Now
Available!
Dime's
Worth of Difference:
Beyond the
Lesser of Two Evils
Order Here!
Today's
Stories
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
August
31, 2004
Escapism
and Global Apartheid
The
Dominican Republic and the NYTs
By
JOSEPH NEVINS
Mikhail Baryshnikov, the ballet star,
has a vacation home there. It is located close to the sprawling
Southern Greek Revival beachside abode of his good friend and
native son, Oscar de la Renta, in the same town where the fashion
designer and singer Julio Iglesias are partners in a luxury resort
and club. Prices there range from $310,000 for a three-bedroom
villa away from the sea to several millions dollar for property
on the beach-such as Iglesias's home, a six-acre Balinese compound.
The place is "the new
St. Bart's," a reference to St. Barthelemy, the tiny Caribbean
island in the French West Indies that serves as a lavish get-away
destination for many of the global rich and famous. But it's
better in so many ways. In addition to having more favorable
prices, "It's so close," explains Margarita Waxman-only
3 12 hours by plane from New York City. The SoHo resident, just
retired from a public relations job at the upscale jeweler, Bulgari,
flies back and forth monthly. She recently paid $3 million for
four acres of beachfront for a new villa there, instead of in
the harder-to-get-to St. Bart's, where she has often vacationed.
"There's so much building
going on," gushes Amelia Vicini, a fashion editor at Town
& Country magazine, who was born and raised in the tropical
paradise. "Every time I go home, I am amazed. The winter
season is crazy, full of people - celebrities, A-listers, everyone."
This hot location is the Dominican
Republic. In a lead article on August 13 entitled, "In Pursuit
of Fabulousness" in the "Escapes" section of the
paper, The New York Times introduced its readership to this little-known
side of the half-island-nation (the other half of the island
being Haiti). "Until a few years ago, the Dominican Republic had a reputation
as second-rate, and affluent shoppers for second homes largely
stayed away," the Times explained. "Then, in the early
90's, developers . . . began attracting attention with luxurious
gated communities on the water."
Only one day earlier, the Times
ran an Associated Press article on the inside of the main section
about a different type of water-related escape involving the
Dominican Republic. Entitled, "Dominicans Saved From Sea
Tell of Attacks and Deaths of Thirst," the piece recounted
the horrific experiences of about 80 Dominican migrants fleeing
the poverty in their homeland. Having paid $450 each-about a
year's income for most Dominicans-they tried to sail clandestinely
to Puerto Rico so that they would be then able to fly to the
U.S. mainland free of immigration controls.
The engine of the small wooden
boat died two days after the July 29 departure from the coastal
village of Limón. By the next day, the vessel's water
and meager food supply-chocolate, peanuts sardines, and some
coconuts-were depleted. The passengers began to panic.
Two lactating women reportedly
dripped their breast milk into a bottle for passengers to drink.
Another told of eating his tube of Colgate to survive. The boat
drifted at sea for almost two weeks. People began dying on the
fifth day, their bodies thrown into shark-infested waters by
those still living. Many jumped overboard in desperation, and
drowned. Forty-seven ended up perishing on the voyage. Another
eight died of dehydration after Dominican authorities rescued
a total of 39 people.
In a follow-up article on August
16, the Times describes the homes of the majority of the inhabitants
of one of the villages of many of the migrants as being made
of "lashed-together pieces of tin." Attempts to flee
from such poverty to a better life in the United States have
increased over the last year in the context of a severe economic
downturn in the Dominican Republic. In the last ten months alone,
U.S. authorities have arrested more than 7,000 Dominican crossers,
and many thousands more have surely evaded the web of enforcement.
Such unauthorized crossings
have a long and deep history given the intense migratory ties
between the United States and the Dominican Republic. And so
do migrant deaths. A May 12, 1998 report in the Los Angeles Times,
for example, spoke of "human bones littering the small shoals
and islets between the Dominican and Puerto Rican shores"
as a result of crossing-related fatalities. In November 2003,
the U.S. Border Patrol estimated that, over the previous three
years, nearly 300 people had either died or vanished-undoubtedly
an undercount-while crossing the Mona Passage between the Dominican
Republic and Puerto Rico. And another 164 U.S.-bound migrants
had reportedly died or disappeared elsewhere in the Caribbean
during the same period.
In the late 1990s, the economy
of the Dominican Republic was growing at a fast pace. But the
economic expansion did little for the poor and middle class,
many members of which also attempt to make the perilous journey.
Today, that expansion is long-gone.
Unemployment stands officially
at 16 percent, and the rate of inflation is 32 percent. Meanwhile,
the Dominican peso has lost half of its value against the U.S.
dollar over the last two years, resulting in a doubling of prices
during that period. Saddled with a $6 billion debt and under
heavy pressure from the International Monetary Fund via a $600
million dollar loan agreement, the government in Santiago has
promised austerity measures. This will lead to cuts in social
services, government jobs and a reduction in subsidies for basic
necessities, which will surely fuel pressures for out-migration.
In addition, the country's electrical system is a mess. The government
privatized generating plants in the 1990s with the goal of lessening
blackouts. The situation has worsened, however, as electricity
is typically only available for a few hours a day.
Little of this profoundly affects
the lives of rich Dominicans or the affluent foreigners eagerly
buying up the country's prime beachfront property. As an envious
real estate agent from St. Bart's explains, "You can be
a king in the Dominican for very little money." Or, as Margarita
Waxman effuses, "There's a quaintness about it. It has all
the beauty of St. Bart's, only more bohemian."
If, as Stuart Hall suggests,
racism is the fatal coupling of power and difference-fatal in
the sense that it shapes one's life (and death) circumstances-the
recent reporting on the Dominican Republic in The New York Times
(albeit unintentionally) exposes the true face of global apartheid.
It is one in which the relatively rich and largely white are
free to travel and live wherever they would like and to access
the resources they "need." Meanwhile the relatively
poor and largely non-white are forced to subsist in places where
there are not enough resources to provide sufficient livelihood
or, in order to overcome their deprivation and insecurity, to
risk their lives trying to overcome ever-stronger boundary controls
put into place by rich countries.
It is for such reasons that
the struggle for global justice and human rights must have international
freedom of movement and residence, among other matters, at the
center.
Joseph Nevins is an assistant professor of geography
at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and the author of
Operation
Gatekeeper: The Rise of the "Illegal Alien" and the
Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (Routledge 2002). Cornell
University Press will publish his latest book, A Not-So Distant
Horror: Accounting for Mass Violence in East Timor, in early
2005.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
Keep
CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home
/ subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|