29929: Leiderman: (reply) disappearing tourist? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leiderman@mindspring.com


dear Kathleen (and readers).  thanks for your note, but I think I lost your train of thought.   I take you seriously.  are you scolding me, or reminding me, or what?  I was juxtaposing the NYTimes' Caribbean travel article omitting Haiti, with the "Boost Haiti" travel summit in Miami a while back.  I wasn't going off in the wild blue Aristide, LaT, Pr'val yonder; I certainly wasn't defending them.

I thought the NYTimes article was escapist in a double-entendre kind of way, and I thought it also insulted New York's large Haitian population.  there must have been a time when travel articles featured Haiti; a sidebar-flashback to when the country still ranked in travel circles would have satisfied me.  but as we all know, newsarticles causing erections that last more than four hours could be branded educational.

security precedes tourism?  okay, what are your paradigms?  magic wands?  iron fists?  does crime-in-the-streets and poor people's resentment just wear themselves out like diarrhea, on a kind of biolological-to-sociological contiuum?  if so, what's the cast of characters?  do peacekeepers change all the diapers while travel moguls lay back with their scented powders and "kitchee koo's"?

security...will we "know it when we see it," like good art? or can we stipulate the conditions?  give me some scenarios...best case to worst case.  'superimpose Mill Valley on Petionville?  Austin onto Gonaives?  Port-au-Prince as "Our Town" -- all patriotic and precious -- or as "Waiting for Godot" whose actors just get on each other's nerves?  or as Macbeth's castle, with every appearance of security except for those wiggly bushes out there in the dark?

urban planners, peacekeepers and travel agents...are they burning the midnight oil in the National Palace tonight or out drinking shots?

thank you,

Stuart

leiderman@mindspring.com

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Good grief, Stuart, denial won't help Haiti's security.  Preval is on record blaming U.S., following the tried and true path of LaTortue, Aristide.... ...and the kidnappings keep coming.  Kathleen