23504: Esser: Re: 23439: Kathleen: Re: 23427: radtimes: Resistance grows in wake of flood disaster (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

There doesn't seem to be a major amnesia on the part of revisionists
trying to equate whatever happened under Jean-Bertrand Aristide with
the current state of terror and impunity. It is by design. People
intent on rewriting history conveniently brush aside the fact that
during the years of Aristide there were no mass killings and
wholesale arrests of pro-democracy activists by hooded goon-squads
equal to what is going on at this very moment in Haiti.

Did people get killed while Aristide held office. Yes! Should we be
opposed to any form of extra judicial killings, torture and whatever
else has been perpetrated on the Haitian people? Of course. Was there
a total breakdown of society under Aristide, including all out
repression of political opponents?
Well, Latortue's fascist methods in controlling wide-spread revolt
against his rule and intolerable methods have already left the blood
of thousands of persecuted Haitians on his hands, something not even
the disreputable NCHR -
http://www.wbai.org/gallery/nyc_haitian_resistance/18nchr or the
absolutely repugnant Haiti Democracy Project, tied to Haitian
entrepreneur Boulos -
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=rudolph_boulos
and http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2004/0304letter.html ,
infamous for his killer cough sirup, have tried to claim of Aristide.
There are simply no accounts of such repression carried out prior to
the second coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Latortue, armed with
far greater support of industrial nations than Aristide in his second
term in office, has managed to not only oversee a rapid deterioration
of the quality of life for all but the tiny elite, but also his
stepped up persecutions and injustice scaled new heights as well.

 From a public relations point of view, this campaign of
misinformation is an all out failure; especially the Haitian people
know who is on their side and who is aligned with foreign interests
or that of the anachronistically backward upper classes on the
island. Even a sugarcoating of lies and misrepresentations does not
make the U.S. man in charge, Latortue - often referred to as a
buffoon, more palatable to the increasingly oppressed masses. From
all indicators the U.S. masters and their Haitian minions know this
too. Why otherwise the attacks on catholic priests, politicians and
schools? It is a desperate attempt at intimidation because the
outright murder of activists and spreading terror in the poor urban
areas has not worked in convincing Haitians that Latortue is not the
illegitimate ruler, supported by foes of democracy, that he is.

Whereas half a world away in Afghanistan the installed ruler, Hamid
Karzai, is often referred to as the mayor of Kabul, since his
presidential powers do not do not encompass urbi and orbi, Latortue
can't even claim to be in control of the Haitian capital. This portly
ruler of the emaciated masses is in the dismal situation that he does
not have the ability to provide Haitians with anything that they
would not have had under Aristide.
Autocratic rulers, especially those as unpopular as Latortue, need to
make the proverbial trains run on time or provide the populace with
some other real or imagined perks in order to not fall from grace of
the economic classes behind them or to avoid fanning spiraling unrest
and revolt. Latortue, a man that did not even reside in Haiti for
decades, can't deliver the stability his handlers need to accomplish
their economic and political goals. Aristide, on the other hand
succeeded, without much international support, to construct many
schools, start literacy programs and slashed the rate of malnutrition
considerably feats that have his detractors foaming, since they like
to lay the blame for much of Haiti's ills at his feet.

The U.S. State Department ought to have learned their lessons by now.
Marc Bazin, the former U.S. sponsored presidential candidate, was not
considered even an option by the Haitian populace and he didn't
mingle with violent criminals in the way Latortue, the Haitian
Quisling of the day, did and does with his "freedom fighter" friends.
The Haitian people are generally very educated about foreign
interventions in their internal affairs and don't succumb easily to
propaganda. The uprising is fomenting and not only in Haiti, but also
wherever Haitians live abroad. Repression has often the side effect
of making peoples more recognizant of their situation within society
and strengthens their will to go all out in the struggle against
their oppressors.

While few people with intimate knowledge of U.S. politics, believed
for a moment that Latortue ever had the well being of the Haitian
masses as his goal, one of the great tragedies is the U.N.
involvement in propping up his regime while simultaneously failing to
provide even minimal security for the masses. Especially the South
American leaders of Argentina, Brazil and Chile, against the will of
much of their own populations, cut despicable figures in joining
Latortue in his murderous forays in the slums of Port-au-Prince while
giving an assortment of thugs and former militaries free reign to
terrorize the country.

Are the people from the National Lawyers Guild and Pax Christi, just
to name two groups whose reports concerning the increasingly alarming
human rights situation in Haiti have come out recently, such fringe
lunatics that we have to discount their reports of widespread murder
and political persecution, currently going on in Haiti? Are there any
such reports supporting the outlandish claim that Lavalas is
responsible for just the same? A plethora of reporting on Haiti by
very informed sources with long track records of honest and hard
hitting journalism show that neither the Lawyers Guild nor all the
others reporting of government perpetrated extreme violence against
political opponents are not in error. The dispathes by the likes of
Guyler-Delva, Bracken and Polgreen, the mouthpieces of just such
revisionist propaganda campaigns and propagandists in the service of
the status quo in Haiti, are a sad counterpoint to responsible
journalism and well researched background information

There's a lot of good journalism on Haiti out there by outstanding
journalists painting pictures wholly different from that of the
perpetrators of wire service and corporate press reporting. Have a
look at ZNet's great collection of articles addressing the current
U.S. intervention in Haiti: http://www.zmag.org/lam/haitiwatch.cfm ,
'Haiti: The Struggle Continues' on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York City -
live on the internet Saturdays at 3 p.m. EST:
http://www.2600.com/offthehook/hot2.ram or via http://www.wbai.org ,
the English section of Haïti Progrès: http://www.haiti-progres.com/
and the recent Pax Christi human rights report:
http://www.paxchristiusa.org/news_events_more.asp?id=943 , just to
name a few examples, and you will instantly see that beyond the world
of parroted press releases and shoddy reporting by the wire services,
there are actually many Haitian and other journalists that are
actually breaking news that do not leave out significant details and
are capable of a vastly superior and coherent analysis. They alas do
not paint a benevolent picture of the U.N./U.S. activities in the
Caribbean or Latortue's failures. They also do not incorporate the
multitude of stereotypes regarding Haitians that the major news
stories are riddled with and offer a very compelling source of
information not to be had from the pages of the New York Times or
wherever else the journalists in their temporary residences high over
the slums of Port-au-Prince deposit their questionable accounts.

A final word to all those now speaking of the need for dialogue and
compromise: While dialogue and peaceful conflict resolution is far
superior and desirable to other forms resistance, it is not feasible
for people looking down the barrel of a gun. As the past six month in
Haiti show, Lavalas and other proponents of democracy in Haiti worked
peacefully through demonstrations and other means commonly available
to people in less repressive situations, but increasingly risky for
Haitians. Only Latortue's ongoing campaign of arrests and outright
murder has brought out more violent resistance. It is fairly easy
from the cozy comfort of ones desk to call for compromise - when your
home is being raided by masked cops, compromise and reconciliation
is virtually impossible. Without either Latortue or his backers
coming to their senses, there is little hope of a imminent peaceful
resolution to the widening conflict in Haiti. The terror emanates not
from the dispossessed, but from the National Police, the (soon to
be?) reborn army and the assortment of international troops in the
service of keeping the system of oppression afloat. In any armed
conflict there can be no neutrality... You are either with the
attacked or allied with the attackers through your "neutrality" or
outright support. As Florence Reece asked in her famous labor song:
Which side are you on?


> From: Kathleen <kathleenmb@adelphia.net>
>
> There seems to be a major amnesia on the part of Radtimes on all the
> killing
> (including journalists), fraud, and destruction of haitian people
> during
> Aristide's reign.  k