‘We ugly! But we here!’ – JAMAICAOBSERVER.COM

The so-called new prime minister of Haiti is one monsieur Latortue, who has a lot of chat for someone without a mandate from anyone except the US ambassador and his bosses. He is, he says, going to unite Haiti, so he has begun by boldly leaving out of his ‘government’ any representative of the people of Haiti. I give him three weeks.

John Maxwell continues to be the most outspoken commentator and the most trenchant observer of the ongoing situation in Haiti. What has happened to that country in the last 10 years is a farce of epic proportions. It would be funny if it wasn’t tragic.

The world should know that the United States and France bear the major responsibility for the predicaments in which Haiti now finds itself. It is a savage irony, that two of the three nations founded at the end of the 18th century on the ideals of the Brotherhood of Man should continue to hypocritically dismiss the third on no other visible basis but that Haiti is black.

Racism is Racism is Racism. To describe Haiti as a ‘failed state”, to say that Aristide misgoverned his country, to allege that the mulatto elite in Haiti are capable of operating a democracy are sick jokes. The mulatto elite and the military have been the junior partners in the franchised predation of Haiti for most of its history.

Aristide was not perfect. Nobody ever claimed that he was. But is George W Bush perfect? or Jacques Chirac? The money misappropriated when Chirac was mayor of Paris could feed a great many Haitians. Does that make Chirac unfit to lead France?
Does the fact that Ken Lay of Enron was the largest contributor to President George Bush, or the fact that Vice-President Cheney’s company is accused of overcharging the US army for food make either Mr Bush or Cheney unfit to govern the United States and the world??

Well, if it doesn’t make them unfit, per se, it sure weakens their authority. Or, it would in a rational world.

The behaviour of Kofi Annan and the UN Security Council was barbaric. They refused to help a UN member in good standing when his country was threatened by the most disreputable, bloodthirsty assassins. Yet, two days later, when Aristide had been overthrown, kidnapped or whatever, the same group felt impelled to send a ‘peace-keeping’ force to Haiti. And a few days ago, the World Bank held a donors meeting to consider aid for Haiti. The hypocrisy runs like blood in an abattoir.

I think the abattoir is an appropriate metaphor. We’ve turned Haiti into as effective a place of misery as a slaughterhouse, one we can turn our backs on and ignore as long as the meat keeps showing up on our plate.

In his Jamaica Observer column, Geof Brown takes the question of whether Jean Bertrand Aristide left Haiti like a sniveling coward to its logical conclusion.

Click here: If the US ambassador is right. – JAMAICAOBSERVER.COM

So Aristide has gone. I wonder: now that the rebels have achieved their sole aim, what will they do? Has anyone heard their agenda or plan?

Yahoo! News – Aristide Leaves Haiti to ‘Avoid Bloodshed’

By Jim Loney and Alistair Scrutton

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) – Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide left his chaotic Caribbean country on Sunday, driven out by a bloody revolt that put rebels near the capital and by pressure from the United States and France.

Aristide said he departed to avert bloodshed but turmoil persisted in the capital Port-au-Prince, where shooting rang out as armed Aristide supporters roamed the streets and looters ransacked a police station.

By way of InstaPundit, I found this post. (And, who wouldn’t be curious to read anything by “Chief Wiggles”?) I don’t agree with some of the good Chief’s arguments in the latter part of the article, but I nodded my head to much of it, especially the following passage:

chiefwiggles.blog-city.com Back in the USA, Plea, Our Role, Why not ask us? 02/26/04

“We are the sole remaining world power. We are the richest nation on earth in the history of the world. We have been blessed with much as we have the abundance of the Promised Land at our fingertips. We have the means and the where with all to make a difference in the world we are a part of. We can be a force for much good influencing generations of people by demonstrating, through small acts of kindness, our compassion and love for all mankind. And we can do this one child at a time.

Chief Wiggles, I honor your bravery and that of your counterparts, and I thank you for your service. I hope that if you believe in what you say, you will also stand up for freedom and democracy in Haiti. They could really use men like you right now.

I wrote my representatives tonight to urge their action in Haiti. The full story, along with my letter, is at The Louverture Project

Found this letter courtesy of the Haiti List. It’s right on, in my view. Of course the follow-up comment posted just after the letter only underscores the level of rhetoric and entrenched attitudes that pervade the discussion of the continuing mess in Haiti.

Dominion Weblog: Letter to Government and Corp. Media About Haiti

Letter to Government and Corp. Media About Haiti

Though often futile, speaking truth to power can be therapeutic. Here’s a copy of a letter I sent out to about 200 corporate lackeys regarding the crisis in Haiti.

John Maxwell (no relation) has been writing some of the most impassioned, clear-headed, and biting commentary about the ongoing situation in Haiti. His most recent column takes the world community to task for their unrealistic expectations of Aristide. He also takes the time to consider what the Haitian people really want. What a concept!

The Caricom/OAS minstrel show – JAMAICAOBSERVER.COM

Last week, Haitians in the United States were asked for their opinions on what should happen in Haiti. A poll among Haitians across the United States was done by the New California Media Coalition, an association of ethnic media companies .

Surprise! More than half (52 per cent) of those polled said they believed President Aristide should stay in office ‘in the interest of democracy’. Just over one-third (35 per cent) believed he should resign. More than half – 55 per cent – felt the Haitian Opposition was fighting for “power”; only 22 per cent believed it was fighting for “democracy”.
Given these figures and the facts reported elsewhere, it would seem a little crazy for Caricom/OAS and the US to be putting pressure on Aristide to dismantle his Government to give power to an Opposition which refuses even to discuss its differences with Aristide.

From BBC News: France ponders Haiti peace force, “France says it is ready to consider sending a peacekeeping force to its former colony Haiti, where civil unrest has left more than 50 people dead.”

Why ironic? Read up on Haitian history at my other blog, The Louverture Project. But also, Haiti is in the US’s back yard, yet we have to depend on France to intervene! Shame on us.

I have now created a separate blog for the Haiti- Toussaint-related posts and discussion. I feel that this will give me the opportunity to open up the Toussaint discussion to others, and at the same time give me a chance to broaden the discussion on my own Stumax site. I would like the freedom to explore ideas from the mundane to the silly, and I would like to preserve the integrity and seriousness of the Toussaint project.

You can see the new site, The Louverture Project, at http://www.stumax.com/tlp/.

I’m making plans to promote the site to the Haiti List. I’d like to invite historians, formal and otherwise, to comment and add to my discoveries. Hopefully, this will accelerate the pace of my learning.

From Silencing the Past – Power and the Production of History, by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, p 25:
“For what history is changes with time and place or, better said, history reveals itself only through the production of specific narratives. What matters most are the process and conditions of production of such narratives. Only a focus on that process can uncover the ways in which the two sides of historicity intertwine in a particular context. Only through that overlap can we discover the differential exercise of power that makes some narratives possible and silences others.”

Trouillot is describing a theory of history much like the philosophy of art. In art, one learns that the negative spaces have value; what is left out describes the ultimate image as much as the impressions that the artist leaves. Trouillot is arguing that the same holds for historical silences, and that if we can understand the reasons such silences show up in a particular historical narrative, we’ll gain insight into the complete history. Indeed, he seems to be saying that one cannot consider history without considering the silences also.

On page 26, Trouillot writes:
“Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).”