18039: erzilidanto: It's our successes as a people that scares our foes, not our failures! (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Erzilidanto@aol.com

If you are interested, here's a link to some writing I have posted and the
latest text below:

http://haitiforever.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1144#1144

One e respe Mag MagPeriod,

Not much resonates here for me in your above post Mag.... I am just not in
the mood for good French full of disjointed sentences and existentialist angst.
Haiti is in serious trouble, se-mwen! Haitians have bought the anti-Aristide
media blitz, which in essence, EQUALS an anti-Haitian-nation, or, an
anti-Haitian-Black-majority media blitz. My Haitian people, of all classes and hues, are
fearful again, in a way not seen since before 1986... Riveted to the
rock-n'-roll of the foreign press' propaganda against the Haitian nation, today, the
prospect of civil war is harvesting in minds that, a few months ago, would have
thought it unthinkable.

Many of us-Haitians in the Diaspora and at home are trying to counter and
STOP the anti-Haitian-nation-media-blitz in hopes of spreading the TRUTH and to
actually prevent the Civil-War-Coup-D’etat-bloodshed of 1991-1994 from
occurring again.

No life is unimportant.

All Haitian life is valuable, no matter the party affiliation or point of
view. That's a given.

But, many of our Haitian brothers and sisters have senselessly shed their
life, in recent months, because of the political impasse strummed by foreigners,
kept burning by a few Haitian politicians and some misdirected provocateurs,
some paid well, others not. The death toll, we are told, is mounting. And, we
are being told, with ad nauseam regularity by the foreign press, that the
"crisis" in Haiti is not only "critical" but almost past the point of no return!!??

What is incontrovertible though, is that ANY Haitian life cut short, from
either side of the manufactured-political-conflict-spectrum, need be remembered
and their families’ supported and legal steps towards justice taken against
those in fact, ACTUALLY responsible, for the said manufactured crisis that is
leading to these death!. Yet, it is also true that the current unrest and
political turmoil in Haiti is definitely NOT as bad as some, especially the foreign
press and those with political ambitions in Haiti, want to make it out to be.

But Mag..., if you and I remain silent, the unthinkable, being manufactured
could come into manifestation so that big business can step in with a U.S.
"restore-order-military" like in 1915-34, or like in 1991. But this time, it won't
be to preserve the financial and neocolonial interests of the National City
Bank of New York but to preserve the assembly plant interests of Andre Apaid,
Jr. and his Wal Mart, Tommy Hilfiger, ecetera's Profit-Over-People neoliberal
interest/structural adjustment-plans and the anti-labor interests these
world-elites, as represented by the radical rightist U.S. neocons, currently in power
in the U.S., want to force (or, is it, to globalize) down our throats.

For, make no mistake, what’s happening right now, this very moment in Haiti,
is NOT simply about Lavalas vs. the Convergence/Group 184 opposition. This is
a deadly and serious big-business game. And this radical right wing special
interest group doesn’t give a damn about how many Haitians die or any dead
Haitian's party affiliation in Haiti. Fact is, the "Get-Aristide-Out" strategy of
the likes such as the IRI, Otto Reich, Roger Noriega, the Bush State
Department, USAID and the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince, their current political strategy
in Haiti, is to catch Haitians killing each other ON CAMERA for their
constituents broadcasting entertainment! That's it. They want to show the Haitian
police shooting at students, shooting at the opposition, shooting, shooting
shooting at, and killing ANY Haitian. And, they want it ON CAMERA for broadcast to
FEED their political purposes against the Aristide government. Our discredited
and morally repugnant "Opposition" is blithely helping them, as EACH of these
Opposition-political-party-leaders are the recipients of MILLIONS of dollars
from these foreigners, in their role as Executive Director of their own
non-government organizations.

The foreign press has purposely NOT widely reported this dirty alliance - the
intestine foreign meddling in Haiti’s domestic affairs by financing of groups
fomenting violence and social conflict in Haiti.

Said international media squarely place ALL blame, for every Haitian person
dying in our Haitian streets today, on the shoulders of the Aristide government
and their young and newly trained policemen and women.

The intransigent opposition, created in their (USAID/IRI) laboratories, who
have boycotted elections for four years, and refused to come to a truce but
even tried to obstruct the January 1, 2004 bi-centennial celebration of our
ancestor's unparalleled achievements with rumors, murders, burnings and all sorts
of other violent obstructions and unpatriotic actions, they, of course, are
simply innocent victims of the so-called Aristide dictatorship. This Washington
press and consensus doesn’t care about our Haitian children out of school;
doesn't care about our Haitian people dying under their US-treasury department's
sponsored embargo; doesn't give a damn about the innocent dying in our streets.
NO.

They see us-Haitians through a racists-lens – our very suffering seems to
feed their souls, it seems to me.

And, this sort of callousness by the wealthy US/Euros and their Black
opportunists in Haiti is what I’ve lived through almost my entire life as a Haitian
person. So, I don’t get your above "fe respe-w" if you want respect line, AT
ALL.

Our sovereignty as a Haitian people, as a Black nation, has always been
meaningless to these foreign provocateurs and meddlers and their imperial agents -
the Black opportunists in Haiti.

Haitian humanity - our suffering, our desire to live in peace, to share in
the riches and beauty of this world, to develop a participatory and transparent
democracy - all that, is beside the point to these, our traditional enemies.
For they only care about manipulating ALL HAITIANS, both the traditional
discredited Black opportunist mostly on their payrolls (today known to us, as the
"Opposition")and the millions upon millions of pro-rule-of-law ordinary
Haitians, of all hues and classes, struggling to find balance and a basis for unity,
diversity and co-existence in Haiti.

Washington, based on its current manufactured-news-and-conflict-media-blitz
and its four years of cutting off and squeezing the duly elected Haitian
government against a financial wall, ONLY cares about regaining imperial CONTROL in
Haiti.

For, as one OAS delegate, said, in front of me, no less, while I was in Haiti
for the bicentennial, and I quote him verbatim: "The international community
is so screwed-up and divided that Haitians are running Haiti!"

Mag....honeychild that’s what all the fuss in Haiti is about!

For, Aristide, through some miracle, has managed to survive! That means, in
gross sum, the majority of the Haitian people, through some miracle, have
managed to survive EVERY stone thrown at it by USAID, IRI, IDB, OAS, U.S. Embassy
and the European Union!!!

It's not that the Aristide government can’t bring stability or security to
Haiti. NO. That's just the ruse, the subterfuge, the red herring. It’s the fact
that he, with the Haitian people, as a whole, have, to a large extent, come
together and done just that - IMPROVED LIFE IN HAITI!!!! That's the problem in
Haiti today, se-mwen. Our successes, as a nation, in the short span of ten
years of the Haitian people finally having their duly elected VOICE at the Palace,
after almost 200 years of containment-in-poverty, our successes is what
scares the hell out of our peoples’ traditional enemies.

Know that. Spread that truth. For, like I've said before, what do Haitians
have to celebrate in this year of the bi-centennial:



We can celebrate the reduction of the illiteracy rate from 85-90% to 48%;

We can claim victory because, Kreyol, our grandmamas tongue is now officially
recognized;

That Vodun is an official religion;

That the hated Haitian military (traditionally trampling on Haitian civil and
human rights since left there in 1934 by the United States to contain us in
fear and terror after their 19-year occupation of Haiti) has been eliminated.

Today we-Haitian may also celebrate that our historic isolation is OVER;

That there are about 3 million Haitians living outside of Haiti who CARE
deeply about Haitian rights at home and abroad;

Who today send MORE than $800 MILLION dollars to hold up their families and
give them more choices;

We may celebrate that more schools have been BUILT in Haiti in the last 10
years than in our ENTIRE 200-year- history.

We may celebrate that the Restavek child-labor law has been repealed and
awaits ratification by the next duly elected parliament.

We may celebrate that the dual citizenship law has also been passed and
awaits ratification by the NEXT duly elected Haitian parliament.

We may celebrate the legal demand and proceedings now getting started, on
behalf of ALL Haitians, for France to repay the 21billion debt of independence it
extorted from our people;

We may even celebrate that the "opposition" has freedom of association and
speech!!!


These are the SUCCESSES THAT MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO COME TO THE FOREFRONT my
beloved people. That's why there must be a violent Coup D'etat, right now!

It's not that Aristide has been a dictator, but that, despite it all, he and
the Haitian majority have managed to do WHAT NO OTHER HAITIAN ADMINISTRATION,
in our history, had done before. That's why there is a "crisis" in Haiti to
THEM - the Kolons and their created "opposition" to the Haitian people's
domestic development and legitimately chosen leadership.

Truth is, thought its made some unwise choices and failed in many, many
areas, the Aristide government is the only ONE to have ever demanded, on behalf of
ALL Haitians, that France repay the 21billion debt of independence and that
the United States make good the money it plundered from the Haitian national
reserves during its 19 years of (1915-1934) of occupation in Haiti.

No wonder the US/Euros have an embargo against us and are manufacturing a
media blitz to violently take DOWN, through FORCE, such a Haitian people and
their legitimately elected leader!!

Today, even the most isolated (in rural areas) ti-machan yo have heard of
these demands, being made on their behalf, for restitution and are walking to the
well to get water with more gumption and stepping to the marketplace with
more strength in their stride, more focus in their eyes, more hope for a better
tomorrow. They feel valued even if their material circumstances haven't change
that much. Yet, at least today, there are demonstrations, if one gets the
proper license, and the Haitian people can generally freely speak their minds.

Thus, Haitians, after almost 200-years of repression, finally have a real
VOICE in the corridors of Haitian power, and are learning they are entitled to
RIGHTS - civil rights, legal rights, economic rights - HUMAN RIGHTS that must be
respected EVEN BY THE MOST POWERFUL. It's an unprecedented and dizzying
miracle!

On the other hand, we may also say, that a tiny minority of Haitians, some
calling themselves, "intellectuals," "teachers," "elites," "opposition" etc.,
are so PUMPED-UP by the fact that they have RIGHTS that must be protected in a
democracy, that they have simply gone bonkers with their freedom of speech and
are just talking nonsense.

But those are the consequences of the development of Civil Society and
freedom of speech.

We must live with it, peacefully and with tolerance.

However, it is also incumbent upon concerned Haitians to give that speech and
freedom to demonstrate some acceptable focus, some logical and legal mission
- a publicly acceptable Haitianist purpose. Coup d'etat, return of the Haitian
army, neoliberalism and foreign occupation just don't meet our Haitian
people's dire social, economic or political needs. No way!

So, I repeat, my people it is OUR SUCCESS, our self-determination and
empowerment of ourselves these last ten years or so, which have gotten the Kolon and
his cohorts in a tizzy so that they MUST lie about us. The current "Haitian
crisis" is not about our failures, but our successes!!!.

For, imagine, 3 million of us, sons and daughters of Haiti, with a new-
parliament-ratified-dual-citizenship-passport, landing regularly at Haiti's
airports with our dollars and democratic rights. Yeah, well...... the IRI, USAID and
the US Embassy are way ahead of you.

They know what that means to their meddling and systemic Profit-over-People
interests in Haiti. Yep. They do.

Yes, that's a large part of the reason WHY the tiny Haitian elite, whose very
survival depends on the Black Haitian majority remaining uneducated,
illiterate, in repression and in economic bondage and us-abroad remaining fearful of
travelling to Haiti and staying away, that's why this minority in Haiti must
strum chaos and impasse to the fevered pitch they are trying to package and sell
it off to a world already predisposed to believe in our Black inferiority and
savagery. Fear of losing their social and economics entitlements, that also
may be why SCHOOLS are close to our ti-machan's children in Haiti, but their
privilege children get to go unimpeded to the private and "International"
schools all over Port-au-Prince, just as they have done for almost 200-years.

That’s why "news" of Haitians killing each other and bombs dropping in
Gonaive, and mourners unable to mourn their dead and demonstrators unable to freely
demonstrate MUST be manufactured!!!!

It is our success at democracy that scares the tiny Haitian majority in Haiti
(sooo into social exclusion, racism and Eurocentrism) and their imperial
backers to these desperate means.

It is not about, as the overwhelming many in the foreign press, the
Opposition and the U.S. State Department would have you believe, it is not about the
young Haitian teenager who Aristide can’t control; it’s not about the garden
variety street crime blown out of proportion; it’s not that the Haitian mass
electorate is stupid, or, are all backward bandits and uneducated chimers. NO.
It's about domination - white domination of a Black Republic, just as it has
always been these last 200 years.

The crises in Haiti today, as yesterday, is about economics and
Eurocentric-greed and still wanting our Haitian people’s labor virtually for free through
dictatorship rule and the Haitian army's return.

But for me, for we-Haitians, the lives of our compatriots, on either side of
the spectrum, being wasted to this traditional cause, is URGENT business. It
is our "live-free-or-die" urgent business!!!

So, I can't, right now, get with existential (in-Francais) angst. For, it's
important that ALL of us with talents, such as yours, Ms. Mag.., lend them
towards averting the death and killing of more Haitians.

It's serious as a heart attack that we-Haitians each do our part so that the
next generation may point to us and say that we told the truth; we forgot our
relations and pocketbooks and did the morally correct thing and united for the
common good of our Haitian nation.

Mag, you write:

Quote:
Est-ce d'être des insulaires? Est-ce autre chose? Mais l'haïtien a toujours
souffert d'un problème de positionnement.

Yes, Haiti has no peer, no point of comparison. We could write that about any
country, any individual, anything. But the situation in Haiti is indeed flesh
and blood REAL. Right now real.

In my lifetime, there's ALWAYS been turmoil, conflict, chaos, impasse,
bloodshed in Haiti, which I saw ONLY diminished during the Aristide/Preval years.
For me, and the majority of Haitians, our life and access to liberty was WORST
under the Duvalier dictatorships. Ask those whose family members died at Fort
Dimanche, etc? Ask those 300,000 internal refugees in maronnage in Haiti, the
over 5,000 victims of FRAPH, the 50,000 passing through Guantanamo Bay,
countless feeding Atlantic sharks and INS detention pens in the years between 1991 to
1994?

Frankly and bluntly, I wasn't around, wasn’t alive, during the "good old
days." And, I simply don't know what was THAT good, in the Black Haitian
majority’s life, who were around, in Haiti, in the age when.... -

Quote:
Il fut un temps ou être haitien signifiait être Jean Brière et diriger le
théatre national du Sénégal à Dakar....By gones are by gones."

I don't have the luxury of your nostalgia. And wishing for it won't feed,
protect or nurture not one Haitian child today, not even one.

For yours truly and most Haitians of working class and payisan parentage, the
neo-colonialist blueprint being played out, at this very moment, is almost
200 years old. Further, you write:

Quote:
"....soyons autre chose, si nous voulons que l'on montre autre chose de nous."

I beg your pardon. But as a person, as a Black woman, an African-American
woman, a Haitian woman struggling to show the world the light and beauty of my
Haitian people and our culture, I don't see that the Powers-that-be are
acknowledging MY EXISTENCE, my desires for a fratricide-free Haiti, just as they did
not acknowledge that thousands-upon-thousands of Haitians celebrated the
beginning of the bicentennial year with joy and in peace. NO. They don't and won't
acknowledge any good thing about us. They wanted a catastrophe. They wanted
bloodshed and Coup D'etat. They exaggerated whatever negatives they could find
and went to the extremes of reporting lies (For, instance, note the New York
times recent retractions) because the catastrophe they came to report did not
happen.

Why didn’t they report that there were countless Haitians, from the Diaspora,
who had braved the State Department's warnings to go and pay respect to their
ancestors and to stand for the rule of law and the cause of participatory and
transparent democracy?

No, I don’t see myself and my friends and family in the images currently
being disseminated all over the news media at all. Yet, we all know the majority
of Haitians want the rule of law in Haiti to be respected, that there are
thousands upon thousands of this sort of Haitian around. Haitian women and men who
are people of peace, conscience and compassion trying their best to be of
assistance to Haiti's development and prosperity.

But, ALL we see out here are reports covering the tiny, tiny, tiny minority
in Haiti, out for blood because of their political frustrations and unbridle
ambitions.

These people are NOT representatives of all Haitians, just as no one would
seriously contemplate saying the rightist and radical Neocons in the U.S.
represent the ENTIRE U.S. mass electorate. That would be a stinking lie. Why is it
not a lie when we are dealing with Haiti. What? Because this tiny, tiny, tiny
Haitian minority, these Black opportunist and Category Zeros strumming violence
and advocating the violent overthrow of a Constitutionally elected government
have money and friends in high places who are used to buying elections and
buying demonstrators with incentives like U.S./Canadian and French passports and
CIA-like promises of impunity if they kill their own brothers – especially if
it can be caught ON CAMERA? Is that why they are not being called on to take
responsibility and be accountable for their wretched actions?

Today, this small cadre of influential Haitian opportunist and their U.S.
propaganda machine are busy trying to show the international cameras and the
world that we-Haitians, as a people, are so contrary, so brutal, savage and
inhuman, we can only be kept in line through FORCE, through torture and the chains
of a newly reconstructed Haitian army!

Mag, you write

Quote:
"....soyons autre chose, si nous voulons que l'on montre autre chose de nous."

Well, what they are showing IS NOT ALL OF US! Not the sums of what
we-Haitians are. Not the majority of Haitian desires, visions and actions. It's not me.
It's NOT the Haitians I KNOW.

You write,

Quote:

Mais l'expression "faire son respect" veut dire le "construire soi-même."

True that. But, mwen fe respe-m. Nou se granmoun. Nou pa timoun. That tiny
infantile few in Haiti, who I've named Category Zero are the ones hiding behind
school children, a dead cadaver stolen from a family funeral, IRI dollars,
USAID dollars, European Union dollars, and the CIA manual coming up with the
political impasse strategies they currently are using to keep Haiti from
developing a domestic economy and educating future leaders in schools who will STEP-up
to their illogic and inhumanity with the patience, compassion and tolerance
one must show the deranged and mentally insane.

Avek respe,

Ezili Danto
Li led li la