28577: R.V. (comment) Jeb Spragues anti-worker arguments up in smoke? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: revolisyonè vre <revolisyone@hotmail.com>

It's hard to know where to begin to take issue with eternal graduate student 
Jeb Sprague's fabrications in his latest article, "Failed Solidarity: The 
ICFTU, AFL-CIO, ILO, and ORIT in Haiti." But let's tackle a few, shall we? 
Attacking real solidarity organizations such as the Confederation of Free Trade 
Unions (ICFTU), which support workers as opposed to politicians, Sprague weaves 
a highly imaginative tapestry of omissions, misinformation and outright lies.

When Jeb Sprague writes that in early 2004, that "Telecommunications D’Haiti 
(TELECO), the 90% government owned public telephone company, had announced 
plans to lay off 2,000 workers, half of its workforce," he seeks to hide the 
fact that the company was little more than an elaborate and notoriously corrupt 
patronage ATM for Aristide's partisans, and ignores that Aristide has been 
accused of illegally pumping at least $21 million of his country's meager 
public funds into private firms that existed only on paper, schemes which often 
centered around Teleco itself.

For more details on the looting of Teleco, those concerned with Haiti should 
see "Aristide diverted millions" by Jacqueline Charles in The Miami Herald 
(http://www.haitipolicy.org/content/3173.htm) and"Haiti Telecom Kickbacks 
Tarnish Aristide" by Lucy Komisar on CorpWatch 
(http://www.corpwatch.org/print_article.php?id=12990).

Sprague's assertion that "The Group of 184 (was) a Haitian organization of 
NGOs, business elites, and foreign financed human rights groups," is also 
interesting as he fails to come up with a single human rights group that was a 
member of the Group of 184.

When Jeb Sprague writes that the attacks on peasant workers in Guacimal were 
"murders carried out by employees of a local landowner" he deliberately leaves 
out the fact that the mob that attacked the workers was led by local Fanmi 
Lavalas party officials, including Saint Raphael Mayor Adonija Sévére, brother 
of Sernand Sévére, who had been mayor machine-gunned to death four months 
earlier. Sprague also omits the fact that the next day, the prisoners were 
airlifted to Port-au-Prince in Aristide's private helicopter and imprisoned in 
the National Penitentiary, with the two women prisoners sent to the women's 
prison at Fort National. Sévére, the Lavalas mayor, had close links with the 
wealthy landowner Jacques Novella, who operated the Guacimal plantation, and 
denounced the protesters as "terrorists."  One can see the fingerprints of the 
Aristide government's involvement the attack in Haiti Progres' own reporting 
from the time (which Sprague links to but apparently didn't bother to read) in 
articles such as "Haitian Government Supports Big Landowners in Clash with 
Peasants" (http://www.haitiprogres.com/2002/sm020605/eng06-05.html) and "The 
Guacimal Affair: Journalists Released but Nine Others Languish, Uncharged, in 
Jail" (http://www.haitiprogres.com/2002/sm020612/eng06-12.html). The 
condemnation of the Aristide government for its actions by the Brussels-based 
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) (posted on the Corbett 
list at http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti-archive/msg12156.html ) is also 
a matter of record, probably one of the reasons Sprague attacks them at the 
outset of his piece.

Jeb Sprague also refers to Dominique Esser as “a New York based human rights 
advocate,” interesting as in fact Dominique Esser has never been the member of 
a human rights organization in his life.

How lazy is Sprague to link to articles that undermine his own thesis? Oh well, 
maybe this failed rock musician’s herbal indulgences made him a bit lethargic.

More soon.

RV

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