19375: (Chamberlain) News postings (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

Dear fellow Corbetteers:


I'm discontinuing my postings of news from AP and Reuters.  It's just too
much when I have other things to do right now.  That's all.  No death
threats from Ben Dupuy or  the secretive PPN...

My apologies.  Either someone else can post them (already b eing done to
some extent) or people can go to Yahoo News (Haiti), which is pretty good
on keeping up overall hour-by-hour.  It's at:

        http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?c=&p=haiti

And if Léonie Hermantin continues her postings, the list will be very
well-served.  The Florida press coverage of Haiti itself has been very good
(esp. Tim Collie of the Sun-Sentinel).

The lengthy comment and analysis by the anti "corporate press" writers,
which is distinctly short on facts and long on ideology and conspiracy
theories, will by default be more prominent (and indeed there seems to have
been some central committee decision taken somewhere a few weeks ago to
flood Corbettland).  Many of the facts these articles do contain are
however quietly drawn or rehashed from the dreaded "corporate media" and
then twisted to fit the ideology.

I've been struck by some of the inventions too, including, to name just a
few:

-- Guy Philippe overthrowing the Duvaliers (he was only 17 at the time and,
I believe, still in school at Collège Bird in PauP).
-- Toto Constant and the FRAPH overthrowing Aristide in 1991 (I think he
was still a social worker in NYC, and the FRAPH wasn't formed until 1993).
-- Andy Apaid described as a "Duvalierist" and on the US blacklist as a
supporter of the military dictatorship during the coup years and quoted as
saying he'd "strangle Aristide."  That was his father André.  I don't think
he even runs his family's "sweatshops" -- it's his brothers, I believe.
-- Lavalas leading the revolt against the Duvaliers (five years before it
existed).
-- the armed rebels all being "Duvalierists" or "Duvalierist former army
officers," when they're either plain ex-soldiers or desperate or
easily-hired youth trying to get their share of the cake, any cake.  Little
to do with "Duvalierism."  One FRAPH killer (Chamblain) in the group
doesn't make all the other rebels FRAPH or Duvalierist, as any fule no.
Neither is Aristide the devil-incarnate and neither are the
184/Plate-forme/Convergence all fascists or slave-owners or rich white men.

-- the hypocrisy over Apaid's US nationality when PM Neptune and many of
Aristide's cabinet have US passports, as elsewhere in the region.

This is what is served up in these articles that ceaselessly denounce the
so-called "corporate media" for supposed inaccuracy.

Take your pick:  facts and descriptions (inevitably including some errors)
or ideology shoved down your throat by writers who mostly know very little
or nothing about Haiti but wish to use that long-suffering country to test
their authoritarian ideologies.  I am not for a minute saying these
articles shouldn't be posted, of course.  This is just my opinion on their
contents.


        Greg Chamberlain