Prometheus 6

It's all well and good for you to be agitating for Aristide to say whatever he pleases, but do keep in mind that right now he's a guest in someone else's home, and the least he could do is avoid creating unnecessary difficulties for his hosts - who aren't really under any legal obligation to keep him around. Frankly, I think Aristide is behaving like an ingrate of the highest order.

I've seen your writing elsewhere Abiola, and I find it difficult to believe you raise this as a serious issue. It may be the single most beside-the-issue point ever made around here.

" It may be the single most beside-the-issue point ever made around here."

Not to me it isn't. I've seen what it's like at the other end of that camera, living in one of those countries people like Aristide are happy to use for stage props while they grandstand for CNN. Here's a man who messed up his own country by supporting thugs and rigging elections, and now he's being celebrated like some sort of hero for democracy?

The reality is that the Central African Republic's leaders must put the needs of their citizens before giving Aristide a platform for his propaganda, and that means preserving good relations with Washington no matter what party is in power. If Aristide can't appreciate the reality of how the world works, he ought to move on somewhere else that's quick to have him ASAP. The fact that Thabo Mbeki isn't so eager to take him in ought to tell you something about how Aristide is viewed in that part of the world.

There's more to life than American domestic Bush-bashing for political advantage, and I don't see why the poor of the C.A.R. must be made to pay the price because of a no-account thug like Aristide. He's already done his bit to mess things up in Haiti - the least he can do is keep from messing things up for those whose hospitality he's so eager to abuse. If Aristide were a Nelson Mandela fighting for the freedom of an entire people I might understand, but he's nothing of the sort, just another power-hungry thug who happened to have been backed once by the Democrats.

All that is fine, and you're as entitled to your opinions as I am to mine. In fact, you may be MORE entitled to your opinion than I. I just need to say that if your first complaint is that Aristede is an ungrateful guest I question whether your opinion has any substance underlying it.

You'll have plenty of opportunity to present whatever substance may inform your position, though. I'll be presenting information on Haiti as I become aware of it, as something of a favor to devorah major.

Prom, the FEMA camps are going to become "model facilities" for this. I see the writing on the wall, it will be a way to 'compassionately conserve' the outsource of jobs by insourcing the labor.

Mr. Rangel's take on the entire Haitian situation carries a lot of weight. The entire situation shows that Bush is not Democracy unless it is opportune for his campaign contributors.

Here's a man who messed up his own country by supporting thugs and rigging elections, and now he's being celebrated like some sort of hero for democracy?

This is an absurd allegation. Naturally it is being put about by FRAPH, the falangist movement created by the CIA, and the "Democratic Convergence," a creature of the ironically-named "National Endowment for Democracy" (NED). FRAPH is an organization which caused such horror in Haiti that it created an exodus of boat people.

Haiti is "messed up" by the environmental degradation which the FRAPH and the urban elites have defended by force majeur. But why take my word for this?

The reality is that the Central African Republic's leaders must put the needs of their citizens before giving Aristide a platform for his propaganda, and that means preserving good relations with Washington no matter what party is in power. If Aristide can't appreciate the reality of how the world works, he ought to move on somewhere else that's quick to have him ASAP. The fact that Thabo Mbeki isn't so eager to take him in ought to tell you something about how Aristide is viewed in that part of the world.

Let me get this straight. Aristide is the villain in this episode because he criticizes the USA from the CAR, and therefore exposes his host to the wrath of the Department of State? In other words, you agree with me that the USA government is likely to inflict grievous harm to the population of an African country because it doesn't silence Aristide?

Calling Aristide "a no-account thug" is a shameful slander of the only leader who exerted any effort to improve the lot of the country, certainly in living memory. And by the way, the oft-repeated claims that the "chimeres" were his creatures is a fiction; Haiti was left by the US/UN occupation force (1994-1997) with a heavily armed populace, including self-defense militia in the gigantic barrios of Haiti's shantytowns.

After the occupation and the tenure of Rene Preval (during which the economy of Haiti contracted 25%), Aristide returned with an intractible security problem and senatorial elections disputed by the OAS. This was not exactly Aristide's fault: the opposition, doomed to be a minority (much like the European-dominated National Party in post-'94 RSA), had no hope but to engineer a constitutional crisis.

Guess who had the prevailing business ties with foreign lobbyists? In any event, Aristide was left with only the most insignificant resources for retaining any shred of civil order in Haiti. Complaining that he did not immediately dissolve the militia, which the US/UN forces had left intact, requires the assumption that Aristide had God-like powers beyond those of the mere Americans.

Finally, a word on the comparison between Aristide and Nelson Mandela: NM was a magnificent leader, and Mr. Lapite's articles on the RSA are quite good. But NM, post-'94, had several advantages to ensure the transition to majority rule in the RSA did not dissolve into chaos. One was that the minority elites did not depend financially on continued destruction of the livelihood of the majority; the logging industry, for example, is well-regulated and small. Second, there existed a large, professional multiracial body of law enforcement. The laws of the old RSA had been execrable; but they had been enforced professionally, and after '94 the courts and police remained a fairly reliable apparatus as far as the ANC was concerned. Third, there benevolent oversight on the part of the international community.

In Haiti all three conditions fail. The destruction of all forms of livelihood for the rural poor is fundamental to the commercial economy there; the security system is entirely malicious and unprofessional; and the international community in this arena has been unhelpful in the extreme.