Pwoblèm Ayiti: responsabilite yon grenn krityen vivan? (3)

[Pitit Ginen]

Let's face it, and let's face it seriously and courageously : guys instead of dedicating our highly precious time to debate about white’s supremacy and black's downpression, it would be much better if we took that same amount of time to pond over the many ways we can concretely, practically, and creatively contribute to the well-being of our nation, our country. It would be so much better...

By we, I mean ourselves who are participating in this forum. More important is the fact that, judging by our different posts here, we are definitely on the same side in the struggle for a better tomorrow for our brothers and sisters back home, and in the Diaspora. That means-- please don't get me wrong-- we should manage to avoid such unnecessary and not-so-healthy diatribes among us. Jaf has been very clever to play the moderator, and Guy understood the necessity to hold back; it is just that our sister Ezili cares so much about her people to permit some criticism about them.

Hopefully we are smart enough not to give any opportunity to the enemy to laugh at us. We know and we are aware that we stand exactly on the same side, in the same stretch into the battlefield. That exchange over another brother's viewpoint should quickly be put out. And let's go back into the forum to see how we are going to organize the fighting (not armed struggle) that will lead us out of the jungle. That's the core message transpiring from Mbeki's speech.

Nobody, no CIA, no FBI, no WTO, no IMF, no World Bank are powerful enough to keep us into that hell, unless we are betrayed by our own brothers or incapable of organizing ourselves to take our destiny into our own hands. That's simply the ultimate truth !!!


Pitit Ginen.

[guysanto*]

Pitit Ginen,

I hear and share your concern. Let's move on.

Guy S. Antoine

[Ezili Danto*]

One et respe to all;

*******
Nina Simone sings: "Please “Don’t let Me Be Misunderstood…”
She puts a spell on you, gives strengths.
So daddy, one remembers………
*********

And so I begin this post with this question….

Why, it is taking so much effort to get this one point across is way, way, way beyond me to understand? I understand everyone on this Forum has good intentions. I do. I don't dispute this Forum’s good heart and dedication to promoting Haitian social and economic justice. Yet.....

I do find particular positions are not strategically good for that cause and I stand by that analyses. But...as Nina sings, "please don’t let me be misunderstood: it is not that I love my people so much I can’t countenance criticisms against them. I understand that that was written by a soul with good intentions, I do. But good grief y’all!

It’s NOT that I can’t criticize Toto Constant, Michel Francois, Raoul Cedras, these new contra-like gangs-in-the-Central-Plateau-of-Haiti calling themselves “San Manman”, or, that I can’t criticize, condemn, disavow Black opportunist such as Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Charles Taylor (Liberia), Foday Sankoh (former rebel leader in Sierra Leone leading youthful gangs strangely familiar in names to Haiti's current San Manmans), or, the Convergence, or, even that deafeningly-silent-on-Haitian-human-rights-and-civic-issues-legitimately-elected-Haitian-government. NO. They ALL own their levels of culpability. Theres no doubt about this.

But (and here's where my greatest differences surface on this Forum), I place them all, in one basket, as category ZERO. What I have been saying and keep trying to say (perhaps not to clearly) is that these African peoples, these variously Black opportunist and tragic elites amount to feudal lords, BECAUSE OF WHITE RULE and BECAUSE OF WHITE PRIVILEDGES (which I individually and collectively define as, Category # ONE), therefore, I say, category ZERO is peripheral to the system that vies for the souls of Black folks.

For, while we are mesmerized by the local drama of Category ZERO, and ladies and gentlemen, it’s an old, old, old WORN out drama, as I will outline in my next post, while we are mesmerized by the parts "these servants to the throne" are playing, ALL that the throne must do, when the heat in its colonies/protectorates(?!) get too much, is to recall His emissaries (put them on a plane to Panama, Paris, Brooklyn, New York); all that they need do, is change their local imperial agents, send us another lord unburden by years of crimes against the African peoples’ the throne in Washington rules or even someone burden by the discredit of the last one to teach us a lesson! It doesn’t matter. The throne is too arrogant to have any respect for African peoples – his abject subjects and “market.”

Why do some very well educated Africans refuse to see beyond the sham, beyond the charade, to even look at race? Why won’t we go deep enough? Refuse to. Is it because it’s difficult in view of what Dubois, called our “double consciousness?” - too difficult because of our Eurocentric visor (And, I put myself there too, I have that visor also. But I live to undo.)

Why do we get happy, consoled, as that Black anchor did, when white people are included as “allies” in our fight but can get all personal when someone tries to say the Black accountability of category ZERO cannot equal to, or, be put into the same basket as the White accountability of category # ONE for terrorizing and murdering Black hope, life and culture; or when one tries to say all white people, because of their white privileges, are co-conspirators, (some unwillingly to be sure just as the Aristide government started out unwilling to oppress sentient beings); but all, white people, because of their white privileges are indeed co-conspirators, along with the Black opportunist, in the establishment that OPPRESSES African peoples; why does this bother some of us? No answer needed: it’s called melanin colonization, mental enslavement.

You know what? I am too through. Sure enough!

For, if we-Haitians don't try to understand and simply allow the Powers-that-be to use our skin color against us by using the Black opportunist to carry out White rule; if we coddle white peoples' psyches, in general, by continuing to analyze and work at the level of the roles of category ZERO, and don’t realize that if that’s all we are about we let the Man off scot-free and THAT, that plainly amounts to a DEFENSE of his throne; a defense of Category ONE, who ascended to its throne through shedding our African blood for centuries and by His “Manifest Destiny,” “Restoring Democracy,” “War on Drugs,” “War on terrorism,” “free trade,” et cetera, or, as Rumsfeld claims, the US is policing the world by endowment from God! If we-Haitians don't develop the strategy necessary to stop the sham in its tracks at its roots not its branches; if we refuse to make the Man step up to the majority, not work through Category ZERO to oppress us, then what can I say,….

For, as Mbeki points out, speaking about the current African rulers in Africa (and he can add today’s Haiti to the lot as far as I am concerned), Mbeki says “many of us are projecting ourselves as presidents and prime ministers, with the assumptions about democracy that attach to these posts, whereas, IN PRACTICE, we are little more than feudal lords who rule by decree over our kingdoms or principalities. “Whose decree? Ahh, the same old same old European slave masters, whom the local Haitian agents of imperial power have been serving since we Haitians fought them in combat. Since the death of Dessaline. (See, President of South Africa’s speech presented at the University of the West Indies. Under General Issues: Pan-African Solidarity - Mbeki in Jamaica on Haiti July 2k3. Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2003 4:04 pm http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=331

Now if we spend our time looking at the feudal lords ruling by decree instead of dethroning the Divine Kings who either anointed the Black opportunist to rule or forced their legitimately people-centered rule into something else - a deafening silence on the people’s-social justice needs - if we want to put all accountability in one basket and refuse to see the respondeat superior, than we well deserve our fate. But its not about ME or the WE on this Forum, its about our suffering Haitian peoples, poor men - women and children, even our imprisoned toddlers in the US, with no voice. It's about them. So, I say, it way, way, way past time for “successful” Haitians to hear M’beki’s clarion call. It’s time, we used “the foundry of our knowledge” bases and access to history to look beyond the veil and confront the central enemy and thereby break His white-death-grip. It’s time we became the masters of our fate, the captains of our souls and thereby truly helpful to our Haitian masses.

Respe

Ezili Danto
“Dje blan-yo mande krim. Bon Dje ki nan nou-an vle byen fe.” (Boukmann at Bwa Kayiman, August 14, 1791)

[Ezili Danto*]

One e Respe to all;


*****
Double consciousness defined:

The African in the US lives with what WEB Dubois identified as double-consciousness. A double consciousness exacerbated by the double standards in US government's avowed moral principles and their non-application.

In his book the Souls of Black Folk, speaking about “Double Consciousness”, W.E.B. Bubois wrote:


“….the Negro is born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

"The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. (Excerpted from the chapter “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” in DuBois’ book “The Souls of Black Folk.”)
*********

Following the thread and vocabulary initiated, these next few posts completes the topics promised while simultaneously addressing brother Jaf’s post dated Tue Jul 08, 2003 4:04 pm, under the General Issues subject: Pan-African Solidarity - Mbeki in Jamaica on Haiti July 2k3 http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=331 . Especially in reference to President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki’s questions posed about the lessons learned from the long Haitian struggles.

*******
In a speech presented before the University of the West Indies, June 30, 2003, South African President, Mbeki’s stated our task is:

“…to raise the level of consciousness of the African masses about the tasks of the African Renaissance, and mobilize them to act for change to advance their interests.”

Mbeki further writes:

“We are all sons and daughters of Africa; we dare not lose sight of this transcendental fact. We should always remember, whether we reside in Africa physically or spiritually, that Africa is our beginning and the world is our ending.

We are not simply at the mercy of the circumstances that presently define our future. On the contrary, collectively we are at work at the foundry of knowledge, which must both engender and determine the outline of this future.
************

ONE: Mbeki’s clarion call compels response and to honor that transcendental fact which the peoples of City Soleil and outside of Port-au-Prince in Haiti (both collectively known as “Moun Andeyo” in Haiti) have never forgotten, I write this post.

Our task is to continue excavating within the foundry of THAT KNOWLEDGE which must be SPREAD, which must become STREET TALK with not only our African masses everywhere, but our “educated” classes, our “successful” brethrens who continue to collaborate in the oppression of the peoples at Cite Soleil and lot Moun Andeyo yo.

The successful Black, the business elites, the Pepe educated and the completely unaware, it is THEY with their “double consciousnesses,” who are the greatest threat to the advancement of our African peoples and our responses to them.

We all have been so schooled in turmoil, so mis-educated in chaos; we appear, with few exceptions, to only regurgitate mainstream propaganda demonizing our African peoples. To examine why our most resourceful enclaves in civil society have lost the VOCABULARY, the comebacks, the alphabet, the replies, counterattacks, counter-the-white-offensives to reach, EXPOSE and DESTROY white tyranny at its roots, I write these post.

For, the task is to use ourselves to advance the mission of Dessaline in solidarity with those who climb these stairs every day, who occupy the space to counter the relentless images being broadcast of the African as savage, uncivilized and responsible for all ills and sufferings in his world.

These racist stereotypes, structural adjustment plans, the overt and covert webs of repressions used - their symbols, their euphemisms, their faces, as now used in this brave new world post-African “independence” world by the white imperialist/neo-colonialist worldwide, must be clearly identified and laid bare.

TWO: In an article, entitled “Affirmative Action As Tool of Imperialist Expansion And Aggression” by Mark P. Fancher writes:

‘Even before dozens of multi-national corporations filed briefs in support of affirmative action, their executives explained quite frankly that as the globalization scenario continues to unfold, people of color will be needed to represent big companies in the southern hemisphere. It is much more likely that, in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, it will be possible to negotiate agreements that allow for exploitation of resources and markets if a corporation can send a "brother" as its spokesperson. The pool of people to play this role would certainly diminish if affirmative action could not facilitate the matriculation of people of color at major universities. ( http://www.blackcommentator.com/50/50_affirmative_action.html )


In view of the above new Supreme Court affirmative action decision, this post also further examines why it is STRATEGICALLY intelligent that African combatants of White tyranny NOT put accountability of a White racist and accountability of a Black opportunist “only in one basket.” Why it is not COMMON SENSE in the battlefield to liberate we don’t constantly look at the horrible deeds of the imperial agents of empire (Category ZERO), but fire at the heart of the enemy (Category ONE) instead of its limbs, which always grow back.

As we note the recent US Supreme Court decision, overwhelmingly favorable, with supportive briefs from multinational corporation and the US military industrial complex intent on using Black, Brown and Yellow faces, such as Powell, Rice and poor youths looking for a way out, intent on outreach programs to mint and direct the minds of the African youths, the newly affirmative-actioned educated Peoples of color, simply looking for a “job” to forge US Southern agendas in the Caribbean, South America and Africa, we must become prepared to tactically refuse to deal with these potential Black defenders of the great white way and the guilt and confusion their like present to our African-psyches, already splintered with negative images.

If we don’t understand why all the sudden, a right-wing heretofore anti-Affirmative action Bush Supreme Court would suddenly decline to eliminate affirmative action, after tons of US corporation and the US military agencies filed briefs to support “diversity” in the US workforce, then we shall be condemn to face more US Black agents of imperial power like the Powells and Rices down the line; condemn to minimize the suffering of Africans under white tyranny because we fail, as a community, to understand the standard colonial model and how it uses your own to oppress you.

Only the blind, deaf, dumb, and in denial would continue to screen out the purposes to which “affirmative action” in the US for African-Americans has been used for; what our Post-Civil Rights experiences has shown us about the destruction of our Black communities and “assimilation” and “integration.” The new class of venomous Black conservatives (Clarence Thomas, Powell and his son, Rice, Ward Connerly, Armstrong Williams etc.) educated, schooled and richly rewarded to come and defend white. (See, Affirmative Action As Tool of Imperialist Expansion And Aggression by Mark P. Fancher in The Black Commentator http://www.blackcommentator.com/50/50_affirmative_action.html)

Mark P. Fancher writes:

“As we witness the quiet, but growing presence of the U.S. military in Africa, we need not speculate long about the future combat locations. Affirmative action ensures the possibility of putting a face of color on U.S. attacks by providing a steady stream of future military policy makers and spokespersons. If, for example, the U.S. decides to effect a "regime change" in Zimbabwe, how can it be racist if Colin Powell is the primary spokesman? All of this undermines a long history of international solidarity of the oppressed. In 1979, when the Sandinistas took power in Nicaragua, one of their first acts was to declare Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday because of their strong identification with the struggles of African people in the U.S. In that same year when militant Iranians took hostages at the U.S. embassy, Blacks were released almost immediately for the same reason. How much solidarity will remain if people of color become the face of U.S. imperialist aggression?”

Attorney Fancher, further notes:

“Thus, the task that lies squarely before us is to compete with the military-industrial complex for the hearts and minds of young beneficiaries of affirmative action. For its part, the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) has resolved to steer young people away from careers in the military.

“The resolution also pledges the organization’s assistance with identifying and developing alternative career opportunities. This is a mammoth, but essential task that NCBL is determined to perform. The organization invites assistance by all persons and organizations willing to help throw a monkey wrench in the military-industrial complex’s affirmative action strategy.”

So, just as it is tactically important to, as Fancher and other African-American lawyer-activist say, veer our young African, Latino and poor Asian peoples of color away from jobs in the US military where they have historically been misused to oppress other people of color; it is equally important to teach our young African youths across the globe, that their freedom and liberty is INEXTRICABLY TIED TO THE FREEDOM AND LIBERTY OF AFRICAN PEOPLES AND PEOPLES OF COLOR EVERYWHERE.

That no matter how far a Black person moves up in terms of material acquisitions and power, few, are in a serious sense assimilated into White society for white US society still harbors the racist mystique in most of its sectors.


REPONDEAT SUPERIOR:

IS a tactic, tool that, if properly understood and used, may be used as a defense, a comeback to disempowerment the Black opportunist
while countering racism and imperialism at the root is the legal theory of “Respondeat Superior.”

Respondeat superior is a legal rule that the principal or employer is liable for harms done by agents or employees while acting within the scope of their agency or employment.

It’s the principle/agent – master/servant rule.

The distance between the suffering majority and the insulated “Divine King(s)” must be severed. It’s time to render the variously Black opportunist and tragic elites amounting to feudal lords, BECAUSE OF WHITE RULE and BECAUSE OF WHITE PRIVILEDGES (which I individually and collectively define as, Category # ONE), it’s time to render them powerless. It’s time to break the standard colonial model and give the majority the tools to step up DIRECTLY to Category ONE.

For, (1) if the African masses and classes agree white people rule with a double standard in favor of white privilege and that this goes vastly unacknowledged by the white masses WHO BENEFIT FROM THIS;
(2) and, if it’s equally true that many “educated” and “schooled” Africans won’t publicly make the corollaries, the connections, or, to even acknowledge white rule because it’s not “sophisticated enough an analyses,” “we don’t want to burn our bridges” or, it’s “too simple” to blame whitey, but it’s just fine to let the blame be publicly deflected onto the Black opportunist, or, on “class divisions”, (3) then, we are collaborators in our own oppression for allowing the suffering to continue by letting the tyrant get off unscathed?

It’s not enough to expose, alienate, isolate, vilify these willing and unwilling collaborators in the white death of our people, it’s MORE necessary that we neutralize their power by always stepping to, confronting the deep pockets - the Colonial sponsors. For, there are plenty of ethical questions to be asked of USAID, US Embassy, the IMF, World Bank, the WTOs, Transnational corporations and the NGO’s in Haiti and all those who make a professional living off their expertise in manipulating-into-private-profit Black poverty, pain and despair.

These white structures flourish under the colonial model, which keeps their involvement in our underdevelopment in the background. Our silence ensures their continued success, makes us collaborators in our own people’s oppression.

The Powers-that-be have vulnerable outposts everywhere in the world and are, day by day, becoming vulnerable at home as they struggle to manage the foreign policy lies they’ve told their own civil societies. Yes, the Powers-that-be, Category ONE, will only give up that whiteness currency, will only RESPECT the African race when we-Africans step up to demanding White take responsibility for white crimes, and continue this demand, brokering no arguments, no compromise, no matter how much Category ONE (the White-power-structure and White privilege) cry “unfair,” “divisive,” “our sins are in the past,” “polarizing,” “I’m not racist”, or, the ever powerful and paralyzing, “how about the accountability of Colin, Rice, Taylor, Duvalier, Mobutu, Cedras, FRAPH, African child soldiers, the San Manman” et cetera. It’s time we started on the offensive instead of staying on the constant reactive defense.

For, when a corporation, through its employees, policies or products, causes harm, an accident, or, an injury, do you or your family take legal action against the supervisor on duty at the time of the injury, or do you sue the CORPORATION responsible for the acts of its representatives?

Let’s get to the heart of the matter and fire at the deep pockets, not their willing or unwilling agents, servants, representatives, or employees. It’s one way to raise the stakes in our favor, strengthening our Haitian mawonaj resistance. The liberty and survival of African life and culture may depend on it.

Ezili Danto

“Dje blan-yo mande krim. Bon Dje ki nan nou-an vle byen fe.” (Boukmann at Bwa Kayiman, August 14, 1791)

[Ezili Danto*]

One et Respe:

Making a presentation before the Universtiy of Thabo Mbeki, said:

“I am suggesting that as we encourage the African masses in Africa and the African Diaspora, especially the youth, to study the revolution of Haiti after the victory of 1804, we would enable them the better to understand their own national conditions. This would empower them to respond more effectively to the challenges of the African Renaissance.

“Entangled within the story of Haiti are many matters relevant to the challenges we have to meet. These include issues of race, class, gender, culture and social consciousness, governance, globalization and global imbalances in economic and other matters, and the effect of the preponderance of the major powers, possibilities for South-South cooperation and so on.

“Accordingly, I would request the University of the West Indies, acting together with its counterparts in Haiti, to take measures to ensure that the story of the Haitian revolution and its aftermath is told to as many of the African masses as possible, both in Africa and the Diaspora.”

Mbeki urges the African intelligentsia and scholars to use the occasion of “the Haitian bicentenary of the Haitian revolution to speak to ourselves as Africans, wherever we may be.

Mbeki writes: “We may also be able to answer the question as to why, in many respects, the African condition, certainly in sub-Saharan Africa, has been worsening over a number of years, despite the fact that we now exist as black republics, as Haiti has done for two hundred years.”

*****

Why is the African condition in sub-Saharan Africa worsening despite the fact the African nations now exist as Black republics, as Haiti has done for two hundred years?

BECAUSE THE STANDARD COLONIAL MODEL HAS BEEN READJUSTED NOT GARROTED.

What is the blueprint that has not changed that serves to underdeveloped Africa, Haiti and the developing world?

Beyond looking at the Haiti blueprint after 1804, look specifically at the history of the first two European created Black republics in Africa, BEFORE Ghana, before the ones they created in the 1960s, or, in 1994 with South Africa. Take a quick gander at the uses of the non-African workforces (as scabs, strikebreakers), especially, the imported Asian indentured workers in the West after Haitian independence and after US emancipation.

My friends, today US/Euro colonialism is remote controlled and digitally operated.

The white powers-that-be are fine tuning their system as to make their oppression and its profit-making mission “insulated” from Haitian politics. They are very close to achieving this. The US/Euros want to get to the point where even a token white presence within Haiti’s government, i.e., even the Haitian imperial agent of US interest, won’t be needed. My dear friends, the US/Euro governments, with “globalization” are getting to the point where they will have so refined their exploitation as to keep it invisible, incorporeal.

Thus, under their form of globalization, the international system has been rigged so that the policies distant Washington technocrats or their proxies design - to be implemented by IMF, World Bank, WTO (all run and funded by US Treasury dept)- these policies are designed to be insulated from any Haitian politics.

Frankly, the way the US/Euros have morphed their exploitation blueprint is so sophisticated that today no matter what happens in Haiti’s political arena, whatever a national pro-its-people government tries to do to make rational pro-people, pro-development economic and social policy, they can’t. Aristide (Feudal Lord that he’s unwillingly become) can do NOTHING because the internationals will wreck Haiti’s economy further than they’ve already wrecked it by capital flight. Unlike back in the day we have no gold reserves. And they pretty much own our banking system. This, is what Haitians face today.

And, if these observations are true, then Haiti’s only hope is the Haitian Diaspora to establish alternatives and lift up Haiti’s economy, counter US/Euro capital flight. A great deal of Haitian self-determination, development and progress is in our hands. No one else will truly help Haiti. The people on the ground are dying, visionless and living with a hamstrung leadership. Who will re-mobilize Haiti’s traditional streak of independence? Who will help the Haitian mothers nurturing Haitian children in Haiti with practically no resources? Who will expose Euro/US barbarity that is dedicated to obscuring the most elementary truths about their actions in this world; how they justify pursuing social policies that are forcing children to die.

But, Mbeki asked that we understand how this all came about?


******

Cast our minds back to 1804 when the greatest Haitian civil society ever had been mobilized. As with the 1990 Lavalas mobilization, back in 1804 the US/Euros had huge economic, material and ideologically racist interests to protect.

Their united task, then as today, was to get back the old pre-Haitian Revolution “business” climate just as after Aristide’s unexpected success in 1990 their SOLE goal has been to get Haiti back to the old pre-Aristide US/Euro favorable business climate. US/Euro aims are to re-install people in Haiti who would carry out US priorities and reverse the Haitian people’s movement towards democracy. The tactics the US/Euros use to achieve their immoral aims are the same for 1990 on to today as they where in 1804.

The standard US/European manner of destroying the prospects for independent democracy, for decimating popular resistance forces is used not only in Haiti but all over the globe.

The US government simply buys off elections with a combination of some or all of the following: it funds ultra-right organizations, terrorist paramilitary groups, fascist police, withholds food, fuel, medicine, makes sure the victims economy cannot function, adds an embargo for good measure when necessary, brings in strikebreakers and starts or fuels subversive activities in neighborhoods of the people’s movement by stimulating, resurrecting or creating criminal mafia groups, pumps in drugs, prostitution and violence. The US/Euros do all this to SMASH up, divide, decimate and counter any mobilized people’s movement that would hinder their “business climate.”

These tactics are UNDISPUTED historical facts. And, they are tried and true and always successful. They have not only been used in Haiti after 1804, but in every people-are-valuable-movement, across the globe, where poor communities came together to regain governance from fascist governments.

In Haiti all these things have happened, in 1804 and up until this very moment as US counterinsurgency plans are humming along as planned and in fine working order. Meanwhile Haitians, from the layperson to intellectuals, business classes, slum dwellers to peasants, we-Haitians twist and turn under this standard US/Euro torture, point at each other, kill off each other. Not enough of us even look up to see the effect of our collective actions works in the service of bringing back the Man’s “business climate” for him. Our turmoil, political impasses – Haitian repression, Haitian children dying of malnourishment, curable diseases, street violence, from illiteracy, nihilism, drugs and inchoate despair and rootless-ness - all these Haitian pains equal US/Euro “good investment climate,” equals white profit.

Back in 1804, as today, task for the US/Euros in Haiti was to pour gasoline and exacerbate the light skin/dark skin Haitian divisions, sponsor internal racist fratricide to destroy the fragile coalition of Haitian interests which had united and looked outwards together against the Europeans for the greatest African victory in the annals of modern history; 2) ignite the web of repression (good guy/bad guy US/Euro duplicitous machiavellian tactics) that would have Haitians at each others throats to set the destabilizing atmosphere for picking-off and killing the leaders of the Haitian Revolution one by one; 3) set factions of the mobilized Haitian civil society at odds against itself by any means necessary, 3) then, decimate it back to Stone Age misery with a 100-year financial embargo so that Haitian currency, goods, products, labor and services had no market.

We won’t go into how these racketeers saddled Haiti with debt with the 1833 French embezzlement, the capturing of our peoples minds and hearts with their Pepe education/propaganda; or by giving the light skinned Haitians access to crony capitalism and European products, passports, mobility, etc, to help create and sustain Haitian feudal lords for the US/Euro governments. For, the pattern of repression, re-adjustment and underdevelopment hasn’t changed much since 1804, 1960, 1990, or now.

*******
THE STANDARD COLONIAL RELATIONSHIP

In his book, “Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky” (Edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel), Noam Chomsky basically outlines how the whites rule through the local agents of the imperial power.

“So take a classic case, look at the history of India for a couple hundred years under the British Empire: the country was run by INDIANS, not by British – the bureaucrats who actually ran things were Indians, the soldiers who beat people up and smashed their heads were Indians. There was an Indian leadership which became very rich and privilege by being the agents of the British imperial system – and it’s the same thing everywhere else.” (“Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky,” Edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, p.314)

For instance, in South Africa towards the end of the apartheid period, “the most brutal atrocities were carried out by Black soldiers, who were basically mercenaries for the white racist South African regime.

“…every (Developing ) country is like that. Whatever you want to call it, the whole American sort of “neocolonial system” – El Salvador, Brazil, the Philippines (India, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia), and so on – is not run by AMERICANS.

“The U.S. may be in the background, and when things get out of hand you may send in the American army or something – but basically it’s all being run by local agents of the imperial power, whose internal power depends on their support from the outside, but who very much enrich themselves by their client ruler status” (Understanding Power, p.313)
******

THE MAKING OF THE TRAGIC BLACK ELITE/UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITIES

People rightly say a converted fanatic is more zealous than the born-into-the-religion (born-into-white-skin) fanatic. And, we-Haitians know, from our history, with our warring elites that that’s true.

FANATICALLY ZEALOUS/venomously paranoid: The Black tragic elite or Black opportunist is fanatically zealous and extremely dangerous.

One thing our warring elites have NEVER fought over is how to be MORE African, while they break their necks to marry white genes or light skin primarily for upward mobility, or, to be culturally French, classically and aesthetically ONLY European, et cetera.

Nonetheless, the wealthy Haitian elites have not all succumbed to opportunism. Many of Haiti’s freedom fighters like Jacques Roumain, Antoine Izmery, etc, came from wealth. And, it’s not only the moneyed classes who are Europeanized -this filters throughout Haitian society, in poor enclaves like Fond Des Blan, Miragoan, Geremie, etc., where light skin provides, for instance, either better marriage possibilities or better domestic jobs for the simple Andeyo girl moving to Port-au-Prince/Petionville looking for superior circumstances. Today, the repression and oppression of the poor and the trickling down and across all divides of the light/skin dark/skin caste system and its attendant mental colonization permeates Haitian society as well as all Developing World societies and the disenfranchised African communities living in US/Euro countries.

THE FANATIC:

Not only is a Black Tragic elite or the Black opportunist suffering from that double-consciousness all Blacks suffer from, at various level and degrees- not only does he/she suffer from this low grade mental instability of constantly second guessing self, constantly looking at self through the veil, the white eyeballs he/she surgically inserts over his/her own African eye – not only is said Black opportunist so mutililated, but his/her African psyche is further shattered by his/her short term positions in life, which, in sum represents, serves and defends historical White hegemony/tyranny at the expense of long term African majority ‘s development, culturally, economically, aesthetically, politically, socially, psychologically, technologically, et cetera..

So imagine, if you will, the Black opportunist both fanatically defending white double standards while living within the veil looking at self through white eyes, then you’ll see we’re really talking about a pretty sick, puppy here.

Yet, and still, acknowledging these facts, I still contend the White racist is far more unstable.

His white privilege and barbaric policies has caused more death in the Black communities worldwide than any natural diseases or Black on Black crimes. Four million died in the Congo precisely because Mobutu and his henchmen were funded and politically and economically supported by the US/Euros.

So, it is important we-Black activists are very careful not to regurgitate the negative images strewn around about Black barbarity. US funds Liberia, so when we see these crazed, drugged-up Liberian soldiers, let’s not forget the accountability of the White racist, all in a sundry are now calling in, to be the “peacekeepers.” Let’s keep at the FOREFRONT of our minds who manufactured the guns, who benefits from the drugs these child-soldiers inhale, the chaos they create. Keep at the forefront not the devastating images of Black gone ferocious and rampant but the invisible pharmaceutical companies who benefit from the chemicals used to mix the drugs, the nicely suited bankers who launder the illegal diamonds and drugs. The diplomatic and World Bank drones and US State department “experts’ and consultants who literally make their living off Black pain, death, arson, murder and mutilations.

Do you see these child soldiers and street children drenched in diamonds or is it those Europeans traders in Antwerp and their wealthy customers benefiting?

No leader, no adult with world perspective and grounded in Liberian and West African history, would countenance putting the accountability of these child soldiers, or even of that madmen Charles Taylor with the profound role of the US imperial system that fuels, maintains and exploits Black turmoil, tribalism and pain.

So then it is important for various reasons that the respondeat superior is called to book. It is also equally as important if we-Haitians are at war for the Haitian peoples survival and we recognize the transcendental fact that Haiti is an African nation struggling on the battlefield to regain the liberty and humanity of Black life from the crutches of systemic white hegemony and tyranny and consistent acts of terror, then, we-Haitians must also publicly acknowledge, that as a Black nation, we have a particular compelling moral interest that is NOT color-blind.

That is, in order to accomplish the larger legitimate goal – the liberty and survival of African life and culture, we must be cognizant that ANY Black leader that is demonized outside of the context of the white system which created him/or her (whether legitimately demonized or not), any such demonization ALWAYS trickles down to demonizing all African peoples individually and as a group NO MATTER WHERE THEY LIVE, and, always leaves the Man, in his self-created position of hero, forcing our innocent children to wholly imbibe images of Black as morally repugnant, wicked or at the very least it makes us-Blacks feel uncomfortable, guilty and grateful for His compassionate intervention where we have no real need to be grateful, ashamed or guilty at all. This blueprint must be decimated.

*******

To outline the complexities and uses of the Black tragic elites/opportunists is a tool. It’s the beginning of a plan, a campaign, a strategy. I am not defending the tragic elite, only showing how they are created and used to keep African civil society passive and quiescent.

It’s to directly, as Mbeki suggested “….encourage the African masses in Africa and the African Diaspora, especially the youth, to…. better understand their own national conditions.” And, to empower them to respond more effectively to the challenges. For, the Black Tragic elite model is “entangled within the story of Haiti.” Its uses are relevant to the challenges we have to meet especially with reference to elevating African culture and social consciousness.

My hope in this outline is to show our people how tragic these mutants are and how it is not smart that they are demonized while the slave masters remain unscathed - for they are inseparable.

This is indeed a thankless task. But I believe it’s important to face it, because, as I’ve said, the demonizing of one Black tragic elite/opportunist, always, under the racist system we live under, it always reflects on the entire fictional Black race. In contrast, the crimes of the Nazis, of Hitler, Timothy McVeigh, the Bushes, Tony Blairs, the Erons, Arthur Andersons, Tycos, et cetera, never are a reflection of the Anglophile white majority, in general. They are all defended as “isolated incidents.”

We are fully aware that venality, brutality and hypocrisy has no race and, is, as Arundhati Roy says “imprinted on the souls of leaders of every nation.” We know that. Yet and still, because of racism, “bad” doesn’t stick to the Teflon-white coating. “Bad” only sticks to Black people and that’s precisely why my thesis, my assertion is that if we are looking for a strategy, a way to bring systemic change that we work at the root of the problem, not at the Black opportunist level. That we are always mindful, whenever presented with an issue of the Black opportunist, follow the money, or, another words, find the white racist or white entity responsible and benefiting from the labours of the Black opportunist or Tragic elite.

If it’s about drugs in Haiti or in the Black community, always ask, comeback with – how many bankers laundering money have been put behind bars? How many pharmaceutical companies selling ingredients to make the drugs have been prosecuted? Ask the pertinent questions, make them STREET TALK.

If it’s about overseers like Charles Taylor, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Raoul Cedras, Tonton Constant, ask who funds them, trained them and pays their salaries. Is it the Black community?

WE have to STOP our systemically imposed confusion, guilt, shame and impasse. Let’s get off the self-hate stratum, the melanin-colonized repression level and try and be ready with the self-affirming comebacks
. The tactics of white tyranny are very, very old and keep being successful because we intellectuals are trained to protect the white psyche, to stay away from the sharp replies, the authentic comebacks.

*********

THE HAITIAN BLUEPRINT

The Haitian people have been at war since 1503 with the white slave masters and their Black overseers. We have had 300 years of slavery and 200 years of containment-in-poverty within a hostile US/Euro Mediterranean.

Today as yesteryear, the US government funds terror in Haiti and the Haitian people are struggling on the battlefield to regain the liberty and humanity of Black life from the crutches of systemic White hegemony and tyranny and its consistent acts of terror.

One of our political functions as Haitians and Africans-Americans is to tell our own people’s stories and life experiences, working towards the mobilization of a worldwide conscience that will see through the lies and hypocrisy of the white powers-that-be.

For, as Dubois says, we must be recognized as FULL human beings because “the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty,—all these we need, not singly but together.” (Excerpted from the chapter “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” in DuBois’s book “The Souls of Black Folk.”)

*********

The story is: we are facing a web of repression here.

A two-headed chameleon here: the madness of a Dr.Jekyll/Mr.Hyde dual personality - a repressive and insane bad cop/good cop charade - except the “good” offered or the “good” that the African struggle wrestles from Dr. Jekyll is always a ruse to buy the evil Mr. Hyde more time to again imprison African life, labor and raw resources more easily and technically under White tyranny, or its massive structural adjustment plans - effectuating the same old same racist, brutal oppression and genocidal course as before.

But post-“independence”, this time without, as we’ve seen in the era after the 1960 Civil Rights Movement in the US, as we’ve seen in the time after the African independence movements of the 1960s, as we’ve seen with the 1994 ANC “defeat” of apartheid in South Africa, this time, once they’ve crushed or ADJUSTED us African peoples with their “law and order” veneers, their various “structural adjustments plans,” their form of “Black independence” their racist economic madness, then, they can go about the usual business of exploitation, terror and Black genocide with a CLEAN CONSCIENCE. (Read, Arundhati Roy’s "Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy: Buy One, Get One Free," at, http://www.cesr.org/roy. Note especially the part where she analyses the dreadful status, under the White Power Structure’s massive structural adjustment plans, of President Mbeki’s South Africa, 10-years after the so-called “end of apartheid.”)

Because now that racism, colonialism and white apartheid is OVER! it’s those African warlords and rebel groups at fault for Africa’s underdevelopment; it’s those warring Black parties at fault; it’s ONLY those African tribal warfare that’s causing the intestine problems in the Sudan, Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Liberia, …. it’s those nationalistic Al Sharptons who are polarizing us, bothering the perfectly happy and contented Black US majority.

But, hey get me one of our venomous Black conservatives to come and defend white. For, everyone knows if the US Black majority is suffering amid plenty, it’s because they have not pulled themselves up by their Clarence-Thomas-bootstraps – like Ophra, Mike, Michael, Whoopi, Colin, or Denzel. Hey, see we-whites know Black people, by their first names (A holdover from the slaveholding era?)! Who are you calling a racist? Stop playing that race card.

And, as Molly Secours points out, the argument is, “If THESE (highly visible and wealthy, US) Black people can make it without a handout then everyone can!…..The implication is that these successful Blacks – who are held up as exceptions – are also used to prove that not all African Americans suffer…” Thus, troublemakers, for instance, like Ezili Danto, should realize that systemic, US-government subsidized segregation, racial hierarchy and apartheid is OVER; realize that the US government doesn’t sponsor racism and Black oppression anymore. “These are sins of our PAST.” How many times do we have to say: It’s over, move on. Stop being “divisive,” “polarizing,” - can’t we all just get along?

And, there you have it.

(Aside: For those who would like further information or, for those who need a white person’s sanction, permission or approval to hold a radical/confrontational thought, by all means, see for further info: Molly Secours, (no disrespect Molly!) a White progressive, who describes herself as “a middle-aged white woman, who has jumped on the reparation bandwagon, in an essay entitled “Riding the Reparations Bandwagon. p. 289. In the essay, Molly Secours advocates for reparations by analyzing the kind of misinformation that “causes most white people who hear and/or read about the reparations movement to get nervous and defensive, and respond with one of an infinite number of objections” at p. 286. See, also another White progressive, Tim Wise, also on the same subject, in an essay entitled “Debtor’s Prison: Facing History and Its Consequences” p. 239 to 250. Also, for further info, see Tim Wise book “Little White Lies: The Truth About Affirmative Action and “Reverse Discrimination.” Or, see, further, Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men.”)

For, under the white man’s new form of oppression, and, ladies and gentlemen, guess what? It was first tested, honed and polished off, in that laboratory known as “Haiti,” after our Revolution and globalizes in the 1960s. Sure enough!

(To be continued…..

Ezili Danto

“Dje blan-yo mande krim. Bon Dje ki nan nou-an vle byen fe.” (Boukmann at Bwa Kayiman, August 14, 1791)

[Ezili Danto*]

One et Respe to all:

IT’S NOT IN THE PAST – LOOKING AT MODERN DAY HAITI, LIBERIA AND SIERRA LEONE, THE OLDEST BLACK REPUBLICS AFTER THE TRIANGULAR TRADE ERA:

The globalization thing began not in the 1960s but soon after Haitian independence in 1804.

For, while the French were testing and refining their Euro-blueprint on us in the early days of our independence through ecclesiastic colonization, and selectively, economically ADJUSTING and positioning the Black-opportunist-light-skinned- Haitian-tribe to rule over the darker-majority-tribes; while the creating “Black feudal lord” thing was being polished off simultaneously with the creating “white” people thing among the European immigrants to the Americas; while this was going on, the English were off in Sierra Leone setting up their own African colony to use as base for imperial expansion in Africa; barely some fifteen years after Haitian independence, US Southern slave owners were establishing their own answer to counter the Revolutionary Haitian model. The alternative they came up with is called Liberia.

US Southern slave owners and their protestant missionaries and gunboat merchants and "traders" established their own palpable base in Africa, in the heartland of Black, with Liberia - complete with their Black overseers in plantation attire strutting down Monrovia, Liberia’s capital (named after the President who penned the “Monroe Doctrine,” which, initially codified white US tyranny in Haiti.)

See the pattern. There is always a “good” reason for white involvement in Africa or Haitian affairs – bringing order, religion, civilization, or giving an African home to the free descendants of British Black or US captives.

SIERRA LEONE: ANGLOPHILE PATHOLOGIES

Now the British were old hats at patriarchy, racism, repression and empire. They had, of course, already stepped on India's shores disguised
as "traders." The multinational Euro company they then used for their exploits, for creating a good British investment climate in India and the Americas was called the East India Company, remember? Thus, it's no chock to learn that the motherland of the United States, the British, were the first to set up the “let’s rule through the natives” blueprint in Africa. Thus, for balance of power purposes and imperial expansion, Sierra Leone was a British colony to which freed African captives were returned to in the late 1700's.

There, on African soil, these Euro/educated and selected Africans formed a social class, which hardly integrated with the indigenous, or homegrown African peoples, just like Liberia, established as a United States colony to be a homeland for free US Blacks.

After independence in 1961, successive Sierra Leone governments were dominated by a small political elite, agents of Euro British power, who exclusively profited from the lucrative trade in diamonds. Little of this nat
ional income trickled down to benefit the rest of the Black majority population.

Liberia became “independent” in 1847. Obviously, Liberian independence here means it became a US protectorate, just as Sierra Leone independence meant the British did not go away and stop the Antwerp trade. Just as up until the first occupation in Haiti, the French not only had us-Haitians pay for our “independence” with their 1833 embezzlement and mortgage of the Haitian people’s wealth, but they simultaneously stole our Haitianist sovereignty with the Euro/US whiteness unification they quickly adopted to stop our African-based-Dessaline-development in its tracks.

And so, the “independent” Republic of Haiti, like the “independent” republics of Liberia and Sierra Leone, except for some small bright spots in Haiti, has, from the beginning of its history been dominated by a small minority made up mostly of anti-Ayisyen, pwo-etranje agents, feudal lords and mercenaries for white power.

And, if you let your children only read, smarmy pro-etranje books like “Written In Blood” and “Politics of Squalor” instead of CLR James’ “Black Jacobin” and the like, to counter the marathon of murder, mutilation, Coup d’etat and African-on-African betrayal that Eurocentric scholars’ refusing to look at the strings their governments cast and pull blithely past off as “Haitian History.” If you only read their mainstream media, then, you will no doubt come away with the weighty and most painful and embarrassing knowledge, that the Haitian nation only OWNS THE LONGEST HISTORY OF CORRUPTION, EXPLOITATION AND BRUTAL REPRESSION OF THE MAJORITY OF ITS PEOPLES IN HAITI. That we are like Liberia. But we are not even it that image is hammered into Haitian heads relentlessly. Our starting points where different. And that has made a difference. Even though our intellectuals are brainwashed, because of our heritage as Freedom Fighters, no one in their right minds would ask Haitians to go kill Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Bahamians whereas the Americo-Liberians and the colonized rebel groups in Liberia have now touched off a civil war that has engulfed the whole of West Africa. We won't even go into what happening in the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan and Somalia.

So even though we are constantly told about our LONG, LONG LONG political history of corruption, Haitian fratricide and brutal repression of the Haitian people. Even though this squalor is banged into our heads while our 200-year peoples’ struggle against it is literally erased or obfuscated, the Haitian people remain cynically unconvinced.

But hey the Anglophile still keeps telling us we were illiterate, backwards peoples who bit off more than we could chew by getting rid of the civilized Europeans. We were not ready for democracy they tell us - unable to govern ourselves after our independence. That’s what we are told, ad nausea, isn’t it?

BUT, inquiring minds want to know, why would an acknowledged US PROTECTORATE in Africa, with hoards of educated white US protestant missionaries guiding it and the best US political minds guiding it, which "nation" has always been funded and militarily protected by the US, why, inquiring minds want to know, would said US-offshoot be dominated by the small minority of Afro-American settlers who held almost total power up until 1980, when army master-sergeant Samuel Doe led his bloody coup, plunging Liberia into the long civil war, which today still goes on under US-funded Charles Taylor? Why? The Euro/Americans guiding them, where were they, weren't they civilized enough, democratic enough, intelligent enough, superior enough to make a difference in that civil society? Why not?

See the pattern here. For, if you understand Haitian history well, you’ll understand why Liberia is the OLDEST Black US-protectorate in Africa with THE LONGEST HISTORY OF CORRUPTION, EXPLOITATION AND BRUTAL REPRESSION OF THE MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE IN LIBERIA!

The problem is while category ZERO always gets vilified and demonize, Category ONE, the respondeat superior, has the LONGEST HISTORY OF EXEMPTION FROM PUNISHMENT, HARM OR RECRIMINATION; THE LONGEST AND LOUDEST PUBLIC HISTORY OF HUMANITARIAN GOOD DEEDS, GOOD GOVERNANCE. If we buy their lies, the white nations/colonial powers come from A LONG LINE of simply good natured, democratic, non-corrupt, merciful rulers and their white peoples who are adventurers, industrious, entrepreneurial, kind, peaceful, civic-minded, honest, unselfish, beautiful developed and brilliantly advanced. (See, Ezili Danto’s post dated: Wed Jul 16, 2003 2:56 am Post subject: The feudal lords and addressing Mbeki http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?p=602#602 )

Pick up any newspaper these days and you will quickly learn how Charles Taylor, Liberia’s current head of state, a descendant of US African-captives, is the latest of A LONG, LONG, LONG LINE of utterly ruthless, loathsome rulers. He was also the principal sponsor of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader (The RUF) in neighboring Sierra Leone who is responsible for unspeakable human rights crimes, notorious for systematic rape, mutilation and abduction, with child soldiers often drugged before being sent into battle.

Now the point is, if Charles Taylor (Category ZERO) was financed by the US (Category ONE), and Foday Sankoh (Category ZERO) was financed by Charles Taylor (Category ZERO), how come only Taylor and Sankoh (Category ZERO) and not the US reps, intelligence agents and US Presidents involved (Category ONE) are charged with crimes against humanity for one of Africa’s most savage wars with amputations of limbs used to terrorize civilians, with the 200,000 killings and countless rapes, mutilations and acts of terror done in Sierra Leone?

Why do the whites always go unscathed? Does it make any sense that US sponsored Charles Taylor, then Taylor sponsored Foday Sankoh and then after 10-years of their massacres with US aid monies of poor African civilians, then, US sets up an “international” tribunal in Sierra Leone, complete with a Washington prosecutor, who has the SOLE authority to indict war criminals in Africa. And who then unilaterally indicts seven warlords including Foday Sankok and Taylor. Where are the LEADERS in Africa? How can this madness go on?

Are we so beholden, so tied to that almighty dollar, we cannot see Category One’s web of repression - its ancient hand in the divisions, the tribal wars, the creation of henchmen like Mobutu, Duvalier, Cedras, Taylor and Foday Sankok and now, in Haiti’s Central Plateau, the San Manmans? (Who, by the way, are probably being trained by the same US intelligent agents who trained those who trained Foday Sankok as the names of both rag tag, drugged-up and armed to the teeth Black youths are eerily similar.

*****

THE REAL HISTORY - ONE EXAMPLE OF THE COLONIAL MODEL - Liberia:

In 1815, Paul Cuffee a free African-American and Maritime entrepreneur started the idea, financed and captained a successful voyage to Sierra Leone where he helped a small group of African-American immigrants es
tablish themselves. He had visions of creating a trade network to develop the resources of Africa, building a free and liberated Black nation in Africa. But he died two years later after that first successful trip to Sierra Leone without fulfilling his dream. Two years after his death, the American COLONIZATION Society, who wanted to repatriate free Africans, basically for self-interested reasons, picked up the James Cufee idea, setting up a US COLONY in Africa.

Many free African-Americans including those who had supported Paul Cuffee's efforts did NOT want any part of this new racist organization dominated by Southerners and slaveholders, which excluded Blacks from membership.

So, these White people established Liberia basically thinking of it as an EXTENSION of Southern US rule. For under the ruse of “helping” free Blacks (who gave hope to, by their very existence in the US, the enslaved Blacks) under the alternative ruses of either “helping or civilizing” Africans, once again the White man expanded his domination.

For the Southerners who were in Sierra Leone and Liberia firmly believed the co-opted Black American colonist could, like we see with Condoleeza and Rice, the Black overseers, the Southerners saw, could play a central role in the “Christianizing” and “civilizing” of Africa – meaning, the stealing of more from Africa from their new African bases. And, so both Sierra Leone and Liberia have fulfilled its Dixieland mission and purpose, ever since, with the Black overseers transplanted from the American South to West Africa, ruling by the decree of the White slaveholders. (For more info, see the African-American Mosaic at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam002.html or, a more detailed history, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/lib ... beria.html

****

Our failure to engage Category Zero is telling. For one cannot stay long in a conversation about the Haitian situation, the African-American situation without the sentence “let’s stop dwelling in the past,” or “how about the Black overseers’ roles” or, that “it’s not about white tyranny because the elites in our neighborhoods are Koreans, Palestinians, Jews, Black, Mulattoes?” etc…. from coming up.

There’s little looking outwards together, mainly tearing and staring at the red herrings place in our paths to create more impasse. No systemic pressure on the US government to put in jail the CIA agents, US presidents and State Department policymakers who created Toto Constant, Raoul Cedras, FRAPH, maintained the Duvaliers homicidal reign and are now sponsoring the San Manmans and many in the Convergence?

Why? Because we are in a quandary, resource-less and brainwashed by a corporate media fixed on keeping us unfocussed.

That’s one reason why most African civil society enclaves and communities in the US, Europe, Canada, Africa, Haiti, the Caribbean, Brazil, etc.. are passive, apathetic and silent on these historical facts, buying instead Eurocentric lenses and their historically vacuous comments and judgments.

It’s not necessarily that we-Haitians don’t recognize the Powers-that-be and their anti-humanistic values of hedonism and materialism; how that has underdeveloped Africa, Haiti, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Developing World, keeping these civil societies in turmoil, impasse, violence, confusion and chaos; no matter how brainwashed we are, an understanding of that history is not very deep below the surface of our consciousnesses. It shows up in our stubborn Haitian pride.

But, thing is, to wholly absorb our history and act on it, is to be condemned to a life of struggle, deprivation, isolation, alienation and punishment. To go for self is easier and less complicated.

Besides, this going-for-self-Machiavellian behavior is taught in Haiti’s Universities as if it’s a laudable, acceptable, pragmatic principle – a moral way of life and proper co-existence. Our African children, both in Haiti and abroad are taught that life is about what one can BUY. That life is valuable only if one has a proper white job and can make a profit. That raising children is not work but gambling or speculating in the financial markets IS work. That it’s about looking out for self, not community and that there are precious little circumstances which occasion acts of pure benevolence. For, in every case, society will glorify, those with an ulterior motive that are driven by a never-ending quest for power and profits.

********

Yes, we-Haitians, faced with a chronic lack of resource, living within a hostile Euro/American Mediterranean, unwittingly helped the Euro/US imperialist set up the blueprint of repression and turmoil combined with political opportunism- that they now globalize.

We Haitians unwittingly helped provide the white forefathers with the keep-them-Haitian-indigenous-peoples-at-hellish-impasse, in turmoil and chaos, within a Euro/US factional violence model. We, the first Black republic in the new world, gave the White power structure this divide and conquer blueprint model that’s gone nuclear.

See, “Barefoot, Sick, Hungry and Afraid, The Real U.S. Policy in Africa” where the author outlines why US policy is and has been historically DESIGNED to place Africans “at extremes of insecurity” in order to foreclose the possibility of any coherent African civil society unit from taking root.

In that article, the Black Commentator author writes: “Tribalism is, indeed, a problem in Africa. For Americans and Europeans, it is an obsession – the game they have played since the Portuguese planted their first outposts at the mouths of African rivers in the 1400s. However, there are limits to the effectiveness of tribal manipulation. Many “tribes” are very large – nations, actually. Setting one tribal group against the other, while suppressing the social development of each, is a tricky business. The colonizer must not to allow the “favored” group to accrue, through privilege, sufficient social space to aspire to nationhood. In that event, the formerly favored group must be crushed by the colonizer’s own military force – a brutish and costly business. http://www.blackcommentator.com/50/50_cover_africa.html
******
Showing, however, how the Haitian elite helped to provide the blueprint for the colonial model, does not in anyway, dismisses as valueless the courage, blood, sweat and tears expended by the Black Haitian majority in the long and tortuous struggle (300-years of slavery and 200-years of containment-in-poverty) to smash the cruel edifice of White-death, exploitation and underdevelopment.


(To be continued…..

Ezili Danto

“Dje blan-yo mande krim. Bon Dje ki nan nou-an vle byen fe.” (Boukmann at Bwa Kayiman, August 14, 1791)

[jafrikayiti*]

Ezili,

I am still reading the second-to-last post of yours and I can't wait to fisnish the reading the two posts thoroughly as soon as I find myself some personal time again...

But I want to now sincerely thank you for your constancy as well as your persistence. This traits demonstrate true dedication and love for your brethren.

I have adopted to reflect on this particular statement of yours for today...

ANY Black leader that is demonized outside of the context of the white system which created him/or her (whether legitimately demonized or not), any such demonization ALWAYS trickles down to demonizing all African peoples individually and as a group NO MATTER WHERE THEY LIVE, and, always leaves the Man, in his self-created position of hero, forcing our innocent children to wholly imbibe images of Black as morally repugnant, wicked or at the very least it makes us-Blacks feel uncomfortable, g
uilty and grateful for His compassionate intervention where we have no real need to be grateful, ashamed or guilty at all. This blueprint must be decimated.

INDEED IT MUST! And this is OUR DUTY !

Thank you for being you and please do continue to challenge and dialogue with your brothers and sisters with passion, love and respect.

Benediksyon zansèt yo sou ou sè mwen !

Jafrikayiti

[Ezili Danto*]

One et Respe to all:

What are the blueprints of oppression so we may draw up our own resistance models?

In this post, I point to another model – a three-tier system where authentic African liberators become unwilling participants and then outright collaborators with the US/Euro imperialistic system.

How do we-Haitians judge when a Haitian leader is at what stage? Simple. Just look at the relationship said purported leader(s) holds with the majority of the Haitian people. That’s the litmus test.

Following up on Mbeki’s challenge to African scholars and activist and on the search for leverage to use against the white imperialist in Haiti and his structural adjustments of African peoples-
http://annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=331

I've just finish reading the two posts on this Forum under subject heading: Mugabe a-t-il raison?

http://winterludes.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=395

and these thoughts came to mind:

Mugabe, like Taylor and Foday Sankoh, or even Kabila, has now come to represent a great opportunity to the Euro/US imperialists.

For, there is no doubt although Mugabe started out as a freedom fighter, and well earned his revolutionary credentials, today, Robert Mugabe and his party ZANU’s repression of Zimbabwe's civil society, including looting land seized from the white opportunist/racist to give to his political cronies, wife and friends; slave labor on the seized farms now operated by African capitalists and his repression of farm laborers, student groups, women, not to mention his so-called "virginity" test, makes a destabilized Zimbabwe ever more ripe for the imperialist to pluck.

A good analysis and a warning on how former revolutionaries, liberators and fighters against imperialism may morph from unwilling participants of neo-liberalism into the third stage of repressive dictators heralding the civil war that will bring the imperialist to come restore "order" is at: http://www.blackcommentator.com/51/51_zim_campbell.html )

And at, http://www.blackcommentator.com/51/51_zim.html

The most salient points made is how these strongman in Africa, (From Charles Taylor to Mugabe) these Black opportunist may not all have started off as destroyers but today they all have, under the guise of fighting white privilege and tyranny "manipulated the symbols of liberation to promote carnage, gender violence, arbitrary arrests, insecurity and destruction across Africa."

Professor Campbell writes: "Throughout the continent of Africa l……from Eritrea to Uganda and from Namibia to Zimbabwe there are leaders who came to power through major sacrifices of the ordinary people. These leaders have integrated themselves into repressive state institutions while claiming to carry forward the traditions of liberation. Since the end of apartheid, the limitations of the liberation model based on the charismatic guerrilla leader has become apparent, where the leadership advances their personal lust for power while forgetting the basic goals of uplifting the living standards of the most exploited. "(Campbell, http://www.blackcommentator.com/51/51_zim_campbell.html )

Keeping in mind Mbeki’s challenge, as we-Haitians study the situation in Africa with these feudal lords, the question that arises with the Haiti situation is: At what stage of the model is Aristide?

Is he still an unwilling participant or is he suppressing Haitian civil society while acquiescing to a harsh IMF/World Bank regime and, later, will end up, like the others, just substituting crony capitalism for a real economic redistribution system?

*********
Or, does he empower the ordinary Haitian?

There is legitimate debate on the empowerment issue but the fact of the matter is Aristide is still an unwilling participant who has made so
me authentic efforts at empowering, even while those efforts must be pushed wider by progressives.

And though we read only negative press on Aristide in the US/Euro media, their opinions are peripheral to Haiti’s central issues - Aristide must be judged by his current relationship to the Haitian people. If you look at Mugabe, Taylor and Kabila, these are straight-up collaborators in the imperialist system no matter their rhetoric to the contrary because they have become unpopular because of State repression. Haiti is no where there……….yet.

The real issue is not what people write but does Aristide still work for transformational policies servicing the needs of the masses of Haitians? Yes, I believe so.

First off, compare him to Robert Mugabe, Laurent Kabila, Charles Taylor and you know he is still the undisputed POPULAR leader of Haiti. Then there are some of his recent actions: His legal recognition of Vodun as a legitimate religion empowers the Haitian masses. This recognition adds to the people’s basic freedoms as African-based citizens and fosters a healthier Haitian civil society. Then there is his government’s demand for a return of the 21 billion looted from Haiti by the French with its 1833 embezzlement. This reclaims the fruits of the Bwa Kayiman warriors in Haiti.

These two achievements alone, mark Aristide as an unparalleled trailblazer for Haitian rights. Setting examples which shall have far reaching consequences, as other Haitian groups and would-be politicians must take the lead and start launching demands, such as, that the US pay restitution for looting and fleecing the Haitian treasury and nation from 1914 to 1945; also for amending the Dessaline Constitution by the point of the gun to give land to US corporations and their Haitian lackeys. Yes, a wall has been broken, the flood is coming. Wangolo ap vini.....

No Haitian leader other than Aristide may claim to have blaze these Revolutionary Path while in office. His courage and integrity deserve praise even while we-Haitian progressive must continue to push and to give voice to the basic goals of uplifting the living standards of the majority and for much more systemic people-empowerment transformational policies to be put in place.

Policies, for instance, to better protect Haitian workers at home and abroad at the Dominican bateys, et cetera. Most importantly, Aristide is still viable because he has not yet fully supported the backward and anti-people economic structural adjustment policies insisted upon by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. That, is why he is still the undisputed leader of the Haitian majority. That is why there is no mass-based or major opposition to the Lavalas movement. That is why there is a US/Euro embargo on Haiti based on POLITICS, not on Haitian state-sponsored human rights violations. That is why there is no civil war in Haiti that would lead to the desired Euro/US imperialist intervention. We are still holding down the fort, despite the best efforts of the US Ambassadors to Haiti, USAID, their NGOs and all their stigmatizing of the Haitian people and Aristide. So yes, unlike the ever growing negative wave they want us to put faith in, we-Haitians can look out and say to the world, to Africa, to the US, to everyone, we have something to celebrate in 2004! Goliah beware! Wangolo ap vini ankò……

Are these "empowerment" – the Vodun decree, the restitution initiative, the recalcitrance towards structural adjustment, are they radical rhetoric as a disguise for state repression, or steps towards the liberation of the Haitian masses - the communal farmers, farm workers, plantation workers, poor women, youth, students and human rights activists? Is Aristide, like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Idi Amin of Uganda, Forbes Burnham of Guyana, Mengistu of Ethiopia, Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone, Laurent Kabila (Democratic Republic of the Congo) or as Doe and Taylor were to Liberia, Abacha and Bababangida was in Nigeria, Siad Barre was in Somali, or as Traoure was in Mali, is he using progressive anti-imperialist rhetoric to mask repression and violence?

Not yet. Aristide’s revolutionary credentials are compromised but still lit, still indisputably strong in some facets. Our job as Black progressives is to continue to expose the imperialist while the Haitian government away from the center or the ultra Haitian right, where change CANNOT take place. It's not an easy task considering the resources of our enemies and the mental colonization of the tragic elite/opportunists living in our midst and the internal Lavalas grab for power, corruption and ineptitude. But, we are moving, sometimes standing still but we are not moving backwards. Not yet......

Some of these feudal lords of Africa, like the leaders I’ve just named, some of whom came to power through major sacrifices of the ordinary African all have integrated themselves into their old colonial repressive state institutions while claiming to carry forward the traditions of Black liberation. There are lots of negative US/Euro media trying to make Haitians believe Aristide has joined these ranks, that he is only advancing his personal lust for power; that he has forgotten the basic goals of uplifting the living standards of the Haitian poor. But that is not yet the undisputed opinion of the majority of the Haitian people – the only opinion that counts. Africa’s feudal lords, like Mugabe, could take note. Yes there must be more recognition on the part of the Aristide Government of the violation of Haitian immigrant rights and the plight of Haitian laborers at home and abroad. Yes, Aristide needs to broaden the representatives within his clique and squash the internal dissension by leading as opposed to by not making any decisions. Yet in still, in this second term, he has taken some significant actions to empower the people, especially with the work on children rights and the Vodun decree which empowers the poorest of the poor.

And while I’m thinking of this, let me just give the Aristide government one tiny suggestion. There has been much talk about Haitian society trafficking in forced child labor. The Restavek issue is now one more US imperialist reason why Haitian society is barbaric. I want to point to the fact that Aristide’s government has made child labor illegal.

In contrast, in the US, slavery is still LEGAL.

Yes, it is. Sure enough.

So next time some US Ambassador or US reps throws in our faces a conditions which Haitians themselves, with no prompting from any of those either Catholic or Protestant missionaries, who have been in Haiti for centuries, we ourselves sought to change our own pathologies. Yet now it is being used against us. So next time some Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hide too-faced hypocrite takes up the love they have for our Haitian children. Let’s not only remind them of what their underpaying Haitian women at 16 cents slave-wages an hour at their assembly plants does to a Haitian child’s welfare, health and survival. Lets not only remind them of what agribusiness, "free trade" no-tariff-paying-dumping-of-rice-wheat-corn-and-tomatoes does to promote Haitian malnutrition. No, let’s ALSO just point to the fact that, in the US, under the Thirteenth Amendment, which supposedly outlawed White enslavement of Blacks, that said slavery (involuntary servitude) is still LEGAL for prisoners. And yeah, guess who makes up a disproportion par t of the US two million plus prison-population. Guess who get to be paid 16cents an hour for working for Sprint, AT&T and other US corporations in the United States. Black people in US prisons!!! Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide. What the US/Euros give with moral fanfare is always taken away on the sly. That’s all you need to understand about the US/Euros and their claims to justice and morality.

Exhibit One: After more than 200 years of slavery in the US and a Civil War and countless of Black fighters dying - here’s the exact wording of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Tell the US to deal with it’s own current legal slavery issue before it comes to Haiti making moral pronouncements about how we-Haitians treat our Haitian babies. Better yet, release those Haitian toddlers under INS lock and key pronto, rescind the legal use of forced labor in the US, then maybe you might have some leg to stand on in Haiti, the land where slavery was legally totally abolished in 1803. Clean your own house of slave-labor now in 2003, then we-Haitians may hear you.

Ezili Danto

[Ezili Danto*]

One et Respe to all: Aristide's Betrayal: US Free Zone displaces Haitian farmers

One et Respe to all:

I spoke too soon…

I was encouraged by reading the histories of African strongman, like Robert Mugabe, Charles Taylor and Jonas Savimbi, Laurent Kabila and Foday Sankoh (Category Zero opportunists) posing as "freedom fighters" and favorably comparing the Lavalas government and Aristide to date. But that was yesterday, I said…."Not yet." I believed then Aristide (Category Zero - unwilling opportunist/collaborator) had not yet FULLY taken on the backward, profit-over-people white-privileged policies of the IMF/World Bank/USAID and US Embassy (Category One.)

And, I hoped that if Aristide was forced to, he would do so measurably, gradually and with less human suffering, more activist involvement, more people empowerment than we see in Africa, India, Latin America and the Caribbean. But, it's not too late to revisit my assessment. I said, "not yet...."

But I was wrong. (See, http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=400 Post dated Tue Aug 05, 2003 6:04 pm Post subject: Concern: Ouanaminthe Free Zone – article submitted to The Sunday Times, By Jacqui Goddard in Ouanaminthe, Haiti. 5 July 2003)

Yesterday I wrote Aristide had to be judged based on his relationship with the majority of the people. Today I wonder what the people in the town of Ouanaminthe, who lost their farms and who are too old to get jobs at the Ouanaminthe Free Zone factories are suffering because of the Aristide government policies and its leadership failure to make proper restitution?

What is Aristide about? Just radical Black liberation rhetoric? Is he like Mugabe, Taylor and the deceased Jonas Savimbi simply manipulating the symbols of Black liberation to promote carnage, gender violence, arbitrary arrests, insecurity and destruction across Haiti? This Free Zone will hire mainly Haitian women? Where will this lead our society. Will there be daycare for their children, healthy conditions in these sweatshops, protection from the hoards of unemployed who will be preying on them? Where is Aristide leading these Haitian women? What about the displaced, out of work farmers and their families? How severe will the State repression be that will contain their legitimate discontent?

Speaking about Mugabe, Professor Campbell noted that "Radical rhetoric as a disguise for state repression has been developed into an art form by the leadership in Zimbabwe.
"(http://www.blackcommentator.com/51/51_zim_campbell.html) Is this where Haiti is heading. Is it there already?

First off, can the Aristide government legitimately be asking for restitution from France when it is now in debt to these Ouanaminthe farmers? Isn't it squandering it's own moral standing just as Mugabe did? I do hope ameliorating steps are immediately taken because we-Haitians did not come this far to go backwards.

For, if the reports one read are accurate, the Aristide Government has clearly stolen the land of Haitian farmers without due compensation or due process; clearly committed an injustice against the 54 farmers in the town of Ouanaminthe. For the land is our Bwa Kayiman inheritance, paid for in-blood, sweat and tears. To ignore the farmers pleas, to ignore Haitian civil society organizations and give Haitian lands up to the World Bank/IMF/Grupo M - Levi's, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger and Hugo Boss, et cetera, is a shocking and unspeakable betrayal of the mandate of the Haitian people to rule on behalf of the people. Pwen, no virgul.

Clearly the Aristide government has moved to the political center if not outright to the ultra Haitian right on this neoliberalization issue if the Free Trade Zone confiscation of farmers lands is any indication. This then, is the historical moment, Haitian progressives may clearly point to as the
moment in time when Aristide, as the leader of Lavalas, no longer articulated the demands of the Haitian populous. This then is the moment in time when his leadership is becoming unworthy of the support of decent peoples everywhere. I hope his government makes amends quickly. For, with this so-called "Free Trade Zone", Aristide has rejected we of the anti-imperialist cadre and joined in and aligned his leadership with our enemies and their Haitian business forces and imperial agents.

This is a clear political leadership degeneration. It will have far-reaching degeneration affecting every aspect of Haitian society (environmental, overcrowding, improper handling of toxic waste, absence of health care and lack of proper conditions for factory worker in the Free Zone sweatshops). And, the fact that it's a so-called "people's government" instituting this degeneration is disappointing to the extreme. But it does follow the traditional repression model/blueprint - from Revolutionary leader to unwilling participant in neoliberalism to outright collaborator just fighting to keep a job as the political honcho/feudal lord in charge, or keeping house, for Euro/US capitalist.

Naturally, our instincts are to fight against this degeneration and rally to the support of the farmers. This division will likely only make the ultra-Haitian-right opposition to Aristide stronger and lead to more compromises, more chaos, more militarization, more anti-democratic State action - leading to greater human loss and misery in Haiti. The old blueprint continues - unrolling as programmed.....

It is reported that:

"The lease of 65 hectares of prime agricultural land outside the town of Ouanaminthe near the border to the Dominican apparel company, Grupo M, has caused much controversy in Haiti. Local farmers and progressive organizations in Haiti are outraged that the Haitian government should authorize such a dubious development project."

Haitians don’t need this collaboration with the imperialist. It will only lead down the road to a Haitian Civil War that will then give the imperialist the excuse to come "restore order." No good will come of it if past sweatshop collaborations are any barometer. If the displacements in Africa, in Jamaica (http://www.lifeanddebt.org/), in Latin America for Free Trade Zones are any indications.

Soon, a few years from now, as the beleaguered factory workers at the Ouanaminthe Free Trade Zone, strike, we may be faced with imported Asian laborers into Haiti to salvage the white men’s businesses. Is this what Haitians fought for in 1986 until now? I beg a reconsideration, pronto.

For, as activists have noted, Free Trade Zones, such as the one in question will only lead to "a swift ghetto-isation of the Maribahoux area as cheap housing springs up and thousands pour in searching for work."

"The job creation rhetoric is propaganda," said Mr. Chalmers, founder of PAPDA, the Haitian Advocacy for an Alternative Development Programme. "They talk about jobs being created, not the jobs that are being lost. There will be a real human cost." We know this for sure!

"They should work with farmers to increase agricultural productivity and feed Haiti's people, rather than destroying the country's bread basket to benefit foreign investors." Yes indeed, they should!

Why has Aristide brought misery to this region? Don’t we-Haitians have enough to deal with already without anticipating the ghettorization of Haiti’s breadbasket region and the displacement of PRODUCTIVE farmers? WHY IS THE ARISTIDE GOVERNMENT FURTHER DESTROYING HAITI’S DOMESTIC ECONOMY for foreigners’ profit?

Has Aristide entered the third stage of our repressive model – from unwilling participant to outright collaborator, displacing the most exploited, ruining the environment and creating only crony capitalist to benefit from his new policies? What next? Greater security and military to keep forced Haitian labor humming along, to stop the factory workers from unionizing; to imprisoned Haitian farm squatters who should refuse to peacefully leave their lands?

As this is a joint venture with the Dominican Republic, shall the DR’s Haitian-hating-police-force be dispatched to keep the Haitian workers in order. You know, this repressive model is too old - it’s consequences to predictable for Aristide not to know. The only reason why this would go on is if Aristide has totally lost his head to his lust for power. Nothing else explains it. For if the IMF/World Bank said "you do this or we withhold money?" What else is new? As I’ve said before silence doesn’t help the Haitian people fight the imperialist. If we don’t know the story, we can only look at the model and the conclusion is that the suffering of the Ouanaminthe farmer means profit for Aristide with the IMF/World Bank people. The hype about creating jobs is as real as the hype was about "civilizing" Africa.

For the Ouanaminthe farmers, the damage has already been done. Now, is the time to STOP the bloodletting before it really starts.

Unless the displaced Ouanaminthe farmers are duly compensated, unions are organized, daycare provided and working conditions regulated in this so-called "Free Trade Zone" to protect the factory workers, this is nothing more than the Aristide government providing the imperialist with access to helpless unprotected slave labor in Haiti at the expense of further underdeveloping Haiti and Haitian society.

As one Haitian farmer who just lost his Bwa Kayiman lands to Aristide/US Corporate buddies succinctly puts it: "Land is your inheritance, but now I have none to hand over to my son. This was the pearl of Haiti, but what they are building on this land is misery" (Farmer Francis Bosse, 74). (See, http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=400

Ezili Danto

"Grenadye alaso. Sa ki mouri za fe yayo. Nan pren manman, nen pren papa. Sa ki mouri zafè a yo. Grenadye alaso…..(Haitian Revolution Freedom Song.)

[jafrikayiti*]

Brothers and sisters,

There is so much that needs to be discussed concerning this deadly transformation process that many Afrikan leaders undergo over the course of their existence….turning from authentic liberation fighters to “unwilling participants and then outright collaborators with the US/Euro imperialistic system”...

Seeking an “explanation” or “reason” seems a good a place to start as any. So, I will begin my input by expanding on Ezili’s speculation that

“The only reason why this (the Maribahoux FTZ) would go on is if Aristide has totally lost his head to his lust for power. Nothing else explains it.”.

Ezili, I think there are other possible explanations to the fact that Aristide has allowed this FTZ to be established. And, no I don't think - YET - that you spoke too soon by objecting to the outright comparison of Aristide w
ith Mugabe, Sankoh etc...

Perhaps, the conversation we are having will not arrive to late, nor will it be in vain...perhaps !

I believe these two recent Haiti-Progrès articles titled “Controversial Free Trade Zone to Start Soon” and “Dominican General Calls Haiti, with Destablization Growing, a "Threat" available at http://www.haitiprogres.com/2003/sm030716/eng07-16.html give strength to the following conclusions of mine:

1. The Haitian State as it stands today (under the presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide) possesses neither the visionary leadership (the will), nor the skills or the political incentives to resist the FTZ program.

2. Haitian Society, as it stands today, possesses neither the visionary leadership (progressive grass-roots and/or traditional political organizations), nor the mental strength (access to knowledge and tools) or the political incentives to effectively derail the FTZ program.

Conditions have been made perfect for what we are witnessing today to go on, not only during the months remaining to Aristide’s term, but for decades to come or until we turn both of these conclusions upside down.

1. Of The Haitian State

To me Haiti’s current Head of State is no revolutionary transformation leader but rather a very pragmatic political survivor. From president Aristide’s declared vision of taking Haiti “from misery to poverty with dignity”, to the various plans expressed in the Lavalas manifesto “Le Livre Blanc”, to the way we have seen this elected government negotiate its powers away to the U.S., the OAS, Canada, the EU etc…, it is plain to me that we are no longer dealing with the pan-African nationalist leadership in the making we had an opportunity to nurture in 1991. Our Titid came back in a U.S. Air-Force plane as we all know.

A segment of page 101 in “Le Livre Blanc” published in 1999 under the direction of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, reads as follows

« En Haiti nous n’avons pas encore de grandes et complexes zones franches. C’est un concept extrêmement développé dans certains pays de la Caraibe et d’Asie. Ce sont des projets à considérer pour Haiti, compte tenu de leur degré de profitabilité et du volume intéressant d’emplois créés ».

Therefore, we can see why the vision and leadership necessary to implement alternatives to the FTZ program cannot be expected to come from this government. And, if the vision isn’t there, we may as well forget about looking for the skills. Yet, if there existed powerful enough political incentives to force the government to rethink its vision, all hopes would not be vain. But, what political force in Haiti is available to counter that represented by the U.S.–led multinational political and economic powers who will make billions of dollars from the FTZ program? Hasn’t the Haitian voter been rendered irrelevant in the political game since the year 2000?

2. Of Haitian Society

Sister Ezili wrote:

If the IMF/World Bank said "you do this or we withhold money?" What else is new?

This type of reasoning holds value when dealing with a well-informed, motivated people who have a clear vision of why they are suffering while they resist, of what they want to achieve and of where their leaders are taking them. We had that in 1991, we had that during the coup years… and unfortunately, we have been losing it gradually, every since.

Ezili wrote:

As I’ve said before silence doesn’t help the Haitian people fight the imperialist. If we don’t know the story, we can only look at the model and the conclusion is that the suffering of the Ouanaminthe farmer means profit for Aristide with the IMF/World Bank people. The hype about creating jobs is as real as the hype was about "civilizing" Africa.

I believe you are right except for one thing sister. This suffering does NOT mean veritable profit for Aristide. And, if our brother would be so short-sighted to believe so himself, he would be greatly mistaken. For the very multinational sharks that are providing him temporary access to such dirty “profit” will surely be quick to "let him have it" as soon as his help would be deemed more cumbersome than useful. Whereas, if on the contrary, this relatively young politician plays his cards well, he may still have opportunities ahead of him to truly profit from this difficult but not impossible situation.

Regardless of what President Aristide chooses to do in the end, the fact remains that our escape from this current situation of collective vulnerability requires first a reinvigoration and empowerment of the real Haitian Civil Society (through our grassroots organizations to resuscitate the visionary leadership buried with Izmery, Malary, Jean Pierre-Louis, Dominique etc…).

Should the progressive agenda be to put “good” Haitians in power or to nurture a critical mass of politically active Haitians who are willing and empowered to force its leaders to walk straight most
of the times, even when drunken?

Indeed, no messiah will do, but surely ordinary people engaged in an extra-ordinary mission !

Jaf
"Ayisyen se lespwa Ayiti "

[Ezili Danto*]

One et respe to all:

I’ve been thinking about what I said with reference to the measure of a leader being his relationship or popularity with the majority of his people in the above post at:

http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?p=696#696
(Dated, Tue Aug 05, 2003 10:49 pm. Post subject: Wangolo w ale ki le w ap vini we m anko w ale, peyi a chanje.)

In that post I analyzed how former fighters against imperialism morphed from unwilling participants of neo-liberalism into the third stage of repressive electoral dictators eventually heralding the civil war that brings the white imperialist back to come restore "order" of the failed State.

I think that, in the case of outright military State repression of civil society, that litmus test, (i.e. the relationship of the purported leader with the majority of his/her people) is a valid barometer of when the unwilling participant has crossed into being a collaborator with the imperialist. Said collaborator would use Black liberation rhetoric to cover his betrayal to the very end as the imperialist puts him on a plane and into his well-earned collaborator’s golden retirement. If State authorities are clubbing the people down; the leader won’t be too popular nor have a good relationship, outside of its own propaganda machine, that is.

BUT, a leader’s relationship with the people is also sometimes misleading and sometimes doesn’t mean the leader is progressive. For, most of this world’s citizenry has been trained that democracy is simply about "voting" once every four or five years. Therefore the citizenry CAN be easily fooled by it’s a "leaders" giving speeches every few quarters about their development programs and social achievements with their media machine in tow cranking up whatever propaganda that is necessary to manufacture consent and de-politicize the citizenry with fear of whatever the latest "threat" to national security might be.

It is obvious to those of us who live, in the US, for instance, that Bush’s ratings with the war on Iraq were very high at the beginning. Does that mean US citizens exercised informed consent? Not so.

Bush lied to the public about the weapons of mass destruction and the uranium Saddam Hussein was supposedly buying from Africa. The war on Iraq wasn’t popular but Bush’s polls were above 50% "for" the invasion of Iraq. That doesn’t mean the war is legal, right, moral or that the US public is not being marginalized, or, have exercised informed consent when they stayed impassive at the specter of the bombing by the US military of Iraq’s already suffering peoples. There was no informed consent, only propaganda passing off as good "intelligence" information. And perhaps, as some have pointed out, if the Iraqis where Western Europeans, blue eyed and white skinned and not Black, the US and its majority citizenry would have tried harder to stopped Bush and his warmongering. But we already know that the "other" is darker and his/her life is not as valuable as Anglo-Saxon life and property.

My point is that a leader can too easily persuade the majority, whether in Africa, Haiti or the US. And the rule of the majority is sometimes just as reprehensible as the rule of the elite few.

I needed to clarify myself on this and make sure it was noted. For, as they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely and no one is above this dictum. Which is why ALL governments are supposed to have checks and balances, functioning courts, the rule of law and a Constitution that is being applied legally not just politically bantered about.

First off, electoral democracy is not participatory democracy; representative democracy is not participatory democracy. Second, the rule of law is supposed to guide everyone - the majority and the minority alike. Fairly and duly applied laws are supposed to temper and protect all in a society, the majority and the minority from fascism, communal mob mentality, and the arbitrary vicissitudes of the traditional power-brokers and/or the messianic mob-power of La-La land-type popularity/celebritism.

My caveat is that even the rule of a popular leader, supported by the majority of the people, like, for instance, Aristide, also needs good laws, a working parliament, and separation of powers. And functioning courts to protect all citizens and the nation from majority-supported whims that may not be in the long-term interest of Haitians, or, that may not be LEGAL.

Haiti, of course, has a special problem - traditional to all Black Republics the white man wants to control. It’s easier to control a country if it has no local governance, only a centralized, very powerful executive, or dictator. Although the 1987 Constitution tried to decentralize the Haitian structure, the political impasse since 1991 and then since 1994, (forced on Haitians by the imperialist and their local agents of imperial power), has made it difficult for Haitian legislators to effectuate these laws. Moreover, I suspect, it’s easier for those in power, with so many etranje advisors and consultants afraid of Haitian empowerment, to keep a centralized government going and not work so hard to enact the enabling statute required to effect decentralization of political authority and provide the revenues needed for functional local governments to operate. It’s easier, as has been done in Haiti, for two centuries for the Republic of Port-au-Prince, which SERVICES the Euro/US international etranje’s needs with Reagan-like trickling down scraps going to the few Haitian elites giving them legitimacy while avidly marketing to put more white genes into their Haitian families. It’s easier for said Republic Of Port-au-Prince to just keep collecting the Moun Andeyo’s taxes and using it all in Port-au-Prince, returning no services, utilities or Afrocentric schools to these Madam Sarahs who have always had to support the internationals, and all the pro-etranje, Gro Neg Haitians of Port-au-Prince/Petionville.

Centralized power in Haiti keeps the pro-etranje tradition going. It’s dangerous because it makes it logistically easier to have another Coup D’etat and it doesn’t promote participatory democracy and the building up of independent grass-roots movements with local constituencies who could feed the political leadership vacuums by showing a track record outside of only at Presidential or Parliamentary campaign seasons.

Moreover, if Haitians in the Diaspora, even those who still maintain their Haitian citizenship at great sacrifice, are afforded no way to vote at Haitian Consulates and Embassies abroad, it’s another way the present Haitian government collaborates in keeping the centralized power-thing going; ultimately letting Haiti still be politically controllable by the imperialist. For, it’s easier to topple a government that is isolated and without international pro-Ayisyen tentacles worldwide. That certainly is one of the reasons why, when Aristide was in the US, he encouraged talk and drafting of voting rights and dual citizenship legislations. This author actually put one together along with many other Port-au-Prince bar members. Yet, as soon as he was back in power, decrees have been taken to make way for tons of "unforeseen" executive needs, but no way has been made for empowering more Haitians with voting rights or dual citizenship. Fact is we are on the backburner like this because Haitian civil society empowerment is not encouraged by the internationals and their pro-etranje elites. I’ve heard all the reasons and half-backed legal theories why not. None stand scrutiny if the will was there - a way would have been found. Period, no comma. Why is it, this advocate of Haitian rights wants to know, that when Haiti FINALLY decides to follow the letter of the law (The Constitutional reasons given why dual citizenship enactment is not possible yet) it's effect is always to DISEMPOWER Haitian civil society and empower the centralized government which then makes it easier for the imperialist to destabalize Haiti. That alone makes ALL the arguments against dual citizenship enactment suspect. There could have been more long-term Haitian empowerment under Aristide. The writers of the Constitutions were looking to EMPOWER not further disempower Haitian people.

The fact that a majority of the people support his reign as I’ve said, doesn’t necessarily mean he’s done ALL that was possible to empower Haitians.

The majority peoples who are the Hindus in India rule India, the largest "democracy" in the world. The problem of the popular Hindu majority oppressing the Muslim peoples (murdering, mutilating, taking lands, burning businesses, gang raping Muslim women) and the Black Dalits (The untouchables) in India are instructive as we study the offenses of majority-supported rule and carefully question the always-criticized Aristide and his Lavalas governments’ FTZ policies, just to name one offense. http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=400

For, just because it’s still the "peoples government" with a so-called charismatic "leader" and a government that is consistently beaten, battered and bankrupt by the US/Euros, doesn’t necessarily mean it is a competent, ethical or even has a deeply progressive leadership with long-term vision. We won’t even go into how the US manufactures public consent for its reprehensible foreign policies worldwide, which totally invalidates the litmus test of majority consent. Now, this is not to say the Aristide government is like the Bush government, for I wouldn’t insult them so. I still believe Aristide, the politician, could be rehabilitated. To date, the Aristide administrations may still legitimately claim it has, overall, given an international image to the Haitian struggle to preserve life in the midst of constant death, and, that this has empowered the majority of Haitians.

But it’s our job as concerned Haitians to steer the Haitian government in question towards transformational Ginen policies not more retarded, washed-up, neo-liberalistic, 20-cents-an hour (or less), imperialistic white droppings, otherwise known as white development polished with the bright façade of "creating jobs for the Haitians poor!"

I am a die-hard optimist. That’s true. I wish a lot of things. That Aristide did not come back to Haiti on October 1994 behind US Plexiglas. The Powers-that-be have a history of putting most of the young virile Black men in the US behind glass for their families to interact with them while in prison! I know Aristide is manacled. But if there’s anyone who had the power of the people to push that glass down, it was Aristide. It hurts to see him not use it properly. I still want to see Aristide straighten up and break that glass. For we-Haitians can’t afford anymore collaborators. It’s my hope he will read this and get off his knees and take a stand against underdevelopment, make pro-Ayisyen choices, don’t think only of keeping his Presidential job because if he’s courageous there will always be love and a place for him in Haitian society. I would like him to learn from past mistakes, his and other African leaders’ mistakes.

Truth of the matter is, Aristide still has a decent if strained relationship with the majority in Haiti, who are the poorest and most wretched on Earth. It would be heartening if he would be accountable to the nation’s long-term interests and hire the expertise he clearly doesn’t seem to own like any good manager would. There are tons of competent Ginen Haitians out here. I could give him my personal list. Either way, this post is under "Eske pwoblem Ayiti se responsabilite yon grenn Kretyen vivan?" because each Ayisyen has a responsibility to bring about change in Haiti, in whatever way their talents dictate. But "development" should not further impoverishment. Development should not further social unrest, and the further killing and criminalization of the Black woman’s child. Development should go beyond the Euro/US Port-au-Prince/Petionville clique and put food in the Moun Andeyo’s mouths, provide shelter, health care, give access to clean and safe water, to roads and infrastructure needs, to electricity, literacy program, a workable public transportation and tele-communication infrastructure and give access to Afrocentric information and schooling that feeds young Haitian minds, building self-esteem and giving value to Black life.

Any work to built a Black child’s self-esteem and sense of worth in a world where white is held up as godly, divine, sinless and worthy and Black as not, must be our work. If development programs don’t feed the body and build an Afrocentric mind and transfer skills, they are not about bringing change to Ayiti. Development work, such as the Maribahoux FTZ zone, with its three tier payment system, making Haitians workers get paid at the bottom tier, in their own Bwa Kayiman lands, are simply unworthy of the peoples struggle and their confidence in Aristide. See, the two Haiti-Progrès articles JAF brought to our attention, enti
tled "Controversial Free Trade Zone to Start Soon" and "Dominican General Calls Haiti, with Destabilization Growing, a "Threat" at http://www.haitiprogres.com/2003/sm030716/eng07-16.html which informs that:

"An army of Haitian and Dominican workers toil from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. building the factories, customs area, AND ACCESS ROAD TO THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, through which ALL the zone's products are destined to flow. Dominican workers are doing most of the skilled work like carpentry, electrical wiring and plumbing. Haitian workers are mostly laborers, digging ditches, hammering stakes, and carrying iron rods and cement sacks. Dominicans are paid 800 pesos (US$24) a day and Haitians only 35 (US$1.06), another harbinger of discrepancies to come. (Capital emphasis added.)

"There is yet a third class of construction worker: Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. They are being paid 375 pesos (US$11.36) a day." (Haiti-Progres, Vol.21, No. 18, July 16, 2003)

And, if Aristide and his crew are done for, then we Haitian progressives must continue our mobilization and keep picking up the pieces. It’s not about one man, one party. No way will Haiti go back to the Coup D’etat days of Cedras and FRAPF rule or the systemic civil society repression days of Duvalier, his tonton macoutes. Back in the day, a ring of fire was lit around the Island to prevent Napoleon from landing his 50,000-soldier-French-armada sent to re-enslave our ancestor. What are these discrepancies about if not a re-enslavement? Especially when done on productive land and at the DR border no less with only Dominican access roads being built, Dominican infrastructure being developed? I do hope there’s more than what meets the eye on this. I wish that that JAF is right http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?p=712#712 (Under Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2003 7:26 am, post subject: Who is their real target...what are our real assets!?)

I hope this just "havoc" but unsubstantiated by Haitian government "legitimacy" if I could stretch to say so. That this is just some pompous imperialist’s, like Brian Dean Curran and his ilk’s, big wet dream. That, in fact, some domestic economy is developed if this is a fait-accompli; that the farmers are equitably compensated; that this three tier payment-system is scraped pronto or made in favor of the people whose land this project is being constructed on. I hope this project never touches reality in the way I am seeing it, to become our waking Haitian nightmare. I do.

But since I am a pagan and not much into hoping and praying at all, I’ve got no choice but to do what I can and speak out. For, if Haiti-Progres’ got it right, and the article Guy brought to us http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=400 (Posted, Wed Aug 06, 2003 1:04 am under post subject: Concern: Ouanaminthe Free Zone, Submitted to The Sunday Times By Jacqui Goddard in Ouanaminthe, Haiti. 5 July 2003) also got it right. Then, I can’t mince my words. What sort of FOOL is "negotiating," no, giving away, our country and peoples like this?

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ECONOMIC REALITIES: That’s not to mean I don’t understand the economic realities here. That it’s all just business. That business chases cheap labor. That the local factors in Haiti, while being retardants, are hardly going to stop business from wringing itself some profits where it can, for as long as it can NO MATTER THE SUFFERING IT CREATES, OR, WHEN IT’S OVER, LEAVES IN ITS WAKE.

In the eighties and early nineties, US corporations stopped manufacturing and outsourced its manufacturing to places like Mexico, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Honduras and South Korea. I know that these governments are bidding to have their peoples get these cheap wages. India for instance has raised this to artistic levels – marketing its skilled labor forces for HB-1 visas to come work in the US. Many Indians have provided a living for themselves and their families this way.

But, if Haiti is going to insert itself into this market it would do best to start educating its peoples and then letting them go all over the globe to work at less an hour than the US white guy. That would help Haitians, in many ways. They would have a legitimate way off the Island, an education to take them somewhere and an income to send some hard currencies back to help their families in Haiti.

Going into the lowest common denominator thing is trash. Long term Haitian development is needed. We must position ourselves on all fronts. For instance yesterday it was about outsourcing assembly plant jobs. Today it’s about software outsourcing. That requires an educated labor force my people.

With hardware (assembling computers, electronics, et cetera) being outsourced, design and architecture companies supplying hardware to all product vendors have ensured that the most products cannot be differentiated via their hardware capabilities.

This is why, in the US today, Computer or mobile phone A, for example, is differentiated from computer or mobile phone B, only via the software that runs on it and via the customer support system that the vendor provides. Thus software becomes key, and vendors today are shopping the world looking to move their software work where it can be done on the cheap.

That’s why these IT guys in the US are out of work. The corporations have no loyalty to their employees, only to the bottom line - increasing profits. Globalization is touching home in the US as white educate college students watch their software programming, maintenance, design and jobs get outsourced to India and elsewhere for a fraction of the cost it would take to hire them in the US. But who, in Haiti, is looking at these things and preparing Haitian students and Haitian people to compete in this ever so dog-eat-dog world.

Fighting over getting assembly plant jobs into Haiti is going backwards and plain politically ignorant. For, over the next few decades in the Euro/US countries, you will probably see marketing and management remain and everything else everywhere else. How are our Haitian long-term development plans going to deal with the peoples need to immigrate, travel, to be healthy, literate and safe in Haiti?

If there’s a competition out there for workforces, why are we-Haitians limiting ourselves to assembly plants? Besides, haven’t Haitians paid enough for US liberties, development and profit in this Hemisphere? When is it our people’s turn. What can the Chinese workers, the Philippine worker, the Malaysian workers do that the Mexican, Brazilian, Bolivians and Haitian can’t do? Do our countries have to remain the killing fields of US/Euro corporations and US economic development? I ‘ve said this before and I’ll say it again, based on US historical injustices to it’s Southern Hemispheric neighbors, equity demands that there be a unified Americas just as there is this unified European Union experiment out there. Imagine full passport, travel and work rights for all peoples in the Americas to go anywhere in the Americas just like the people of the European Union? I know this is too revolutionary for some, but I don’t see why not. Equity and fairness demands it. Isn’t it about time Haitians and the others in South and Central America, who’ve been terrorized by "Manifest Destiny", "the Monroe Doctrine," "upholding democracy," "regime change" and all sorts of US barbarity weren’t literally condemn and contained in poverty for generations?

I think it must be understood, by all, that not all who criticize Aristide’s rule are opponents or stooges of white imperialism. There is a broad civil society sector in Haiti and especially abroad, beyond Aristide, who are legitimately concerned with Haitianist development and who have a duty to move the Aristide rule towards the left of center - towards more transformational and visionary policies. It hasn’t yet been mobilized by an issue that would make its presence felt. But nonetheless we are here. It’s difficult to articulate our space because of imperial shenanigans and because Lavalas is so under attack that legitimate voices, left of La
valas, who love Haiti and don’t want a violent coup, or a US re-occupation, are hesitant or warned to remain silent less we be branded as US sycophant, pro-etranje against Haitian sovereignty. But we won’t be silenced.

We-Haitians are not dependable lackeys of anyone. We call them as we see them. We are fully aware that if there was good news about Aristide it may not be highlighted by the media. I know that, for instance, Cap Haitian has had electricity for over a year and that according to those in the know ''by the end of 2004, every major city (in Haiti) except the capital will have 24-hour electricity.'' These are substantial improvements for the Haitian poor, including the many housing built for Cite Soleil people and the efforts made, by Fammi Selavi, on behalf of the most defenseless within our Haitian society - the orphans, homeless, displaced (Restavek) child, disabled-and-sick child and living-with-AIDs child. So, of course concerned Haitians do not want to see our criticism of a duly elected people’s government be used to further the chaos, impasse, confusion; the better for the white sharks to feed. That’s why I travel, throughout the US, exposing the Haitian plight and educating about Haitian history and culture. For there are many of us working together everywhere.

We meet, even on this very Forum, to formulate positions on this matters with objective criteria that will guide those of us who wish to support, not spoil, authentic Haitian development.

The Aristide government should do more to de-centralized leadership and encourage civil debate by encouraging independent local governance with a budget of its own and decision making power. That, and empowering Haitians abroad with at least their voting rights, if not dual citizenship would help raise the level of the so-called "opponents" coming before the Haitian people for approval.

Yet and still, I believe our history of political unrest IS being progressively decimated, no thanks to the US embargo. But maybe that'
s a blessing after all. We-Haitians are doing it without being beholden to US/Euro's eternal fake innocence and pompous self-promotion.

Our task is to develop objective criteria so that trying to influence and direct a people’s mandate doesn’t lead to more Haitian fratricide, more killings, more internal divisions within the grass-root movements, and ultimately a more de-politicized Haitian citizenry, apathetic, defeated and easily crushed by the Euro/US Powers-that-be.

Ezili Danto