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26293: Dailey re 26258: A Reply (fwd)





From: Peter Dailey <phdailey@msn.com>

[Note from Bob Corbett: As most of you know I don't normally post items which have PERSONAl attacks on people who have posted on the Corbett list.

However, I have made an exception in this case since I erred and allowed a post that was a personal attack on Peter Dailey, and in his reply he has things I would normally not accept.

This is a one time exception and I won't post any reply that has any personal attack, and hope I don't slip up and post any more.

I just believe in civil exchange where one can disagree vehemently with someone's IDEAS without attacking the person. I guess it's my training in philosophy which is mainly that way. It's also some old fashion sense of decency too.

Bob Corbett]

From Peter Dailey:



Apparently Guy Antoine has chosen to take my comments personally.

At present, the human rights of ordinary Haitians are under an assault as severe as any in recent memory. The complicity of the interim government in this has been repeatedly underscored in reports by frontline human rights organizations. However, unlike the situation for most of the Lavalas years, these abuses spring from a multiplicity of sources, as I'm sure Antoine recognizes, and nothing is served by denying this. As the Swiss historian Jacob Burkhardt famously observed: "The denial of complexity is the beginning of tyranny."

There is no reason why an analysis should not focus on the responsibility of a single actor- the HNP, Department of Justice, Chimeres, MINUSTAH, Aristide, etc- although to imply that this represents the complete picture is morally irresponsible and intellectually dishonest. Nor, since human rights violations are fundamentally assaults against the individual, do such analyses have to be comparative. Were Kevin Pina to have been jailed indefinitely for his minor offense instead of held and released the following day I doubt he would have been vastly interested in knowing how much better or worse he might have fared under Duvalier, or Aristide, or Stenio Vincent, etc.

Which brings me to Antoine's thoroughly tendentious post, which he dedicates appropriately enough to Kevin Pina. In his subsequent Riposte, Guy explains that his subject was the narrow one of government interference with freedom of the press. In doing so he pinpoints one of the few areas where, in comparison to its Lavalas predecessors, the interim government would appear to be paragons of legality and to have ushered in a new golden age, not withstanding Latortue's criticism of Delva and the brief detention of Pina and Restil. However, Haiti remains a place where one's political opinions can still get one killed. Had I realized that Antoine's topic was not freedom of the press but only interference in press freedom by the interim government I obviously would have had no cause to wonder at Antoine's omission of the name of Jacques Roche. I know no more about the Roche case than that the manner of his death strongly suggests that it was a political crime rather than a mere kidnapping for ransom. If, as Antoine states, there have indeed been arrests, and a trial and convictions follow we will perhaps know more. Should this in fact happen, however, it will be one of the few times in a recent Haitian history that has not lacked cases of this nature. I imagine that like most other people confronted by murders like those of Jean Dominique, Abdias Jean, or Brignol Lindor, I will continue to make whatever inferences or draw whatever conclusions it seems to me the evidence justifies. Antoine's argument, like the rest of his post, is short on logic and long on sanctimoniousness.

Antoine says that the point of his leaden sarcasm- striking in a writer notable in past for a ready wit and enlivening sense of humor- is that the French, Canadians, U.S. et al. have betrayed his expectations that "the fruit you put into the bowl were better than those you discarded." It must be wonderful for a writer to have metaphors like that right at his fingertips! However, his Riposte has almost nothing to say about MINUSTAH or Haitian Nationalism and a whole lot about the outrage I've apparently done to his Feelings. I did not call Antoine a scoundrel- this would be taking his comments a great deal more seriously than circumstances warrant. Nor did I question his integrity, although it is clear from the speed with which he set out to exploit Kevin Pina's arrest, and the wide range of parties at which he chose to point the finger that Antoine is obviously not averse to attempting to score cheap political points. Insofar as I am familiar with his writing its principal shortcoming has always been Antoine's outsized and well nourished capacity for self deception, particularly where Aristide and Lavalas are concerned. A celebrated example of this was Antoine's Open Letter to Aristide, published on the Corbett List, a notable exercise in bootlicking that thanked Aristide for finally condemning political violence and stating that if the rumors connecting Aristide to the chimeres had been true, Antoine would have considered Aristide morally unfit to be president. I don't know if you will find this on Windows on Haiti or not.

In reading over my original post, the one thing I do regret is that in comparing Windows on Haiti to the IJDH, HLLN, Fondasyon Trant Septanm, and Haiti Progres I appeared to be equating them. The latter are all organizations whose sole raison d'etre is to promote the political fortunes of a single individual. Windows on Haiti is an online magazine devoted to a variety of topics, whose political section provides a forum for a number of different points of view. I hope it will continue to appear well after most of the current political actors have sunken into well deserved obscurity. Hyppolite Pierre has written to the Corbett List to say that Guy would like to republish my comments and his Riposte on Windows on Haiti. Although I would have thought that an editor's injured sense of amour propre was not a topic of particular general interest I have no objection to his doing so provided that he includes these remarks as well.

Peter Dailey