Let’s begin with 1492. Since that year, when it was “discovered,” no country in the Caribbean has suffered more pain per capita than Haiti.

In the 15th century, according to Columbus, Haiti was an island paradise. Now it is an ecological disaster. In the 18th century, Haiti was the richest colony in the New World. Now it is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

In the early 1500s, Haiti’s indigenous people, the Taino, were rendered extinct. Alien disease took its inevitable toll. But it was the Spanish obsession with gold and Columbus’ brutal ways of extracting and extorting what little gold there was that sealed their fate.

Soon thousands of West Africans were imported every year to fill the labor vacuum. Africans, under the lash, were put to work raising indigo and then cane sugar.

So savage was the slave regime, at first under the Spanish and then under the French, that a slave’s life expectancy upon reaching Haiti was only several years. Slaves didn’t live long enough to assimilate “Western civilization.” To this day, Haiti remains essentially an African country.

In the 1790s, the Afro-Haitians revolted. In 1804, led by the slave Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Africans succeeded in whupping Napolean’s army and driving it off the island.

This was the world’s first successful slave revolt. Ignored in our history books, it was an accomplishment as significant and as liberating as the French or U.S. revolutions.

Western civilization – France and the other white colonial slave-holding powers – has yet to forgive the Afro-Haitians. Like Sandinista Nicaragua and Castro’s Cuba, liberating itself was Haiti’s original sin. Two centuries later, the forces of counter-liberation are still relentlessly applied against it.
Full: sfbayview.com

Rioting was reported in Khartoum today after the former Sudanese rebel leader who signed a peace deal ending his country’s 20-year civil war was announced dead in a helicopter crash.

John Garang, who became the vice-president of Sudan with the end of the conflict, died at the weekend with six of his companions when the Ugandan presidential helicopter they were travelling in crashed.

The announcement of his death has raised concerns about the future of the peace deal, signed in January this year, between the predominantly Muslim north and the mainly animist and Christian south.

The northern government agreed to a power-sharing constitution with the south that made Mr Garang vice president and the administrative head of an autonomous southern region for six years before a possible referendum on secession.
Reuters reported that in Khartoum, where 1 million people last month greeted Mr Garang as a hero at his swearing in, thousands of his southern supporters took to the streets, attacking northerners and looting shops.

“They are beating anybody they see who looks like they are Arab,” Swayd Abdullah, a student, told the news agency. Witnesses reported rioting in Juba, one of the main cities in the south.
Full: guardian.co.uk

Who believes in ‘accidents’ anymore?

THOUSANDS of police marksmen will be on London’s streets and rooftops again today after warnings that another team of suicide bombers is plotting a third attack on the capital.

The new group is believed to be made up of British Muslims who were understood to be close to staging an attack on the Underground network last week. According to security sources the men are thought to be of Pakistani origin but born and brought up in this country. They have links with the Leeds-based terrorist cell that staged the July 7 attacks, in which 52 innocent people died.

Even with the transport system so heavily guarded, police and intelligence sources believe that the bombers are intent on once more attacking London’s bus and Underground network. Another multiple suicide strike is also intended to demonstrate how the network can call on more recruits. The men are said to have access to explosives.

US security sources said yesterday that this third group of would-be bombers met at Finsbury Park mosque in North London, where some of the July 7 terrorists are also known to have stayed. There are reports that this team originally planned to strike last Thursday, which is why more than 6,000 police, half of them armed, were present at Underground stations. Scotland Yard said at the time that this exercise, the biggest since the Second World War, was to test their resources and reassure a nervous public.

As commuters return to work today police chiefs say that the arrest of five suspected bombers in house raids in Birmingham, London and Rome has not ended this threat. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the anti-terrorist branch, said: “The threat remains and is very real.”

There is concern among ministers and police at how long officers can continue such an intensive operation to “lock down” London while a threat remains. Although reinforcements have been brought in and leave has been cancelled, resources are stretched to keep up the guard on the capital, which is costing £500,000 a day.
Full: timesonline.co.uk

Good day to rob a bank…

Over the past fortnight Israeli intelligence agents have noticed something distinctly odd happening on the internet. One by one, Al-Qaeda’s affiliated websites have vanished until only a handful remain, write Uzi Mahnaimi and Alex Pell.

Someone has cut the line of communication between the spiritual leaders of international terrorism and their supporters. Since 9/11 the websites have been the main links to disseminate propaganda and information.

The Israelis detect the hand of British intelligence, determined to torpedo the websites after the London attacks of July 7.

The web has become the new battleground of terrorism, permitting a freedom of communication denied to such organisations as the IRA a couple of decades ago.

One global jihad site terminated recently was an inflammatory Pakistani site, www.mojihedun.com, in which a section entitled How to Strike a European City gave full technical instructions. Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons, have also been shut down. However, Islamic sites believed to be “moderate”, remain.
Full: timeslonline.co.uk

JERUSALEM (AP) – The Israeli military said it is changing riot control methods, replacing its sometimes-lethal rubber-coated steel pellets with compressed sand bullets.

Rubber bullets have killed dozens of Palestinians in the past two decades. The new sand bullets were originally developed for close-quarter hostage rescue situations.

An Israeli human rights groups praised the decision but said it was surprising the army had taken so long to find non-lethal means of dispersing Palestinian demonstrators.

…The military has denied the new weapons were acquired in the face of possible confrontations with thousands of Jewish protesters in next month’s Gaza Strip withdrawal.
Full:guardian.co.uk

TEL AVIV – Israel is a racist state that commits war crimes and resorts to terrorism worse than that employed by the Palestinians, former Education Minister Shulamit Aloni charged in an unusually scathing interview with Nazareth-based Arab-Israeli newspaper Kul al-Arab.

Other highlights from the interview include “(Prime Minister) Sharon should face justice,” “Israel is following Mussolini’s way,” and “some soldiers behave like animals.”

When asked how she characterizes the prime minister, Aloni responded: “Sharon is a big, arrogant nationalist. He suffers from megalomania and doesn’t mind sacrificing the lives of others, as happened in the invasion of Lebanon.”

“Sharon and the Israeli leadership always try to make Israelis believe the lie that the Palestinians want to throw us to the sea,” the former minister charged. “In fact, we are the ones who commit war crimes against humanity, and I hope Sharon will face justice.”

‘Government, settlers coordinate anti-pullout campaign’

Turning her attention to the disengagement plan, Aloni leveled more charges, saying she fears the evacuation from Gaza will turn Palestinian life in the West Bank “into hell.”

“I want to note that National Union Knesset Member Benny Elon recently said that settlers intend to embitter the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, until they emigrate from here,” she said. “I see testament to that in the existence of an IDF unit comprising radical religious soldiers, who are no different than animals in their daily behavior.”

Aloni also expressed her surprise that Israelis continue to play the “role of victims” and the American President accepts that image while declaring that “Israel has the right to defend itself, while ignoring the fact we have one of the most powerful armies in the Middle East.”

The former minister also resorted to apparent conspiracy theories, claiming the government and settlers were “secretly coordinating” anti-pullout resistance in order to create a “national shock” and convince the world of the difficulties inherent in withdrawing from the West Bank.
Full: ynetnews.com