Updating a footnote

Earlier today, I mentioned in a footnote that Reuters had used the terms "bloody rebellion" and "anti-Aristide gangs" in an article about Haiti, noting how such terms appeared now that Aristide had been kicked out. Here's an even better example. All the following quotes come from today's New York Times in an article pushing the new meme of the just terrible, terrible difficulties facing the noble Americans trying to help the pitiful, strife-ton Haitians put their "failed" nation back together:

- "Many of the armed rebels who rose up in Haiti this past month are veterans of the junta that overthrew Mr. Aristide in 1991. They have not put down their arms as they have promised."

- "The Haitian government, torn between rival elites, has traditionally ignored the needs of Haiti's poor, who saw in Mr. Aristide a champion of their interests."

- "The question of the Haitian Army also overshadows the country's future. Mr. Aristide dissolved it in 1995; the armed rebels have announced its resurrection. The army was created by the American military after it occupied the country and imposed martial law in 1915. Mary A. Renda, author of 'Taking Haiti,' an award-winning history of the American occupation, said the Marines created 'a military that was intended to be used against the Haitian people.'"

- "The political opposition [is] led by Haiti's elites," many of who "supported the rebel cause - the overthrow of Mr. Aristide and the reconstitution of the army, which has always served the elites at the expense of its poor."

- "Many of Haiti's poor ... remain loyal to Mr. Aristide...."

How much of that appeared - did any of that appear - in the pages of the Times (or, for that matter, any other major mainstream news outlet) in the preceding weeks when we were being deluged with stories of a "populist uprising" and a "nonviolent opposition" pressing the "widely unpopular" Aristide, who had "lost support" because of his own "failures?"

And did that meme - or the new "noble American" one - give any consideration to the US's role in this newest disaster? (One estimate of the damage caused in the course of the slow-motion coup is an amount equal to Haiti's annual national budget.) The closest we got was an occasional reference to the cutoff of aid - but even that was usually presented as something Aristide provoked.

No wonder some people have started referring to it as the New Pravda Times.

By the way, there are also those who argue the US actually financed and perhaps even directed the overthrow of Aristide. I don't agree, just as in the case of Chile I disagreed with those who insisted that the US ordered the army to overthrow Allende. Rather, I maintain, in each case the US sought to create the conditions that would promote a coup of one sort or another and then just sat back and let it happen.

Precise technical difference ratio: high
Actual practical difference ratio: low
Ethical equivalence rating: 100%