WikiRebels -- The Documentary Full Version

http://www.SVTplay.se
Sweden's public service television, SVT, is releasing this one-hour documentary chronicling the history of WikiLeaks.
From summer 2010 until now, Swedish Television has been following the secretive media network WikiLeaks and its enigmatic Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange.

Reporters Jesper Huor and Bosse Lindquist have traveled to key countries where WikiLeaks operates, interviewing top members, such as Assange, new Spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson, as well as people like Daniel Domscheit-Berg who now is starting his own version - Openleaks.org!

Where is the secretive organization heading? Stronger than ever, or broken by the US? Who is Assange: champion of freedom, spy or rapist? What are his objectives? What are the consequences for the internet?"

 

 

Contest Winners

SUBMISSIONS
Submitting work to Carpe Articulum is a two-step process.

1. Review the appropriate Deadlines, Guidelines and Rules of Entry for your submission.

2. Submit to Carpe Articulum Literary Review using Submishmash

 

DEADLINES
These dates are ANNUAL, REVOLVING deadlines

SHORT FICTION……..MAR 30, SEPT 30
POETRY…………………MAR 30, SEPT 30
NOVELLA…………….. JAN 7
ESSAY/NON-FICT……JAN 7, AUG 30
PHOTOGRAPHY……. AUG 30
SCREENWRITING…….NOV 30
YOUNG WRITERS…….FEB 1

If deadlines are missed, the piece will automatically be entered into the next contest cycle for that particular genre.

 

GENERAL RULES OF ENTRY

1. All contests are void where prohibited by law.
2. All contests are open to the public over the age of 18. International submissions accepted  and encouraged. For publication in the English Version of CALR, participant must have work translated into English. All rules apply.
3. All work must be original, and by submitting the pieces, author gives rights to the Carpe Articulum Literary Review to print the piece and to use it on the web or other media. All rights revert back to the author. See website for release and terms information. We want authors to become well known, and have no desire to encumber work. We do however, reserve the right to use it.
4. Multiple entries are accepted.
5. Previously printed work is acceptable as long as the circulation did not exceed 2,000 copies of a magazine, newspaper, book or other printed media. Previously printed authors are permitted.
6. Two Cover Sheets must be included: One with author’s contact information, including name, address, telephone number, email, entry title and contest name. The second must contain the contest name and working TITLE of the piece ONLY. Absolutely no author name may be included on the work itself (unless it is a painting) or the piece(s) will be disqualified.
7. No manuscripts will be returned, see winner’s announcements in the magazine or on the website.
8. Electronic entries are accepted and encouraged, as long as all guidelines are observed, and entry fee accompanies its submission, ear-marked for the work’s title and author. Send electronic entries in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx file extension) through the email address: Editor-in-Chief@CarpeArticulum.com
9. If no suitable winner can be found by contests’ end, the judges may invoke the right to  extend the contest date slightly, in order to find enough appropriate work material. However, all contests will be awarded the funds allocated by the end of the extension date.
10. All reader’s fees are non-refundable, and work is non-returnable. Please see to it that you are NOT sending us your only copy.
11. All reader fees can be paid online via PayPal, OR by check or money order payable to: CARPE ARTICULUM LITERARY REVIEW. Entries can be sent via regular or special mail to:
    The Carpe Verbum Contest / [write short fiction, novella, etc. here]
    PO Box 409
    Lake Oswego, Oregon 97034
12. All Submissions MUST be postmarked by the deadline in order to be considered for that genre. We get a lot of work in, and in order to give it the proper attention, appropriate time allowances must be made. THE EARLIER, THE BETTER. If for any reason you feel you may have omitted an important piece of information, or may have inadvertently made an error in putting your package together, feel free to contact us and we will do our best to straighten out the issue. We sincerely want all worthy authors to get their due recognition and will in no way arbitrarily disqualify a participant for a slight oversight. International submissions welcome.

GUIDELINES FOR SHORT FICTION
Submissions must not exceed 25 pages double-spaced. Submissions must not be less than a 12 pt. nor larger than a 14 pt. of a typically used font.

Reading Fee  $20

AWARDS
FIRST =  $1,250 / SECOND =  $300 / THIRD =  $200

Each additional entry in this SAME category, $10, not to exceed 5 total submissions

GUIDELINES FOR NOVELLAS
Eligible submissions must be of a single novella. May be a self-contained portion of a larger book, but must be a complete work in and of itself. May be comprised of up to 150 double-spaced typed pages; other than length, all Short Fiction guidelines apply. Submissions must not be less than a 12 pt. nor larger than a 14 pt. size of a typically used font.

Stories or novellas previously published are eligible, as long as the publication did not exceed 2,000 copies.

Reading Fee $25

AWARDS
FIRST =  $1,000 / SECOND =  $300 / THIRD = $200
Each additional entry in this SAME category, $10, not to exceed 5 total submissions.

GUIDELINES FOR POETRY
Not to exceed three pages per poem.

Not to include more than three poems per entry.

Reading Fee $20 (for 3 poems)

AWARDS
FIRST = $400 / SECOND = $200 / THIRD = $100
Each additional poem entry in this SAME category, $10 each, not to exceed 5 total submissions.

GUIDELINES FOR PHOTOGRAPHY (JOHN & EVA KEENER AWARD)
Work can include up to 3 black and white or colour photographs.

Work must not be digitally altered beyond very basic touch up,  (i.e. no inserts of fire-breathing dragons over the White House).

Work must not be pornographic (sexually explicit) in nature.

Work must be provided between the sizes of 3×5 to 11×13.

Work must be available in jpeg and PDF format, preferably 300 dpi.

ENTRY FEE  $20

AWARDS
FIRST = $400 / SECOND = $200 / THIRD = $100
Each additional entry in this SAME category, $10, not to exceed 5 total submissions.

GUIDELINES FOR CARPE VERBUM ESSAY/NON-FICTION AWARD
See GUIDELINES FOR SHORT FICTION

Reading Fee $20

AWARDS
FIRST = $300 / SECOND = $200 / THIRD = $100
Each additional entry in this SAME category, $10, not to exceed 5 total submissions.

GUIDELINES FOR “MAKE A SCENE!” SCREENWRITING COMPETITION
The contest is open to all screenwriters, both professional and aspiring. Submit either the opening scene of a feature-length script or the full text of a short film. The submission may not be optioned, in development, in production, or produced, as the award is intended to provide exposure for a project the writer is developing. Submitting artist must have full rights to the original work. If the submission is optioned or placed in production before the winner is announced it will be disqualified and the writer should provide us notification. All genres are considered. We are simply looking for the writer with the best ability to capture a scene. There is a 20 page limit and the winning entries (1st, 2nd and 3rd) will receive total cash awards of $1,400 ($700, $400 and $300) along with publication in the next issue of Carpe Articulum Literary Review. A judging/reading fee of $29 should accompany each submission. Screenwriters may present multiple independent submissions, not to exceed 3 total packages.

All submissions should be formatted to industry standards. The title page should include the author’s name, address, telephone number, email, entry title, and contest name.

All work must be original, and by submitting the piece, the author gives rights to the Carpe Articulum Literary Review to print the work and to use it on the web or other media. All rights revert back to the author.

No manuscripts will be returned, see winner’s announcements in the magazine or on the website.

Only electronic entries are accepted. Send entries in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx file extension) to Editor-in-Chief@CarpeArticulum.com

This contest will award a winner, as the judge believes it is unethical to not do so.

An entry fee of $29 must accompany the manuscript. All reader’s fees are non-refundable. Fees can be paid online via PayPal, or by check or money order payable to Carpe Articulum Literary Review sent via regular or special mail to The Carpe Articulum “Make a Scene” Screenwriting Award, P.O. Box 409, Lake Oswego, Oregon 97034.

All Submissions MUST be postmarked by the deadline, NOVEMBER 30 ANNUALLY, in order to be considered. International submissions welcome. Electronic submissions accepted and encouraged as .doc files to Editor-in-Chief@CarpeArticulum.com (must be accompanied by site registration and judging fee). By submitting work to Carpe Articulum, author/artist acknowledges, accepts and agrees to all rules and terms of service as listed on the website www.CarpeArticulum.com.

GUIDELINES FOR THE YOUNG WRITERS COMPETITION: YOUTH TRUTH
For those under 18, grades 6-12 by US Standards

No Reading Fee

Genre: Poetry or Short Fiction (under 20 pages)

Due date: February 1, annually

AWARDS
FIRST =  $500 / SECOND =  $300 / THIRD = $200

Entrant must be sponsored by a teacher in a traditional high school or middle school classroom. Sponsoring teacher’s contact information must be included on the entry cover sheet along with entrant’s parent or legal guardian’s signature authorizing and releasing entry and acceptance of Carpe Articulum’s Terms and Conditions as stated on the website and on behalf of the student. NO AUTHOR NAME may appear on the work itself. By entering, parties are also acknowledging the acceptance of the site’s conditions and terms of service.

Student’s parent(s) full contact information is required as well as the school attending at time of entry. Statement of the parents’ and student’s signed willingness and intention to use award money to furthering the student’s post-high school education (either in a collegiate setting or trade schools). Teacher must acknowledge that any funds awarded will be used for the classroom and/or educational projects.

No single entry may be longer than 20 pages double-spaced. All other rules apply as outlined in the submissions/rules section on the website for Poetry or Short Fiction. Entries must be sent both ELECTRONICALLY as a .doc file, with the scanned signatures mentioned above, and via REGULAR MAIL. These can be sent in one package per classroom by the teacher.

Submit entry electronically to: Editor-in-Chief@CarpeArticulum.com

Mail entry to:
Carpe Articulum Literary Review
Attn: Youth Truth Writing Award
P.O. Box 409
Lake Oswego, OR 97034

 

Call for Papers: Caribbean Studies Association (Deadline Extended)

The Caribbean Studies Association has extended its deadline for its 36th Annual Conference to take place May 30 – June 3, 2011, at the World Trade Center in Piscadera Bay, Curaçao. The deadline for submissions is now January 3rd, 2011.

The forthcoming CSA conference theme is “Building a New House: Towards New Caribbean Futures in an Age of Uncertainty.”  The association is seeking scholarly papers spanning the broadest disciplinary and methodological range whose work focuses on the Caribbean and its Diasporas. Submissions for individual papers and panel proposals are welcome. Graduate student submissions are also welcome.  All submissions must be made online (see www.caribbeanstudiesassociation.org).  

CSA is able to offer a limited number of travel grants to assist selected participants. For further information, please their website.  As CSA is striving to develop its travel fund, any donations are appreciated.  

For information pertaining to the program only, please contact: Dr. Terry-Ann Jones, Program Chair at caribbeanstudies2011@gmail.com; for questions on the travel grant, please contact Dr. Samuel Furé Davis at sfuredavis@flex.uh.cu; for any information pertaining to registration or membership, please contact Mrs. Joy Cooblal, Secretary-Treasurer at Joy.Cooblal-CSA@sta.uwi.edu.  

More information on the conference theme is available at www.caribbeanstudiesassociation.org

 

100 Words or Fewer Writing Contest

Contest Number Six

September 18, 2010—December 18, 2010

Fiction

NEWS:

1. We are continuing with four opportunities to win. First prize winner will receive $500. Runner up prizes will be $150, $100, and $50.
2. For Contest Six, story subjects are up to you, with attention to specifications on the "WHAT WE WANT..." (following) page. Do take a good look at "TIPS" on that page.

THE ONE HUNDRED WORD STORY—EXAMPLES OF WHAT WE WANT AND WHAT WE DON'T WANT.  (Aren't we the bossy ones!!!)

As always, we welcome whimsy, allegory, mystery, romance, fable, humor, love, fantasy, even horror. And it doesn’t matter whether the story is in past or present tense, in first person, third person, or even second person.

Not acceptable are non-fiction pieces, anecdotes, letters, poems, or any writing that is not a complete, fictional narrative. Any story that lacks proper English punctuation and grammar will be sent back to the author. Also unacceptable is a rewrite of any story entered into the current or past 100 Words or Fewer Writing Contest.

TIPS

The best 100 word story writers tend to do the following:

1. Stick to one or two characters.
2. Stick to one action.
3. Write to a story's point. Do not write beyond that point, even if you have extra words. If you do continue, your story will likely be less strong.
4. Avoid dog and cat stories. (A gorilla's or elephant's presence might work.)
5. Write from imagination. This will give you more leeway for creativity than a personal story which is likely to appear as a personal anecdote.
6. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite for excessive adjectives, adverbs, and for clarity.
7. The "Show not tell" approach allows the reader to participate--to bring details and meanings to a story. (See the Hemingway story below.)
8. Read master stories!

---

Point of View--Hemingway

Some writers have sent in stories containing more than one point of view. In general, and particularly in a short, short story, this presents a complexity in a form which requires simplicity of characterizations and plot. We recommend first person narration (I) or third person narration (He, She, or It—Your dog can tell the story!). Here is a masterwork written from an invisible third person point of view. It is attributed to Ernest Hemingway. The six words are:

“For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never used”.

 

You may note that Hemingway’s story contains a hallmark of story tradition: a structured beginning, middle and end. The story is complete. Inferences are open but will depend on information given in the six words.

Fable--Aesop

It is popularly believed that Aesop was a slave who lived six centuries B.C. in Greece. The endurance of the following fable, along with others from that time, attests to the power of our short, short narrative. In fables, one or two animals always take prominent roles which demonstrate a human flaw and/or mental agility. (Aesop’s “The Goat and the Fox” offers the two characteristics.) There is always a moral that pulls the lesson of the story together. We Americans generally write about people in action and expect the reader to infer meanings. You may try a fable if you would like!

The Fox and the Grapes

 

One hot summer's day, a fox strolled through an orchard until he came to a bunch of ripe grapes on a vine trained over a lofty branch. "Just the thing to quench my thirst," he cried. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a “One, Two, Three,” he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he sought the tempting morsels, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour."

Moral: It is easy to despise what you cannot get

What human characteristics do you see in this story????

Fiction

 

Official Guidelines

Please read the following guidelines carefully. It would be a shame to be disqualified on technical grounds.

1. What is the format for entries?

Enter your story inside the text of an email message. This contest requires 100 words or fewer.

Attachments will not be considered. Present your name, mailing address, repeated email address, and your story's word count at the top of your entry. We require good grammar and spelling. Use a plain 12 point font. We suggest Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman, or Courier.

2. What are the locations of entrants?

Entrants may be located anywhere on Earth.

3. Must the entries be original?

Your entry must be original, in English, unpublished and not accepted by any other publisher or producer at the time of submission. 100 words or Fewer Writing Contest retains one-time publication rights to the First and Second winning entries, to be published once on the 100 words or Fewer Writing Contest website.

No revisions of stories evaluated and critiqued on from any 100 Words Or Fewer Writing Contest will be accepted. Revisions from other contests you entered are certainly acceptable.

4. Is there a given topic?

The topic is open. However, anything lewd or libelous will be discarded immediately. The payment will not be returned.

5. Is the word count limitation firm?

Yes! Entries exceeding the word limit will not be considered. Type the exact word count (counting every single word, except the title and contact information) at the top of your entry.

6. What are the fees?

Please use Paypal for secure payment of entry fee ($15.00); entry plus checkmark evaluation ($21.00); entry, checkmark evaluation and critique ($49.00); and critique alone ($30.00). (An entrant may decide on a critique after sending in a story.) Under special circumstances, a check sent directly to us will be acceptable.

7. What is the deadline?

The deadline for Contest Six is December 18, 2010.

(Note this is a three month contest.) Any manuscript received after the deadline will not be considered. Entries may be sent immediately.

8. How will I know if I have won?

The four winners and ten honorary mention designates for Contest Six will be determined by our Final Judge by January 10th, 2011. Prizes will be issued by mail on January 15th, 2011. The four winners and winning stories will be posted on the website by January 17th, 2011, or earlier, along with information regarding the next contest.

9. May I send more than one entry?

Certainly. We welcome each entry. Fees are as stated in 6., above.

10. What is the basis for your decisions regarding each entry?

Judges will look for the following:

1. immediate pull of the story’s fictional world,

2. believable characters,

3. voice, which should contain a personal flavor and possibly humor,

4. intensity and drive of focus,

5. power of images,

6. cadence and flow of sentences,

7. overall structural integrity,

8. beauty of language,

9. suspense,

10. plot twist, or ending that concludes a coherent story,

11. power of ending, and

12. overall emotional impact.

Judges will first segregate stories into higher and lower groups. Stories with higher rankings will be read again and narrowed down for further segregation. This process will be repeated until our final judge determines first, second, and third places. At each point, judges’ decisions are final.

 

 

Haiti on My Mind: Stories by Haitian American Teens (2010) is a recent collection of essays by youth of Haitian descent edited by Dana Vincent. The book was published by Youth Communication, a non-profit youth journalism program that publishes teen stories in books, magazines and other venues. When I received a message about the book from a colleague, I was intrigued by the premise and immediately ordered it, eager to see youth perspective documented in essay form.

The foreword is written by Edwidge Danticat who herself began writing stories as a youth and had the opportunity to participate in the Youth Communication program. Danticat immediately acknowledges the Haitian issue at the forefront of our minds as she describes traveling to Haiti for the first time after the earthquake. She writes about observing children of all ages that ‘these children, in many ways, are the symbol of Haiti that is to come. We can either shield and protect them from a very difficult start or we can turn away and let their stories and voices fade…The young people of Youth Communication have decided not to let these stories fade or die…Haiti is on the mind of these young talented writers at this moment just as it has been on the mind of many others. However, even before this disaster, as these essays poignantly show, Haiti was already deep in the minds, and hearts, of the teen writers at Youth Communication.” (7) This is perhaps the strongest point of the book, that it reveals how teenagers—some recent immigrants, some the children of immigrants—conceptualize, imagine, and long for Haiti and how these thoughts translate in their daily lives.

Just as the editor Vincent does through a game of word association in her introduction, the writers share “what comes to mind when you hear the words Haiti or Haitians” (9). Few of us will not find the list familiar, “boat people, political instability, illegal aliens, refugees, poorest country in the…and [now] earthquake” (9). Throughout the book different writers express their own troubling encounters with different variations of these stereotypes. It is a reductive litany that we are all too familiar with given the dominant negative representations that saturate the media. The voices of Haiti on My Mind engage these stereotypes directly and in many cases manage to move beyond them.

For example, in “I May Not Look Haitian, But….” Marsha Dupiton recounts her uncomfortable experience with classmates who had reduced our culture to physical characteristics with which she did not identify. The story describes Dupiton’s struggle from being embarrassed about her Haitian identity to transforming into a self-assured and self-loving young woman with great pride in her cultural heritage. For Marsha the change was gradual, a major catalyst on her journey was the poetry of Prosper Sylvain Jr., who in “I Don’t Look Haitian” the author’s imagined interlocutor is someone who tells him that he does not look Haitian, to which Sylvain replies with a historical and cultural lesson that goes beyond the glare of media stereotypes. He writes, “I apologize if there is more to me than voodoo dolls,
and I apologize if there is more to my country than slums, poverty and hunger, and I apologize if my poetry makes you wonder if I am really Haitian, product of years of miscegenation. 
I apologize if your idea and concept of me
is not what I have proven to be.” By citing Sylvain’s poem and explaining its impact on her life, Dupiton displays the power of creative work to impact youth identity, just as the essays of Haiti on My Mind will surely impact the generation after her.

Sabrina Rencher details a similar trajectory as Dupiton, chronicling her journey into self-love and self-acceptance after many desperate attempts to fit in with those around her. For her the transition from Haiti to the United States involves changes on how her own aesthetics are perceived. She explains “I’m originally from Haiti, there I felt gorgeous. I felt as if I didn’t have to do anything to fit in with people at school” at the very beginning to introduce the sharp contrast with how she struggled to receive affirmation from her peers in the United States (99). The first piece by Cassandra Charles, “Tomorrow is Promised to No One,” is actually the only essay with the earthquake of 2010 as its thematic focus, and is the first essay of the book. Charles’ heart-wrenching story is about learning that her cousin had died in the earthquake and her continued struggle with that grief.

While many of the stories in the collection deal with the challenges of being a teenager, being an immigrant or child of immigrants, being cross-cultural, or multilingual, some of them simply narrate mundane aspects of life. Among these we find a story about a boy falling in love as a child, and another of a girl who loses a precious pair of earrings that her mother had given her. Another such story by Claude Fravien takes on the complexity of parent-child relationships across the cultural divide. As Fravien shares some of the conflicts he faced in dealing with his own parents, whether it was their restricted ideas about how he should dress or their stereotypical opinion about African Americans, he explains that his predicament is not unique. “So far I have never met one Haitian teenager who thinks of his parents as friends,” although he does clarify the generalization by writing “I am not trying to say that all Haitian parents are like mine”(91). As such, the stories offer a range of experience and attempt to cover Haitian youth experience in its complexity.

This book is ideal for middle and high school students, whether or not they are of Haitian descent. It is especially effective as a tool for teaching and reflection since the end of each chapter contains a “Think About it” section with detailed questions directly related to the essay but that delve deeper into the issues addressed. The penultimate essay, “Haiti’s Part in America’s History” by Cassandra Worrell reviews the intersections of Haitian and U.S. history, reframing that history by beginning, “Except for the United States, Haiti is the oldest republic in the Western hempishere,” in my opinion a welcome change from the other superlative adjective in the Western Hemisphere more commonly invoked (124). The final piece is a review essay of Edwidge Danticat’s memoir Brother, I’m Dying written by Kaela Bezard. The book also contains a timeline of Haitian history that helps to contextualize some of the time periods referred to. The purpose of Haiti on My Mind is largely educational. Part of that education is more traditional as in the detailed timeline of Haitian history and section about vodou. In the latter section, for example the authors distinguish between the term “voodoo” which is used throughout the book, the academic term “vodou” or “vodun,” and the way the religion is referred to as “serving the spirits” (138). The deeper value of this book as an educational tool can be found in how it corrects popular misconceptions about Haitian culture and uses the voice of teens to do so.

To me, the stories are especially compelling because they came from an age group that is often neglected in the sense that teenagers too old to be children and too young to be adults, can be overlooked. Earlier this summer, the International Labour Organization reported that global youth unemployment is at an all time high. Programs such Youth Communication in New York, and A Long Walk Home’s Girl/Friends in Chicago harness the energy and the talents of young people through the use of the arts. I could not help but think of the large number of unemployed teenagers in Haiti and wonder about the kinds of stories they could tell if given the opportunity as the writers on Haiti on My Mind had been given. Having worked with this age group through youth enrichment groups like AFAB’s (The Association of Haitian Women of Boston) Ayiti demen, I have been struck by the rawness and emotional realness of the experiences they share. Haiti on My Mind captures this raw and real essence without any pretense. It is an important collection in which youth not only educate others about Haiti, but also empower those of their generation to tell their own stories for themselves.

RMJC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Set in 2001, for…reasons which become important, the film revolves around Tariq, played by Evan Ross, a young man entering college…Raised by his overbearing…strict Muslim father (Roger Guenveur Smith) who separated from his wife (Nia Long) after a bitter disagreement over how to raise their son, Tariq is tormented, caught in a psychological  trap. Scarred…and sheltered from the world, Tariq is confused, lonely and baffled by the new world all around him in college…Tariq finds himself in constant conflict which reaches a boiling point…

more, here. a trailer, here. interview with the director (audio and text), here. the film was on the festival circuit, but due to lots of grassroots support, there’s an official in-theaters release date of February 11 2011.

 

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CLICK HERE TO DEMAND THIS MOVIE IN YOUR THEATER: http://eventful.com/performers/moozlu... 
Watch Qasim "Q" Basir's new film with Evan Ross, Nia Long, Danny Glover, Roger Guenveur Smith, Summer Bishil & Dorian Missick in a Groundbreaking new film about a an African-American Muslim boy who comes of age against a politically charged 9/11 backdrop, with deep personal and familial traumas to overcome, and a search for identity that must reconcile his own difficult history with his new changed reality.

Joing our facebook page: www.facebook.com/MoozlumTheMovie

______________________________________

First things first, Qasim Basar’s film MOOZ-lum answers a question we’ve pondered on S & A a few times before, namely whatever happened to director Christopher Scott Cherot (Hav Plenty, G)? Well the answer is that he’s still involved in filmmaking, since according to the opening credits, he was the editor on Basir’s film.

And, with that out of the way, I am happy to report that MOOZ-lum is quite a good film. Well written, well directed and well acted, despite its occasional tendency early on to fall into the trap common in black film dramas;  that of being at times too didactic with occasional touches of expositional dialogue (Basir clearly has a lot of things to say and express to his audience).

However, the great thing about MOOZ-lum is its low key, subtle approach. Purposely modest in scope and scale, the film is effective and at times quite poignant. It builds slowly to an intensely dramatic climax, which though  some may find overly melodramatic, nevertheless delivers a genuine emotional impact.

 Set in 2001, for obvious reasons which become important to the plot, the film revolves around Tariq played by Evan Ross, a young man entering college as a freshman. Raised by his overbearing, oppressive strict Muslim father (Roger Guenveur Smith) who separated from his wife (Nia Long) after a bitter disagreement over how to raise their son, Tariq is tormented, caught in a psychological  trap.  Scarred mentally and literally physically from his Muslim upbringing and sheltered from the world, Tariq is confused, lonely and baffled by the new world all around him in college.

Though he makes tentative steps towards a friendship with roommate and an attractive young sister he meets at college along with his sister Taqua (Kimberley Drummond) who’s also a student at the college who tires to reach out to him, Tariq finds himself in constant conflict which reaches a boiling point with the terrorist attack at the World Trade Center.

Basir shows with MOOZ-lum that he’s confident and assured director and the performances all across the board are excellent with Ross proving that he has some genuine talent as an actor and Smith, known of course for his gallery of oddball characters, is  appropriately stern and hateful as the restrictive father with a gleam of madness in his eyes. And Basir, to his great credit, isn’t afraid to rightfully criticize the extreme and backwards attitudes and practices in the Islamic religion and culture.

Now that the film is beginning to hit the film festival circuit, starting off with a screening at the Chicago International Film Festival next month, others will get an opportunity to see the film, but it’s definitely worth your time to see an excellent drama with a promising young director who knows what he’s doing.

>via: http://www.shadowandact.com/?p=31290

 

 

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 US will pay for Haitian vote fraud

Demonstrators in Petionville, Haiti, clashed with UN police officers last week during election protests. (St-Felix Evens/ Reuters)

By Brian Concannon Jr. and Jeena Shah

December 15, 2010

 

THE DECISION last Thursday to recount the votes in Haiti’s disputed elections is like rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. As this week’s continued protests demonstrate, it will not avoid the catastrophe. Resolving Haiti’s election woes requires the financial backers of the flawed election process — especially the United States — to reverse course and insist on new, inclusive elections run by a new, inclusive electoral council.

Haitian voters see the fraud and disorganization of the Nov. 28 election as part of a long campaign to reduce competition to President René Préval’s INITE party in both presidential and legislative elections. The Provisional Electoral Council, which ran the election, was hand-picked by Préval, and excluded 15 political parties from the legislative elections, including Haiti’s most popular, Fanmi Lavalas, whose leader, former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, remains in forced exile. The electoral council also excluded 15 candidates from the presidential race without issuing a comprehensive explanation. During the months preceding the elections, Haitians complained about the voter registration program. In the end, over 100,000 voters who had registered did not receive their voting cards. More than 75 percent of voters with cards stayed home on election day.

The current crisis was widely predicted. In October, 45 members of the US House of Representatives warned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that US support for flawed elections “will come back to haunt the international community’’ by generating unrest and threatening the implementation of earthquake reconstruction projects. According to a cable released by WikiLeaks, even the US ambassador to Haiti described Préval as “orchestrating’’ the election to choose his successor. The Obama administration, along with the United Nations and other allies, dismissed these warnings and the mounting evidence of unfairness, and invested their prestige, influence, and $30 million in the elections. As the WikiLeaks cable explained, US officials held their noses and supported Préval because they believed he was “indispensable’’ to Haiti and a good ally to the United States.

If the results from the election stand, the protests may be just the beginning. No matter who emerges victorious from the counting and negotiating, Haiti will be saddled with a president and Parliament chosen by a restricted group of voters from a restricted list of candidates.

The Haitian people will not accept such a government any more than the American people would. They will keep taking to the streets and confronting the government’s police and UN peacekeepers. Protests and suppression of protests may engender more violence, and render Haiti ungovernable for the five-year presidential term.

US support for Haiti’s flawed elections was also a bad decision for US taxpayers. Our government has sent hundreds of millions to Haiti to respond to the earthquake and has promised billions more. But this money may be wasted without a legitimate, respected government in place.

The “realists’’ say that the first round of Haiti’s elections, no matter how flawed, are done and that there is no money for a do-over. The $30 million election pricetag is a lot of money in poor Haiti, but a small price to pay to avoid wasting the $11 billion promised for earthquake reconstruction.

The Obama administration can avoid an expensive, five-year-long disaster in Haiti, but only if it takes forceful action that addresses the roots of the current crisis. The administration should first announce that it will not provide any further financial support to the current Electoral Council or to any government resulting from this council’s elections. It should then offer to support new elections under a new, credible electoral council, as long as all qualified parties are allowed to participate and all political exiles are allowed to return to Haiti. Haitian voters have suffered enough the past year and deserve nothing less.

Brian Concannon Jr. directs the South Boston-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. Jeena Shah monitored the election as a Lawyers Earthquake Response Network Law fellow in Port-au-Prince.

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

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Losing candidate calls for Haiti election re-run

 

 

A singer-turned-presidential candidate, Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, whose apparent loss in Haiti's flawed election helped spark days of rioting is calling for the vote to beredone with all of the original candidates. (Dec. 15)

>via: http://www.latimes.com/videobeta/30f85de2-200d-4ae9-b8ee-3c9945db28d7

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(AP) – 1 day ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Supporters of one of her competitors in Haiti's presidential election set barricades on fire and threw rubble at cars when initial results put him third. The No. 2 finisher urged his partisans to mobilize and his staff warned they could start a war.

But during the turmoil since the preliminary vote count, Mirlande Manigat, the 70-year-old law professor and former first lady in first place, has kept her calm and stayed in the classroom and her stucco-walled office.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, she blamed the discord on a "crisis of confidence" with Haiti's electoral officials.

She also defended her decision not to participate in a recount and said she is open to power-sharing agreements with other parties as a means of emerging from the crisis.

"Now we are in a situation which has no relation whatsoever either with the constitution or to the electoral law," Manigat said. "I would like to see my country heading for a true democracy, and I am personally concerned about the whole situation."

Manigat is not new to the dirty business of Haitian politics. Her husband, Leslie Manigat, was elected in a criticized 1988 election under a military junta that quickly ousted him in a coup. She won a Senate seat in 2006 but resigned in protest when her husband was denied a run-off in a compromise favoring now-President Rene Preval.

Her supporters clashed with U.N. peacekeepers in two provincial cities between the dysfunctional Nov. 28 election and the much-critcized Dec. 7 announcement of results, throwing rocks and burning tires to demand she be declared the winner.

Since the vote tally the crisis has boiled down to a fight for second place — the other spot in a Jan. 16 runoff — between Jude Celestin, the candidate of Preval's party, and Michel Martelly, a singer who trails him by 6,845 votes. Manigat, all but assured of going on to the next round, has stayed in the background.

That changed briefly when the provisional electoral council, or CEP, proposed creating a commission to recount the tally sheets. Manigat and Martelly declared they were opposed; only Celestin accepted.

"Nobody trusts the CEP. Nobody in Haiti," Manigat said Monday. "I cannot accept (the proposal) because there is no indication about the location, the rules, the membership, etc., etc."

She was also put off by the way she was invited — by e-mail received over her faulty Internet connection at 5 a.m.

"I did not even answer, because for me it was a very bad way to communicate to someone who is a candidate or supposedly might become the next president of Haiti," she said.

Now the electoral council has proposed a second, 72-hour appeals period through Wednesday in which candidates can legally contest the results. That new window was announced late Sunday by a coalition of nine international ambassadors as more protests were expected.

Haiti's political stalemate comes as it wrestles with post-quake reconstruction, a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 2,100 and endemic crises of poverty and instability.

The election cost $29 million — including $14 million provided by the United States — and ambassadors have told Manigat they are not interested in paying for a do-over.

"The Haitians are not enjoying a kind of autonomy with regard to the present situation. It's a matter of relation of force: economic force, political force," she said. "If ever I was president of Haiti before that I would not find myself in this present situation."

Manigat's campaign has promised gradual change and long-term solutions. Her first priorities would be dealing with the cholera epidemic and finding ways to house the more than 1 million people still living under tarps and tents nearly a year after the earthquake.

Seated behind a heavy wooden desk in front of a Haitian flag, Manigat said she believes an agreement between her Assembly of Progressive National Democrats and another party would be essential to resolving the crisis.

She said she is open to a pact with Celestin or Martelly supporters, though not necessarily the men themselves. She called Martelly, a carnival singer known as "Sweet Micky," an "intelligent man" — though she conceded his is "not my type of music, you know."

"It is true he is enjoying a popularity precisely among the young people. And for me, political scientist apart from being a candidate, that is a case study," she added with a grin.

As for Celestin, head of the state-run construction company before being plucked from obscurity to represent Preval's new Unity party, she said: "It is better not to base an opinion about what people are saying. I don't know him. That's all."

Manigat's professorial voice rises with one thought before plunging into a growl with the next, punctuating words like "IF" and "NOW" as paragraphs unto themselves.

She poses questions to herself: "What was the situation at that moment?" she asks, referring to her election day decision to join 11 other candidates in calling for the vote to be invalidated. "We had every evidence that something was going on, either in order to declare that Jude Celestin was elected on the first ballot or to block the elections," she answers.

So why did she change her mind the next day and call for counting to continue? Her supporters saw she had a chance to win and demanded it, she said. Yes, the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission called twice and met with her to encourage her to stay in. No, he did not influence her decision.

"I am not someone who changes easily her mind. I have strong principles, but as a political scientist I know that sometimes ... a situation arises which can lead you to change your mind," Manigat said.

And why does she want to win a contest where the prize is a country full of problems?

"I am a patriot. And I don't like my country as it is now," she said. "I am ready to face the coming situation. And I know that I will succeed."

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

>via: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jtPASZJg6cKsPy3_VVSOm-1Eu1E...

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>via: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/georgianne-nienaber/whose-side-is-bill-clinto_b...

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Debunking the Media's Lies about President Aristide
by Justin Felux
www.dissidentvoice.org
March 14, 2004

Speaking from his de facto prison in the Central African Republic where he is being kept under lock and key by the French, Jean-Bertrand Aristide recently made a statement to the world in which he said, "I declare in overthrowing me they have uprooted the trunk of the tree of peace, but it will grow back because the roots are L'Ouverturian," referring to Toussaint L'Ouverture, the military genius who led his fellow slaves in the only successful slave rebellion in world history. L'Ouverture was captured by the French and taken to a jail cell in the Jura Mountains of France. Aristide, the first democratically elected leader in Haitian history, has maintained that he was forced out of his country by the United States and a group of terrorists working on behalf of Haiti's wealthy elite.

If you believe the stories of the corporate media and the Bush administration, you would think Aristide is getting what he deserves. He is a "corrupt dictator" who abuses human rights. He is a "psychopath" who advocated "necklacing" his opponents. He didn't do anything to bring Haiti out of poverty; in fact, he made Haiti more poor than ever. All of these statements are distortions or outright lies. Aristide's true crime was the same crime committed by L'Ouverture 200 years ago: he stood up to the powers that be. He empowered the Haitian people and belied the racist caricature of Haiti as a land of savage, voodoo-practicing black people who aren't fit to govern themselves; the view expressed by William Jennings Bryan when he said "Think of it, niggers speaking French," or by Pat Buchanan when he disgracefully referred to Haitian refugees as "the Zulus off Miami Beach." Aristide showed those who painted the Haitian people as ungovernable savages needed to take a look in the mirror before they presumed to control the affairs of Haiti, and for that, he had to be deposed.

The New York Times Glorifies Killers

Meanwhile, the U.S. media has waged a vicious propaganda campaign against the embattled former priest in an attempt to justify his forced removal. The coverage of the events in Haiti has been nothing short of disgraceful. For example, the New York Times printed a story last Thursday titled "Thousands March in Haiti for New Leaders and Army." The story devotes 760 words to describing the rally held by supporters of the death squads that recently overran the Haitian countryside: "Some of the signs read 'Arrest Aristide!' Others said 'Down with Bill Clinton!' and 'Down with Jesse Jackson!' ... Others chanted 'Bring back the army!'" For those who don't know, the Haitian Army was created by the U.S. during the first half of the 20th century. It was used as an instrument of terror against Haiti's poor by the wealthy ruling class until Aristide bravely disbanded it in 1995.

In the story, Guy Philippe is portrayed as a character whose goodness ranks somewhere between that of Mother Teresa and Jesus. This is the same Guy Philippe who led incursions into Haiti from across the border which killed dozens of Lavalas supporters and police officers. He is also suspected of cocaine trafficking. Contrast the Times' coverage of the anti-Aristide demonstration with their coverage of a recent pro-Aristide demonstration. According to Reuters, the pro-Aristide rally had anywhere from 8,000 to over 10,000 participants: "Thousands of outraged supporters of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide poured out of Haiti's slums and into the streets on Friday, marching on the U.S. Embassy to denounce the "occupation" of their homeland and demand Aristide's return."

The New York Times mentioned the rally, but it was buried in a piece titled "U.S. Special Forces in Haiti Seeking Out Rebel Leaders." Only 115 words are devoted to describing the demonstration. They said the demonstrators numbered in the "thousands," rather than the figure of over 10,000 reported by Reuters. The Aristide supporters are presented in a negative light. It says they "jeered and cursed" and "shouted angrily." It also describes them as "hooting protesters." The anti-Aristide demonstrators, on the other hand, "sang songs" and "chanted." In addition, "The march was peaceful ... There was some drinking and celebration but no violence." The message is clear: Aristide's supporters are mean and unruly whereas opponents of Aristide are amicable and peaceful.

Another story titled "Gunfire Kills 5 as They March in Haiti Capital" further demonizes Aristide supporters and humanizes his opposition. The article describes how anti-Aristide demonstrators "marched peacefully through the capital" when suddenly they were ambushed by "the toughs Mr. Aristide had used to enforce his authority." They describe the demonstration as the "largest" since Aristide's exile, which is almost certainly untrue if the Reuters estimate above is correct. The article describes in graphic detail the wounded and the dead: "The most seriously wounded lay on gurneys; half a dozen men writhed in pools of blood on the floor." They again make a hero out of Guy Philippe, saying, "Guy Philippe, the rebel leader whose actions helped push Mr. Aristide into exile, visited victims at the hospital, his face contorted as he saw their wounds." The story has over 1,000 words and relies almost totally on anti-Aristide sources. I have yet to see the Times devote anything near this much space to covering the hundreds of people Philippe's thugs have slaughtered in the past few weeks.

This sort of thing has been a consistent feature of the major media's coverage of the Haiti crisis. Demonstrations by Aristide's opponents always get covered whereas larger demonstrations by his supporters, if they are mentioned at all, get less, and with a more negative tone. Part of the reason is that major media outlets are obsessed with relying on the "official" sources rather than doing actual journalism. Another part of the reason is that the media in Haiti is owned by the ruling elite, most of whom harbor a pathological hatred for President Aristide. The situation is similar to what happened during the failed coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, where the Venezuelan media was virulently anti-Chavez. The reporting also is skewed by the fact that most of Aristide's support comes from the slums and the rural areas where reporters for the elite media are afraid or too lazy to visit.

The Haitian Media: A Mouthpiece for Elites

The media outlets in Haiti will report any falsehood that has the effect of demonizing Aristide and his supporters. For example, when the "rebels" were surrounding the capital of Port-au-Prince, the radio was reporting that Aristide had fled days before he had actually left the country. This was an attempt to demoralize Aristide supporters who were preparing to resist the thugs. More recently, Guy Philippe told a mob of his supporters he had discovered small coffins which contained dead babies. He said President Aristide had sacrificed the babies in a "black voodoo ceremony." Haitian radio reported the story as a fact.

Andre "Andy" Apaid, the spokesman of the leading anti-Aristide group (Group 184), is the founder of Tele-Haiti. Tele-Haiti and the various radio stations owned by the ruling elite frequently air commercials inciting Haitians to overthrow the government. Apaid isn't even a Haitian citizen; he is an American citizen who owns sweatshops in Haiti. He is notorious for evading his taxes, supporting the Duvalier dictatorship, and forcing union organizers off his property at gunpoint. Working conditions in Haitian sweatshops are absolutely brutal. An employee for a subcontractor of Cintas, an American corporation, describes her working conditions: "They lock the gates on us and sometimes put security guards out in front with rifles to prevent us from leaving. The supervisors would yell and curse at us to finish our quota. My daily quota is sewing 90 dozen zippers on pants for 80 gourds (~$2 USD) . . . The factory gets so hot it is like working in fire. Inside the air is so hot and full of dust that I can't breathe, so I would put my handkerchief around my nose and continue working."

Thanks in part to Haitians being worked like beasts of burden, Cintas scored $234 million in profits in 2002. It is no wonder wealthy elites like Andy Apaid and those who own the Cintas subcontractors have no love for President Aristide. Aristide's administration has increased tax collection and doubled the minimum wage, an action that some say was "the straw that broke the camel's back" in the minds of Haiti's elite. To put it simply, Aristide worked to give Haiti's poor a bigger slice of the already very small economic pie, and that was unacceptable. It also flies in the face of the popular notion in the media that Aristide didn't accomplish anything while in office. Most reports will say something to the effect of "People hoped Aristide would bring them out of poverty, but today Haiti is more poor than ever." TheNew York Times referred disparagingly to "the mess [Aristide] left behind." Statements like this seem to carry the assumption that Aristide is personally responsible for Haiti's economic fate, which is frankly ridiculous. Equally ridiculous is the notion that Aristide has attempted nothing to improve the country's problems. People who say such things are not doing their homework. In order to understand why Haiti is so poor, one must first understand Haiti's history and the impact that racism and colonialism have had on the island nation.

Past U.S. Meddling in Haitian Affairs

In fact, in order to understand the causes of Haiti's extreme poverty one has to go back over 200 years, when the Haitian people were held in bondage by the French. Under the system of slave labor the French employed slaves were literally worked to death and replaced by fresh shipments of slaves from the west coast of Africa. After the slave revolt defeated Napoleon's army, the French ordered the newly liberated colony to pay 90 million gold francs in "compensation" to French plantation owners who lost property and investments as a result of the uprising. Thomas Jefferson didn't like the idea of an independent black republic and attempted to strangle Haiti economically. Under the threat of embargoes and military intervention, Haiti agreed to pay the money to France. It took about 100 years to pay off, and France didn't recognize Haiti until the payment was completed. During that time, much of the Haitian population barely survived through subsistence agriculture. President Aristide recently called for France to pay the money back, which didn't make him many friends in Paris.

Between 1849 and 1913 the U.S. Navy entered Haitian waters to protect U.S. "interests" 24 times. In 1915 Woodrow Wilson began a U.S. military occupation of Haiti. The U.S. helped create the Haitian army during this time. The Army became the main instrument by which the poor masses of Haiti were kept in line by whichever autocratic regime happened to be in power. The Army brutally suppressed and intimidated labor unions and dissidents. Haiti's economy was also opened up to exploitation by U.S. corporations. The occupation would last 19 years despite the resistance of the "Cacos," a group of revolutionaries whose name was derived from the call of an indigenous bird. In the 1950s the dictatorship of "Papa Doc" Duvalier came to power with U.S. support. The reign of both "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" (who now wants to return to Haiti) were characterized by terrorizing Haiti's poor and ensuring a favorable business climate for Haitian elites and foreign investors.

The IMF and World Bank Strangle Haiti's Economy

According to a 1997 report by Foreign Policy in Focus, "Since the early 1960s the U.S. has actively used its political influence and development assistance programs to help turn Haiti into a low-wage, export-friendly economy that provides profitable business opportunities for U.S. investors. In 1971, at a time when development assistance to Haiti had been cut off due to the terrible human rights record of the Duvalier regime, the Nixon administration agreed to give political support to the transition of power from Papa Doc to Baby Doc-dictator to dictator-in return for the establishment of generous incentives to attract U.S. private investors. These included maintenance of an extremely low minimum wage, the suppression of labor unions, and the right of foreign companies to repatriate their profits."

During the 1980s international financial institutions, namely the World Bank and IMF, began to push for economic reforms in Haiti. The Haitian economy was subjected to "structural adjustment" programs which included "short-term stabilization measures, reduction of tariffs and import controls, cuts in government expenditures on health and education, and wage restraint. With the removal of import controls, the value of agricultural exports to Haiti from the U.S. increased from $44 million in 1986 to $95 million in 1989." The point about agriculture is an important one. More than 75% of the Haitian population is involved in agriculture. The IMF reforms flooded Haiti's markets with cheap, subsidized agricultural products from the U.S. and Europe, undermining local producers. Haitians don't have enough money to subsidize their agricultural products, and the international financial institutions probably wouldn't let them if they did. The impact of these reforms on the Haitian economy was cogently explained by President Aristide himself in his book, Eyes of the Heart:

"What happens to poor countries when they embrace free trade? In Haiti in 1986 we imported just 7000 tons of rice, the main staple food of the country. The vast majority was grown in Haiti. In the late 1980s Haiti complied with free trade policies advocated by the international lending agencies and lifted tariffs on rice imports. Cheaper rice immediately flooded in from the United States where the rice industry is subsidized.

In fact the liberalization of Haiti's market coincided with the 1985 Farm Bill in the United States which increased subsidies to the rice industry so that 40% of U.S. rice growers' profits came from the government by 1987. Haiti's peasant farmers could not possibly compete. By 1996 Haiti was importing 196,000 tons of foreign rice at the cost of $100 million a year. Haitian rice production became negligible. Once the dependence on foreign rice was complete, import prices began to rise, leaving Haiti's population, particularly the urban poor, completely at the whim of rising world grain prices. And the prices continue to rise."

Aristide also recounts the impact of international institutions on Haiti's hog farmers. It is an example of how rich countries often use overly rigid safety and health regulations as a way of keeping foreign exports out of their markets:

"In 1982 international agencies assured Haiti's peasants their pigs were sick and had to be killed (so that the illness would not spread to countries to the North). Promises were made that better pigs would replace the sick pigs ... all of the Creole pigs were killed over period of a thirteen months. Two years later the new, better pigs came from lowa. They were so much better that they required clean drinking water (unavailable to 80% of the Haitian population), imported feed (costing $90 a year when the per capita income was about $130), and special roofed pigpens. Haitian peasants quickly dubbed them 'prince a quatre pieds,' (four-footed princes). Adding insult to injury, the meat did not taste as good.

Needless to say, the repopulation program was a complete failure. One observer of the process estimated that in monetary terms Haitian peasants lost $600 million dollars. There was a 30% drop in enrollment in rural schools, there was a dramatic decline in the protein consumption in rural Haiti, a devastating decapitalization of the peasant economy and an incalculable negative impact on Haiti's soil and agricultural productivity. The Haitian peasantry has not recovered to this day."

IMF loans increased Haiti's already burdensome debt. According to the Haiti Support Group, "Haiti's debt to international financial institutions and foreign governments has grown from US$302 million in 1980 to US$1.134 billion today. About 40% of this debt stems from loans to the brutal Duvalier dictators who invested precious little of it in the country. This is known as 'odious debt' because it was used to oppress the people, and, according to international law, this debt need not be repaid." In addition to this awful economic climate, the political climate in Haiti has always been volatile, with dozens of coups shaking the foundation of the country, including the one recently orchestrated by Washington.

Mental Health and "Necklacing": Bad Journalism and Journalism Not Even Attempted

All of this is what President Aristide inherited. He won Haiti's first free elections by a landslide, receiving 2/3 of the vote. During his presidential campaign he would ride across the countryside on a donkey while greeting people. He was adored by the poor people of Haiti for his bravery in standing up to the Duvalier regime. He was so defiant, in fact, that some of his fellow clergymen attempted to have him transferred out of Port-au-Prince. When the word of the possibility that Aristide would be sent away got around, young people from all over the capital began a hunger strike to protest. Aristide was never transferred.

Upon taking office Aristide refused to accept his $10,000 monthly salary, saying it was "scandalous in a country where most people go to bed hungry." He began a program of land reform that distributed fallow plots to landless peasants, leading to an enormous decrease in violent land disputes. He lobbied to increase the minimum wage. Perhaps most importantly, he cracked down on the crime and drug trafficking among members of the former military, an organization that was still making it difficult for Haitians to sleep at night.

Aristide was overthrown in a coup less than a year into his term. The coup was led by elements of the former military, Duvalier supporters, and terrorist thugs of the wealthy elite. Aristide was exiled to the United States for 3 years, during which a ruthless military dictator ruled Haiti. Anywhere from 3 thousand to over 5 thousand people were killed during this period. It was also during this period that the media demonization of Aristide began. Two major rumors, both of them utterly false, began to spread about Aristide. One was that he advocated "necklacing" of his opponents. Necklacing is a form of execution whereby a tire is drenched in gasoline, draped over a person's neck, and set on fire. The other rumor was that Aristide was "mentally unbalanced" or "a psychopath." Now that Haiti is back in the news, these same charges are starting to creep back into the coverage even though they were both discredited 10 years ago. On Fox News Channel, right-wing pundit Fred Barnes called Aristide a "psychopath." The New York Times recently repeated the lie about necklacing.

Both of these stories were the result of a propaganda campaign waged by minions of the C�dras dictatorship that was then ruling in place of Aristide. Sheldon Rampton debunks both myths in an articlefor PR Watch. Here he explains the role of Lynn Garrison: "A former Canadian air force officer with shadowy ties to the CIA, Garrison became one of the primary sources for the coup leaders' smear campaign against Aristide. His first task, following Aristide's expulsion from the county, was to go through the exiled president's personal possessions, including diaries, paintings and medicines, seeking evidence to back up the junta's claim that Aristide was unfit to govern."

Garrison found paintings and doodlings that he was convinced would only be possessed by a madman. He went through Aristide's medicines and claimed to have found drugs that Aristide needed to sustain his mental health. They were actually medicines used to combat heart trouble. A host of PR agents were hired to spread press releases, memos, and editorials around Washington. One of C�dras' leading agents enlisted the help of right-wing columnist Bob Novak, who wrote a series of columns praising the Haitian dictator. Novak also unearthed a phony "hit list" supposedly penned by Aristide. Pat Buchanan joined in the fun, saying Aristide was a "bloodthirsty little socialist." Jesse Helms and Bob Dole were working behind the scenes with these agents to undermine Aristide in Congress. No matter what people may say about Aristide, it is undeniable that he has all the right enemies.

A CIA document, later proved to be a forgery, was presented by Jesse Helms as "proof" of Aristide's psychopathic tendencies. Helms also accused Aristide of human rights abuses, which ended up angering human rights organizations. Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch called Helms' claim that Haitians were worse off under Aristide "ludicrous." The lie about Aristide advocating "necklacing" was also popularized by Jesse Helms when he made the claim in a speech to the Senate. Here are the portions of the speechAristide gave in which he was allegedly advocating necklacing:

"And if you catch a cat [the slang in Creole for thief], if you catch a thief, if you catch a false, Lavalassian, if you catch a false, if you catch one who shouldn't be there, don't hesitate to give him what he deserves. Your tool in hand, your instrument in hand, your constitution in hand! Don't hesitate to give him what he deserves. Your equipment in hand, your trowel in hand, your pencil in hand, your Constitution in hand, don't hesitate to give him what he deserves."

The speech is about the Haitian elite and the supporters of the Duvalier dictatorship. In the next line Aristide refers directly to "the 291," meaning Article 291 of the Haitian Constitution, which bans supporters of the former dictator from politics for 10 years. He is imploring his followers to use the Constitution (their "instrument") to prevent torturers and killers from participating in the new Haitian government. According to Helms, "tool" means "burning tire." Jesse probably needs to brush up on his Creole. The irony of all this is that "necklacing" is a tactic often used by Aristide's opponents. The New York Times has reported several instances of necklacing against "suspected Aristide militants" since the recent coup. Necklacing was also a common occurrence after the 1991 coup.

Democratic Party to Aristide: Satisfy U.S. Investors, or Else!

 

During the 1991-94 dictatorship, the OAS declared an embargo to protest human rights abuses. The U.S. refused to comply with the embargo, declaring certain firms "exempt." U.S.-Haiti trade actually increased during Aristide's exile. Despite the favorable press and economic ties, pressure mounted on the Clinton administration to do something to restore democracy in Haiti. The CIA-backed FRAPH death squads and the Haitian military were committing atrocities on a massive scale. As a result of that pressure, Aristide was restored to power with the help of 20,000 U.S. Marines. Right before the intervention, the AP reported that U.S. oil companies had been illegally supplying the coup leaders.

As a condition of his return, the Clinton administration forced Aristide to agree to yet another round of "free trade" initiatives. These initiatives involved the selling of state-owned enterprises, which included a telephone company, electric company, airport, port, three banks, a cement factory and flour mill. The U.S. hoped these would be sold to multinational corporations, but Aristide was reluctant. Only the cement factory and the flour mill were sold. The unfairness of the privatization scheme was summed up nicely by Aristide:

"The state-owned enterprises are sick, we are told, and they must be privatized. The peasants shake their heads and remember the Creole pigs. The 1997 sale of the state-owned flour mill confirmed their skepticism. The mill sold for a mere $9 million, while estimates place potential yearly profits at $20-30 million a year. The mill was bought by a group of investors linked to one of Haiti's largest banks. One outcome seems certain; this sale will further concentrate wealth-in a country where 1% of the population already holds 45% of the wealth of the country."

Al Gore personally visited Haiti to tell President Aristide how to run his country. In the words of Haiti Progres, "His message to the Haitian people: we know what's best for you, and you will have to do what we say, like it or not." Aristide always had to navigate a line between carrying out his programs to help uplift the Haitian people and appeasing the elites and the international financial institutions that were applying enormous pressure on him. At first, Aristide made several major concessions which won him a fair amount of acceptance from Washington. According to former ambassador Robert White, Aristide had been given a "crash course in democracy" and learned that "too much revolution scares away investors. Small countries can't afford too much social experimentation."

Aristide implemented some of the neoliberal economic reforms. Trade barriers were lowered, making Haiti probably the most open economy in the world. A "free trade zone" was established along the Dominican border. The government eliminated gasoline subsidies, causing the price of gas to double and transportation costs to increase 60%. Aristide appointed a strongly pro-free trade Prime Minister. Many of Aristide's former supporters say he went too far and gave up on his principles. That may be the case, but Aristide was still able to accomplish a great deal in the fields of education, health, and human rights. What should be made abundantly clear, however, is that when the media makes a statement like "Aristide failed to lift Haiti out of poverty" they are ignoring all context and history, including the crucial role played by the U.S. and international financial institutions.

The "Fraudulent" 2000 Elections: A Fraudulent Excuse for a Coup

Aristide's opposition, fortified by funds from the International Republican Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy, was desperate to get rid of him and gain control of the government. Coups had failed. Less than 15% of the population supported them, so they couldn't win elections. Even so, the elections of 2000 gave Aristide's opponents an opportunity to stir up controversy. The elections have been broadly denounced as a "fraud." Some media organizations have echoed the false accusations of the opposition parties, claiming that there was systemic and widespread fraud. Such a claim was never alleged by any credible international body or organization; it was simply made up by the opposition.

The real "controversy" centered around an electoral quibble of minor importance. The U.S.-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) decided to meddle in the internal affairs of Haiti, overstepping its mandate. The OAS took issue with the method used to calculate the vote totals in 8 of those seats, saying there should have been a runoff. Instead, the posts were given (gasp!) to the people who had the most votes. It's easy to understand why George W. Bush would find such electoral methods unsettling. The other 7,492 positions that were filled in the same elections were judged to be fair. Few people have taken the time to actually investigate the claims made by the opposition. As a result, the charges have been repeated and exaggerated by the media.

First of all, there is absolutely no doubt that Aristide's Family Lavalas Party would have swept the elections regardless of what method was used. Even some of Aristide's strongest opponents have admitted this. L�opold Berlanger, director of the anti-Lavalas Radio Vision 2000, has said that the scattered irregularities did not affect "the result of the vote in general." The opposition has always had very little popular support, even according to polls conducted by Washington. Many international observers judged the election to be fair. The Mission of Francophone States gave its seal of approval. The International Coalition of Independent Observers characterized the elections as "fair and peaceful."

Furthermore, the method used to calculate the votes was public knowledge before the vote. Why didn't the OAS raise its objections then? In fact, the same method was used in previous elections. According to Luciano Pharaon, the head of election operations, "Not only have we done our job correctly, but this is the same method used in the elections of 1990, 1995, and 1997, and everyone accepted it," he said. "I don't see what the problem is this time, unless it is a false problem and they really are after something else." Something else is exactly what they were after.

Many people alleged that Aristide supporters engaged in intimidation and violence against opponents during the election. Weapons were banned during the electoral period, even if the owner had a license. In the rural areas, several Lavalas members were arrested on weapons violations, contrary to the alleged "partisanship" of the Haitian police. However, most of the trouble, as usual, came from Aristide's opponents, many more of which were arrested for similar weapons violations. Several opposition supporters were arrested for attempting to incite violence. The night before the election, someone lobbed a Molotov cocktail at Lafanmi Selavi, the orphanage founded by Aristide. One prominent opposition figure, Paul Denis, was arrested after police found illegal automatic weapons in his home.

These arrests have been portrayed in the media as a case of Aristide's evil blackshirts cracking down on dissent. In reality, Aristide has always condemned people on both sides who violate the law, and people on both sides were held accountable. Notably absent from all the administration's denunciations are the opposition forces who have engaged in violence. In February, the opposition attempted to illegally set up a "parallel government," which eventually "collapsed under the weight of its own ridiculousness," to quote Haiti Progres.

Bush to Haiti: Surrender Your Democracy or Drink Polluted Water

In response to the election disagreement, Aristide's opponents boycotted the remaining elections and began calling for the overthrow of the government. The Bush administration blocked over $500 million in desperately needed international aid. This included $146 million dollar loan package from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) intended for healthcare, education, water sanitation. In other words, the Bush administration has no problem halting aid over a minor political dispute while Haitian children die from drinking polluted water. Aristide denounced the move as "economic terrorism." The funds were not dispensed until years later, after the Haitian government was forced to pay $66 million in "arrears" for debts largely incurred by the former dictatorship (this reminds Haitians of the "debt" they had to pay to French slave owners). In addition, the embargo has helped cause the Haitian gourde lose 69% of its value and shrink Haiti's foreign reserves by 50%.

The reason the U.S. blocked the aid was to further destabilize Haiti and foment rebellion. The administration's claim that the aid is being withheld because of the election results cannot be taken seriously. The top 3 countries which receive aid from the U.S. are Israel, Egypt, and Colombia. All three of these countries have horrible human rights records. Of the three, only Israel can be reasonably considered a democracy (unless you count the occupied territories as part of Israel, in which case a large segment of the population cannot vote). After 9/11, the military dictator of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, was renamed "President Musharraf" by the Bush administration. Pakistan receives a good deal of aid from the United States. The U.S. government also had no qualms with giving aid to the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti.

The ultimate irony over the election dispute, as many have pointed out, is that the truly "fraudulent" elections in 2000 were the ones that put President Bush in power. In Florida, over 90,000 voters were disenfranchised by being falsely labeled as convicted felons. Most of the voters were minorities and likely to vote Democrat. Other technicalities were used to disqualify voters, such as address changes. Black voters were subjected to old voting machines, confusing ballots, intimidation, and police checkpoints. There was also the corrupt Supreme Court decision which stopped the Florida recount, as we all know. What all this suggests is that the United States and the "international community" should stop sticking its nose in Haiti's internal affairs and raising objections when the reflection in the mirror looks a lot worse.

Aristide has bent over backwards to compromise with the opposition. He asked 7 of the Senators to step down from their posts, which they did. He promised to hold immediate runoffs and new elections the next year. The opposition refused to accept anything less than Aristide's ouster. There was a lot of fanciful rhetoric about Haiti becoming a "one-party state" with a "winner take all system," which is precisely what we have in the United States. Aristide has always shared power, despite the fact that his opponents do not have the popular support to warrant such power sharing. He has even allowed former Duvalier supporters to hold prominent positions in the government, much to the chagrin of his supporters. As a result of all this bargaining and compromising, the Lavalas movement began to divide, which is what Washington and the opposition were trying to accomplish all along.

The Aristide Record: Human Rights, Education, Health

What has been completely lost in all of the reporting about Haiti are the tremendous accomplishments of the Aristide government. While the media may grudgingly admit the fact that Aristide is wildly popular, little attention is given to where that popularity comes from. The human rights situation under Aristide has remarkably better than past regimes, despite the fact that many of the same folks from those days are still around. Against all odds, the Aristide government has made health care and education a priority in Haiti. The improvements made in these areas have been especially impressive considering the lack of funds and the hostility expressed by the opposition and the "international community." A report titledHidden from the Headlines, issued by the Haiti Action Committee, does a good job of summing up the record of the Aristide government. Many of the following facts have been taken from this must-read document.

While it is often said that Aristide suppresses dissent, the truth is the exact opposite. Over 200 radio stations operate in Haiti today, and most of them broadcast lies and propaganda about Aristide on a daily basis (pro-Aristide journalists are now afraid to talk to the U.S. media for fear of attacks). Aristide has respected the right of his opponents to criticize his government, even when his opponents take part in things that seem more like sedition than dissent. Many of Aristide's allies have been frustrated by him and claim that he is too timid and accommodating toward his opponents. For example, before his ouster he agreed to a CARICOM proposal that would have given his opponents a grossly inordinate amount of power, but they refused to accept anything short of his removal.

Human Rights

The Raboteau trial in 2000 saw some of the worst killers in Haitian history brought to justice (although many of them have been "liberated" from prison by Guy Philippe and his thugs). Aristide also disbanded the Haitian military, which is probably the greatest human rights achievement of his presidency. Even many of Aristide's opponents favored the elimination of the military, which served no purpose other than to terrorize the population. The fact that some of Haiti's new "leaders" are calling for the military to be reborn ought to tell you something very unsettling about them.

Many organizations and media outlets accuse "Lavalas militants" of violence. It is true that there have been acts of violence, but they have occurred on both sides. Aristide has consistently condemned violence regardless of which group is taking part in it. Many Lavalas supporters have been arrested for such activities. It should be noted that Lavalas supporters are a huge segment of the Haitian population, and it isn't fair to blame Aristide for the actions of individuals. To blame Aristide for every action done by a Lavalas member implies that everything his followers do is the result of Aristide's direct instruction, which isn't the case (just like Bush isn't responsible for Ku Klux Klan members who happen to be Republicans). The media also tends to ignore violence when it is done by the other side, which is most often the case. Opponents of Aristide will intentionally provoke Aristide supporters into violent action so that the violence can be used by the media as proof of how evil Aristide is. A relevant example is given by the Haiti Action Committee:

"On March 20, 2003, the Associated Press reported that 'police fired tear gas and used nightsticks to disperse 300 anti-government demonstrators near the National Palace.' What they did not report was that these protesters insisted�over police objections�on changing the route of their march to go to the National Palace where hundreds of pro-government demonstrators were rallying. Predictably, a melee broke out and police were forced to break it up. (Haiti Progres, March 2003) The AP story closed with a quote from Convergence leader Gerard Pierre Charles, who declared, 'the government is more repressive than ever.'"

The Haitian police force has also been the target of some legitimate criticism. It is an unorganized and undisciplined, largely thanks to the United States. When Aristide was returned to power in 1994, part of the mission of the U.S. and Canada was supposed to be to train the Haitian police force and provide security. That part of the operation ended up being a miserable failure. Aristide refused to align himself with elements of the former army and military junta, and U.S. forces refused to disarm the thugs and death squads. As a result, Haiti has an undisciplined police force that sometimes steps over the line and often doesn't get its job done.

In other words, Haiti's police force has a lot in common with the police in the United States. According to a 1998 report by Human Rights Watch, American police engage in "unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because overwhelming barriers to accountability make it possible for officers who commit human rights violations to escape due punishment and often to repeat their offenses. Police or public officials greet each new report of brutality with denials or explain that the act was an aberration, while the administrative and criminal systems that should deter these abuses by holding officers accountable instead virtually guarantee them impunity." These are the kind of human rights abuses that many democracies have trouble with. It isn't grounds for overthrowing the government (especially when those calling for the overthrow are members of death squads).

Some have also legitimately claimed that Aristide's government is corrupt. There is some truth to this, and it has caused division within the Lavalas movement. Some public officials have nice houses and cars that would be impossible to afford with the salary of a public official. Again, this is exactly what goes on in the United States. In fact, the corrupt reconstruction racket in Iraq has resulted in no-bid contracts for Haliburton that amount to about a tenth of the entire GDP of Haiti. Connecticut Gov. John Rowland has recently come under fire for corrupt dealings with contractors in his state. This does not justify an armed insurrection against the state of Connecticut. A democratic government has mechanisms to deal with such problems.

The Aristide government has also made significant steps in fighting trafficking in persons, contrary to the State Department's claim that Haiti is among the "least compliant" countries with regards to this issue:

"An estimated 400,000 young children, primarily girls, work as domestics in Haitian households. The majority of these children come from rural Haiti and are sent to the cities by their parents in hopes that they will receive food, education and shelter in exchange for their labor. Often, in addition to long hours and hard work, these restaveks are subject to abuse, violence and neglect. In May 2003, Haiti passed legislation prohibiting trafficking in persons, and banning the provision of the labor code which formerly sanctioned child domestic labor. The bill followed a law enacted in October 2001, which banned all forms of corporal punishment against children. In addition, Haiti is taking specific measures to ensure that restavek children get an education. Government scholarship funds for the 2003�2004 school year will target restavek children, and President Aristide has called on all families who have restavek children living in their homes to send them to school."

Education

Aristide's government began a Universal Schooling program designed to give every child an education. More schools have been built under Aristide's government than were built in the entire 200 years prior to his taking office. Aristide has mandated that 20% of the national budget go to education, including "a 70% government subsidy of schoolbooks and uniforms, and expanded school lunch and school bus programs." Aristide has also made many new scholarships available to students so that they can attend private schools. The government has also made enormous strides in improving literacy:

"Haiti�s rate of illiteracy currently stands between 55% and 60%. In the summer of 2001, the Haitian government launched a national literacy campaign. The Secretary of State for Literacy has printed 2 million literacy manuals, and trained thousands of college and high school students as literacy workers. The students committed to teach throughout the country for the next three years. Working with church and voudouizan groups, popular organizations and thousands of women�s groups across the country, the government has opened 20,000 adult literacy centers. Some 320,000 people are currently in literacy classes; the majority are women. Many of these centers, opened in poor urban and rural areas, are resto-alphas which combine a literacy center and a community kitchen, providing low-cost meals to communities in need."

Health

In a cooperative effort with Cuba, 800 Cuban doctors were brought to Haiti to work in rural areas. In addition, 325 Haitians began receiving training in Cuba with a commitment to return to Haiti and serve the public. Two hundred Haitians were also studying at a new medical school in Haiti, which was part of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy. Since the coup, the medical school has been closed down and used as a base for troops. Aristide's foundation has reportedly been looted. Both organizations were involved in doing very good and much-needed work on behalf of the Haitian people.

The Aristide government has also taken a strong lead in fighting AIDS:

"Haiti joined an im-portant three-country AIDS vaccine trial. In 2002, the UN Global Fund for AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis chose Haiti as one of the first three recipients of grants. The two-year, $18 million grant will fi-nance a broad spectrum of work to treat and prevent AIDS in rural and urban areas, including the provision of anti-retroviral treatment to some AIDS patients. Some of these funds will support the groundbreaking work of Partners in Health at the Central Plateau hospital founded by Dr. Paul Farmer, which provides AIDS treatment and medication to patients free of charge."

Personal Impressions of Aristide

Those who have met President Aristide have an impression of the man that is radically different from the evil despot that he is made to be in the media. Randall Robinson, head of TransAfrica, has called him an "honorable man." Lyn Duff, a friend of Aristide, wrote in a recent article, "The Jean Bertrand Aristide I know is markedly different from the one that is being portrayed in the media ... In 1995 when, I was 19 years old, I traveled to Haiti to help set up Radyo Timoun, a radio station run by street children in the capital .. It was there that I came to know Jean Bertrand Aristide, not just as the president of the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but also as a father, teacher, a friend, and a surrogate dad for hundreds of parentless street kids."

One of those street children sent Lyn Duff a letter in which he talks about his fears after Aristide's overthrow. The letter deserves to be quoted at length:

"I was living in the gutter, dressing in old clothes and begging at the airport when President Aristide took office in 1990. One of the first things Titid [as President Aristide was popularly known] did when he moved into the National Palace was invite a group of children who sleep in the streets to visit the Palace and speak out about the conditions of the street children ... When Titid became president he told the world that we street children were people, we had value, that we were human beings. 

Many adults didn't like this message. They said we were dirty and should be thrown out like the trash that we are. But Titid loved us and when I met him, he kissed me and put his hand on my face and told me he loved me. And they were not the empty words of a politician ... During the first coup in 1991 the street kids were attacked and Lafanmi Selavi [a shelter for homeless children started by Aristide when he was a parish priest] was burned. Aristide came back from exile in October 1994 and it was a new world for the children. Three years of horror were over. 

I was just a little child at that time but with Titid I felt important. We went to Titid and told him that we wanted to have a voice in democracy, to have a voice for children and he gave us Radyo Timoun. We were the first children's radio station in the world, run by children and promoting the human rights of all Haitians ... The U.S. Marines stood by and did nothing while the library at the Aristide Foundation was burned. With my own eyes I saw the American Marines stand and watch while rebels cut a woman and shot her. I yelled at them, "Do something!" and they swung their guns around toward me and yelled, "Get back!" 

While I hid in a field the American Marines put their hats on the bodies of dead people and posed for pictures with them. It made me sick because in Haiti we respect the dead. The Americans scare me; I don't believe that they want anything good for the Haitian people because they support the criminals who oppose democracy .. A new government has no hope for the children of Haiti. I am scared, I think the criminals will try to kill me too because I am one of Titid's boys. But I am not just scared for myself. I am scared for all the children of Haiti. And today I cannot stop crying."

One cannot read those words and believe that Aristide was a monster, or that this bloody coup is anything but a disaster for the Haitian people. The children's radio station has been looted and destroyed by anti-Aristide gangs. Another letter from a young girl said that she is being targeted because the thugs found a picture of her handing a flower to President Aristide.

The Threat of a Good Example

Several liberals have asked me questions such as, "Why would Bush do this to Haiti? Haiti has no oil. Even if what you're saying is true, I don't understand what interest we have in Haiti." It is true that Haiti has little strategic or economic significance. Certainly not as much significance as Iraq or Venezuela, which both have large oil reserves. However, Aristide was a threat to the powerful in the United States in a very real way. It was the threat of a good example. As Noam Chomsky has acutely observed, "No country is exempt from U.S. intervention, no matter how unimportant. In fact, it's the weakest, poorest countries that often arouse the greatest hysteria ... There's a reason for that. The weaker and poorer a country is, the more dangerous it is as an example. If a tiny, poor country like Grenada can succeed in bringing about a better life for its people, some other place that has more resources will ask, 'why not us?'"

Exactly. This is why the New York Times is bending over backwards to portray Aristide as an authoritarian radical, whether they realize it or not. To quote Dr. Paul Farmer, "Aristide is indeed a radical, but not in the sense of the dispatches to Washington: he is radically devoted to the poor ... Aristide's main inspiration comes directly from the poor themselves. He has worked with disaffected and unemployed urban youth, and with the street children and beggars and homeless inhabitants of a city of well over a million people." He has a bunch of crazy ideas such as "investing in human beings" and "the right to eat and to work." In other words, he is a very dangerous man in the eyes of multinational corporations, foreign investors, and Haiti's rich elite. As one Haitian businessman put it, "Everyone who is anyone is against Aristide. Except the people."

Justin Felux can be contacted at justins@alacrityisp.net.

Further Reading

* Dissident Voice's Coverage of Haiti

Other Articles by Justin Felux

* The Rape of Haiti 
* US and France Kiss and Makeup, Haitian Democracy Dies
* John Kerry: Media Darling
* Playing the "War Hero" Card

>via: http://dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Felux0314.htm

 

 

Coleen Rowley

Bogdan Dzakovic

WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if?

Frustrated investigators might have chosen to leak information that their superiors bottled up, perhaps averting the terrorism attacks.

October 15, 2010|By Coleen Rowley and Bogdan Dzakovic

 

If WikiLeaks had been around in 2001, could the events of 9/11 have been prevented? The idea is worth considering.

The organization has drawn both high praise and searing criticism for its mission of publishing leaked documents without revealing their source, but we suspect the world hasn't yet fully seen its potential. Let us explain.

There were a lot of us in the run-up to Sept. 11 who had seen warning signs that something devastating might be in the planning stages. But we worked for ossified bureaucracies incapable of acting quickly and decisively. Lately, the two of us have been wondering how things might have been different if there had been a quick, confidential way to get information out.

One of us, Coleen Rowley, was a special agent/legal counsel at the FBI's Minneapolis division and worked closely with those who arrested would-be terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui on an immigration violation less than a month before the World Trade Center was destroyed.

Following up on a tip from flight school instructors who had become suspicious of the French Moroccan who claimed to want to fly a jet as an "ego boost," Special Agent Harry Samit and an INS colleague had detained Moussaoui. A foreign intelligence service promptly reported that he had connections with a foreign terrorist group, but FBI officials in Washington inexplicably turned down Samit's request for authority to search Moussaoui's laptop computer and personal effects.

Those same officials stonewalled Samit's supervisor, who pleaded with them in late August 2001 that he was "trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing into the World Trade Center." (Yes, he was that explicit.) Later, testifying at Moussaoui's trial, Samit testified that he believed the behavior of his FBI superiors in Washington constituted "criminal negligence."

The 9/11 Commission ultimately concluded that Moussaoui was most likely being primed as a Sept. 11 replacement pilot and that the hijackers probably would have postponed their strike if information about his arrest had been announced.

WikiLeaks might have provided a pressure valve for those agents who were terribly worried about what might happen and frustrated by their superiors' seeming indifference. They were indeed stuck in a perplexing, no-win ethical dilemma as time ticked away. Their bosses issued continual warnings against "talking to the media" and frowned on whistle-blowing, yet the agents felt a strong need to protect the public.

 

The other one of us writing this piece, Federal Air Marshal Bogdan Dzakovic, once co-led the Federal Aviation Administration's Red Team to probe for vulnerabilities in airport security. He also has a story of how warnings were ignored in the run-up to Sept. 11. In repeated tests of security, his team found weaknesses nine out of 10 times that would make it possible for hijackers to smuggle weapons aboard and seize control of airplanes. But the team's reports were ignored and suppressed, and the team was shut down entirely after 9/11.

In testimony to the 9/11 Commission, Dzakovic summed up his experience this way: "The Red Team was extraordinarily successful in killing large numbers of innocent people in the simulated attacks …[and yet] we were ordered not to write up our reports and not to retest airports where we found particularly egregious vulnerabilities.... Finally, the FAA started providing advance notification of when we would be conducting our 'undercover' tests and what we would be checking."

The commission included none of Dzakovic's testimony in its report.

Looking back, Dzakovic believes that if WikiLeaks had existed at the time, he would have gone to it as a last resort to highlight what he knew were serious vulnerabilities that were being ignored.

The 9/11 Commission concluded, correctly in our opinion, that the failure to share information within and between government agencies — and with the media and the public — led to an overall failure to "connect the dots."

Many government careerists are risk-averse. They avoid making waves and, when calamity strikes, are more concerned with protecting themselves than with figuring out what went wrong and correcting it.

Decisions to speak out inside or outside one's chain of command — let alone to be seen as a whistle-blower or leaker of information — is fraught with ethical and legal questions and can never be undertaken lightly. But there are times when it must be considered. Official channels for whistle-blower protections have long proved illusory. In the past, some government employees have gone to the media, but that can't be done fully anonymously, and it also puts reporters at risk of being sent to jail for refusing to reveal their sources. For all of these reasons, WikiLeaks provides a crucial safety valve.

Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for more than 20 years, was legal counsel to the FBI field office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. Bogdan Dzakovic was a special agent for the FAA's security division. He filed a formal whistle-blower disclosure against the FAA for ignoring the vulnerabilities documented by the Red Team. For the past nine years he has been relegated to entry-level staff work for the Transportation Security Administration.

 

Aging Oil Rigs, Pipelines Expose Gulf to Accidents

 

By BEN CASSELMAN

Kendrick Brinson/LUCEO for The Wall Street Journal"

Oil rigs dating from the late-1980s are still in operation in the Gulf, just off the coast of Dauphin Island, Ala.

 

GALLIANO, Louisiana—On June 10, 1947, Stanolind Oil & Gas Co. won an auction for the right to drill for oil on a plot seven miles off the Louisiana coast. The company built a spindly steel platform and drilled a well in shallow waters. It struck oil, and in 1950, Stanolind sold its first Louisiana sweet crude for $2.67 a barrel.

More than 60 years later, the West Cameron 45-A platform is, according to government records, the oldest functioning platform in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico. One of more than 100 structures built in the 1940s and 1950s still in operation, the platform has survived seven Category 2 hurricanes and a major fire.

Growing Old in the Gulf

See when major existing Gulf installations were built and view platforms owned by major operators.

View Interactive

• More photos and interactive graphics

The platform's age may have taken a toll, however.

On Dec. 4, 2009, a severely corroded pipe connecting the structure to a high-pressure gas well gave way during routine maintenance, releasing explosive natural gas into the air. Unlike most modern platforms, this one had no remote shut-off switch. Emergency valves that should have cut off the flow of gas automatically didn't close properly—in part, a subsequent investigation found, because a control panel was caked in bird droppings. Workers who had fled by boat to a nearby platform were finally able to shut down the well.

The deadly explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in April set off a fierce battle over deep-sea oil drilling aboard huge, state-of-the art vessels. But that debate has largely ignored what many experts say could be a bigger threat: The troubled state of offshore infrastructure that remains in place long after wells are drilled.

High-tech drilling rigs make up only a small piece of the Gulf's energy infrastructure, a vast network of tens of thousands of fixed wells, hundreds of permanent platforms and thousands of miles of undersea pipelines. This network together accounts for nearly a third of the oil produced in the U.S. and more than 10% of the natural gas.

More

• New Party to Suits in Gulf Spill: U.S.
• Audio: Ben Casselman reports on the aging drilling infrastructure.

Much of that infrastructure is decades old. Roughly half of the Gulf's more than 3,000 production platforms are 20 years old or more, and a third date back to the 1970s or earlier, long before the development of modern construction standards. More than half have been operating longer than their designers intended, according to federal regulators.

Older structures are more prone to accidents, especially fires, and more dangerous for workers. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal accident records, platforms that are 20 years old or more accounted for more than 60% of fires and nearly 60% of serious injuries aboard platforms in 2009.

"There is an infrastructure issue confronting the industry," says Charles Swanson, a managing partner with Ernst & Young's Oil & Gas Center in Houston. "We're reaching a point now where we're not going to be able to ignore it any longer."

Platforms are subjected to extreme ocean currents, corrosive salt water and frequent hurricanes. Unlike drilling rigs, which are mobile, platforms can't be brought to shore for repairs. Many are so old or have changed hands so many times, that maintenance records are missing or unreliable. And experts say that maintenance work has often gotten short shrift in an industry focused on new discoveries rather than old, declining fields.

  

The Justice Department is expected to join several civil lawsuits against BP as a way of gaining access to legal documents, which could be used in the government's ongoing investigations, Joe White reports.

Federal regulators investigated 81 accidents at oil-and-gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico over the past three years in which equipment failure, the most common cause of accidents, was blamed. In more than a quarter of such cases, according to the Journal analysis, investigators found that age or issues that are often age-related, such as corrosion or rust, contributed to the incident.

The government hasn't conducted any studies specifically on the correlation between platform age and incident rates. But in 1998, a broader study on the industry commissioned by regulators and conducted by researchers at Louisiana State University found what they called a statistically significant correlation: A 1% increase in platform age leads to a 0.3632% increase in the rate of accidents. "Thus, we conclude that older platforms indeed pose a greater risk for accidents," the authors concluded.

Pipelines, too, are often decades old and have a history of spills and leaks due to corrosion. Yet offshore lines are subject to lower inspection standards than those onshore; the vast majority of them aren't designed to hold the internal inspection equipment that looks for corrosion, according to federal regulators.

After last year's pipeline rupture on the 1940s platform, federal investigators found there was "extensive metal loss [and] heavy corrosion build-up on the exterior of the pipe" due to "lack of maintenance."

Stone Energy Corp., which bought the platform in 2001, said in a statement that "the overall age of the equipment and infrastructure was not considered to be a factor in the failure." The company said that "as a general rule, older facilities require more upkeep and maintenance than newer facilities," adding, "We prioritize maintenance … with safety of personnel as top priority."

On Tuesday, Stone said it disagreed with investigators' findings and believed its safety devices worked as designed. The company said all its systems met regulators' standards.

Mike Hiner, a deep-water drilling veteran with the engineering firm Hamilton Group, likens old platforms to classic cars, saying they require more maintenance, but can still be run safely. "If it's well maintained, it works," he said.

But industry workers say companies will sometimes cut corners. "Some of the platforms, the catwalks are so rusty you can't get up on them," says Randal Harryman, who worked on platforms in the Gulf for 12 years before retiring when he broke his back on the job in 2005 for reasons unrelated to the age of the platform. "I've been afraid of some of the equipment I've used."

Mr. Harryman, who reached an undisclosed settlement with his employer, says he was mostly stationed on old platforms, many dating to the 1950s and 1960s. He did so-called workover jobs: cleaning out wells, replacing worn-out pipes and plugging up old wells. He says pipes inside wells were routinely so corroded that they broke in two when his crew tried to pull them out.

On a recent Monday in November, a blue-and-white helicopter took off from a small air base here on the southern edge of Louisiana, and flew out over the Gulf. Below, dozens of platforms and structures of all ages and sizes poked out of the water. Rusting tanks sat on wooden docks next to marshland oil wells. Larger, manned platforms stood on steel legs in the shallow water. Farther out, newer platforms floated in deep water.

"You can see the entire history of the offshore industry down there," said Paul Bulmahn, chairman and CEO of ATP Oil & Gas, a relatively small oil company in the Gulf.

Mr. Bulmahn was on his way to ATP's Titan, one of the newest platforms. Designed to operate for 40 years, the 64,000-ton Titan is built to withstand powerful hurricanes, as well as swirling ocean currents that can strain the platform's moorings and eat away at its hull. Every three days, remote-controlled submarines with cameras survey the pipes that connect the platform to wells, looking for wear. The 12 polyester ropes that anchor the Titan to the sea floor contain sections that can be removed and inspected.

Many of the platforms Mr. Bulmahn's helicopter flew over en route to the Titan, however, didn't have such rigorous standards in place when they were installed. Few companies have invested in adding advanced monitoring technology to alert them about corrosion or other developing problems. That means the first sign of trouble is often when a valve blows out or a pipe bursts. Such alarms are common. In 2009 there were 133 fires aboard Gulf rigs, 10 oil spills of more than 50 barrels and 17 releases of natural gas that forced facilities to shut down, according to government data. This past April, two weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, an engine-room fire on a shallow-water rig off Louisiana was blamed on a 33-year-old generator that was "prone to failure due to the engine's service life," according to a federal investigation.

In September, the federal government came out with a new policy on aging infrastructure, announcing that it would step up enforcement of existing rules requiring companies to plug dried-up wells and dismantle unused platforms.

The rules, however, don't do anything to address wells that are still in operation—no matter how old they are.

Nor do they address aging offshore pipelines. While recent onshore pipeline disasters have led to calls for beefed-up regulations onshore, the 25,000 miles of underwater lines that crisscross the Gulf have essentially been ignored. Most of these pipelines are exempt from the kinds of inspections required for pipelines that run through cities and towns.

Yet, ruptured and leaking underwater pipelines have spilled more than 70,000 gallons of oil and other pollutants into the Gulf in more than a dozen incidents in the past three years. A 2007 study found that corrosion is by far the leading cause of offshore pipeline failure.

A 2007 attempt by federal regulators to impose tougher rules for maintaining offshore pipelines was abandoned after opposition from industry groups. In a 232-page rebuttal of the proposed rules, the Offshore Operators Committee argued they were time-consuming, expensive and unnecessary, and questioned the authority of the regulatory agency, the Minerals Management Service, to impose them.

Critics say the failure to adopt new rules on pipelines hints at a broader failure by regulators to force oil companies to maintain their offshore facilities.

"You're exposing people and you're exposing the environment to unmanaged risk," says Tony Hall, CEO of Welaptega Marine Ltd., a Canada-based company that inspects offshore platforms.

Federal regulators say they are strengthening their standards and toughening enforcement of all offshore operations, including those on aging platforms.

"We are aggressively pursuing substantial reforms of our offshore program, including our inspection program," says Michael Bromwich, director of the renamed Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said in a statement. He says his agency needs more funding to ensure compliance.

The extent of the problem was highlighted after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita barreled through the Gulf of Mexico in 2005, leaving behind a tangle of twisted pipelines, toppled platforms and flooded refineries.

Older structures were particularly hard-hit by the storms. Of the 116 fixed platforms destroyed by Katrina and Rita, half were built in the 1960s or earlier and more than 70% were built before 1980.

The storms served as a wake-up call for the industry. Companies stepped up spending on maintenance and monitoring of older structures, and started removing facilities that were no longer profitable.

But experts generally agree that restoring all the old or outdated U.S. energy infrastructure onshore and off is a multi-trillion-dollar problem. And there are forces pushing companies to keep their facilities going for as long as possible. New technologies have allowed companies to pump more oil out of old fields, extending the lives of the platforms and pipelines that serve them. And high oil prices have led companies to try to continue operating fields that, in the past, would have been considered too old to operate profitably.

Says Sampat Prakash, head of the oil and gas division for consulting firm Deloitte: "High prices give people an incentive to keep at it."

Write to Ben Casselman at ben.casselman@wsj.com