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Book by John Maxwell
How to Make Our Own News: A Primer for Environmentalist and Journalists
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The
End of Nationhood
By John
Maxwell
All
the signs, all the portents and omens point to one thing: the
Caricom intervention in Haiti is almost certain to make things
worse, much worse. The
world’s savants including Dr Ricky Singh, the editor of the London
Guardian and Caricom's leaders appear to be
agreed that what’s wrong with Haiti is Aristide and if they
can get rid of him, all will be well in the worst possible of
all republics.
A
racist, right-wing American publication the National
Vanguard put it well in 1994: “What they cannot do,
however, is change the nature of the Haitian people. …
According
to the National Guardian, Haitians are corrupt, brutal
and uncivilised and are unable to absorb the multifarious
benefits of western capitalist democracy.
The
basic proposition is that Aristide is the symbol of all this,
and as the National Vanguard said, a decade ago,
Aristide has all the qualifications for a Haitian bogeyman
–”He is a Marxist priest of the Roman Catholic persuasion
instead of a rightist priest of the Voodoo persuasion like
“Papa Doc” but he agrees with the latter that the proper way
to control one’s political opponents is to terrorize and
murder them.”
Scarcely
to be wondered at then, is the London Guardian’s
headline “Haiti's despot Aristide stirs up people's
revolution” conflating two unsupported assertions – that
Aristide is a despot and that there is a peoples’ revolution
in progress.
The Wall
Street Journal (July 6,2001) in a story by Mary Anastasia
O’Grady, editor of the Americas section, says “Mr.
Aristide bears direct responsibility for his country's hardship.
His extortion practices aimed at the few productive sectors of
the economy have suffocated growth and investment. He has
overseen the complete collapse of justice and personal security,
and implemented a tyrannical crackdown on political dissent.”
I
would advise readers, whenever they read anything about Haiti,
including my column, to make sure their B-S detectors are turned
to full power. It has been my contention that most of what is
written about Haiti is toxic waste and totally unfit for human
consumption. Obviously, I believe that I am writing the truth
and presumably so do many others who are willing to weigh in on
Haiti, many of them from an abundance of ignorance and
ideological and racist hostility
American influence
I
believe that it is an incontestable fact that the Haitian
majority has been in total control of their own affairs
for only an infinitesimal portion of their 200 years as free
people – people who freed themselves from slavery and
imperialist control against all the rules of the eighteenth,
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Any
intervention in Haiti which does not take account of that fact
is doomed to failure. Haitians have already proved that they
will fight with machetes and hoes, with clubs and improvised
spears, against trained soldiers armed with machine guns and
dive-bombers. The one constant in Haitian history is the burning
desire to be free.
According
to the National Vanguard, “When the United States sent
a military mission to Haiti in 1958 in order to help "Papa
Doc" reorganize his army, the US personnel who arrived were
as appalled by the conditions they found as the Marines had been
43 years earlier. Historian Robert Heinl, who was a Marine
colonel with the US mission in 1958, found the
"telephones gone . . . roads approaching non-existence . .
. ports obstructed by silt . . . docks crumbling . . .
sanitation and electrification in precarious decline" ("Bringing
Democracy to Haiti," National Vanguard No 114
Nov-Dec 1994).
The
situation has only got worse since then.
Despite
this, when the US deposed the usurper, General Cedras in 1994,
it made absolutely no attempt to help Haiti out of its largely
foreign-sponsored difficulties. Since Aristide was distrusted by
all right-thinking Americans there was no question of his being
allowed to complete his term of office – it was decided that
the Cedras interregnum would count as part of Aristide’s
term and he was allowed to complete the few months left. He was
succeeded by a sympathizer, Rene Preval elected by the
overwhelming majority movement, the ‘Family Lavalas’ which
supported Aristide.
It was
therefore a foregone conclusion that Aristide would be back. In
view of this, it was decided by the North Atlantic rulers of the
world that the Haitian government should get no assistance
unless it sold off its pathetic economic patrimony and accepted
the dictates of the IMF and hold new elections
Since
the Haitians refused to do this, no aid was forthcoming. They
would have needed money for elections anyway.
On
strictly humanitarian grounds alone, Haiti, whatever its
government, represented what Newsweek magazine once
called 'a basket case’ – an economic paraplegic,
unable to fend for itself. Unlike the people of former
Soviet countries however, Haiti is largely black, and blacks
batten on ‘welfare’. No dole then for Haiti.
It is
clear from this crude (but factual) summary that Aristide,
Preval and the Family Lavalas are the authors of their own
misfortune – if the whole tragic history of Haiti
including the dive-bombers is assumed to be their
responsibility. They suffer from an original sin which makes
them and their suffering invisible to the outside world.
Flies
in the Ointment
The
present situation is dire. In the Jamaican vernacular,
“Nutt’n naw gwaan” which being translated means that
economic activity is at a standstill, electricity doesn’t
work, the roads are roads in name only, the hillsides are bare
and the streets of the capital are distinguished by heaps of
rubbish and heaps of firewood. The other important reality is
that most Haitians remain loyal to Aristide in the Family
Lavalas.
Haiti
is beyond dirt poor. It is, as Newsweek described it, a
‘basket case’. Which is why, ten years ago, after the
floating barracoons were removed from Kingston
Harbour, I suggested that Caricom should immediately set up a
technical assistance group to help Haiti. In the parish of the
poor, it is the poor who rescue the poor. We however preferred
to re-institute Emancipation Day rather than work for the final
emancipation of the black people whose revolution helped to end
slavery and free the rest of the Americas. It was the example of
Haiti which fired the likes of Bolivar and Marti, of San Martin
and O’Higgins, who went on to free their countries from the
European domination.
The
Haitians have never been forgiven for that.
In a
story headlined “8 years after Invasion, Haiti Squalor
Worsens” New York Times reporter David Gonzalez
reported people living in ‘Apocalyptic poverty”, some of
them in a former prison which they have captured, Jamaican
style. Gonzalez quoted one young man who tried to leave
Haiti during the Cedras dictatorship but had been caught by the
Americans and returned.
"The
same America that … restored Mr. Aristide to power in 1994,"
Mr. Arince said, "now makes life impossible."
"We
are human beings and we do not like to live like this. Only
animals should live here."
Gonzalez
also quoted an American doctor, Paul Farmer, who founded a
clinic in Port au Prince in 1980 and has been working there
since. Dr Farmer said "One of the world's most powerful
countries is taking on one of the most impoverished," he
said of the United States decision to withhold aid.
"I object to that on moral grounds. Anybody who presides
over this blockade needs to know the impact here already."
The
alleged cause of the present Haitian problem are the elections
of May 2000 which the Haitian opposition factions claimed were 'flawed'.
The problem for them is that even if the elections complained of
were flawed, the opposition stands no chance of having a
majority in the Haitian parliament. In any case, these elections
predated Aristide’s presidential re-election.
The
election flaw is a red herring.
According
to the Wall Street Journal of Friday, July 5, 2001
“Haiti
doesn't need international aid to get back on its feet. It needs
modern democratic institutions that will attract private capital
and brains. This conflicts sharply with Mr. Aristide's most
basic instincts, which run more along the lines of his chum
Fidel. It is folly to believe that in exchange for multilateral
aid the leopard will change his spots.” Deliverance –
neo-liberal style. Jamaicans and other structurally adjusted
peoples will understand.
When
the Supreme Court delivered the White House to George W Bush,
there was celebration in Florida and in elite Haitian
neighbourhoods. A few weeks before the US presidential election,
Jean Bertrand Aristide had been swept back into power with an
overwhelming majority of his own, a majority that no one, not
even the opposition seriously questions.
In the
parliamentary elections in May, the Family Lavalas had won all
but one of the 29 seats in the Senate and 80 percent of the
seats in the lower house. Aristide captured 92% of the vote in
an election boycotted by the opposition. This boycott has
assumed mythic proportions, since most eligible Haitian voters
voted for Aristide anyway.
But
the Haitian elite (like the Venezuelan elite) sees the
Republican takeover in Washington as the lever to return them to
power. They have the active collaboration of Bush’s
envoy, the disreputable Otto Reich and of USAID which
apparently sponsors the so-called Haiti Democracy Group. But
even before Bush, the Clinton administration had blackballed
Haiti. A US Embassy spokesman in Port au Prince said
"the President [Clinton] together with the international
community has made it known to the Haitian authorities that
their failure to address well-documented election irregularities
puts into question their commitment to democracy."
It is
all quite simple, really. A country whose infrastructure has
been destroyed, whose best and brightest have fled after a
century of sponsored abuse, is expected to pull itself up, as
Americans say, by its own bootstraps. As you will discover if
you try, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps simply
breaks your back.
Another
way is of course possible.
As
Haiti endures the ravages of disease of all kinds, but
especially of HIV/AIDS, there is one country which is
helping. There are now nearly one thousand Cuban medical
personnel in Haiti, 700 of them doctors. Like the Good
Samaritan, Cuba did not pass by on the other side. Perhaps
Caricom could examine this example, and they certainly should
get the facts of Haiti before charting a course that might mean
racial civil war next door to Jamaica and the United States.
Copyright ©2004
John Maxwell
maxinf@cwjamaica.com
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 20 December 2011
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