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Whenever I see civil protest described as "riots," I always remember Seattle, where I personally witnessed a massive (10,000 people), ENTIRELY PEACEFUL and well-organized civil disobedience protest--the most amazing civil disobedience protest I have ever seen--brutally assaulted by the Darth Vader police, for no good reason, and, when a few "radical" brats wearing black bandanas then burned some trash cans and kicked in some store windows, downtown, THAT's what got the coverage on the "news" that night, and THAT'S what went onto front pages of newspapers and magazines all over the country. It was a complete lie and slander!
The little vandals were not supported by the masses of people protesting in Seattle (about 50,000 people, all told, in various marches and public events) and were very few in number. Various groups representing the REAL protestors had spent months preparing an entirely peaceful, one-day civil disobedience protest, and there were constant long meetings about it, in the days just before. It was meticulously planned. No one wanted violence. No one wanted even a hint of the slightest violence or threat towards anyone, and that's the way everything went--safe, peaceful, effective, awesome civil protest--until the police started wading into peaceful crowds and hosing people with chemicals and beating people up. I saw them direct a pepper spray HOSE right at the heads and faces of SEATED, peaceful people in a street intersection. It was horrible. And still the protestors did not fight back. It was this other small group of black-masked teenagers--whom no one knew, who had not attended meetings--who staged their vandalism downtown for the cameras, without police intervention. The real protestors tried to stop them. The police didn't touch them. This was late in the day--after about five hours of peaceful protest with the police beating, tear gassing and arresting the peaceful.
I have never forgotten this lesson: that the corpo-fascist media OUTRIGHT LIES when their billionaire bosses' interests are involved (--U.S. global trade domination of the WTO). They don't just distort. They LIE!
I've since learned about the Venezuelan media. With a million Venezuelans out in the streets peacefully restoring their constitution and their elected government, the corpo-fascist media in Venezuela DIDN'T EVEN COVER IT! They played cartoons! They tried to play it like a million people didn't exist.
So, when I hear of protests in a righteous cause--such as the election fraud in Haiti--and any images are pushed on us of violence, I don't believe them, upfront. I know how that can be manipulated. Maybe violence occurred, maybe not. If so, it was most likely "staged" just like in Seattle. I would believe the protestors themselves or trustworthy eyewitnesses. I would never believe corpo-fascist 'news' reports.
Anyway, the people of Haiti didn't take this election fraud sitting down--as, unfortunately, we north Americans have often done, to our grief. And I think that the Obama/Clinton government cannot take any more "black marks" against them in Latin America. Their reputation was severely damaged by the Honduran coup. Possibly that was by Bush Junta design (the coup occurred only six months into the Obama administration) but then Obama/Clinton went along with it, basically, and presided over the destruction of Honduras' democracy--where trade unionists, teachers, human rights workers and other anti-coup protestors and political leftists are now being murdered by rightwing death squads. Maybe they think that Haitian "riots" over an election is something they don't need. Insulza follows their lead. I imagine that someone compatible with U.S. corpo-fascist goals will end up ruling Haiti--they've already turned it into a U.S. client state (even before the earthquake)--but they need to make this look good, or their other aims in the region will suffer.
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