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[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: kevin pina <kpinbox@hotmail.com>

"On any day of the week you can arrange a meeting with Raymond and Civil.
Your descriptions of them are reminiscent of the way Lynn Garrison used to
speak about FRAPH. "Come over and meet the guys." Roger Lafontant was one of
the most charming and interesting people I've met in Haiti. Let's say he was
like that in some of my interviews with him. That did not stop journalists
from calling him a killer and a torturer, even though, of course, many
reporters, myself included, never saw him commit a crime except brandishing
shotguns".

Actually, Mr. Garrison's favorite game was not unlike your own argument ,
false parallelism. The main thrust of his argument, as appears to be your
own, is that Aristide is actually a dictator in democrat's clothing and that
the popular organizations represent nothing more than a noveau Ton Ton
Macoutes. This is the same position of the elite and apologists for the coup
of September 1991. The coup was necessary in order to stop Aristide's
tyranny, ala Duvalier, and the army was the only institution that could
guarantee order.  This is virtually the same argument being put forward
today with a few twists added in for good measure.

You are certainly right that Raymond and Civil are not media savvy darlings
but to equate them with the Macoutes displays another agenda at work here.
As for equating apologists for FRAPH with a call for a rational assessment
of meta-messages currently running in the press with regards to events in
Haiti, another example of false parallelism.


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