22826: Fenton: Chomsky on Haiti and US policy, mainstream coverage... (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Anthony Fenton <apfenton@ualberta.ca>

Exerpt from interview with Noam Chomsky

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=36&ItemID=5968

Chowkwanyun: The coup in Haiti occupied headlines for about a month
this past spring, but a scan through the major news archives reveals a
lack of follow-up stories since, save for the recent minor surge of articles
on the U.S. new investigation of Aristide's alleged corruption. What
preliminary interpretations can we make about the general U.S. press
coverage of Aristide's fall from power? And how can we situate what
happened in Haiti in historical context?

Chomsky: As press coverage has declined, serious human rights
violations increase, a matter of no interest since Washington attained its
goals. Previous press coverage kept closely to the officially-determined
parameters: Aristide's corruption and violence in a "failed state," despite
the noble US effort to "restore democracy" in 1994. It would have been
hard to find even a bare reference to Washington's fierce opposition to the
Aristide government when it took office in 1990 in Haiti's first democratic
election, breaking the pattern of US support for brutal dictatorship ever
since Wilson's murderous and destructive invasion in 1915; or of the
instant support of the Bush-I and then Clinton administrations for the
vicious coup leaders (extending even to authorization of oil shipments to
them and their rich supporters in violation of presidential directives); or of
the fact that Clinton's noble restoration of democracy was conditioned on
the requirement that the government must adopt the harsh neoliberal
program of the defeated US candidate in the 1990 election, who won 14%
of the vote. It was obvious at once that this would have a devastating effect
on the economy, as it did. Bush-II tightened the stranglehold by barring
aid, and pressuring international institutions to do the same, on spurious
pretexts, therefore contributing further to the implosion of the society. No
less cynical was the contemptuous refusal of France, which preceded
Washington as the primary destroyer of Haiti, even to consider Aristide's
entirely legitimate request of repayment of the outrageous indemnity that
Haiti was forced to pay for the crime of liberating itself from French tyranny
and plunder, the source of much of France's wealth. All of this was
missing, replaced by lamentations about how even our remarkable
magnanimity and nobility were insufficient to bring democracy and
development to the backward Haitians, though we would now try again, in
our naive optimism.

This illustration of abject servility to power is not, regrettably, unique.
But
the spectacle is particularly disgusting when the world's most powerful
state crushes under its boot, once again, the poorest country in the
hemisphere, as it has been doing in one or another way for 200 years, at
first in understandable fear of a rebellion that established the first free
country of free men right next door to a leading slave state, and on to the
present. It is a depressing illustration of how a highly disciplined
intellectual class can reframe even the most depraved actions as yet
another opportunity for self-adulation.