13867: Chamberlain replies to 13851: Schuller on media and Bin Laden shouts (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>


> Mark Schuller <marky@umail.ucsb.edu> wrote:

> i have serious doubts as to the mainstream U.S. reportage.  Let's
> say, for the sake of argument, that one youth was shouting out against
U.S.
> imperialism and rhetorically supported U.S.'s Enemy Number 1.  Why was
this
> chosen to be reported and not others?

Because that's the definition of news -- something unusual, out of the
ordinary -- in Haiti like anywhere else. The proof is this whole discussion
that's going on here about the shouts in the PauP demo.  The episode is
something anyone would have noticed.  The report could have been filled
with descriptions of what a nice sunny day it was in PauP, that people were
walking along the Grande Rue as they usually do in daylight. But news is
the unusual, whether "good" or "bad" things.  This has been decided by
human beings since the dawn of time.  The CIA or whoever doesn't need to
intervene !

This is close to that old chestnut of news one doesn't like should not be
published and news one does like should be.  We'd all be in jail pretty
quickly if that kind of scenario took over.  It happens all round the
world, and is precisely why Jean Dominique and Brignol Lindor were killed.
An anti-government demonstration is by nature more news than a
pro-government one in Haiti, because the anti-government protest could
theoretically lead to a change of government (= news), whereas a
pro-government demo by nature will not (= broadly not news, or at least far
less news than a change of govt).


> have made explicit use of post 9-11 tropes on Haiti.  First, the
desperate
> Haitians reaching Key Biscayne a few weeks ago represent a threat to
> national security.

But that has been said for many years, long before any 9-11.


> Now, by very sloppy and incomplete reporting, Aristide has been linked to

> Osama Bin Laden.

How?  Did the episode happen or not?  Yes.  Did it even dominate the story?
 No, it was a passing reference in the 7th paragraph of a 13-paragraph
story. So how is this "very sloppy and incomplete" ?  Nobody is saying or
implying that Aristide told them to shout such slogans.  Does this simply
mean you didn't want people to know what happened?  This attitude is not
very different to the way the press is run in Iraq...


> I am reading the mainstream U.S. coverage of the months leading to both
the
> coup and the dechoukaj.  The parallels are stunning.

So there is a Big Plot, carefully mapped out in a secret bunker by Cheney
and Rumsfeld in their days off from the Iraq nonsense !


> the U.S. may be trying to add Haiti to the Axis of Evil.

This is ridiculous !


> Regardless of how many people are mobilizing, clearly, they and their
> concrete demands need to be taken seriously.

At last !  Right at the end, we come to what many might consider the most
important point of all...


> some actions or movements can go unnoticed, while some seem to play
> right into Washington's hands and can be exploited for the detriment of
Haiti.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the Haitian government might have a _teeny_ bit of
responsibility for such actions, to say the least !


> Nicholls said... "no one who is at all familiar with the history of Haiti
can fail
> to see how hostility between blacks and mulattoes has frequently opened
> the way to foreign intervention in the affairs of the country."

My old friend Nicholls (died 1996) robustly saw through the trickery of any
regime that used the ancient and handy ruse of blaming outsiders for things
 that are perfectly within the power of that regime to fix.  He was very
lucid about Aristide.


        Greg Chamberlain