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[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Jeb Sprague <jebsprague@mac.com>



I see no "overwhelming amount of evidence" that "Aristide's
government has sanctioned the brutal smashing of a peasant
demonstration" as you state.  Where is this "overwhelming evidence"
of government sanction?   The footnote in the Labor Notes article
(that you are talking about) was showing the source location of a
quote from Haiti Progres.   When doing detailed research such as this
we should try to site the sources of our quotations, that does not
mean we have to accept hands down all of the analysis that is printed
in the sited source.  Check out Jules R. Benjamin's "A Student's
Guide to History" it gives a good break down on how to properly site
sources for research papers.



Next, as to your insinuation made once again that those public sector
workers fired were merely ?no-show patronage jobs?, I refer you to my
Corbett posting 28580 and especially the quote by Anoop Singh,
Director of the Western Hemisphere Department at the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) which states that the expenditure cuts (austerity
measures, resulting in the loss of jobs)  ?adversely affected the
ability of the authorities to deliver basic public services.?  Do you
think firing ghost workers would result in the loss of basic public
services, which the IMF acknowledges?  Only from firing real workers
would you receive a decline of basic public services.  This does not
mean that ghost workers could have also been or not been fired.  What
it does mean, is that REAL workers were in fact fired.



To my knowledge I have never misquoted a source from any interview or
discussion.  The Solidarity Center (SC) or any SC employee for that
matter has never complained or notified me of any misquote.  I have
spoken to numerous officials at that institution on various
occasions.   My footnoted  ?notes on this conversation with the
Solidarity Center?s In-Country Haiti Organizer" I transcribed with a
pad and paper while I was speaking with the SC's In-Country Rep after
a talk I did this last December in San Francisco with a number of
other speakers on labor in Haiti.  I vividly remember the SC employee
commenting to me that ?Aristide flew over Guacimal in a helicopter,
shooting at workers.?  I was so shocked that I actually did a double-
take, asking her if she said what I thought she said.  Again, she
seemed positively sure about her unsubstantiated claim.  Many months
before, another Solidarity Center employee that I spoke with referred
to those workers who supported the ousted Aristide government as
"revolutionary ideologues".