Tag Archives: Heritage Foundation

Disaster Capitalism in Haiti

Posted on by elizabeth
5

From Ashley Smith at Counterpunch:

Aid in Haiti has always been used to further imperial interests. This is obvious when you look at how the U.S. and Canada treated the Aristide government in contrast to the coup regime. The U.S. and Canada starved Aristide of almost all aid. But then after the coup, they opened a floodgate of money to back some of the most reactionary forces in Haitian society.

We should therefore agitate against any attempt by the U.S. and other powers to use this crisis to further impose their program on a prostrate country.

We should also be wary of the role of international NGOs. While many NGOs are trying to address the crisis, the U.S. and other governments are funneling aid to them in order to undermine Haitians’ democratic right to self-determination. The international NGOs are unaccountable to either the Haitian state or Haitian population. So the aid funneled through them further weakens what little hold Haitians have on their own society.  [there’s more]

Naomi Klein:

Readers of the The Shock Doctrine know that the Heritage Foundation has been one of the leading advocates of exploiting disasters to push through their unpopular pro-corporate policies. From this document, they’re at it again, not even waiting one day to use the devastating earthquake in Haiti to push for their so-called reforms. The following quote was hastily yanked by the Heritage Foundation and replaced with a more diplomatic quote, but their first instinct is revealing:
 

“In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region.”

To make donations for earthquake relief in Haiti and ongoing development, check MADRE, an organization that’s been working in Haiti for years and combines its struggle for resources with a rights-based philosophy to advance social justice.
 
UPDATE:  From Chris Floyd at Information Clearing House –
Yes, there will now be a great outpouring of immediate aid, as there always is after any spectacular disaster. And of course, this is laudable, and I encourage anyone who can to contribute what they can to these efforts. But unless there is a sea-change in American policy, unless there finally comes an end to the curse that has been laid on Haiti — not by God, or by the Devil, but by the hard hearts of elites following blindly in the cruel traditions of their predecessors — then this flurry of caring and attention will soon give way again, as it has always done, to callous disregard, brutal repression and inhumane exploitation.

The tale of these cruel traditions — and the “continuity” with them that Obama has already displayed — does not augur well for such a change. But as that wise man, Edsel Floyd, always says, we live in hope and die in despair. And such a hope for Haiti is worth holding onto, and working toward.

At the same time, hope must not be blind; you have to acknowledge the grim realities in order to know just what you’re up against. So let’s take a long, hard look.  [more]

Try Partners in Health for donations to Haiti

UPDATE II:  And the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund

Wow. Just Wow.

Posted on by elizabeth
3

From Newsweek:

The most influential legal thinker in the development of modern American interrogation policy is not a behavioral psychologist, international lawyer or counterinsurgency expert. Reading both Jane Mayer’s stunning “The Dark Side,” and Philippe Sands‘s “Torture Team,” it quickly becomes plain that the prime mover of American interrogation doctrine is none other than the star of Fox television’s “24,” Jack Bauer.

This fictional counterterrorism agent—a man never at a loss for something to do with an electrode—has his fingerprints all over U.S. interrogation policy. As Sands and Mayer tell it, the lawyers designing interrogation techniques cited Bauer more frequently than the Constitution.

According to British lawyer and writer Sands, Jack Bauer—played by Kiefer Sutherland—was an inspiration at early “brainstorming meetings” of military officials at Guantánamo in September 2002. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate general who gave legal approval to 18 controversial interrogation techniques including waterboarding, sexual humiliation and terrorizing prisoners with dogs, told Sands that Bauer “gave people lots of ideas.” Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security chief, gushed in a panel discussion on “24” organized by the Heritage Foundation that the show”reflects real life.”

John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who produced the so-called torture memos—simultaneously redefining both the laws of torture and of logic—cites Bauer in his book “War by Other Means.” “What if, as the Fox television program ’24’ recently portrayed, a high-level terrorist leader is caught who knows the location of a nuclear weapon?” Even Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking in Canada last summer, shows a gift for this casual toggling between television and the Constitution. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Scalia said. “Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?”

There are many reasons that matriculation from the Jack Bauer School of Law would have encouraged even cautious legal thinkers to bend and eventually break our longstanding rules against torture. U.S. interrogators rarely if ever encounter a “ticking time bomb,” someone with detailed information about an imminent terror plot. But according to the advocacy group the Parents Television Council (which has declared war on “24”), Bauer encounters a ticking time bomb an average of 12 times every season. Given that each season represents a 24-hour period, Bauer encounters someone who needs torturing 12 times per day. Experienced interrogators know that information extracted through torture is rarely reliable. But Jack Bauer’s torture not only elicits the truth, it does so before the commercial. He is a human polygraph who has a way with flesh-eating chemicals.

… Yoo wanted to change American torture law to accommodate him, and Justice Scalia wants to immunize him from prosecution. The problem is not just that they all saw themselves in Jack Bauer. The problem was their failure to see what Bauer really represents within the legal universe of “24.”

For one thing, Bauer operates outside the law, and he knows it. Nobody in the fictional world of “24” changes the rules to permit him to torture. For the most part, he does so fully aware that he is breaking the law. Bush administration officials turned that formula on its head. In an almost Nixonian twist, the new interrogation doctrine became: “If Jack Bauer does it, it can’t be illegal.”

The Scylla in this case is a belief that this guys are profoundly evil.  The Charybdis is that they are profoundly mundane and superficial.  If it’s possible to be profoundly superficial.

Funny thing is, I noted the similarity between Bush-think and Bauer-think quite awhile ago, here.  As did matttbastard [I can’t find the link to mattt’s original post – drop it in comments if you find it].  And, of course, Philippe Sands at Vanity Fair.  But I hadn’t read either of them at the time.

My idea was that tv shows like “24”, much as I confessed to being addicted to it, softened us up to the idea that an American working on behalf of America would use immoral and illegal means without much thought but with easy justification – “it works and I gotta do it to save the world”.  I guess Scalia and Yoo noticed that as well.

Newsweek article via digby

UPDATE:  mattt kindly dropped some links in comments and I’m moving them up –

see this, this, and this and you get your LL.B. from The Jack Bauer School of Law.  Show evidence of having read Jane Mayer and Philippe Sand and you get your doctorate.