Macoutes -- the terror force of Baby
Doc Duvalier -- burned it down and torched her house as well.
These are very localized experiences.
But people do not experience broad trends of corporate globalization
they live their lives with their families and communities and
find themselves involuntarily confronting local, national and
international structures of domination.
Author Beverly Bell explains how "power
structures within the international community and the global
economy [are] mirrored in domestic structures."
Walking on Fire is subtitled "Haitian
women's stories of survival and resistance" and the emotions
of horror stirred by the book are matched by a sense of awe and
inspiration of the women, many of whom do struggle just to survive,
and especially of those who choose to respond to amazing hardship
and myriad challenges by organizing and collective action to
improve their and others' lives, and to fight for justice.
"Today," Bell writes, "the
popular movement is demanding stronger national sovereignty so
that Haiti will no longer be subordinated to more powerful states,
lending agencies and international trade and finance institutions.
The movement is protesting the foreign-imposed economic policy
of structural adjustment, or what Haitians have labeled the plan
lanmo, the death plan."
Their protests and organizing take the
form of street theater featuring demons labeled "IMF,"
creating women's associations, organizing trade unions and much
more. For the women in Walking on Fire, the fight against the
local landlord or structural adjustment is seamless, all to be
resisted, with a will of steel. Belvius relates a song from her
farmers' organization:
We will not give in, oh no.
We'll never cede the battle.
No we will not surrender
To the assassins' power.
Russell Mokhiber
is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter.
Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor.
They are co-authors of Corporate
Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy
(Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999)
|