| Want to send this page or a link to a friend? Click on mail at the top of this window. |
| October 11, 2002 |
| The 2002 Nobel Peace Price awarded to former United States President |
| "Jimmy" Carter, an oustanding triumph for human rights and democracy |
| History, said Voltaire, a French philosopher and writer, whose writings epitomized the
Age of Enlightenment, often attacking injustice and intolerance, is a Atableau of crimes.@
Well, not exactly, is the correct reply from former United States President, James AJimmy@
Carter, and even totalitarian dictators can, too, conform their behaviors after they are
urged to confront their murderous rules, eliminating limits, barriers to the energy of
those who want to replace dictatorship with democracy and human rights. For decades he has traveled the unequal world, including troubled Haiti, where he averted a bloody crisis by persuading a military junta led by General Raul Cédras to consign its bloody tenure to the archives of history, in 1994, in an effort to promote democratic and human rights values. It is because of Mr. Carter=s unparalleled efforts for the cause of democracy and human rights, not for joining the lecture circuit and corporate boards to earn millions of dollars annually since he departed the office of the presidency more than two decades ago, like others before and after him have done, that the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded him the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize - an outstanding triumph for human rights and democracy and a demolition of the idea of dictatorship. May our expressions of congratulations be the following very few exceptional words: @Jimmy Carter, a man of great integrity, one of the very few persons ever rightly chosen for the Nobel Peace Prize.@ So, too, the Norwegian Nobel Committee oughts to be congratulated for its savvy decision. It reminds dictators, including Haiti=s chief bandit Jean-Bertrand Aristide who have repeatedly committed human rights crimes of extreme severity, of the importance of democracy, that maintaining faith in dictatorship, or their willful acts (i.e., torture, summary executions), should no longer be an easy task. Photos |
| Yves A. Isidor |
| September 11,2002 |
| September 11th, 2001, a day of remembrance and determination |
| September11th, 2001, a memory of four plane-loads of people hijacked to their deaths.
A memory of thousands of innocent people, of all nationalities, the vast majority of them
Americans (including those who thereafter attempted to come to the rescue of the first
victims presumed to be still alive and hopefully find the remains of all the victims who
were assumed to have perished), slaughtered when four planes, two of them hit the World
Trade Center twin towers, another one part of the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed in an
opened field in ShankVille, Pennsylvania. Sadly, all in an effort to eviscerate the
freedom or democracy that has long defined the United States and the rest of the civilized
world. The Americans and their foreign friends remember ... The terrorists, the enemies of progress, the enemies of liberty, will all be defeated and consigned to the archives of history. Never again will the unscrupulous, murderous people commit such odious crimes, particularly in the U.S., prompting them to harbor hope they will achieve their ultimate objective, that is returning the civilized world to the epoch of the stone age. |
| Yves A. Isidor |
| July 7, 2002 |
| Wealthy nations are not spared as AIDS continues to ravage |
| the Third World |
| The number of countries in the world surpasses 200. However, only 24, according to the World Bank, classify as being "high income economies," or having a per capita GDP of U.S.$12,000 or more. In other words, members of the exclusive club of nations. |
| In the not-affluent nations, especially those with a per capita GDP of less than U.S.$750, the core of the Third World, a great many of the impoverished countries are ravaged by years of dictatorship, gross government incompetence, genocide and conflict. |
| Worse of all, AIDS is undermining sustainable economic growth, suggesting that citizens, including orphans, in the 45 most affected nations, such as the African nation of Botswana, where nearly 39 percent of adult are HIV-infected, a rise of 3 percent since 2000, according to the United nations (UN), are most likely to endure even more abject poverty over the next 20 years or so as more than 68 million of their fellow compatriots and others succumb to the deadly epidemic in human history. |
| Having very little food or none at all to consume, many H.I.V.-infected citizens may attempt to illegally enter the wealthy nations to, hopefully, obtain employment and ultimately consign to the archives of history the circumstances, or extreme conditions of poverty, into which they were born. |
| Certainly, such a human catastrophe and this, without precedents, can be prevented - even in part. More money, in addition to the U.S.$3billion that will be available by wealthy nations this year, will be needed to help pay for the economic cost of relevant lifesaving H.I.V. drugs, for example. |
| Yves A. Isidor |
| Wehaitians.com, the scholarly journal of democracy and human rights |
| More from wehaitians.com |