This is the second part of our essay on the consequences of US investment in Haiti. The piece examines the New York Times investigation into the Caracol industrial park, its anchor tenant, the South Korea's Sae-A Trading, giving Haiti context with the Bitter Cane documentary on industrial parks in Haiti 40-years ago. The piece illustrates that Washington's bait and switch use of donation dollars and US taxpayer aid for private profit is a colonial blueprint in Haiti. US intervention is not intended, even when called "Haiti reconstruction" to provide sustainable jobs and infrastructure for Haitians. Caracol itself is window dressing covering the infrastructure the US is building for the mineral and vast oil reserves the US occupies Haiti to exploit. For part one, click here.
Haiti: Foreign investment means Death and Repression: A Historical Perspective, Part II
The showcase project for Haiti’s earthquake reconstruction is being built far outside the disaster zone, in a location that could jeopardize the country’s key conservation effort. (Photos)
Haiti, 35, 40years ago - "Notice how long ago it's been since Haitians knew there was gold in Haiti. It's the same for Haiti's vast oil, which the US strategically denies. But now that the one-percenters have de-legitimized elections and lined up their puppet government, perhaps sometime soon the New York Times shall suddenly "discover" Haiti oil reserves and what Ezili HLLN has been pointing out for a decade now. Haiti's mineral riches and oil in Haiti are the economic reasons the US took down Haiti's democratically elected government in 2004, installed the US occupation behind UN guns with the humanitarian invasion."-Ezili Dantò of HLLN ******************************************
Ezili Dantò’s Note
Haiti: Foreign Investment means Death and Repression, Part II
The constant US bait and switch in Haiti: A Historical Perspective
THE SLOW AND SILENT GENOCIDE THE US IS CONDUCTING IN HAITI
In 1971 the minimum wage was about $1.30 USD per day. It was raised to about $2.60 or 70 gourds in 2003. In 2004 it was cut back in half to $1.60 or .36 gourds by the US coup detat folks.
Since the 1970s Haiti assembly plant workers, mostly all women, have battled to raise the minimum wage to a living wage and for humane working conditions. (Workers interviewed in the older Bitter Cane documentary as well as those interviewed around 1996 in the Mickey Mouse goes to Haiti documentary talk about how they suffered abuse for protesting the indecent wage. Even then, Haiti workers were pushing for .63 US cents an hour wage or approximately $5 USD dollars per day for a minimum wage.)
In 2009, though the Haiti parliament voted to raise the assembly plant minimum wage to 200 gourdes or the equivalent of US $5.00 a day (about .63 U.S. cents an hour.), UN Envoy Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton at the Obama State Department forced Haiti officials to rescind the vote.
Today's Haiti minimum wage for assembly plant workers is approximately$3.00 USD per day/ .38 U.S. cents an hour or 125 gourdes per day. Because of inflation, the $3.00 per day wage is not much higher than what the minimum wage had been 35 to 40 years earlier. That’s nothing less than genocidal.
It’s even more crushing and unimaginable when you factor not only the depreciation of the Haitian gourd over the last few decades but that local agriculture was decimated by systemic US and neoliberal economic attack on Haiti peasants. And practically all of Haiti’s food is now imported from the US and world food prices much higher.
Moreover, the minimum wage is really less than .38 cents an hour for $3 for an 8-hour day because the Haitian women work not 8 hours per day but more like 12 hours per day. They are given a daily quota to fulfill and can't leave until that quota is met and it takes more than 8-hours for that to happen.
"Then, when the Haitians were once again pauperised, the experts and their elite allies introduced the nearest thing to slavery known to this century - free zones, where Haitians laboured for the price of less than one Jamaican patty a day. The women were injected with drugs which stopped their monthly periods so they wouldn't need time off to have babies. They were prohibited from joining unions. Hold on tight to your screams!..."--John Maxwell The Audacity of Hopelessness, April 05, 2009 (Obama's offered HOPE is sweatshop slavery.)
For those who don’t know, when the 1970s, 1980s food-for-work program were replaced with seasonable cash-for-work job programs to maintain infrastructure for the foreigners, the USAID/Care/Catholic Relief Services, et al, programs would hand out these jobs just when the peasants should be planting and tending to their fields causing them to miss another harvest. This, another way to wipe out local Haiti agriculture was routinely implemented by the Western mindsets known to exterminate entire civilizations in the Western Hemisphere under the guise of “bringing civilization”. (See also, Bill Clinton’s Heavy Hand on Haiti’s Vulnerable Agricultural Economy: The American Rice Scandal.)
Caracol was the site where, during the first US occupation of Haiti (1914-1934) the US Marines ran the Chabert Post prison labor camp, infamous for its brutal treatment of dissenting Haiti peasants.
Revered Haiti hero, Charlemagne Péralte was initially buried on the property in an unmarked grave before getting a state monument further up North in Cap Haitian. It's one of the places where forced Black labor made fortunes for Spain, France and then US plantations owners, permanently deforesting Haiti. It wasn't fully reclaimed by Haitians until the overthrow of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986.
The way I see it, in a deep, long, historical way, Haiti was founded by ex-slaves who overthrew a plantation system and people keep trying to get them to return to some form of plantation,” he said. “There have been cycles of this type of project, where the idea is that foreign investment will modernize the country. But things have gotten progressively worse for Haitians.”Earthquake Relief Where Haiti Wasn’t Broken (July 5, 2012)
An export-based economy for Haiti is a tired US policy
An export-base economy for Haiti didn't work 4o-years ago and the devastation it left is still being absorbed by Haitians with famine, containment-in-poverty and the presence of UN troops today. This new endeavor has already brought suffering to Haitians: the US project kicked Haiti farmers off their lands and gifted it to foreigners for factories and private businesses in the looming presence of UN guns.
The US has the information NOW to stop this project and prevent Haitians from further great sufferings to come tomorrow – not wait until perhaps hundreds of thousands more Haitians are dead, traumatized or fleeing Haiti on the open seas.
40-years ago, in the 197os, under Baby Doc’s-Martelly-type “open for business”, Catholic Relief Services and Care, where running the “food for work” programs in Haiti that helped destroy Haiti indigenous jobs, rendered the peasants homeless, brought dependency.
Such US policies disempower the Haiti masses and that disempowerment also disempowers the US masses and is neither good governance nor ethical. The corporatocracy pits wage earners worldwide against one another for the benefit of the corporatocracy. The irony is that US workers are undercut by the low Haiti wages. But it’s US taxpayer and donation monies that are used to suppress the Haiti laborers, keeping them with no voice to fight. (See, 1969 Re-opening Haiti to US and foreign investment – Bitter Cane 4/7 )
BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE TO SERVE THE INTEREST OF FOREIGN CAPITAL– A Historical Perspective
If past atrocities are not to be repeated, we should recall how at the height of the assembly plant era 35, 40 years ago, subsidized imported food was given in exchange for Haiti labor to build infrastructure for US factory owners and the bauxite miners.
The US disinterest for labor and environmental concerns and privatized use of donation dollars at Caracol industrial part is a REPEAT of history and as Professor Dubois says, it's "tired." The consequences are predictable. ( 1969/1971 Re-opening Haiti to US and foreign investment/food-for-work)
This Obama Administration application of disaster capitalism and the shock doctrine is like pouring gasoline onto a fire already set by past US missteps in Haiti. There's no sane reason for the US to be unleashing the South Korean Sae-A factory on vulnerable Haiti's back despite Sae-A's despotic reputation for using bribes, rape, death threats and imprisonment to prevent and break up unions.
Haiti, 35, 40years ago
HAITI DOESN'T NEED ANYMORE PAIN It's not surprising to veteran and bruised Haiti justice advocates that unregulated, unfettered capitalism create and uses depravity to make a profit. We were awake and suffering in scorching neocolonial fires when Bill Clinton returned President Aristide in 1994 with 20,000 US troops to ramp up privatizing Haiti and re-imaging the bloody Duvalierist as civil society.
Foreign investment has always meant MORE Haiti fleeing refugees, indefinite detentions, deaths and suffering. Donation monies and US taxpayer “aid” monies are privatized in Haiti and used to profit and make the rich richer. This is NOT new in Haiti. It’s the STANDARD. (Watch in 2012- A Factory Grows in Haiti and in 1971 Bitter Cane Pt. 5/7 . )
From 1971 on, beginning with the tenure of Baby Doc Duvalier, Haiti was “open for business.” How did that go for Haiti domestic development and human rights? See history at videos -Bitter Cane 4/7 and Bitter Cane 6/7 .
It cost Haiti billions in lost trade, tax, custom duties and tariff revenues, more than 5,000 Haitian lives and over 70,000 Haiti refugees fled the tyranny of the first US-supported regime change landing in Guantanamo Bay detention center to be further terrorized. 20,000 Haitians were slaughtered from 2004-2006 during the second US repression. More than 500,000 Haitians fled Haiti under the Duvalier dynasty supported and financed for the bulk of their reign by the US government.
THE WORLD ECONOMY HAS CHANGED, THERE’S NO LABOR-INTENSIVE JOBS WITH HIGHER PROFIT MARGINS IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE THAN IN CHINA, IT’S A HOAX
"Sweatshop development" is an oxymoron and a hoax. Except China which has 1.3 billion people with no workers rights or semblance of a representative government, the FTZs are closing everywhere.
There won’t be the promised 20,000 jobs available over this so-called 6-year period Haitians are sacrificing life, lands and livelihood for now. The US has been holding that carrot of 20,000 jobs out since 2004, as can be verified by checking the record. Back in 1987 when the Berlin Wall fell and the Asian market place opened up so that the 7 to 10million Haitian labor market could not compete with 1.3 BILLION people, the assembly plants had no reason to stay in Haiti.
When they left, the infrastructure built (from back-breaking food-for work peasant labor) to service the assembly plant companies, the private ports (like the privatized Miragoane port servicing the bauxite mines of Reynolds Metals aluminum) were abandoned, left in gross disrepair or purposely destroyed to prevent the people’s movement and democratically elected government from success.
Mostly, Haitian infrastructure improvements are allowed to stand in Haiti only if they serve foreigners or their local subcontractors. The roads and ports were built for foreign business use.
The US legislative conditions (HOPE ACT II) imposed upon Haiti for hosting non-tax paying foreign companies such as the Caracol industrial park, which make duty free garments and goods for the export market, COMPELS Haiti to agree NOT TO INVEST in needed public services - clean water, sanitation, public roads, health care, et al. Imposes controls, rules out Haiti government ownership of economic assets. (See, Statement of Haitian Activists on the HOPE legislation passed by Congress, December 16, 2006: Enriching the few at expense of the many is not "HOPE" but fueling more despair.)
Haiti is in dire need of public services, clean water, sanitation, infrastructure, local manufacturing, local food production, local agriculture and for the government to invest in this and be accountable to its citizens for these services.
Unless its designed and implemented with Haiti monies, by Haitians for Haitians, no Haiti reconstruction shall provide sustainable jobs and infrastructure for Haitians.
Are the ridiculous Haitian collaborators abroad and in Haiti along with the US drones implementing the despotic one-percenters' edicts, so brainwashed they believe whatever the ruling corporatocracy says, can’t see there’s nothing benevolent or bungling about US investment in Haiti, that it’s a total HOAX. Are they simply too comfortable in the good life to think independently, just machines with one directive from the corporatocracy, no free will, no ability to unplug?
Ayisyen kote nou ye toutbon?
Ezili Dantò of HLLN Li led li la July 9, 2012 For part one, click here.
******************************************* Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network *******************************************
Haiti 's water supply is ALREADY contaminated by foreign cholera feces, what will leaking cyanide, arsenic emissions, mine waste, Marine ecosystem destruction and open pit mining and unsupervised drilling leave Haiti with up North?
Will the new propose mining laws being drafted by the Martelly government provide MORE legal protection for Haiti? Or, will they simply void the protections that are on the books already but not applied?
What will be different in the new laws and what will the effect be for the people in Haiti?Will Haiti ecosystem, crops, water supply be duly protected. How? And how will the displaced farmers and Haiti in general profit from these new laws? WHO is drafting these laws?
Why isn't the new mining law conversation PUBLIC and soliciting Haiti legitimate public participation.
Haiti: Waiving current law to benefit the global miners and readying bullets for peasants who will protest the looting
Waiving the current law to benefit the global miners and readying bullets for the peasants who will protest the looting is probably the reason the neoDuvalierist Martelly government is suddenly drafting new Haiti mining laws.
Haiti's current law doesn't allow drilling without a signed mining convention. But Newmont mining got a "waiver" to the current law. Former Minister of Finance Ronald Baudin along with the Minister of Public works helped Newmont and Majesco mining get the unlawful waiver.
Dieuseul Anglade, the then head of Haiti mining objected to the "waiver" charade and was fired by the newly installed prime minister, Laurent Lamothe.
This is not new, as I reported in 2008 in an interview with Chris Scott:
"in terms of regulation, what happens, nobody knows. The Bureau des Mines...I'll give you an example, the head of the Bureau [of Mines] is Mr. Anglade. And around that same time he talked about, not mining companies, but there was an issue where there was an underwater exploration in Ile-à-Vache, which is an island in Haiti, somehow there was a dispute between the company and the Bureau des Mines and what happened was, out of the blue, someone, somewhere decided to move the contract away from the Bureau des Mines and put it into the Minister of Culture."(Haiti's Riches:Interview with Ezili Dantò on Mining in Haiti; The secret behind the Rush to Haiti.)
What other waivers did Newmont, VCS Mining, et al... negotiate with the newly minted Washington government in Haiti? Perhaps a waiver of the 50%/50% sharing of profits or maybe no royalties to Haiti for 30-years?Ronald Baudin who helped Newmont and Majesco get to drill without a fully negotiated and signed convention with Haiti now works as a consultant for Newmont-Eurasian.
Backroom deals, legally questionable “memorandums”, and test drilling carried out with no public scrutiny and little government oversight are all part of the new gold rush in Haiti.
Tieramerica quotes Dieuseul Anglade, a "well-respected geologist who headed the state mining agency for most of the past 20 years:"
“Minerals are part of the public domain of the state,”.... if tougher laws and better contracts with the mining companies aren’t written, it would be better to “leave the minerals underground.”
"...Caracol job-for-Haiti (is) bait to provide infrastructure and housing for the Denver-based miner Newmont (Eurasian/Marien Mining), Canada’s Majesco/VCS Mining and other foreign companies mining Haiti for gold, silver, copper, worth more than $20 billion dollars."
The New York Times focuses on the eviction of farmers for a factory complex just nine miles down the road from US mining operations worth $20 billion. What about the farmers evicted for Newmont and Majesco to mine for gold at the mining royalty rate on mineral resources is 2.5% to Haiti, which is the lowest in Hemisphere. Will this help Haitians or just the foreigners?
People all over the world, where Newmont has active mines, from Nevada, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Ghana to Peru, are mad about Newmont and the gold mining industry. The Akyim indigenous community in Ghana has launched a world campaign to protest against Newmont. This week five protesters died in a clash in Peru over the Newmont mine. In the US, Newmont mining is accused of not paying Nevada taxes.
If the powerful Newmont conglomerate is not paying tax on mining profits in Nevada, USA, how reasonable is the expectation it shall pay the negotiated Haiti 50% profit tax or even the lowest 2.5% royalty rate in the Hemisphere to vulnerable Haiti?
Haiti is severely deforested, just suffered the worst earthquake damage in world history and its fragile water supply is ALREADY contaminated by foreign feces- UN-imported cholera from 2010.
The Times article doesn’t make the obvious correlation, nor mention the ecological concerns with the mining, just talks about Caracol Bay and Fort Liberte ecological concerns.
Most telling is how the Times article notably fails to mention, simply skips the obvious – Haiti’s vast (an Olympic pool to Venezuela’s glass of water) oil reserves in the North, its connection to the Caracol project."
**************************************************** Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network ****************************************************
Washington Justice For Haiti: In support of Paul Farmer’s pharmaceuticals and the Farmer groups – Brian Concannon/IDJH – asking the UN to judge itself guilty on behalf of Haiti cholera victims, Washington Post opines, justice for the Haiti cholera victims would be collectively awarding $40million to Paul Farmer pharmaceuticals for cholera vaccines - Ezili Dantò on Washington Post editorial supporting expansion of Farmer’s ineffective cholera vaccines
Haiti Riches: Lakou New York Interview with HLLN’s Ezili Dantò (Kreyòl) with Dahoud Andre and Manno on environmental degradation concerns of post-coup d’etat gold/copper mining in Haiti by foreign companies, May 6, 2009
July 25, 2012 interview Jeff Blankfort host of Takes on the World interviews Ezili Dantò on Haiti's Exploitation / Radio Project MP3 KZYX Public Radio Interview
Summary: Ezili Dantò talks about her review, titled "Foreign investment means death & repression"(Part 1 and Part 2) of New York Times July 6, 2012 article detailing how foreign investment at Caracol, Haiti raises bait and switch issues, worker abuse and environmental devastation concerns; tells how Obama, through the Clintons, pushed opening of South Korea sweatshop with US tax dollars and earthquake donations dollars requiring eviction of Haitian farmers instead of rebuilding after earthquake; of corporations, Newmont mining, VCS mining, etc., stealing Haiti’s (20bn) gold and oil companies waiting to plunder oil and destroy environment; of history of US-Haitian relations and occupation by Marines; of UN doing US dirty work; of Haiti being earlier robbed of its gold; of Haiti over $22billion independence debt to pay “reparations” to France for throwing it out of Haiti in 1804; of current Haitian government taxing remittances to Haiti from Haitian-Americans; of racism, race and gender as tools of empire; of five-star hotels built on donation dollars while the quake victims and Haiti peasants countrywide get evicted off fertile lands to make way for tourism in the time of cholera.
"This writing reviews, in two parts, the consequences of US investment in Haiti. It looks at the New York Times investigation into the Caracol industrial park, its anchor tenant, the South Korea’s Sae-A Trading, giving Haiti context with the Bitter Cane documentary on industrial parks in Haiti 40-years ago. The piece illustrates that Washington’s bait and switch use of donation dollars and US taxpayer aid for private profit is a colonial blueprint in Haiti. US intervention is not intended, even when called “Haiti reconstruction” to provide sustainable jobs and infrastructure for Haitians. Caracol itself is window dressing covering the infrastructure the US is building for the mineral and vast oil reserves the US occupies Haiti to exploit."
"Mostly, Haitian infrastructure improvements are allowed to stand in Haiti only if they serve foreigners or their local subcontractors. The roads and ports were built for foreign business use.
The US legislative conditions (HOPE ACT II) imposed upon Haiti for hosting non-tax paying foreign companies such as the Caracol industrial park, which make duty free garments and goods for the export market, COMPELS Haiti to agree NOT TO INVEST in needed public services - clean water, sanitation and waste management, public roads, health care, et al. Imposes controls, rules out Haiti government ownership of economic assets. (See, Statement of Haitian Activists on the HOPE legislation passed by Congress, December 16, 2006: Enriching the few at expense of the many is not "HOPE" but fueling more despair.)
Haiti is in dire need of public services, clean water, sanitation, infrastructure, local manufacturing, local food production, local agriculture and for the government to invest in this and be accountable to its citizens for these services." (Haiti: Foreign investment means death & repression, Part 2)
******************************************************** Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network *********************************************************
********************************** BACKGROUND INFORMATION
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Ezili Dantò of HLLN
November 22, 2010 Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio interviews Ezili Dantò of HLLN. Dantò talks about US shock doctrine, disaster capitalism in Haiti; UN cholera elections and democracy; US occupation with UN guns as replacement for old Haitian army; Coup Detat/Bush Regime change participant, Richard Morse declaring "it was a coup d'etat, I participated, went to Washington."
The full interview with April McNeil and Saje Fitzgerald and Congo Rising in the first half is worth listening, discussing mining violence, culture of impunity, mining causing gender violence - rape, torture against women.
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Day 27 - Feb. 8, 2010 Four weeks after the earthquake
Faiza Ahmed reviews the film “Haiti: Where did the money go?” Directed by Michele Mitchell/ PressTV http://bit.ly/LUwgky *
"This Caracol "jobs-for-Haiti" is bait. Window-dressing to provide infrastructure and housing for the Denver-based miner Newmont(Eurasian/Marien Mining), Canada's Majesco/VCS Mining and other foreign companies mining Haiti for gold, silver, copper, worth more than $20 billion dollars.
During the first US occupation, both HASCO (the Haitian-American Sugar Company) and SHADA (Haitian-American Society for Agricultural Development) were foreign controlled, but used Haiti figureheads to circumvent Haiti Constitution prohibiting foreign land ownership. For the SHADA and HASCO similarities with the looting Haiti-American collaborators of today, see on our website, Caracol, SHADA: Hoax masking foreign appropriation of fertile Haiti lands. ( Haiti: Foreign investment means death & repression, Part 1 - http://bit.ly/NhilyS )
South Korean stranglehold in Haiti keeps multiplying "The South Korean stranglehold in Haiti keeps multiplying and the correlations brings the picture of tyranny and power-holders over disenfranchised poor Haiti very clear. The UN-MINUSTAH troops in Haiti are led by South Korean, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Paul Farmer is the Deputy UN Special Envoy to Haiti and his partner at Partners & Health is South Korean, Dr. Jim Yong Kim who is the US-dominated World Bank's newly elected Korean born President. For the first time in UN history the World Bank, not the UNDP are bankers for Bill Clinton's funds raised for Haiti. They gather together destroying Haiti as their latest excursion in their proposed Korean operated factory slave labor jobs in Northern part of the country on the burial ground of Haiti's revered liberator, Charlemagne Peralte." ( Haiti: Foreign investment means death & repression, Part 1 - http://bit.ly/NhilyS )
"Washington swapped Haiti lives and lands to get a South Korean Maquilas into Haiti but not a Brazilian Maquila? The geopolitical maneuverings fills a few US imperial agendas: cements Haiti poverty; sends a message to all dissenters in the region about US elites’ dirtier capacity for maintaining their world looting system despite the horrors of the quake in Haiti; underlies efforts that contains Brazil’s economic ascendancy in the Hemisphere; promotes a servile and useful South Korean client state; makes no apology for using charity donation dollars and US taxpayer dollars to support unfair labor practices, corporate welfare for giant US manufacturers, worldwide low-wages or to feed the WalMart-ilk’s appetite for closing down small local businesses."( Haiti: Foreign investment means death & repression, Part 1 - http://bit.ly/NhilyS )
Economic fascism against Haiti poor "Caracol capitalist vultures pay no taxes, tariffs or custom duties, get free land, free factory, luxurious gated communities but see NO PROBLEM with their money changers taxing Haiti Diaspora remittances, the only direct aid that keeps the poor alive. Under the US-supported Martelly government, Haitians overseas pay an extra $1.50 per transfer and .05cents extra per phone call to Haiti. No other nationality in the world are paying these in-country transfer taxes." ( Haiti: Foreign investment means death & repression, Part 1 - http://bit.ly/NhilyS )
“The right to own property does not extend to the coasts, springs, rivers, water courses, mines and quarries. They are part of the State’s public domain.” – Haitian 1987 Constitution, Section H, Article 36-5. (Massacre at La Visite by Dady Chery)
Illusion is reality - Washington swings high with Haiti's Carnival King of Haiti
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Marie Antoinette said "oh no, they don't have bread, clean water, are evicted from their homes, massacred to make way for Clinton/Obama tourists and Korean gated homes. No worries."
To the beat now, just give them the carnival king to escape y'all, as US masses escape nightly knowledge - young Americans dying on war fronts - with trivia on Tom Cruise/Kate Holmes divorce and hollow spectacle as breaking news... To the beat, carnival beat y'all... illusion is reality. Forget the despotism, the injustices. Be happy. Tuxedo-ing in Washington with Billy and Hillary, Rice and Mills, Obama and Michelle to the beat y'all. Retreat to fantasy so you won't see what's leading the crowd, blinded and mollified, outside the gated walls. CARNIVAL in August. Duvalier and Rochambeau smile.
Click and sing. It's all good. Washington sings too with the Carnival King of Haiti
Click and swing. It's all good: Washington swings too with the Carnival King of Haiti
Illusion is reality
Justice a triviality
July 28, 2012 Carnival and Bamboche
On July 28, 1915, the US invades Haiti, practically re-enslaving Haitians. It took 19-years to remove the claws of the vampires off Haiti. They left the bloody Haiti army behind.
97 years later, on July 28, 2012, in the course of the second US occupation, US-installed President Martelly dances, sings, makes merry.
His July carnival celebrates the anniversary day that lives in infamy for all Haitians with Rara bands playing 24/7 juxtaposed against the utter misery of UN cholera, bleak desolation of Clorox hunger, of over 400,000 earthquake victims still living in tents and tarps, homeless, and the horrors of mining companies fracturing the mountains on fault lines for Haiti's 20billion in gold, silver and copper.
The first Carnaval des Fleurs in Haiti was held in 1916, just two years after the US began their first military occupation (1915 to 1934). Carnival in the time of foreign invasion. The Carnival and public spectacles were the opiates consumed for dulling the distress, grief and pain of foreign invasion and destruction. It was intended to distract and shift focus away from the US imperial takeover, the slaughter of dissenters and horrors that were happening in the country.
As it was in the first occupation, it is in the second from 2004 to the present. Take their lands, their mountains, their oceans, their islands, their clean water, their gold, their independence, their homes, their freedoms, their sovereignty, their very bodies for rape and imprisonment. But give 'em carnival. Lots of carnival.
Ezili Dantò of HLLN July 28, 2012
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"La Visite Park is a lush expanse of green that straddles the hills of Marigot and Kenskoff and overlooks Marigot, a picturesque fishing town near Haiti’s larger southeastern city of Jacmel...The fishing is artisanal, and for some time the fishermen have been asking the government to assist them with credit, fishing equipment and modest facilities such as a refrigerated room. There has been no response. The government has other plans for the region...
On Monday July 23, around noon, a group of 36 commandos from the Departmental Unit for Maintenance of Order (UDMO), together with Jacmel Representative Lafontant Pierre Michel, Police Chief Ovilmar Sagesse, Government Commissioner Antoine Jean Feraud, and local officials of the Marigot City Hall (recall that all municipal officials have been replaced by presidential appointees) arrived in La Visite Park to evict 142 families. The families had lived there since 1942 in an area called Galèt Sèk, which belongs to a larger neighborhood called Seguin à Chevale.
When the commandos tried to remove the residents by force, they fought back with stones in a battle that lasted 4 hours. Dozens were injured. Initial reports noted that 4 children were shot dead along with 8 adults. Among the dead are:
Desire Enoz – 32 years old Nicolas David – 28 years old Robinson Volcin – 22 years old Desire Aleis – 18 years old
US control of Haiti and other little republics' vote at the UN is not new
I found an August 10, 2012 George Will opinion piece relevant to UN/US occupied Haiti today for reasons that would probably not occur to Mr. Will. The piece discusses and juxtaposes other US candidates' "indelicate claims" to Democrat Obama's current campaign obfuscations that have caused consternation.
Whether intended or not, the opinion piece made a point we've made in several articles and commentaries about the key players in Haiti's containment in poverty and misery today: the Barack Obama administration, Dr. Paul Farmer, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, USAID, Congress, World Bank and the tiny big business corporatocracy they all serve.
"Stop being so CONFUSED folks by the rebranding of the same old fascists. The good cop/bad cop play-acting of the Democrats and Republicans or that of the "progressives" and the "right wingers...don't be confused about the power plays between the malfini and the mongoose. Between Democrats and Republicans (Between Obama and Bush.) Or, 'between Wilson and Harding,' to quote (Kandyo) one of Haiti's most favorite satirist" in the time of the first US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934.
Maybe Mr. Wills intended to make the point that the Republicans and Democrats (the US duopoly) as well as the Left and Right wingers in Congress and elsewhere, mostly serve the same global oligarchs and their profit-over-people interests, especially in the realm of US foreign policy. But I doubt it.
Speaking about US presidential campaigns and an Obama current public faux pas ("private sector is doing fine...the economy is not doing fine") in an opinion piece titled "It’s a question of context," George Wills wrote, in part:
"On Aug. 18, 1920, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), campaigning in Butte, Mont., said that it would be fine for the United States to join the League of Nations because our nation would have multiple votes. He assured listeners that “the votes of Cuba, Haiti, San Domingo, Panama, Nicaragua and of the other Central American states” would not be cast “differently from the vote of the United States,” which is “the big brother of these little republics.”
Then, (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) referring to his days as assistant secretary of the Navy, the vice presidential candidate said: “You know I have had something to do with running a couple of little republics. The facts are that I wrote Haiti’s constitution myself and, if I do say so, I think it a pretty good constitution.” He added: “Why, I have been running Haiti or San Domingo for the past seven years.”
Maybe Mr. Wills intended to make the point that the US empire's control of Haiti and other little republics' vote at the UN is not new. Or, say that both Democratic and Republican candidates are ruled by big business (the tiny monopolistic "private sector is doing fine...the economy is not doing fine), support US imperialism and spin their own admissions of this reality onto "the public's inability to parse plain English."
Maybe Mr. Wills intended to make the point that Haitians often make, in Haitian folkloric peasant parlance. That is, Haiti and other US dominated client states, and their huddled masses are like small chickens. Both the malfini (ie. the birds of prey - the Republicans, neocons or Right wingers) and the mongoose (ie. the small carnivores - the progressives or Left wingers) are just fighting over which of them will either swoop down from the sky (the malfini - birds of prey) or crawl up from the ground (the destructive terrestrial mongoose) to eat - plunder, pillage, exploit Haiti or the world's poor masses (the chickens preyed upon by both these predators)! That's probably not what George Will intended to point out with the FDR/Haiti and other anecdotes in his opinion piece. Nonetheless, he did. FDR and the US did rewrite Haiti's Constitution, controlled its (League of Nation)/UN vote, just as the current US occupying powers in Haiti today control Haiti, the UN/MINUSTAH military mission there, helped select its president, are rewriting Haiti's current Constitution as well as Haiti's mining laws.
(The entire Georges Will's opinion piece is copied on our website as well as an Ezili Network reader commentary on this note. )
“Transformation is only valid if it is carried out with the people, not for them. Liberation is like a childbirth, and a painful one. The person who emerges is a new person: no longer either oppressor or oppressed, but a person in the process of achieving freedom. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors” -- Paulo Freire
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Paul Farmer and World Bank president Jim Yong Kim exposed
Ezili Danto's Note on 'Good Growth at the World Bank? Dying for Capitalism' by Brian McKenna and Hans Baer
for the first time, about what Ezili Dantò has been publishing on the narcissism and false charity of UN Deputy Envoy to Haiti, Paul Farmer and his partner, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim.
It's a worthwhile read and I am grateful that, for once, our work at Ezili's HLLN is not simply ignored as usual by the folks who regularly publish at the main "Leftist" US outlets such as Counterpunch.
"Dying for Capitalism" references our work in the context of the Paulo Freire quote above we're constantly repeating and describes Ezili Dantò as an "organic intellectual."
Don't know for certain what that means, but I asked an agriculture expert whose job it is to authorize "certified as organic" on lands where food are being sold in the US with that label.
He works daily as a special investigator doing field inspections to be sure when farmers say their fertilizer and fields are organic with no synthetic fertilizers, it's actually organic as advertised. My expert says "organic" means "not synthetic, not made in a laboratory and mass produced."
I am with that indeed, what a good compliment. My heartfelt thanks to the very insightful authors. Lol.
Haiti, nay, the entire indigenous world, needs some pest control to weed out the NGOs and World Bank false charity. These mass produced folks are today led by the Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim ilk. Their progressive credentials are tainted in convenient alliances. A weeding up, a decontamination is required.
Brian McKenna and Hans Baer begin that pest and weed control process, for the academic crowd, with "Dying for Capitalism."
What Haiti needs is more "organic" decision-makers not contaminated by synthetic fertilizers like Farmer and Kim.
"The slavemaster took Tom and dressed him well, and fed him well, and even gave him a little education -- a little education; gave him a long coat and a top hat and made all the other slaves look up to him. Then he used Tom to control them. The same strategy that was used in those days is used today, by the same white man. He takes a Negro, a so-called Negro, and make [sic] him prominent, build [sic] him up, publicize [sic] him, make [sic] him a celebrity. And then he becomes a spokesman for Negroes -- and a Negro leader." - Malcom X, Message to the Grassroots
Alright, I am appreciating and having too much fun with the connections that "organic" metaphor provides when this Black woman's mind thinks about Haiti's policymaker and spokesman, Paul Farmer.
It must be noted though, that after reading the article in its totality, I am mostly convinced the authors and I actually do not see Paulo Freire's work within the same non-colonial prism or level of importance
The false charity of the "missionary" or "humanitarian" saviors is a colonial blueprint. These saviors with their finance capitalists' rulers, pillage - through chaos, disenfranchisement and dictatorship - create the instability or the disease. (UN brings in cholera, UN envoy Famer cholera vaccines, Bush disenfranchises with coup d'etat, Clinton agricultural devastation). Then rush in to "cure it" or "bring order" to the "natives." That's a given.
The Freire work that most resonates with me speaks, though, to the pedagogy of the oppressed - the colonial victims' mental colonization and victim-making-victim capacity and the clueless narcissism of the imperialist.
I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves. --Harriet Tubman.
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” --Lily Watson
Also at one point the authors write:
"In short, there is a major conflict (mostly unreported in the anthropology literature) between two leading Leftist intellectuals on Haitian health and politics, Paul Farmer and Ezili Danto."
I must say, I don't wish to even be in the same sentence as that Jake Sully exploiter. If the mass produced imperialist Paul Farmer is a "Leftist intellectual" I'd choose something without the engrafted Western codes and backstories of such "Leftist intellectual." I'd say I am a pagan, a maroon intellectual, an indigenous intellectual dedicated to undoing the Western programming called "education" we've been taught. The poverty pimp Farmer selling his soul to serve power, privilege and especially big pharmaceutical and Ezili Dantò are opposites. HLLN recommends the article. See excerpts below from "Good Growth" at the World Bank? Dying for Capitalism by Brian McKenna and Hans Baer).
Ezili Dantò of HLLN September, 2012 ***
Standing Alone "One who often stands alone is Ezili Danto, Founder and President of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. She is an organic intellectual and artist who was born in Port au Prince. Her organization once awarded a medal to Paul Farmer, but today she is one of Dr. Farmer’s most vocal critics. Danto cites Freire to inform her practice, choosing a quote to countermand Farmer’s focus on “true charity” work. Here is the quote, “Transformation is only valid if it is carried out with the people, not for them. Liberation is like a childbirth, and a painful one. The person who emerges is a new person: no longer either oppressor or oppressed, but a person in the process of achieving freedom. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors” (from Freire 1970).
"In short, there is a major conflict (mostly unreported in the anthropology literature) between two leading Leftist intellectuals on Haitian health and politics, Paul Farmer and Ezili Danto. Both cite Paulo Freire to justify their positions. Clearly, an independent assessment to ascertain the strength of their respective arguments is called for.... One must ask why are so many anthropologists reluctant to investigate the claims?"
“...(Paul Farmer and Kim) by not challenging the ways in which profit- motivated economic processes cause the kind of illness that they claim to cure...this kind of pragmatism risks sacrificing future generations for current exigencies” (Hodge 2011).
"There are two sets of principles. They are the principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. If you pursue truth and justice, it will always mean a diminution of power and privilege. If you pursue power and privilege it will always be at the expense of truth and justice" -- Chris Hedges ("Good Growth" at the World Bank? Dying for Capitalism by Brian McKenna and Hans Baer )
******************************************************* Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) *******************************************************
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” --Lily Watson
This is the best of times for unfettered capitalism and privatization reigning supreme in Haiti above all else. There's sweatshop industrial openings with Hollywood good-times rolling, romantic moments for Billy and Hillary while billions in misery donation dollars are used to give the South Koreans a free factory, housing and to build cruise ship berths and hotel suites that service the privileged few. Over 400,000 quake victims remain homeless. And, in just two years, UN-imported cholera has killed over 8,000 Haitians and infected over 600,000. But it's against the US "HOPE"Act law and International financial institutions (IFIs) dictates (that allow for subsidies and bailouts to the Korean and other businesses at this industrial park) for the Haitian government to put public funds into servicing its own people's public needs. "Leave it to the free market and the NGO business," opine the US rulers in Haiti.
On Monday, October 22, 2012, another dirty business enterprise was being exposed while the Clintons and their wealthy Hollywood celebrityfriends were showcasing the Caracol hoax, sharing a romantic moment -"opening Haiti," yet again, with the sharp media propaganda tools of providing relevant "jobs and housing" for Haiti.
Clifford Brandt, son of the wealthy Fritz Brandt and a member of one of Haiti’s billionaire families, was arrested at his place of business and put in handcuffs, accused of being the mastermind behind an organized kidnapping ring in Haiti.
Obama Sec. of State, Hillary Clinton and former President Clinton, celebrate sweatshop opening at Caracol, Haiti. At the bottom in their own country, sad, exploited but dressed-up Haitians frame the Avatar Crew's feet. October 22, 2012. Photo credit: Larry Downing, AP
According to Haiti officials, Clifford Brandt admitted his involvement in several kidnappings including the October 16, 2012 kidnapping of Coralie (23) and Nicolas Moscoso (24), two members of another wealthy Haiti family. On Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012, at 3:am, the morning after his arrest, interrogation and confession, Brandt took police to the place where the two young Moscoso adults were being held. Police freed them.
Clifford Brandt is the managing director of Mazda dealership in Delmas Haiti.
“His activity, indicated the Secretary of State for Public Security, Reginald Delva, “was to come to Haiti from his home in Miami, collect the ransom monies from his kidnapping enterprise in Haiti “
Local Haitians call this foreign-authored organized criminal activity: Ayisyen kidnape, Blan fè pri.
In a Haiti radio public broadcast, Haiti State Secretary of Public Security, Reginald Delva, interviewed by Gary Pierre Paul for Scoop FM maintains that documents show the kidnapping network Clifford Brandt is involved with demanded U.S. $2.5 million for the release of the two Moscoso victims. This is an on-going investigation explains Mr. Delva. He says authorities found a list of folks Clifford Brandt’s kidnapping ring had “a macabre plan” to kill or kidnap for the coming Christmas season.
The Untouchables: It will surprise no one in Haiti if this case is suddenly reduced to a rumor despite the photos of Mr. Brandt in handcuffs at the police station and HaitiState Secretary of Public Security, Reginald Delva public statements. Most likely, if the local Haiti authorities who broke this case are not serving a neo-colonial purpose, the ruling imperial hands may have them silenced, marginalized, fired or worse. Those who serve foreign interests, or are well connected enough to these authorities to buy their freedom, do not, like the criminalized Haiti poor, remain in prison.
In 2005, another wealthy Haitian businessman in Haiti was arrested in relation to a slew of kidnappings and crimes.
"According to police sources, the investigation in the disappearance of UNIBANK’s employee allowed police to uncover the existence of a huge and powerful network of crooks, linked with drug money laundering, kidnappings, and many other shady activities. The businessman Stanley Handal and the bank employee Genelus were apparently part of this network. " (An Important Businessman was Arrested in Relation to Kidnapping cases reported in Port-au-Prince.)
Kidnapping in Haiti began to find a footing after the UN took over and with the 2004 US kidnapping of president Aristide out of Haiti back to Africa. The powerful, connected and wealthy are the worst purveyors of violence and corruption in Haiti. (Yo se chèf zinglendo yo, epi yo di se Nèg nan Geto, se ti malere k’ap bay pwoblèm: Corruption uninterrupted in Haiti)
The international and national media which are owned by the corporate organizations mostly benefiting from the status quo, will generally criminalized the poor, disenfranchised and working masses worldwide. This is why Ezili’s HLLN continually ask this most pertinent question
Why is there a UN, Chapter 7 peace enforcement mission in Haiti for 8 years? A country not at war, without a peace agreement to enforce and with less violence than most countries in the Western Hemisphere?” (See the UN’s own Global Study on Homicide at page 93 and Legacy of Impunity.)
The distraction to note is that since this summer and throughout September 2012, the US-supported government has face almost daily protest demonstrations from practically all sectors of the society. This Brandt kidnapping case changes the discourse. Moves the focus from the people issues of foreign gold/oil pillage, the internationally sponsored Caracol hoax of jobs and housing for Haitians and basic discontent towards the Martelly/Lamothe government to this alluring Ninja Brandt kidnapping issue. On the street sources indicate that Clifford Brandt has bragged to having 275 Haiti police officers on his payroll and was in charge of 15 gangs.
Secretary of Public Safety, Reginald Delva, indicated that senior police officers and former police officers including former police inspector Mr. Edner Comé were actively being sought, suspected of being part this organized kidnapping ring.
Brandt’s defense lawyer, Delatour Calixte, told Scoop radio that Brandt did lead police to where the two Moscoso victims were being held, but denied his client participated in a kidnapping.
Calixte told Scoop’s Gary Pierre Paul that “removing a person is not the same thing as kidnapping…There’s a difference between kidnapping and a personal feud.” Calixte, in his public radio Scoop interview, defended Brandt saying this was not a kidnapping as his client did not ask for a ransom. Calixte suggested Brandt may have organized their “removal” in a power play to settle a business dispute – that this was a settlement of scores between two wealthy families.
Calixte, when pressed, would not elaborate on the “personal feud” or as he said, “un règlement de compte” that caused the “removal” of the Moscoso victims who were found held hostage, handcuffed and blindfolded inside the abandoned residence Clifford Brandt took the police to.
In researching this case, a quick internet name search of the Moscoso kidnapped victims garnered this FB post from the day of the kidnapping:
“Ayiti Pap Peri Sa grav net “Haiti-kidnapping: Hier soir, vers 8hrs sur la route de bourdon, une patrouille de la #PNH cagoule aurait kidnappée #Nicholas Moscoso et sa soeur #Coralie. Source: Chantal M. Elie, Journaliste”
Nicolas and Coralie Moscoso, found handcuffed and blindfolded, were apparently kidnapped by fake police in black hoods and rescued by real police, also wearing black hoods. No wonder the victims kept their heads down and were so terrified to take off their blindfolds when their police rescuers appeared. (See Haiti police rescue video at 3:49).
Alterpresse reports that Brandt is the suspected mastermind of not only a kidnapping ring, but a powerful criminal syndicate practicing forgery, counterfeiting and money laundering.
During police searches conducted at Brandt's place, police said they found police equipment, flashing lights (desgyrophares) and a set of license plates of vehicles. They were planning "attacks against public authorities...This is a solid team. They are true professionals, which speaks of big organized crime," said Frantz Lerebours, spokesperson for the Haiti National Police (PNH) force.
More and more, this Clifford Brandt kidnapping case sounds like that other wealthy businessman kidnapping case, all over again. This time, perhaps the victims will be heard and it won't be business as usual.
One thing is for sure, Robert Moscoso, the father of the Brandt kidnapped victims, would probably have given his entire fortune to get his children back. The business model of making decisions based on cost effectiveness priorities and making a profit at all cost, suddenly did not apply.
Similarly, the profit consideration of foreigners is not worth the loss of life, livelihood, liberty or health of any Haitian. But the US, through the Clintons unregulated capitalists at Caracol, and in general in their reconstruction plans for Haiti, are casually swapping Haiti domestic interests, lives, livelihood, liberty, health, its future and environmental safety for getting the largest possible foreign profit to export out of Haiti. (See, Haiti: Foreign Investment means Death and Repression: A Historical Perspective.)
Until civil society stops equating business interests as the same as governmental interests or the common good, it will be business as usual.
Here is a Kreyòl radio broadcast of the Galipòt story and where voiceless Haiti, not the Avatar crew, speak about their lives in Caracol Haiti. Haitians working at Caracol speak to LakouNewYork, say the 200gds (about $4:74 per day or 59cents per hour) is slave wage, "they're taking my health, this is not jobs for Haiti."
Ezili Dantò HLLN Oct. 23, 2012 (Check this link for updates.)
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In the photo, Haiti Oligarch, Grégory Brandt, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Franco-haïtienne : “Mes enfants ont étudié à l’étranger mais ont choisi de revenir à Haïti malgré la situation. Et j’en suis très fier” - "My children studied abroad, but they chose to come back to Haiti, despite the situation. It is my greatest source of pride." Crédits : Paolo Woods / Institute (Source: Les Nantis D’Haiti;Haiti's 1 Percent: A look at the lives of plenty in the land of the poor.) Serving maids, gardeners and butlers for blan (foreigners). Clinton/Obama and the Haiti Oligarchs “development” for Haiti is Caribbean-style tourism where Haiti’s huddled masses are exotic backdrop, convenient bodies and props for privileged Northern tourists, Paul Farmer’s false NGO benevolence and the Caracol hoax used to fleece Haiti out of its vast oil, coast lands, $20billion in gold and mineral resources.
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"Clinton’s oversized role in Haiti only makes sense when we remember that both the left and right see Haiti through deeply racist lenses...Clinton is the co-chair of the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti. He is the UN Special Envoy for Haiti. And he is the co-director of the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, a foundation involved in number of neoliberal economic initiatives in Haiti. Clinton justifies his involvement by saying he is “responding to the needs of Haitians.” But what needs? Which Haitians? And to what end?" (Bill Clinton Loves Haiti by Jemima Pierre, Black Agenda Report, Oct. 23, 2012)
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"...although the oppressed often do revolt, the object of their hostility is misplaced. They vent their fury on a political puppet, someone who masks colonial power, a despised racial or ethnic group or an apostate within their own political class. The useless battles serve as an effective mask for what Gamer calls the “patron-client” networks that are responsible for the continuity of colonial oppression. The squabbles among the oppressed, the political campaigns between candidates who each are servants of colonial power, Gamer writes, absolve the actual centers of power from addressing the conditions that cause the frustrations of the people. Inequities, political disenfranchisement and injustices are never seriously addressed.”( Colonized by Corporations )
Ezili Dantò's Note: Here is a Kreyòl radio broadcast where voiceless Haiti, not the Avatar crew, speak about their lives in Caracol Haiti.
Haitians working at Caracol speak to LakouNewYork, say the 200gds is slave wage, "they're taking my health, this is not 'jobs for Haiti.'"
Manno, the broadcaster, points out that the minimum wage is now 300gds (as of Oct 1, 2012) not 200gds. The Caracol workers say they are only paid 200gds and not on time and it doesn't cover their expenses whatsoever. One worker explains how she is treated like trash - like a second class citizen within the industrial park. http://lakounewyork.com/emisyon10-22-12.mp3
Also, this audio (in Kreyòl) begins with Koralen's Galipòt. Searching for Desalin's horse on Oct 22nd Caracol holocaust day. This Koralen performance piece asks the question "Where is the living Haitian who can ride Galipòt?" "Galipòt," the author explains is Desalin's horse who wanders Haiti looking for another warrior who can walk his path. http://lakounewyork.com/emisyon10-22-12.mp3
Yesterday, during the opening of the Caracol park, those Haitians who didn't readily applaud the Martelly gov, the Clintons, Sean Penn, Richard Branson, Donna Karen Avatar crew, the opening of the Caracol mothership/Avatar Haiti were pushed out of the way, some even immediately arrested. One person who talked on this Oct 22nd broadcast about the repression was immediately arrested by the special police from Fort Liberte.
But this was the general mainstream media's reporting Avatar Caracol mothership piloted by Clintons opened #Haiti again w/ sharp media propaganda tools= "jobs, housing for Haiti."
Ezili Dantò of HLLN Oct 23, 2012
******************************************* Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network ******************************************* Monday, Oct 22, 2012 marking day of brutal Haiti sorrow is celebrated by the "star-studded" Avatar crew (Sean Penn, Ben Stiller, Donna Karan, Richard Branson, led also by the beyond-the-pale Clinton capitalist vampires, giving cover for the corporate stealing of Haiti's unobatainium -$20+billion, vast oil reserves in Northern Haiti, its coast lands and dismissing its cultural heritage: Bill and Hillary Share Romantic Moment In Haiti - (See, Haiti: Foreign Investment means Death and Repression: A Historical Perspective.)
Remembering the Battle of Battle of Vertières- Nov 18, 1803 the final Haiti battle defeating European forces for slavery, forced assimilation, the slave trade and colonialism in Haiti. The Haitian struggle is the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on the face of this planet .
In remembrance of Vertieres, disengagement is not an option, Grenadye alaso
Last night, I didn’t catch the Little Girl in the Yellow Sunday Dress hanging by one arm over the side of a crowded, overloaded Haitian boat. Last night it was in 2007 that I Capsized. Before that, I crossed death and Capsized in 1997 too.
It’s another November 18th under occupation and I guess you already know what I hide. I write this piece, each year, mostly to find the strength to carry this name until the end.
But two decades of documenting, witnessing, giving homage to the fallen and struggling for justice and to prevent the continuous deaths, sufferings and incomprehensible hardships has taken its toll. (entire article may be read here.)
Enjoy Yves Point Du Jour on Al Jazeera speaking what the white saviors always block, speaking the Haiti majority's narrative! "Haitians are tired of the US occupation, we don't play baseball" - Yves Point Du Jour
by Ezili Dantò of Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN)
Summary: The UN plays the role of both arsonist and fireman in Haiti’s cholera epidemic. UN announces a rehashed 10-year plan for clean water that is unfunded. Kristof’s white savior bridge characters, filled with conflicts of interests, declare cautious success. They help throttle justice for Haitians, put bandages on plunder, help prolong Black and indigenous world suffering. UN plans for Haiti are not solutions. The UN is the problem. -- Ezili Dantò at UN Capitalizing on Cholera: playing arsonists and firemen
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Selected excerpts transcribed from Al Jazeera interview with Yves Point Du Jour, Brian Concannon, Jonathan Katz, December 20, 2012
BRIAN CONCANNON: We've put the ball in the UN's Court...
YVES POINT DU JOUR RESPONSE: ...We don't need a fake lawsuit at the UN...No, that's a joke. Let me tell you something. For example, you take Dr. Paul Farmer, he's on the Board of Brian's organization and he works for the UN. That's joke.
We want REAL lawsuit here to compensate Haitians. This is serious business here. Tired of that joke. Of people making a joke out of us. It is serious. Lives of peoples have been destroyed, not only of those who've died but also of their families. That's true we need to build an infrastructure. But they're playing a game with us. And we see the pattern. We saw what happened with the (mission accomplished) Bush-Clinton fund. That's the same thing going on in Haiti. We are tired of it. Let them get the hell out of Haiti. The UN is not part of the solution. They're part of the problem."
YVES POINT DU JOUR: "(They UN's 10-year plan) is the same old stuff that has not been working. The UN knows fully well that they are responsible for the cholera in Haiti that has killed 8000 people and you have 600,000 more infected. As a matter of fact, if UN were a country, Ban Ki-Moon should have been at the Hague in a jail cell for crimes committed against humanity. They know very well that when they brought in those troops and they were dropping their feces into the river that those rivers where used by the people for drinking water and also for their farm animals and everything. They knew it. And yet they brought those people from Nepal infected with cholera...and created havoc in a country that has already very weak infrastructure... They did it. They refuse to face the music. They have to face the music. They have to pay for their crimes... And not only that, we have to sue them. We don't want a fake law suit that is suing them at the UN. We want to sue them in New York like the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network has been advocating..." ---Yves Point Du Jour, speaking on Al Jazeera about the non-existent UN cholera aid for Haiti.
The UN is not part of the solution, they're the problem. --Yves Point Du Jour
"The mainstream media and humanitarian progressives willingly swallow the manipulative lies, ignore that foreign aid is about creating jobs for foreigners and selling foreign products and services abroad. Life worsens for Haitians in Haiti when the world’s public are made to foolishly believe these spinning of wheels and high-tech money laundering schemes are about “helping Haitians.” Justice deferred is justice denied.
Open pit mining in Haiti in the time of US occupation, open pit mining of Haiti's $20billion gold in the time of UN cholera catastrophe. The warfare against the poor heightens...December 21, 2012
See also, US/Euro pillage masking as Humanitarian Aid Back in March 2010, Bill and Hillary Clinton held a similar champagne pledging party at the UN where numbers in the billions were blightely cast about for a first 10-year relief and reconstruction plan to "rebuilt Haiti back better" after the earthquake and before cholera. The same pledged funds that went uncollected are part of the $215million being re-pledged for the UN's "newest" 10-year initiative in Haiti.---US/Euro pillage masking as Humanitarian Aid; Haiti Riches and Expose the Lies that fragment Haiti opposition to the tyrants, their false benevolence, colonial and NGOtocracy terror - Free Haiti, end the US occupation behind convenient UN guns. Stop the pillage and environmental and human catastrophe.
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"It’s not surprising to Haitians that the UN continues to deny liability for their gross and criminal negligence, for bringing death to Haiti.
We know about the Ottawa Initiative. We live the fear of the immigration deportations and unequal immigration policies. We deal each and every nightmarish day of this US hidden occupation with why there is a UN, Chapter 7 peace-enforcement mission in Haiti for 9 years. A country not at war, without a peace agreement to enforce and with less violence than most countries in the Western Hemisphere. Their imported disease provides the opportunity to accidentally kill 8000 Haitians, infect over 620,000, raise and launder more taxpayer and donor country monies, sell more Paul Farmer pharmaceuticals, write more Nicholas Kristof/Tracy Kidder white savior partisan pieces, experiment on the sick as guinea pigs with never-before-used-in-an-epidemic cholera vaccines, stay in Haiti for their 10-year plan to capitalize on cholera: playing arsonists and firemen.
"The genocide in Haiti and in Africa, is being conducted by...otherwise average, normal, well-intentioned, nice, loving white people. In the context of the Django Unchained movie...Quentin Tarantino made the movie on slavery fun for white folks to watch and fun for Black establishment folks to watch because they don't relate to the monsters portrayed in the movie. Disassociating allows for the anarchic humor of the gallows, for the public to accept cheap trashy thrills and gratuitous violence that wasn't about ending the US system of slavery...Is it such a wonder that in the time of the Obama presidency that Hollywood feels comfortable making a fun movie about slavery -- a time when Liberals or the Left eschew tension, sacrifice and real agitation for justice to make as many convenient alliances as they please with the far right and the Wall Street corporatocracy..."
"Everyone who has been following Ezili Dantò’s work KNOWS that international monies were never MEANT to help Haiti’s domestic economy, growth or reconstruction. Yet, these repugnant folks write on and on about what aid has not done in Haiti. As if it was SUPPOSED to have lifted up Haiti’s domestic economy and African-centered community development. The subtext is that Haiti, that perennially failed state of uncivilized savages, can’t absorb the white settlers’ epic generosity and compassion.
In the interviews, I could not give legitimacy after a while by answering the same old narrative: What happened to the aid monies sent to Haiti.
Hello? Most of it never left Washington, Paris or Toronto...Let us repeat the ONLY sustainable and direct aid to Haiti, that has no anti-democratic strings attached, is the $2.5 billion yearly in diaspora remittances. Haiti doesn’t need false charity or the cannibalistic, imperialistic North’s false benevolence. Haitians do not need US-style development. Haitians need for Haiti to be free."
"Human rights attorney Ezili Dantò of Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) discusses on Black Agenda Report with Glen Ford the US occupational forces claiming absolute immunity for bringing cholera deaths and water poisoning to Haiti, February 22, 2013, "
"HLLN has never subscribed to the callous and profiting-on-misery notion of letting the UN independently investigate itself while Haiti’s people die unmercifully.
Ezili’s Clean Water for Everyone in Haiti Project (Donate to support Zili Dlo– Clean water and renewable power for Haiti.) *********************
"On February 21, 2013, the United Nations officially rejected legal responsibility for damage claims to Haiti cholera victims...As the UN has rejected or been non-responsive to virtually every human right violation claims made by Haitians since the US occupation began in 2004, we at HLLN had no past UN behavior that provided a logical basis to expect a different answer from the UN other than the one it announced yesterday..."
Go HERE for interviews and excerpt 1 and 2 from the un-edited HLLN complaint against the USoccupational forces for bringing in the UNcholera to Haiti.
Video report on Haiti Riches, Zili Dlo Haiti solar project and the works of Ezili Dantò HLLN
Ezili's HLLN tells the non-colonial narrative on Haiti and promotes self-sufficiency not NGO dependency. Zili Dlo is an HLLN project for clean water, renewable power, cultural education and skills transfer for Haiti
HLLN's Zili Dlo is a Haiti-led, Haiti-capacity building humanitarian program to make renewable energy and clean water/sanitation access a reality for the poorest and most marginalized rural and urban communities in Haiti through relevant high-tech skills transfer and indigenously relevant culturally grounding education.
This video was made from a collection of still photos of our works and shows our first four peasant rural mothers who will solar electrify two remote villages and run a mini power plant at a community energy center for their community.
Zili Dlo is life and health for Haiti. Zili Dlo cultural orientation, identifies Haiti riches, wonders and famous landmarks for our peasant solar mothers to be informed ambassadors of Haiti during their six-month (Sept 2012 to March 17, 2013) course in solar power at Barefoot College in Tilonia, India.
The video is interspersed with Haiti riches and treasures - a constant and often-repeated Ezili Dantò/HLLN theme to counter the exploitative colonial narrative on the "natural poverty" of Black Haiti.
In fact, the opposite is true. Haiti or Ayiti is, along with Cuba, the oldest (over 1 billion years old) landmass in the Americas. The land is rich with every conceivable wealth. Take, for one, Massif de La Hotte or Lake Azuéi as detailed in the video harboring fauna, flora and animal species in patterns not found anywhere else in the world. The biggest caves in the Caribbean, like the Grotte Marie-Jeanne at Port-A-Piment, are in Haiti. Haiti possesses the largest and richest heritage of cave art in the Caribbean, and probably the most important collection in the Americas. - (http://on.fb.me/16XBfb3)
Also strategically, the US denies Haiti mineral riches and vast oil reserves. But Haiti riches is, in fact, the economic reasons the US took down Haiti's democratically elected government in 2004, installed the US occupation behind UN guns with the humanitarian invasion. For years it denied the over $20billion in Haiti gold until its mining companies had a puppet Haiti government to sign off on OPEN PIT mining in the time of UN-imported cholera. Haiti geologist say Haiti oil reserves is "an olympic pool to Venezuela's glass of water." The US is still strategically denying Haiti oil while carting it off, for almost ten years now, behind UN "peacekeeping" guns.
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Our Haiti model for real relief with human rights, healing self-reliance and dignity
"Haiti is rich and you can see that by looking at the four beautiful women in our solar power project. Just a few months ago these women where travelling down their rural mountain villages on donkeys or a motorcycle taxi and some didn’t even have a birth certificate much less a passport to travel to India. Today, they’ve had a global experience. Met the former president of Chile (UN Women executive director, Michelle Bachelet), know how to fabricate, install, use and maintain solar panel equipments to light up their own villages. Know how to operate our Zili Dlo high tech Max-Pure 01 solar-powered water filtering unit and can confidently sit at any international interview to answer questions about the most famous Haiti landmarks, their village’s historical significance and the say a bit about the cultural uniqueness of Haiti. Haiti's population is made up of 70 to 80% farmers. Zili Dlo's purpose is to help the majority population in Haiti, these semi-literate and literate rural women are given the tools and skills to improve their villages, personal lives and make a better future for their children. This is relief for Haiti. It's not about paying salaries to foreigners, purchasing useless foreign products or the money laundering of the Paul Farmer NGO subsidiaries to the US/Euro governments that's laughably called "aid to Haiti" and which collected $9 billion in earthquake relief supervised under the Obama administration by Bill and Hillary Clintons leaving little footprint or domestic development in Haiti. We Haitians are very proud to put this model for Haiti development out there as an example of the road to fundamental change. We set this forth in our 14 points for relief with dignity and human rights when the earthquake happened. But the powers who live off misery and poverty obviously have no interests in doing things differently." -- Ezili Dantò of HLLN, March 2013, in a Haiti radio interview about the return of the Zili Dlo merchant/farmer women who became solar technicians and are also trained in rainwater roof harvesting.
Ezili Dantò with Haiti solar power mothers - Marie Andrea Saint Felix, Marie Ilma Meriste, Madeleine Saint Louis at Toussaint Louverture airport on Sept. 29, 2012 reading itinerary, giving final travel instruction to India to Haiti solar mothers traveling to attend 6-months course, sponsored by the Indian government (ITEC/SCAAP). Photo Credit: Dominique Esser, HLLN, September 29, 2012
Four Zili Dlo solar mothers (Marie Andrea Saint Felix, Marie Ilma Meriste, Madeleine Saint Louis and Magalie Luc) in traditional Haiti rad karabela dress at Toussaint Lourverture airport in Port au Prince Haiti flanked by Zili Dlo executives, Rea Dol and Ezili Dantò. Photo Credit: Dominique Esser, HLLN and professional photographer/photojournalist - September 29, 2012
Zili Dlo Clean water and renewable energy for Haiti is authentic relief from Haiti suffering and containment in poverty with human rights, healing, self-reliance and dignity. These Zili Dlo solar mothers will earn income from the sums they receive from the community they service which sets a monthly contribution amount for their services to the village. Toussaint Louverture Airport on September 29, 2012 escorting the first four Zili Dlo solar engineer team. Ti Paul, Mark Jacob, Ezili Dantò, Mme Rea Dol, co-executive director of Zili Dlo in Haiti *************** The Journey Begins for four Haiti farmers/market women Sept 2013
Zili Dlo: Dream of a lifetime for our four Haiti women entering immigration at Toussaint Louverture Airport, Port au Prince, September 29, 2012
Waiving goodbye and smiling are Haiti mothers: Magalie Luc (35 years old, 4 children), Madeleine Saint Louis (35yrs old - 6 children ) from Okadè (6th Section Aux Cadet) Laferriere, Petionville and Marie Ilma Meriste (44yrs old from- 4 children), Marie Andrea Saint Felix (48yrs old - 3 children) from Fon Batis (7th Section), Arcahaie.
These mothers are simple market women, merchants and peasant farmers, the backbone of Haiti's informal economy and of Haiti. They are the community leaders in Haiti most in need of authentic help to raise up the living standards of their communities and provide a sustainable future for their children, families and Haiti as a whole. Zili Dlo women arrive in India. Pictured here with Barefoot College founder, Bunker Roy, UN women executive director Michelle Bachelet and other poor farmers/peasant women from Central America, Haiti, Guatemala , El Salvador. Photo credits: Batas at picasa album source here.
Michelle Bachelet was the President of Chile from March 11, 2006 to March 11, 2010. She was the first female president of Chile.
************** The Return to Haiti, March, 2013
Our beautiful Zili Dlo solar mothers are back in Haiti ready to solar-electrify their remote rural villages!
Four Zili Dlo solar power mothers (Marie Ilma Meriste, Marie Andrea Saint Felix, Magalie Luc and Madeleine Saint Louis) return to Haiti March 17, 2013 after six months of Zili Dlo sponsored training in Tilonia India on how to fabricate, install, use and repair solar panels and solar lighting equipment.
Magalie Luc, Madeleine Saint Louis show off the equipments they will install on 100 houses in their villages. Thank you to the Indian government for all their help and for the ITEC/SCAAP program.
Zili Dlo Solar mothers being interviewed in Haiti at Nouvelliste upon their return to Haiti. Seated at theNouvelliste Haiti offices are: Marie Andrea Felix, Magalie Luc, Madeleine Saint Louis and Marie Ilma Meriste. **********************
HLLN's Zili Dlo is renewable energy, SUSTAINABILITY, PUBLIC HEALTH, ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY, sanitary infrastructure, community development and transferring useful life skills that’s practical, relevant relief with human rights and dignity and that meets Haiti's urgent needs for self-reliance.
We'd like your help to continue this work, please donate to encourage and continue supporting this work.
To support this work and for updates, "Like" the Ezili Dantò public page on Facebook
Oil in Haiti -Economic Reasons for the US occupation behind UN guns and why tiny Haiti has the fifth largest US embassy in the world. Oil in Haiti and Oil Refinery - an old notion for Fort Liberte as a transshipment terminal for US supertankers by Ezili Dantò
Did Obama FBI re-image bombers into face of Black woman to counter smiling, white-boy-next-door-look of the Boston bombers?
On Thursday, May 2, 2013, Assata Shakur became the first woman added to the FBI’s most wanted terrorists list. The reward for her capture was doubled to $2 million. Shakur is the second person originally from the United States to be placed on the FBI terrorist list.
Assata Shakur is 65-years old and living in exile in Cuba. She was a member of the Black Panther Party For Self-Defense, the Black Liberation Movement and the Anti-War Movement back in the 1960s. She was falsely convicted in 1973 for killing a New Jersey state trooper during a gunfight where she was shot twice while having both her arms held up in the air, and shot in the back.
Shakur is the step-aunt and godmother to famed Hip-Hop artist and poet, Tupac Shakur and has always maintained her innocence and accused federal authorities of political persecution under Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO operations to destroy the Black power movement for human rights.
A surgeon who examined her wounds after the shooting said it was “anatomically necessary” for her arms to have been raised for her to receive the bullet wounds she did and that her hand wounds made it “anatomically impossible” for her have fired the shot that killed the state trooper. No gun powder was found on her hands. In 1979, Shakur escape from jail, later fleeing to Cuba where she received political asylum. Listen to Assata Shakur in her own words.
After holding the press conference to suddenly declare Assata Shakur a domestic terrorist who killed a state trooper "execution style" (which grossly misstates the documented and reported evidence), the FBI proceeded, 40-years after the incident, to place huge "most wanted terrorist" billboard photos of Assata in New Jersey.
"We're talking about a woman who was shot twice while attempting to give herself up to police who were co-operating with Federal authorities to target and assassinate or otherwise eliminate members of the Black Liberation movement just as they had done and admitted in a civil lawsuit to doing to Martin Luther King Jr." - Scotty Reid, Black Talk Radio.
In these fascist heyday of the morally corrupt financial elites, effectively represented by President Barack Obama, the billboard photo simply re-images bombers and terrorists with the face of an African woman.
Assata Shakur
For psychological purposes, for white supremacy, its vampirish, cannibalistic taste, its world-renown avarice, for the Euro minority's desperate historical and world lies to keep working, it seems that the kind, smiling, curly-haired white-boy-next-door-look of young Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev or of Connecticut's Adam Lanza - had to be countered pretty fast, no? Even if Obama's FBI had to reach back 40-years to re-make reality for today.
Captured suspected Boston bomber, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev
It seems, Obama's FBI found it convenient in this climate when the US public is reeling from shock and fear, after the Connecticut Sandy Hook school massacre and the Boston marathon bombings, to confuse the issue. Re-imaging bombers and mindless gunmen with the face of an African woman freedom fighter and putting her pictures on billboards in New Jersey serves not to find Shakur but only to intimidate the Black community and other civilian justice advocates legitimately protesting the prison industrial complex and US police departments killing unarmed, innocent citizens with impunity.
Adam Lanza, 20. Shot his mother and then fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in cold blood.
If the FBI's mandate is to preserve and protect the lives of the innocent, then FBI resources would best be applied to reign in the rogue police departments in the US that kill unarmed innocent citizens, especially in the Black community, with impunity. The FBI would better serve the public if they paid more attention to these domestic terror cells or concentrated more on finding the potential Lanzas and Tsarnaevs before these mentally disturbed folks caused public harm. This is the very same FBI that's accused of dropping the ball on the elder Boston bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. (Video -"Did the FBI drop the ball on elder Boston bombing suspect?" ; See also, Boston Bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev's connection to a CIA-linked NGO .)
Attacking and re-imaging a 65-year old Black woman, not even living in the US as a dangerous "domestic terrorist," who presumably would, like the mindless, gun-toting Lanza, hurt innocent school children, or like the two white Boston bombers, indiscriminantely kill marathon watchers and participants is an outragious misuse of the public trust and a gross distortion of the 1960s Black liberation struggle. In fact, the Black freedom movement was the object of state sponsored terrorism. None of its various offshoots, including the Black Liberation Army, practiced or advocated armed violence against civilians in order to advance a political agenda.
It is amazing — and pathetic — how swiftly the FBI felt compelled to frame the domestic terrorism conversation around a Black revolutionary living in Cuba, instead of two White men from Boston. - Kirsten West Savali, Newsone.com
The huge Assata Shakur "FBI most wanted" billboards, plastered in New Jersey where Obama's FBI know Assata Shakur is not living, is, as many have noted, about politically repressing the Black community. A pretext to invade, send drones to Cuba, derail efforts to normalize relations with Cuba? Shut up human rights avocates who struggle against tyrannical US foreign and domestic policies? Repress public dissent by dehumanizing and misrepresenting justice advocates as psychopaths or cold-blooded executioner?
"This is not about Assata Shakur, it is about sending a message to the Black community and those that live within it who stand up to police violence, oppression and murder of residents, one of the very reasons for the formation of the Black Panthers. It is about the political repression of those who advocate on the behalf of the many political prisons being held by the United States government often in torturous conditions. It is about sending a message to anyone who would take up arms in defense of life, liberty and true freedom in a country that is home to the largest prison population in the world which the federal government and various corporations use as slave labor. It is about sending a message to those that would dare stand up and point out that the US government is the most violent entity on the planet and one that commits acts of terrorism against non-white people and nations on behalf of maintaining the American imperialist status-quo." (See entire Scotty Reid article at FBI Billboards not about Assata Shakur, it is about FBI politically repressing the Black community. See also Assata Shakur in Her Own Words: Rare Recording of Activist Named to FBI Most Wanted Terrorists List and, A Song for Assata.)
The Black collaborators and sell-outs who uphold white supramacy
The colonial role of Bafyòti yo, the Black collaborators like President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and the Black FBI agent that was put up-front to help make the announcement at their press conference- are critical.
Haiti has proven this and showed the way out with the Bwa Kayiman call to action for all Africans and liberty lovers.
The Black collaborators and sell-outs for the enslavers fulfill anessential role for the colonial blueprint and false narrative to work and for the Empire's key stakeholders, for these white minorities to rule the world's masses they've contained-in-poverty, infected with deadly diseases, killed, imprisoned, brutalized, repressed, falsely accused, hunted down or coopted. (But, see "They wait without hate".)
It is critical to highlight over and over again how Obama is used to distract and cover up the recolonization, AFRICOM/US militarization, drone warfare in Africa, US occupation in Haiti and to whitewash the absolute police and economic repression in Black communities in the USA. White supremacy continues because of the behavior of the Black collaborators, the poor and disconnected who are daily bought out.
Assata Shakur was targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO program and forced into exile. But it is sadly under President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that, 40-years later, Assata becomes the first woman freedom fighter added to the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list as a "threat" to the US government with the reward for her capture doubled to $2 million.
Freedom warriors like Assata Shakur and others in the Black Liberation Movement helped pave the way, during the sixties liberation movement, for an Obama, Eric Holder, Susan Rice, Cheryl Mills to attend previously segregated schools of higher learning. Helped pave the way for them to hold the positions they hold today. Black culture in America evidences that death is not the worst end for a human being and thus Blacks have endured the various stages of white tyranny with dignity for over 400 years , not becoming what their Ancestors fought against.
Yet, in one fell swoop, under Obama, the FBI is projecting upon the Black community perhaps their boss' personal failures as the head of the white supremacist, profit-over-people world structure. It speaks to the dangerous effectiveness of the power elites Obama services that his presidancy can, without much outrage, attempt to destroy the Ancestors' dignified legacy as today's empoverished Black community is being falsely colored as mindless mass bombers who kill innocent civilians.
It's ironic how Black collaborators, who are also inheritors of Assata Shakur's freedom work, are now the bounty hunters hunting down anew Assata Shakur who clearly represents universal freedom for all, not mindless terrorism as they would have us believe. (See, Sister Assata: This Is What American History Looks Like by Alice Walker)
Lennox Hind, her attorney since the 1970s says: "The act she was (falsely) convicted of had nothing to do with terrorism."
The revolutionary Assata Shakur, once described as the soul of the Black Liberation Movement in the 1970s has pointed out that the same US/white power structure of yesterday's COINTELPRO still practices, with the complicity of the corporate media, systemic terror, racist tyranny against the Black community.
"COINTELPRO utilized and received full cooperation from the corporate media to demonize and alienate freedom fighters from the people who supported them, corporate media today is still fulfilling that role. The concept of a free and independent press in America has always been a fraud and it remains so today." -- Scotty Reid, FBI Billboards not about Assata Shakur, it is about politically repressing the Black community.
The US government making false accusations to criminalize, marginalize or get killed civilian dissenters to its structural injustices happens not only in the US but in Haiti, regularly. And yet if they used the same standards
Why, for instance, this week when the corporate media had a field day plastering the "news" that the defunct, Wyclef Jean charity Yele Haiti, was being sued for not paying its bills. We posted it thus:
But the Haiti voice keeping track. Asking why the whites stealing with impunity get no media coverage. Just advocating for "revolutionary changes in the structure and principles that govern the United States", or for self-determination, self-reliance and self-defense is criminalized and, as in the case of Assata, will bring the might of the FBI or other authorities on the justice seekers' head, for life. (Video – Assata Shakur in Her Own Words .)
But still, “live free or die” is Desalin's imperative. So we must face evil straight up, not become media zombies. For Haiti, one must always ask again and again why is the world allowing the lawless UN to hide the US occupation of Haiti with impunity?Why is Wyclef Jean always getting sued, but the UN, the Clinton Foundation, Red Cross, Dyncorp, Chemonics, "Partners & Death", USAID, their large NGOs, et al, are not also being sued for legal improprieties, money laundering, ethical conflicts of interests, over-reaching, switch 'n bait, not meeting their obligations to Haitians and for stealing Haiti earthquake funds?
Is it because, the white saviors of Haiti, both from the Left and Right Washington duopoly, benefit like bandits, by constantly securing their paternalism and elevating "the Haitians are corrupt" narrative?
Assata Shakur's life and struggles evidences how the radical, transformative voice against these parasites is systematically suppressed by (Ndòki) the elites, their intelligence agencies, NGOs, medias, military arms.
Haiti women, like Sesil Fatima, Gran Guitonn, Mari Jann, Defile, Grann Toya, Sanit Belè took up arms in self-defense to abolish slavery, forced assimilation, colonialism, the Euro-slave trade that sold their babies as cargo and to create Ayiti.
In Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide and the Democracy Movement was destroyed and overthrown twice by the US, its client-states and Haiti-supported oligarchs and death squads.
Sergeant Sanit Belè, Haiti revolutionary army, 1802 She was betrayed, captured, put to death by firing squad by the French along with her husband, General Belè, who tried to save his soldier-wife by trading his life for hers. Napoleon's soldiers killed them both after agreeing to the swap. Sanit's courage and how she died is what Haitians remember. She refused to be blindfolded. "Fire," she urged the French enslavers, baring her naked chest to Napoleon's firing squad. "You didn't put a blindfold on my husband. I don't need your blindfold. This is how a woman warrior dies." (Ezili Dantò’s Haiti Work: The non-colonial narrative.)
Haiti has been under US occupation since the 2004 bi-centennial US regime change. Its sovereignty grind down to bitter ash with the help of the international economic hit men and the White Savior NGO Industrial complex, headed by the likes of Dr. Paul Farmer, the UN, USAID, the Clintons, George Soros, the Bushes, the Washington "beltway bandits" consulting firms ( DynCorp, Chemonics...) and their Black collaborators.
Haiti is today occupied, terrorized, pillaged, re-enslaved.
"My name is Assata ("she who struggles") Shakur ("the thankful one"), and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the U.S. government’s policy towards people of color.”." -- Assata Shakur
Assata Shakur my sister, djab la di l ap manje w, se pa vre.
Recall Haiti's Bwa Kayiman - the call, the prayer, the greatest struggle for rebirth ever told...and still unfolding. E, e, Mbomba, e, e! Kanga Bafyòti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndòki. Kanga yo!
Kenbe la Assata. Nou la, nou la. Pa lage. Lamou pa nou an, li pli fò ke lanmò. Chèn sa pap janm kase! Nou fè yon sèl kò. Boukmann pa te fè Bwa Kayiman pou Assata Shakur sevi etranje.
"People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave." -- Assata Shakur
* To show your support and say Hands Off Assata Shakur, ho here and sign the on-line petition here and the "What Can You Do" suggestions, here. *****
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This is what (white) solidarity can look like Marilyn Buck - a Tribute http://vimeo.com/16406539 Marilyn Buck died on August 3, 2010 at the age of 62, after being released the previous few weeks ago after serving 25 years out an eighty year prison sentence for politically motivated incidents, including the liberation of Sister Assata Shakur.
Clorox Hunger lives in the same space that billions of dollars in "aid" are supposed to have been poured
by Ezili Dantò of HLLN June 10, 2013, Haitian Perspectives
In this May 23, 2013 photo, a malnourished 4-year-old Michelene Thelusme sits outside her home in Belle Anse, Haiti. In a country where half the food is imported, meals are becoming less affordable as the value of Haiti's currency depreciates against the U.S. dollar. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)
A disenfranchised Haiti means opportunity for the imperialist and their Left talking right wing vultures.
Bourgeoisie Freedom or democracy is, for instance, the dissonance beating at you when Clorox Hunger, emaciated Black babies, live in the same space that $9billions of dollars in humanitarian aid are supposed to have been poured. It's the confusion one feels when one juxtaposes the deep, Clorox-burning hunger ravaging the population with how the United Kingdom just opened up a new embassy in Haiti to boost UK companies "trading" in earthquake-hit Haiti.
The burning hunger, lack of relief and exploitation of the poor is easily explained by the indigenous Haitians who never saw any part of the $9-billion in his rural town. But the powers of the NGOs, the US humanitarian occupation of Haiti are so vast, so multi-layered and interconnected with the myth of white superiority and its media forces that the rural Haiti voice is drowned-out completely. For the "schooled" stakeholders involved, both in Haiti and abroad, are mostly so vested in US imperialism, US foreign policy and white supremacy they must continue to define and defend their presence in Haiti as "development work."
The renown Black psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon, once wrote :
"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.” --Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Starvation is everywhere in Haiti not just in rural Haiti, evidencing the deadly and unconscionable consequences of the current US-led world pain rush in Haiti.
There are too many "schooled" Haitians either indifferent to or plain collaborating with empire abroad and in Haiti. Most, passively suffer the racist capitalistic brutality of Papa Clinton, Paul Farmer-led NGOs, the UN and that overseer Barack Obama killing civilized, dignified co-existence in Haiti.
The children are dying. Haiti is dying, dying from the hidden US occupation behind UN mercenary guns. Dying from cholera, dying from Clorox hunger, drought, hurricanes, earthquake evictions, dying in hopelessness and despair, while in Petionville the cultural genocide has been worse than when that butcher of Haiti, Franklin D. Roosevelt - who was ironically so loved in America for his so-called New Deal egalitarian ideals “to make a country in which no one is left out."
But in Haiti, Franklin D. Roosevelt was known only for his almost Rochambeau- like butchery of egalitarian ideals, his butchery of the unarmed peasants, repression of Haiti indigenous religion, rewriting Haiti's Constitution in 1915 as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, giving a Clintonesque-Democrat face to stealing Haiti lands for the corporatocracy his ilk represented that was clear-cutting centuries-old Haiti trees for the Euro-tribes world war machine, instituting force labor chain gangs, dropping bombs on peasant farmers objecting to the US Marine occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934.
Not since then, has Haiti seen so many whites on the ground. Not since then have there been so much disease, desperation, death and hunger for the Black majority mixed in with four star hotels, token poverty programs and tourist attractions. That's what the white tribes and repugnant Black collaborators, their imperial war machines, false benevolence, endless death, dependency, dictatorships and cold wars, bring to indigenous populations world over. Death, starvation, despair, genocide - no raising of the indigenous population's standard of living.
It's in the face on these starving Haiti children - who cannot eat from our grandparent’s fruit trees now polluted by Monsanto, USAID nitrate/fertilizers and the UN cholera feces... Not to mention the destruction of Haiti poultry, rice, and all local industry from the ravages of the rabid elites privatization schemes, dumping Arkansas and Miami products that destroy local Haiti food production.
Never mind that Donna Karen sells Haiti crafts at Saks or to Hollywood, Sean Penn sponsors a Haiti marathon, Paul Farmer built a new hospital from quake remains, the Clintons built new sweatshops, all so that the tourists may be steered toward lying edifices masking Western imperialism, patriarchy, domination, blatant NGO racism and capitalism. For, it's the norm for US bourgeois democracy to tout “no one is left out."
It's as real today under Barack Obama as it was under the murderous FDR regime in Haiti back in 1915. Their new deals mostly leave out the Black majority populations in their sight. Indeed, bourgeois democracy's debilitating dissonance is refined by the Obama face to imperialism.
Under this more deadly bourgeois democracy, Haiti self-determination and cultural genocide are not only acceptable collateral damages but invisible injuries.
Our pains are turned back upon us, used to enrich NGOs, mining companies, the beltway bandits and most Western adventurers. It's not a gold rush in Haiti that's profitable to the Euro ruling tribes, but the rush to inflict more pain and collect, collect, collect it against the myth of white superiority, white universal love for all humankind using the structures that carry this myth forth since World War II ---the UN Security Council system, the NGO system, the foreign aid system, the International Monetary Fund/World Bank/World Trade Organization system (aka, the US-Euro cartels.) Disaster Capitalism is all about inflicting pain on the poor and Black then capitalizing on Black pain.
The ensuring social chaos is then capitalized upon to set up puppet neoDuvalierist US governments in Haiti, for the World Bank to draft Haiti mining laws, and for the uninterrrupted Euro-US pillage and plunder of Haiti Riches - over $20billion in gold reserves, its iridium, silver, copper, coal and the Haiti oil cache Haiti geologists say is "an olympic pool to Venezuela's glass of water." (Video report on Haiti Riches, Zili Dlo solar project and the works of Ezili Dantò/HLLN.)
Like the level of earthquake casualties, hunger in Haiti is Made in the USA and legalized by the post WWII US-Euro cartels
Under the US occupation, it's a "pain rush" in Haiti. Newspapers, foundations, “humanitarians”, think tanks write about it, elevate it, cash in on it, and keep it going, won't tell you, ala Jared Diamond, that the Haiti struggle is cleared of cognitive dissonance only when you factor in structuralized white supremacist hatred - its genocidal germs, guns and steel. Oh, no, that's downplayed.
Today's mainstream media reports that chronic hunger in Haiti is rising mostly because of geography - the weather!
According to the Associated Press, much of the hunger crisis "stems from too little rain, and then too much," corrupt Haiti politicians and because half of Haiti's food is imported.
But if Haiti is corrupt, then it's a 1cent corruption to the 99cent that stays in the hands of the Westerners per aid dollars to Haiti. If Haiti imports half its food, it's because of US destruction of Haiti agriculture - the forcible US disruption of a country that had an overproduction of food in the 1950s.
Some thirty-five years ago, the US started dumping Miami rice, corn, poultry, year-round into Haiti while forcing powerless Haiti governments to lift up protective tariffs.
Simultaneously, each time these “look-at-the-poor-starving-Haiti-babies” articles are written, the USAID beltway bandits, the UN and their NGOs will rush in to dump food aid instead of using aid monies to buy food from the local Haiti farmers in areas where there’s no crisis. But that is not a money-making proposition for the NGOs.
Moreover, the imperialist imposes World Bank conditions upon Haiti government prohibiting it from subsidizing its own local farmers and US Congress preside over laws prohibiting aid to come in the form of cash to buy from local Haiti farmers and give it as food aid to the folks affected by drought or storms. These articles will not mention, for instance, that US agricultural laws, like the 1980s Bumpers Amendment, restricts assistance for agricultural development if it may improve the recipient country’s ability to compete with U.S. farmers.
Also, if too much or too little rain alone could cause a hunger crisis, then Californians living in the Salinas Valley in Monterey California would all be dead from starvation since it doesn't rain, in one of the most fertile crop producing areas in the United States.
There's mostly not one drop of rain there between April to November of each year. Yet, the Salinas Valley in California, USA is one of the most fertile areas in the world, the "salad bowl" of America.
What Californians have in the Salinas Valley that you won't find in Haiti is water infrastructure, water management.
How long does it take for the fake charity workers to help build the infrastructure that's necessary for water management in Haiti? It's been more than 50-years of incessant destructive “aid” to Haiti. For fifty years, aid workers and the "humanitarians" have claimed billion in the name of "building Haiti back better," building infrastructure, building clean water/sanitation and they've collected and collected monies for these otherwise laudable purposes. But somehow they've never managed to put down permanent infrastructure in Haiti. That would mean they're out of a job, no?
Indeed, US economic, social and political policies in Haiti creates chaos, destroys the public infrastructure Haiti had in place with coup d'etats, regime changes and by pushing Haiti governments NOT to invest in updating or rebuilding old irrigation system, reservoirs, aquifers. Haiti riches are pillaged and stolen, not allowed to be exploited for national domestic development or to build environmentally sustainable aqueducts or reservoirs for capturing water, managing and storing water for household use, industrial use and agricultural use. US foreign policy in Haiti pushed rural farmers off their valuable lands and into Site Soley urban slums in the early 1980s where US sweatshop development did not work and these country folks would face crushing deprivations, UN massacres in 2004 and then massive deaths in the 2010 earthquake.
If you’re a peasant farmer in Haiti, do the labor intensive work to prepare the land, plant and harvest your crops, but can’t make a profit at the market because US rice is for free, what can you do if the sweatshops are gone, your farm is gone, but to get on a rickety boat to escape and find new life? US unfair trade makes it futile to go back and plant when every minute, food aid makes the Haiti peasants' harvest more expensive to buy than donated or subsidized US goods.
Although the AP article notes that:
"In 1997 some 1.2 million Haitians didn't have enough food to eat. A decade later the number had more than doubled. Today, that figure is 6.7 million, or a staggering 67 percent of the population that goes without food some days..." (-2 out of 3 people face hunger as Haiti woes mount, AP, June 10, 2013)
It doesn't contextualize it with US incessant destabalization, its sweatshop development and failed 40-year export led economy initiatives. But in any case, generally when a glimpse of the devastating depravity of the US occupation sneaks through the mainstream colonial narrative, it is quickly "democratized" by locating one Establishment "expert" to say that "there's sufficient proof that at least some of the aid is reaching the population." This journalistic trick then fully gains root to lift up (destructive) foreign aid as the only reason why the poor in Haiti are still alive. You'll not read the truth, which is that the over $2billion yearly in Haiti Diaspora remittances is the ONLY real direct aid to Haiti that actually reaches the population and keeps the poor alive.
Such colonial news on Haiti, will mostly remain silent about the centuries upon centuries and current US racist destabilization of Haiti while pimping out photos of our starving Black babies to sell newspapers, re-validate white supremacy, fuel humanitarian imperialism's raison d'etre, give the NGOs a document to go raise more funds for their coffers.
The Euro colonial deforestation and their centuries of environmental harm or current open pit mining initiatives in Haiti are mostly non-existent in these colonial narratives on Haiti. For, only the peasants' wood cutting for charcoal is highlighted. Nothing is noted about the current 10-year US occupation of Haiti behind UN guns - the totality of its devastating destructions in Haiti and failures. Nor the US support for the Duvalier dictatorships for 30 years from 1957 to 1986, the two US-sponsored coup d'etats in 1991 and then 2004 to reinstate Duvalierism over a democratically elected Haiti government, followed by the current US occupation behind UN guns. After all, the white savior industrial complex is as economically and socially benign today as it was during the Western tribes’ chattel enslavement of Ayiti, no?
"The US public won't be taught about the nearly 10-year old US occupation of Haiti by the media. But in fact today, the US is Haiti's mother country. And all around us the “colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.” - Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Ezili Dantò of HLLN June 10, 2013 Another day under US occupation behind UN guns********************
(AP Photos) In this May 23, 2013 photo, an unidentified malnourished boy stands near his home in Belle Anse, Haiti. Haiti in general and the mountain villages in particular have long suffered from chronic hunger. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) View Photo
In this May 22, 2013 photo, a malnourished 2-year-old Jerydson Baltazar is weighed by a community volunteer in Belle Anse, Haiti. The United Nations' World Food Program reports that nearly a quarter of Haiti's children suffer from malnutrition, though that figure is higher in places such as Guatemala and the Sahel region in Africa. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) View Photo.
In this May 22, 2013 photo, a malnourished 5-year-old Dieufort Jean stands in his kitchen holding a spoon as he waits for a meal in the community of Mabriole near the town of Belle Anse in Haiti. Mabriole town official Geneus Lissage fears that death is imminent for these children if Haitian authorities and humanitarian workers don't do more to stem the hunger problems. (AP Photo/ Dieu Nalio Chery) View Photo
In this May 22, 2013 photo, Darloune Charles, 9, removes scales from a fish in her home in Belle Anse, Haiti. In a country where half the food is imported, meals are becoming less affordable as the value of Haiti's currency depreciates against the U.S. dollar. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) View Photo
In this May 23, 2013 photo, a malnourished 4-year-old Michelene Thelusme sits outside her home in Belle Anse, Haiti. In a country where half the food is imported, meals are becoming less affordable as the value of Haiti's currency depreciates against the U.S. dollar. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) View Photo - Hunger in Haiti worst than ever.
US to rewrite Haiti Constitution to better serve the one percent
The leech says, "I cling to you because without your blood, I have no life."
Part 1 - Haiti: USAID/NGO/WB money laundering continues
As long as white supremacy paints Haiti as a failed state because of weak public services, when Haiti is prevented by US unfair trade and World Bank/IMF structural adjustments from investing in its own local economy and paints the Clintons, Paul Farmers, UN, World Bank, the NGOs and their three-piece suited Eurocentric-Haiti collaborators with the mark of international distinction and service to humanity, Haiti's pains will continue to be their cash cow.
"The holocaust in Ayiti continues. The insane imperial narrative and custom of honoring rapists, murderers, torturers, degenerate pedophile maniacs, pillagers, plunderers, enslavers and poverty pimps, starting with Christopher Columbus, who set forth the most prolonged genocides and horrific terrors in recorded human history, continues today. Officialdom honors the UN and UN envoys to Haiti as “humanitarians” or “God” bringing security, stability, peace, law, Christian ethos and “Western civilization.” Too many have jobs, egos, power and prestige invested in the profit-over-people system to see that the current saviors of Haiti extend mostly the same narcissistic, cultural blindness and denials as the initial “missionaries/humanitarians” brought to Haiti in 1492."–Ezili Dantò of HLLN, Oct. 10, 2011 , Bill Clinton has more power in Haiti than Haiti’s president: The Holocaust Continues
The NGOs carry out US imperial policies in Haiti in exchange for "charity funding" - which means, they money launder US tax payer and donor dollars and put it in their pockets. US imperial policies is about destroying Haiti manufacturing and local economy, expropriating Haiti natural resources and making a larger Haiti market for their subsidized Wall Street monopolies. (World Bank: Money Laundering Criminals.)
Se mèt ki veye kò - The Haiti population must look out for itself
Part 2: Se mèt ki veye kò - The Haiti population must look out for itself /Mining without community participation or profit
Racism continually allows the Haiti perspective and non-colonial narrative to be marginalized. But Ezili's HLLN has been the voice ahead of all to sound the alarm, to consistently and almost daily provide the tools for Avatar Haiti's defense for nearly ten years now. We cover all things Desalin, Dantò and about Haiti riches, Haiti epistemology.
Back in 2004, when Ezili's HLLN noted that the US occupation of Haiti wasn't because the US wanted to protect Haiti civil rights and stop a supposedly abusive Haiti elected government under Aristide. It was about stopping that popularly elected government from nationalizing Haiti resources. When we pointed this out, not one of the charitable industrial complex organizations today purporting to be helping Haiti protect itself with "good mining" laws would quote our work, not then and not now.
We were called the apologists for Lavalas and most of the foreign Haiti experts announced that Haiti had no resources the US could want. Today, the US occupiers are freely announcing their intent to change Haiti's mining laws with little public dissent of their nefarious occupation and resource pillages in Haiti. Ezili's HLLN is still the only voice out here exposing Oxfam, World Bank and the other fake philanthropic folks involved in protecting the interests of the one percenters, re-writing Haiti mining laws.
If you want to be ahead of the corporate lies, there's a Kreyòl, Lakou New York Interview where HLLN’s Ezili Dantò talks about environmental degradation concerns, Haiti resources and the foreign mining of Haiti resources. It was broadcasted in 2009 before the earthquake, before foreign cholera, before the public pillage of earthquake donor dollars. The English parallel (the text is here) to the 2009 Kreyòl interview may be listened to at Ezili Dantò with Chris Scott- CKUT on Haiti Riches.
At the point we did the interviews, it had just been announced that Haiti was no longer the "poorest" country in the Western Hemisphere, Nicaragua was. This was because of all the billions the foreigners had made in Haiti from 2004 to 2009 during the US occupation of Haiti. The economic elites made billions upon billions before the $9-billion the US "big-hearted humanitarians" would add to their coffers from laundering earthquake relief dollars largely back to US groups.
These interviews on Haiti Riches were done before the UN poisoned the Artibonite river with cholera. Haitians wondered then, in terms of US mining, what happens if mining chemicals poison the Artibonite river? Very uncanny this foreshadowing. For the invaders found another way to poison Haiti waters with greater market effectiveness.
Our "rescuers" benevolence is the decoy used for manufacturing consent to the US occupation in Haiti. Period, no comma. OXFAM, the IDB, the UNand the World Bank are simply howling a wolf's care for the sheep they're tearing apart.
June 20, 2013 Haiti radio/magazine 4 Je Kontre Kreyòl interview with Oxfam America, World Bank and mining representative talk about their mining in Haiti. Oxfam rep talks about how this forum is about diffusing information. No mention made that Haiti’s current law doesn’t allow drilling without a signed mining convention.
Neither Oxfam, nor the World Bank are questioning that US Newmont mining, VCS Mining and Canada’s Eurasian, St Genieve, Majescor mining et al, have managed to get the puppet Haiti president to unlawfully WAIVE Haiti environmental and mining laws- its Constitutional laws - in order for Northern miners to do OPEN PIT mining in areas close to earthquake fault lines in the North, in a country devastated by the last earthquake and with its water table already poisoned with UN cholera. The corporate media - liberal and conservative - are blithely writing PR articles about the World Bank "helping" Haiti draft new mining laws, conducting no investigation, ignoring the apparent suborning of local Haiti officials to do illegal and harmful acts more apocalyptic to Haiti and its people than the 2010 earthquake. There's no outrage or concern that mining and oil drilling are known to cause earthquakes.
Part 3 - US occupiers stealthily privatizing Haiti water: HLLN on the Haiti cholera case against the occupiers
Infecting over 650,000 and killing 8,200 Haitians with cholera in less than 2-years provides the NGO and multinational companies commercializing poverty and their Paul Farmer (NGO)/Jim Yong Kim (World Bank/IMF/WTO cohorts with 1) more opportunity to raise funds that will be laundered back to this corporatocracy but called "Haiti aid" 2) the more Haitians to die in their disaster capitalism infernos, the better to bring demand down and balance the elites' capital markets and 3) our deaths provides the multinational companies with the opportunity to privatize all sources of Haiti water under the pretext of cleaning Haiti water for the public's good health.
Not to mention an opportunity for the Bill Clinton/Warren Buffet-Swiss Re partnership to help sell cholera insurance to traumatize UN-cholera victims. If UN makes no reparations, if the US-led World Bank insists Haiti not invest in its own water/sanitation infrastructure. Then, of course cholera insurance is a good cash cow as Haitians would be contracting cholera, possibly forever.
In October 2010, the very month that the UN imported cholera to Haiti, before the charitable industrial complex saviors entered the fray as big-hearted humanitarians to delay and defer Haiti justice, HLLN wrote:
"The accused cannot investigate itself. The United Nations being the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the executioner, all in one, in the Haiti cholera case is contrary to established traditions as well as established national and international laws. (Listen to Oct 30, 2010 interview with Yves Point Du Jour
"The Alien Tort Statute (28 U.S.C. § 1350) of the United States Code reads: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” This statute is notable for allowing United States courts to hear human rights cases brought by foreign citizens for conduct committed outside the United States." --- Excerpt from HLLN complaint against theUS occupational forces for bringing cholera to Haiti.
Do not be shocked if the UN/PAHO/WHO stealthily concludes and garners public consensus for the proposition that justice for Haiti cholera victims shall be served if a law is passed that makes all sources of Haiti water propertyof a foreign company like Bechtel and it shall clean Haiti's water and sell it back to Haitians!
The Bolivian water wars is a good parallel to study in order to understand why Brian Concannon's Institute for Justice for Democracy (IDJH), a Dr. Paul Farmer affiliate, is "legally representing(?)" the Haiti cholera victims. IDJH like Paul Farmer have glaring ethical conflicts of interests issues that makes it impossible for them to vigorously defend the cholera victims by naming their own funders, employers, business associates, interlocking corporate board directors and the primary funder of the US occupation - the US government that occupies Haiti, their consulting firms and NGO cohorts as the Respondiat Superior for the destruction of Haiti government and water systems.
A first year law student readily understands that Haiti needs immediate injunctive relief, restitution and damages. Injunctive relief is not subject to immunity laws. Neither the US government nor the UN is too big to be prosecuted for human rights crimes, tort or gross negligence. As the largest funder and the main orchestrator of the UN presence in Haiti, the US government, is legally, the Respondiat Superior for the cholera wrongdoings in Haiti along with the UN.
Yet, CEPR and such foreign "policy researchers" on Haiti also claim IDJH/Paul Farmer and their not-filed-in-any-court-of-law cholera "lawsuit" against the UN/US, along with the UN/US non-funded $2 billion proposal for privatizing clean water in 10-years in Haiti is a DIFFERENT, a more positive paternal step for Haiti. That this sort of bait and switch, fraudulent Haiti aid and NGO funding always further weakens Haiti’s ability to handle its own affairs is of no consequence.
Haiti geologists have marked 20 oil sites. This is the Haiti map of mining resources showing 5 oil sites in Haiti, from the "White Book" of Fanmi Lavalas.
Part 4 - US to rewrite Haiti Constitution, Again (with new mining laws)
ARTICLE 36-5 of the Haitian Constitution, states: "The right to own property does not extend to the coasts, springs, rivers, water courses, mines and quarries. They are part of the State's public domain. "
So, how is it legally possible for the US to re-write Haiti mining laws? To legally change the Haiti constitution on ownership of Haiti resources at mines, coasts, springs, rivers, water courses and quarries? Who will stop this US occupation forces' re-writing of the Haiti Constitution to benefit US resource extraction companies and for privatization of Haiti's water? Ayisyen kote nou ye? - Where are the Haitians? (See World Bank says its helping Haiti draft mining legislation.)
Se mèt ki veye kò - Haitians must, as always, look out for themselves! Haiti's Charlemagne Péralte led the Caco opposition against the first US occupation of Haiti (1915 to 1934.) The Marines executed him and nailed his body to a door to prevent others from rising up. The opposite happened. He's the symbol of Haiti dissent to US occupation.
In 1987, Haiti attorney Yves Volel was gunned down by colonial agents with the Haiti Constitution in his hand. For two centuries men and women like attorney Volel constantly die, in cold blood, trying to bring law, order and real progress to Haiti. Always disguised as humanitarians, Haiti's powerful US-Euro tormentors, enslavers and destroyers forment chaos, orchestrate genocide and dependency in Haiti - 33 regime changes to date. But they write history through the media, academia and Hollywood. Celebrate and bestow angelic halos on their "humanitarians," like four-term US president, Franklin Delano. Roosevelt, who rewrote Haiti's constitution at the point of a gun and is known to Haitians, during the first bloody US occupation, as the butcher of Haiti.
The ideal the US-Euro elites promote and the reality these imperialists hoarders bring to application seem too contrary for their Northern public to credit.
Haiti’s current law doesn’t allow drilling without a signed mining convention. But US Newmont mining got a waiver to the current Haiti law without public discussion, without the approval of even the puppet Haiti legislature. Martelly signed it in violation of the Haiti Constitution. (Gold Rush in Haiti: Mining Investment Good for Whom?)
The US companies were offered a friendly, public-private partnership by the Aristide government to exploit Haiti oil, gold, iridium, uranium and other strategic resources. That idea of equitably revenue sharing with Haiti peoples INSULTED the northern US-Euro monopolies so much, they hired and trained death squads in the Dominican Republic from former Haiti army officials to take down Haiti's duly elected government. And when the hired jackals and US mercenaries, including Guy Philippe/Louis Jodel Chamblain paramilitaries, could not do the US regime change themselves, US Special Forces along with Canada and French troops landed in Haiti on Feb. 29, 2004 and through extraordinary rendition put President Aristide and the first lady on a plane to Africa. This merciless and shocking malevolence was followed by a brutal 3-months US Marines sweep of Site Solèy, Bel Air, Solino and other dissenting areas and then covered up with US MINUSTAH's permanent war in Haiti behind NGO imperialism.
Between 2004 to 2006 the US occupation behind UN guns slaughtered 14 to 20thousand Haitians. If it wasn't for organizations like Ezili's HLLN the Wall Street assassination squads in Haiti might have slaughtered more in the same manner the CIA orchestrated paramilitary death squads in Guatemala got to slaughter 200,000 Guatemalans on behalf of US United Fruit companies. In Haiti with former UN employee Gerald Latortue illegally imposed as Prime Minister, the oligarchs urged Brazil commanders to kill more poor Haitians so that Haiti oil and gold can now freely be carted off to service the Northern vampires as Haiti majority die of Clorox hunger, UN cholera, unfair trade, endless debts and WB neoliberal death plans. (The Pain Rush in Haiti : Clorox Hunger lives in the same space that billions of dollars in "aid" are supposed to have being poured.)
Today, the US is re-writing Haiti mining laws for its corporations.
"Now that these ghouls think we indigenous Haiti are all infected with vampire blood and DEAD, it's no surprise, the NGO OXFAM/World Bank, is howling out a wolf's care for the sheep they're tearing their fangs into - funding conferences, issuing action alerts with the other wolves GUARDING Haiti from the mining companies? I would laugh out loud at these media missives if the depravity these hidden war criminal collaborators bring forth wasn't as evil to the Haiti majority as a Hitler's holocaust was." (Excerpt from [ezilidanto]NGO false benevolence manufactures consent for the US occupation in Haiti: OXFAM & World Bank howling a wolf's care for the sheep they're tearing apart; or here.)
The global North's insane sense of entitlement knows no bounds, no law, no morality, no ethics. The US government destroys Haiti farmers, Haiti manufacturing, Haiti water system, Haiti politics, Haiti spirituality in order to reshape, privatize and call Haiti resources their own. (Se mèt ki pou veye kò.)
With respect to this sudden US public effort via coup detat NGO, Oxfam USA, purported to be about securing protection for occupied Haiti from US mining giants. This false benevolence is a way to do the mode soufle.
In Haiti, mode soufle (bite and blow) is where the cunning rural rat takes a bites while you're sleeping, then blows on the injury in order to lessen the pain, keeping you asleep longer so the rat increases its chances for getting a second bite before the peasant awakes from the piercing pain. While the US is destroying the provisions in the Haiti Constitution protecting Haiti from foreign mining companies, Oxfam and its other international cohorts are sent forth to do PR for America's commitment to protect Haiti's poor from the giant mining companies?
But keep your eye on the ball Haitians and true friends of Haiti. For they must especially ERADICATE these protective local Haiti laws that give the local Haiti inhabitants the right to exploit the mines or to participate in mining exploitation BEFORE the government may legally offer that opportunity to outsiders. To wit:
ARTICLE 39 of the Haitian Constitution, states that the "inhabitants of the Communal Sections have the right of preemption for the exploitation of the State's land in the private domain located in their locality."
ARTICLE 36-6 of the Haitian Constitution, states that "law shall establish regulations governing freedom to prospect for and work mines, or bearing earths, and quarries, ensuring an equal share of the profits of such exploitation to the owner of the land and to the Haitian State or its concessionnaires."
ARTICLE 36-5 of the Haitian Constitution, states: "The right to own property does not extend to the coasts, springs, rivers, water courses, mines and quarries. They are part of the State's public domain. "
Part 5: US occupiers mining on fault lines
Geologists maintain the rubbing of the tectonic plates up North create the Northern earthquake fault line vulnerability as well as release the resources the Northern multinationals are digging for in Haiti.
"Haiti ‘s water supply is ALREADY contaminated by foreign cholera feces, what will leaking cyanide, arsenic emissions, mine waste, Marine ecosystem destruction and open pit mining and unsupervised drilling leave Haiti with up North?"
Peruvian peasants have been struggling against US mining company Newmont's $5 billion Conga gold project which is effectively privatizing certain public lakes:
"Lake Perol is one of several lakes that would eventually be displaced to mine ore from the Conga project. Water from the lakes would be transferred to four reservoirs that the U.S. company (Newmont) and its Peruvian partner, Buenaventura, are building or planning to build. The companies say the reservoirs would end seasonal shortages and guarantee year-round water supplies to towns and farmers in the area, but many residents fear they would lose control of the water or that the mine would cause pollution...'Why would we want a reservoir controlled by the company when we already have lakes that naturally provide us water?' asked..a peasant patrol group..."-- Peru protesters push to stop $5 billion Newmont mine, June 17, 2013.
Where are the Haitians - Ayisyen kote nou ye - concerned with the taking of Haiti water to mine $20billion in gold for foreigners with open pit mining chemicals known to kill, pollute, cause earthquakes. Mining that depletes ancestral land aquifers used for centuries for drinking, bathing, watering livestock, plants, Haiti fields, etc?
Where's the public outrage when one notes media missives such as, World Bank says its helping Haiti draft mining legislation. Shouldn't the international community -these self-defined "big-hearted humanitarians" be shouting that defenseless "Haiti can't take anymore Made-in-the-USA devastations. That human life and environmental health is more important than Northern profit?"
If Peru's $5 billion Newmont mine project requires displacing huge amounts of Peruvian water sources, how much more is Haiti's $20 billion gold mine project going to deplete Haiti aquifers and other water sources which are already in grave shortage because of UN cholera poisoning? (Peru protesters push to stop $5 billion Newmont mine.)
It is only possible for the US to re-write Haiti mining laws because Haiti is under US tutelage and might make right. Who will stand for justice , stop this US occupation forces, its rampage and re-writing of the Haiti Constitution to benefit US-Euro resource extraction companies and for privatization of Haiti's water? Ayisyen kote nou ye? Haiti must look out for itself - Se mèt ki veye kò.
For those foreign charity workers reconciling with injustice like Farmer's Partner and Death, for the Haitian technocrats and diaspora collaborators pretending amnesia, proclaiming ignorance or innocence, occupied Haiti runs thus- “recently, there was a government press conference. There was nothing ‘government’ about it; we organized it and told them what to say,explains the spokesman for one of the largest UN organizations in the Haiti." (Full article at The NGO Republic of Haiti).
Part 6 - Colonial Deception: The most educated and powerful on planet earth benefit from and help hide the US genocidal occupation of Haiti
On December 31, 2003 this author was in Haiti to honor the bicentennial of Haiti's independence. It was very late, I'd already gone up to my room for the night. But my good friend Jafrikayiti (Jean St-Vil) had come to the Montana Hotel in Petion-Ville to meet up. He called from the front desk. I took the elevator down and found a heated conversation in progress with US career diplomat and current member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Luigi R. Einaudi, who was then the Assistant Secretary General at the Organization of American States. Journalist Kevin Pina was arguing with him. What Einaudi said as he exited towards the elevator up to his room was so astonishing, I took out pen and paper and wrote it down. On the eve of Haiti's 200-year independence, the OAS's Luigi Einaudi said, "the international community is so screwed up they're letting Haitians run Haiti."
The US occupation of Haiti is hidden by the white saviors, their educational and professional institutions and media outlets. These operatives hide the re-enslavement of Haiti by centering the uninformed persons' attention on the UN or, on their own "good works" in Haiti. Empire's various celebrity front-men are constantly awarded and elevated with the highest international distinction for their "service to humanity." When one lifts up the white supremacy visor, the stark reality is that the fake US progressives control the conversation on Haiti to improve the rabid elites' global feudal system not to take it down.
Haitians require an end to the US occupation of Haiti, a stop to the mining companies and the NGO republic. If the Haiti government was sovereign and free from US bullying neoliberal World Bank/IFIs policies; if Haiti oil, gold, iridium, marble and uranium resources were not privatized but used for Haiti's public welfare, there would be no need for food-aid in Haiti.
If the Haitian government would be allowed by Paul Farmer's partner at the World Bank, President Jim Yong Kim to invest in its own health care, its own people's education, water management and to protect its own local economy from unbalanced US trade with protective Haiti tariffs, there would be no need for NGOs in Haiti. There would be no need for a Paul Farmer hospital in Mirebalais Haiti not accountable to the Haitian public; no need for food-aid, no need for the NGO pèpè schools and "orphanages."
USAID just launched its newest money laundering scam, - Feed the Future North - to capitalize on the media brainwashing of US tax payers andcarry forth its usual extortions in Haiti. Media misinformation on Haiti allows death squad-maker USAID to freely use tax payer dollars and "aid" monies for creating new markets in Haiti for their biotech, pharmaceutical, shipping and big-agribusiness companies.
How much sense does it make to empower NGOs to provide local agricultural aid in Haiti while keeping the Haiti government weak and unable to respond to its farmer constituents. When will the human rights community stop getting funds from the imperialist, divest from the system killing the poor, commercializing poverty. Use their platform to act as real humanitarians to confront subsidize big agribusiness destructions, Monsantogenetic poisons and World Bank/IFS priorities inhibiting local agricultural and manufacturing growth? The current NGO push to "help" Haiti local agriculture is nothing more than another means to further increase NGO capacity and to create more unwilling markets for the US biotech and big agri-business industries instead of increasing Haiti governmental capacity and supporting autonomous Haiti community-based organizations that are the real engines of progress and Haiti's only hope for sustainable development. (Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy: USAID Policies in Haiti Grassroots International and Ezili Dantò' at Foreign Investment means Death and Repression: A Historical Perspective.)
Haiti misery and the general American public's cluelessness is their cash cow. US false benevolences in Haiti, its fairly uninterrupted corruption, has been going on for over two centuries. But as recently as in 1997 when a similar USAID initiative was analyzed, Grassroots International noted :
"CARE has been 'helping' people in the Northwest for decades. But each year, the misery of the people of the Northwest increases. What is the real impact of this aid? To make people more dependent, more vulnerable, more on the margins?...The aid is not given in such a way as to give the people responsibility, to make them less dependent....This is what you call ‘commercializing’ poverty....The people's misery should not be marketed.... Samuel Madisten, Haitian Senator.” --Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy: USAID Policies in Haiti Grassroots International 6 March 1997.
Unless Haitians start protesting like the Peruvians, the World Bank, NGOs and US mining companies, will gather together as one and with depraved indifference to Black life and environmental health in Haiti successfully amend the Haiti constitution as the US marines did during the first occupation (1915-1934), to destroy more Haiti life than UN cholera, privatize all sources of Haiti water.
Ezili Dantò is an award winning playwright, a performance poet, author and human rights attorney. She was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in the USA. She holds a BA from Boston College, a JD from the
University of Connecticut School of law. She is a human rights lawyer, cultural and political activist and the founder and president of the Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN). She runs the Haitian Perspectives on-line journal, the Ezili Dantò Newsletter and Zili Dlo, an Ezili Network project for clean water, renewable power, cultural education and skills transfer for Haiti.
“Homeless quake victims get evicted in the hurricane season while the Bush-Clinton fund builds a new $29 million shelter for Westerners with donation dollars to help quake victims. Once a vagabond always a vagabond...'Kou midi sonnen, lap tonbe ranni.' It’s their nature. Fòk li ranni.” – Ezili Dantò, excerpted from I pay this price for you
"...The Clinton foundation donated toxic trailers (formaldehyde shelters) that sickened Haiti school children and helped subsidized the Western insurance companies by providing CHOLERA INSURANCE to the broken market women. These merchants' income are never factored into the Haiti wealth index by empire's pirates at the US-led World Bank. No. Haiti "informal" economy is valuable enough to merit market merchants making cholera insurance payments to (Bill Clinton's pal) a Warren Buffet organization for potential lost commercial interests but not valuable enough to be counted on the plus side within the Haiti income base when figuring out who is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. If Haiti informal economy was counted as valuable for Haiti in the world financial markets, it would show more Haitians WORK and more Haitians own LAND than any other island populations in the Caribbean. Of course that's also numerical as Haiti makes up 60% of the Caribbean population. But positives are not counted for Haiti, only the need to keep Haiti facts/significance hidden, bring pain so the bloodsuckers may happily continue to feast...."
"Are American taxpayers not yet tired of the perversion of good-hearted American intentions? The charity industry’s scams. Their bait and switch? (Western Traditional NGOs: Tools of War.) Did Americans know the Red Cross was soliciting monies to build a for-profit luxury hotel when they reached into their pockets, text monies, to the Red Cross to bring relief to the Haitians they saw, on TV, with crush limbs being amputated without anesthetic?" –Ezili Dantò, Corruption uninterrupted in Haiti
“They’re open for business on top of our decomposed dead bodies, on top of our crushed bones, on top of our intense grief. Open for business on top of our ground water contaminated by their diseased feces. They’ve made so much money.” –Ezili Dantò, I pay this price for you
Ezili’s HLLN urges the Haitian government, if you politicos have any, any shred of dignity left, void the SOFA agreement and deport all NGOs from Haiti now." –Ezili Dantò, Corruption uninterrupted in Haiti
Obama's declaration identifying with Trayvon falls short. Action is required. Ezili Dantò of HLLN reMEMBERS Trayvon Martin. Helpful links for undoing racism and four articles by whites to white liberals advocating for justice for Trayvon are highlighted.
For Trayvon
Flow beloved native son, in the timeless power of the blood of the slaughtered African
President Obama's declaration that "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago," is a day late and dollar short. It's good that President Obama finally said something. However, it's hollow without the use of his power to affirmatively bring a civil rights case against George Zimmerman or to push legislation to repeal the Stand Your Ground laws. Obama has the power, has no re-election concerns to negotiate. His declaration of empathy without use of power is simply posturing - political theater and crocodile tears. (Obama: Trayvon Martin could have been me').
American courts did not give Trayvon Martin's family any justice.
Trayvon Martin, a Black male, barely 16-years old and unarmed, was talking on the phone, munching on skittles while walking home. George Zimmerman stalked him, presume he was a criminal come to rob the neighborhood and fatally shot the child less than one minute after the phone call disconnected. But it is the unarmed, innocent Black male who was naturally considered by the authorities, as inherently dangerous and the gross aggressor. The mostly all-white jury, duly presented with evidence of this racist narrative, suitably exonerated the killer.
Our prayers and condolences to the Trayvon family. Courage and strength to the most maligned Haitian in this tragedy, Trayvon Martin's friend and chief witness in the case, Rachel Jeantel.
Rachel Jeantel, like Trayvon, was put on trial instead of George Zimmerman.
The same Florida prosecutors who successfully prosecuted and convicted a Black Florida mom to 20-years in prison for simply firing warning shots could not find the language to defend a Black child like Trayvon. (See, Injustice in America: Fla. mom gets 20 years for firing warning shots and John Oliver video. See also, Conservative commentator, Larry Elder says "Every Neighborhood Needs A George Zimmerman? Racism is not a major problem in America anymore?" Larry Elder is a fool. You can't help free a slave who doesn't know he's a slave.)
Racism is institutional. Racism is taught and white privilege is a benefit to every white and a minus for every Black, regardless of how much money each has or doesn't have or the innate compassion or critical anti-racist sentiment of the white. (See below four recommended articles written for whites by whites on Trayvon).
I don't know how the Ancestor's survived slavery. I don't know how we keep standing against the overwhelming barbarity of white supremacy and imperialism worldwide. Don't know.
The acquittal of George Zimmerman adds to our endless pain...
Trayvon, if the Black mother's tears could wake up the dead, you and tens of thousands of young Black youths like you, would be alive.
I am desperately sorry that we've not worked smart enough, been intelligent enough, powerful enough to have made the consequences of you dying like this so terrifying, that no George Zimmerman ilk would ever think of pulling a gun on you, much less follow you around as if you were born a criminal.
Your brothers, friends, fathers - Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), dead prez and Mikeflo made a song for you. We, at the Ezili Network will continue to reMEMBER you.
Flow Trayvon, beloved native son, in the timeless power of the blood of the slaughtered African that calls to us. That deep love/pain that knows your name directs us, compels us to close down this white supremacist system that took your life, put your dead corpse on trial instead of putting your killer on trial and then killed you again by denying your spirit justice, your family some release. Rest in the power of that long line of pain and grief. Honed in the hell-fires on their "New World" evil, your spirit joins with wondrous spirits. Not Cain but Able rising. Able rising.
In every corner where American injustice towards an unarmed, helpless Black child takes a swipe, your name Trayvon will crash down for justice. Hold on people. Ginen poze.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” -Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
************************************************ Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network **********************************************
Mos Def, Dead Prez and Mikeflo's Tribute to Trayvon
It's time for action. It's time to close down the tyrannical system.
Here are a few supportive articles that validates our lost, our pain, our sight, our humanity. In this post for mourning Trayvon, I put first the voices of Black men such as Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), Dick Gregory and Glen Ford at the Black Agenda Report for his ceaseless serums that bolster our value as a people and tells of our efforts for justice and peace.
In his latest piece, the fearless investigative journalist and human rights activist, Glen Ford, executive editor at The Black Agenda Report, explains white madness, the death of Trayvon Martin and why there probably won't be a Department of Justice civil rights initiative.
John Oliver segmenthighlights the blatant racial double standard in Florida’s self-defense laws.
Four Trayvon articles written by whites to the white liberals
Four recommended articles for white activists advocating for justice for Trayvon Martin, written by whites to white liberals.
"Where are the white feminists’ outrage for Rachel Jeantel?... "
"Let me be clear – there is no way to distance yourself from the white supremacist system if you are white. The only way to distance oneself from a white supremacist system is to destroy it. By destroy I do not simply mean internally “checking your privilege,” which I’m not sure is an action at all but more of a stopping of action. I mean literally destroy. Refuse to acknowledge this legal system as legitimate. Take down every prison, every courtroom, take the guns and the authority of the state away from every police officer. Disband our colonialist military."
" I have benefited from my pale complexion for my entire life. If no one knows my name, I am any other white person; and I get many of the privileges that come with that territory. No amount of anti-racist sentiment or *perceived* anti-racist actions on my part will EVER change that, until the last US courtroom has closed its doors for good. " --- Suzahn Ebrahimian, To White Folks: The Collective Lament of Trayvon Martin is Not Your Anti-Racist
"Recognize you represent a homicidal, repressive force. Not the victims of it"- How many times have Haitians said this to the white saviors industrial complex headed by the Paul Farmer/UN/NGO ilks in Haiti... For how long have we exposed their sneaky complicity with the system that vies for the soul of Black folks... Oh no, they will claim to know more than you, feel your pain more deeply than you do. In fact, they're YOU because they lived behind NGO walls and color coded distribution lines in Haiti! To paraphrase Richard: 'Do you dream at night, Black people. Be careful. Blan kolon will even claim your midnight dreams as his!' - Ezili Danto of HLLN (See video, I am Not Trayvon Martin, I am not Troy Davis)
Article 3: We Are Not Trayvon Martin "I am not, and will never be, Trayvon Martin. Nor will I be Rachel Jeantel. Or Any Other Black Person in America. I will never, ever understand. But I will forever grieve how people that look like me treat people that look like them...."
"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting our time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” --Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s
George Zimmerman is Peruvian white. As Haitians, we know the hard way, how the majority of Latin Americans treat the Black or the Native indigenous.
We live, on an Island with Dominicans where the Bateys are where Haitians are enslaved. Most folks born in Mexico or Latin American countries are defined as Hispanic and that term is only defined as "non-white" in the US.
"Hispanic" outside of the US generally mean descendants of European whites from Spain no matter their skin tone who identify in aesthetics, ideals, habits and nationality as WHITE. And that whiteness identification makes them supposedly superior to Black Brazilians, Black Peruvians as well as Haitians.
There was a time when the European tribes looked upon the Irish as the "Blacks" of Europe or before the end of the Cold War, where even some Slavics, Romanians or some Russians weren't quite "white" enough. But America needs those immigrant "white" numbers up and identifications with white supremacy going in order to keep the majority in the world from rising against its tyranny. Divide to conquer.
Of course in America needing the numbers, the Irish became white. Soon though, as America needs numbers more, all the Latinos along with Japanese, will be categorized as whites? Zimmerman used the confusion to alternatively identify himself as Hispanic and white. Depending on who his family wanted to manipulate. Much has been forgotten about Zimmerman's many inconsistencies, and the attempt to have his wife hide monies raised from the white communities for his legal defense.
The one light in this case, is the Latino/Latina communities, used to being considered as almost lowly Blacks in the US, refused to let Zimmerman divide them from standing with the Justice for Trayvon defenders.
George Zimmerman had a choice of race and ethnicity
Zimmerman had the benefits, privileges and choices of race, presumed "Americanism" and ethnicity that Trayvon Martin could never have because he was Black and seen as an unassimilated Black youth. These privileges operate to further institutionalize racism.
On the US census and government forms, Hispanics have a choice to define themselves as white Hispanic or non-white Hispanic. The choice is fictional like the white race. A political choice depending on the individual identification for those who can get away with it in US. For even if an African marks himself as non-Black, his features and skin color will operate to deny him privileges others who can pass for Italian, Israeli, Argentinian white, Hispanic white, Spanish white or Greek are accorded.
Trayvon Martin, dark-skinned Blacks and Blacks without features culturally defined as European features, do not have such political and survivalist choices under white supremacist's US.
Historically, in the US whenever poor people came together to fight the oligarchs/robber barons/one percenters to push for change because the conditions were so oppressive for all working peoples, no matter skin color, in each case the ruling class turned to white supremacy to beat back the efforts from below. (Watch, for instance - The Invention of the White Race.)
Zimmerman and how white supremacy works
Here's how George Zimmerman's acquittal worked the white supremacist's US system. George Zimmerman's brother, Robert, told Bill Maher that George is not white, could "NEVER be white." He identifies their mother as Afro-Peruvian and his father as a US-born white, "our father is from German descent" he says. This, to somehow show George Zimmerman cannot be racist.
Later on, the family publicly dropped the identification with Afro-Peruvian and their Hispanic roots.
In white supremacy America, that strategy works. Especially notable is that Zimmerman's white US-born father is a judicial officer in the US who probably knows well the legal privileges of being white to that of part "Afro-Peruvian."
For instance, for Afro-Peruvians in Peru "racism remains so deeply ingrained in Peru that many don't consider the practice discriminatory." (See, Lima: Where the pallbearers are black .)
Associated Press/Rodrigo Abd - In this July 2, 2013 photo, black pallbearers put on their white gloves as they prepare to handle a coffin during a burial in Lima, Peru. These pallbearers are in the job precisely because of the color of their skin, a phenomenon unique to this South American capital that was a regional seat of Spain’s colonial empire for more than three centuries and where racism remains so deeply ingrained that many Peruvians don’t consider the practice discriminatory. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
George Zimmerman's acquittal shows, certain non-black people of color definitely do reap the benefits of anti-Black racism, both in the US, in Peru, mostly all over the world.
Trayvon Martin had no such choices. He was Black and dead. He had been born to a world and in a society that generation after generation imposes a presumption of criminality on Blacks. Born in a world that conflates Black with being criminal. Whiteness plus the unevenly applied Stand Your Ground Laws which removes the obligation to retreat helped make the Zimmerman defense strategy a slam dunk. Because George Zimmerman had those choices, he could choose a defense strategy that empathized his whiteness and rarely publicly identified with his Black and Hispanic hyphenates other than to use them to deflect charges of racism. For, "white people who kill black people in 'Stand Your Ground' states are 354% more likely to be cleared of murder."
Blaming the victim, Trayvon Martin, is not justice. But it sums up the historical relationship that Blacks have had with people in the US who hold power. Statistics show, George Zimmerman's use of deadly force, on an unarmed child that he provoked, is a criminal act mostly when the victims are white.
Zimmerman provoked the fight and is responsible at law -if racism wasn't involved - for the consequences, for the death of Trayvon Martin. The double standards are clear. The white perpetrators of crimes, especially in killings of Black people, are still, in 2013, under Obama, more likely to get an acquittal.
"I still don't understand what Trayvon Martin was supposed to do," Amy Davidson writes in the New Yorker Magazine. "There is an echo, in what people say Martin should and shouldn't have done, of what people say to women when bad things happen to them in dark places." (See also from Ezili Dantò, For Trayvon: Obama a day late and a dollar short).
Ezili Dantò of HLLN July 2013
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In memory of Trayvon Martin, consider going to see Fruitvale Station, the story of Oscar Grant. Much like Trayvon Martin, Oscar family did not get justice. His story is now on film. For other positive action, see also Justice for Trayvon: Actions You Can Take ; The Justice for Trayvon Action Kitor the info here.
"Uncle Sam Zimmerman: George Zimmerman stalked a young man and picked a fight. When the youth fought back, George shot him dead in ”self-defense.”
Uncle Sam, also a self-appointed “protector” (as in protection racket), stalks the world picking fights. When the victims fight back, Uncle Sam screams “terrorist!” and kills them."-- Per Fagereng, Host of the "Fight The Empire" show on KBOO radio, Portland.
In the Age of Obama: Truth You Won't Hear at the 50th Anniversary March on Washington
The 50th anniversary (kumbaya) March on Washington falls in the shadow of stop and frisk, mass incarceration of young Black males, the unequal application of Stand Your Ground laws, indefinite solitary confinement and education and prison privatization. The 50th anniversary (kumbaya) March on Washington is held up by officialdom and its sycophants to highlight the "progress" of truth and justice while the planet groans under the weight of US imperialism, unfettered capitalism, resource wars, inequities, genocide, ecocide and injustices that are hidden worst than ever.
In the age of Obama, truth is subverted, symbolism uplifted.
The folks at Black Agenda Report - Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon, et al, speaking in this video, count amongst the few remaining and un-cowed truth-tellers. The video outlines the issues of the day that will most likely be truncated at the 50th anniversary March on Washington. Insightfully pointing out how the shallow Black talking heads collaborating with injustice are mostly hired to sweep truth under the table in the age of Obama.
Glen Ford details how the US military conquest of Africa is all but complete. Tells how all African armies except two - Zimbabwe and Eritrea - have been integrated into the US military command. Names the US control African militaries and strongmen. Military control of Africa also means Africa's increasing trade with China is not a threat.
This must watch video broadcast also touches on: the New Jim Crow in the US; the land grabs and gentrification of lands in the cities; privatizations of education; pervasive racial surveillance and mass incarceration in Obama's second term; Obomba's drone warfares...murdering of over 222 innocent children. Obama military killings of Afghan, Pakistani, Somali, Yemeni based on secret regulations and secret "profiles."
Then, Cornel West exposes Sharpton, Jay-Z and the others on the Obama plantation: the Black collaborators' obsessed with status, career, assets rather than justice and truth.
Bruce Dixon's sends a video letter to them. To MHP, Toure, JoyAnn Reed. His comments cover Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, Mumia Abdu Jamal, cover ups of government crimes, criminalizing the messenger. You may perhaps, watch the video below, in rememberance of Dr. Martin Luther King on the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. He stood with the truth-tellers.
******************************************* Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network * Ezili Dantò is a human rights lawyer, performing artist/writer and award wining playwright. More info at - ezilidanto.com/zili
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Ezili's HLLN amplifies the voices and stand in solidarity with the prisoners on an indefinite hunger strike against cruel, inhuman and degrading prison conditions. Denounces court ordered force feeding of hunger-strikers as torture.
"...80,000 prisoners in the United States of America...are subjected to solitary confinement, nearly 12,000 are in isolation in the state of California...'Even if solitary confinement is applied for short periods of time, it often causes mental and physical suffering or humiliation, amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and if the resulting pain or sufferings are severe, solitary confinement even amounts to torture...(The UN Special Rapporteur on torture urges the US government) 'to eliminate the use of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement under all circumstances...including an absolute ban of solitary confinement of any duration for juveniles, persons with psychosocial disabilities or other disabilities or health conditions, pregnant women, women with infants and breastfeeding mothers as well as those serving a life sentence and prisoners on death row.'" - Juan E. Méndez, UN Special Rapporteur on torture
Haiti is occupied, raped and tormented by the wealthiest country in the world. It's terrorized cruelly at the hand of the greatest superpower on planet earth, the white-savior industry and its charitable-industrial complex.
US charity worker and pedophile, Douglas Perlitz is in jail for nearly 20-years plus 10-year probation for molesting homeless boys in Haiti for 10 years. He was convicted and sentenced on federal charges for travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct (18 U.S.C. Sec. 2423(b) and engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places (18 U.S.C. Sec 2423 (c). (See, Justice for Haiti prevailed: Perlitz going away for a long time.)
Human rights lawyer, Ezili Dantò, President of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, talks to the media about Catholic philanthropist, Haitian charitable works icon, the Venerable Pierre Toussaint, whom Douglas Perlitz named his school after, while outside the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse in downtown New Haven, Conn. during a recess in the sentencing hearing for Perlitz on December 21, 2010. Photo: Christian Abraham / Connecticut Post
Last month, US charity worker, Matthew Andrew Carter, was sentenced to 165 years in prison for sexually abusing Haiti orphans for 16 years. “Altogether, U.S. authorities identified 52 victims they said were sexually abused by Carter over the years at the group home.” (See, US occupation: Uselessness of USAID, UN, NGOs in Haiti.)
There are thousands more foreigners in Haiti still, behind their high walls, and apartheid hotels, daily raping, molesting, trafficking, sodomizing distraught Haiti children and sexually preying on Haiti women and powerless men in exchange for money, power, jobs, US visas or approval, as we’ve detailed over the years.
Recently there was an article about a British aid worker in Haiti and his "gay Haitian partner" reportedly assaulted by some locals at their engagement party in Haiti.
Haiti has far bigger problems than these isolated incidents, but the Western press and wealthy gays insist on their various Droit du seigneur rights and privileges in Haiti, notwithstanding that the NGO charitable industry’s very presence in Haiti is a denial of Haiti sovereignty and basic human rights.
In fact, these are the same adults who mostly turn a blind eye to the occupation of Haiti, the NGO false benevolence, the imperialism, neocolonialism, unfair trade and rampant abuse of Haiti children, men and women by powerful homosexual and heterosexual foreigners as a matter of course.
There is, of course, the question of POWER and the tastes white supremacy forces upon others that may not be their natural predispositions. We know this at the Haitian Lawyes Leadership Network (HLLN), for instance, from working with sexually abused Haiti minors, victims of foreign pedophiles, who became victimizers themselves, sexually sodomizing other children because that's what they learned as a child from the US/Euro charityworkers.
Many of these abused orphans grow up to prostitute themselves to foreigners whose sexual taste and proclivities they were taught, like some of the victim boys learning from US charity worker Douglas Perlitz or certain foreign priests and pastors how to have sex with a man. Court papersdetailed how Douglas Perlitz' minor victims were forced to watch US porn films to learn his requirements. These children did not have a choice. Their innocence was taken and now many, as adults, are in need of psychological help to understand sexuality, their lost innocence, their self-hatred, outcast feelings, mental disorders, and certain other imported anti-social behaviors forced on them every night when they were young and helpless.
What's to say an adult gay partnership with a perceived rich white man at the Red Cross, with a UN soldier, a powerful Western politician stationed in Haiti is a “natural choice” where there are no jobs, visas, or positions except if one is a "nice Negro" in the eyes of the sexually liberal foreign worker.
When hunger, death and joblessness are the alternative if one doesn't cooperate is consent effective? This is not to condone attacks on adult LGBT folks overseas. It is to point out that white supremacy in Haiti ushers in issues of power, racism and occupation that must end before certain Western accepted norms, and sexual tourism even between consenting adults may be said to be freely and consensually adopted. Even then, it is offensive for the US, as a policy, to force legalized prostitution and special homosexual rights in Haiti, in Africa, in the Caribbean, despite overwhelming opposition. (See the film showing this at Video documentary- Cultural Imperialism: The Sexual Rights Agenda.)
Neither Black culture nor Black people are random accessories. To alternatively dismiss, demean or appropriate.
After the earthquake with hundreds of thousands more charitable industry folks landing in Haiti and the US occupation blatantly being "open for business," sexual rape, like the US abuse of power in occupying Haiti is simply ignored by journalist as a norm that Black Haiti should endure from the white settlers.
Ezili's HLLN used to try and record as many of the US/Euro/UN charity worker sexual abuse of Haiti children and powerless women as we could.
For years, HLLN was the only voice doing this and then the US/Euro/UN molesting, raping and pedophilia and sex push in Haiti became so Sodom-Gomorrah blatant and pervasive, it overwhelmed our ability to keep up.
Here are the links still on-line on their abominations:
In the age of Obama, US Ambassador Pamela White and the Martelly/Lamothe government, "Haiti open for business" literally means the small, innocent bodies of Haiti's children and defenseless Black women are the newly added tourist enclaves for the Northern vampires to gorge their every perversion upon.
What Haiti today is forced to endure, nearly 10-years after the US occupation began behind UN mercenary guns and the Paul Farmer-led NGO invasion, is beyond what a sane human mind and soul will absorb.
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Haiti is one of the safest destinations in the Americas. In 2012, according to the UNODC, Haiti’s violence rate of 6.9 out of every hundred thousand Haitians is among the lowest rates in the Americas, and the same as Long Beach, California.
What’s a Chapter 7, peace enforcement UN mission doing in Haiti for nearly 10-years when there is no peace agreement to enforce? There’s much greater violence elsewhere in the hemisphere, including in some US cities and in Brazil, the country that heads the UN mission to Haiti.
In Haiti, the most educated and powerful on planet earth benefit from and help hide the US genocidal occupation of Haiti. The US de-legitimized every Haiti elections since it began the occupation, put in its own puppet government (Cholera Democracy) and controls Haiti.
The US occupation of Haiti is to blame for the 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians dead from cholera since their UN proxy brought the deadly disease to Haiti.
The US built its now fourth largest embassy in the world in tiny Haiti, not to bring Haiti democracy or development as evidenced by the last 10-years of terrorizing Haiti, and Obama simply continued the Bush/Clinton warmongering, to cart out Haiti riches, take its lands, profit from imposed Haiti chaos, misery and deaths.
It's called disaster capitalism, unfettered capitalism, forced assimilation, white supremacy and it’s been a great business boon for the Western elites since the days of their outright slavery in Haiti.
“(Uganda is) a country where we have seen our loved ones die of HIV/AIDS, seen the suffering, the toll that such illness bears not just on the affected individual but the family, the society, our whole economy is suffering. It is our deepest belief that we owe it to our fellow Ugandans to put the right policies in place policies and homesexuality erodes the very fabric of our society in the sense that it puts our people at risk”– Rossette Katungye , Ambassador/Uganda Deputy Permanent, Geneva /quoted from the video documentary: Cultural Imperialism: The Sexual Rights Agenda
Gay rights, just like the Haiti human rights the U.S. is supposed to have been concerned about when they overthrew Haiti's democratically elected government, is the cover behind which HIV/AIDS drugs are sold and ethnic cleansing, depopulation are brought to application. With the added benefit that the wealthy white gays, bisexuals, lesbians and transgenders (LGBT) charity workers or UN/USAID/Embassy executives get to feast and gorge on sexual tourism, for engaging in illicit sexual conduct, or certain tabou-at-home sexuality proclivities, in mostly transient, power-based, non-committed relationship, while stationed in at-risk countries.
For instance, how useful is it to make a market in Haiti for vitamins and nutritional supplements if the recipients have to drink it down with cholera water or on hungry, empty stomachs caused by US big agri-business famine brought to Haiti.
For instance, the illnesses US aid workers left behind include cervical cancers, ovarian cancers, endless bleedings Haiti women are suffering from, as a result of Norplant implants and other controversial contraceptive drugs that USAID used decades ago. This refuels the need for more Western presence, more pharmaceuticals as aid. More opportunity to impose Western sanctions and economic warfare to force nations in Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq or in Haiti to do what Westerners think is right, including legalizing prostitution and promoting sex. It's raw imperialism. White supremacy's bloodsucking vampire activity.
Rich Western heterosexuals, homosexuals, bi-sexuals, lesbians, transgenders who want to talk to the Haiti masses about promoting their sexual preferences in Haiti ought to first address Haitian sovereignty, right to self-defense, self-reliance, self-determination, a domestic economy. Ought to first address the right to LIFE.
If there's no life, how is sexual behavior of any importance to the dead Haitian?
The white-savior industry and UN workers ought to first be about bringing into application universal human rights in Haiti, not claim and act as if they are above the laws. Ought to be about ending white supremacy, cultural imperialism, the profit-over-people insatiable greed of the wealthy elites. Ending NGO/USAID/US embassy false benevolence - its so-called aid, its unfair trade, its regime change embassies, WB/IMF/IFIs ecocide, genocide and their various operatives' warmongering in the global South. Go home. Fix that terror.
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End the uninterrupted Euro-US pillage and plunder of Haiti Riches - over $20 billion in gold reserves, its iridium, silver, copper, coal and the Haiti oil cache Haiti geologists say is "an olympic pool to Venezuela's glass of water." (See- The Pain Rush in Haiti: Clorox Hunger lives in the same space that billions of dollars in "aid" are supposed to have been poured and In the Age of Obama: Truth You Won't Hear at the 50th Anniversary March on Washington.)
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Once the all-consuming Western terror is gone, once the NGOs are gone, the US occupation has ended and the US embassy is closed, Haiti would find its own way around exploiting its vast oil and mineral riches to raise its own peoples' domestic living standards - including tackling police issues of protecting all humans from Christian fanatical violence, regardless of their sexual orientation, in an equitable, civil and responsible manner.
Barack Obama who mostly betrayed core justice and peace values during two terms, the Clintons, the Bushes, the Dr. Paul Farmer-led NGOs, the UN Security Council, their employees, agents and sycophants have no moral standing to preach about oppression and human rights to the distraught and traumatized Haiti masses. None. We are the history and evidence of their systematic, every day tyranny and rape.
Ezili Dantò is a human rights lawyer, performing artist, writer and award wining playwright. She was born in Haiti. Holds a BA from Boston College, a JD from the University of Connecticut School of law. She is a cultural and political activist and the founder and president of Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN). She runs the Haitian Perspectives on-line journal, the Ezili Dantò Network and is the creator of Zili Dlo: Clean Water, Skills Transfer and Solar Power for everyone in Haiti. More info at - ezilidanto.com/zili
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” --Lily Watson/Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s
“I was made, by the law a criminal, not because of what I had done, but because of what I stood for, and because of what I thought” — Nelson Mandela
"Whites in Africa believe that worn out Mandela who they once made justification to keep in prison for 27-years is the only honorable black person; while the rest of Africans are corrupt, criminals, rapists, drunkards and uneducated buffoons." -- Ve Mee
"What did the Black South African leaders and African majority do to the murderous white supremacist minority to have to reconcile for that would compare? Self-defense is a human right. Reconciling with injustice merely delays justice for decades, if not centuries more." -- Ezili Dantò of HLLN (Read also Ezili's Haiti post: End apartheid in the Dominican Republic and watch Apartheid did not Die.)
"Remember when Madiba called George W. Bush “a small little man”? In the accolades following Mandela’s Transition, it’s interesting that the words “peacemaker”, “reconciliation” and even “non-violent” are being heard on the N.E.W.S. We forget the reason why Mandela stayed in prison for so many years was because he *refused* to renounce violence as a means of dismantling apartheid. As usual, the white world wants to emphasize his “gentle” nature rather than his warrior spirit. He had both…" -- Dr. Ray Winbush
Nelson and Winnie Mandela, day of his release from prison after 27 years
beware the icon makers they will say he was great they will laud his calls for peace they will wring their hands and cry speaking only of the man disregarding the people explaining away the movement pretending the revolution was won they will deny their guilt denying their privilege obscuring his birth in the pains and the blood of his people denying the capital crimes of neoliberal friends of apartheid still alive now that Mandela is dead
they will say no one else will come they will wink that we still organize they will pretend that de Klerk was his friend they will ignore the birth pangs in Jo’burg today pretending to honor him with deceitful silence in the face of Capetown shanties and Manenburg misery and Durban oppression while former murderers still prey and bougie negros still play while lying bishops still pray and corporations still rape and the people in South Africa still die like people across the Global South as the Revolution dies as Madiba’s children live in squalor as the wine growers awake in shacks as the homeless sleep beneath the floors of stores—after hours when they will not be seen while they are still being sold
beware the speakers of phrases that lie they will disremember liberation struggles that have yet to be won they will pretend that Mandela belonged to them denying the people to whom he belonged
remember to remember Chris Hani remember to remember Robben Island remember to remember the South African Charter remember to remember that icons created by oppressors will never liberate the people remember to remember that they are still killing Martin remember to remember that they are still killing Malcolm remember to remember that Assata still lives remember to remember that our liberation will be sold to us for profits unless we work for it with our minds and our actions then we will remember Mandela as he was for he will live inside us and the lies will no longer deceive because the struggle will continue and the last will be first at last
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Madiba is dead: Condolences to heroic mother Winnie, stay with us warrior mother, to guide us straight on the path of freedom, peace and justice
Thank you for the long walk you've taken alongside brother Rolihlahla, during these rough years when the hypocrites and the criminals who now sing fake praises of him, dubbed you and your comrade-husband "terrorists".
Sincere condolences to you beautiful Mother of the Nation. May your presence here with us help the world remember why so many Steve Biko, so many Sobukwe, so many Sisulu, so many MBeki had to sacrifice their youth, their innocence, their lives, over so many years.
Nou bese byen ba pou nou salye pasaj Rolihlahla nan ran zansèt yo. E nou di ou Manman Winnie, rete ak nou pou anpil tan anko paske nou bezwen ou pou ede nou kontinye mache dwat sou chimen libète, lapè ak lajistis.
Ayibobo! Amandla!" Dec. 6, 2013
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"Black women are discriminated by the white supremacy; they have to contend with male prejudice fed by patriarchal notions, they suffer abuse from white women who are also beneficiaries of white supremacy. At the same time, they are expected to form alliances with these women to defeat male privilege. They are expected to be in solidarity with their male folks to fight racial oppression. In this regard they have little choice. They cannot sit on the sideline and watch the black male being reduced to an endangered species. After all, these men are the fathers of their children, the lovers, and their sons. In short, there is no other species that understand oppression as black women do."--- Winnie Madikezela Mandela, "Being A Black Woman In The World, Part 1."
New York Times’ Mandela Obituary Headline Couldn’t Have Been More Wrong
The iconicity of “peaceful resistance”
"..in American bourgeois fantasy life, the only good liberation struggles are Gandhi and King, and if a struggle does not match that mythologized template, could not have matched it, it will be roundly condemned while it is ongoing, and if it happens to be successful (despite us), its history will be rewritten. [ED's Note: Contrary to the mainstream Western powers' mythologize template sold to the world, Gandhi was a racist who did not support equality for either the South Africans or the Dalit. The Ghandi myth is to keep the oppressed from exercising self defense. The message is to endure, forgive, reconcile with white supremacist injustice and wait for their mythical change to come.)
The dialectic is a familiar one and a little sad. There is a way in which the myth of peaceful resistance is flattering to the oppressor and disabling to the oppressed. It’s as much the oppressor’s narrative as anyone’s.
“You ought not to fight us with more than the image of your own broken body,” it says, “for we who oppress you are good and rational most of the time. We have the same interests as you, and understand that you enjoy the same basic rights. We, your rulers, simply need to have our consciences pricked from time to time.”
By couching the antipathy as a mere moral lapse, the oppressor is permitted simultaneously to deny the actual material basis of the social division and hence the necessity for a struggle for liberation that is more than merely symbolic, and to perform a mental splitting-off from its own identity of those aspects of itself it can now pretend were inessential deviations from its rational, humanistic core. Just as the United States broadly did with the benighted South of Bull Connor and the Klan.
As if the story of American racist oppression was one of mere regional ideological peccadillo and not one of the founding principles of the whole nation’s economic structure. As if the story of Apartheid were simply those nasty Afrikaners and their gauche racism. They’d probably lived in Africa too long and allowed its “tribalism” to rub off on them, and so deviated from the European universalist norm. Still, one of us in the end, eh?
That’s the funny thing about colonialism even when it’s visible, it appears only in ideological garb flattering to the oppressor." (Entire article at The iconicity of “peaceful resistance”: The New York Times’ Mandela Obituary Headline Couldn’t Have Been More Wrong)
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Exclusive interview: Winnie Mandela remembers Nelson Mandela "One of the most important figures in Nelson Mandela’s life was Winnie Mandela... his former wife and an incredible anti-apartheid activist in her own right. For decades, she fought the worst of the regime and at one point was charged with treason... and put in solitary confinement. In a world exclusive, CCTV anchor James Chau went to Johannesburg in October... where he spoke to Mrs. Mandela. The interview was filmed at the same house in Johannesburg where lived on his release from prison and where he wrote his biography, Long Walk to Freedom." --Exclusive interview: Winnie Mandela remembers Nelson Mandela
When Mandela wasn’t the messiah: "...Mandela was arrested and imprisoned in 1962. In the late 1980s he rejected a number of offers of freedom in return for a repudiation of violence. He wrote in his memoirs that it was always the oppressor, not the oppressed, who dictated the form that the struggle would take. If the oppressor used violence, the oppressed had no choice but to respond with violence. Only violence, supported by popular mobilisation and by ever more restrictive international sanctions, was able to demonstrate the stupidity of the apartheid system and force the white minority government to change. Having established the principle of “one man, one vote”, Mandela and the ANC showed they could be flexible through their efforts to build a “rainbow nation” and the guarantees they made to the white minority. They even scaled down their plans for social transformation – but that is another story.
..The intervention of Cuban troops in Angola in 1975 and the victories they won, especially at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, weakened the government’s military power and highlighted the impasse that it faced. Cuito Cuanavale was, according to Mandela, “a turning point for the liberation of our continent and my people” (4). Mandela did not forget the part Cuba had played and Fidel Castro was a guest of honour at Mandela’s inauguration as president in 1994.
In this clash between the black population and the white minority government, the US, the UK, Israel and France took the wrong side..." (Entire article at "When Mandela wasn’t the messiah," by Alain Gresh, Le Monde diplomatic | Dec. 6, 2013)
"'Apartheid is certainly a deplorable system, but change must come without violence.' If the ANC had listened to his advice (or that of Ronald Reagan) and shown restraint, Mandela would have died in prison, South Africa would have fallen into chaos and the world would not have been able to construct the legend of the new messiah." --"When Mandela wasn’t the messiah," by Alain Gresh, Le Monde diplomatic
"Nelson Mandela was almost 72 years old when he was released from jail. By then he had been involved in the organised struggle for national liberation for 45 years, the greater part of his life." -- Thabo Mbeki, Farewell, Madiba , Dec 6, 2013
******************************************* Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network **************************************
Remembering Chris Hani Chris Hani, born Martin Thembisile Hani (28 June 1942 – 10 April 1993) was the leader of the South African Communist Party and chief of staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He was a fierce opponent of the apartheid government. He was assassinated on 10 April 1993...Hani was a charismatic leader, with significant support among the radical anti-apartheid youth. At the time of his death, he was the most popular ANC leader after Nelson Mandela, and was sometimes perceived as a rival to the more moderate party leadership.[7] Following the legalisation of the ANC, Hani's support for the negotiation process with the apartheid government was critical in keeping the militants in line.[10]
Calixte, when pressed, 
