ITN: Filthy scumbags. posted by Richard Seymour

ITN report on Haiti this evening - the most disgusting, racist episode I've seen on television for some time. It begins by setting the scene, explaining that the country has been in chaos and civil war "for years" - not true, of course. The country has been in civil war since the US, France & Canada despatched trained death squad militias from the Dominican Republic in 2004. It continues, that this has been the case since Aristide "fled" two years ago - he did not, of course. He was kidnapped and bungled out of the country against his will by US marines. Then we hear that "gun toting gangs" have run the place since. No sense of analysis, understanding, not even an attempt to grasp what is happening. No one, especially not a journalist, need detain themselves with such trivialities as the attempt by a new government of sweatshop owners and death squad leaders to wipe out the Lavalas party after a decade of pacific rule, in which the army was disbanded, and in which Aristide - despite considerable pressure from Washington - attempted to increase the minimum wage and improve conditions. It's just "gun toting gangs". And, of course, when a woman explains that she has been shot by UN 'peacekeepers', the tone is repulsively condescending: "this woman insists that she was shot by peacekeepers".

And finally, the worst moment in the whole report, we are told that "The world is at a loss to know what to do about Haiti. Everything from aid to foreign invasion has been tried. The result is anarchy." As if the requirement for aid was not created by colonialism and client-state imperialism, a process stretching right up until 1994. As if the 'aid' was benign. As if the foreign invasion were not part of the problem. As if these dirty brown people were simply beyond help, congenitally predisposed to violence and - who knows - probably rape and drugs and all sorts of evil things. This is frightening. To be amazed at how brutal the present is (as in "in this day and age") is a sure sign of naivete. And yet, I can't help feeling that the most weathered cynic would wilt and fume at such a performance.