a51: Dorcé, JJPierre and HProgrès curiosity: Chamberlain comments , (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

>From: LAKAT47@aol.com

<<   "France demands all Haitians to show the greatest restraint to avoid
 blood shedding," said the French Foreign Ministry in a statement issued on
 Monday evening. >>
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
> Isn't this the problem right here, or a big part of it?  Why are foreign 
> countries "demanding" anything of the Haitian people?  As I see it, they
have 
> no moral authority to do so.  I am hoping this is a simple translation 
> problem and "demand" was not the best word to use.

> Kathy Dorce~

_______________

The French "demander" here should've been translated as "ask" (a very
common 
"faux ami" error).

But what is this "no moral authority" nonsense?  Are we not all in an
"international 
community" (however uneven or unjust) ?  The idea that everything must be
given 
and nothing asked/demanded -- is this not, yet again, insulting Haitians by
saying 
they need have no responsibility for anything? (by not being asked to do
things 
as a responsible state and country).  That they should in effect just be
beggars?  
That they should just blame anything that goes wrong on others?  That, in
fact, 
they should not aspire to be citizens of the world with the normal range of
civic
duties?  I can't think of anything more demeaning, debilitating or likely
to keep 
Haiti in the sorry state it's in, than that Haitians must never be "asked"
for anything 
or to do anything.

Just as the world must demand that America, for all the recent horror, must
see 
that it has a "moral duty" to wake up to the horror it's funding in places
like 
Israel/Palestine and wake up to how to more responsibly help the the
world's poor, 
who most Americans don't seem to know or care much about.

If Kathy's idea is accepted, it means no non-Haitian has the "moral
authority" to say
Lavalas is corrupt and "demand/ask" that this stop before more money is
handed
over( to be stolen at once by 'grands mangeurs.'  Or the "moral authority"
to say the 
Convergence is a joke coalition and "demand/ask" that they sort themselves
out 
and make themselves attractive and able enough to be chosen to serve their 
long-suffering compatriots. When the houses of the some of the saner 
Convergence leaders have been criminally burned down by government 
supporters, this might not seem not the most tasteful thing to say, but the

problem has to be confronted. 

We should reflect on Jean Jean-Pierre's thoughtful post and its hard
truths.  

BTW, how extraordinary (or not!) that the Haiti Progrès story in English
posted
last week (Corbett 9955) about the Petit Goave violence contained not a
word about 
one of the key elements in the Lindor episode -- that one of the Lavalas
deputy mayors 
of Petit-Goave, after Lindor had hosted on his local radio station a debate
among 
politicians of various kinds, publicly and angrily called for "zero
tolerance" towards 
Lindor, which almost certainly encouraged his execution by the tèt chagé.  

How could you leave this out, Kim, and in the same breath complain of an
"almost 
complete press blackout" on the Convergence people severely beating up the
FL guy 
Duvergé (not true, anyway) ?  OK OK, you'll tell me it was in some other
part of the 
paper, but the English section was (and is always) presented as a complete
story.  
Let's hope that the often-estimable and always laudably energetic Progrès
isn't 
slipping back into its bad old ways, having wisely decided to step back
from the two 
camps in their present piteous states.

That "ALLAH" party, BTW, is the "house party" (= one man and his dog) of
the 
far-right Reynold Georges and is of no consequence. 


        Greg Chamberlain