"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons." Bertrand Russell

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Little Alternative apparently...

Before reading this piece it is first necessary to forget up until recently a democratically elected leader was attempting to bring some sort of equality to a country ruined by years of imperialist oppression. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected by a large majority of his people and was forcibly removed from power by a US funded milita, a particularily brutal one at that. He is now unable to return to his country having been allegedly kidnapped in order to get him out of Haiti. Once you have fully extracted these facts from your memory, then you can fully understand this journalists view point...


Should the UN Run Haiti? Some See Little Alternative
By Pablo Bachelet
Miami HeraldDecember 12, 2004

UN-protectorate status is being discussed as a possible way finally to bring Haiti out of chaos.
From the anarchy that is Haiti, an old question is rising again: If Haitians can't rule themselves, should the United Nations run the destitute country for them? The question is being batted about in Washington think tanks, cafes in Port-au-Prince and U.S. academic circles, with many saying that there are few options left for a country mired in decades of mismanagement, corruption and political bloodletting.

''The only way we're going to make any progress in Haiti is to establish a good, old fashioned trusteeship,'' said Riordan Roett, the Western Hemisphere director at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. Haiti needs a ''multilateral force with a 25-year mandate to rebuild the country year by year. Everything's been destroyed. It's a failed state, a failed nation,'' Roett said.

CHAOS REIGNS

Everyone agrees that Haiti is in chaos. Since September, clashes by armed gangs of supporters and opponents of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide have left more than 90 dead. The gangs freely walk the streets of three of the nation's four largest cities, for-ransom kidnappings have become routine and the U.S.-backed interim government is being increasingly criticized as inefficient.

continued...

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world
/haiti/10397231.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp&1c#




For more informed reading on the problems facing Haitians, here is a good start...

http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR26102.shtml

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