The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots
30 Years Ago Haiti Grew All the Rice It Needed. What Happened?

By Bill Quigley
From Counterpunch

Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs have claimed the lives of six people. There have also been food riots world-wide in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, reports that last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January rice prices have risen 141%. The reasons include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased demand in China and India, as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal crops.

Hermite Joseph, a mother working in the markets of Port au Prince, told journalist Nick Whalen that her two kids are “like toothpicks” they’ re not getting enough nourishment. Before, if you had a dollar twenty-five cents, you could buy vegetables, some rice, 10 cents of charcoal and a little cooking oil. Right now, a little can of rice alone costs 65 cents, and is not good rice at all. Oil is 25 cents. Charcoal is 25 cents. With a dollar twenty-five, you can’t even make a plate of rice for one child.”

The St. Claire’s Church Food program, in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood of Port au Prince, serves 1000 free meals a day, almost all to hungry children -- five times a week in partnership with the What If Foundation. Children from Cite Soleil have been known to walk the five miles to the church for a meal. The cost of rice, beans, vegetables, a little meat, spices, cooking oil, propane for the stoves, have gone up dramatically. Because of the rise in the cost of food, the portions are now smaller. But hunger is on the rise and more and more children come for the free meal. Hungry adults used to be allowed to eat the leftovers once all the children were fed, but now there are few leftovers.

The New York Times lectured Haiti on April 18 that “Haiti, its agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself.” Unfortunately, the article did not talk at all about one of the main causes of the shortages -- the fact that the U.S. and other international financial bodies destroyed Haitian rice farmers to create a major market for the heavily subsidized rice from U.S. farmers. This is not the only cause of hunger in Haiti and other poor countries, but it is a major force.

Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened? In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million in desperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out). But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for their Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some industries to open up the country’s markets to competition from outside countries. The U.S. has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF.

Doctor Paul Farmer was in Haiti then and saw what happened. “Within less than two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called ‘Miami rice.’ The whole local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, U.S. subsidized rice, some of it in the form of ‘food aid,’ flooded the market. There was violence, ‘rice wars,’ and lives were lost.”

“American rice invaded the country,” recalled Charles Suffrard, a leading rice grower in Haiti in an interview with the Washington Post in 2000. By 1987 and 1988, there was so much rice coming into the country that many stopped working the land.

Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, a Haitian priest who has been the pastor at St. Claire and an outspoken human rights advocate, agrees. “In the 1980s, imported rice poured into Haiti, below the cost of what our farmers could produce it. Farmers lost their businesses. People from the countryside started losing their jobs and moving to the cities. After a few years of cheap imported rice, local production went way down.”

Still the international business community was not satisfied. In 1994, as a condition for U.S. assistance in returning to Haiti to resume his elected Presidency, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced by the U.S., the IMF, and the World Bank to open up the markets in Haiti even more. But, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, what reason could the U.S. have in destroying the rice market of this tiny country?

Haiti is definitely poor. The U.S. Agency for International Development reports the annual per capita income is less than $400. The United Nations reports life expectancy in Haiti is 59, while in the US it is 78. Over 78% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, more than half live on less than $1 a day.

Yet Haiti has become one of the very top importers of rice from the U.S. The U.S. Department of Agriculture 2008 numbers show Haiti is the third largest importer of US rice - at over 240,000 metric tons of rice. (One metric ton is 2200 pounds).

Rice is a heavily subsidized business in the U.S. Rice subsidies in the U.S. totaled $11 billion from 1995 to 2006. One producer alone, Riceland Foods Inc of Stuttgart Arkansas, received over $500 million dollars in rice subsidies between 1995 and 2006.

The Cato Institute recently reported that rice is one of the most heavily supported commodities in the U.S. -- with three different subsidies together averaging over $1 billion a year since 1998 and projected to average over $700 million a year through 2015. The result? “Tens of millions of rice farmers in poor countries find it hard to lift their families out of poverty because of the lower, more volatile prices caused by the interventionist policies of other countries.”

In addition to three different subsidies for rice farmers in the U.S., there are also direct tariff barriers of 3 to 24 percent, reports Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute -- the exact same type of protections, though much higher, that the U.S. and the IMF required Haiti to eliminate in the 1980s and 1990s.

U.S. protection for rice farmers goes even further. A 2006 story in the Washington Post found that the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all; including $490,000 to a Houston surgeon who owned land near Houston that once grew rice. And it is not only the Haitian rice farmers who have been hurt.

Paul Farmer saw it happen to the sugar growers as well. “Haiti, once the world's largest exporter of sugar and other tropical produce to Europe, began importing even sugar-- from U.S. controlled sugar production in the Dominican Republic and Florida. It was terrible to see Haitian farmers put out of work. All this sped up the downward spiral that led to this month's food riots.”

After the riots and protests, President Rene Preval of Haiti agreed to reduce the price of rice, which was selling for $51 for a 110 pound bag, to $43 dollars for the next month. No one thinks a one month fix will do anything but delay the severe hunger pains a few weeks.

Haiti is far from alone in this crisis. The Economist reports a billion people worldwide live on $1 a day. The US-backed Voice of America reports about 850 million people were suffering from hunger worldwide before the latest round of price increases.

Thirty three countries are at risk of social upheaval because of rising food prices, World Bank President Robert Zoellick told the Wall Street Journal. When countries have many people who spend half to three-quarters of their daily income on food, “there is no margin of survival.”

In the U.S., people are feeling the world-wide problems at the gas pump and in the grocery. Middle class people may cut back on extra trips or on high price cuts of meat. The number of people on food stamps in the US is at an all-time high. But in poor countries, where malnutrition and hunger were widespread before the rise in prices, there is nothing to cut back on except eating. That leads to hunger riots.

In the short term, the world community is sending bags of rice to Haiti. Venezuela sent 350 tons of food. The US just pledged $200 million extra for worldwide hunger relief. The UN is committed to distributing more food.

What can be done in the medium term? The US provides much of the world’s food aid, but does it in such a way that only half of the dollars spent actually reach hungry people. US law requires that food aid be purchased from US farmers, processed and bagged in the US and shipped on US vessels -- which cost 50% of the money allocated. A simple change in US law to allow some local purchase of commodities would feed many more people and support local farm markets.

In the long run, what is to be done? The President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who visited Haiti last week, said “Rich countries need to reduce farms subsidies and trade barriers to allow poor countries to generate income with food exports. Either the world solves the unfair trade system, or every time there's unrest like in Haiti, we adopt emergency measures and send a little bit of food to temporarily ease hunger."

Citizens of the USA know very little about the role of their government in helping create the hunger problems in Haiti or other countries. But there is much that individuals can do. People can donate to help feed individual hungry people and participate with advocacy organizations like Bread for the World or Oxfam to help change the U.S. and global rules which favor the rich countries. This advocacy can help countries have a better chance to feed themselves.

Meanwhile, Merisma Jean-Claudel, a young high school graduate in Port-au-Prince told journalist Wadner Pierre "...people can’t buy food. Gasoline prices are going up. It is very hard for us over here. The cost of living is the biggest worry for us, no peace in stomach means no peace in the mind.¦I wonder if others will be able to survive the days ahead because things are very, very hard."

“On the ground, people are very hungry,” reported Fr. Jean-Juste. “Our country must immediately open emergency canteens to feed the hungry until we can get them jobs. For the long run, we need to invest in irrigation, transportation, and other assistance for our farmers and workers.”

In Port au Prince, some rice arrived in the last few days. A school in Fr. Jean-Juste’s parish received several bags of rice. They had raw rice for 1000 children, but the principal still had to come to Father Jean-Juste asking for help. There was no money for charcoal, or oil.

Jervais Rodman, an unemployed carpenter with three children, stood in a long line Saturday in Port au Prince to get UN donated rice and beans. When Rodman got the small bags, he told Ben Fox of the Associated Press, “The beans might last four days. The rice will be gone as soon as I get home.”

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. His essay on the Echo 9 nuclear launch site protests is featured in Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland, published by AK Press. He can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com People interested in donating to feed children in Haiti should go to http://www.whatiffoundation.org/

People who want to help change U.S. policy on agriculture to help combat world-wide hunger should go to: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/ or http://www.bread.org/



Don't Blame Brazilian Biofuels
The Real Villains in the Food Crisis are the Shocking Subsidies and Wastage found in North America and Europe

By Conor Foley
From The Guardian UK
2008


Brazil's President Lula strongly defended his government's biofuels programme at the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation conference in Rome earlier this week. Since his remarks run directly counter to the Guardian's call to "use this summit to press the case for stopping biofuel production" in certain circumstances and it is worth elaborating why liberals in the north are taxing the patience of progressives in the south on this issue.

Brazilian ethanol, unlike its incredibly inefficient North American competitor, has had no demonstrable impact on the recent increase in food prices, as the relative stability of world sugar prices shows. Nor is the industry a direct threat to the Amazon rainforest. As Lula pointed out, "Our sugar plantations are 2,000km away from our rainforest. That is the distance from the Vatican to the Kremlin." Currently only about 1% of Brazil's arable land is given over to the production of biofuels and, while there are legitimate concerns that a rapid expansion of the industry could displace other crops, the Brazilian government is actually trying to regulate both the industry and working conditions within it.

"Ethanol is like cholesterol," Lula told the conference. "Good ethanol helps to tackle the pollution of the planet and is competitive. Bad ethanol depends on the fat of subsidies." He directly attacked the production of biofuels from maize and other forms of crop substitution by western farmers. He also said that he was "astonished, indignant and devastated" by the lobbying efforts of agro-business and the petroleum industry to keep their tariffs and subsidies, which are costing countries like Brazil dear in lost exports. "The fingers pointing at us with indignation are soiled with oil and charcoal." He argued that the only way of tackling the food crisis is to increase food supply and that some of the biggest obstacles to this are the protectionist policies of the rich world. The world would not be facing a food crisis, according to Lula, "if developing countries had been stimulated in a free-market context."

There is no doubt that one of the reasons for the sudden rise in food prices has been the decision by many farmers in Europe and North America to switch production to growing cereals which can be converted to biofuels. As Chris Goodall has pointed out, about 100m tonnes of maize from this year's US crop will be diverted into ethanol refineries, which means one in 20 of all cereal grains produced in the world this year will end up in the petrol tank of US cars. This is an increase of a third on 2007's figure and has obviously had a knock-on effect on the supply chain. Rising oil prices have also increased the production and shipping costs of food – as well as providing farmers with a greater incentive to produce for this market.

The second reason, it is generally accepted, why prices have risen, is that people in Asia and Latin America are eating more meat, which is a consequence of rising living standards. However, the Malthusian view that links rising food prices directly to population growth is not supported by the facts, since the price spike has occurred while rate of increase of the world's population is currently slowing. Those who argue that there are simply too many people on the planet, also need to explain what they propose to do about it. Fortunately, there is a clear link between rising incomes and decreasing birth rates,which should eventually stabilise population growth. The far bigger problem is not that there may come a time in the future when there is not enough food to feed everyone, but the fact that every single year at the moment around 3.5 million children lose their lives as a direct result of malnutrition.

The point Lula has made repeatedly when defending Brazil's biofuels programme is that: "The problem with world hunger is not a shortage of food but a shortage of income." He called for a "radical change in ways of thinking and acting" about food production to "increase food supply, open up markets and wipe out subsidies". He also said that the "cutting-edge technology" which Brazil has developed to "bring together the earth, sun and labour" in a "golden revolution" could be exported to Africa to help tackle poverty as well as global warming and food and energy shortages.

As Kevin Watkins has argued, The US government is currently spending $7bn a year in subsidizing maize-based biofuels, which has been a huge boost to American agro-business but has had zero benefits for reduced carbon emissions. France alone received a subsidy of $12bn for the European Union's notorious Common Agricultural Policy last year, and the average European cow receives more financial support than half the world's population has to live on. This money could instead be used far more efficiently to increase food production by strengthening the development of agriculture in the south. Instead it is often used for precisely the opposite purpose. One of the reasons why so many of the world's poorest countries remain both poor and particularly vulnerable to sudden food price rises is that the dumping of food by Europe and North America has wiped out many local markets.

This is the key issue in the debate, which some liberals and environmentalists in the rich world seem either not to have fully grasped or simply want to ignore. The World Trade Organisation is not the main enemy. Indeed it is difficult to see how the issue can be tackled without an agreement, which in reality can only be achieved through the WTO, that stops rich countries dumping surpluses, opens up their agricultural markets and supports the development of agriculture in poor countries. You do not show solidarity with poor people by supporting policies which keep them in poverty and it is obscene to pretend otherwise.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008


Virgin Atlantic Biofuel Flight - Green Breakthrough or Greenwash?

By Chuck Squatriglia
From Wired Magazine
2008

Virgin Atlantic has become the first airline to fly with biofuel, something airline boss Richard Branson calls "a vital breakthrough" but environmentalists deride as a "nonsensical" publicity stunt.

The Boeing 747-400 flew from London to Amsterdam on Sunday, carrying in one of its four fuel tanks a 20-percent mix of biofuel derived from coconut and babassu oil. That may not sound like much, but it is the first time a commercial aircraft has flown any distance using renewable energy. Branson said the "historic" flight marks the first step toward reducing the airline industry's carbon footprint.

Does it? Many environmentalists scoffed at the idea that Branson, and the airlines, are at all interested in cleaning up an industry that contributes 2 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Pete Hardstaf, head of policy for the World Development Movement, said, "This is nothing more than a Virgin publicity stunt with dangerous consequences for the planet." Doug Parr, chief scientist for Greenpeace, told the Globe and Mail the flight is "high-altitude greenwash."

Why? Virgin's critics offered the standard arguments against biofuels -- mainly, the environmental benefits of biofuels are negligible at best and using crops for fuel will drive up food costs, deplete arable land and contribute to deforestation. Jos Dings, director of the European Federation of Transport and the Environment, told Australia's ABC Online, "If Virgin would power its entire fleet with biofuel, it would have to use about half of the UK's arable land."

Beyond that, the critics said any gains made through biofuels would be offset by one year's growth in the number of flights. Airline passenger growth rates are expected to rise 6 percent annually through 2009 and double by 2020. Aircraft emissions are expected to double by 2030. "The concept of using biofuels and continuing the rate of expansion in the aviation industry is nonsensical," Hardstaff said.

"If Richard Branson is serious about combating climate change, instead of experimenting with biofuels he should be backing the campaign to include aviation in the targets to reduce emissions in the Climate Change Bill," he said.

The airline industry realizes it must clean up its act or face tough regulations. Organizations like the International Air Transport Association and Sustainable Aviation are pushing for a greener future.

Not all greenies were piling on Virgin. Jon Dee, founder of Planet Ark, praised Virgin and Boeing for the effort, telling ABC Online, "I actually think it is good to show that you can fly major airliners on alternative fuels. I think that it is vital that as quickly as possible we move away from business as normal. But what we should be looking at, I think, is how we get that biofuel derived from algae. That is the best way to go when it comes to biofuel."

Branson and Boeing agree, which is why they're spending a lot of time and money investigating algal fuels. Billy Glover, Boeing's head of environmental strategy, says "algae looks very promising." Branson says Virgin used coconut and babassu oil for the test, but commercial fuel will almost certainly be derived from algae.

"Our search for a fossil fuel replacement does not end today," he says. "(But) today's flight will prove a different type of fuel can be used."

© 2008 CondéNet, Inc. All rights reserved.



Kids Spending More Time in Front of Screens: Report

By CTV News Staff
From CTV.ca
2008

A new report card has given Canadian children a grade of D for spending too much time in front of screens and failing to meet the recommended guidelines for physical activity. The report, released Tuesday by Active Healthy Kids Canada, said that 90 per cent of Canadian kids are not getting enough exercise. The culprit? They are spending too much time in front of television, movie and computer screens.

The report gives an F grade for the amount of time kids spend in front of a screen. Children between the ages of 10 and 16 spend about six hours a day in front of a screen. That is three times longer than the recommended daily screen time of two hours or less.

The 2008 Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth was a joint effort by Active Healthy Kids Canada, the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute - Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group and ParticipACTION.

"The results of the Report Card are very disturbing," Dr. Mark Tremblay, chief scientific officer of Active Healthy Kids Canada, said in a statement. "This trend of extreme inactivity in today's children and youth will have an enormous impact on their development and potentially lead to long-term health issues including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and a range of chronic degenerative conditions."

The fact that kids are spending a lot of time in front of screens comes as little surprise to anyone who has seen a child walk down the street with his or her nose in a personal video-game device.

The report said that television and video game use are rising as participation in organized sports is declining. In 1992, 77 per cent of youths aged 15 to 18 played sports. However, that participation rate dropped to 59 per cent by 2005. These figures warranted a grade of C.

The report gave a D for the number of kids, about 10 per cent, who commute to and from school in an active way, such as walking or biking. The report also showed that while more than 90 per cent of parents have access to parks and playgrounds, only 34 per cent of parents use them. This also resulted in a D grade.

Active Healthy Kids Canada, an advocacy group that lobbies organizations and educates parents on the importance of physical activity in kids, says parents, teachers, community programs and governments need to work together to get kids moving.

The group's recommendations include:

Parents keeping kids away from television and video games when they can.
Development of more programs that offer free play time to kids.
Avoiding exercise that is centred on video games that involve physical activity.

© 2008 CTV globemedia All Rights Reserved.



Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice
Review of John Laughland's book

By Prof. Edward S. Herman
From Global Research
2007

John Laughland's superb new book, Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice, is the fourth important critical study of the issues pertaining to the Balkans wars that I have reviewed in Z Magazine. The earlier three were Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade (2002), Michael Mandel's How America Gets Away With Murder (2004), and Peter Brock's Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting (2005). It is an interesting and distressing fact that none of the three earlier books has been reviewed in any major U.S. paper or journal, nor, with the exception of Z Magazine (and Swans and Monthly Review, which later ran a fuller version of the Johnstone review), in any liberal or left journal in this country (including The Nation, In These Times, The Progressive, or Mother Jones). This is testimony to the power of the established narrative on the recent history of the Balkans, according to which Clinton, Blair and NATO fought the good fight, though coming in late and reluctantly, to halt Serb ethnic cleansing and genocide managed by Milosevic, with the bad man properly brought before a legitimate court to be tried in the interest of justice.

This narrative was quickly institutionalized, with the help of an intense propaganda campaign carried out by the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim governments (assisted by U.S. PR firms), the U.S. and other NATO governments, the NATO-organized and NATO-servicing International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia's (ICTY, or Tribunal), and the Western media, which quickly became co-belligerents in this struggle. This informal collective focused on numerous stories and pictures of suffering victims, on one side only and devoid of context. In commenting on the parade of witness victims, Laughland notes that "Indictments [by the ICTY] are drawn up with little or no reference to the fact that the acts in question were committed in battle: one often has the surreal sensation one would have reading a description of one man beating another man unconscious which omitted to mention that the violence was being inflicted in the course of a boxing match." But this stream of witnesses, that the defense could duplicate in its turn if given the opportunity--and Milosevic did with a video presentation of badly abused Serbs for several hours toward the beginning of his trial--is effective in demonization and helped mass-produce true believers who viewed any contesting argument or evidence as "apologetics for Milosevic."

This consolidation of a party line has been reinforced by a virtual lobby of institutions and dedicated individuals ready to pounce on both the deviants who challenge the new orthodoxy as well as the media institutions that on rare occasion allow a questioning of the "truth." The refusal to review these dissenting books and to deal with the issues they raise is also testimony to the cowardice and self-imposed ignorance of the media, and especially the liberal-left media, unwilling to challenge a narrative that is false at every level, as is spelled out convincingly in the three books reviewed earlier and once again in Travesty.

Laughland's Travesty focuses on "The Corruption of International Justice" displayed in the ICTY's performance in the seizure and trial of Milosevic, but in the process the book covers most of the issues central to evaluating the Balkan wars and the role of the various participants. The institutionalized lies are dismantled one after the next. On the matter of "international justice," Laughland stresses the fact that the ICTY is a political court with explicit political objectives that run counter to the requirements of any lawful justice.

This political court was organized mainly by the United States and Britain, countries that now freely attack others, but seek the fiction that will give their aggressions a de jure as well as quasi-moral cover. For this reason the rules of the ICTY stood Nuremberg on its head. The Nuremberg Tribunal tried the Nazi leaders for their planning and carrying out the "supreme international crime" of aggression. But the ICTY Statute doesn't even mention crimes against peace (although with Kafkaesque hypocrisy it claims to be aiming at protecting the peace). Thus, Laughland notes, "instead of applying existing international law, the ICTY has effectively overturned it." The dominant powers now wanting to be able to intervene anywhere, the new principles to be applied were a throwback to the Nazis in disrespect for international borders. Laughland says that "the commitment to non-interference in the internal affairs of states, reaffirmed as part of the Nuremberg Principles in the United Nations Charter, is an attempt to institutionalize an anti-fascist theory of international relations. It is this theory which the allies destroyed in attacking Yugoslavia in 1999." And it is this anti-fascist theory that the ICTY and humanitarian interventionists have abandoned, opening the door to a more aggressive imperialism.

The ICTY was established not by passage of any law or signing of an international agreement (as in the case of the International Court of Justice) but by the decision of a few governments dominating the Security Council, and Laughland shows that this was beyond the authority of the Security Council (also shown in another outstanding but politically incorrect and neglected work, Hans Kochler's Global Justice or Global Revenge? [Springer-Verlag Wien, 2003]). It was also established with the open objective of using it to pursue one party in a conflict, presumed guilty in advance of any trial. The political objectives were allegedly to bring peace by punishing villains and thus serving as a deterrent, but also to serve the victims by what Laughland calls "the therapeutic power of obtaining convictions." But how can you deter without a bias against acquittal? Laughland also notes that "The heavy emphasis on the rights of victims implies that 'justice' is equivalent to a guilty verdict, and it comes perilously close to justifying precisely the vengeance which supporters of criminal law say they reject." "Meanwhile, the notion that such trials have a politically educational function is itself reminiscent of the 'agitation trials' conducted for the edification of the proletariat in early Soviet Russia."

Laughland features the many-leveled lawlessness of the ICTY. It was not created by law and there is no higher body that reviews its decisions and to whom appeals can be made. The judges, often political appointees and without judicial experience, judge themselves. Laughland points out that the judges have changed their rules scores of times, but none of these changes have ever been challenged by any higher authority. And their rules are made "flexible," to give efficient results; the judges proudly noting that the ICTY "disregards legal formalities" and that it does not need "to shackle itself to restrictive rules which have developed out of the ancient trial-by-jury system." The rule changes have steadily reduced defendants' rights, but from the beginning those rights were shriveled: Laughland quotes a U.S. lawyer who helped draft the rules of evidence of the ICTY, who acknowledges that they were "to minimize the possibility of a charge being dismissed for lack of evidence."

Laughland notes that the ICTY is a "prosecutorial organization" whose "whole philosophy and structure is accusatory." This is why its judges gradually accepted a stream of rulings damaging to the defense and to the possibility of a fair trial-including the acceptance of hearsay evidence, secret witnesses, and closed sessions (the latter two categories applicable in the case of 40 percent of the witnesses in the Milosevic trial). ICTY rules even allow an appeal and retrial of an acquitted defendant-"in other words, the ICTY can imprison a person whom it has just found innocent."

Laughland's devastating analysis of the Milosevic indictment and trial is a study in abuse of power in a politically-motivated show trial, incompetence, and faux-judiciary malpractice. The first indictment, issued in the midst of the NATO bombing war, on May 27, 1999, was put up in close coordination between the ICTY and U.S. and British officials, and its immediate political role was crystal clear-to eliminate the possibility of a negotiated settlement of the war and to deflect attention from NATO's turn to bombing civilian infrastructure (a legal war crime, adding to the "supreme international crime," both here protected by this body supposedly connected to "law" and protecting the peace!). The later kidnapping and transfer of Milosevic to the Hague was a violation of Yugoslav law and rulings of its courts. The ICTY's NATO service and contempt for the rule of law was manifest.

The original indictment of Milosevic dealt only with his responsibility for alleged war crimes in Kosovo. But as Laughland points out, the wild claims of mass killing and genocide in Kosovo were not sustainable by evidence, and NATO bombing may have killed as many Kosovo civilians as the Yugoslav army. This accentuated the problem that if the Milosevic indictment was limited to Kosovo it would be hard to justify trying him for Kosovo crimes but not NATO leaders, a point even acknowledged by the ICTY prosecutor. So two years after the first indictment, but after Milosevic's kidnapping and transfer to The Hague, the indictment was extended to cover Bosnia and Croatia. A bit awkward, given that back in 1995 when Mladic and Karadzic were indicted for crimes in Bosnia, Milosevic was exempted. There was also the problem that the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs were not under Serb and Milosevic authority after the declared independence of Bosnia and Croatia, and Milosevic fought with them continuously in an effort to get them to accept various peace plans 1992-1995 (documented in Sir David Owen's Balkan Odyssey, another important book neglected perhaps because of its contra-party line evidence).

So the prosecution sought to make the case for "genocide" by belatedly making Milosevic the boss in a "joint criminal enterprise" (JCE) to get rid of Croats and Muslims in a "Greater Serbia." The initial indictments that confined his alleged crimes to Kosovo never mentioned any participation in a JCE or drive for a "Greater Serbia." So the prosecution had to start over in collecting evidence for the crimes, JCE, and Greater Serbia aims in Bosnia and Croatia and tying them to Milosevic. Guilt decision first, then go for the evidence, was the rule for this political court. The trial moved ahead while the "evidence" was still being assembled. Most of it was the testimony of scores of alleged witnesses to alleged crimes, a large majority with hearsay evidence, and almost none of it bearing on Milosevic's decision-making or differentiating it from what could have been brought against Izetbegovic, Tudjman or Bill Clinton. Laughland shows very persuasively that the inordinate length of the trial was in no way related to Milosevic's performance-a lie beloved by Marlise Simons and the mainstream media in general-it was based on the fact that this was a political trial that inherently demanded massive evidence, and the prosecution, unprepared and struggling to make a concocted charge plausible, poured it on, trying to make up for lack of any documentation of their charges of a Milosevic-based plan and orders with sheer volume of irrelevant witnesses to civil warfare and Kosovo-war crimes and pain.

A key element in the prosecution case was the belated charge that Milosevic was involved in a "joint criminal enterprise" with Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia to get rid of non-Serbs by violence, looking toward that Greater Serbia. The concept of a JCE is not to be found in prior law or even in the ICTY Statute. It was improvised to allow the finding of guilt anywhere and anytime. You are part of a JCE if you are doing something bad along with somebody else, or are attacking the same parties with somebody who does something bad. With that common end you don't even have to know about what that somebody else is doing to be part of a JCE. Laughland has a devastating analysis of this wonderfully expansive and opportunistic doctrine, and his chapter dealing with it is entitled "Just convict everyone," based on a quote from a lawyer-supporter of the ICTY who finds the JCE a bit much. Milosevic probably would have been convicted based on this catch-all, or catch anyone, doctrine. Of course it fits much better the joint and purposeful Clinton, Blair, NATO attack on Yugoslavia, or the Croats U.S.-supported ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatian Krajina in August 1995, but there is nobody to enforce the JCE against them, whereas we have the ICTY to take care of U.S. and NATO targets!

Laughland has a fine chapter on Greater Serbia, which shows that Milosevic didn't start the breakup wars (even quoting prosecutor Nice admitting this), that he was no extreme nationalist and that accusations about his speeches of 1987 and 1989 are false, that his support of the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia was fitful and largely defensive, and that he was not working toward a Greater Serbia but at most trying to enable Serbs in a disintegrating Yugoslavia to stay together. During Milosevic's trial defense, Serb Nationalist Party leader Vojislav Seselj claimed that only his party sought a "Greater Serbia," as the Croats and Bosnian Muslims were really Serbs with a different religion and his party fought to bring them all within Serbia-Milosevic only wanted the Serbs stranded in the breakaway states to be able to join Serbia. At that point the prosecutor Geoffrey Nice acknowledged that Milosevic was not aiming for a Greater Serbia, but, in Nice's words, only had the "pragmatic" goal of "ensuring that all the Serbs who had lived in the former Yugoslavia should be allowed.to live in the same unit." This caused some consternation among the trial judges, as Milosevic's aggressive drive for a Greater Serbia was at the heart of the ICTY case. You never heard about this? Understandably, as the New York Times and mainstream media never reported it, just as they never tried to reconcile Milosevic's support of serial peace moves with his alleged role as the aggressor seeking that Greater Serbia.

There is much more of value in Travesty and I can't do it justice even on the issues discussed here. This is a wonderful book that should be on the reading list of everyone looking for enlightenment on the confused and confusing issues involving the Balkan wars and "humanitarian intervention." It helps shred the notion that the NATO attacks were based on a morality that justified over-riding sovereignty and international law, and it shows decisively that the ICTY is a completely politicized rogue court that is a "corruption of international justice."

As Laughland emphasizes (and Johnstone and Mandel do as well), the NATO war and the work of the ICTY in running interference for that war, were very helpful in setting the stage for George Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and possibly also, Iran. It was treated then, and remains treated today, as a "good war," a "humanitarian intervention." So those who swallowed the standard narrative, built on lies, at best failed to see the continuity between Clinton and Bush, and the service of the former and the publicists of the "good war" in removing the protection of the "anti-fascist theory of international relations" that protected small countries from Great Power aggression and unleashing the rule of the jungle.

© Copyright Edward S. Herman, Z Magazine April 2007,