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The two pan-national bodies have called on the United Nations
to investigate Aristide's claim that the U.S. agents forced him
onto an outbound plane at gunpoint, leading a coup against
Haiti's first democratically elected government.
U.S.
officials counter that they saved Aristide's life from the rapidly
approaching rebel army. The Caribbean Community and African Union
have asked that the investigation go through the U.N. General
Assembly instead of the Security Council to dodge the possibility
of a U.S. or French veto.
The
request comes on the heels of controversial statements by Haiti's
interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, who hailed Haitian rebels
as "freedom fighters," despite the many convictions
of assassination and human rights abuses they share between them.
Human Rights Watch has reported the illegal detention of Aristide-era
officials and journalists.
*
Danish
artist Marco Evaristti has begun painting an iceberg off
the coast of Greenland blood red. "We all have a need to
decorate Mother Nature because it belongs to us," the artist
told the Associated Press. "This is my iceberg; it belongs
to me." Before all you whole-grain and scratchy underwear
types start throwing around adjectives like "arrogant,"
"frivolous" and "destructive," ask yourselves
how many halls you've decked with boughs of holly. No, I've never
done that either. But you know what I mean.
*
Speaking of chopping up the forest, U.S. timber companies
have successfully lobbied the Bush administration to allow increased
old-growth logging on public lands in Washington, Oregon and California.
The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan fixed survey-and-manage logging
standards, mandating that the U.S. Forest Service survey for salmon-bearing
steams and roughly 300 rare plant and animal species before approving
logging.
The
protections proved too efficient — the plan predicted an
annual harvest of 805 million board feet and last year's take
was a mere 475 million. Timber companies complained and survey-and-manage
got the ax. Poor logging towns, especially in Oregon, are hopeful
that the relaxed regulations will revitalize their struggling
economies. Wealthy timber company owners, on the other hand, needn't
be hopeful of gain — they can, as usual, be certain.
*
Ariel
Sharon's government agreed to vacate six West Bank settlements
in exchange for a broad U.S endorsement of its disengagement plan
last week. The plan's details haven't been revealed fully, but
the plan reportedly calls for a withdrawal from all settlements
in Gaza and six small ones in the West Bank. In return, Sharon
asked that the United States approve the strengthening and annexation
of the rest of the West Bank settlements — which seems like
stealing six cookies from the jar and agreeing to return two in
exchange for a full parental endorsement of eating the other four.
*
And
finally, I just have to confess my growing awe of and affection
for Dr. Demento Donald Rumsfeld. He is a bold übermensch
who has realized his will to power — you can see it in his
crooked pointing fingers and lucid, fearless eyes. I have always
been a bit dumbfounded that a society so large and technologically
capable has a free press at all, and Rumsfeld's admirably self-assured
disregard for the basic mechanisms of transparent, democratic
government reminds me why.
Cultural
critics can carp and whine about the dumbing down of American
news, complaining that corporate propaganda ministers like Rupert
Murdoch* hawk irrelevant cat-rescued-from-tree trash and spin
the real news to within an inch of its veracity, but I think that's
inevitable in a massive centralized republic. Rumsfeld has made
plain what we all should have known for years: Nobody who has
been invited into the seat of power has to answer to the press,
the citizenry or anybody else.
Thank
you, Donald. Thank you for your naked honesty and evil genius
eyebrows. You are my secret shadow hero.
*
I'm not being bombastic - the British paper The Guardian reported
that on March 19, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice took
time out of her day for a secretive satellite address to Rupert
Murdoch and media executives in his Fox/New York Post/Weekly Standard/DirecTV
empire. Do you remember what was happening on March 19? The new
Spanish prime minister was calling the Iraq occupation "a
disaster," terror guru Clarke had torn into the Bush administration's
incompetence, the Taiwanese president had just been shot, and
Osama's No. 2 man supposedly was surrounded in Pakistan. A busy
day for any national security adviser, but Rice found time to
address Murdoch's media family, which is doubly suspicious considering
her reluctance to address the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission in
front of the media. If you ever had doubt, know it now: Murdoch
is the Bush administration's most powerful spin-doctor.
*
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