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First published, August 14, 2002
                                          
Lucky little man, just for now thanks to narco-U.S.
$60,000 Haitian totalitarian dictator and chief bandit
Aristide rewards anarchy, murders and
dehumanizing poverty to save 'criminal syndicate'
_________
                      
By YVES A. ISIDOR

Cambridge, MA - The violent demonstrations that immediately succeeded the successful jailbreak after bandits and others crashed a stolen tractor through a wall and illegally liberate Amiot "Cubain" Métayer from illegal detention on August.6th after he was kidnapped by his senior chief bandit, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, on July 2nd, in Gonaïves, a hotbed of insurrection against existing governments, could have lasted more than just a few days, perhaps weeks, until tyrant Aristide, not concerned at all with the plight of Haitians, was forced to permanently distance himself from the office of the presidency he occupied, and illegally so, on February 7th, 2001.

                                                          
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warden Sony Marcellus, 37, stand in the rubble of a prison wall knocked down by gunmen on a stolen tractor as he points to a now sealed-up hole where the gunmen entered the prison in Gonaïves, Haiti, Tuesday August 6th, 2002. the gunmen freed 159 prisoners last Friday in a jailbreak that left at least one dead and a town in chaos. (AP information and Photo/Daniel Morel)
 
A prison guard speaks to female inmates Tuesday, August 6th, 2002, at the prison in Gonaïves, Haiti. Heavily-armed gunmen stole a tractor, crashed through the wall of the jail and free 159 prisoners last Friday in a jailbreak that left at least one dead and a town in chaos. The inmates in the photo are some of those who did not escape. (AP Information and Photo/Daniel Morel)
                                                 
But why the last week unpleasant events were short-lived, even though public anger and general destation of monstrous dictator Aristide, even before then, were so great?

It is an open secret that in Haiti narco-money talks and, the dictator, Aristide, who is not short of prominent drug dealer friends, in addition to trafficking in narcotics himself, has plenty of it.
                                                  
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Narco-U.S. dollars

  Aristide, the alleged druglord
                                        

Through a third, but unidentified party, Métayer, who barely spelled out the details of his pseudo-revolution and, at times seemed confused during interviews with journalists, perhaps because of his rudimentary educational or elementary-school background, received "narco-U.S.$60,000 and promises of jobs," according to a credible source, from radical leftist Aristide.

 "You," a reference to Métayer, who deeply believes killing people, and brutally so, does not make him the alleged notorious criminal that human rights groups say he is, "stop all demonstrations against me; I guarantee you we will take care of everything; and, you my dear friend and little brother will not return to jail," was the message from tyrant Aristide, who hours after the successful jailbreak and the first unanticipated violent demonstration against him, when participants repeatedly shouted "Down with Aristide! Aristide is a criminal! Aristide is a drug dealer! and said they wanted the "thief out now," suffered a mild breakdown, hand delivered to about ten heavily armed representatives - nearly enough to start a small army - of Métayer by an Aristide's bagman seconds before they entered possession of the precious cash sent by cruel and rapacious Aristide.

                                                            
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Children chant "Down with Aristide" during a demonstration in the Raboteau neighborhood of Gonaïves, 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, Aug. 8th, 2002. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
                                                         
Serving, however, in the capacity of a bagman between two notorious terrorist groups, Métayer and Aristide', can be a dangerous job. The bagman eventually had guns pointed to his head while the narco-money (most of it large bills), which was in several large brown paper bags before it was put on a dirty white blanket on the floor of an undisclosed rundown safe house in the Gonaïves' section of Raboteau, or squatter slums, was been counted.  

Needless to say tyrant Aristide's days were numbered after Métayer told journalists "I have put an end to my violent demonstrations and, effective now.
             
Métayer's game of chess

Imagine a game of chess after the board has been overturned, and no one is sure where to put the pieces. Thus lucid Haitian politicians and many academics, as well as foreign, both in Haiti and abroad, took pains to describe the regrettable events of last week in Gonaïves.

                            
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Amiot "Cubain" Métayer, left, and Jean "Jean Tatoune" Pierre, both escapees, leading an anti-brutal dictator Jean-Bertrand Aristide's violent demonstration in Gonaïves, Friday, Aug, 2nd, 2002. (Photo AP/Daniel Morel)
                                         

But to most average Haitian citizens, both in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora communities, by apparently turning, and violently so, against his "fascist thug" boss, Aristide, a man who delivers speeches with considerable theatrical power,  Métayer had achieved a near-miracle.

"I'm betting on Métayer's ability and his willingness to topple Aristide," said one of the average Haitians who, like virtually thousands of people like her, in Haiti and abroad, lost about $40,000 in a $200 million-plus pyramid scheme that was used to launder drug money in Haiti recently. He was commenting, too, on the U.S.$800 million, which a de facto government spokesperson said Aristide earned through books' royalties, after many respectable news media outlets, based in the trash-filled capital Port-au-Prince, said Aristide, according to confidential sources, to be worth.

The disappointed Haitian's additional problems with dictator Aristide are "he has failed to change our lamentable quality of life for the better while he himself and his American wife, Mildred Trouillot-Aristide" (Mrs. Trouillot-Aristide, a light-skinned American educated Attorney with hazel eyes born into the thicket of Haitian lower upper class expectations, until twelve years ago or so was as socially distant from darked-skinned and hideous Aristide, who is of  peasant backgrounds, as United States' Senator Edward Moore Kennedy is from the man of the ghetto. Many Haitians often consider Aristide's marital contract with Mrs. Trouillot-Aristide a treason of his class and Mrs. Trouillot-Aristide' a prostitution of her class), have millions of dollars to purchase expensive suits and distinguished homes and estates, both in Haiti and in foreign countries, for themselves and cronies."

Beside she "used to help finance Aristide's so-called liberation movement, in the late 1980s," she said, and gave the impression that he would shoot the ingrate man if he were somewhere to be found. Translation: The silver bullet that penetrates genocidal monster Aristide's body, it appears, would cure all Haiti's ills.  

These were the unpleasant words, if they may be called so, uttered a friend of the visibly angry and disappointed Haitian, whose uncle perished in a jail cell after he was kidnapped by Aristide's thugs and aunt had to pay an exorbitant sum of money to the dictator's bagmen, she said, before she could ultimately enter possession of his body on the condition that no public funeral services were held.

"I'm impatient, I can't wait to see the crooked Aristide's administration or, "criminal syndicate," consigned to the archives of history, and Aristide himself and other criminals be put under secured lock and key for their innumerable number of crimes."

What justification can there be for such a great confidence in Métayer, his willingness and capacity, to topple lunatic Aristide or, his de facto government, which today easily can even more and more be compared to a ship that will continue to go through storms until it sinks? To many of the average Haitians, the answer is simple.

The first reason, the conflict between Métayer and Aristide, a man with a prehistoric mentality - no running water, no paved roads, add electricity, for the Haitians - started a few weeks ago, when the dictator had his thug kidnapped, while others of similar and unquestionable reputation, for their innumerable number of odious crimes, who were known to have participated in the killing of innocent citizens in Gonaïves, on December17th, when Aristide staged a coup d'état in an attempt to eviscerate the democratic opposition, known just about everywhere as the Convergence Démocratique, remained free.  

The second reason why for such a great confidence in Métayer's willingness to write the dictator's obituary, even though right before his kidnapping still he was doing the dirty work, including killings, for his boss, in press conferences Métayer called for his apparently former "fascist thug" boss, Aristide, including others, to be taken out of the circulation after he is deposed to face the bar of justice (Haiti's judiciary is rotten and inadequate - one that is always bullied or bribed while bullets in the head from defendants and partners in crime are awaiting underpaid, grossly incompetent and corrupt judges, just in case they fail to comply) for a large number of crimes, including the early morning of April 3rd, 2000 brutal murder of Haiti's best known radio journalist and commentator, Jean Léopold Dominique, that he and supporters alike accused the senior henchman of having committed.  

It might be said, too, that the average Haitians saw the primary reason for the kidnapping of Métayer by tyrant Aristide was to prevent the Organization of American States' (O.A.S.) largely unfavorable human rights report from weakening further his "edifice" of crimes, and that the victim, Métayer, if he may be called so, was right when he said "I have been betrayed by President Aristide." That is especially true that even many politicians and academics who offered me professional opinion of considerable value for this column shared such a contention.       

Still, turbulent times are awaiting tyrant Aristide who does not hesitate to order journalists murdered for suggesting that "Mr. Aristide has a brain disease,"for example  

The extreme conditions of poverty in Haiti, as the photograph, below, may help the reader of this column visualize is  to argue that Gonaïves, including other Haitian cities and towns, still presents a threat to radical leftist Aristide or, indeed to his totalitarian dictatorship as a whole. Discontent is smoldering in Gonaïves, and most likely will continue to flare up in the weeks to come, thanks also to ineffective politics, combined with endemic corruption.

                                       
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A flaming barricade in Gonaïves on Friday, Aug. 2, 2002. (Photo AP/Daniel Morel)
                                             

In fact, many of Métayer's former colleagues have since their unanticipated divorce with him became a public affair felt betrayed, prompting them to want his head and those of his paid remaining loyal supporters. Now, not only have they formed rival gangs, but vow to take to the streets of Gonaïves in the days or weeks to come until they oust dictator Aristide - former Métayer's colleagues have again accused tyrant Aristide of trafficking by proxy in narcotics, causing many Haitians to die of overdoses and many families, which before were considered role models, but now are so dysfunctional to the point that they barely exist - from office.

The reason for toppling tyrant Aristide, who once was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, in Montreal, and for a long time, is not without justification, as many Haitians have put it, in addition to those - victims and their accompanied painful testimonies - first listed and reported, respectively, above.

According to the United Nations (U.N.) report - 2002, or UNAIDS 2002 - report, more than 500,000 Haitians, out of an estimated population of 8.2 million are HIV positive, while very little effort is been made, at least, to educate those not yet infected with the deadly virus, reducing the unacceptable high rates of tuberculosis cases and vaccinate children to prevent a recurrence of the outbreak of  the paralyzing disease, polio, which recently resulted among eight children and later killed two of them.

                                                      
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Top, one of tyrant Jean-Bertrand Aristide's major achievements, an unthinkable hospital room. Right, children continue to endure abject poverty. (AP Photo/Daniel Morel)
     
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    Photo Radio Nederland
                                                                              

"We have examined the patients. We know well what they have. Our concern we did not have the right equipment," said doctor Neal Moosey, a member of the surgical mission team from Indiana (U.S.A.) that visited the Haitian island of La Gonâve, about 20 miles from the capital Port-au-Prince --- annually for 12 years, reported WRTVIndyChannel.com in a May 21st news article.

Complaints of a lot of starving children, which can cause severe learning problems, among many others, all over the country have become part of Haitian daily lexicon.

About 4,000 Haitian children are smuggled into the contiguous Dominican Republic each year to work as manual laborers or beggars, said an August 10th UNICEFF (unicef ) and International Organization for Migration or, IOM (iom.int), joint published report.

It is not difficult at all for Haitians to find similar reasons to further substantiate their shared contention that the dictator's "time is up." Aristide's sponsored "grand thievery" has become the norm and honesty and morality the exception.

"I sold my house because the president," a reference to tyrant Aristide, "encouraged us to do so," said Serge Decimé, a bus driver in the touristry coastal city of Jacmel said he had invested $6,500 in a co-operative that failed or, became insolvent, just a few weeks after promising investors astonishing monthly returns of 15 percent or more - only in the dirt poor nation of Haiti. "Now, we live, but only a bit. We cannot afford to live anymore," reported David Gonzalez of the New York Times in a July 20th news article.  

The corruption has long become so endemic that dictator Aristide considers the public treasury as his "piggy bank." A few facts that may attest to this contention are: For the past six years or so, government agencies, in addition to the national government, if the latter must be called so at all, given its de facto and criminal nature, have gone without budgets, plans or projects to provide basic services, water, health care and public education - as Abraham Maslow would have categorized them to help give a meaning to human life. 

Democracy has yet to arrive ... It's stuck in the mud or sand, like a car would

Most of the problems analyzed above and below suggest, democracy - that messy dogma "de la alternabilidad" (literally, alternate ability), as the late little and Dominican Republic - Black-African and Spanish, sharing the island of Hispaniola to the east - notorious racist medical doctor, President-for-life, author of many books (poems, novels, nonfiction) and poet, Joaquin Balaguer Ricardo (Balaguer's poetry, like him, was formal and old-fashioned. Orden y paz, or order and peace, were his watchwords), once called it - lacks poetic grandeur and simplicity - has yet to arrive in Haiti, despite of more than $3 billion spent by the United States (U.S.), most of that large sum of money, in the first half of the1990s, to help pay for the accounting and economic costs of Haiti (hopefully) entering the pantheon of democratic nations - and, permanently so. 

Brignol Lindor, was a radio journalist in the provincial city of Petit-Goâve, about 35 miles from the capital Port-au-Prince. Aristide and Petit-Goâve's Deputy Mayor, Bony Dumé, assumed he harbored anti-tyrant Aristide's sentiments and had to physically be eliminated. He was hacked to death in broad daylight by members of a subsidized government gang called "Domi Nan Bwa" or, "Sleeping in the Woods," on  December 3rd, in the nearby district of L'Acul.  

As Lindor's relatives were still morning his death, most of them, including his brothers, sisters, father and mother, were forced to emigrate to France after they themselves received repeated death threats.

                                               
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Brignol Lindor, a radio jounalist ordered hacked to death by totalitarian dictator Aristide on December 3rd, 2001. (Photo/HNP)
   
                     

Lindor's tragic death came nearly two years after Jean Léopold Dominique's, a  renowned Haitian radio journalist, commentator and assumed presidential candidate,  who was gunned down in the early morning of April 3rd, 2000, in the courtyard of his radio Haiti-Inter station, and nearly six years after prominent Haitian attorney, Mireille Durocher-Bertin, who vowed to have tyrant Aristide stand trial for odious crimes committed against the Haitian people, was assassinated in broad daylight on a Port-au-Prince street (Ruelle Chrétien) on March 28th, 1995 - ironically, just three days before former United States' President, William "Bill" Jefferson Clinton, traveled there to drink champagne and celebrate with Aristide "the triumph of democracy over tyranny," as he put after arriving at destination..  

Many other Haitian freedom fighters, including the Reverend Antoine Leroy, and he, too, after he was forced to kneel down in broad daylight on a Port-au-Prince street, have also been murdered by brutal dictator Aristide. But, I would experience a great many difficulties listing them all since the number of victims surpasses 1,000 - sure an exorbitant number that would hardly help a man as brutal as Fidel Castro defines the true meaning of "atrocity" when comparing the duration of their illegal tenures in office. 

                                                   
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The HPN, long one of the most notorious "gangster haven" in the Western Hemisphere, was featured in a June14th Wall Street Journal's column (The Wall Street Journal's column). Mario Andrésol, a former central director of the supposedly law enforcement body judiciary told the Journal's Mary Anastacia O'Grady of drugs and murder plots among his former colleagues.

Israel Jacky Cantave, 28, a radio journalist known for his investigations of criminal gangs working for dictator Aristide always faces serious danger of death. He was found tied up, stripped to his underwear and thrown in a mudhole after he was kidnapped on July15th - two days after he finished his newscast at the Port-au-Prince Radio Caraïbes station.

And on August 7th, many residents of the town of L'Estère, south of Gonaïves, suffered lifetreatening injuries after they were arrested and then tortured by about two dozen members of the national police that arrived from Port-au-Prince by helicopter in the predawn hours for simply saying they "grew tired of broken promises by the government to address their needs," while participating in a peaceful protest.  

"The protesters, most of them beaten within an inch of their lives, are right. In this town, we have no water, no communication, no hospital," said a passerby who refused to identify himself for fear of retribution by dictator Aristide's thugs.   

Alarmed by tyrant Aristide's gross human rights violations, human rights groups, including trade unions, from the world over had been forced to call on the tyrant to conform his behavior.  

The Polish independent and self-governing trade union, Solidarunosc, which represents over 1 million workers in Poland, recently (July 24th) wrote a letter to Aristide, of which copies were distributed to news media and human rights groups the world over, protesting the mistreatment of six trade unionists at the Port-au-Prince national penitentiary after they were illegally arrested in the town of Saint-Raphael on May 27th.
Recent events in Haiti once again suggest foreign aid money to that nation will be wasted

Weeks before and during the violent protests in Gonaïves (OASpage/Haiti_situation) tyrant Aristide's bandits set on fire, following threats to have government buildings consumed by flames, the city of 200,000 inhabitants' customs house, detritus trucks and many government offices, including the courthouse. Once again, all of these Osama bin Laden like terrorist acts offer a lot in the way of explanation: The industrialized nations, including the United States, should refrain themselves from using their citizens' hard earned taxpayers' moneys to pay for the accounting or economic cost of baby-sitting chief bandit Aristide, whose sole goal is burning to the ground every single building in the poorest Caribbean nation (per capita income less than U.S.$400), as the events of December 17th, when he staged a coup d'état, thereafter prompting his bandits, including Métayer, to have the remains of many citizens after they were hacked to death and doused with gasoline consumed by flames, too, suggest.                                            

                        

 
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Gonaives' courthouse, one of the government buildings burned. (Photo The Hartford Currant/Enrique Valentin)
                                                                

So, too, did they burn to the ground the offices and houses, including a French-owned library, of democratic opposition leaders.    

"Aristide sent messengers at midnight December16th to order us to defend him against the coup d'état," Siméon, a 54-year-old carpenter said. "We were told to crush the opposition," reported the Associated Press in an August.6th news article.  

More, foreign aid money to the troubled Caribbean nation will certainly be stolen, too. In turn, part of the stolen aid will be used to help pay for the accounting or economic cost of devastating (killing, burning, importing more narcotics from the South American nation of Colombia and others to be resold at a retail price) further Haiti, which according to a recent United nations' published report, is the third hungriest nation in the world, after Afghanistan and Somalia (why subsidize the rampant corruption and gross incompetence of Third World nations' totalitarian dictators by giving them more foreign aid?). Overall, aid money will be wasted.

Transforming a dream into reality

Given Haiti's plight, one can think of worse. Still, don't rule out a better Haiti, not yet this week anyway. Let's hope that over the next few months, instead, before the next spell of deadly hunger and diseases arrive, the present conditions of anarchy and dehumanizing poverty, to name only these ones, since it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to name all of the unfortunate Caribbean nation's alarming problems that the little 'red' man and former priest of the shantytowns, Aristide, who since the regrettable events of last week seems afraid to sneak his head out, has long forced Haitians to subject themselves to and endure, respectively, help decide the fortunes of his de facto government or, "criminal syndicate."

Dr. Moffitt and colleagues' prospective Haitian subjects

In the meantime, Dr. Terrie Moffitt, of the Institute of Psychology at King's College, London, and her colleagues who, for a recent study of genetic determinists and social determinists of behavior published in the journal Science entitled: "The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study," picked MAOA, the gene for a protein called monoamine oxidase-A (an enzyme that breaks down members of an important group of neurotransmitters, the molecules that carry signals between nerve cells), deserve to be known to Haitians - and not because they may be favorites of  Haiti's totalitarian dictator Aristide and his students of violent crimes (Famously, Aristide teaches that knowledge of murdering even assumed political opponents is not a collection of propositions to be passed on from teacher to pupil, but a manner of being, a way of life - a phrase that even his least notorious bandits use with approbation.), who do the dirty work, including killings, for him. They should consider strongman and the equally anti-United States Aristide, including his partners in violent crimes, as their next subjects of study.   

Dr. Moffitt and his colleagues would, hypothetically, find that there is abundant evidence Aristide and partners in violent crimes have a reduced level of monoamine oxidase-A, which results in violent behavior. That would make sense in evolutionary terms, since they all came to power through violent acts and continue to employ violence to keep the majority of so poor a people like the Haitians hostage, while happily watching them divided by fanaticism and run the tyranny - and, not too adroitly so.

Yves A. Isidor, an economics faculty member at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, is spokesperson for "We Haitians United We Stand For Democracy," a Cambridge, MA-nonpartisan political pressure group and, executive editor of Wehaitians.com, an online scholarly journal of democracy and human rights.  

This column was also supplemented by information from The Economist. 

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