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Given the less than chirpy tone of the last rant, I’ll kick things off with an optimistic bang: news from Japan that the much-maligned military base planned for Okinawa has suffered a ‘setback’, to use US military parlance. In standard english, that means there are now too many people bitterly opposed to it to be conveniently ignored and forgotten about. Think peace in Iraq (we’ll get to that in a second) and you’ll see what I mean.
At last the groundswell of feeling against Uncle Sam’s maniacal militarism has finally found its spokesperson in the form of Susumu Inamine, the newly-elected mayor of Nago, Okinawa, who plans to revoke the 2006 US-Japan agreement that would move the majority of US troops (some 25,000+) currently based in Futenma, Okinawa to his hometown. Whose population is around 60,000. As if the prospective dash of cosmopolitanism wasn’t alluring enough, Nago is also turning down the opportunity to have a US helicopter crash land on its university campus, or servicemen rape its schoolgirls – once in 1995 and again in 2008. The move is a major spanner in the works for the US, who only want to leapfrog onto the undoubtedly far more pliant island of Guam by 2014 anyway. Oh wait, the locals are against a base there too. Don’t they know anything about national security?
The other glimmer of hope comes from the very man who once symbolized hope to millions, el presidente Obama. Speaking out against the indefensibly bad move from the Supreme Court last week to open the sluice gate on corporate contributions to the US electoral process, Barack raged: “[this] opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money in our democracy…This ruling strikes at our democracy itself”. Let’s hope no one reminds him that he has half of Wall Street kicking around in his cabinet. For an educational (and infuriating) way to waste away an afternoon, check out opensecrets.org and trace the flow of green to the white house. It’s not often that I (or anyone) looks to the UK as the paradigm of political process, but at least we have caps on campaign spending.
And now, the bad news. Apparently there aren’t enough accountants in Iraq, and the US-backed reconstruction effort, spearheaded by US firm Dyncorps, is hemorrhaging cash to the tune of $2.5bn lost expenses in training the iraqi police force. Once the moneymen get there, someone point them towards Afghanistan, where -yep, you guessed it- Dyncorps is also in charge of getting things up and running.
Coming soon: tomorrow’s inauguration in Honduras of conservative, coup-supporting President Porfirio Lobo, who takes office after the bloodiest months in his country’s recent history. Fear not, the last installment of the Honduran Coup: the graphic history is on my drawing board as I type. And for that Friday feeling, be sure to check out the sweat patches on Tony ‘Teflon’ Blair as the non-stick ex-PM tells us all how he and Dubya saved us from Saddam at the Iraq Inquiry this Friday.
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Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long one to reflect what an ugly week it’s been in US-related politics. First up, here’s the latest part of the School of the Americas piece – skip back 3 steps to get to the beginning and find out more about SOA/WHINSEC and their illustrious graduates’ violent pasts.
As the estimated number of dead in Haiti rises past the 200,000 mark, several news reports (Democracy Now!, The Guardian and Al Jazeera for starters) are describing the US’s apparent takeover of the main airport at Port-au-Prince. Convoys carrying aid, medical supplies and water are being re-directed to make way for a worrying number of US troops, who are being deployed ‘to ensure security’. Yes Magazine had a great quote from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who, after declaring her expectation that the Haitian government would pass an emergency decree – including things like the right to impose curfews – said, “The decree would give the government an enormous amount of authority, which in practice they would delegate to us”. Of course they would.
Naomi Klein leads the charge for transparency to prevent Haiti from succumbing to the free market agenda that New Orleans did in the aftermath of Katrina. Here’s a checklist of suggested actions sent by Rep. Paul Teller on September 13, 2005 – let’s hope they don’t start happening in Port-au-Prince. One other chilling similarity with Katrina is the already conspicuous presence of Blackwater-esque private mercenary forces, operating under the philanthropically-tinged moniker International Peace Operations Association. For an altogether more upfront description of their services in Haiti, checkout this webpage hosted by a similar private outfit called All Pro Legal Investigations – under the ‘Personal Protection’ header they’ll even deal with ‘worker unrest’ and ‘high-threat terminations’. What more could an International Peacekeeping force want? Jeremy Scahill has the whole scoop over at the Nation.
The bad news then came home, not only with the loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat for the Democrats, but also yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling that curbing corporate donations to electoral campaigns is unconstitutional. Why? Because it infringes on the said corporations’ first amendment rights to free speech. I’m sure that’s exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he said, “the end of democracy will occur when government falls into the hands of the lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.” See corporate watch for more info.
Lastly, one piece of good news to try and even up the balance. The online human rights and social justice magazine Independent World Report will publish my 4-page piece on Diego Garcia in their next issue.
Here’s the rest of the first page of the School of the Americas comic, which will be featured as the centrefold spread in the next issue of Presente! As the death toll continues to rise in Haiti, check out this episode of Democracy Now! below on how the crippled country and its hamstrung government is coping with the biggest natural disaster in two centuries.
Next three panels of my piece on the School of the Americas. To start at the beginning, just hit previous for an intro to the SOA and its heinous past.
Remember, this piece and the Honduran coup comics I put together with Nikil Saval are available in hard copy format via the chipin widget on the right hand side bar, shipped directly to your door for $5 plus $2 shipping. Or you could just click here.
Below is a film I highly recommend, viewable free online, about the SOA and the part Father Roy Bourgeois has had in fighting to get it shut down:
Back from an amazing honeymoon and straight into work mode. Above is the opening on my latest piece for the School of the Americas Watch about the shocking history of what’s now been catchily renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation for PR purposes. Essentially it’s a military school for Latin American troops to be trained in counter-insurgency tactics (torture, interrogation, etc) by benevolent US personnel. Not only have SOA graduates have been repeatedly linked to cases of mass murder and horrific violence against civilian populations (La Cantuta, El mozote), but it’s also trained some of the last century’s most infamous latin american military dictators.
On a lighter note, my piece on the apocalypse (that’s what passes for light round here) has secured me a regular slot at Religion Dispatches. The next one’s due in March. Also, the talented Joe Shansky, whose reporting from Tegucigalpa I turned into comic, has just lauched his website, which I highly recommend. It’s got all of his reporting on Honduras collected in place and makes for a revelatory read, especially in light of the unreported swathe of dissident murders.
And lastly, for those of you in need of aural enhancement in the new year, subscribe immediately to the Hospital records podcast, which serves up quality drum n bass, free, every other week.
All the way from Northern Thailand, where I’m on my honeymoon, comes my latest piece on 2012 and the hysteria that has spread worldwide, mostly thanks to Roland Emerich’s latest cinematic opus. Click here to read the whole piece online at Religion Dispatches.
Above is the last tier of the Honduran comic. Now that the fake election was pushed through and trumpeted by the media, let’s not let the spotlight drift away from the area – check out the video below for some excellent reporting from behind the scenes of the voting process:
Also, here’s a comic from last year exposing the dangers, greed and environmental destruction inherent to Mountain Top Removal – and good luck to those who are protesting in Copenhagen this week.
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A request to new visitors to the site: (welcome!) on the right hand toolbar is a chipin widget that I’m using to get pre-orders for a hard copy, full-colour 32p comic about US intervention in central america – featuring both parts of the Honduran Coup: A Graphic History as published in Alternet and the Huffington Post. Read more about it on the chipin page I’ve created here.
For $5 (plus $2 shipping in the US and $4 overseas) you’ll get a copy of the comic as well as your name printed in the back, along with all the other donors to the project. We’re already well on the way (see the total) and payment is via paypal so totally safe. Be part of a group project to help raise awareness and produce an educational tool that will have a lasting impact. And please use the buttons below to share this link around – facebook, twitter, digg – any help is appreciated.
