May 15 2003 The Black Commentator - Haiti

[seemslikeadream]

"A LOW CLASS HUMAN BEING": "You're an ignorant, low-class, opportunistic man, both personally and politically, who does everything for political gain and nothing for the wellbeing of the people, and you should not be in office, and the kind of fascism you're perpetrating on our country we don't want, and you're out. We're done with you." So says an angry Ricky Lee Jones, who on her new CD, The Evening of My Best Day, "is singing about the ugly man with the ugly father who is blighting her nation, the two senators killed in mystery plane crashes, and the need for Americans to tell the world what is happening in the US'"...

http://homepage.mac.com/steverapport/iblog/C549401732/E1974626583 /

and from the Guardian

She believes the bombing of the Twin Towers has politicised a politically apathetic generation in an alarming way. "I think 9/11 gave this generation an identity, and its identity is potentially fascist. My skin crawls when I think of the first week after 9/11. I was looking out of the window and there were people marching down the street carrying flags. It reminded me of spontaneous, angry Nazis and I thought, 'Oh, man, we are in a lot of trouble'. There's a whole bunch of people who have flags hanging from their cars and who are mistaking fascism for patriotism."

This generation of Americans, she says, has not had to struggle for anything, and the only thing it has fought for is the right to reverse hard-won freedoms - free speech, fair trials, abortion rights. She talks of how language and values have been subverted.

"Now they're using the term 'leftwing' to evoke in people fear and loathing," she says. "And they have no idea what the far left looks like. Actually, the far left is almost the same as the far right. But they accuse just moderate people who disagree. And it is 'accuse'. There's no discussion going on."

Then there's the strange notion of bombing countries into a sense of responsibility. "Look at Afghanistan and Iraq. Pound the shit out of them, then bring them democracy because it's for their own good, right?" It's the hypocrisy she finds hardest to cope with. "I would have probably made peace with the idea of this rightwing Republican presidency if at any point after we were bombed - because we were devastated, we were terrified and broken-hearted - if he had said, 'I'm so pissed off, I'm gonna go and blow up the whole fucking Middle East. I hate 'em and I'm blowing 'em up', we would have gone, 'OK, right on', but he didn't. He said, 'We're looking for Bin Laden and we're bringing democracy'. Every single aspect of his response has been evil, thus making us into the evil thing we didn't know we were. Ffffhgggmm." (I'm sure she wouldn't have said 'right on' and made peace with Bush, but I know what she means.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1065419,00.html


December 4,2003
Among the other right-wing notables at the founding of the HDP was Stanley Lucas of the International Republican Institute, whose relations in Jean Rabel, Haiti were implicated in a 1987 massacre of peasants. Also in attendance was Olivier Nadal, the former president of the Haitian Chamber of Commerce, who is implicated in a peasant massacre in the Haitian township of Piatre in 1990. (Ears close to Haiti’s courts say an indictment and arrest warrant, in connection with the Piatre massacre, are due to be issued for Mr. Nadal soon.) To round it off and give the semblance of a Haitian center-right coalition, James Morrell chose as a co-founder Clotilde Charlot who is a Social Development Specialist who works for the Women in Development Unit of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). Jocelyn McCalla, founder and former executive director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), was also in attendance. Creole language radio stations in New York and Miami as well as officers in Haiti’s police force recently accused NCHR of taking sides with the opposition in Haiti. It must have been a lonely night for Dr. Joseph Baptiste of the National Organization for the Advancement of Haitians (NOAH) whose website states “NOAH's active participation in the democratization of Haiti continues, and was most recently evidenced when the organization was invited to witness the inauguration of the newly elected, President Jean Bertrand Aristide."

Even more interesting is the cadre of Washington suits who attended the HDP’s grand opening. Many in this elite group are also founding members or advisory board members of HDP. The list includes:

Founding board member of HDP, Timothy Carney – U.S. ambassador to Haiti, 1998–99.
Founding board member of HDP Vicki Carney – Consultant, CRInternational, Washington, D.C.; served in U.S. Embassy in Haiti 1998–99.
Clinton L. Doggett – Head of Haiti desk, U.S. Agency for International Development
Sukhi Dosanje – Agency for International Development
Amb. Luigi Einaudi – Assistant secretary-general of the Organization of American States. (For over two decades, Einaudi has been a career U.S. diplomat and defender of Washington's interventionist policies through both Republican and Democratic administrations).
Founding board member of HDP, Ira Lowenthal, in-country director, Associates in Rural Development, 1998–2000. (The Haitian opposition was first forged under Mr. Lowenthal’s tutelage as former guru of the Democracy Enhancement Project).
Founding board member of HDP, Amb. Orlando Marville – Chief of OAS electoral mission in Haiti, May-July 2000. (It was Marville’s office that leaked allegations to the press of incorrect ballot counting methods in the May 2000 parliamentary elections.)
Roger Noriega – U.S. ambassador to the OAS. (Noriega is Jesse Helms’ protégé and a vociferous opponent of popular democratic movements in the region.)
Dan Whitman – Former chief public-affairs officer, U.S. embassy, Port-au-Prince. (Whitman was accused of manipulating a witness, Phillip Markington, in the investigation of the Jean Dominique assassination)

http://www.blackcommentator.com/67/67_pina.html