14418: Sanba: Re:14414: Edouard- news- Miami Herald 1/11/03 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: sanba@juno.com

Dear Mr. Edouard,

I really appreciate your comment, because it brings about a general question that may be asked about any of us posting anything political on the list. Including you. Including myself.
Are we (instead of Michelle or any partisan writer, for the matter) interested in forwarding articles we do not agree with? Whether we are employed or independent?

In my opinion, as you are asking about AHP
[tell me what exactly is AHP? Is it a government funded propaganda machine or an independant news agency? If it is funded and run by the government should it not indentify itself as such? Anything else is misleading.]
first,  you could also ask with the same relevance about Radio Metropole, Radio Vision 2000, HPN, Alter Presse, CNN and any other big networks for the matter. So much true that I posted a message to the list that I CCed to Reuters itself in order to voice the same concern, with another approach I believe more realistic. It reads like this:

From: sanba@juno.com

Subject : Government supporters clash with marchers in Haiti
   		By:Michael Deibert, Reuters

Date : Sat, 11 Jan 2003 20:21:20 GMT

This report is at times spottily at odds with the one by Karshan, as much as mutually exclusive.
We know that Karshan reports the government side of the story. Should we think that as soon as the story is
By:Michael Deibert, Reuters
it has to be neo-Duvalieristly pro-opposition, pro-putch-and-terror and/or from the media branch of the militaro-makouto-FRAPH branch of a same institution?

Second, speaking of misleading are you intended to state that if an agency whether it be AFP, Reuters, AHP, or for the matter Reporteurs Sans Frontières are funded they cannot be objective? If that’s what you mean, do you believe that if the big channels are paid by big businesses, and that in turn big businesses are tightly close to US-Republican, those channels cannot be objective either? To be realist, I think that the job to be performed is rooted in truth, and a real quest for social fairness. We can achieve that, funded or not, partisans or not. So that funding should be irrelevant.

A personal question to you, Edouard, just for the sake of consistency: are you bothered or delighted with the fact that the media in general is a bashing point against the present Haitian government, while it was not so before or during the coup d’etat? While today, and to go straight to the point, they are supporting the idea of ("suivez mon regard") regime change through -not revealed though- violence and terror. Try to reconcile both positions through thorough analysis
Therefore, do you ever try to somehow, pro or con, relate the so-called Aristide's lost of popularity and the systematic refusal of the opposition against him to consider election (even supervised by OAS dominated by the US Bush-Republican government one cannot credit with showing any sympathy for Aristide) as a way to show they are right in their wish to see or force Aristide out?
What in your opinion do they (the opposition members) have to lose or fear if logically they should proportionally gain the same popularity Aristide lost? If they are in fear, it's very confusing that a group that is certain to win through constitutional ways wants to pave the way for disrespect of the law they will need in order to govern. If it's not the case, and on the contrary they cannot go to elections because they fail to capitalize on Aristide's lost, what is wrong with them, then? how does it happen they could not and cannot, and still they feel they have credibility to decide that Aristide should go?

Don’t you tink that the fact of wisdom is the old Lavalas guard (that includes the bulk of today's opposition) must find a way to sit down with the remnant of the same Lavalas and amend for Haiti sake. They are intellectuals and technocrats, aren't they? Then, they are supposedly smarter than the illiterates? The more so, the more History, the real one, is there waiting for a strong and stern judgment of both the government and the opposition. Believe me. Meanwhile you know who and from what class are going to lose the most? Those who show a pattern to offer their bodies in a compact human shield to secure the road for inclusive and participatory leadership, unfortunately to no avail. Frankly, I believe that until an election comes and decides otherwise, they are also the ones who want Aristide to stay: failure or success. The pertinent question is then: Whose fault it is?