26751: Simidor (reply) Re: 26727: Donoviel: (ask) "Leftist" Simidor? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: daniel simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

    Mr. Donoviel,

      In response to your questions:

      I?ve called on this list and elsewhere for Jean-Juste?s  immediate
release
from prison.  I?ve  also defended his right to run for president.

      For my most recent thoughts on the occupation, I invite you  and others
to
please follow this link to the Grassroots Haiti website, for a  short piece I
wrote as an introduction to a roundtable discussion in  mid-November:
http://www.grassrootshaiti.org/Events/Haiti%20under%20Occupation.html

      The interim Latortue government was set-up as a tool of the  current
occupation.  I?ve written more  significantly, in my opinion, here and on
Alterpresse, about the Interim  Cooperation Framework (CCI) and its neoliberal
agenda.  Two things I like about ?Gwo Jera? Latortue:  1) he didn?t try to
setup his own Tontons Macoute/militia or Chimeres; 2) he?ll  be gone in a few
short weeks.  What  comes after him, Lord, is a different matter!

      Lastly, as a bonus for an assiduous reader, I append here  the last three
paragraphs from something I wrote yesterday for a different  thread in a
different forum.  They  clarify, I think, some of things we?ve discussed here.
      . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I would agree that ?the most important thing is to look at what the
imperialists
(mainly the U.S., plus Canada and France) are doing in Haiti in order to work
to defeat them.?  Alex Steinberg commented insightfully on that very point.  I
would add that even inside the Bush administration, there were different levels
of responsibility and different approaches to Haiti.  Bush quite clearly
doesn?t give a damn about Haiti (Oil syndrome? Attention deficit disorder?),
and relied on his in-house niggers to deal with the niggers over there.  So far
the evidence available would show that Powell, who was instrumental in
arranging Aristide?s return to Haiti in 1994, worked in his spare time with
CARICOM and the OAS to keep the lid from blowing off, i.e. to maintain the
status quo with Aristide.  (Which is not to say that other forces in the
administration were not actively working toward Aristide?s demise.)  But more
than anything, Aristide wanted the US Marines to come back to safeguard him
 again.  Knowing that his only leverage in terms of US policy was
the ?invasion?
of the so-called boat people, he tried to force Bush?s hand by having his
militias shut down the port in P.au.P (making it impossible for the US Coast
Guard to return the refugees who were by then trying to flee Haiti by the
hundreds).  This happened three or four days before his abrupt departure, which
I guess was Bush?s way of slapping his hand down.

      Regarding Aristide?s ?accomplishments,? the construction  industry was
one
of the plums in the Lavalas corruption scheme (awarding  contracts to phony
companies set up by proxies and sucking millions of dollars  from the state
budget when the allocated funds ran out).  This is documented elsewhere.  The
concrete plazas, as many as 50, bearing  Aristide?s and his wife?s names are
the crowning achievements of Aristide?s  second term in office.  The schools
were  mostly never funded and therefore never opened.  The Cuban doctors
literally worked miracles in Haiti, but the  credit should go to the Cuban
people who consented the sacrifices for those  miracles to happen, and to the
UNESCO which conceived those types of  South-South bilateral arrangements.

      Finally, after 200 years of naked imperialist predation and  kleptocratic
self-rule, Haiti is a country on the brink of collapse.  This profound social,
political and economic  crisis is what?s driving events there.   It explains
why and how Aristide came to power in the first place (hopes  of a painless
miracle), and why stability is a pipe dream even with  elections.  Haiti?s
chief attraction in  the global economy is its cheap labor force, but that
labor force is also the  chief concern in terms of revolutionary upheavals
threatening to erupt at any  moment.  In this juncture when Haiti is  faced
with the prospect of long-term colonial occupation, the left in Haiti is  in
dire need of critical support, and not this kind of wanton sectarian
destruction.  Still, Sprague?s  unsubstantiated attack is proof that Batay
Ouvriye is doing some good work in  terms of organizing that volatile labor
force, and I hope that activist folks  will look for themselves in its pretty
 outstanding record.

      Daniel Simidor