30654: Simidor (FYI/comment): Free Navassa! (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel Simidor

What an unexpected boon for Haiti: an opinion piece
upholding Haiti?s claim to La Navase (Navassa Island),
penned by the Librarian at Brown University (and not
some two-bit lobbyist) and published on the New York
Times editorial page (albeit on a Saturday)!

In 1948 the Estimé government timidly tried to
ascertain Haiti?s sovereignty over the island with
help from Raymond Pace Alexander, the black
Philadelphian lawyer who wrote a detailed report on
the subject. A decade later Papa Doc offered the
island to the US as a missile base, but the attitude
in the Eisenhower administration was (as it is
undoubtedly today) why should we give you money for
something we already own?

There is some concern that Haitian sovereignty could
very well mean the destruction of the island?s fragile
ecology (vandals cutting down the trees for charcoal).
 Would a wildlife refuge or a NASA station to monitor
climate change make more sense than a missile base,
especially if Haiti could collect some money on the
lease?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/30/opinion/30widmer.html



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