14257: Simidor: Re: 14239: JJPIERRE: Re:14224: Simidor re: Gunmen in Haiti Attack Widow's House (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: karioka9@arczip.com

Dear Jean Jean-Pierre,

It amazes me that someone feeling as strongly as you do, by all appearance,
about what Francois-Marie Michel very cautiously calls that “Christmas night
event against Michelle Montas, the widow of Jean Dominique,” doesn’t show
any appreciation for the two main questions raised in my note.  Those two
questions are: who commandeered the “Christmas event,” and why?  It occurs
to me that quite a few crocodile tears are being shed, and an awful lot of
melodrama being acted out by the Lavalas bosses and their supporters abroad,
precisely in order to stonewall those two questions. Just like the attack against
the Montas compound may have been designed to obscure something equally
sinister, or at the very least to frighten Montas into silence.  What gives, man?

As for your “facts,” which are no facts at all:

1>  The choice to paraphrase Montas instead of a third person narrative is a
transparent appeal to emotion and sympathy.  Montas said it, therefore it must
be true, and even if some details were not altogether true, it would be impolite
to say so.  In this particular case, Jean-Pierre claims that the shooting
occurred “seconds” after Montas had passed through the gate.  Most reports
I’ve read speak of minutes, not seconds.  Common sense, I believe, will show
that it would take more than mere seconds for Montas to get comfortably
from the courtyard to her mother’s bedside.  Unless, of course, the old woman
was literally dying (more rudeness on my part).  As for Seide, I’m not
questioning the fact of his death, only why it happened.

Jean-Pierre tries to build some sense of outrage by moralizing about things
that were not even even implied in my original note.  For instance, I never
denied that the “Christmas event” was an attack against Montas.  I merely
raised the question whether it was an actual attempt against her life, or a
warning to keep her mouth shut.  Jean Pierre makes a big deal whether the
gunmen shot out gate (as I wrote), and whether they shot at it or through it.
All that is irrelevant to the point I was making.

2>  Jean-Pierre’s second fact, namely that in his “book, you don’t call a lady
in her mid fifties ‘an older bourgeois woman’” is entirely inconsequential.

3>  His third “fact” is equally inconsequential: it is a direct appeal to emotion
or pity.  Police death squads murder dozens of young men every year, their
bodies left along isolated roads for pigs and dogs to feast upon. I don’t recall
you, Jean-Pierre, ever voicing any outrage about those killings.  As for Seide,
police brass and some Lavalas big shots have tried to screw up his name (and
Montas’ reputation) by imputing his killing to some drug-related “règlement
de compte.”  That should bother you, I think, much more that my “concocted”
and “cogitated extrapolations.”

What gives, man?  Have I become the proverbial “bannann pouri?”  The
Lavalas die-hards on this list take me to task regularly and quite harshly.  I
don’t mind.  And yet, I don’t recall any one of them criticizing the regime
even once over the last two years.  The few Lavalas supporters who had
shown the slightest inclination of a critical thought have safely withdrawn
into complete silence.  What’s going on?  How is blind allegiance benefiting
the people or the country, especially at a time when things are so damn
screwed up?

Lavalas has shifted from non-violence to distributing automatic weapons to
children.  Either Aristide knows or doesn’t know what kind of uncontrollable
massacres have resulted recently from arming children, in countries like
Liberia and Sierra Leone.  Either way, it’s just as sad (and cynical).  Lavalas
has shifted from “poverty with dignity” to running drugs and the most
extreme forms of corruption, from being the underdog to orchestrated
repression against those who dare question its rule.  And yet, not a word of
protest from the so-called progressives who support the regime (with the
noted exception of Haiti-Progrès, from time to time).  Not a word from Jean-
Pierre or from my dear friend Francois, to call the regime to task about its
“Zero Tolerance” commandos.  Not a word to disown the police death squads
in Carrefour and elsewhere.

There is a deficit in credibility there that is rather troubling.

Daniel Simidor