26712: Simidor (comment): Re 26669: This Week in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: daniel simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>


      How pathetic that after this  onslaught, this deluge of words
(Haiti-Progres, 11/23/2005, ?Supporting a Leftist Opposition to Lavalas: The
AFL-CIO's  Solidarity Center and Batay Ouvriye," by Jeb Sprague), the author
is left wandering after the proverbial money trail.  Sprague couldn't
substantiate his allegations that Batay Ouvriye accepted money from USAID or
the US State Department, because Batay Ouvriye never did.  All he can  "prove"
is that the workers? organization accepted a $3,500  contribution to their
strike fund from the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center in Haiti.  And that took no
effort at all, since that  information was disclosed by Batay Ouvriye in the
first place.


      What is even more pathetic is  that this self-righteous attack should be
published in a newspaper that  collected thousands of dollars of blood money
from the New York Police  Department, as part of an NYPD public relations
campaign after the killing of  an innocent Haitian man, Patrick Dorismond. That
performance got Kim Ives and  Haiti-Progres thrown out of the Haitian Coalition
for Justice, an organization  that was fighting police brutality at the time.
Does Sprague even wonder where all  the money is coming from for the
well-funded "International Tribunal on Haiti" to which he has latched his
wagon?  Have  his sources told him how many millions of dollars, yes millions,
the Lavalas Family  party accepted from the National Democratic Institute and
other State  Department-funded institutions over the years?  Don't ask, don't
tell, eh?


      Sprague's contention that  Batay Ouvriye accepted "monetary aid and
oversight" from the US  government is based not on facts, but on what he
accepted for true, i.e. that  Batay Ouvriye was "different" from other Haitian
left organizations  in its opposition to Aristide.  The joke is on Sprague for
not knowing  that aside from Haiti-Progres? owner, the Lyndon Larouche-like Ben
Dupuy and  his virtual National People Party (PPN), the Haitian left
universally rejected  the greedy Lavalas Family leader.  (Greedy, as in taking
money under the  table for selling out Haiti and the Maribahoux farmers and
workers to the  Dominican ruling class.)  Read ?Notes from the Last Testament,?
Michael  Deibert?s blow by blow account of Aristide?s second term in office,
for a sense  of how inept, repressive and corrupt Aristide and his accomplices
really were.

      In my book, Sprague is a  stoolpigeon whose main contribution in this
case
was in fingering and  endangering the lives of key activists on the Haitian
left.  Shame on all  the websites that helped him carry out his dirty work.

  Daniel Simidor