Waiting in totalitarian dictator Aristide's hell, more Haitians are likely to risk their lives in perilous waters to come to paradise

Cambridge, MA - There were painful scenes to watch in Florida early this week. Police chasing a large number of the 220 Haitians who severely disrupted traffic as they attempted to flee authorities, in a desperate effort to avoid capture, after jumping ship into Miami harbor. This, in fact, was after a long and perilous voyage from Haiti.

There are reasons, and more than one can enumerate, for Haitians, in large numbers, to attempt to illegally enter the United States. An innumerable number of the dirt-poor Caribbean nation's citizens - brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, cousins, husbands, and wives - who have been at the forefront of the democratic cause, add those suspecting of supporting it at a distance, have been tortured and brutally murdered by proxy by an uncommonly bestial Haitian dictator, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. That is pretty much their fate after they are kidnapped - not arrested, based on its legal definition, as some often claim.

In the photograph, right, above, is the private residence of the late prominent radio journalist and commentator Jean Léopold Dominique and his surviving wife Michelle Montas in the Pétionville suburb of Port-au-Prince. On Dec. 25, 2002, about 5:30 p.m., two heavily armed bandits known to be members of chief bandit Jean-Bertrand Aristide's so-called Lavalas political party opened fire on Montas' residence, killing one of her bodyguards before they were forced to flee the premises by other security agents.

Prominent radio journalist and commentator, Jean Léopold Dominique, for example, was killed in the early morning of April 3, 2000 after more than ten fatal shots were pumped into his small body in the courtyard of his Radio Haiti-Inter station, in the capital city of Port-au-Prince.

Yet, on December 3, 2001, Brignol Lindor, another radio journalist, was hacked to death in broad daylight in the l'Acul District, near the western provincial city of Petit-Goäve, and less than 35 miles from Port-au-Prince.

The perpetrators, including brutal dictator Aristide=s Deputy mayor, Bony Dumé, who days earlier held a menacingly press conference, of the odious crimes have yet to be taken out of the circulation, though they all thereafter granted long interviews to journalists, promising that their caravans of death, personally financed by a vicious thug like Aristide, they accentuated, were far from finishing exterminating those who were against Lavalas (Flood), Aristide=s party. Sure it is an indication that Lavalas, the party of cynics, has no ideology besides the desire of its members for brutal killings.

But what the Haitians - from intellectuals to illiterates and, from bourgeois, including marginalized petit bourgeois, to citizens of extremely limited economic means - who dream of a democratic Haiti, rather than a land further destroyed, tens of thousands more brutal deaths and hundreds of thousands more made refugees in the years to come think of the former little red priest of the shantytowns Aristide=s party? AAristide=s party is certainly the party of >Satan=, a repository for hardcore criminals," they opine.

More, many former associates of Aristide, of whom they yield up considerable criminal secrets, too, ask a rhetorical question designed to lead them to answer it themselves. They introduce possibilities, that are assumed to be probabilities and, indeed certitudes. AHad Voltaire lived today to write about Aristide=s party, he would not have a great many difficulties pronouncing it a >Tableau of Crimes,= as he did when he offered a professional opinion of history, which he called a >Tableau of Crimes,=@ they say.

So how about adding a cruel insult to the memory of thousands of his other victims savagely murdered as well and a screw-you affront to those who believe in democracy. Aristide=s notorious junior bandits, or chimères (after the firebreathing monsters in Greek mythology), since he himself has long been said by Haitians to be the chief bandit, threatened to kill too many of Lindor=s relatives, ultimately forcing them into exile in France.

Vendors ( photo #1), who sell products like used clothing and shoes on the downtown of Port-au-Prince contemplate the loss of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise they bought with money borrowed from loan sharks and which burned when chief bandit Jean-Bertrand Aristide ordered his junior bandits to set fire to the headquarters of the Mobilization for National Development (MDN), an opposition political party and vehement critic of totalitarian dictator Aristide. Uncommonly vicious thug Jean-Bertrand Aristide's bandits (photo #2) are thinking hard how to best attack democratic opposition supporters; notorious terrorist in light green shirt is Paul Raymond, nicknamed Mr. 1,001, suggesting that he has brutally killed 1,001 Haitians for his Pol Pot-like supreme leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Bestial dictator Jean-Bertrand Aristide's notorious criminals (photo #3) set flaming barricades in front of the National Cathedral in Port-au-Prince. A bus ( photo #4) belonging to members of the democratic opposition, commonly known as the Convergence Démocratique, is torched by radical leftist Aristide's thugs. Often, paid de facto and narco-government criminals burn alive citizens opposed to tyrant Aristide and subject their homes and businesses to be consumed by flames. (AP Photos/Daniel Morel)

Often, most of tyrant Aristide victims= bodies are consumed by flames - their political party offices, homes and buildings housing their business enterprises are set ablaze - after the victims are hacked to death, to deter others who might otherwise have been inclined to promote democracy, which the United States vainly spent more than $2 billion for, when and still long after it returned Aristide to Haiti, in 1994 - sure a regrettable mistake.

Consider the victims= surviving relatives and others, for instance. Many of them, or more than 10,000 Haitian families, recently lost their life savings (a combined sum of money that surpasses U.S.$220 million) in a cooperative pyramid scheme and others of sorts.

A substantial number of the defrauded Haitians, their supporters (i.e., Rosemond Jean) as well, have since been subject to illegal detention and torture to the point that some are paralyzed for life for simply uttering these very few words: AWe want our money back; Aristide, we are not going to let you get away with >grand thievery= this time.@

It should be easy for the readers of this column to develop a more picture of bestial Aristide, who once called himself the "savior" of the Haitian people, but only to become their butcher. Reflecting on his formal training as a Roman Catholic priest, who was ultimately defrocked, may, too, offer a rich explanation for his totalitarian behavior - that he is a top-echelon student of Pope Alexander VI (1421-1481).

According to Catholic Encyclopedia, Pope Alexander took the Roman historian Bartolomco Platina, a friend of Marsilio Ficino - a celibate philosopher, philologist, translator of Plato and physician, who eventually became a priest. Ficino became an ardent admirer of Plato and a propagator of Platonism, or rather neo-Platonism, to an unwarranted degree, going as far as to maintain that Plato should be read in the churches, and claiming Socrates and Plato as fore-runners of Christ - out of the circulation and then tortured him for daring to include the word "pleasure" in the title of his cookbook.

Joseph, 57, who declined to reveal his family name, perhaps for fear of retribution, which is not limited to torture, is now one of Haiti's poorer men; he is paralyzed; and, he lost more than U.S.$70, a large sum of money for Haitians since most of them have no jobs at all - At the other extreme, two years ago Aristide promised unprecedented economic growth, that he will add 500,000 new jobs to the never-healthy Haitian economy over the course of his five-years largely questionable tenure.

Joseph has been detained and tortured for participating in a protest over the lost of his hard earned money, also for knowing how to read the contents of protest signs. "My hope of improving the quality of life of my family of eight has been dashed," he recently anxiously murmured to an old friend who visited him at the Port-au-Prince's penitentiary - a place so horrible, given the extremely inhuman conditions there, that citizens kidnapped are most of the time left for dead.

"My family," he added, "will continue to inhabit a hut, which would barely pass muster with Western animal-rights campaigners."

In this asymmetrical democracy-totalitarian dictatorship struggle, animals, too, figure among firebrand Aristide's victims. So what exactly happened to a parrot not long ago in a Haiti's small town has all the elements of farce and criminality. Aristide's thugs fatally shot a parrot to death after he was detained for uttering the words: "Aristide makes life squalid for his people; listening to Aristide talking about the virtues of democracy, especially after taking the drug lithium for mental depression, is akin to listening to Stalin talking about human rights; Die, thief Aristide! Die!, criminal Aristide!"

"Grand thievery," which also involves the pillage of the Haitian public treasury by bloodthirsty and barbarian Aristide, who stands anti-United States, has so permeated the fabric of his de facto government that it has become self-perpetuating.

Photo, left, above - The uncommonly vicious thug Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose material conditions have changed to an almost Bill Gates degree, with upper class de souche ( by birth) wife Mildred Trouillot-Aristide, after having traveling a 1,000-mile journey from a mud hut in the wretched village of Beaulieu, in the south of Haiti, where he could only watch neighbors herd cows since his family could not dream of owning even a skinny one, to neo-bourgeois, at the inauguration of a public park, not homes for the Haitians he has defrauded, near his grand home or mansion built with stolen state funds and narco-money. (AP Photo/Daniel Morel)

Photo, right, above - "Our material conditions have gone from bad to worse under this guy named Aristide. We don't have to tell God how discouraged we are. He already knows. In our sprawling slum - where muddy walkways and crowded shacks create a labyrinth of poverty - that is home to a teeming population of 500,000 people or more, if we can call them so since they have long been reduced to primitive animals, small children and adults can be seen clambering amid mountains of refuse at garbage dumps looking vainly for scraps of food." The children and their mother (not in photo, above), Isalie Barolet, 35, said. (AP Photo/Daniel Morel)

In reality, Aristide=s illegitimate government has no vertical hierarchy, but rather a network of violent gangs, terrorists and thieves fighting for control of the lucrative drug market - 15 percent of drugs that enter the United States transit via Haiti, where even acts of charity or book readings are construed as conspiracy against the state, from Central America, reports the U.S. government - and other shady businesses.

One of the many notorious terrorists is Joseph Philipe Antonio, though of junior rank. For nearly two years, he has been attempting to polish up and present himself as a de facto minister of foreign affairs, at least, believing that the date of January 23, 1973 will not be forever burned into Haitian history and U.S. government archives. Sorry, terrorist Antonio ... it will always be remembered as the date that you and a few other Haitians kidnapped the American Ambassador, Clinton Everett Knox, in Haiti.

Accurately, all of chief bandit Aristide=s barbaric acts or evils, complete with prescriptions for exterminating the majority of the Haitians - close to four and half a million people, out of an estimated population of 8.2 million citizens - so he may remain in office for life after he declares himself king of kings (including 34-year-old Swaziland King Mswaiti III, who recently ordered two of his emissaries to whisk off from school a pretty 18-year-old student, Zena Mahlangu, just as class prepared for exams, to become his tenth wife) and, illegally so, since he was elected in a Saddam Hussein=s type (pre-cooked) presidential election, suggest civilization is being disrupted in this corner of the Caribbean.

Most Haitian political analysts believe civilization will be eviscerated in Haiti when king Aristide begins enjoying the most a few of his kingly new entitlements - like taking eleven wives, one more than Mswaiti III ... he hits the jackpot.

Many prominent Haitian historians, with vast connaissance (knowledge) in French history, however, explain the anticipated shameful situation with an analogy. "King Aristide, as did many French kings, may otherwise resolve to make the new women "Maîtresses en titre" or "Mistresses by title," since he is already officially married to Mildred Trouillot-Aristide, who many critics continue to say, with certitudes, he downloaded on the Internet while in exile in Washington, D.C."

Borrowing a great deal from the book, "Madame de Pompadour," of Christiane Penitt, Grave Press, 2002, the historians cite King Louis XV of France who they say in May 1745 officially made Jeanne-Antoine Poisson (1721-84) - the gray-eyed beauty of scandalously low social rank "Madame de Pompadour," or his official "Mistress," eventually, the de facto prime minister of France, despite being officially married and already having an official prime minister.

To complete the picture, still he continues to exhibit a tendency to use a great many of his destitute fellow compatriots in the form of Aboat people@ to convince, hopefully, the international community, most notably the United States, to restore foreign aid (economic aid recipient, $730.6 million - 1995, according to Central Intelligence Agency 2000), apparently to Haiti, suspended after a series of largely fraudulent elections, in May 2000.

But international aid donors, including the European Union, or E.U. (one of Haiti=s very few major economic engines), already have repeatedly said aloud ANo democracy, no aid.@

What has been ferocious dictator Aristide=s reaction other than the refugee calamity, which he so orchestrated? Has he again attempted to tell the same old big lies, which can easily be compared to the mimicry practised by monkeys? AAs I promised United States= President William Jefferson Clinton in 1994 before my return to Haiti from nearly three years in exile in the U.S., >democracy today, democracy tomorrow, and there will never be democracy in Haiti without me.=@ Certainly not, but rather the without moral scruples and ruthless, dangerous and cynical little man has equated, with a lot of energy, the industrialized nations= refusal, particularly that of the U.S., to again send their taxpayers= monies to a Agrand thief@ that he is to Aeconomic terrorism.@

Given Aristide's crimes, which can easily be compared only to those of Stalin, both in numbers and nature, and prior aid money, which has yet to be accounted for, as the abject poverty that the majority of Haitians continue to endure suggest, the reaction of human rights and democracy advocates to his characterization of the industrialized nations' decision not to come to the assistance of impoverished Haiti by means of hundreds of millions of dollars has been found to be "absurd.

According to Catholic Encyclopedia, the term hell (infernus) in theological usage is a place of punishment after death. However, given the dehumanizing poverty, for example, that kleptocratic, megalomaniac Aristide - in late 2000, he bathed in the blood of a dead man (related column) in an effort to put a curse on then Republican Governor and presidential candidate George W. Bush so he would not become the 43rd president of the United States - has long forced the vast majority of Haitians to endure, while he lives and comports himself like a Caribbean Caesar, the destitute citizens of the tropical nation can anticipate that they will not be admitted to hell a second time in the hereafter.

The Double Jeopardy Clause (according to the American Legal System), if there is one there, will most likely preclude those who long ago committed mortal sins from being confined and undergo some kind of punishment in sympathy for having long inhabited Aristide's hell that is Haiti, and force to endure brutal poverty.

Psychopath Aristide, whose errors of absolutism for power and narco-money always infect his manner of political thinking (rudimentary), to paraphrase the French historian and sociologist, Raymond Aron (a friend of Jean-Paul Sartre), who in 1955 began a book, "The Opium of the Intellectuals," with an epigraph from Karl Marx: "Religion is the sigh of the creature overwhelmed by misfortune; the sentiment of a heartless world; the soul of soulless conditions; and, the opium of the people," it is most likely weird, corrupt and dangerous Aristide - he often choreographs assassination attempts against himself and stages coups d'état against his de facto government to justify burning alive members of the democratic opposition, add pre-cooked elections to validate his de facto regime and reign of terror - will soon order the name of the month of April to be renamed for his late Tonton Macoute (bogeyman) father, who allegedly was killed in a boat accident days after raping a young neighborhood girl, who before repeatedly turned down his advances and had a few unpleasant words for him. He will simply emulate another kleptocratic, megalomaniac dictator, Saparmurat Niyazov, of Turkmenisten, a former republic of the Soviet Union.

So maniac depressive is Niyazavov, as is Aristide who continues to demand songs of praise from musical groups, last summer he changed some of the names of the days of the week and the months to his first name, last name.

After this week "tragedy," also the flimsy boat intercepted in high seas near the Bahamas thereafter, with a large number of passengers, not inferior to 58, as its sole cargo, might Haitians cease to risk their lives in perilous waters, hoping to enter Florida, in search of political liberty, in search of economic opportunities, that totalitarian dictator Aristide has long told them Adehumanizing poverty is what is good for you@?

The nature of tragedy, according to the book, "Sweet Violence," of Terry Eagleton, published by Blackwell Publishing, 2002, has been argued over and over at least from the time of Aristotle's words on the subject in his fragmentary "Poetics" (late fourth century B.C.).

Thinking about a tragedy this week, you should consider that tragic state - the agonies of the 200 or so Haitians boat people who jumped overboard, waded ashore and rushed onto a major highway, in a desperate effort to avoid capture by authorities.

The possibility, including preventing Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda from easily having terrorist cells in a country as poor as Haiti (per capita purchasing power parity $1,340 and, population below poverty line 80 percent - Central Intelligence Agency 2000 1999 est.), less than two hours from the United States by plane, can be dismissed as long as Haiti remains a criminal >syndicate,= a >narco-state,= with the grossly incompetent and rapacious Aristide at its control.

The solution or a worked-out alternative to the present totalitarian dictatorship order: The United States must act now before Al-Qeada eclipses rapacious Aristide's reign of terror or has an exclusive sphere of control over Haiti in exchange for a few millions of dollars

To paraphrase historian George Santayana, those who cannot remember the past - most notably the odious terrorist acts of September 11, 2001 ever in the annals of the United States' history - are condemned to allow it to repeat itself, and regrettably, at a great cost so.

To also paraphrase the historian version of Freud's theory of "the return of the repressed" - the more we try to forget unpleasant memories, the more persistently they (including the 20,000 or so Haitians who landed in Florida in the early 1990s, after risking their lives in shack-infested waters) will resurface.

President George W. Bush, stop king of terror Aristide, the progeny of voodoo practitioner and extremely poor peasant parents, who at an early age fell into the cant of violence discourse about burning alive those born into the ticket of upper upper class expectations and neo-bourgeois, from using so-called Haitian refugees as political tools to embarrass you and your brother, Jeb Bush.

President Bush, what then should you know about Aristide and do? In truth, the man who was born in a mud hut in Beaulieu, a wretched village in the south of Haiti, is a primitive and terrorist in an expensive (U.S. $7,500) Italian three-piece suit. You will always be right to continue to vehemently refuse to use the taxpayers' monies to subsidize rampant corruption and drug trafficking in Haiti, which tyrant Aristide has long transformed into hell.

Prevent terrorism in United States' own backyard, Haiti. Render it impossible in the bandit semi-state that proven monstrous Aristide - a man long guided to demagogy or risibility, a man infamous for his deceit - has for more than a decade turned Haiti into. All, today, not tomorrow, I insist, before it is too late. If not, lawlessness will go upward. Chaos will continue to prevail. Civil strife will be horrible beyond imagination - even beyond that of the former notorious Ugandan butcher, Idi Amin Dada, for example. This will be democracy's lost, especially in the Americas, suggesting that the future will not turn out too well for innocent citizens, including the writer of this column.

Hence ferocious dictator Aristide and his corrupt de facto government are consigned to the archives of history, terrorism, to begin with, will be prevented in Haiti.

With encouraging signs of peace and political stability, all around the Caribbean nation, Haitians can hope to start enjoying a better quality of life, as the U.S. and other members of the international community provide the new, competent and honest administration, and yes, democratic government, with the financial package and technical assistance needed to jump-start the moribund economy.

The anticipated results, however, do not end here. Even better is the fact that business investment, both domestic and international, will follow.

Adam Smith came to prominence with his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), but nearly 20 years on (1776), in his great work of political economy, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, with a skill that justified his reputation as a master rhetorician, he argued: "What is true for individuals is equally true for nations."

Optimists may point out, for example, the growth in output in the longer term in Haiti. The country's long cyclical deficit, attributable in part to cyclical disturbances (unemployment and inflation), as tyrant Aristide burns buildings accommodating businesses to the ground and others cease operations all together and flee the country for the neighboring Dominican Republic, will be reduced, thanks to automatic stabilizers that kicks in as GDP growth accelerates and the unemployment rate, currently estimated at 85 percent, falls. The surge in the economy will affect the budget by increasing tax revenues, reducing public spending - un pas de géant pour un pays comme Haiti (a big step forward for a country like Haiti).

It will most likely be comforting to know that Haiti's foreign debt will be serviced, and in a timely fashion, becoming credit worthy at the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.), for example.

The Gourde, Haiti's currency, which just over the past two months has fallen by more than 40 percent against the U.S. dollars, will most likely climb as demand for imports falls because of a rise in production for domestic consumption, and exports increase, as capital flight ceases to be the norm.

The connection between the anticipated valuation of the Gourde and capital infloats will most likely matter too. This mystery will lie on the supply side of the economy as foreign exchange reserves go upward, further reducing the country's reliance on foreign aid money for hard currency.

What is more? Part of the jump in the value of the Gourde will most likely reflect a shift in consumers' spending. In other words, consumers' buying power will end up going upward, saving or more of their unspent Gourdes for future purchases or investment, or both.

There are many other relevant issues of concern left unaddressed. Sure I cannot address them all in one column. However, like Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome, from A.D. 161 to 180, who was renowned for his justice and humanity, still was reduced to slavery by his evil son, Commodus, but only to stoically fight his way back to honor and freeing Rome from tyranny in the process, so will the Haitian freedom fighters most likely liberate Haiti from king of terror Aristide - a man with vampire fangs, a Maoist who once wrote a song called "Capitalism is a mortal sin. The International Monetary Fund is a repository for criminals devoided of morality. The White House is a devilish place." Shortly thereafter, he acted his words out. That, in fact, was when he was the self-declared lead singer and struggled to play the guitar, still called himself one of the best guitarists on earth, in a musical band he formed with church money.

A reborn nation will Haiti most likely be, a dignity long lost that will most likely be regained, since it is anticipated that Haitians will cease to embark on flimsy boats, with Florida, perceived to be paradise since the grossly incompetent and corrupt Aristide has long transformed Haiti into hell, as their final destination, while the partial economic insights that I have developed, in addition to the ones with an emphasis on politics, provided they are implemented, work their magic with the requisite political will - not limited to democracy and the rule of law. What will be better than a free nation and its proud people as they profess great contentment of 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-based nonpartisan political pressure group and, executive editor of wehaitians.com.

Correspond with professor Yves A. Isidor by means of electronic mail: wehaitians@gis.net

*Note: This column has been recognized by editors of seven newspapers and magazines and gutted their publications to accommodate it.