28010: Hermantin(News)PBS airs two grim looks at foreign affairs (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Posted on Mon, Feb. 27, 2006


TELEVISION REVIEWS
PBS airs two grim looks at foreign affairs

BY GLENN GARVIN
ggarvin@MiamiHerald.com

• American Experience: Hijacked, 10-11 tonight, WPBT-PBS 2

• Failing Haiti, 11-midnight tonight, WLRN-PBS 17

They really ought to fill those tote bags they hand out during PBS fundraising 
weeks with anti-depressant drugs. They'd sure come in handy tonight as both 
South Florida PBS stations offer grim looks at two of America's most 
intractable foreign-policy problems -- Middle Eastern terrorism and the eternal 
political dysfunction of Haiti.

Hijacked, an episode of the American Experience documentary series airing on 
WPBT, examines the 1970 hijackings of three airliners by Palestinian militants 
that ushered in the age of transnational terrorism. And Failing Haiti, an 
independent film screening on WLRN, focuses on a country that has been mired in 
chaotic poverty literally since the day it was born. Neither will leave you 
feeling very peppy about the future of liberal democracy.

In the wake of Sept. 11, recounting the story of a hijacking in which the only 
casualties were the airplanes themselves seems almost quaint. But as Hijacked, 
the work of veteran Israeli-American documentarian Ilan Ziv, makes clear, the 
seeds planted that day by the Palestinian gunmen would eventually bear ghastly 
fruit.

''They did not have the sophistication nor, let it be said, did they at that 
time have the ruthlessness to press home the initial attack on the airplanes by 
killing people,'' says one witness interviewed in Hijacked. ``They were to 
learn, but they didn't have it then.''

Palestinians and Jews had been trading terrorist punches in the Middle East for 
most of the 20th century. But the hijackings in Europe that began on Sept. 7, 
1970, marked the first time that attacks were staged in -- or targeted citizens 
of -- another country. Two planes were flown to the Jordanian desert, a third 
to Cairo. (A fourth attempt, on an El Al flight, was thwarted when Israeli sky 
marshals overpowered the hijackers.)

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out the 
hijackings, threatened to kill several hundred passengers unless imprisoned 
Palestinian militants in Europe and Israel were released. The Israelis flatly 
refused, and the PFLP eventually settled for half a dozen prisoners from 
Europe. They freed the passengers, then blew up the airliners.

As Hijacked notes, the PFLP -- showing ''an almost child-like innocence'' about 
public relations -- had expected to win sympathy for its cause with the 
hijackings. In that sense, they were a failure. But the ready acquiescence of 
European countries in swapping prisoners for hostages would haunt the world for 
decades to come, as hijackings and kidnappings became a regular tool of Middle 
Eastern zealots.

''Once you get started with this kind of militancy, it's hard to turn it off,'' 
observes a former American diplomat interviewed in Hijacked. ''People are 
beginning to compete with ways of doing other, more dramatic blows.'' Left 
unspoken is the chilling implication: Exactly what sort of attack is under 
contemplation right now in the Middle East that would be more dramatic than 
Sept. 11?

`FAILING HAITI'

Like Hijacked, Failing Haiti is briskly paced and sharply drawn. It's also 
visually and editorially blunt, making no attempt to disguise what a mess the 
country is, in terms of both social and physical infrastructure. Particularly 
disturbing is the ample footage of burned and mutilated corpses (the reason 
it's airing at such a late hour) that makes it clear that ''politics'' in Haiti 
is often just a polite word for murder.

Failing Haiti's script is as uncompromising as its pictures. Haiti is not a 
developing country but a devolving one, and nobody pretends otherwise. ''How 
can it be that after nearly a century of foreign intervention, and billions of 
dollars in international aid, Haiti remains so tragically poor and 
misgoverned?'' asks writer-narrator David Adams as a montage of grisly images 
flashes across the screen.

The answer proves elusive, though not for want of trying. Adams, the Caribbean 
correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times, and producer-director Rod Paul, an 
Atlanta filmmaker, have conducted an impressive array of interviews with 
figures all around the ideological and social spectrum.

Everybody from deposed lefty president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Roger Noriega, 
the Bush administration's chief shock trooper on Haiti, gets his say, providing 
Failing Haiti with a refreshing diversity of opinion -- not to mention a 
reality check -- that's usually missing from works on the country. When 
Aristide says he was kidnapped by the CIA and forced from office in 2004, it's 
followed immediately by an interview with the head of his security detail 
labeling the claim hogwash.

With so many viewpoints represented in Failing Haiti, it's no surprise that no 
consensus emerges on either the causes of the country's problems or their 
solutions, and Paul and Adams do not attempt to impose one. Intentionally or 
not, however, their interviews with Haitian political figures offer a clue. All 
of them, regardless of political stripe, blame Haiti's travails on the 
international community, particularly the United States.

A peasant organizer says the United States ruined the country by training 
Haiti's first professional army. Former military officers say the troubles 
began when the Americans permitted Aristide to abolish the army. Aristide 
supporters say the Americans forced him out; Aristide critics say the Americans 
didn't put enough pressure on him. No Haitian, it seems, is ever responsible 
for anything that happens there. Watching Failing Haiti is likely to leave you 
thinking that the next shipment of foreign aid to the country should include a 
large mirror, because Haitian leaders need to take a hard look in one.

Miami Herald television critic Glenn Garvin will answer your TV questions 
online. Go to MiamiHerald.com and click on Q&A Forum.






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