28590: R.V. (comment) Response to Spragues bad research (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From revolisyonè vre:

Reading Jeb Sprague’s response to the critique of his article, rarely has 
someone flailed so much with so little effect.

While Jeb Sprague tries to make it appear that issue is taken with the passage 
that states “Telecommunications D’Haiti (TELECO), the 90% government owned 
public telephone company, had announced plans to lay off 2,000 workers, half of 
its workforce,” quite the contrary.  That is accurate, and a reflection on just 
how bloated the TELECO and other state bureaucracies were with no-show 
patronage jobs in a country that badly needs REAL development.

Likewise, in his original “Labor Notes” article regarding the deadly attacks on 
workers in Guacimal – attacks supported and abetted by the Aristide government 
- he writes that the attacks were “murders carried out by employees of a local 
landowner,” and then goes on to state that “an employee of the AFL-CIO’s 
Solidarity Center recently made the unsubstantiated claim that ‘Aristide flew 
over Guacimal in a helicopter, shooting at workers.’

Sprague cites as evidence for this “notes on this conversation with the 
Solidarity Center’s In-Country Haiti Organizer in possession of author 
(December, 2005. San Francisco).”  This presumably means the conversation was 
not recorded and Sprague can pretty much say whatever he wants, which he 
evidently has a history of doing with subjects he interviews. Sprague also 
includes the following link - 
http://www.quixote.org/hr/news/haitireport/7-12-2002.php - which says nothing 
about the Solidarity Center or the helicopter which was there – without 
Aristide in it – to take the workers back to jail in Port-au-Prince for daring 
to challenge the regime. If Sprague disputes this, allow him to inform us how 
the prisoners were transported back to the capital where they were imprisoned.

As stated before, Sprague attempts to intentionally deceive his readers, and 
what he still will not admit to - even though his own footnotes and a multitude 
of other sources attest to it - is that the Aristide government and local Fanmi 
Lavalas mayor Adonija Sévére were 100% on the side of wealthy landowner Jacques 
Novella as he attempted to crush the workers, with Haiti Progres writing at the 
time the following:

“Aristide's government has sanctioned the brutal smashing of a peasant 
demonstration, the lynching of two demonstrators, and the imprisonment without 
charges or medical attention of two journalists and ten demonstrators, most of 
whom were badly beaten by a big landowner's armed goons.”

With an overwhelming amount of evidence on this point there is no way Sprague 
can dispute this fact and thus he falls silent on it. His whole thesis – that 
the Aristide government was a popular, progressive entity as opposed to 
deformed, neo-liberal corrupt mafia clique – falls into shreds.

RV (not Simidor)

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