#1908: Re: US tourist shot dead; Simidor comments (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From:Karioka9@cs.com

When the day is done, it will be found that the Haitian people had nothing to 
do with the killing of the three tourists or with the so-called dechoukaj of 
the Ile-a-Vache hotel.  It will also be found that the  most likely suspects 
are to be found among the assorted Macoute, FRAPH and ex-FAd'H criminals, or 
among the drug dealers and the gangs of deportees from the US.  The former 
because they would have been summoned to action by their leaders (with or 
without CIA approval), or simply because they now have to "earn" a living by 
their own wits.  The latter because that's the kind of ruthlessness they 
usually operate with and because of the impunity of their new circumstances.  
In either case, the real victims are the masses of unarmed people they  prey 
on every day, and now and then a tourist or would-be investor.  But the 
short-sighted have been quick to blame the people for the crimes alleged, and 
just as quickly to hold US imperialism blameless.  One has to wonder how many 
of those indignant accusers would actually blame the "American People" for 
the lynching of a black man in Texas, or for the police lynching of Amadou 
Diallo in New York City?  Se pèp Ayisyen ki genyen bon do…  
 
When trees begin to fall in the forest, one is well advised to look not just 
for the ax chopping down the trees, but also for the hand wielding the ax.  
In the case above, that hand, n'en deplaise the short-sighted, is the  same 
hand that financed FRAPH, armed the Macoutes and trained the old FAd'H.  It 
is the ubiquitous hand of US imperialism which, by virtue of its 1996 
"anti-terrorism" bill, has managed to deport an important cross-section of 
its criminal class to the periphery -- thereby causing a huge criminal influx 
not just in Haiti, but in countries ranging from Jamaica and Central America 
to far away Ethiopia and Kenya.  So  a few tourists get killed here and a few 
get killed there.  The mayor, the dignitaries, the entire town of Jacmel, 
will march up and down the streets to show they are sorry.  How sorry they 
are when the people  get slaughtered is another story.  It's very 
uncomfortable for the tourists, I'm sure, but it brings to mind the case of 
the chickens going away to roost!
 
 And lest la gent bien pensante should start cursing my name like they did 
with Malcolm X in 1963, let me add, emphatically, that I do not condone the 
crimes committed.  I know how bad they are for the country.  In fact, that's 
probably why they were committed in the first place.   But in my naiveté, I 
was rather surprised that the first three offerings on the subject on this 
list should actually condemn the people in such virulent terms, in the 
interest of combating "kraze brize!" That propensity to blame the people for 
the very crimes committed against them (and the near unanimity this kind of 
attitude enjoys) is a measure of how backward the list has grown over  the 
past year.  It would almost seem that wherever the posts on the list gained 
in quantity (a spillover, in part, from the two Haiti newsgroups), they 
actually suffered in quality.  Mediocrity and reaction have gained the upper 
hand. The wise and the learned have retreated to their ivory towers.  And the 
petty-bourgeois elements (as they are wont to do when the wind thus changes) 
have turned right, while faking on their left.  Without an ivory tower to 
call my own, I too, perhaps, would have bolted, if not for the occasional 
hilarity of the soup joumou liberals!
 
 Daniel Simidor