KPFA Weekend News broadcast March 12

by Ann Garrison

KPFA News Anchor Cameron Jones: On Tuesday the House Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the Democratic Republic of Congo, the most lethal conflict in the world since World War II, which has continued since the International Rescue Committee estimated over three years ago that more than 5.4 million people had died in the conflict, most of whom had died of hardship after being driven from their homes.

Actor Ben Affleck, founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative, greets John Prendergast, co-founder of The Enough Project, prior to a hearing by the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Africa, Global Health and Human Rights Subcommittee on “The Democratic Republic of the Congo: Securing Peace in the Midst of Tragedy” in Washington on March 8. No Congolese or African person testified. – Photo: Kevin Dietsch, UPI

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Friends of the Congo Executive Director Maurice Carney told KPFA that the absence of a Congolese or even African voice at the Congressional hearing on Congo’s catastrophe was no surprise, even in the age of President Barack Obama.

Maurice Carney: It’s part of a long pattern of the colonization of information. You have experts who claim to be speaking on behalf of the Africans.

KPFA: The African Great Lakes Advocacy Coalition had, six days earlier, held a briefing on the U.N. Mapping Report, released on Oct. 1, 2010, which documents mass atrocities in Congo, with an all African, including Congolese, panel. An intern from John Prendergast’s Enough Project was in attendance, asking questions, but, as Carney noted, none of the panel’s all African speakers were invited to speak at Tuesday’s hearing.

African scholars and activists Nii Akuetta, Claude Gatebuke, Emira Wood, Jacques Bahati, Nita Evele and Kambale Musavuli were the panelists at the Great Lakes Advocates’ Coalition’s March 2 briefing on the 2010 U.N. Mapping Report, which documents atrocities committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. None of them were invited to the March 8 Congressional hearing on Congo where Ben Affleck and John Prendergast testified. – Photo: Arrian Lewis

Maurice Carney: Both the FDLR and the LRA can enroll in the “Museveni and Kagame School of Mass Atrocities” and get a Ph.D., because the overwhelming suffering in the region has been triggered by U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda, led by their presidents. So, when you have people testifying in Congress and talking about FDLR and LRA to the exclusion of U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda, you feel like you’re in the twilight zone, like “What are you talking about?”

Friends of the Congo Executive Director Maurice Carney

KPFA: John Prendergast is most often introduced on talk shows and in congressional hearings as an author and human rights advocate. Neither he nor Enough hide his previous employment as director of African Affairs on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council and on the National Intelligence Council.

Ben Affleck made another celebrity appearance last November with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair John Kerry at a press conference about foreign policy in Congo at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is now headed by former Deputy Director of Defense John Hamre. Again, Maurice Carney:

Maurice Carney: The people called in to testify are usually those who reinforce U.S. foreign policy in a particular region of the world, not those who challenge U.S. foreign policy. So that’s just the way it works in Washington unless you connect with a progressive, such as Cynthia McKinney, when she was in the Congress.

Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney held congressional hearings on the Congo conflict in 2001.

KPFA: A partial transcript of McKinney’s 2001 Congressional hearings on Congo can be found on the website of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper with the title “End the conflict in the Congo.” Keith Harmon Snow’s essay, “Ben Affleck, Rwanda and Corporate Sustained Catastrophe,” can be found on the Dissident Voice website.

For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison.

San Francisco writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, Colored Opinions, Black Star News, the Newsline EA (East Africa) and her own blog, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, Weekend News on KPFA and her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at ann@afrobeatradio.com. This story first appeared on her blog.

Interview by Minister of Information JR

You are listening to another Block Report with the Minister of Information JR on Hard Knock Radio. Today we’re going to be talking about the country of Haiti. Our guest is Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee.

As President Aristide speaks at the airport on his return to Haiti March 18, the joy in his face and his wife Mildred's reflects the jubilant exultation of the people.

Pierre: Yes, first let me start by thanking you for having me on your show once again and thank you for your support and solidarity for the people of Haiti. I thank Block Report Radio and also Hard Knock Radio for their constant support.

The history of Haiti – well, we all know about Christopher Columbus and his invasion of the lands of the indigenous people in this hemisphere that today is known as the Americas. Christopher Columbus invaded the island in 1492 and the name Haiti or, as it’s pronounced, Ayiti, it’s an indigenous name that means Land of Mountains, and the Arawaks were the first inhabitants of the land – what Christopher Columbus mistakenly referred to as the Indies or Indians.

In 1492 he started a war of extermination against the indigenous people and by 1503, the first arrival of Africans kidnapped from Africa for the purpose of enslavement actually was recorded. But it’s important to pay homage to the indigenous people. The population of the indigenous inhabitants was estimated at the time at about 1,500,000 but then in about 30 years the population was reduced to 60,000.

It was truly a brutal system of slavery that Christopher Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors had imposed and also a war of extermination – to exterminate indigenous people in order to get their resources. Why is it important to say that? Because in modern times as we are looking at the world today, we have the same wars of extermination taking place against indigenous people living in various lands throughout the world, not only in the Americas but throughout, to get their wealth, to get their resources, so the same spirit of the conquistadors way back in the 1490s is still what’s going on today.

Today they give it other names: They call it the new world order. They give it names such as globalization. And that’s why as we look at the Congo, for example, because it is a very rich land and its peoples are subjected to a whole process of extermination, be it through wars or through forced labor or imported diseases. So that’s basically what Haiti went through in those early years, and some are arguing that this is what’s going on today to the people of Haiti.

MOI JR: What has the United States’ impact been on Haiti? What has the United States’ history with Haiti been over those years?

Pierre: Well, this takes us to the beginning – the founding of Haiti as a nation – with the Africans being brought in as enslaved people and being worked to death on the island. The island became split between the Spanish and the French in 1697. For the next 100 years on the French part, which today is known as Haiti, and the other part of the island, now the Dominican Republic, the French continued the system of brutal exploitation, brutal slavery.

A hundred years later, 1791, the Africans rebelled and there was a massive rebellion led by Brother Boukman Dutty and a woman, Cecile Fatima, and that rebellion successfully ended 13 years later in the Africans defeating the armies of Napoleon, the Spanish and the British and proclaiming themselves an independent republic in 1804.

Now the U.S., as a slaving-owning nation, saw the new nation as a threat, so they started to undermine the Haitian revolution to destroy it basically. For the next 50 years the U.S. refused to recognize Haiti as an independent nation. They had also maneuvered so that in the conference of the independent states of the Americas – now, what I mean by that is all the South American countries under the leadership of Simon Bolivar, who led the movement for the pan-American conference; Haiti had helped Simon Bolivar in his struggle against Spanish colonialism – Haiti was invited to participate in that conference, but through manipulations by the U.S. and pressure, Haiti was disinvited and Haiti was told not to come to participate in that conference, which took place in 1826. It wasn’t until the end of the Civil War that the United States finally gave recognition to Haiti as an independent nation.

One of the first ambassadors to Haiti was Frederick Douglass. At the very inception of Haiti, Haiti was in the crosshairs of the United States and various administrations of the U.S. Haiti was also seen by the U.S. as a place that was very strategically located in order to locate a Naval base, but the Haitians resisted that and refused to cede any of their territory.

I must say Frederick Douglass was very supportive of the Haitian side of it. To him, as a former enslaved African, Haiti was sacred ground because as an enslaved person who fought so successfully his way out of slavery, he identified with his brothers and sisters in Haiti and he stood up for Haiti.

The Haitians successfully refused to cede their territory, and 1915 was the first U.S. occupation of Haiti. It lasted 19 years, from 1915 to 1934, and it was during that time that the Haitian military, which had successfully defeated the troops of Napoleon, that the traditional Haitian military was destroyed and replaced by a new military formed by the U.S.

At the Aristides’ home, thousands of Haitians, who had waited seven long tortured years for the return of their beloved president and his family, waited a little longer to welcome them. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste

And during that period the gold reserve of Haiti’s bank was actually taken forcefully out of Haiti and transported to the U.S. It hasn’t been returned to Haiti to this date.

MOI JR: Can you tell the people a little bit about the history of 1991 and the rise to power of the people – Fanmi Lavalas as well as President Jean-Bertrand Aristide?

Pierre: Yes, during that period following the end of the occupation and the removal of the troops – but people will argue there was a continued de facto occupation of Haiti and that Haiti had lost its sovereignty – there were many movements in the country, movements from the grassroots to change the system, particularly the system of color prejudice and class prejudice that existed during that time.

In 1946 there was a massive uprising; it’s known as the Revolution of ‘46 in Haiti. Out of that there was a president, Dumarcais Estime, who was pretty much a reformist president.

Four years later he was overthrown by the Haitian military because they didn’t like the fact that his reforms targeted such things as establishing a minimum wage, allowing trade unions to participate, to have a say in what was going on, to be active in the country. A number of grassroots organizations, community organizations, were coming forth and they were directly part of the movement of ’46. So Dumarcais Estime was too much for the Haitian ruling elite.

The Haitian ruling elite: There is a tiny elite in Haiti that after the independence of Haiti, with the support of the French interests and European interests, had managed to gain a foothold to dominate the economy of Haiti. So if you look at the international imperialists, the ruling elite were junior partners running the country for their interests.

One of the shameful things in our history is that in 1826, France demanded that Haiti pay ransom, reparations to the French slave owners because of our foremothers and forefathers taking their freedom and declaring themselves free people. So France got the support of the U.S. and Britain and Spain to force the newly freed Haitians to pay reparations to the French slave owners.

What did that mean? It means that everything that we were producing in Haiti, instead of investing it in ourselves, in our own institutions, such as hospitals, building schools, having tools for farmers, having irrigation canals, universities, roads, all of those things that would help the new nation have the infrastructure to develop into a modern nation, you see, all of that money was being sent to former French slave owners in Europe. That was why they needed that ruling elite and a subservient military to keep the people subjugated, to keep the people producing just like in slavery days.

That’s what Kwame Nkrumah referred to as neocolonialism: It was another way to maintain the colonial system. But in any case, people have been rebelling against that since the 19th century. In 1946 that movement of the people was part of changing that whole structure.

We had a series of dictators. There was the military dictatorship, and then Papa Doc Duvalier came to power in 1957 – actually handpicked, selected, put in there by the U.S. government with the support of the Haitian military and a large majority of Haiti’s ruling elite.

So the Duvaliers controlled Haiti – first the father, who died in 1971; then his son took over and (caused) brutal, brutal repression. Over 50,000 Haitians were reported as having been killed or disappeared and the country was being systematically destroyed by the Duvalier regime and their policies. They were implementing the demands and dictates of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Those were the realities that were really keeping Haiti within that neocolonialist system, very dependent.

Joyfully, people surround Aristide’s car as he leaves the airport. They ran beside him all the way to his house. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste

But the people of Haiti managed in 1990 to elect a young parish priest who was a very eloquent spokesperson for the demands of the people. You see, during that time a lot of the agricultural sector in Haiti was under severe attack and under severe destruction. For example, our livestock, the pork industry in Haiti, the pig industry, all the pigs were destroyed, the Kreyol pigs. That wiped out over $600 million of the peasant agricultural economy, and that livestock wasn’t replaced.

Our rice industry was completely destroyed and now rice was coming in – imported rice that was subsidized, rice produced in the U.S. that was being sold below market rate in Haiti – which really destroyed the rice economy, making Haiti more dependent. The same thing happened to our poultry production. So you see our whole agricultural sector was being undermined by this assault.

The labor unions, for example: In the ‘70s, Baby Doc Duvalier used brutal repression against the trade unions that were demanding decent wages, while sweatshops were being encouraged to come in to Haiti. Companies would close their factories in the U.S. and open them in Haiti as sweatshops, where they wouldn’t pay a living wage to people, basically starvation wages, less than $1 a day for a 10-hour workday.

Our people, when they formed a union and tried to demand better wages, they were considered subversive, put in jail. Union leaders were being killed outright. When people rebelled in 1986, it was to change that system.

Aristide was elected on a people’s platform to change the system, and seven months after his election he was taken out of office by a military coup – supported, really encouraged by George Bush, the father, who the Haitians call Papa Bush. After three years of struggle, in which the people of Haiti received a lot of international solidarity from communities throughout the world, Aristide was returned to Haiti. Bill Clinton was the president of the U.S. at that time. In 1996, a new president (of Haiti) was elected – Rene Preval – who had been prime minister under Aristide.

But five years later the people again drafted President Aristide to run again for office, again on the people’s program to build schools, to build roads, to build hospitals, universities and to really demand that companies that do business in Haiti negotiate, follow the laws, pay their taxes, and invest so that there would be investment in the country and the investment of the resources, the tax money, and also investment of the government of Haiti into institutions to help people build schools, hospitals, and investing in education for our children, whereby schools would be subsidized.

Aristide as president did something that the Haitian people wanted him to do: He demobilized the military, disbanded it, and he took the headquarters of the Haitian military and gave it to the women’s movement as the ministry for women’s affairs. It would be like taking the Pentagon, decommissioning it and turning it over to the women’s movement.

This was tremendous for the people of Haiti. What happened is 40 percent of the national budget that the Haitian military was taking outright for doing nothing and being of no service to the country, that money was used to build the roads, the hospitals, the schools that the people wanted.

The platform of the government of the Lavalas movement was investing in the people: “Let’s invest in our people!” It’s shameful that the average life expectancy for our people was 48 years. Illiteracy – 85 percent of our people did not know how to read or write. There was one doctor for every 20,000 Haitians. So they founded a medical school.

The people were demanding a platform. The people formulated a platform and they said, “Look, brother Aristide, we trust you when we give you our vote that you are going to implement those demands that we are formulating into a program to launch Haiti into the new century.”

MOI JR: Aristide was overthrown during the bicentennial of Haiti’s independence (in 2004) and he recently returned from exile. And you were there to greet him and that happened less than a week and a half ago. Can you talk about that experience? And what was it like to be on the ground for such a historic occasion?

Pierre: It was tremendous, JR. You know, this happened on Friday, March 18. I’d gone to Haiti, I landed there on Thursday, and I could see feverish activity from various communities. I was in Port au Prince and I could see people trying to put up posters, putting up banners saying, “Welcome home,” “Bon retour, Aristide,” which means “Welcome back” – feverish activity all night long. It was so busy I didn’t get to see many friends because they were so busy putting up posters. And I did too. I got caught up in the fever.

The following day with the delegation I was supposed to be at the airport, but the roads were so clogged so early in the morning from 8:00 on, it was impossible to get to the airport, so a friend of ours at the airport said look, forget it, it’s an impossible task. Why don’t you go to his (Aristide’s) house, so that’s what we ended up doing.

Young people who are barely old enough to remember Aristide before he was kidnapped by U.S. Marines seven years ago and forced into exile were as excited as their elders to welcome him home. The sign says, “Titid, the youth love you.” Titid is an affectionate nickname for Aristide. – Photo: Ansel Herz

And so the day of, as I was at his house, we heard a roar of shouts of joy, and then over the walls people started coming in, pouring into the courtyard of the house when they saw the car. People were accompanying the car as many as three miles from the airport to his house. Now these are community organizations that had already marched to the airport. Now they were at the airport and bringing him back to his home. So it was a slow procession of people, tens of thousands of people in the tropical heat.

We’re in the yard and all of sudden all these people marching, brothers and sisters singing, and they were shouting with joy, saying, “Give him back his house! He’s back now, he’s back to take his house back! Give him back his house!” It was an expression of anger at the way President Aristide had been kidnapped.

As you mentioned earlier, in the year 2004, the year of Haiti’s bicentennial, he had been kidnapped in a coup d’etat, and this was by the administration of George Bush, the younger – people in Haiti call him Baby Bush; that’s a reference to Baby Doc Duvalier. People are so angry at the fact that their democratic rights, their right to choose their own representatives, had been so brutally and openly snatched from them. Expressing their anger, people were chanting and singing songs of the movement and singing the song, “Our blood is the blood of Aristide. We are all united as one!”

They said so many of us have died because we stood up for our rights, for the right to vote, for the respect of our right to choose our own leaders. They were saying that and counting the many who died. They said, “Many of us were wounded by bullets shot at us by U.N. troops when we were demonstrating for Aristide’s return, by the Haitian police who were defending the coup d’etat and were against our rights, and still we stood up.”

So it took the brother (Aristide) at least another 45-50 minutes to walk from the car into his house. So much joy, it was just electric. It was fantastic. People felt a sense of vindication. They said, “We were told Aristide would never come back. Now see the power of the people, the resistance of the people.”

They asked me to convey their many, many thanks and their love to people here in the Bay Area because they were aware how people here in the Bay Area – how the listening audience worldwide – have stood up with them in solidarity, even though there were many lies being spread against Aristide. People were calling him a drug dealer, a dictator.

But one day while he was in exile, a friend was in touch with him by phone – the friend conference called me – and he (Aristide) told me something, and I said, “President Aristide, I’m so sorry that this is happening, all those lies against you.” And he answered using a Haitian metaphor which translates in English roughly as, “Truth crushed to earth shall rise again.” And this is what is happening in Haiti.

I did have a chance to sit down with him, and he sends his love and appreciation to everyone, to each and every one for everything they’ve done in solidarity with the people in Haiti, for the democratic rights of the people of Haiti. As he said in his article, which is in his letter, “Upon My Return,” his focus is on education. The denial of our peoples’ rights, political rights, and also their right to live and achieve their potential in this society, has to stop.

He’s an educator. He’s focused on education. So he’s going to reopen the medical school and also the university. That’s what his major focus is – to find ways to help bring our young people educational opportunities.

MOI JR: For those of you who are just tuning in, we are listening to the voice of Pierre Labossiere, cofounder and organizer with the Haiti Action Committee. I am the Minister of Information JR and this is Block Report Radio on Hard Knock Radio. Pierre, there was recently an election which happened the day after Aristide came back from exile. Can you speak a little bit about this election and how the people on the ground in Haiti feel about this election.

Pierre: For the most part, people didn’t turn out. Nobody believes in those; they call them a selection process, in which it’s been the big countries that dominate Haiti, that occupy Haiti – France, the U.S., Canada – that are running the show. Basically they are trying to roll back the gains of the democratic movement of 1986, so what they are doing is taking the people again out of the political process.

Five to ten thousand supporters wait to greet President Aristide outside his house when he returned to Haiti after more than seven years in exile. – Photo: Ansel Herz

Since ’86, many have died for their right to cast their ballot, and so people see (their exclusion) as a rolling back to those days of the dictatorship. That’s why they call them (the recent elections) a selection process.

Famni Lavalas, the party of Aristide – Lavalas means flash flood – and its family, the flash flood family, means that the people all of a sudden rose up in 1986 in a big mass movement to clean Haiti of all of the mess that it was in.

2009 was the beginning of this current election process. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to various reports, led the successful efforts to remove the Lavalas party from the elections. And so they decided to ban Fanmi Lavalas – the Preval government banned Lavalas – excluding them from the elections, under the pretext that, President Aristide being in exile, even though that’s not against the law and he had appointed someone, Dr. Maryse Narcisse, to represent the party and be able to sign the party into the elections. But they (election officials) claimed that the authorization was not done, that there was some hanky-panky going on and they didn’t believe the signature, which was a bold face lie. And it didn’t stand up to scrutiny what they were presenting.

It was simply because Lavalas was the majority party, is the majority party, they were so afraid that if in a normal election where everybody could freely express themselves, that Fanmi Lavalas would once again sweep most of the seats, including the presidency. So they knew that after seven years of misrepresenting, vilifying Fanmi Lavalas, vilifying President Aristide, that in the hearts of the people, the people knew who was on their side.

The people would never turn away from Fanmi Lavalas. On the contrary, Fanmi Lavalas had gained in stature and popularity, so that’s why they brutally excluded Fanmi Lavalas from the process. In 2010 in November was another round of elections. In ‘09 there was a round of elections for the legislature. Fanmi Lavalas didn’t participate and there was a massive boycott. Only 2-5 percent of the people turned out.

On Nov. 28, 2010, again they excluded Fanmi Lavalas from the process and this time also very few people participated in that process and it was a fraudulent election – so bad that most of the candidates, all the major candidates actually, in midday, around noon, they went on national TV in Haiti. They called a press conference and told their supporters don’t bother voting; this is fraudulent. The vote has taken place already. This is crazy. Don’t even participate.

What happened was that by that evening, the United Nations, which is the organization that supposedly is entrusted with setting the rules for democratic elections and making sure that the rights of the people are respected, the U.N. itself was involved in the fraud taking place. They had called two candidates, two right-wing candidates, Manigat and another guy, Michel Martelly, who is known as Sweet Mickey.

For the seven years of President Aristide's exile, Haitians by the thousands marched through police and U.N. "peacekeepers'" beatings and bullets to demand his return. On the great day their demand was finally met, signs everywhere read, in literal translation, "Good (or happy) return, Titid!" Titid is Haitians' affectionate nickname for Aristide. - Photo: Ramon Espinosa, AP

The two of them were promised that if they dropped their opposition to the fraud in the election that they were the ones who would go to the second round. And to their shame and their discredit – no one could expect better from these two – they decided to go along with it. And essentially the second round that took place last Sunday, March 20, was between these two people, and the turnout again was very poor. It was according to various estimates between 15-25 percent, but in any case it’s one of the lowest turnouts in presidential elections in the Americas, from what I’ve heard, in recent history.

Even though the Electoral Council, the body that’s in charge of running elections, as discredited as they are, as bad as they are, still the majority of them is supposed to ratify the first round so you can go to the second round. But things went so bad on this one that less than the majority signed off on it, which made it illegal, and to this day they never ratified the first round of the election, which makes the whole second round completely illegal and a complete farce.

For people who still were saying, “Well Haiti’s not occupied,” this is clearly an occupation. This is clearly where Secretary Hillary Clinton and France and Canada have imposed their will in such a blatant way and a blatant disregard for Haiti’s institutions that they didn’t bother to even have the fig leaf of the president’s signature or to have a fig leaf of legality through this whole process.

And the OAS, the Organization of American States, is also involved in this big time. So what we are saying is a number of international organizations that brand themselves as being people who are so upright, are so concerned with human rights, with legality and democracy in Haiti – they have shown themselves to be nothing but complete liars and brutal forces of aggression.

I’m not saying that lightly, because the United Nations forces have been involved in a number of massacres in Haiti of our brothers and sisters, and there are a number of massacres that they are connected with simply because our people were demanding that their right to vote be respected, were demanding their right to freedom, were demanding the right to voice their opinions into the running of the country.

MOI JR: You were just listening to the voice of Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee. I am the Minister of Information JR for Block Report Radio on Hard Knock Radio. Pierre, there’s been two major catastrophic disasters in Haiti, the first being the earthquake of 2010 and the second being the cholera outbreak. Can you tell the listeners a little about what’s going on the ground in Haiti right now in terms of those two disasters?

Pierre: Yes. The earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010, as everybody has seen by now, was devastating. The current figures are that over 310,000 people were killed in that earthquake: horrific, terrible. This is a natural disaster, but with so many deaths, it shows (the effect of) the previous manmade disasters – meaning the coup d’etat of 2004, the coup d’etat of 1991, the economic sabotage of the country, the blocking of the loans that were supposed to help build infrastructure, such as more health care institutions, more hospitals throughout the country. That was blocked when President Aristide was there. So when this natural disaster took place, the country was ill-prepared to deal with this kind of disaster.

"In the courtyard of Aristide's house on the day of this return, people ... shimmied up the coconut trees, onto the roof and the balconies, ate mangoes from the mango trees, cracked open coconuts and passed them down to the crowd below, reveled and smiled and claimed the house and its occupants as their own," writes Laura Flynn of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy, another eyewitness. - Photo: Paul Burke

And about 10 months later, in October 2010, there was a massive outbreak of cholera. The cholera was brought to Haiti – despite the U.N. saying that they didn’t bring it to Haiti – by United Nations troops that were infected with the disease, were carriers of the disease from Asia. It’s been 100 years since there was cholera in Haiti. Those troops had recently arrived the end of September, and their waste was being dumped into one of the main rivers in Haiti. That’s where their waste was being dumped.

Within three weeks of their arrival and with their fecal matter being dumped into the river, you had a number of cholera outbreaks downstream from their base. They tried to deny it, but there was a group of reporters that went there, they took photos, they filmed it, they showed where the fecal material from the base was going into the river, and then one of the trucks that was emptying the fecal waste was actually dumping it into the river – and all that was circulating on the internet.

The United Nations and all of the big countries that participated in the overthrow of President Aristide promised people that after Aristide was gone, Haiti would be a land of milk and honey, everybody would have everything, there would be no more misery, no more poverty and all of that. But what we saw was it was worse for the people of Haiti. Economically the situation got worse for the people of Haiti. Seven years after those big rich nations took control of Haiti, the situation for the average Haitian was much, much worse economically.

So what happened both after the earthquake and with the cholera outbreak was that the people had to fend for themselves. JR, you were in Haiti right after the earthquake and you saw how people all over the world freely gave so much. But those supplies, that money was kept stockpiled someplace, not being given to the people who really needed those supplies, so the people of Haiti were left on their own to fend for themselves.

Same with the cholera outbreak. All of those powerful nations should have mobilized and put together a plan very quickly to contain the disease and provide information to the population and provide support for the people – the vaccinations and medicine and all the stuff they needed – because cholera is deadly but it’s preventable. You can treat it very easily, but that wasn’t being provided to the people of Haiti. I hear there’s been a recent upsurge in the cholera outbreak; I heard about that yesterday: Over 800,000 people are infected with it and over 5,000 are dead.

But this is not counting the countryside, where figures are not kept, so this is mostly in the city. This is shameful. This is disgraceful. And this is what this occupation of Haiti has led us to, and it’s shameful that these big countries continue to lie about this situation and are not telling the world the truth about what’s going on.

MOI JR: Last question: Can you tell us what is the history of Bill Clinton, the former president of the United States, as well as what is the interest of the United States in Haiti? What is it that they want? And one thing that we didn’t mention during the interview that I think is very important is that during the time of French colonialism, Haiti was seen as the breadbasket of the French empire. So can you tell us what is it that the United States is eyeing in Haiti and what is the history of Bill Clinton specifically – what has it been in Haiti?

Pierre: Well, they have always eyed Haiti from the beginning, when it was a colony. Because of the brutal exploitation of our people, Haiti produced more for France than the 13 colonies in continental America were producing for England at that time. So Haiti has been like a prize possession. Everybody wanted to take it and maintain the system of colonialism that was brutal – colonialism that was making France so rich. Haiti is very strategically located in the Caribbean. That’s why the U.S. wanted a base there. Before they got Guantanamo, they wanted to have a base there.

Also, Haiti has a lot of mineral resources as well. Haiti has gold, copper and oil reserves that people want. Some of the things (the U.S. wants) also include the fact that Haiti is a source of cheap labor, where people are brutally exploited. But combined with that, the people of Haiti have always fought against that.

Etched on the older people’s faces is the truth of this woman’s sign, “We suffered greatly, (but) we had faith you would return home.” Thousands of Haitians died during the past seven years at the hands of the U.S. and U.N. forces occupying Haiti, compounded by the over 300,000 who were killed in the earthquake and over 4,600 killed so far in the cholera epidemic. – Photo: Etant Dupain, brikourinouvelgaye.com

In the modern era, with liberation theology – Father Aristide, President Aristide, being a former priest, a liberation theologian – to lead successful movements calling for the poor people to have a place in society, to have the right to vote, and be able to sit at the table of decision-making and also to say no to the plans that keep people in misery couldn’t be tolerated. So on an ideological level that example had to be brutally crushed.

And to get rid of its military at the time when the U.S. was pushing for the School of the Americas and the integration of military, promoting military, not as a way to help people, to help those various nations, but more as a repressive force in those countries – Haiti chose a different path, a different model of economic development where people were being put first before profits. That was too much of a challenge, so on those various fronts, the example of Haiti had to be destroyed. That’s what I believe.

As we look at the labor front as well – Haiti being one of the places where the wages are so low – when workers in other countries are demanding or fighting for better wages, fighting for better working conditions, the bosses always use Haiti as a place where they can move to. They use it as a threat: “Well, unless you agree to these concessions, we can always reopen the plant in Haiti.” That’s very useful. There are so many ways that Haiti serves the interests of greedy folks, greedy capitalists.

MOI JR: On Bill Clinton, real quick, as we’re running out of time.

Pierre: Yes, Bill Clinton, a special envoy of the U.N., really is one of the big promoters of what we call sweatshop development. A number of policies, including those fraudulent elections, can be attributed to former President Bill Clinton because he wields tremendous power in Haiti, but also his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They are the ones pushing for a policy that is destroying Haiti as a country and destroying the people of Haiti, and that has to change.

So I’m appealing to the audience to get on their phone to call and protest this and to demand that there is a new foreign policy in regards to Haiti. Call on the Obama administration to stop this policy that has been in existence ever since the days of the colonies, ever since the days when the U.S. saw Haiti as a threat because it had broken the chains of slavery. This has to stop.

MOI JR: What about Barbara Lee here in the Bay Area, the former head of the Black Caucus. This is her region that she runs. What has Barbara Lee’s connection been to Haiti?

Pierre: Rep. Lee has always been a good friend to the people of Haiti even before she was an elected official, both at the state level and now the federal level. We look upon her as a friend. But also she needs to hear from us because the other side is really lobbying. They sit in Washington. They have money. The ruling elite in Haiti have all the access. But we can help encourage her in continuing her strong stance in solidarity with the people of Haiti, just like her colleague, Rep. Maxine Waters. And for people who are in Marin, Rep. Lynne Woolsey has been a good friend as well.

They’ve been good friends of Haiti but they need to be encouraged to know that when you stand with the people of Haiti and their chosen leadership, President Aristide, you can’t go wrong. So we should not listen to the ruling elite of Haiti and to the other side.

MOI JR: How do people get in touch with the Haiti Action Committee?

Pierre: The Haiti Action Committee: You can reach us at our website, which is www.haitisolidarity.net. Also I’m a board member of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. We work with a number of grassroots organizations in Haiti, giving to them directly. We provide them the support so they make the decisions. And the way to reach the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund is www.haitiemergencyrelief.org.

MOI JR: We have 60 seconds, Pierre, but can you tell us real quick: Recently Wyclef John, the rapper, is said to have been shot in Haiti and people have reportedly debunked that claim. Real quick, can you tell us what happened with that situation? What are people on the ground in Haiti saying?

Pierre: When I was in Haiti last Sunday, only one person mentioned that to me. But then when I came to the U.S., a number of people said this was a big lie, and I saw several articles that debunked it. The Haitian police investigated it and they saw that there were no shots fired at Wyclef and the doctor who treated him said he was cut by glass, not by a bullet, so everything points to the fact that this was all made up and a lie, so this is disgusting.

MOI JR: Thank you again, Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee. He was here giving us a history of Haiti as well as bringing us up to date on the current events going on in Haiti, including the sham “selections” as well as the return from exile of President Aristide. I am the Minister of Information JR signing off for Block Report Radio on Hard Knock Radio.

Email POCC Minister of Information JR, Bay View associate editor, at blockreportradio@gmail.com and visit www.blockreportradio.com. A different version of this interview was broadcast Monday, March 28, 2011, on Hard Knock Radio, the “news, views and hip hop” hour-long show heard weekdays at 4 p.m. on KPFA 94.1 FM or kpfa.org and on stations across the country.

by Cynthia McKinney

April 20 – All of our institutions have failed us if they do not use their power and act against this crime against humanity being carried out in Africa today. I received a call this morning from an Ivorian friend who calls it genocide what Sarkozy’s troops are doing there. Blood, blood, everywhere. He was able to get out. But what about the rest?

We must try to stop President Obama. He has the power to say no. So far, he is good at saying yes to all the wrong people. So we must do more than we think we can. Anything less places more blood on everyone’s hands.

I weep. But I know I must do more than weep. I cannot stand idly by. Depleted uranium in Libya. Generations to come will suffer the health effects. British ground troops joining the U.S. troops already on the ground there. A report today says that Obama gave U.S. proxy forces on the ground in Libya $25 million in addition to the $200 million they got from an illegal oil sale to Qatar.

Now is not the time to be confused by the disinformation artists and their multi-layered scams. They lied about the 2000 and 2004 elections; they lied about Iraq and then laughed at you for believing them; they lied about 9/11; they lied about the bailouts; and they’re lying now about these Africa actions. My question is, with a record like that, why would anyone believe them now?

Please take the time – and I know that you will – to read and listen to all of this:

1. Hear Temple University Professor Molefi Asante tell the truth about Libya, Cote d’Ivoire, AFRICOM, Africa

2. “I’m Sorry, Libya,” a video celebrating Qaddafi’s accomplishments for Africa:  http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=626471

3. Letter from an African writer, not Libyan, on Qaddafi’s contribution to continent-wide African progress:

The real reasons for the war on Libya

by Jean-Paul Pougala, translated from the original French by Sputnik Kilambi

Qaddafi organized Africa and contributed $300 million of the $400 million it cost to buy a communications satellite rather than pay the $500 million a year to Europe for the use of one of its satellites that had made phone calls to, from and within Africa the most expensive in the world. – Photo: Flickr/DavidDennisPhotos.com

It began in 1992, when 45 African nations established RASCOM (Regional African Satellite Communication Organization) so that Africa would have its own satellite and slash communication costs in the continent. This was a time when phone calls to and from Africa were the most expensive in the world because of the annual US$500 million fee pocketed by Europe for the use of its satellites like Intelsat for phone conversations, including those within the same country.

An African satellite only cost a onetime payment of US$400 million and the continent no longer had to pay a US$500 million annual lease. Which banker wouldn’t finance such a project? But the problem remained – how can slaves, seeking to free themselves from their master’s exploitation ask the master’s help to achieve that freedom? Not surprisingly, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the USA, Europe only made vague promises for 14 years.

This is the first Pan-African communications satellite, launched Dec. 26, 2007. Africa News called it “a turning point for the development of the continent.”

China and Russia followed suit and shared their technology and helped launch satellites for South Africa, Nigeria, Angola and Algeria, and a second African satellite was launched in July 2010. The first totally indigenously built satellite, manufactured on African soil, in Algeria, is set for 2020. This satellite is aimed at competing with the best in the world, but at 10 times less cost, a real challenge.

This is how a symbolic gesture of a mere US$300 million changed the life of an entire continent. Qaddafi’s Libya cost the West, not just depriving it of US$500 million per year but the billions of dollars in debt and interest that the initial loan would generate for years to come and in an exponential manner, thereby helping maintain an occult system in order to plunder the continent.

African Monetary Fund, African Central Bank, African Investment Bank

The US$30 billion frozen by President Obama belongs to the Libyan Central Bank and had been earmarked as the Libyan contribution to three key projects which would add the finishing touches to the African federation – the African Investment Bank in Tripoli, the $42 billion African Monetary Fund in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and the African Central Bank in Abuja, Nigeria.

The African Monetary Fund is expected to totally supplant the African activities of the International Monetary Fund which, with only US$25 billion, was able to bring an entire continent to its knees and make it swallow questionable privatization like forcing African countries to move from public to private monopolies. No surprise then that on Dec. 16-17, 2010, the Africans unanimously rejected attempts by Western countries to join the African Monetary Fund, saying it was open only to African nations.

It is increasingly obvious that after Libya, the Western coalition will go after Algeria, because apart from its huge energy resources, the country has cash reserves of around €150 billion. This is what lures the countries that are bombing Libya and they all have one thing in common – they are practically bankrupt. The USA alone has a staggering debt of $US14,000 billion. France, Great Britain and Italy each have a US$2,000 billion public deficit compared to less than US$400 billion in public debt for 46 African countries combined.

Inciting spurious wars in Africa in the hope that this will revitalise their economies which are sinking ever more into the doldrums will ultimately hasten the western decline which actually began in 1884 during the notorious Berlin Conference. As the American economist Adam Smith predicted in 1865 when he publicly backed Abraham Lincoln for the abolition of slavery, ‘the economy of any country which relies on the slavery of blacks is destined to descend into hell the day those countries awaken’.

Regional unity as an obstacle to the creation of a United States of Africa

To destabilize and destroy the African Union, which was veering dangerously (for the West) towards a United States of Africa under the guiding hand of Qaddafi, the European Union first tried, unsuccessfully, to create the Union for the Mediterranean (UPM). North Africa somehow had to be cut off from the rest of Africa, using the old tired racist clichés of the 18th and 19th centuries, which claimed that Africans of Arab origin were more evolved and civilized than the rest of the continent.

This failed because Qaddafi refused to buy into it. He soon understood what game was being played when only a handful of African countries were invited to join the Mediterranean grouping without informing the African Union but inviting all 27 members of the European Union.

Without the driving force behind the African Federation, the UPM failed even before it began, still-born with Sarkozy as president and Mubarak as vice president. The French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, is now attempting to re-launch the idea, banking no doubt on the fall of Qaddafi.

What African leaders fail to understand is that as long as the European Union continues to finance the African Union, the status quo will remain, because there’s no real independence. This is why the European Union has encouraged and financed regional groupings in Africa.

It is obvious that the West African Economic Community (ECOWAS), which has an embassy in Brussels and depends for the bulk of its funding on the European Union, is a vociferous opponent to the African federation. That’s why Lincoln fought the U.S. war of secession: because the moment a group of countries come together in a regional political organization, it weakens the main group. That is what Europe wanted and the Africans have never understood the game plan, creating a plethora of regional groupings, COMESA, UDEAC, SADC and the Great Maghreb, which never saw the light of day, thanks to Qaddafi who understood what was happening.

Qaddafi, the African who cleansed the continent from the humiliation of apartheid

The Life Magazine caption reads: “Nelson Mandela and Gaddafi embrace in Tripoli in 1990. A staunch pan-Africanist, Gaddafi has earned a reputation as a statesman among Africans. Mandela once noted that Gaddafi's Libya called for his release from an apartheid-era prison long before most Western democracies did.” – Photo: Life

This was why Mandela, soon after his release from 27 years in jail, decided to break the U.N. embargo and travel to Libya on Oct. 23, 1997. For five long years, no plane could touch down in Libya because of the embargo. One needed to take a plane to the Tunisian city of Jerba and continue by road for five hours to reach Ben Gardane, cross the border and continue on a desert road for three hours before reaching Tripoli. The other solution was to go through Malta, and take a night ferry on ill-maintained boats to the Libyan coast. A hellish journey for a whole people, simply to punish one man.

Mandela didn’t mince his words when former U.S. President Bill Clinton said the visit was an “unwelcome” one: “No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do.” He added, “Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Qaddafi. They are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past.”

Indeed, the West still considered the South African racists to be their brothers who needed to be protected. That’s why the members of the ANC, including Nelson Mandela, were considered to be dangerous terrorists.

It was only on July 2, 2008, that the U.S. Congress finally voted to remove the name of Nelson Mandela and his ANC comrades from their [terrorist] blacklist.

It was only on July 2, 2008, that the U.S. Congress finally voted to remove the name of Nelson Mandela and his ANC comrades from their [terrorist] blacklist, not because they realized how stupid that list was but because they wanted to mark Mandela’s 90th birthday. If the West was truly sorry for its past support for Mandela’s enemies and really sincere when they name streets and places after him, how can they continue to wage war against someone who helped Mandela and his people to be victorious: Qaddafi?

Are those who want to export democracy themselves democrats?

And what if Qaddafi’s Libya were more democratic than the USA, France, Britain and other countries waging war to export democracy to Libya? On March 19, 2003, President George Bush began bombing Iraq under the pretext of bringing democracy. On March 19, 2011, exactly eight years later to the day, it was the French president’s turn to rain down bombs over Libya, once again claiming it was to bring democracy. Nobel peace prize-winner and U.S. President Obama says unleashing cruise missiles from submarines is to oust the dictator and introduce democracy.

The question that anyone with even minimum intelligence cannot help asking is the following: Are countries like France, England, the USA, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Poland who defend their right to bomb Libya on the strength of their self-proclaimed democratic status really democratic? If yes, are they more democratic than Qaddafi’s Libya?

The answer in fact is a resounding NO, for the plain and simple reason that democracy doesn’t exist. This isn’t a personal opinion, but a quote from someone whose native town, Geneva, hosts the bulk of U.N. institutions. The quote is from Jean Jacques Rousseau, born in Geneva in 1712 and who writes in chapter four of the third book of the famous “Social Contract” that “there never was a true democracy and there never will be.”

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela meets with Muammar Qaddafi in Tripoli in June 2006. Western “democracies” vilify their countries even though both function through grassroots neighborhood and village councils, a form of democracy that gives fundamental power to the people. – Photo: AFP/Getty Images

1. The state: The bigger a country, the less democratic it can be. According to Rousseau, the state has to be extremely small so that people can come together and know each other. Before asking people to vote, one must ensure that everybody knows everyone else. Otherwise voting will be an act without any democratic basis, a simulacrum of democracy to elect a dictator.

The Libyan state is based on a system of tribal allegiances, which by definition group people together in small entities. The democratic spirit is much more present in a tribe, a village than in a big country, simply because people know each other, share a common life rhythm which involves a kind of self-regulation or even self-censorship in that the reactions and counter-reactions of other members impact on the group.

From this perspective, it would appear that Libya fits Rousseau’s conditions better than the USA, France and Great Britain, all highly urbanized societies where most neighbors don’t even say hello to each other and therefore don’t know each other even if they have lived side by side for 20 years. These countries leapfrogged into the next stage – “the vote” – which has been cleverly sanctified to obfuscate the fact that voting on the future of the country is useless if the voter doesn’t know the other citizens. This has been pushed to ridiculous limits with voting rights being given to people living abroad. Communicating with and amongst each other is a precondition for any democratic debate before an election.

Communicating with and amongst each other is a precondition for any democratic debate before an election.

2. Simplicity in customs and behavioral patterns are also essential if one is to avoid spending the bulk of the time debating legal and judicial procedures in order to deal with the multitude of conflicts of interest inevitable in a large and complex society. Western countries define themselves as civilized nations with a more complex social structure, whereas Libya is described as a primitive country with a simple set of customs.

Libyans loyal to Qaddafi rally after a NATO air strike on April 23. The African Union's panel on Libya, meeting in Nouakchott, Mauritania, on March 19 called for an "immediate stop" to all attacks after the United States, France and Britain launched military action against Qaddafi's forces. – Photo: AP

3. Equality in status and wealth: A look at the Forbes 2010 list shows who the richest people in each of the countries currently bombing Libya are and the difference between them and those who earn the lowest salaries in those nations; a similar exercise on Libya will reveal that in terms of wealth distribution, Libya has much more to teach than those fighting it now, and not the contrary.

So here too, using Rousseau’s criteria, Libya is more democratic than the nations pompously pretending to bring democracy. In the USA, 5 percent of the population owns 60 per cent of the national wealth, making it the most unequal and unbalanced society in the world.

4. No luxuries: According to Rousseau, there can’t be any luxury if there is to be democracy. Luxury, he says, makes wealth a necessity which then becomes a virtue in itself. It and not the welfare of the people becomes the goal to be reached at all costs: “Luxury corrupts both the rich and the poor, the one through possession and the other through envy; it makes the nation soft and prey to vanity; it distances people from the state and enslaves them, making them a slave to opinion.”

Is there more luxury in France than in Libya? The reports on employees committing suicide because of stressful working conditions even in public or semi-public companies, all in the name of maximizing profit for a minority and keeping them in luxury, happen in the West, not in Libya.

The American sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote in 1956 that American democracy was a “dictatorship of the elite.” According to Mills, the USA is not a democracy because it is money that talks during elections and not the people. The results of each election are the expression of the voice of money and not the voice of the people.

The results of each election are the expression of the voice of money and not the voice of the people.

After Bush senior and Bush junior, they are already talking about a younger Bush for the 2012 Republican primaries. Moreover, as Max Weber pointed out, since political power is dependent on the bureaucracy, the U.S. has 43 million bureaucrats and military personnel who effectively rule the country but without being elected and are not accountable to the people for their actions. One person – a rich one – is elected, but the real power lies with the caste of the wealthy who then get nominated to be ambassadors, generals etc.

How many people in these self-proclaimed democracies know that Peru’s constitution prohibits an outgoing president from seeking a second consecutive mandate? How many know that in Guatemala, not only can an outgoing president not seek re-election to the same post, no one from that person’s family can aspire to the top job either? Or that Rwanda is the only country in the world that has 56 per cent female parliamentarians? How many people know that in the 2007 CIA index, four of the world’s best-governed countries are African? That the top prize goes to Equatorial Guinea whose public debt represents only 1.14 percent of GDP?

Rousseau maintains that civil wars, revolts and rebellions are the ingredients of the beginning of democracy. Because democracy is not an end, but a permanent process of the reaffirmation of the natural rights of human beings, which in countries all over the world – without exception – are trampled upon by a handful of men and women who have hijacked the power of the people to perpetuate their supremacy.

There are here and there groups of people who have usurped the term “democracy” – instead of it being an ideal towards which one strives, it has become a label to be appropriated or a slogan which is used by people who can shout louder than others. If a country is calm, like France or the USA, that is to say without any rebellions, it only means, from Rousseau’s perspective, that the dictatorial system is sufficiently repressive to pre-empt any revolt.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing if the Libyans revolted. What is bad is to affirm that people stoically accept a system that represses them all over the world without reacting. And Rousseau concludes: “Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium; translation: If gods were people, they would govern themselves democratically. Such a perfect government is not applicable to human beings.” To claim that one is killing Libyans for their own good is a hoax.

What lessons for Africa?

After 500 years of a profoundly unequal relationship with the West, it is clear that we don’t have the same criteria of what is good and bad. We have deeply divergent interests. How can one not deplore the “yes” votes from three sub-Saharan countries – Nigeria, South Africa and Gabon – for Resolution 1973 that inaugurated the latest form of colonization baptized “the protection of people,” which legitimizes the racist theories that have informed Europeans since the 18th century and according to which North Africa has nothing to do with sub-Saharan Africa, that North Africa is more evolved, cultivated and civilized than the rest of Africa?

The U.S.-France-Britain-NATO assault on Libya has caused widespread death and deprivation. The shelves of this bakery in Tripoli were bare on April 21. – Photo: AP

It is disconcerting to say the least that for the first time in the history of the United Nations, war has been declared against a people without having explored the slightest possibility of a peaceful solution to the crisis. Does Africa really belong any more to this organization? Nigeria and South Africa are prepared to vote “Yes” to everything the West asks because they naively believe the vague promises of a permanent seat at the Security Council with similar veto rights. They both forget that France has no power to offer anything. If it did, Mitterand would have long done the needful for Helmut Kohl’s Germany.

It is disconcerting to say the least that for the first time in the history of the United Nations, war has been declared against a people without having explored the slightest possibility of a peaceful solution to the crisis.

An African Union delegation, including South African President Jacob Zuma and Congo-Brazzaville leader Denis Sassou Nguesso, met with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi April 10. Libya agreed to the AU peace plan, which calls for a cease fire and talks regarding succession to Qaddifi’s leadership, but the rebels rejected it, demanding he leave the country. – Photo: Pan-African News Wire File Photo

We should leave the United Nations to register our rejection of a worldview based on the annihilation of those who are weaker. They are free to continue as before but at least we will not be party to it and say we agree when we were never asked for our opinion. And even when we expressed our point of view, like we did on Saturday, March 19, in Nouakchott, when we opposed the military action, our opinion was simply ignored and the bombs started falling on African people.

Today’s events are reminiscent of what happened with China in the past. Today, one recognizes the Ouattara government, the rebel government in Libya, like one did at the end of the Second World War with China. The so-called international community chose Taiwan to be the sole representative of the Chinese people instead of Mao’s China.

Professor Jean-Paul Pougala, author of this essay, teaches two courses at the Geneva School of Diplomacy: Sociology and the Evolution of Political Thinking from Confucius to Bobbio. Here he is (above and below) with some of his students. The prestigious school’s “purpose is to prepare future world leaders for their roles on the world stage to advance peace and human rights.”

What does Africa hope to achieve from the United Nations without playing hardball? We saw how in Cote d’Ivoire a U.N. bureaucrat considers himself to be above the constitution of the country. We entered this organization by agreeing to be slaves. And to believe that we will be invited to dine at the same table and eat from plates we ourselves washed is not just credulous, it is stupid.

When the African Union endorsed Ouattara’s victory and glossed over contrary reports from its own electoral observers simply to please our former masters, how can we expect to be respected? When South African President Zuma declares that Ouattara hasn’t won the elections and then says the exact opposite during a trip to Paris, one is entitled to question the credibility of these leaders who claim to represent and speak on behalf of a billion Africans.

Africa’s strength and real freedom will only come if it can take properly thought out actions and assume the consequences. Dignity and respect come with a price tag. Are we prepared to pay it? Otherwise, our place is in the kitchen and in the toilets in order to make others comfortable.

This book by Professor Pougala is part of the curriculum in some 300 Italian secondary schools.

4. Qaddafi in his own words at the United Nations General Assembly:

Muammar Qaddafi at the General Assembly of the United Nations

On Oct. 1, 2009, the leader of the Libyan Revolutionary Committees Movement, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, attended the United Nations General Assembly for the first time and tore up the worthless United Nations Charter. His full speech, translated to English, was posted to Mathaba on April 16, 2011: http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=626459.

Narration and commentary on Jean-Paul Pougala’s essay by T. West

by Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives

The people of Cité Soleil march on Jan. 26, 2008, to stop a series of U.N. massacres. – Photo: Jean Ristil, HaitiAnalysis.com

Then U.S. Ambassador to Haiti James Foley warned in the cable “against private delivery of arms to the HNP” (Haitian National Police) after learning from a prominent Haitian businessman that “some business owners have already begun to purchase weapons and ammunition from the street and distribute them to local police officials in exchange for regular patrols.”

Fritz Mevs, a member of “one of Haiti’s richest families and a well-connected member of the private sector elite” with major business interests in Port-au-Prince’s downtown and port, was the principal source for Foley’s May 27, 2005, report.

Haiti’s “private sector elite” has been a key U.S. ally in promoting Washington’s agenda in the country, from free trade and privatization of state enterprises to twice ousting Jean-Bertrand Aristide followed by U.S. and U.N. military occupations.

Mevs told the embassy that the president of the Haitian Chamber of Commerce, Reginald Boulos, had “distributed arms to the police and had called on others to do so in order to provide cover to his own actions.” Boulos currently sits on the board of Bill Clinton’s Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) which controls the spending of $10 billion being donated to rebuild Haiti after the Jan. 12, 2010, quake.

The cable describes the period after the Feb. 29, 2004, coup d’état that ousted Aristide, repressed his Lavalas Family party, set up a U.S.-backed de facto government, and ushered in a 9,000-strong U.N. military occupation known as MINUSTAH (U.N. Mission to Stabilize Haiti).

De facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue’s interim government of Haiti (IGOH) and his paramilitary allies had difficulty stabilizing their unpopular regime, despite killing, jailing and purging from government jobs thousands of Lavalas militants and sympathizers.

The Latortue regime had particular trouble suppressing pro-Aristide strongholds like the slums of Bel Air and Cité Soleil, which mounted a fierce armed resistance to the coup and occupation. The coup government, U.S. Embassy and Haitian elite called the resistance fighters “bandits” or “gangs,” the terminology used in the cable.

Entitled “Haitian Private Sector Panicked by Increasing Violence,” the cable relays Mevs’ report to the Embassy’s political officer that Haitian “business leaders are exasperated by the lack of security in the vital port and industrial zone areas of Port-au-Prince and are allegedly arming local police with long-guns and ammunition in an effort to ensure security for their businesses and employees.”

Dread Wilme

Mevs “defended the idea of the private sector arming the police in general, but he lamented the haphazard manner in which many of his colleagues seemed to be handing out weapons with little control,” the cable says. Mevs also worried “that funneling the arms secretly would only serve to reinforce rumors that the elite were creating private armies,” which was in fact happening.

Mevs was asking the embassy if “the U.S. would oversee [a] program” under which the elite could legally buy the HNP’s guns because “he did not trust either MINUSTAH or the HNP to properly control the issuance of weapons.”

The private army “rumor” was corroborated by “[c]ontacts of the Econ Counselor [who] report from time to time of discussions among private sector leaders to fund and arm their own private sector armies.”

Foley added that the “[American Chamber of Commerce] Board of Directors at one point discussed informally giving non-lethal assistance to police stations, such as furniture and microwave ovens for police stations, but decided against doing so for fear that anything given to the police would quickly be stolen.”

Security around the capital’s industrial, warehouse and port districts degenerated after the Mar. 30, 2005, death of Thomas Robenson, alias Labanière, a one-time Lavalas leader in Cité Soleil’s Boston neighborhood, who defected to defense of the 2004 coup and providing armed protection to the bourgeoisie’s nearby commercial zones. Labanière was killed by one of his bodyguards, Evens Jeune, “allegedly in a plot directed by rival pro-Lavalas gang leader Dread Wilme,” Foley wrote.

After that, the U.N. force had tried to secure the commercial areas but “was proving to be a poor substitute for Labanière,” a political advisor to Cité Soleil’s mayor told the Embassy, largely because “MINUSTAH troops (who, he said, rarely set foot outside of their vehicles) were unable to identify the bandits from amongst the general populace as Labanière had done.”

The residents of Cité Soleil did not view Emmanuel Wilmer (aka Drèd or Dread Wilme) as a “bandit.” They saw him as a hero defending them from pro-coup paramilitaries, who in 1994 burned many houses in the rebellious shantytown, and U.N. occupation troops. Today, one of the main boulevards through Cité Soleil is named after him, and murals of his face adorn many walls.

Wilme told the Lakou New York program on Brooklyn’s Radio Pa Nou station in April 2005 that “MINUSTAH has been shooting tear gas on the people. There are children who have died from the gas and some people inside churches have been shot … The Red Cross is the only one helping us. The MINUSTAH soldiers remain hidden in their tanks and just aim their guns and shoot the people. They shoot people selling in the streets. They shoot people just walking in the streets. They shoot people sitting and selling in the marketplace.”

But for Foley and the Haitian elite, the U.N. military was not doing enough repression. “According to Mevs, although MINUSTAH has on occasion parked armored vehicles near the Terminal with some success, he said criminals regularly force the tanks to move (by burning tires or fecal matter nearby), and as soon as the vehicles depart, the rampage continues.”

Foley asked the “Core Group” of international donors and the U.N. military for a “swift, aggressive” response to the business sector’s call for action against the “criminal elements” from slums like Cité Soleil.

The MINUSTAH soldiers remain hidden in their tanks and just aim their guns and shoot the people. They shoot people selling in the streets. They shoot people just walking in the streets. They shoot people sitting and selling in the marketplace.

“Ambassador Foley warned the Core Group that MINUSTAH’s stand-down in Cite Soleil put the elections at risk, and that the insecurity around the industrial zone risked undermining what is left of the Haitian economy,” said the cable.

In response, U.N. mission chief Juan Gabriel Valdes “promised a more robust response from MINUSTAH,” which sat down with police leaders to develop a plan in “coordination with the private sector,” the cable explains.

“In response to embassy and private sector prodding, MINUSTAH is now formulating a plan to protect the area,” concluded the cable.

Weeks later, on July 6, 2005, at 3:00 in the morning, 1,440 Brazilian and Jordanian soldiers sealed off Cité Soleil with 41 armored personnel carriers and attacked. Helicopters dropped grenades and U.N. troops fired more than 22,000 bullets, leaving untold dozens of civilian casualties, including women and children. Cité Soleil residents told an October 2005 fact-finding delegation for the International Tribunal on Haiti that U.N. tanks whisked away many bodies, which were never returned. Human rights groups called the carnage a “massacre.”

Little Stanley Romelus was murdered while he slept by U.N. soldiers, who made war on the Cité Soleil neighborhood in the early morning hours of July 6, 2005, when 1,440 troops fired more than 22,000 bullets as helicopters dropped grenades on homes.

Meanwhile journalist Jean Baptiste Jean Ristil, a Cité Soleil resident, interviewed “a weeping Fredi Romélus, [who] recounted how U.N. troops had lobbed a red smoke grenade into his house and then opened fire, killing his wife and two children,” reported the Haiti Information Project. Jean Ristil also filmed inside the house where the body of Fredi’s 22-year-old wife, Sonia Romélus, lay, “killed by the same bullet that passed through the body of her 1-year-old infant son, Nelson,” the Haiti Information Project reported. “She was apparently holding the child as the U.N. opened fire. Next to them was her 4-year-old son, Stanley, who was killed by a single shot to the head.”

A U.S. Labor and Human Rights Delegation, which was in Haiti at the time and visited Cité Soleil the next day, reported that “this full-blown military attack on a densely-populated neighborhood, … multiple sources confirm, killed at least 23 people” and possibly as many as 50.

As the evidence of a massacre grew, the U.N. and U.S. began to admit that more Cité Soleil residents may have died. “Given the flimsy construction of homes in Cite Soleil and the large quantity of ammunition expended, it is likely that rounds penetrated many buildings, striking unintended targets,” Foley’s FOIA-released cable reported.

By Aug. 1, Foley was praising the Brazilians in another cable, obtained by Yearman’s FOIA requests, entitled “Brazil Shows Backbone in Bel-Air.” According to Foley, “the security situation in the capital has clearly improved thanks to aggressive incursions in Bel Air and the July 6 raid against Dread Wilme in Cité Soleil … Post has congratulated MINUSTAH and the Brazilian Battalion for the remarkable success achieved in recent weeks.”

The WikiLeaked May 2005 cable also offers a glimpse of Haiti’s inter-ruling class rivalries. Mevs felt that “private sector protests against the IGOH for the lack of security were misguided,” Foley reports, because “Haiti’s real enemy and the true source of insecurity [was] a small nexus of drug-dealers and political insiders that control a network of dirty cops and gangs that not only were responsible for committing the kidnappings and murders, but were also frustrating the efforts of well-meaning government officials and the international community to confront them.”

At the center of this “cabal,” according to Mevs, was prominent attorney Gary Lissade, who has a long history as a right-wing operative. In 1993, he was the lead counsel for the military government of coup leader Gen. Raoul Cédras during negotiations at New York’s Governors Island with Aristide’s exiled constitutional government. In 2001, Aristide, in a futile attempt to mollify the Bush administration and putschist bourgeoisie, made Lissade justice minister until popular outcry forced his removal along with Prime Minister Jean-Marie Chérestal’s whole government. Today, Lissade sits, alongside Reginald Boulos, on the board of the Clinton co-chaired IHRC.

To the million or so people of Cité Soleil, Dread Wilme was a hero and benefactor. After the U.N. killed him, the people erected a monument to him on Dec. 9, 2005, and named their main street for him.

The embassy took Mevs’ warnings about Lissade’s “cabal” with a grain of salt. Foley wrote that Mevs “is no doubt biased against those individuals he names” because “Mevs himself is a core member of what might easily be described as a rival network of influence competing for control of Haiti against the cast of characters he has described.” Presciently, Foley says that while his embassy “cannot confirm whether the alleged cabal of political insiders allied with South American narco-traffickers is controlling the gangs, we have seen indications of alliances between drug dealers, criminal gangs and political forces that could threaten to make just such a scenario possible via the election of narco-funded politicians,” which some political observers fear may be the situation in Haiti today.

Meanwhile, Dread Wilme’s legend lives on. “His funeral was a hero’s farewell,” wrote Haitian attorney and writer Ezili Dantò. “His remains decked in a Vodun boat were pushed out onto the open seas next to Site Soley’s water shores and set to flames for his spirit to soar towards the countless African Ancestors who, like Dread Wilme, had made the ultimate sacrifice for our people’s freedom and dignity.”

Haiti Liberté releasing secret U.S. Embassy cables provided by WikiLeaks

The weekly newspaper Haïti Liberté is publishing a series of exclusive articles which will draw from 1,918 secret diplomatic cables about Haiti from U.S. embassies around the world. The cables were obtained by the transparency-advocacy group WikiLeaks and made available to Haïti Liberté.

The cables cover an almost seven-year period from April 17, 2003, 10 months before the Feb. 29, 2004, coup d’état which ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to Feb. 28, 2010, just after the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the capital, Port-au-Prince, and surrounding cities.

“Haïti Liberté is publishing these cables because they offer unparalleled insight into how the United States government has tried to manipulate Haitian affairs in its own interests, not in the interests of the Haitian people,” said Berthony Dupont, Haïti Liberté’s director. “We hope that the release of the cables will help bring about some transparency and accountability for the Haitian people.”

The cables range from “Secret” and “Confidential” classification to “Unclassified.” Cables of the latter classification are not public, and many remain marked “For Official Use Only” or “Sensitive.”

The cables cover official U.S. strategies and maneuvering in Haiti during the coup years, 2004-2006, and the period after President René Préval’s election, 2006-2010. We see Washington’s obsession with keeping Aristide out of Haiti and the hemisphere, the microscope it trained on the democratic Lavalas movement, the relentless focus on rebellious shanty towns like Cité Soleil and Bel Air, and Washington’s tight supervision of Haiti’s police leadership and of the United Nation’s 9,000-man military occupation known as the U.N. Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH).

In November 2010, WikiLeaks began publishing the 251,287 leaked U.S. embassy cables it obtained last year by providing them to large newspapers like the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel.

Now WikiLeaks is selecting media in many other countries to provide them with the U.S. Embassy cables relative to their specific country. “Haiti Liberté is honored that WikiLeaks has entrusted it with releasing the cables relative to Haiti,” Dupont said. “Haiti Liberté is also pleased to partner with The Nation, the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S., in publishing and distributing English-language articles based on those WikiLeaks cables.”

The cables offer many clues as to how Washington brought Haiti from the paramilitary and Special Forces coup of 2004 to the electoral coup that installed the neo-Duvalierist Michel Martelly in 2011.

by Robert Roth

The indomitable spirit of Haiti burns in the eyes of three little boys memorialized by the camera of one of Haiti’s greatest photojournalists, Wadner Pierre. The boys must wonder, though, whether the greed of U.S. corporations and NGOs and their eagerness to steal Haitians’ labor and resources will dash their hopes. – Photo: Wadner Pierre

In a speech at Toussaint Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince, Aristide commented on the undemocratic elections then taking place in Haiti. He stressed the need for including all Haitians in the political process of the country, including his party, Fanmi Lavalas, the most popular in the country.

“The problem is exclusion. The solution is inclusion. Exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas is the exclusion of the majority. And the exclusion of the majority is like cutting off the very branch we are all sitting on – every Haitian without exception – because every person is a human being, so the vote of every person counts.”

Thousands of Haiti’s poor followed his car as it moved from the airport through the streets of Port-au-Prince and towards his house. Then a roar erupted and thousands of people climbed over walls, rushed past security and engulfed the courtyard. They were exuberant, singing and chanting for hours: “Welcome back, Titid. Welcome back, schools. Welcome back, hope.” “Lavalas: We bend but do not break.”

It was a beautiful moment, made possible by years of sacrifice and effort by Haiti’s grassroots movement, aided by a determined international solidarity campaign. For those who had doubted that Aristide’s return was possible – and there were many, both within and outside of Haiti – it showed, once again, the power of the people.

Aristide’s return demonstrates Haiti’s independent will and self-determination. He brings back a deep, abiding respect for the poor of Haiti and a belief in their intelligence, their wisdom and the justice of their demands. His return challenges the racist notion that the poor of Haiti can only look to the U.S., the U.N. and the NGOs for relief and development. This is why he is loved and this is why he is feared.

For those who had doubted that Aristide’s return was possible – and there were many, both within and outside of Haiti – it showed, once again, the power of the people.

Aristide has made clear that his focus will be education. Haiti’s education system has always enforced the system of social apartheid – completely eliminating the poor while building up a small elite. During the Lavalas administrations, more schools were built in Haiti than in its entire history. Adult literacy programs – often led by women – reduced the illiteracy rate.

When the Aristide Foundation’s University (UniFA) opened a medical school in 2001, it recruited students from the poorest communities throughout Haiti, each of whom committed to return to their communities upon graduation. These were revolutionary initiatives in a country whose elite despise the poor and have worked for generations to keep them away from any form of literacy or higher education. It was no accident that U.S. and U.N. forces drove students out of the campus after the 2004 coup and turned the building into a military barracks.

Even with limited resources, Aristide’s return will generate the impetus to reopen the medical school. The Aristide Foundation’s continuing work among youth – a Youth League has begun, with over 1,000 young people meeting at the foundation a few months ago – reflects a growing mobilizing of a new generation of activists, whose dynamism will be needed in this next phase of Haiti’s development. And, given a little time, the thousands of dedicated grassroots organizers, whose work has never ceased in all these years of repression and occupation, will surely regroup and make their demands heard.

The task is daunting. Aristide returns to a colonized country. Bill Clinton has set up an Interim Recovery Commission that is now sitting on over $10 billion. USAID is pouring money into U.S.-based NGOs that pay more for staff than they do for projects.

Construction companies are lining up to bid for earthquake rubble removal contracts. Cholera – brought to Haiti by U.N. forces from Nepal – has spread throughout the country, with recent reports citing 800,000 cases. A seemingly permanent foreign MINUSTAH occupation patrols the streets, with their blue helmets and pointed guns.

As if to rub salt into the wounds, there is the new president, Michel Martelly. A kompa singer and long-time proponent of Jean-Claude Duvalier, Martelly worked with the dreaded FRAPH death squads that killed over 5,000 people in Haiti after the first coup against Aristide in 1991.

He has made the reestablishment of Haiti’s hated military a priority of his administration. In the past, he has called for a ban on “all strikes and demonstrations.” In a revolting video released right before the election, Martelly called Lavalas members “faggots” and threatened sexual violence against Aristide. Some of his chief aides had warned that “the country would burn” if he were not selected.

In the end, Martelly was selected by only 17 percent of eligible Haitian voters. With Fanmi Lavalas excluded and two right-wing candidates running, the vast majority of Haitians stayed away, refusing to lend credibility to the charade. The percentage of voters who turned out was the smallest in 60 years for any presidential election in the Americas.

Right after his election, Martelly obediently traveled to Washington, where he met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who declared that the United States was with him “all the way.” He then made the rounds with officials of the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the chair of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was later arrested for attempted rape in New York. After the discussion with Strauss-Kahn, Martelly beamed and announced that “the meeting had gone well.” Of course it did. The vultures are hovering over Haiti.

Consider the recent deal brokered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with South Korean garment giant, Sae-A Trading Co., which will soon become Haiti’s largest private employer. Sae-A is building a 617-acre “free trade zone” near the northern city of Cap-Haitien. It plans to employ 20,000 workers and pay them only two thirds of Haiti’s minimum wage. USAID is contributing $124 million, the Inter-American Development Bank $100 million, and Sae-A will put in $78 million.

South Korean garment giant, Sae-A Trading Co., plans to employ 20,000 workers and pay them only two thirds of Haiti’s minimum wage.

The planned industrial park will supply Wal-Mart, Target, Kohl’s and other major U.S.-based retailers. When confronted with questions over the deal – including whether the new factories will be sweatshops – Hillary Clinton dismissed all concerns, declaring, “Haiti is now open for business.”

The Sae-A project is just one part of the structural adjustment plan now being consolidated in Haiti. Known as the “death plan” in Haiti, it involves privatization, new contracts for elite import-export barons and continued limits on social investment – all combined with targeted repression of grassroots organizations.

In one particularly frank analysis, U.N. economic advisor Paul Collier highlighted the new possibilities for investment in Haiti: “Due to its poverty and relatively unregulated labor market, Haiti has labor costs that are fully competitive with China, which is the global benchmark.”

Taking note, Coca-Cola has expanded its Haiti operations, through its “Hope for Haiti” mango drink. Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, which didn’t even have the decency to postpone its post-earthquake Haiti tours, has received funding from USAID to multiply its tourist operations in northern Haiti, training Haitians to be “hospitality workers.” And energy companies are lining up to grab contracts to dig up the country in order to exploit Haiti’s vast mineral wealth.

Yet, despite decades of repression, the popular movement in Haiti remains active and alive. Women’s organizers are right now supporting market women through low-interest micro-credit programs. Human rights workers continue to demand the release of political prisoners and expose the horrific conditions within Haiti’s prisons.

Progressive radio stations have taken great risk to denounce Martelly and the sham elections. The popular church (ti legliz) continues its work among peasants throughout the countryside. Young people have flocked to the Aristide Foundation by the thousands for education and training. And the reopening of the medical school is on the horizon.

All of this demands international solidarity. As we take a breath and celebrate Aristide’s hard-fought-for return, we know that the work continues. Hopefully, we are all ready for this next round.

Robert Roth is a co-founder of Haiti Action Committee and a board member of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. He was in Haiti for President Aristide’s return. A version of this article originally appeared in the Summer 2011 Newsletter of the Ecumenical Peace Institute.

by Ann Garrison

KPFA Weekend News Anchor Cameron Jones: The secession of South Sudan rekindled calls for secession around the world, including those of the Rwandan lobby for redrawing the map to make the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s North and South Kivu provinces on Congo’s eastern border with Rwanda part of Rwanda.

Yaa Lengi, author of “Genocide in the Congo”

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Friends of the Congo’s pilot film “Crisis in the Congo, Uncovering the Truth,” which was shown at San Francisco’s African American Cultural Center this week, points to evidence that the U.S. armed and trained the Rwandan and Ugandan armies who have invaded and occupied Eastern Congolese provinces, beginning in 1996.

Former university Professor Yaa Lengi, author of “Genocide in the Congo” and leader of the New York City-based Congo Coalition, says that many policy makers in the U.S. have backed the lobby pushing to fold the mineral and natural gas rich Kivu Provinces into Rwanda.

Professor Yaa Lengi: These provinces have been occupied by Rwanda since the invasions of 1996 and 1998 and, as Herman Cohen wrote in the Washington Post in 2003 and in the New York Times in 2008, these two Congolese provinces’ economies have been integrated 100 percent into the economy of Rwanda, meaning that Rwanda controls these two provinces 100 percent.

Since Bill Clinton’s administration continued on even under Bush and now under Obama’s administration, Rwanda still occupies those two provinces, controls them. Bill Clinton, with the mining companies backing him, has given carte blanche to Paul Kagame and Rwanda and that control of the Eastern Congo continues.

KPFA: Professor Lengi says, however, that 15 years of aggression have only strengthened the resolve of Congolese people in the Kivus not to become part of Rwanda:

Professor Yaa Lengi: Until today, the Congolese people in Kivu do not want to be part of Rwanda. Therefore what Rwanda’s been doing is killing those millions of Congolese, trying to bring in Rwandans to occupy those territories and, therefore, maybe later they can have a referendum and the Rwandans who have been occupying the Congolese territory can say “we want to join Rwanda.” But as of now, the Congolese people refuse to join Rwanda − those who are in those Kivus territories.

KPFA: The Kivu provinces are mineral rich, most famously in coltan − a mineral found in cell phones and other electronic gadgetry − but also in cassiterite, whose common name is tin, and in other minerals essential to military industrial technology. Lake Kivu, on the border of Rwanda and Eastern Congo’s South Kivu province, has huge stores of natural gas claimed by Rwanda − although the dangers of extracting it are shared by Rwandans on its eastern shores and Congolese on its western shores.

For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison.

San Francisco writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, Colored Opinions, Black Star News, the Newsline EA (East Africa) and her own blog, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, Weekend News on KPFA and her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at ann@afrobeatradio.com. 

by Ann Garrison

Rwandan and Congolese march in Paris to protest Kagame’s visit. The banners say: “No to the cruelty and brutality of Kagame!” “Rwanda, free all political prisoners!”

Troy Davis, then 22, at his 1991 trial. He maintained his innocence througout the two decades he lived on death row. - Photo: AP

If I were in New York City, I would make a point of getting there – for Troy Davis and for all my Rwandan and Congolese friends. Being on the West Coast, I signed up to view the webcast instead and resolved to make sure that someone, most likely the San Francisco Bay View and New York based AfrobeatRadio.net, report the news.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s presence protested in Paris and Pittsburgh

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton shakes hands with his friend Rwandan President Paul Kagame on a visit to Rwanda.

Wuyi Jacobs: And now Ann Garrison has this report of protests against Rwandan President Paul Kagame, organized by Rwandan and Congolese people, first on Monday in Paris and yesterday in Pittsburgh, outside Carnegie Mellon University:

Paris demonstration chants: Assassin! Assassin! Genocidaire! Genocidaire! Genocidaire!

AfrobeatRadio/Ann Garrison: That’s the sound of over 1,300 protesters, most of them survivors of Rwandan and Congolese wars, chanting first “Assassin!” French for assassin, then “Genocidaire!” French for person who commits or advocates genocide, during Monday’s protest of French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s welcome to Kagame and Kagame’s presence in France. Spanish organizer Susana Sanz Guardo of Basta de Impunidad en Ruanda said that the turnout and the unity of Rwandan and Congolese people victimized by Kagame’s regime was unprecedented and that nothing will stop them now that they have lost their fear.

Five days later, on Friday, after short notice of Kagame’s visit to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, 50 protestors including Rwandan and Congolese survivors, gathered from around the U.S. to meet their supporters in Pittsburgh. This is a clip of Pittsburgh Channel 4 WTAE’s coverage:

WTAE: Well, the protest is underway right now on Forbes Avenue, across from University Center on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University. About 50 people are over directing their efforts across traffic. Nearby the Rwandan president speaks inside the university center. Many of these people say they survived the 1994 genocide. Rwandan President Paul Kagame is offering a keynote address right now on his country’s strategy for growth in the global economy. Now we speak with one man leading this protest against the university:

Claude Gatebuke: The university is entering into an agreement with a war criminal, a mass murderer and someone whose military is accused of genocide.

AfrobeatRadio: Protester, Rwanda Genocide survivor and University of Memphis law student Claude Gatebuke’s statement, that President Kagame has been accused of genocide, refers to the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights’ October 2010 “Mapping Report on Human Rights Abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1993 – 2003,” to the indictments brought by the Spanish court of Fernan Andreu, the French court of Jean-Louis Bruguiere, to the civil lawsuit, Habyarimana v. Kagame brought in a federal district court in this country, and scholarly investigations by Professors Allan Stam and Christian Davenport, Law Professor Peter Erlinder and others.

Eric Kamba

Boston-based Congolese American social worker and activist Eric Kamba says it’s galling to African people that Clinton would include Kagame in such a forum, less than one year after the shocking U.N. documentation of his crimes in Congo:

Eric Kamba: The U.N. “Mapping Report” said that Kagame’s army committed civilian massacres and sexual atrocities, including mass rape and the intentional infection of targeted communities with HIV in the Congo. Bill Clinton has been Kagame’s ally in all this through the Congo Wars of the ‘90s when Clinton was in power, and now he continues to be Kagame’s most powerful supporter, with the help of his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to this day.

Rwanda Genocide survivor Claude Gatebuke tells WTAE TV-Pittsburgh that Carnegie Mellon is signing a deal with a war criminal and mass murderer accused of genocide in a U.N. report.

For further information on Obama’s request for Kagame’s immunity, the French and American protests, and the protest being organized in New York City on Thursday, see afrobeatradio.net and sfbayview.com.

For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison.

San Francisco writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, Colored Opinions, Black Star News, the Newsline EA (East Africa) and her own blog, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, Weekend News on KPFA and her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at ann@afrobeatradio.com.

Guest Amoeblogger JR Valrey on the air at KPFA Berkeley – Photo: Ali Thanawalla

by JR Valrey

Black History Month was born out of Black History Week, which was created by Carter G. Woodson, author of “The Miseducation of the Negro,” in the early half of the 20th century. Since then, many people celebrate it by learning about the great pyramids of Egypt or by memorizing Malcolm’s “The Ballot or the Bullet,” which is cool, but I want to modernize and diversify the list a little bit. These are some books, movies and albums that I would add to the list of the “Black Experience Study Guide,” because they had a profound effect on how I look at the world in a spiritual, social, political and cultural sense.

This list is my humble contribution to uplifting people’s consciousness about what is happening to Black people internationally, as well as how we feel about life after having our backs against the wall for centuries, with few exceptions. As the late legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane would say, “Here are a few of my favorite things.”

1) ‘The New Jim Crow’ by Michelle Alexander

“The New Jim Crow” is one of the best books that I’ve ever read in my life. It gives a chronological history of how the U.S. has become the biggest mass incarcerating nation in the world, way beyond Russia and even apartheid South Africa.

This book talks about the role that political architects like Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and more played in bringing us to the scenario, where 2 million people are currently behind bars. Michelle Alexander also makes the poignant point that there are more Black people in this country tied to the criminal justice system today than there were in 1850, a decade before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. “The New Jim Crow” is an essential read for anybody doing serious study on the on-going war being waged against Black people in the U.S. by the government.

Bay View editor’s note: A revised edition of “The New Jim Crow” has just been released in paperback; therefore, it is now available to prisoners in states like California that do not allow hardback books. It can be ordered from the publisher, The New Press, 38 Greene St., Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10013, for $19.95 (though it’s a little cheaper on Amazon).

2) ‘The First Minute of a New Day’ by The Midnight Band

Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson of The Midnight Band were two of the most influential musicians of their era, musically and lyrically. Many have heard of some of their contemporaries like Curtis Mayfield and The Last Poets, but somehow this band seems to get lost in the sauce when it comes to official recognition.

This album is like a time capsule, detailing spiritually the wants and desires of African people that have been oppressed in the Americas for centuries. Songs like “Winter in America,” “Ain’t No Such Thing As Superman” and “Pardon Our Analysis” are timeless masterpieces … not only scathing critiques of the system that has its boot on our necks, but empowering messages for oppressed people to keep their heads up, fist in the air and eyes peeled on the path to self-determination. Songs like “The Offering,” “Must Be Something” and “Alluswe” are revolutionary prayers, extensions of the spirituals enslaved Africans were singing on plantations in the South to organize and politically educate themselves.

The late Gil Scott Heron was one of the most passionate writers of any genre, in my opinion, ever produced in the United States. Brian Jackson is the perfect musical compliment. This dynamic duo has been sampled in rap music by 2Pac, The Coup, Freeway, Common and Kanye, just to name a few.

3) ‘Kongo: 50 Years of Independence of Congo’

This is a documentary that employs animation to tell the history of the mineral rich, under-developed, war-torn African country known today as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Everyone who listens to the international media from the United States, Europe or the Arab world has heard the stereotypes of African governments being backwards and corrupt and squandering resources, but very few have heard of the European powers who manufactured these situations, helping to put these puppets in power for the benefit of European economies.

An image from “Kongo: 50 Years of Independence of Congo”

“Kongo: 50 Years of Independence of Congo” also paints a bold portrait of the late great first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who strived to fight off secessionists who wanted to split the most mineral rich areas from the country for the benefit of a few and the Western powers. It was my first time hearing the names of Congolese anti-colonialist like Simon Kimbangu, who was a liberation theologist and died a political prisoner because of that fact, and Paul Panda, who was a Black man of Congolese descent from Belgium, who spoke up and organized for African independence on an international level.

This film discusses the life of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who was in power for decades, and who was in part responsible for the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. It also talks about the rise, with the assistance of the Rwandan government, of Laurent Kabila, who was later assassinated, and his “son,” the current front man “running” the Congo, Joseph Kabila.

In most electronic devices, there is a mineral called coltan, and 80 percent of the world’s supply of this essential mineral is in the Congo. So for all of us who use laptops, iPhones, iPads and PS3’s, it is our responsibility to know the human costs and environmental costs of these products and to do what we can to eliminate the carnage. The Congolese people deserve to have their sovereignty and right to self-determination respected, and if people want to make and buy things that require minerals from the Congo, then they should pay the Congolese who are the caretakers of that land a fair price.

To properly respect other cultures, we need to educate ourselves, and learn something about them. This documentary is a great start to educating oneself on Congolese political history.

4) ‘The Wiz’

“The Wiz” is a brilliantly crafted cinematic masterpiece that was shot in New York City with an all-star cast featuring Michael Jackson, Richard Pryor, Lena Horne, Nipsey Russel, Diana Ross and more. Although it is an adaptation of the widely known “Wizard of Oz,” it is the Black version that is spiced up with beautifully written and performed music, as well as soulful choreography.

The climax of the film is when Dorothy, played by Diana Ross, and her crew of misfits make it into the Emerald City, aka Oz. There Richard Pryor, who plays the Wiz, scares the hell out of the motley crew using big speakers hoisted on the top of tall buildings and a huge metal face that breathes fire and gives people the impression that the Wiz is indestructible. At one point the Wiz yells through his microphone that the color is red and all of the people follow the trend, even making up songs and dances to celebrate the color. A few minutes later, the Wiz changes the trendy color to green and the people follow suit, making up a new song and dance. This reflects the brainwashing power of the corporate media.

Shot during the political and cultural dishevel of the ‘70s, this tale of mass media manipulation of the human race is even more important today, looking at the fact that more people know of Jay Z and Beyonce’s new baby than know about the war in the Congo, which has already claimed 6 million African lives. Most people in the U.S. could name more sports figures than politicians who make decisions every day that dictate the quality of our very lives. This is a testament to the power of the media.

5) ‘The 7 Day Theory’ by Tupac Shakur aka Makavelli

This was the last album that Tupac Shakur worked on and oversaw before he was assassinated with the help of various police agencies in Las Vegas in September of 1996. Different from “All Eyez on Me,” “The 7 Day Theory” was, in my opinion, one of his most contemplative albums right alongside the classic “Me Against the World.” These were the two albums where we got to see the genius come out of Pac without any obstacles or filters.

Tupac recorded “All Eyes on Me” after he was shot, set up and convicted on trumped up rape charges. The rage and party nature that makes up “All Eyes on Me” reflects a young Black spokesman for his generation that was still maturing, and he was trying to psychologically bounce back from being almost killed and unjustly accused, imprisoned and crucified in the media.

“The 7 Day Theory” is the album he started after he was able to shed those feelings, expel those demons and revolve back to what it is he set out to do. Pac was very verbose about his political leanings, on songs like “Blasphemy,” “Whiteman’s World” and “Hold Ya Head.” He lyrically sprayed venom on “Bomb First” and “Hail Mary,” where he starts out with “I’m not a killer but don’t push me/ revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin’ pussy/ picture paragraphs unloaded/ wise words being quoted/peeped a weakness in the rap game and sowed it/ bow down. “

A lot of people had a problem with Pac calling out other rappers on this album. But isn’t that the roots of rap? When KRS 1 and MC Shan battled, it was Hip Hop; when Common attacked Ice Cube, it was Hip Hop; but when Pac spoke up in his rhymes, people couldn’t take it. They thought that he went too far. His words, his writing and his passion were so in tune with each other that people thought that it was dangerous. Isn’t that the sign of a great writer, poet, rapper and musician?

His commentary on other musicians was only a secondary reason why I appreciated this album. The No. 1 reason is that Pac, his emotions and the things that would happen to him in the world gave the planet a bird’s eye view to the worldly intellect, the gentleness of spirit, the confidence and the arrogant, rough attitude of young Black men that is created once we realize that in every country, in every kind of society, it is us against the world: White on top and Black on the bottom. Rich on top and poor on the bottom.

This album elegantly weaved all of these feelings into a cohesive product that the oppressed all over the world and those who identify with them related to, because they knew that Pac meant everything he said, with everything in his being. I aspire as a writer to be able to connect my brain, heart and pen like Pac did on this album.

6) ‘Block Reportin’’ by JR Valrey

This is the book of interviews that I wrote. I think that “Block Reportin’” is an essential read because I interviewed people who made major contributions nationally or were involved in major earthshaking events: controversial people, talented musicians who stand for a cause, legendary political figures who speak on behalf of Black people from all walks of life and more.

Interviews range from the late poet and jazz and blues man Gil Scott Heron to the fire spitting lyricist M-1, half of one of rap’s dopest revolutionary groups, dead prez, to courageous peace activist Cynthia McKinney, who talks about her experience being kidnapped and made a political prisoner in Israel, to Hajj Malcolm Shabazz, the grandson of the international human rights leader Malcolm X (Hajj Malik El Shabazz) to CIA financier Freeway Rick Ross, the real dude, not the rapper, to Black Panther political prisoner and the prolific writer Mumia Abu Jamal plus more.

I don’t believe in polite journalism, though I do believe in truthful journalism, so I ask questions that may seem invasive at times, but it is in the spirit of true political education. In the book, I don’t speak the “Queen’s English.” I speak the dialect of masses, the people in the streets who live around us. The reason I do this is to communicate information, not to pass some kind of English exam.

Unlike most school textbooks that talk about the people who are no longer breathing, “Block Reportin’” deals with the people who are still breathing, kicking, fighting and speaking out. This is important because their stories are not over. In some cases you can join their movement and help to affect the outcome, like in the case of political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal or in the case of the war in the Congo that is still on, having claimed over 6 million lives and caused catastrophic environmental damage.

The chapters in “Block Reportin’” are only a few pages long, and there are more than 30 personalities for the reader to analyze who talk about subjects as eclectic and abstract as Malcolm X’s connection to jazz music, which I talked about with Umar Bin Hasan of the Last Poets, and as concrete as the curriculum of the Black Panther Party’s Liberation School, which was headed by Ericka Huggins, who shared her knowledge with me in a KPFA recording studio.

“Block Reportin’” is my attempt at hooking real living history and history makers up with people who live within these neighborhood and cell blocks, because ultimately I believe that our history and the history of resistance in this country in all its forms should be documented and distributed by us. If we fail to do so, our enemies will bury it and change it.

7) ‘Dark Alliance’ by Gary Webb

Sometimes it is said in the Black community that the truth is only the truth when it comes out of the mouth of a white man. So to that extent, I had to include this book on my list of top seven choices of books, movies and music that I would recommend for Black History Month.

“Dark Alliance,” written by San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb – who was later murdered – details the U.S. government plans that were executed in the ‘80s to sell cocaine in Black neighborhoods in the Bay and in LA. The mission was to fund counter-revolutions, off the books and out of the gaze of U.S. taxpayers, in El Salvador and in Nicaragua. This book exposes explosive information linking the elite in the highest echelons of the United States government to international drug trafficking.

This is another book that exposes the true nature of the government that we currently live under. Many of the people – excuse me, criminals – named in this book are still alive and still impacting influential circles in the government, military and intelligence agencies of this county. So even after you’ve read the last page, the story is on-going and still unfolding. We’ve had shortages on water in California recently, but never on cocaine, which is grown in South America.

“Dark Alliance” is a classic piece of journalism that I believe should be a mandatory read for every high school and college student in this country.

For more on guest Amoeblogger JR Valrey, visit the blockreportradio website.

The People’s Minister of Information JR is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’“ and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe,” both available, along with many more interviews, at www.blockreportradio.com. He also hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com. This story first appeared on Amoeblog, the online forum of Amoeba Music Inc.

Time to clean up one of the UN’s biggest crimes

by Mark Weisbrot

Haitians have had a long and arduous struggle just to achieve the rights that most people in the rest of the hemisphere have enjoyed. From the revolution of Haitian slaves that won independence from the French in 1804 through the U.S. occupation (1915-1934), the Duvalier family dictatorship (1957-1986) and the last 20 years of devastating foreign intervention, the “international community” just hasn’t seen Haitians as having the same basic human rights as people in other countries.

They still don’t, perhaps because Haitians are too poor and Black. While the horrific earthquake of January 2010 brought international sympathy and aid – much more pledged than delivered – it didn’t bring a change of attitude toward Haiti.

A mother and child take shelter from Hurricane Isaac as it hit Haiti Aug. 25. Two and a half years after the earthquake, 400,000 Haitians still live in tents and other flimsy housing that is no match for the storm. And flooding could reignite the cholera epidemic that has killed more than 7,500 people in Haiti since the U.N. brought it to Haiti in October 2010. “If a flood comes, we know certainly cholera is going to be an issue,” Sinan Al-Najjar of the Red Cross had said on Aug. 23. – Photo: Reuters

This is gross negligence that would have landed them a multi-billion dollar lawsuit if they were a private corporation – or even criminal prosecution. But the U.N. has so far refused to even admit responsibility; although Bill Clinton, who is the U.N.’s special envoy for Haiti acknowledged in March that the U.N. brought cholera to Haiti.

“As cholera was brought to Haiti due to the actions of the U.N., we believe that it is imperative for the U.N. to now act decisively to control the cholera epidemic,” said Congressional Democrats in an appeal to Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a few weeks ago. Despite the fact that the letter was signed by the majority of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, it was ignored by the media in the United States. And Rice has yet to respond.

But controlling and putting an end to the epidemic is the least that the U.N. can do for Haiti, having caused this disaster. We know that it can be done, too – as it has in many other countries – by building the necessary infrastructure so that Haitians can have access to clean drinking water. The cost has been estimated at about $800 million, or the amount that the U.N. spends on keeping its soldiers there for a year.

Haiti has no civil conflict or peacekeeping agreement. The U.N. military mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) therefore has no legal or legitimate basis – on the contrary, it was sent there in 2004 to occupy the country after Washington and its allies organized the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected president.

“As cholera was brought to Haiti due to the actions of the U.N., we believe that it is imperative for the U.N. to now act decisively to control the cholera epidemic,” said Congressional Democrats.

Besides bringing the cholera epidemic to Haiti and wasting billions of dollars, MINUSTAH troops have committed serious abuses, from killings of civilians to sexual abuse. Last September Uruguayan troops were caught on video sexually assaulting an 18-year-old Haitian man. In the latest MINUSTAH sexual abuse scandal, Pakistani troops were found guilty of raping a 14-year-old boy; they received a year in prison from a Pakistani military tribunal. Perhaps more damning for the U.N. in this case is that higher U.N. officials have been implicated by Haitian authorities as having attempted to cover-up the crime.

No wonder more than 70 percent of Haitians responding to a recent poll said they wanted MINUSTAH to leave within a year. The U.N. can use the money currently wasted on this military force to rid the country of cholera. Then, at least, they will have cleaned up one of their biggest crimes in the country.

Mark Weisbrot is an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: the Phony Crisis. This story first appeared on Counterpunch.

by Ezili Dantò, founder and president of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network

“Haiti may have many problems but until 2010 cholera was not one of them. In fact, the country had no known history of the disease at all,” the Al Jazeera host explains. In October 2010, the first of now 8,000 Haitians died of cholera introduced to Haiti by U.N. peacekeeping troops from Nepal and the U.N.’s negligence in allowing their untreated waste to poison a major river.

The U.N. plays the role of both arsonist and fireman in Haiti’s cholera epidemic. At a Dec. 11, 2012, press conference, the U.N. announced a rehashed 10-year plan for clean water that is unfunded. U.N. plans for Haiti are not solutions. The U.N. is the problem.

Calling it a “new initiative to help eliminate cholera in Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” Secretary Ban Ki Moon launched the U.N.’s grand 10-year water and sanitation money laundering, no, its fundraising scheme to harm, oops no, to “aid” Haitians. This water project is just a re-hashed initiative launched nearly a year ago.

The $2.2 billion initiative is unfunded. The $215 million from bilateral and multilateral donors the U.N. claims is available as newly added money is mostly previously pledged earthquake money pledged seven months before U.N. cholera ever hit Haiti but not given. Also, the U.N. refuses to set up a claims commission under the Status of Force Agreement with Haiti. It still doesn’t accept responsibility for the cholera epidemic it caused and gives no verifiable legal assurances to the Haitian people that their raw sewage is not still being dumped in Haiti’s waterways.

Cholera, unknown in Haiti until U.N. peacekeeping troops infected with the disease dumped their untreated sewage into a major river supplying drinking water to millions, has now killed 8,000 and sickened 620,000, with a surge in infections since Hurricane Sandy.

The new monies to be raised will go into the same hands, to the same USAID/U.N./NGO subcontractors with no public accountability to the Haitians, bolstering an international system that has failed in Haiti for over 50 years.

The grand announcement is another theatrical press gambit and waste of monies. The U.S. and U.N. internationals act as if their meeting equates to “doing something” solid and urgent to address the disease they imported. This multi-pronged attack is about using the image of the U.N. as the arbiter of human rights and justice, a claim that cannot actually be born out, but it’s their image.

It’s about using this unearned credibility to raise more funds, not to “save the poor Haitians” but to tighten the stranglehold, elevate the “poor Haiti” narrative, have more future occasions to give themselves more titles, awards, jobs, more luxury hotel stays.

Listen as Dennis Bernstein of Flashpoints interviews Kevin Pina on the U.N.’s talk about ending cholera.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon states the “new initiative will invest in prevention, treatment, and education. The main focus is on the extension of clean drinking water and sanitation systems – but we are also determined to save lives now through the use of an oral cholera vaccine.”

Six months ago when the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization at the U.N., not the secretary-general, was unveiling this very same bogus 10-year U.N. plan to end U.N. cholera in Haiti, world renowned cholera expert Professor Renaud Piarroux maintained that the cholera epidemic in Haiti could be gone in months, but that Paul Farmer’s cholera vaccines are ineffective and a waste of money.

“If that is so,” we posted, “this would cast great suspicion on the NGOtocracy’s settling in for this opportunistic 10-year, far future – 2022 – plan, as the PAHO/U.N. Millennium Development-type proposed declarations and their signers seem to be maintaining.” It’s brazen greed, outrageously dishonest and fraudulent.

The fake humanitarians create the problem, use the shock doctrine and disaster capitalism to occupy Haiti, disenfranchise the people, de-legitimize elections, then with the complicity of the mainstream media and white saviors both from the Left and Right duopoly, they put a Black neocon Haitian, Laurent Lamothe, up front for publicity purposes to sell the world their 10-year “solution” to cholera as a legitimate Haiti-led initiative.

Then, when one year later in December 2012, the U.N. “unveils” its repackaged request for more funds for itself and its subcontractors in Haiti and calls this “eradicating cholera,” this travesty is capped off for public consumption by having the fraudulent progressives and justice-seekers speaking on behalf of Haitians, declaring “success.” For instance, Mark Weisbrot’s op-ed, “More Pressure Necessary to Get Desperately Needed Clean Water to Haiti,” trumpets the suspect U.N. cholera plan as at least “a beginning,” a showing of the capacity of the U.N. to what? judge itself fairly? provide what? money to private NGOs with no public accountability to Haitians?

Oh, this cholera eradication plan from the cholera importers in Haiti is “incremental justice to Haiti,” seriously opine the Leftist intellectuals from the West. No joke.

The aim, of course, of most foreign aid to Black countries is to keep them in perpetual poverty, ill health, chaos by design, dependency, and so disenfranchised and desperate they are compelled to do Western biddings.

The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) repeatedly points out the false benevolence, the basic Haiti rights repealed, the harm, the glorification of disenfranchisement and sweatshops, the conflicts with the industrial paternalistic, condescending white folks in Haiti vis-a-vis Haitian best interests, justice and sovereignty.

“Nicholas Kristof’s reason for perpetuating the Tarzan idiocy for his New York Times audience is self-indulgent, harmful, narcissistic and as racist as it is lazy and cowardly. What’s the point of Kristof’s white saviors – his bridge character – helping the victims of rape, cholera or hunger in the Congo, Darfur or Haiti when it’s U.S. taxpayer monies and U.S. corporate welfare and the agricultural subsidies to U.S. corporatocracy that supported their agent rapists, U.N. partisan presence or corrupt government clientele states to come to power or for them to maintain power and the rapes and disenfranchisement of the African masses?

“Mr. Kristof ought to teach that U.S. citizens of every culture, race or national origin, who care about Haiti and Africa should study U.S. foreign policy, then go try to change the duopoly in Washington before they impose themselves on Haiti or Africa through the NGOtocracy. Some bridges ought to be artifacts in old museums.” – Ezili Dantò’s comment on “NY Times Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof Answers Questions,” Nov. 28, 2012

No Caucasian typifies the white savior tool of imperialistic Black oppression and trajectory more than Paul Farmer.

Paul Farmer runs Partners in Health, which distributes the U.N. supported oral cholera vaccines. His partner, Jim Yom Kim, now runs the World Bank. Farmer is the U.N. special deputy envoy to Haiti, a long time board member of Brian Concannon’s Institute of Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and now he’s also the special appointed advisor for the U.N.’s 10-year cholera eradication plan that dodges liability for the U.N. bringing in cholera to Haiti and denies justice to Haiti victims.

Yet, Brian Concannon’s IJDH with Paul Farmer on its board and obvious conflicting interests claims to be legally representing the Haiti cholera victims, sending a demand last November 2011 that’s oftentimes, for fundraising purposes, billed as a lawsuit, asking the U.N. to judge itself guilty and apologize to the victims!

This is an inside job. It’s definitely the fox guarding the chicken coop. These “bridge” characters crowd out most Haiti-led relief, use exploited Haiti fronts to legitimize their fundraising junkets, build bridges for white supremacy and cultural hegemony death crossings while watching each other’s backs from their various spheres and beltway platforms.

A Haitian with symptoms of cholera is transported in a wheelbarrow in the slums of Cite Soleil in Port-au-Prince a month after the outbreak began in October 2010. – Photo: Eduardo Munoz, Reuters

“While we are still a long way from implementation, there are important lessons to be learned from this experience. Perhaps most importantly, it shows that organized political pressure can work. The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti went to the U.N. to file for damages and reparations. Many other groups and individuals kept the issue in the news and wouldn’t let it go away …

“Newspaper editorial boards such as those of the New York Times and the Boston Globe called on the U.N. to take responsibility for the disaster that it caused. As a result of grassroots organizing, the majority of Democrats in the U.S House of Representatives signed a letter to the same effect …

“Bill Clinton, U.N. special envoy to Haiti, admitted that the U.N military mission was responsible for the deadly outbreak, but the organization maintains its denial.

“Tuesday’s announcement by the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, together with the U.N., of a 10-year plan to eradicate cholera from the island shared by the two nations is a step forward and a result of all the pressure that has been brought to bear over the past two years. Better late than never, but it is still just the beginning,” wrote Weisbrot in “More Pressure Necessary to Get Desperately Needed Clean Water to Haiti.”

The rescuers have mostly been hard at work re-imaging the Haiti occupation, giving a civil face to the Duvalierists, opening Haiti up for business in the time of cholera, fragmenting Haiti’s voices, denying the horrible evil and international crime scene that Haiti is.

They have been denying the masses’ struggle for fair elections since 2004, obfuscating the main issue, which is that Haiti is illegally, unjustly occupied by the U.S. and Paul Farmer’s NGOtocracy; that Western aid is MEANT and STRUCTURED to fail; that the Haiti majority must take back their sovereignty; that Haiti’s mineral and oil wealth must stop being denied and pillaged.

The U.S. corporatocracy and NGOtocracracy occupation behind U.N. proxy guns MUST end. Vicious U.S. imperialism in Haiti, its outright aggressions and uses of the U.N. peacekeepers to cover this up, its uses of Americans like Bill Clinton at the U.N. and the Paul Farmer NGOtocracy as its tool of mayhem, of oppressive Haiti decision-making and rule cannot be discounted, ignored or denied.

U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Susan E. Rice has put the whole matter in context:

“The truth is, the U.N. Security Council can’t even issue a press release without America’s blessing. The U.N. depends entirely on its member states, not the other way around. When the U.N. stumbles, it’s usually because its members stumble – because big powers duck tough issues in the Security Council or spoilers grandstand in the General Assembly. As one of my predecessors, the late Richard Holbrooke, was fond of saying, ‘Blaming the U.N. when things go wrong is like blaming Madison Square Garden when the Knicks play badly.’”

Haitians in a Port au Prince tent camp are given bleach and water purification tablets on Dec. 11, 2012, in an effort to prevent cholera. Why, nearly three years after the earthquake that killed over 300,000 and displaced millions, has the money initially donated not been spent to build and repair housing and supply clean water? – Photo: Logan Abassi, UN MINUSTAH

They share liability for the U.N. bringing in cholera, for slaughtering innocent Haitians in the populous neighborhoods en mass, for the raging impunity of their re-imaged death-squads and neoDuvalierists’ civilian fronts and for the rotten child molesting and other crimes perpetrated against defenseless Haiti civilians. There can be no Haiti justice outside of this Haiti context and narrative. Period, no comma.

The U.N., its Haiti policy-making member states and its other neocolonial partners are attempting to collect $2.2 billion more misery funds on imported foreign misery to Haiti while planning to further privatize clean water to dodge public accountability. Yet this blatant money laundering scheme is seen by the U.N. apologists as “some” justice, an authentic good for Haiti and the cholera victims?

The U.N. keeps talking to raise funds for their peacekeeping presence in Haiti, keeps cunningly and repeatedly “unveiling” their privatization plans for Haiti water and no justice for Haiti.

Back in March 2010, Bill and Hillary Clinton held a similar champagne pledging party at the U.N., where numbers in the billions were blithely cast about for a first 10-year relief and reconstruction plan to “rebuilt Haiti back better.” This was after the earthquake and seven months before cholera hit Haiti in October 2010. The same funds pledged then that went uncollected are part of the $215 million being re-pledged for the U.N.’s newest 10-year initiative in Haiti. This is U.S.-Euro pillage in Haiti, masking as humanitarian aid.

The mainstream media and humanitarian progressives willingly swallow the manipulative lies, ignore that foreign aid is about creating jobs for foreigners and selling foreign products and services abroad. Life worsens for Haitians in Haiti when the world’s people are made to believe these high-tech money laundering schemes are about “helping Haitians.” Justice deferred is justice denied.

Just days after the October 2010 U.N. cholera deaths began, HLLN pointed out, in an interview with broadcaster Yves Point Dujour, that “the accused U.N. cannot investigate itself … The genocide going on in Haiti is obvious … We’re looking at the evil but we don’t want to compute it.”

It’s not surprising to Haitians that the U.N. continues to deny liability for their gross and criminal negligence, for bringing death to Haiti. We know about the Ottawa Initiative. We live with the fear of the immigration deportations and unequal immigration policies.

We deal each and every nightmarish day of this hidden U.S. occupation with why there is a U.N. Chapter 7 peace-enforcement mission in Haiti for nine years – a country not at war, without a peace agreement to enforce and with less violence than most countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Their imported disease provides the opportunity to accidentally kill 8,000 Haitians, infect over 620,000, raise and launder more taxpayer and donor country monies, sell more Paul Farmer pharmaceuticals, write more Nicholas Kristof/Tracy Kidder white savior partisan pieces, experiment on the sick as guinea pigs with never-before-used-in-an-epidemic cholera vaccines, stay in Haiti for their 10-year plan to capitalize on cholera: playing arsonists and firemen.

Resources

[ezilidanto] Request to peruse and comment on proposed 10-year plan, June 22, 2012

[ezilidanto] 10-year international plan to PRIVATIZE clean water (funding NGOs) in Haiti unveiled June 29 in Washington, June 30, 2012

U.S. failed aid and false benevolence in Haiti

The Plantation called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Aid

The White Savior Industrial Complex

Haiti’s Gold Rush – an Ecological Crime in the Making

The U.N. has requested $2.2 billion to battle a cholera epidemic in Haiti that has killed nearly 8,000 people since 2010.

Unease over U.N. bid to eradicate Haiti cholera

Audit: USAID Haiti work ‘not on track’

Haiti: Ezili Dantò on Washington Post cholera editorial

Paul Farmer is not a God but the face of the U.N./U.S.AID/World Bank

Ezili Dantò, award winning playwright, performance poet, dancer, actor and activist attorney born in Port au Prince, Haiti, founded and chairs the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN), supporting and working cooperatively with Haitian freedom fighters and grassroots organizations promoting the civil, human and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad. Visit her at www.ezilidanto.com, where this story first appeared, or www.open.salon.com/blog/ezili_danto.

by Malaika Kambon

President Martelly-appointed Haitian Prosecutor Lucmane Delille, a former member of the GNB (Balls Up Your Butt) movement that worked to oust Aristide in 2004, has arrested 21 Lavalas members and summoned countless others into court. When Delile summoned Aristide himself, Haitians surrounded his house and the courthouse to protect him.

Aware that the present Haitian government has ordered the arrest of 21 members of Lavalas following large demonstrations on Dec. 16, 2012, against Martelly’s rule, the Haitian people have cause to suspect the political motivation behind attempts to bring Dr. Aristide to court without charge. Additionally, other Lavalas leaders, protesting the arrests, have themselves been called into court arbitrarily.

The masses of the Haitian people are outraged at this latest conspiracy to both tarnish the reputation of Dr. Aristide and further marginalize Fanmi Lavalas, the most popular political party in Haiti, from the electoral process.

In fact, it is the opinion in Haiti that this latest attack is an attempt on the part of the U.N. MINUSTAH forces to mask their failure to improve the lives of the Haitian people, which have deteriorated significantly under the aegis of the U.N., U.S., Canada and France. Thus it is more convenient to again blame their wrongdoing on Dr. Aristide.

The latest word is that court proceedings were postponed until Wednesday of next week, due to the massive numbers of Haitian people at the courthouse and around Dr. Aristide’s home.

Listen to an in depth discussion on Flashpoints broadcast by KPFA and dozens of other stations around the country on Jan. 1:

In an escalation of the ongoing witch hunt against former President Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti’s largest political party, President Martelly’s prosecutor trumped up charges against Aristide himself. When thousands of supporters surrounded the courthouse, the police attempted to block them with fire trucks and barricades. But the people swarmed over them and kept coming until the court agreed to postpone the proceedings. – Photo: Swoan Parker, Reuters

U.S. issues Haiti travel warning: How dare they!

by Malaika Kambon

In the wake of the Obama administration’s gaffe in their attempt to replace the bloodied hands of Hilary Rodham Clinton with the bloodied hands of Susan Rice, comes now another historic and cruel irony.

According to a recent Associated Press article, “State Dept. warns Americans about Haiti travel,” the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs has now issued a travel warning “to inform U.S. citizens traveling to or living in Haiti about the current security situation.”

Contrary to U.N. and U.S. propaganda, Haitians have always resisted oppression. On Sept. 21, masses of Haitians marched across Haiti against “the corruption of the Martelly regime,” but not a single mainstream U.S. news outlet filed a story in English. The demonstrators were dismissed as “merely burning tires” by U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Pamela A. White. – Photo: Radio Caribe

The absolute nerve of them! How dare they!

Robbery? Lawlessness? Disease? What poor medical facilities? What “security” situations?

When President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the twice democratically elected president of Haiti was in power, there were only 3,500 policemen in the entire nation of Haiti and there was virtually no crime.

But since U.S.-Canadian-French usurpation of Haitian sovereignty, Haiti has suffered not only from a lack of national security in the sense of borders and territorial integrity but also an ongoing crisis of human security, the right of each person to live in peace and with the guarantee of basic rights.

Aristide, through two terms in office – both of which he was deposed in the middle of – was sabotaged at every step by the U.S. CIA, USAID, the European Union, the Canadian government, the IMF, and the World Bank.

Why? So the U.S. government could blame everything that was “wrong” with Haiti on anyone but itself. This century it chose Jean-Bertrand Aristide to be its scapegoat.

Because the U.S. government cannot stand the thought of grassroots democracy and cannot stand the fact that the achievements of Afrikans who defeated entrenched slavery are of monumental significance to Black people in the Diaspora – and that Black people have the right to take and to define our place in the world without requesting anyone’s sponsorship and without needing anyone’s approval.

Haitian struggle and resistance has taught the world these facts, much to the chagrin of the U.S. State Department. So now, in retaliation, the U.S. State Department seeks to criminalize Haiti. Again.

But since U.S.-Canadian-French usurpation of Haitian sovereignty, Haiti has suffered not only from a lack of national security in the sense of borders and territorial integrity but also an ongoing crisis of human security, the right of each person to live in peace and with the guarantee of basic rights.

After perpetrating a reign of superpower terrorism that includes 33 coups d’etat, financing right wing para-militarism, the terrorizing, abduction and murder of human rights activists, the hijacking of loans meant to establish sources of clean, potable water, hospitals, and clinics, dismantling the democratic election process, forbidding the existence of the largest political party in the country, Fanmi Lavalas, and fomenting the spreading of disease, starvation, mass murder and U.S. hegemony via the Monroe Doctrine, many Haitians believe that the U.S. State Department is now in firm control of the monster it has created.

Not only that, but it is also believed that the U.S. is playing a cruel game, running people against their very own monster. It is a classic game of the criminal blaming the victim.

Thus, in 2012 the U.S. continues to spread the contempt of Haitians held by the Anglo-Saxon power structure. Reminiscent of the views expressed by Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan so long ago when he said, “Imagine! Niggers speaking French!” the State Department has begun its “official,” for-sound-bite-use-only pogrom, couched in a “travel warning” to America.

However, this pogrom is liable to bite Anglo-Saxon hegemony in the ass, even when it has an Obama face, because the idiots don’t realize there are more Afrikans with a command of the French language than those whose limited command is of English alone.

That being said, it is now evident by this little noticed State Department “travel warning” to Haiti that their U.S. trained U.N. MINUSTAH occupation forces cannot handle the popular opposition of the Haitian people to the current lawlessness of U.S. imposed puppet, Michel Martelly.

For, in the finest traditions of semper fidelis and the 1915-1934 invasion, occupation and racketeering of Haiti led by Gen. Smedley Butler and the U.S. Marine Corps, Michel Martelly is robbing the people and the Haitian treasury blind. Just like old times, making Haiti safe for the National City Bank boys – or whatever bank is fashionable nowadays – to collect revenues in.

And the illegal U.S. inspired coups d’etat of 1991 and 2004 that robbed Haitians of their twice democratically elected President Aristide, were transparent as U.S. instigated regime changes in Haiti.

This doesn’t inspire belief in a law-abiding U.S. State Department.

Not when considered in light of Michel Martelly’s receipt of “more than $2.5 million in bribes for providing non-bid reconstruction contracts to companies in the Dominican Republic,” working in consort with Bill Clinton to force U.S. born businessman Laurent Lamothe into the post of prime minister despite Lamothe’s lack of qualification for the post, and Martelly’s blatant and arbitrary alteration of the 1987 Haitian Constitution, re-establishing laws to limit the basic human rights of Haitian citizens.

And especially not when former U.S. President and current U.N. Special Envoy William Jefferson Clinton legitimizes the s/election of Michel Martelly as president of Haiti by less than 16 percent of the vote and embraces former dictator for life Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier at a ceremony held nearly one year ago, on Jan. 14, 2012, to “commemorate” the second anniversary of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake.

The ceremony was held in Titanyen near Port-au-Prince. Duvalier couldn’t leave Port-au-Prince while awaiting trial for human rights violations and crimes against humanity. The trial didn’t happen. And the Martelly-Clinton-Duvalier presence at Titanyen was a travesty and an insult, for Titanyen is the burial ground of earthquake victims and has been for decades the dumping ground of the bodies of Haitians murdered by the infamous Ton Ton Macoutes and other Haitian death squads commanded by Duvalierists, approved by the U.S. State Department, and trained and financed by the U.S. and the CIA.

They kill you and then dance on your grave?

President Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly and his wife greet former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier at the Jan. 12, 2012, earthquake commemoration ceremony – legitimizing Duvalierists – at the dump site in Titanyen, where the vicious U.S.-trained death squads dumped bodies of Haitian citizens they killed, and where bodies of victims of the 2010 earthquake have been laid to rest. – Photo: Haiti Information Project.

Haiti’s occupation was instigated and engineered by the U.S., Canadian and French governments. U.N. MINUSTAH forces now maintain that occupation. U.N. Special Envoy William Clinton’s embrace of Baby Doc Duvalier and Michel Martelly is greatly illustrative of a U.S. State Department’s design to turn back the clock on democratic progress and the people’s participation in the process of democracy in Haiti established by the twice democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

No wonder the U.S. State Department now wants the world to view “travel” to Haiti as fraught with “robbery, lawlessness, infectious disease and poor medical facilities.” They’ve implemented and now practice what they preach: robbery, lawlessness, the spread of infectious disease and the destruction of proper medical facilities to destroy any hope of democracy in Haiti.

Whatever is the State Department to do but to increase their attempts to re-criminalize Black Haitians?

It might do to remember, on this first day of January 2013, that 209 years ago in 1804, Haiti celebrated its independence by crushing chattel enslavement of Afrikan people everywhere.

On this day a victorious Jean-Jacques Dessalines specifically de-criminalized Black people. This scared then president Thomas Jefferson to death.

Perhaps now, hushed State Department dinner conversation analysts will try to subvert the feelings of the Haitian masses about U.S. attempts to return the brutal, Papa Doc military to power, but the terrorist ploy won’t work.

The nearly 700,000 people still living under old sheets since the 2010 earthquake will speak out on the lawlessness of an Obama regime that sends a U.S. military invasion force to occupy injured, starving, homeless Haitians after a 7.2 earthquake instead of sending doctors, food and medical supplies.

This is the same regime that controls the U.N. occupation forces and is backing Martelly’s forced eviction of earthquake survivors from refugee camps in 2012.

No wonder the U.S. State Department now wants the world to view “travel” to Haiti as fraught with “robbery, lawlessness, infectious disease and poor medical facilities.” They’ve implemented and now practice what they preach: robbery, lawlessness, the spread of infectious disease and the destruction of proper medical facilities to destroy any hope of democracy in Haiti.

If this was Obama’s prep for the U.S. armies being sent to 35 Afrikan countries in 2013, who knows – maybe the Marines will again be sent to Haiti to quell the cholera infected and those injured from the lack of infrastructure after Hurricane Sandy. After all, most of those poor medical facilities could use that $20,000 per day per diem that Washington’s pet buffoon, Michel Martelly, gets daily when he travels, don’t cha think?

And I don’t know, do you think that maybe the populace could appear on TV with Martha Stewart and show the world how to bake mud cookies?

For those who do not know the recipe, read the following: First get some special clay containing calcium and other nutrients from near the town of Hinche in the Central Plateau. “Combine” it with salt and vegetable shortening. Then dry the result in the sun and eat.

Do you think Ms. Stewart would wanna make Haitian mud cookies a dietary staple of her customers? No? No “cooking with Crisco” this time around, in the finest tradition of that old American idiom for making everything run smoothly?

Well then, consider the crucial question asked by the great Jamaican columnist John Maxwell: “Is Starvation Contagious?” That is the issue that must be addressed when the country whose enslaved labor kept all of Europe fed before the Haitian Revolution is reduced by soaring food prices and globalization to eating mud!

And maybe during a commercial break, folks could be quizzed about how it feels to eat, sleep and take care of their young while standing “at home” in 2 feet of dirty flood water with no food, in their tent cities paid for by starving Haitians instead of said people having access to billions of mismanaged post-earthquake funds that find their way into U.S. government pockets and into the pockets of overseers Bill Clinton and George Bush – overseers, I might add, who were specifically placed in Haiti by Barack Obama.

Yes, the U.S. State Department’s lawlessness knows no bounds. And apparently financing Martelly’s corrupt government is one of the more creative and innovative ways that France and her U.S. allies have used the $22 billion France extorted from Haiti for having thrown off chattel enslavement, thus “depriving” Europe of its entire source of income.

U.N. Special Envoy William Jefferson Clinton, shown in the previous photo with jaw agape as the Martellys greet Duvalier, recovers his composure, follows his instincts and extends his hand, too, to the former dictator-for-life in a clear gesture of legitimization. – Photo: Haiti Information Project

The AP should also tell American travelers to Haiti that they’re not likely to be shot while brushing their teeth in their swank hotels or on the way to work, because the latest U.S. puppet, Martelly, will personally see to it that they survive to be robbed or killed by his – and only his – staff.

After all, ‘tis the season to be jolly, and the U.S. State Department and their quislings are some of the happiest killers on the planet, din’t cha know?

Yeah. The U.S. State Department should indeed warn Americans about the dangers of spending “Christmas in Hell: Or A Dread of Black Freedom,” where the coins of exchange are a history of resistance to oppression and naked U.S. engineered aggression, terrorism, starvation, disease and death.

But this article is a call to action.

There are political prisoners in Haiti, people who have been put in jail for saying “Enough!” of the thefts of our land and money, enough of the massacres, enough of the starvation and death. And recently, there are 21 newly imprisoned young men and women – seven young women and 14 young men – who have been imprisoned for nothing more than speaking out against the brutality perpetrated against Haiti by the U.S.-Canadian-French triad, by the U.N. MINUSTAH forces, by Brazil, the European Union and by the Haitian elite.

This is what has been going on in Haiti.

It is time for Euro-America and its allies to break with the legacy of rape that has marked their relations with Haiti. Haitians have always resisted. It was Haiti who broke the chains of slavery.

This latest demonization of Haiti is part of what has happened since the days of Haitian independence, when slavery advocates and slave owners designed the U.S. foreign policy that continues to be followed to this day.

And that needs to be changed.

Malaika H Kambon is a freelance photojournalist and the 2011 winner of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association Luci S. Williams Houston Scholarship in Photojournalism. She also won the AAU state and national championship in Tae Kwon Do from 2007-2010. She can be reached at kambonrb@pacbell.net.

by Robert Reich

Imagine a plot to undermine the government of the United States, to destroy much of its capacity to do the public’s business and to sow distrust among the population.

Around the country, people are protesting the foolish and unnecessary cuts in essential services and the job losses that come with sequestration.

Finally, imagine they not only paralyze the government but are on the verge of dismantling pieces of it.

Far-fetched? Perhaps. But take a look at what’s been happening in Washington and many state capitals since Tea Party fanatics gained effective control of the Republican Party, and you’d be forgiven if you see parallels.

Tea Party Republicans are crowing about the “sequestration” cuts beginning March 1. “This will be the first significant Tea Party victory in that we got what we set out to do in changing Washington,” says Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kansas, a Tea Partier who was first elected in 2010.

Sequestration is only the start. What they set out to do was not simply change Washington but eviscerate the U.S. government – “drown it in the bathtub,” in the words of their guru Grover Norquist – slashing Social Security and Medicare, ending worker protections we’ve had since the 1930s, eroding civil rights and voting rights, terminating programs that have helped the poor for generations, and making it impossible for the government to invest in our future.

Sequestration grew out of a strategy hatched soon after they took over the House in 2011, to achieve their goals by holding hostage the full faith and credit of the United States – notwithstanding the Constitution’s instruction that the public debt of the United States “not be questioned.”

To avoid default on the public debt, the White House and House Republicans agreed to harsh and arbitrary “sequestered” spending cuts if they couldn’t come up with a more reasonable deal in the interim. But the Tea Partiers had no intention of agreeing to anything more reasonable. They knew the only way to dismember the federal government was through large spending cuts without tax increases.

Sequestration is only the start. What Tea Party Republicans set out to do was not simply change Washington but eviscerate the U.S. government.

Nor do they seem to mind the higher unemployment their strategy will almost certainly bring about. Sequestration combined with January’s fiscal cliff deal is expected to slow economic growth by 1.5 percentage points this year – dangerous for an economy now crawling at about 2 percent. It will be even worse if the Tea Partiers refuse to extend the government’s spending authority, which expires March 27.

A conspiracy theorist might think they welcome more joblessness because they want Americans to be even more fearful and angry. Tea Partiers use fear and anger in their war against the government – blaming the anemic recovery on government deficits and the government’s size, and selling a poisonous snake-oil of austerity economics and trickle-down economics as the remedy.

Sequestration combined with January’s fiscal cliff deal is expected to slow economic growth by 1.5 percentage points this year – dangerous for an economy now crawling at about 2 percent.

They likewise use the disruption and paralysis they’ve sown in Washington to persuade Americans government is necessarily dysfunctional and politics inherently bad. Their continuing showdowns and standoffs are, in this sense, part of the plot.

What is the president’s response? He still wants a so-called “grand bargain” of “balanced” spending cuts – including cuts in the projected growth of Social Security and Medicare – combined with tax increases on the wealthy. So far, though, he has agreed to a gross imbalance – $1.5 trillion in cuts to Republicans’ $600 billion in tax increases on the rich.

The president apparently believes Republicans are serious about deficit reduction, when in fact the Tea Partiers now running the GOP are serious only about dismembering the government.

And he seems to accept that the budget deficit is the largest economic problem facing the nation, when in reality the largest problem is continuing high unemployment – some 20 million Americans unemployed or under-employed – declining real wages and widening inequality. Deficit reduction now or in the near-term will only make these worse.

Besides, the deficit is now down to about 5 percent of GDP – where it was when Bill Clinton took office. It is projected to mushroom in later years mainly because healthcare costs are expected to rise faster than the economy is expected to grow, and the American population is aging. These trends have little or nothing to do with government programs. In fact, Medicare is far more efficient than private health insurance.

The president apparently believes Republicans are serious about deficit reduction, when in fact the Tea Partiers now running the GOP are serious only about dismembering the government.

I suggest the president forget about a “grand bargain.” In fact, he should stop talking about the budget deficit and start talking about jobs and wages – and widening inequality – as he did in the campaign. And he should give up all hope of making a deal with the Tea Partiers who now run the Republican Party.

Instead, the president should let the public see the Tea Partiers for who they are – a small, radical minority intent on dismantling the government of the United States. As long as they are allowed to dictate the terms of public debate, they will continue to hold the rest of us hostage to their extremism.

Robert B. Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written 13 books, including the best sellers “Aftershock” and “The Work of Nations.” His latest, “Beyond Outrage,” is now out in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause. Visit his website, http://robertreich.org/, where this story first appeared.

by Dadisi Kambon, Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, Abdul Olugbala Shakur, Sondai Kamdibe Dumisani, Mutope Duguma and Abasi Ganda

For the past two years we’ve heard the state claim it’s reforming its long term segregation policies and practices by implementing a Security Threat Group (STG) Step Down Program (SDP). Officials claim the program is a significant move towards a more behavior-based system, yet they remain extraordinarily vague about the “ultimate conclusion.” What exactly is “gang activity”?

The state’s motives are and always have been about the targeting and creation of informants, snitches and other low lifes for the sole purpose of creating a population of prisoners who mindlessly operate against their own interest to the benefit of the state.

This powerful drawing, “Step Down Program” by F. Bermudez, was enclosed with this statement by the writers.

We are dealing with an entrenched mindset. State officials have created their own paranoia with the sheer sensationalization of the unproven, unchallenged reports they fabricate in order to justify keeping hundreds of us confined to control units indefinitely.

It’s important to understand that prisoners are by way of the 13th Amendment slaves and are essentially dealt with as such by the courts and state officials who have essentially unchecked authority to treat prisoners as they see fit with very minor limitations. The 13th Amendment says, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Folks tend to underestimate the wording of this amendment. We tend to think and/or are conditioned to think that slavery is over. It’s important to reflect upon this because it places into context the role that the judicial branch – the courts – have played in permitting this 148-year experiment to continue.

We need not look far to see that in the history of this nation there were no rules governing the operation of a prison. Those matters were left to the absolute discretion of the warden.

With the emergence of the prison movement in the 1960s, prisoners began to win some important rights. The United States Supreme Court decided two very important good cases in this regard: Monroe v. Pape, 365 US 167 (1961), and Cooper v. Pate, 378 US 546 (1964).

These cases transformed Section 1983 into an extremely valuable tool for state prisoners. [Section 1983 is today the most important provision of the Reconstruction-era Klan Act, originally meant to protect Black voting rights. After Reconstruction, the 1871 law fell into disuse for nearly 100 years. It makes relief – in the form of money damages – available to those whose constitutional rights have been violated by someone acting under state authority, such as a prison guard, and the statute is most often used today by prisoners. – ed.]

Powerful, racially united strikes and rebellions shook Folsom Prison, San Quentin, Attica and other prisons throughout the country during the early 1970s. These rebellions brought the terrible conditions of prisoners into the public eye and had some positive effects on the way federal courts dealt with prisoners.

Prisoners won important federal court rulings on living conditions, access to the media, and procedures and methods of discipline, such as the right to some due process before being placed in disciplinary segregation (Wolff v. McDonald, Cluchette v. Procunier, Wright v. Enomoto), the right to send and receive letters (Procunier v. Martinez), and the “Prisoner’s Bill of Rights,” which guaranteed prisoners a measure of human decency. Accordingly, prisoners won the right to access the court (Bounds v. Smith) and the right to outdoor exercise (Spain v. Procunier).

These were pre-validation rulings and were high on the target list of Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist, an extremely activist judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. President Richard M. Nixon had first attempted to appoint Rehnquist in the 1970s, having been furious with what he felt was a liberal Supreme Court granting citizens Miranda Rights and the right to be represented by counsel at trial.

Rehnquist, like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia today, does not believe that the constitution applies to prisoners. Rehnquist openly questioned whether the constitution afforded prisoners the right to access a court or whether the state should be required to inform arrested citizens about their right to remain silent.

In the meantime, prison officials invested a lot of capital in their scheme to divide and conquer, fomenting violence, pitting prisoners against each other and effectively stifling the political influence that the 1960s era of “progress and struggle” had on the concentration camps, giving rise to the era of “roll back and repeal” and “gang validations” under the guise of fighting gang activity.

Rehnquist, like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia today, does not believe that the constitution applies to prisoners.

Unfortunately, the federal courts did not stay receptive to prisoner’s struggles for long. In 1996, Congress passed and Bill Clinton signed into the law the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). The PLRA is extremely anti-prisoner and designed to limit prisoners’ access to federal courts, legally permitting discrimination against a specific class of individuals: prisoners. The PLRA has given rise to what is known as judicial deference – deferring to the judgment of prison officials – in matters of prison management.

This analysis was brilliantly articulated in an article in the January issue of Prison Legal News (PLN) by Sharon Dolovich entitled, “Forms of Judicial Deference in Prison Law.” I will only paraphrase the article here as it is important to the analysis of the STG/SDP Pilot Program. We must pay attention to this phrase and what it actually means.

In her article, Ms. Dolovich explains that in cases concerning prisoners’ rights, the imperative of judicial deference takes three forms: First, and most obvious is doctrine constructing. In this respect, deference to prison officials is written right into the substantive constitutional standards yielding rules of decision that tip the scales in favor of the defendants – the state.

Second, deference is used to justify procedural rule revising in ways that transform familiar aspects of the legal process into more inherently defendant (state)-friendly procedural mechanisms. In other words, if the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require the pleadings to be read in the light most favorable to the party against whom summary judgment is filed, typically a prisoner, in most cases, deference prevents this rule from benefiting the prisoner.

Third, deference spurs situation reframing or recasting of a procedural or factual history in ways that enhance the defendant’s (the state’s) position at the plaintiff’s (the prisoner’s) expense. Here is where a court will completely ignore a prisoner’s factual allegations and reframe them in a way that bolsters the defendant’s position and make it easier for the court to dismiss and/or deny the prisoner’s case.

In sum, Ms. Dolovich points out that “far from achieving a balance between appropriate deference and appropriate constitutional enforcement, the Court’s prisoners’ rights case law seems instead to be a jurisprudence of evasion, justified by talismanic reference to the need to defer to prison officials.”

This explains what’s kept their policies so vague and their constant schemes to replace one hoax with another any time their methods are questioned to any appreciable degree.

When the courts permitted indeterminate confinement for non-disciplinary reasons, it did so because the state convinced them that said confinement was not for disciplinary reasons or punishment (Toussaint v. McCarthy) and that CDCR would review those placed in segregation for administrative reasons, considering them for release every 120 days.

Well, 30-plus years have yielded ample evidence of the punitive nature of this kind of segregation with the opening of Pelican Bay in 1989 and administrators smugly proclaiming to the world that these guys are the “worst of the worst” and then going about the task of selling that notion, which necessitated the creation of a little crime and some violence to a certain degree! Who says crime doesn’t pay?

With this scheme, they arbitrarily changed the Toussaint requirement to review for release. Now the only way out would be to parole, debrief or die! Shortly thereafter Madrid v. Gomez was litigated. The case was initially taken because – to his credit – U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson grew concerned about the large number of excessive force complaints the court was receiving from Pelican Bay prisoners.

The case, while setting some guidelines to monitor the use of force, turned its focus largely toward the mental illness aspect of confinement to Pelican Bay SHU – i.e., sensory deprivation. It would add another layer to the validation procedure by requiring three independent sources to justify SHU confinement, while changing absolutely nothing.

The court side-stepped the issue, leaving prisoners to languish and die, based on sensational allegations of gang activity dreamed up by IGI (Institutional Gang Investigations) and OCS (Office of Correctional Safety) and their informants, individuals they’ve rewarded for their fantastic lies and grandiose imaginations. Informants invent spectacular tales of slander, yet they themselves have worked in concert with the state, much like lackeys in a Third World country, instigating and spurring chaotic dissention and violence to benefit their handlers.

CDCR now says it recognizes that new STG group affiliates and corresponding gang-type behavior has emerged within the department’s sensitive needs yards (SNY) population. Now remember we were told that SNY inmates were those who chose to debrief and disassociate themselves from the gangs, yet they have this gang-type behavior cropping up on the SNY yards.

It begs the question, did these inmates debrief and lie on other prisoners in order to escape torturous conditions only to resume their prior criminal activity? Or did they debrief and lie on other prisoners only to be given greater access to resume their gang activity? Whichever it is, CDCR admits its debriefers are exhibiting the gang-type behavior that they’ve supposedly disassociated themselves from by providing information about others!

The Madrid ruling changed absolutely nothing and gave prisoners no protection at all when it came to arbitrary gang validations, except to require their independent source item rule, with one item establishing a direct link to a validated member. Again, there is no interpretation of what a direct link is, which left the gates wide open to the scandalous imagination of the gang investigators to invent bogus gang validations as long as they established that one source item was directly linked to a validated member.

They accomplish this in several ways: The most common at the moment is 1) during a debriefing you were identified as a member of X gang, or 2) during a cell search your name was discovered on a roster listing validated members of X, or 3) – this is a good one – you were found in possession of other validated gang members’ property.

In In Re Cabrera, the California Court of Appeals interpreted CCR (California Code of Regulations) Title 15, Section 3378(c)(4), finding that in order to establish a direct link to a validated member or associate, IGI was required to prove that the prisoners formed a mutual or reciprocal relationship. Seemed fair, seemed reasonable; however, CDCR didn’t want the burden of having to prove its slander so they appealed to the California Supreme Court, claiming the lower court didn’t show or give enough deference to its judgment. And, as you might have guessed, the highly activist anti-prisoner court agreed, stating “courts are bound to defer to CDCR’s intervention of its regulations in gang identification process” (In Re Cabrera, 55 Cal.4th 693 (2012)).

We’ll talk more about the California Supreme Court later. To date, that court has rolled back every prisoner case that’s come before it following a lower court victory for the prisoner – every one.

Turning our attention to Castillo v. Alameda, this is another highly touted, highly publicized case that was supposed to change the validation process and afford prisoners substantially more due process in validation proceedings and supposedly change what source items could and could not be relied on without an articulable basis.

Turned out “articulable basis” meant anything about anything they wanted it to mean. For example, when validated prisoners speak to or greet other validated prisoners, their basis for using a “hello” is this: “Validated gang members are known to engage in roll call. Sending regards to one another using their gang monikers (nicknames) is a sign of respect for the gang. Based on my training and experience, this constitutes gang activity.”

A court cannot say this is ridiculous because Cabrera and other cases say courts are bound by CDCR’s interpretation of its regulations. That’s substantial deference.

The California Supreme Court has rolled back every prisoner case that’s come before it following a lower court victory for the prisoner – every one.

The articulation of a basis is limitless. Being validated, anything you do or say is characterized as gang activity – anything. When mail is confiscated, to scare and/or intimidate family, friends or the public, their basis is: “Gang members must communicate in order to recruit and spread their gang propaganda. They are known to use coded messages to recruit through the mail, etc.” This is a scare tactic.

The so-called Castillo Agreement was supposed to have defined gang activity as knowingly furthering, promoting or assisting a gang in activities that violate the law.

But what actually has become the definition of gang activity is any documented activity between validated gang members. This can be talking in the library or the yard, sharing a look or a simple hello.

Being validated, anything you do or say is characterized as gang activity – anything.

The changes Castillo purported to make to the validation process resulted in the mistaken belief that SHU review is to occur every six years as opposed to every 180 days. Courts, afraid to even question CDCR lawyers and the like, all accepted this erroneous persecution, despite Toussaint v. McCarthy, clearly holding review must occur every 120 days and said review must amount to more than meaningless gestures.

While prisoners were told they could be released from SHU after six years of no documented gang activity – and true to form CDCR initially released about 90 prisoners from 2000-2004 and sent about 100 or so to Corcoran SHU – the word was Pelican Bay was releasing people. The same stunt is being employed now. CDCR says it has about 83 prisoners scheduled to be released per a case-by-case review.

However, this was only a slick hoax. Those prisoners released remained under constant threat of being returned to Pelican Bay unless they debriefed. By 2008, 90 percent of all inactive releases had been returned to SHU. The process was looked upon by prisoners as a hoax designed to quell the brewing storm waiting behind parole, debrief or die!

So here we are again with the new Security Threat Group/Step Down Program of 2012. We are again told that we can, via the SDP, be released from SHU without having to debrief, by participating in a five-year Step Down Program. Sound familiar? CDCR says it will implement an incremental four-year STG/STP which by design will replace the existing six-year inactive review process for validated STG affiliates.

The STP will be an individual behavior-based program for STG affiliates that will provide graduated housing, enhanced programs, inter-personal interactions, as well as corresponding privileges and personal property enhancements for participating STG affiliates. Sounds a lot like the failed policies of the past.

Get this: CDCR says additionally you have the responsibility to report STG or criminal activity when known or observed by you. This process is not intended to compromise your safety but to enhance your safety through the identification and removal of those involved in STG or criminal activities. Reporting your observations can be accomplished via many avenues, including 1) contacting staff directly; 2) writing a request for interview (CDCR GA-22); 3) notifying your counselor or classification committee; 4) writing a letter to the institutional gang investigator (IGI) at the address of your assigned institution; 5) writing a confidential letter to the warden of your assigned institution.

If you have access to the inmate telephone system, you can call a friend or family member who is willing to contact the prison directly on your behalf so the staff can follow up and take your report confidentially.

This cannot be reconciled with anything other than what it sounds like: a brainwashing. They expect you to report on the conduct of others around you and they give you several ways to do it. These kinds of requirements encourage inmates to lie.

It appears that their mindset is about creating informants – snitches – because in their mind the only way one is not a threat is if he or she is an informant. No snitch, no threat. This is the prescription they have for our lives!

The behavior and conduct of other individuals should not be the responsibility of other prisoners to report on. What the hell is this?

The STG/SDP is nothing but more of the same window dressing with a new coat of paint. They now seek to employ more aggressive brainwashing techniques aimed at inducing snitching. We continue to be held here for the past 10, 20, 30 and 40-plus years because we refuse to be and/or become government agents.

While they will undoubtedly release individuals, these individuals will remain at risk of being returned to the SHU if they fail to inform on the conduct of others. You must participate in the program.

Without a real change of substance to the gang validation policies, the STG pilot program is only a continuation of the same old methodology of re-wording what already exists.

They seem to think they’re dealing with children. They are trying to enforce a no-talking policy! Don’t talk to so-and-so or so-and-so or you’ll get a time out. They seek to have an entire population of men running around with their heads down, scared to speak or share simple reading material for fear of being validated.

We continue to be held here for the past 10, 20, 30 and 40-plus years because we refuse to be and/or become government agents.

If you’re already validated, this STG policy requires that you don’t associate with other STG affiliates. Remember, association remains undefined and non-STG affiliates will be validated for associating with validated STG affiliates. The entire gimmick is a catch-22.

What is association? Personally we know it is anything they want it to be – reading newspapers, books and magazines, sharing a cell or simply a greeting. This is why the first requirement in their SDP contract is for you to comply with the double cell policy. What does that have to do with STG activity?

It seems as though the conspiracy to continue using any old thing to ultimately create snitches and justify parole denials is actually at the root of their scheme. This conspiracy ought to be evident by the explanation given before the BPH (Board of Parole Hearings) by George Giurbino explaining the STG policy.

It’s the BPH that’s been the chief validator of CDCR’s management policies, operating with a carrot and stick approach, validating otherwise sensational, unproven fabricated accounts of gang activity by issuing vague, lengthy parole denials with references like “You gotta get out the SHU” or “You have to decrease your custody level” or relying on confidential information that the prisoner has no knowledge of. So it’s no wonder the first place they ran to explain the rewording of their latest scam was the SDP.

The SDP contract that one must sign before being placed in or advancing through the SDP, folks are reporting that it doesn’t appear to be a requirement. Well, that’s not what the policy says.

In fact, No. 3 of the contract says, “Follow all staff recommendations and directives.” If by chance staff recommend that you debrief and you do not comply, you have violated the contract.

The so-called STG disciplinary matrix is really a method to exact punishment for things like participating in a hunger strike or talking to another prisoner or the way you criticize them in the media or the subjects you study. The STG disciplinary matrix is a cheap way to exact punishment for your thoughts in a way that justifies your continued involvement in STG activities.

It’s worth noting that the new STG disciplinary matrix has a violation for violating the STG contract. Interestingly now, CDCR admits that the STG policy is not entirely behavior-based.

Of course not! Because it would be impossible to continue running this racket without having the discretion to fabricate and invent gang activity. An example is found in CCR Title 15, Sec. 3378, validation criteria being a direct link to a current or former validated member or associate.

The only way to be validated on a link to a former validated prisoner is to debrief, so by hinging any validation on a link to a former validated prisoner is a gimmick to validate young, unsuspecting new prisoners when they arrive in the kamps, unaware of anything and intentionally placed around debriefers who then become the catalyst for their validation, and the cycle continues.

The current STG policy still hasn’t determined what or who they will designate as a STG, because STG 1 members will be housed in segregation based solely on their validation. And while they are claiming to be moving away from focusing solely upon the groups they have traditionally focused on, like the BGF (Black Guerilla Family), the Mexican Mafia, Northern Familia (NF) and the Aryan Brotherhood (AB), it’s hard to believe that their supposed shifting focus won’t mean a STG designation for those traditional groups. They haven’t said. It’s like they want us to sign a blank contract and wait while they fill in the blanks.

They say STG associates will remain in general population unless confirmed STG behavior or activities are present. If these behaviors or activities are present, the STG associate will be considered for segregated housing and placement into a five-year Step Down Program.

Here’s the gist of it: A validation will still mean punitive segregation without being found guilty of anything at all, and validation as an associate will still mean a minimum of six years in a SHU. Until one advances through a maze of a five-year Step Down Program that now will employ advanced brainwashing techniques to induce snitching, i.e., reporting on the conduct of others.

The STG pilot program is not a credible revision of the policy to supposedly end long-term solitary confinement based on status. There is nothing in the wording to prevent arbitrary validations, something Madrid was supposed to address, then Castillo. But each time the vagueness got vaguer, such as the term “training material,” which can be anything a validated prisoner reads or studies – anything.

This has become the catch phrase as pointed out by Shane Bauer in the October 2012 Mother Jones article. He says: “California officials frequently cite possession of black literature, left-wing materials, and writing about prisoner rights as evidence of gang affiliation. In the dozens of cases I reviewed, gang investigators have used the term ‘[BGF] training material’ to refer to publications by California Prison Focus ….”

The stories are endless about what constitutes “training material.” Slavery is alive and well inside the free world. Anything you read can be considered training material if it offends them and enough prisoners read it.

They want us to sign some vague contract that can be breached depending on their mood. But they refuse to agree not to fabricate information in order to target and validate prisoners they wish to remove from the general population and subject to long-term torturous conditions until and unless they debrief or submit to their brainwashing techniques.

They steadfastly refuse to accept responsibility for subjecting thousands of prisoners to solitary confinement for upwards of 40 years for no justifiable reason, other than it has been profitable to do so.

If they were required to prove the sensational allegations they create against individual prisoners, they couldn’t, which is why the court invented the grandest scheme of all called the “some evidence” rule (Superintendent v. Hill), which doesn’t require them to prove anything at all.

So while they test the new STG policy as being some sort of reform of what they admit are draconian policies, we must not forget that they also sold their inactive policy as also being a correction of previous unconstitutional practices that were accepted by and justified in a series of unpublished rulings by the courts.

As one looks at this so-called new STG policy, it really is an expansion of the validation model and a continuation of the six-year SHU terms upon an initial validation as an associate, albeit characterized as a five-year Step Down Program, where the coercive tactics to debrief will be applied more systematically at each step.

They steadfastly refuse to accept responsibility for subjecting thousands of prisoners to solitary confinement for upwards of 40 years for no justifiable reason, other than it has been profitable to do so.

The fabrication of STG activity will increase with a so-called disciplinary matrix that employs vague code words like “training material.”

As we have seen in In Re Cabrera, CDCR fought to remove the definite definition of the term “direct link” because to do so would defeat their purpose. They claim that we’re here because of acts of violence. We say, then charge us. Prove what you say!

As much as our struggle is with CDCR and its policies, it is even more so a struggle with the courts and legislators that have permitted this to continue, not to mention the prisoners themselves with the courts’ slave-era approach to permitting prison officials to punish – and we know now that this is punishment – based on allegations, without our having been charged with or found guilty of any misconduct at all. Yet we are treated as if we had committed a crime, much like the institution of slavery was expanded by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision of 1857.

Basically the Supreme Court would decide a similar issue in Scales v. United States, 367 U.S. 203 (1961), holding: “In our jurisprudence, guilt is personal, and when the imposition of punishment on a status or on conduct can only be justified by reference to the relationship of that status or conduct to other concededly criminal activity …, that relationship must be sufficiently substantiated to satisfy the concept of personal guilt in order to withstand attack under the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment.” The Court concluded that without more, mere membership in an organization engaged in illegal conduct is not sufficient to establish the required relationship between that membership status and criminal activity.

Since prisoners are essentially slaves, this reasoning does not apply. Prisoners are only entitled to minimum constitutional protection, since the state says prisoners’ status (segregation) is not for punishment but for safety and security (Toussaint).

But when justifying this crap, they’re quick to paint with a broad brush that we’ve earned our way into SHU with acts of violence and other misconduct. They’ve had it both ways for 40-plus years. Charge us or release us – period!

There’s 30 years’ worth of evidence of punishment based on status that they’ve substantially tried to justify with ploys like Madrid and Castillo, while actually changing nothing, one ploy after another. This ought to be revisited to determine, based on the 30 year period, are we being punished? And if so, then the Toussaint ruling ought to be carried to its only logical conclusion and mandate the full panoply of constitutional protections for those placed in segregation for so-called gang affiliation.

If the U.S. Supreme Court can revisit the 1965 Voting Rights Act to determine, based on evidence, whether discrimination still exists in voting so as to determine whether the 1965 voting rights act is still necessary, then there is no reasonable reason why the ruling in Toussaint can’t be revisited for those very same purposes.

In fact, in Wolff v. McDonnell, Justice Marshall advocated the in camera review of confidential informants which, of course, was rejected by the Court, citing legitimate institutional concerns.

A couple of years later, in Baxter v. Palmigiano (1976), the Supreme Court took up the issue again, holding “the better course at this time, in a period where prison practices are diverse and somewhat experimental, is to leave these matters to the sound discretion of the officials of state prisons.” However, the court emphasized that its limited list of inmate due process protections was not “graven in stone.” “As the nature of the prison disciplinary process changes in the future, circumstances may then exist which will require further consideration and reflective of this Court.”

The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) rose to its zenith on the backs of prisoners, and ultimately it will meet its decline on the backs of our united collective determined efforts. It is what they fear the most.

The time is now. We have 30 years’ worth of evidence that shows state officials have abused their discretion by carrying forth old vendettas under the guise of gang suppression.

The so-called STG disciplinary matrix is really a method to exact punishment for things like participating in a hunger strike or talking to another prisoner or the way you criticize them in the media or the subjects you study. If you thought the articulable basis was far out there, wait until that basis is employed in conjunction with the STG disciplinary matrix.

In other words, the matrix is a cheap way to exact punishment for your thoughts in a way that justifies your continued involvement in STG activities.

So while we find all manner of excuses to avoid acting, and while we lie in the corner and pretend it’s somebody else’s problem, ultimately we must drag ourselves to act. This is our problem. The martyrs of yesterday are not here.

For decades folks would spout about what prisoners needed to do, when they thought the divisions were insurmountable. Well, our reps have done that so stop the happy-happy-feel-good talk and drag yourself to the table. What can you contribute? How can you support the effort? Those are the only questions that ought to be asked.

We can either die quietly, paving the way for future generations to endure this crap, or we can do something about it. We have absolutely nothing to lose. “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass

The time is now. We have 30 years’ worth of evidence that shows state officials have abused their discretion by carrying forth old vendettas under the guise of gang suppression.

Prisoners are well within their human rights to demand an end to state-sanctioned torture. Now is not the time to be intimidated into silence. If the courts will not act to protect our constitutional rights or provide us with the full panoply of constitutional protections when a so-called validation brings a wide array of punishments yet the prisoner hasn’t broken any rules, then it’s our duty to act. This crap has lasted this long because as a class we accepted it.

The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) rose to its zenith on the backs of prisoners, and ultimately it will meet its decline on the backs of our united collective determined efforts. It is what they fear the most.

The SDP is a hoax. It simply rehashes old failed policies. Our reps have put forth the correct solution that incorporates an experienced, comprehensive approach towards an end to long-term solitary confinement. It’s worth reiterating the reps issued the Pelican Bay Human Rights Modern Management Control Unit (MMCU), a counter proposal to the STG strategy published in the April 2012 Bay View.

Send our brothers some love and light: Dadisi Kambon (Lorenzo Benton), B-85066, PBSP SHU, D2-101L, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532-7500; Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa (Ronnie N. Dewberry), C-35671, PBSP SHU, D1-117L, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532-7500; Abdul Olugbala Shakur (James Harvey), C-48884, PBSP SHU, D1-119L, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532-7500; Sondai Dumisani (Randall Ellis), C-68764, PBSP SHU, D1-223L, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532-7500; Mutope Duguma (James Crawford), D-05596, PBSP SHU, D1-117U, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532-7500; Abasi Ganda (Clyde Jackson), C-33559, PBSP SHU, D2-107L, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532-7500. This statement was transcribed by Adrian McKinney.

by Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa

French translation by Marceline Nduwamungu follows.

Paul Kagame has been touring top American universities giving speeches deceiving unsuspecting students and uncaring top brass at these academic institutions about what he calls accomplishments of his reign: peace, human rights, democracy, development etc. This is vintage Kagame. He has the whole Rwandan population under lock and key, assassinates and imprisons dissenting voices, and then goes to the land of his benefactors to taunt the West as if to say, “I do what I want; you can go to hell!”

President Kagame basks in the glory of an honorary doctorate in humane letters from William Penn University, but on the way to the ceremony, his motorcade passed a noisy protest – Rwandans, Burundians and Congolese chanting, “Kagame criminal!”

Other than his love of million-dollar-a-trip luxury travel – money that ends up in his private pockets because he rents the private jets bought on public money to the Rwandan state – and expensive $20,000-a-night hotel rooms and an opportunity to visit his children studying here in the USA, Kagame seems to be thrilled to receive honorary doctorates and rub shoulders with academics. For a man who never stepped in a university out of indiscipline and not lack of intelligence, has he discovered that universities are useful centers of learning, contributing to human progress?

Universities have historically been places where intellectual freedom, openness and innovation have been nurtured. It is then ironic that Kagame, the enemy of freedom and openness in Rwanda, would be welcomed to Harvard, Tufts, MIT, Brandeis and Stanford to extol the same values that he lacks and fights. He should be grateful to Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Michael Porter, Rick Warren, Michael Fairbanks and other hired mercenaries whose greased hands can return favors that enable dictator Kagame to hobnob with academics who do not care about the plight of Africans.

Of late, Kagame has not been received with fervor at the U.S. State Department and the White House. He must be secretly lamenting that. Universities provide an alternative opportunity to be around here and to continue his campaign of deceptions and denials. On this particular trip, he seems to be indirectly telling his strongest supporter, the United States, that he will change the Constitution and run for as long as he wants, and nobody will stop him.

Universities have historically been places where intellectual freedom, openness and innovation have been nurtured. It is then ironic that Kagame, the enemy of freedom and openness in Rwanda, would be welcomed to Harvard, Tufts, MIT, Brandeis and Stanford to extol the same values that he lacks and fights.

Nobody should ever not take Kagame’s threats seriously. He has killed and waged wars with impunity.

He is fond of saying privately that the West and the so-called international community lack the interest and will to stop him from doing what he wants.

He is right in this regard but wrong in another sense. Rwandans have the interest and will to stop and reverse the effects of his murderous madness.

Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa

And when that happens, and Kagame survives the coming change in Rwanda, Tufts, Harvard, Brandeis, MIT and Stanford should perhaps crown him with a tenured professorship of dictatorship. After all, he has stolen enough money to offer generous endowments to these otherwise prestigious but heavily commercialized institutions.

Shame on you Tufts, Harvard, MIT, Brandeis and Stanford!

Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa is an alumnus of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, former ambassador of Rwanda to the United States, chief of staff to President Paul Kagame and secretary general of the ruling party, Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). His latest book is “Healing a Nation: A Testimony: Waging and Winning a Peaceful Revolution to Unite and Heal a Broken Rwanda.” He can be reached at ngombwa@gmail.com.

L’offensive de charme de Kagame dans les universités américaines

par Dr. Théogène Rudasingwa

Paul Kagame sillonne les universités américaines dans lesquelles il prononce des discours à des étudiants non avertis et un public indifférent sur ce qu’il appelle les réalisations de son règne : la paix, les droits de l’Homme, la démocratie, le développement, etc. Ça, c’est Kagame tout craché. Il maintient la population rwandaise sous les verrous, il assassine, il emprisonne toute voix dissonante et s’en va dans le pays de ses bienfaiteurs pour narguer l’Occident en disant « je fais ce que je veux, allez vous faire foutre ».

Le Président Kagame baigne dans la gloire d’un doctorat honorifique en Lettres de l’Université William Penn, mais sur le chemin de la cérémonie, son convoi est passé devant une manifestation bruyante : des rwandais, des burundais et des congolais scandaient « Kagame, criminel »

Outre ses amours pour les voyages se chiffrant en million de dollars – argent qui finit dans ses poches puisqu’il loue ses jets privés avec les fonds publics – et des chambres d’hôtel de 20.000 dollars par nuitée et une opportunité de rendre visite à ses enfants qui étudient aux USA, Kagame semble ravi de recevoir des doctorats honoris causa et donner des accolades aux académiciens. Pour un homme qui n’a jamais foulé les portes d’une université plus par indiscipline que par manque de capacité intellectuelle, vient-il seulement de découvrir que les universités sont des centres du savoir, qui contribuent au développement humain ?

Historiquement, les universités sont des lieux où la liberté intellectuelle, l’ouverture d’esprit et l’innovation sont développées. N’est-il donc pas ironique de voir Kagame, l’ennemi de la liberté et d’ouverture au Rwanda d’être invité par les universités comme Harvard, Tufts, MIT, Brandeis et Stanford afin d’exalter les mêmes valeurs qui lui font défaut et qu’il déteste le plus ? Il devrait être reconnaissant envers Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Michael Porter, Rick Warren, Michael Fairbanks et d’autres mercenaires dont il graisse les pattes et qui renvoient l’ascenseur en permettant au dictateur Kagame de fréquenter les académiciens qui se soucient le moins du monde du sort des Africains.

Il y a quelque temps, Kagame n’a pas été reçu avec ferveur au Département d’Etat américain et à la Maison Blanche. Il doit secrètement ruminer cela. Dès lors, les universités sont une autre alternative lui permettant d’être présent aux USA et de continuer sa campagne de déceptions et de dénégations. Lors de cette visite-ci, il a l’air de dire indirectement à son plus grand supporteur que sont les Etats-Unis, qu’il va changer la Constitution et briguer autant de mandats qu’il voudra et que personne ne l’en empêchera.

Historiquement, les universités sont des lieux où la liberté intellectuelle, l’ouverture d’esprit et l’innovation sont développées. N’est-il donc pas ironique de voir Kagame, l’ennemi de la liberté et d’ouverture au Rwanda d’être invité par les universités comme Harvard, Tufts, MIT, Brandeis et Stanford afin d’exalter les mêmes valeurs qui lui font défaut et qu’il déteste le plus ?

Personne ne doit ne pas prendre les menaces de Kagame au sérieux. Il a tué et déclenché des guerres en toute impunité. En privé, il aime dire que l’Occident et la soi-disante « Communauté internationale » ne sont pas dignes d’intérêt et ne l’empêcheront pas de faire ce qu’il a envie de faire. Il a raison d’une part et tort d’autre part. Les Rwandais sont dignes d’intérêt et arrêteront et inverseront sa folie meurtrière.

Et quand cela arrivera et que Kagame survivra au changement qui se prépare au Rwanda, Tufts, Harvard, Brandeis, MIT et Stanford devront peut-être le couronner d’un poste de professeur en dictature. Après tout, il a détourné assez d’argent qui lui permettra de faire de généreuses donations à ces institutions par ailleurs prestigieuses mais largement commerciales.

Honte à vous Tufts, Harvard, MIT, Brandeis and Stanford!

Dr Théogène Rudasingwa est un ancien élève de l’École Fletcher de l’Université Tufts, ancien ambassadeur du Rwanda aux États-Unis, chef de cabinet du président Paul Kagame et le secrétaire général du parti au pouvoir, le Front patriotique rwandais (FPR). Son dernier livre s’intitule « Healing a Nation: A Testimony: Waging and Winning a Peaceful Revolution to Unite and Heal a Broken Rwanda ». Il peut être joint à ngombwa@gmail.com. 

by Seth Donnelly

During my last trip to Haiti this June with a delegation of students and human rights observers, we were exposed to the raw violence of the ongoing forced dispersal of the poor. On May 31, the Martelly regime intensified a process – in the name of “eminent domain” – of violently evicting the poor from their homes in downtown Port-au-Prince and then physically destroying their homes and businesses.

In downtown Port-au-Prince, the Martelly regime has been destroying homes of the poor in the name of “eminent domain.” – Photo: Seth Donnelly

We met with a group of men and women who had been subjected to this violence and we filmed their extensive testimony. They spoke of SWAT police and bulldozers coming at night, of having only 10 minutes to flee their homes, then witnessing the destruction of everything they had.

These survivors came to us with tears, anger and backpacks full of the only possessions they had left. They spoke of having to sleep in parks or on roofs, of children being put out on the street, of vulnerability to infection and ongoing harassment by the government.

One man, speaking on behalf of the Representatives of the Citizens of Centre-Ville Against Forced Displacement, stated that more than 62,000 people had lost their homes in downtown Port-au-Prince since May 31. The Martelly regime has not provided compensation and humane, alternative housing – in clear violation of the Haitian Constitution.

Indeed, official sources acknowledge that 400 properties have been destroyed, but only 17 people compensated.[i] Clearly, this grossly underestimates the numbers of people rendered homeless since legally registered pieces of property may actually consist of multiple dwellings of the poor with dozens of people living within them.

Secretary of State Planning Michel Presume stated earlier in the spring that the Martelly regime had taken all the necessary steps to compensate “the owners.” “We deposited this money in a deposit account. Owners have just to appear with their original titles, so they can receive from the Expropriation Committee the value of their land or their homes in accordance with the evaluation criteria for buildings.”[ii] Undoubtedly, the problem with this compensation formula is that it does not take into account the thousands of people dispossessed of their homes who were tenants, not owners.

Accompanied by a Haitian human rights journalist, we visited the areas of downtown that had been subjected to these demolitions; we saw massive destruction spanning blocks and blocks, including half of the General Hospital. We saw a bulldozer still at work and Haitians standing around the rubble, perhaps some still in shock, as if another earthquake had hit.

The initial eminent domain decree for the downtown was issued by President Preval in 2010, then repealed and re-issued (with some modifications) by Martelly. Ostensibly, the goal is to rebuild the administrative center of the city, but Martelly has also stated that he welcomes the involvement of “entrepreneurs” and the private sector.

One man, speaking on behalf of the Representatives of the Citizens of Centre-Ville Against Forced Displacement, stated that more than 62,000 people had lost their homes in downtown Port-au-Prince since May 31. The Martelly regime has not provided compensation and humane, alternative housing – in clear violation of the Haitian Constitution.

Secretary of State Planning Presume stated that “the State has a budget of about 150 million U.S. dollars (for the construction of the administrative city) from several sources: Petrocaribe, Treasury and Fund of the Cancellation of Haiti’s Debt.”.[iii]

The people who shared their testimony with us blamed Martelly for their dispossession and current misery. According to these Haitians, the eminent domain project involves not just the reconstruction of the administrative center, but the transformation of the downtown into an upscale, commercial zone. Further investigation is required to determine other facets of this plan and sources of funding and investment involved, particularly those by the “private sector” welcomed by Martelly.

Where will the poor go? Where have so many tent city dwellers already gone? The Martelly regime has dismantled most of the tent cities through stick-and-carrot methods: Many families have received a one-time payment of $500 to relocate while others have been violently evicted from the camps.

The $500 payment is notoriously inadequate given the spike in land and housing prices and rents, a “market reaction” in large part to so many rich foreigners now living in Port-au-Prince as part of the NGO-U.N. network. Moreover, the price of rice – now “Made in the USA” – has increased dramatically in recent years, perhaps as much as 500 percent, further rendering this $500 aid package paltry.

Port-au-Prince never looked like this before. Where the homes of the poor are destroyed, highrises for the rich are rising. – Photo: Dieu Nalio Chery, AP

We gained a sense of where so many desperate people are relocating when we visited Canara, a “city” of approximately 200,000 people seeking to eke out an existence in the arid, “dust bowl” hills in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Out of sight, out of mind – that is, for the foreign tourists and Haitian bourgeoisie who stay at the new Oasis hotel or who perhaps will shop soon in downtown Port-au-Prince.

The people of Canara do not have any meaningful access to water, electricity, education, healthcare, food and employment, let alone even the cement and cinder blocks to complete many of their houses. People are forced to walk or travel considerable distances just to pay for water, food and other supplies, if they have the money.

And yet, while we were meeting with an older Haitian woman about a water cistern project our team is funding in her community of Canara, we heard machinery – a bulldozer and truck – at work. After the meeting, we walked about 50 feet behind her dwelling and discovered that they were digging out a vast canyon, extracting truck-loads upon truckloads of rock and sand to be sold elsewhere, reportedly for the profits of a private company.

She came to the edge of the canyon and yelled down to the workers not to dig any closer to her home. While she lacked the sand, rock and cement to build a simple water cistern for her community, an apparently private company poached these resources for free in order to sell to those who could better afford the “market rate.”

The people of Canara do not have any meaningful access to water, electricity, education, healthcare, food and employment, let alone even the cement and cinder blocks to complete many of their houses.

On June 19, perhaps as the bulldozers were still clearing the rubble of people’s homes in downtown Port-au-Prince, Bill Clinton received the “Lifetime Achievement Award” for his work in Haiti from the Happy Hearts Fund in the NYC Cipriani Restaurant. The award ceremony was led by Petra Nemcova, a super model who runs the foundation and who is the girlfriend of current Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe.

Also in the audience was Haitian President Michel Martelly, who received an award for his “leadership in education.” Outside of the lavish restaurant, a group of Haitian activists and their allies protested the ceremony, chanting, “Clinton, where is the money for reconstruction?”[iv]

The timing of these awards is particularly absurd. According to the news website Tout Haiti, earlier this April, two prominent lawyers have petitioned Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes to demand an audit of Bill Clinton’s management of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC). A federal audit, conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and released on Oct. 9, 2013, raised major concerns about the USAID’s recent work in Haiti, particularly on Clinton-backed projects.[v]

But there is a deeper issue than alleged missing funds, mismanagement and shoddy, incomplete aid projects. The deeper issue is Clinton’s agenda for “development” in Haiti: a strategy that is not really healthy development at all, but rather mal-development in the service of corporate exploitation of the country’s resources and people.

Expanding this corporate-driven mal-development was a central agenda for Clinton in the 1990s, just as it is for the Obama administration today.

As president, Clinton pushed this strategy when he pressured the Haitian government to open up its economy to U.S.-subsidized, big business rice exports, thereby driving many Haitian rice farmers out of business and crippling Haiti’s domestic rice industry.[vi] Though Clinton publicly apologized for this “trade policy,” he has been pursuing a similar corporate strategy through his handling of “aid” as head of the Clinton Foundation and the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) since the 2010 earthquake.[vii]

In the wasteland called Canara, where hundreds of thousands of Haitians have been forced to relocate since the 2010 earthquake, a nonprofit aid worker points out the location of a water well the group plans to drill.

He has been a vigorous supporter of the new Caracol Industrial Park, funded in large part by USAID. The “park” consists of garment sweatshops, offering substandard, unlivable wages. This has been a boon to companies that can have clothing assembled in Haiti by workers receiving near-slave wages, then sold in the U.S. without having to pay any customs.[viii] However, as investigative reporter Jonathan Katz notes, the “park” has not been such a boon to the local Haitians:

“But less than a year after Caracol Industrial Park’s gala opening – with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Sean Penn, designer Donna Karan and Haiti’s current and former presidents among the guests – the feeling these days is disappointment. Hundreds of smallholder farmers were coaxed into giving up more than 600 acres of land for the complex, yet nearly 95 percent of that land remains unused.

A much-needed power plant was completed on the site, supplying the town with more electricity than ever, but locals say surges of wastewater have caused floods and spoiled crops.

“Most critically, fewer than 1,500 jobs have been created – paying too little, the locals say, and offering no job security. ‘We thought there was going to be some benefit for us,’ says Ludwidge Fountain, 34 … He worked for two months at the park as a guard, taking home about $3.40 a day, until his contract ran out. ‘Maybe it’s good for some of the people inside the park. Everyone else got nothing.’”[ix]

Likewise, Bill Clinton has funneled aid money to establish a business venture between Coca-Cola and local mango farmers, using existing mango groves and using land for new groves to produce exports for Coca-Cola and its “Haiti Hope” project (an Odwalla drink). About the project, Clinton stated:

“The Coca‑Cola Co. responded to Haiti’s urgent immediate needs with financial support and beverages. The Haiti Hope Project goes a step further and exemplifies the innovative role that partnerships with the private sector can play in the reconstruction of Haiti.”[x]

According to Coca-Cola’s website, $9.5 million has been raised since 2010 to launch this project in a public-private partnership. Coca-Cola claims to have 19,000 mango farmers “enrolled” in the project, frequently organized into co-ops, and that half of these farmers are women.

Moreover, Coca-Cola claims that 10 cents on every bottle of “Odwalla Mango Tango Smoothie” purchased will go back to “Haiti Hope.”[xi] The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund gave a grant of more than $500,000 to the project.[xii] Projects such as this do not advance Haiti’s vital need for food security, but instead tether the well-being of Haitian farmers to the fickle tastes of more affluent, primarily “First World” consumers.

Bill Clinton has been a vigorous supporter of the new Caracol Industrial Park, funded in large part by USAID. The “park” consists of garment sweatshops, offering substandard, unlivable wages.

The Clinton Foundation is also funding similar agricultural “supply chain” projects involving peanut and coffee farmers. The foundation claims to be assisting these farmers by funding the construction of regional depots, providing marketing and technical assistance, as well as linking the farmers to buyers elsewhere, such as the Four Season Restaurant chain.[xiii]

As with the Coca-Cola Project, this “market-driven” and export-led approach to agricultural development fails to directly address Haiti’s vital need for domestic food production and security. While Haitians produce more coffee, peanuts and mangos for export, they remain dependent upon overpriced U.S. corporate food imports while growing tracts of their land are being leased off to “foreign investors” for “industrial parks” and tourist sites.

Then there is the infamous Oasis Hotel in Port-au-Prince, a huge, elite structure built to court rich tourists and foreign investors. It is “awkwardly” close to the houses and shacks of the poor that lack decent sanitation, plumbing and electricity. The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund allocated $2 million in “aid” to construct this hotel.[xiv] Clinton is likewise allocating more foundation aid into the construction of new Marriott Hotel.

Haitian women work for slave wages in a Caracol Industrial Park sweatshop. – Photo: Swoan Parker, Reuters

Tourism, sweatshops and export-agriculture – these are integral components of Clinton’s vision for Haiti. Undoubtedly, some of this “development” will require the coercive dispersal of the rural poor who occupy land that will be turned into “free trade zones” and of the urban poor who occupy space – either in tent cities or popular neighborhoods – slated for tourist projects and up-scale commercial zones.

And what of Martelly, the other award recipient? Has he doubled the rate of Haitian children going to school, as claimed in the Happy Heart Fund ceremony?

This claim is patently false, according to Haitian grassroots educators who we interviewed. Martelly pledged to provide payments to schools on a per pupil basis, but this funding reportedly only covers a fraction of all pupils and, to date, has not even been received by schools for this past school year.

Many teachers have not been paid in months, resulting in the recent, widespread teacher and student protests. Apparently, super model Petra Nemcova was unaware of these basic, easily verifiable realities on the ground in Haiti when she awarded Martelly.

Martelly came to power in 2011 through sham elections – what many Haitians call “selections” – because the largest political and most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, the party of the poor majority, was excluded from participation. Only 22 percent or less of the electorate bothered to vote and, of that fraction, Martelly received the winning fraction.

This was reportedly the worst voter turnout in the Americas since 1947.[xv]

The Obama administration financed the selections, including legislative positions, to the tune of at least $14 million.[xvi] Moreover, the administration exerted considerable pressure, including threats to cut off aid to Haiti, in order to insure that Martelly was included in the run-off elections, even though he technically placed third in the first round.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Haiti and personally intervened to help push Martelly into power.[xvii] Martelly, himself a very wealthy entertainer, spent considerable sums of his own fortune to leverage his “victory” – the equivalent of $15 billion in the U.S. Martelly’s Duvalierist ties in Haiti and his far right connections abroad have been well-documented by reporter and historian Greg Grandin, among others.[xviii]

Martelly came to power in 2011 through sham elections – what many Haitians call “selections” – because the largest political and most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, the party of the poor majority, was excluded from participation.

Predictably, since coming to power, Martelly has been rebuilding the Duvalierist system, in which the elite get rich in ventures with foreign interests – e.g. Clinton – while the poor majority is further marginalized, immiserated and increasingly subjected to selective repression. Martelly has attempted to rebuild the dreaded Haitian army[xix], he has integrated Duvalierist elements into his regime, and he has established a supportive, friendly environment for “Baby Doc” Duvalier now back in Haiti.[xx]

Grassroots activists of the poor reported to our team that they are experiencing threats on their lives by a growing network of repressive agents. The Martelly regime has postponed legislative elective and mayoral elections, with Martelly instead selecting many mayors across the country, including in Port-au-Prince.

Proud of his “development” of an export economy – raising food for the world but none for the Haitian people – Bill Clinton visits a peanut plantation on Haiti’s central plateau on June 29, 2014. – Photo: AFP

A high-level judge who was calling for an investigation into Martelly and his family for corruption mysteriously died several days after meeting with and reportedly being verbally attacked by Martelly and Prime Minister Lamothe. Many Haitians suspect death by poisoning.[xxi]

In ostentatious displays of their wealth, Martelly and his family are well known for their extensive travels abroad and lavish life styles. He is an excellent junior partner for Bill Clinton and the Obama administration.

The people in downtown Port-au-Prince whose homes and businesses have been destroyed are demanding justice and reparations. They have just experienced another earthquake and they are clear that this one is human-made, in the service of “economic development” that discards the poor.

Now is the time to join our voices with theirs in demanding justice and reparations. Now is the time to join our voices with those of Haitian grassroots activists in the Lavalas Movement struggling courageously for the restoration of democracy in Haiti.

[i] Personal communication.

[ii] Haiti Libre, “Haiti-Reconstruction: the Demolition of the Area of Public Utility.”

[iii] Haiti Libre, “Haiti-Reconstruction: Expropriation, No Title, No Compensation.”

Also, for a 2012 projected breakdown of funding for the particular components of the “administrative center” project, see www.skyscrapercity.co, “Haiti-Reconstruction: the New Haiti Is Emerging.”

[iv] For a more in-depth discussion of this event and the protest, see Dunkel, “Haiti: Bill Clinton Receives ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ But Where Is the Money for Reconstruction?”

[v] The GAO’s report is available at http://www.gao.gov/products/gao-14-47t.

[vi] See Katz, “With Cheap Food Imports, Haiti Can’t Feed Itself”.

[vii] See his filmed apology on “Democracy Now,” April 1, 2010.

[viii] For excellent coverage, see Edmonds, “Sweatshops Over Homes.”

[ix] Katz, “A Glittering Industrial Park in Haiti Falls Short.”

[x] “Coca Cola Scheme Brings Hope to Haiti”

[xi] See Moye, “Hope in Haiti: Why Job Creation and Economic Development Will Drive Nation’s Recovery.”

[xii] See the “Haiti Hope Project” fact sheet on Clinton Bush Haiti Fund website.

[xiii] See official website for the Clinton Foundation.

[xiv] For a detailed examination of this “aid” project, see Wilentz, “Letter from Haiti: Life in the Ruins.”

[xv] For a summary of the many problems with these “selections,” see Weisbrot, “Haiti Election: a Travesty of Democracy” and IJDH, “The United States Should Support Fair and Inclusive Elections in Haiti.”

[xvi] Beeton, “Haiti’s Elections: Parties Banned, Media Yawns.” The $14 million figure refers to U.S. funding of the initial round of presidential and legislative elections in November 2010. Undoubtedly, the U.S. pumped in more money to finance the run-off elections in the spring of 2011, since the U.S. was vigorously pushing for Martelly’s inclusion in the run-offs.

[xvii] Grandin, “Martelly: Haiti’s Second Great Disaster.”

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] The Economist, “Haiti’s Army: Who Needs Them?”

[xx] CEPRI, “Former Dictator Lives the Good Life.”

[xxi] Geffrard, “Haiti: Political Assassination?”

Seth Donnelly is a member of the Haiti Action Committee and a Bay Area high school teacher. He regularly travels to and works in Haiti. He can be reached at Seth.Donnelly@mvla.net.

Open letter from the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) regarding the Sept. 15 U.S. Congressional letter addressed to the Haiti Senate urging it to clear the path for another round of mock elections in Haiti

Haiti is under U.S. occupation behind U.N. proxy guns and the charity industry (NGO) shadow government.

On Dec. 10, 2010, dozens of Haitians demonstrated alongside progressive allies in front of the United Nations General Headquarters in New York to demand the annulment of Haiti’s Nov. 28 sham elections, the removal of the current Provisional Electoral Council, and the immediate withdrawal of the 13,000 U.N. occupation soldiers. These troops, misnamed a “peacekeeping force,” have occupied Haiti since 2004, when a U.S.-backed coup removed Jean Bertrand-Aristide, the democratically elected president.

There is no democracy for the people of Haiti. Haiti has no friends in the United States Congress. If it did, these Congressional delegates would be writing to John Kerry to ask the Obama administration to support human rights for the U.N. cholera victims and to put an end to the play acting of democracy that has been going on, with fictitious elections, ever since the United States started its direct occupation of Haiti by disenfranchising 10 million Haiti voters on Feb. 29, 2004.

Where was the cry for respect for elections when the U.S. Special Forces kidnapped former President Aristide out of Haiti? Where were these “friends” when Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Kofi Annan covered up the military invasion by the U.S., France and Canada with an illegal Chapter 7 U.N. interim multinational force and then with MINUSTAH?

Elections in Haiti have been a sham since 2004, with the largest, most powerful political party in Haiti – Fanmi Lavalas – forbidden to participate. Where have the voices of these “friends” been?

Here’s what Ezili’s HLLN suggests Haiti Senators do with this Sept. 15 Congressional letter from the United States “friends of Haiti.” Have a press conference and, in plain sight of cameras, do what Desalin did to the tri-colored French flag. Tear it up.

The people of Haiti do not want sham elections that will help pave the way for the ratification of Bill Clinton’s FDR-type amendments to the Haiti Constitution to more easily allow for the plunder and privatization of Haiti ports, lands, national resources and offshore islands.

The people of Haiti are LOUDLY and most democratically asking for an END to the U.S. occupation of Haiti behind U.N. guns. An END to the puppet Martelly-Lamothe government and the NGO invasion. They demand a STOP to the plunder of Haiti offshore islands and national resources; release of the political prisoners, including Enol Florestal, Sister Dona Belizaire and Jean Lamy Maltunes; and that the Clinton-Korean sweatshop workers are duly paid all the meager wages they’ve earned, not just a third of those wages.

The people of Haiti ask for the U.N. soldiers, aid workers and missionaries to STOP raping and abusing Haiti children and women. For the U.S. government to stop trying to persecute former President Jean Bertrand Aristide. And finally, we demand, most precisely and urgently, that the NGOs and USAID go home.

The people of Haiti ask for the U.N. soldiers, aid workers and missionaries to STOP raping and abusing Haiti children and women. For the U.S. government to stop trying to persecute former President Jean Bertrand Aristide. And finally, we demand, most precisely and urgently, that the NGOs and USAID go home.

Haiti doesn’t need this U.S. play acting of liberty that’s called “elections,” which, in reality, legitimizes silencing the masses. Martelly-Lamothe represent dictatorship, not democracy. The Haitian people are fully aware of this despite the foreign propaganda.

Haiti needs human rights as defined in national and international laws. This means the right to life, to an adequate standard of living, to safe, not Monsanto or Arkansas food. To fair, not unfair trade or a plantation economy (neoliberal economics).

Free Haiti demands the right to live in Haiti without the U.N., the international institutions, the aid workers or the missionaries’ cultural, political or economic interference or their various tortures, rapes, eugenics medicines or any of their cruel, inhuman or degrading containment-in-poverty death and destruction programs.

Signed Sept. 17, 2014: Ezili Dantò, HLLN and the Free Haiti Movement

Editor’s note: A Miami Herald article, “U.S. lawmakers to Haiti Senate: Vote for election law,” has apparently been removed from the Herald website but is reposted by HaitianTruth.org.

Ezili Dantò, award winning playwright, performance poet, dancer, actor and activist attorney born in Port au Prince, Haiti, founded and chairs the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN), supporting and working cooperatively with Haitian freedom fighters and grassroots organizations promoting the civil, human and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad. Visit her at www.ezilidanto.com, www.open.salon.com/blog/ezili_danto and on Facebook.

by Ann Garrison

KPFA Weekend News for Oct. 11, 2014

French translation follows

A new BBC documentary challenges the world’s most basic beliefs about the Rwandan Genocide.

Transcript

KPFA Weekend News Anchor Sharon Sobotta: Last week, a new BBC documentary titled “Rwanda: The Untold Story” upended the world’s basic beliefs about what really happened during the Rwandan war and genocide of the 1990s.

Most of the world knows the Rwandan Genocide as the story told in the Hollywood film “Hotel Rwanda.” The new BBC documentary tells a radically different story.

The history that the documentary challenges is not legally enforced in the United States, as it is in Rwanda, but it is ideologically central to U.S. foreign policy. The bombing of both Libya and Syria were prefaced by U.S. officials’ urgent warnings that we must “stop the next Rwanda.” KPFA’s Ann Garrison filed this report.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: With “Rwanda: The Untold Story,” the BBC became the first media outlet of its size and influence to radically challenge the received history of the Rwandan Genocide, which has become such a centerpiece of U.S. and NATO interventionist policies.

The documentary opens with the question it attempts to answer.

“BBC Host Jane Corbin: Rwanda, a country dominated by its dark history. The senseless barbarity of the genocide still shocks us. We think we know the story, but do we?

“Alan Stam: What the world believes and what actually happened are quite different.

“BBC: Rwanda’s ruled by President Kagame, regarded by many as the savior of his country. But what kind of man is Paul Kagame?

“Kayumba Nyamwasa: We have a dictator. We have a man who is a serial killer, who enjoys killing his citizens.

“BBC: He’s a man with powerful friends.

“Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair: The president of Rwanda is someone I’ve got a lot of respect for, a lot of time for, and I think he has got a vision for the country.

“Filip Reyntjens: Their closeness is a closeness with what I call the most important war criminal in office today.

“BBC: Twenty years on from the genocide, what is the truth about Rwanda?”

University of Virginia Professor Allan Stam and University of Michigan Professor Christian Davenport spent 14 years researching what really happened in Rwanda.

KPFA: University of Michigan Professor Christian Davenport and University of Virginia Professor Allan Stam have been researching what really happened in Rwanda for 14 years. Stam told the BBC that their conclusions contradict the most basic statistics recounted in the Wikipedia and parroted by journalists for the past 20 years.

“Alan Stam: If a million people died in Rwanda, in 1994, and that’s certainly possible, there’s no way that the majority of them could be Tutsi.

“BBC: How do you know that?

“Stam: Because there weren’t enough Tutsi in the country.

“BBC: The academics calculated there had been 500,000 Tutsis before the conflict in Rwanda. Three hundred thousand survived. This led them to their final, controversial conclusion.

“Stam: If a million Rwandans died, and 200,000 of them were Tutsi, that means 800,000 of them were Hutu.

“BBC: That’s completely the opposite of what the world believes happened in the Rwandan Genocide.

“Stam: What the world believes and what actually happened are quite different.

“BBC: Estimates of the number of Tutsis and Hutus killed during the genocide vary greatly. The Rwandan government asserts there were far more Tutsi in the country to begin with, and that nearly all of those who died were Tutsis. When Stam and Davenport presented their findings, they were told to leave Rwanda, accused of being genocide deniers.

“Stam: We have never denied that a genocide happened. We don’t deny a genocide happened. But that’s only part of the story.”

KPFA: The BBC documentary only hints at U.S. and U.K. complicity in what happened – and in the cover-up – by reporting that Rwandan President Paul Kagame has very powerful friends, including Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, and by noting that the U.S. military trained Gen. Paul Kagame just before he led the 1990 invasion of Rwanda from Uganda because they noted “his military potential.”

For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison.

Oakland writer Ann Garrison contributes to the San Francisco Bay View, Counterpunch, Global Research, Colored Opinions, Black Agenda Report and Black Star News and produces radio news and features for Pacifica’s WBAI-NYC, KPFA-Berkeley and her own YouTube Channel. She can be reached at anniegarrison@gmail.com. If you want to see Ann Garrison’s independent reporting continue, please contribute on her website, anngarrison.com.

La BBC s’interroge sur ce qui s’est réellement passé au Rwanda avant et après 1994

French translation by Marcelline Nduwamungu

Le journal du week-end de KPFA, 11 octobre 2014

Un nouveau documentaire de la BBC met les pieds dans le plat de l’histoire officielle du génocide rwandais

Retranscription

Le journaliste de KPFA Weekend Sharon Sobotta: La semaine dernière, un nouveau documentaire de la BBC intitule “Rwanda, l’histoire non contée” a mis les pieds dans le plat de l’histoire communément admise de ce qui s’est réellement passé au Rwanda pendant la guerre et le génocide des années 90.

Presque le monde entier connait l’histoire du génocide rwandais à travers le film hollywoodien “Hotel Rwanda”. Le nouveau documentaire de la BBC raconte une histoire radicalement différente.

L’histoire que le documentaire remet en question n’est pas légalement reconnue aux États-Unis, comme elle l’est au Rwanda, mais elle est le moteur idéologique de la politique étrangère des Etats-Unis. Les décisions de bombarder la Libye et la Syrie ont toujours été précédées par des sommations urgentes selon lesquelles nous devons « éviter un autre Rwanda ». Ann Garrison de KPFA a compilé ce reportage.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Avec le documentaire « Rwanda, l’histoire non contée », la BBC a été le premier media de sa taille et d’influence à remettre en question l’histoire officielle sur le génocide rwandais, laquelle histoire était devenue la pièce maîtresse des politiques interventionnistes des Etats-Unis et de l’Otan.

Le documentaire débute par la question à laquelle il tente de trouver une réponse.

Jane Corbin, présentatrice de la BBC: Rwanda, un pays dominé par son passé sombre. La barbarie insensée du génocide nous choque encore. Nous pensons connaître l’histoire, mais la connaissons-nous ?

Alan Stam: Ce que croit savoir le monde entier et ce qui s’est réellement passé sont deux choses totalement différentes.

BBC: Le Rwanda est dirigé par le Président Kagame, considéré par tout un chacun comme le sauveur de son pays. Mais qui est réellement Paul Kagame ?

Kayumba Nyamwasa: Nous avons un dictateur. Nous avons un homme qui est un tueur en série, qui aime tuer les citoyens de son pays.

BBC: C’est un home entouré d’amis influents.

Tony Blair, l’ancien premier ministre britannique: Le Président du Rwanda est quelqu’un dont j’ai beaucoup de respect, à qui je consacre beaucoup de temps et je pense qu’il est un homme visionnaire pour son pays.

Filip Reyntjens: Leur rapprochement est un rapprochement avec quelqu’un que je qualifie de plus grand criminel en exercice aujourd’hui.

BBC: Vingt ans se sont écoulés depuis le génocide, quelle est la vérité sur le Rwanda ?

KPFA: Professeur Christian Davenport de l’Université de Michigan et Pr Allan Stam de l’Université de Virginie conduisent des recherches sur ce qui s’est réellement passé au Rwanda depuis plus de 14 ans. Stam a révélé à la BBC que les résultats de leurs recherches sont en totale contradiction avec les chiffres présentés dans Wikipedia et ressassés par des journalistes depuis une vingtaine d’années.

Alan Stam: Si un million de personnes sont mortes au Rwanda en 1994, et cela est certainement possible, la majorité d’entre elles ne saurait être des Tutsi.

BBC: Comment pouvez-vous avancer cela?

Stam: Parce qu’il n’y avait pas autant de Tutsi dans le pays.

BBC: Les universitaires estimaient à 500.000 le nombre de Tutsi vivant au Rwanda avant le conflit. Trois cent mille ont survécu. Ceci les a conduits à la conclusion finale et controversée.

Stam: Si un million de rwandais sont morts, que 200.000 d’entre eux étaient Tutsi, cela veut dire que les 800.000 restants étaient Hutu.

BBC: C’est exactement le contraire de ce à quoi le monde croit quand on évoque le génocide rwandais.

Stam: Ce en quoi le monde croit et ce qui s’est réellement passé sont deux choses totalement différentes.

BBC: Les estimations du nombre de Tutsi et de Hutu tués pendant le génocide varient considérablement. Pour commencer, le gouvernement rwandais avance qu’il y avait plus de Tutsi dans le pays et que presque tous ceux qui sont morts étaient Tutsi. Quand Stam et Davenport ont présenté les résultats de leurs recherches, ils ont été priés de quitter le pays, étant accusés d’être des négationnistes du génocide.

Stam: Nous n’avons jamais nié l’existence du génocide. Nous ne nions pas qu’un génocide s’est produit. Mais c’est une partie de toute l’histoire.

KPFA: Le documentaire de la BBC fait seulement allusion à la complicité des Etats-Unis et du Royaume Uni dans ce qui s’est passé et dans la même veine, dit que le président rwandais Paul Kagame a des amis influents, dont Tony Blair et Bill Clinton ;et en souligne en passant que l’armée américaine a entraîné Paul Kagame, juste avant l’invasion du Rwanda à partir de l’Uganda en 1990, parce qu’ils avaient reconnu en lui « son potentiel militaire ».

Pour Pacifica, KPFA et AfrobeatRadio, vous étiez avec Ann Garrison.

by Mutope Duguma

In 1619, the first Africans were brought to North America by force to be slaves. From 1619 to 1776, this brutal chattel slave system was able to flourish in the 13 British colonies. From 1776, the United States government would take over the reins of this land, including its brutal slave system. From 1776 to 1865, while declaring its independence from its mother country, Great Britain, on July 4, 1776, the U.S. nevertheless held onto all of its evil practices.

A youngster sentenced under vagrancy laws, once known as the Black Codes, is punished in a forced labor camp in Georgia around 1932. – Photo: John Spivak

The so-called Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 would end slavery as we know it. At the end of the Civil War in 1865, these so-called freed slaves would be subjugated by a new system of exclusion and exploitation under the Black Codes. Instituted by the slave states as slave codes, the Black Codes effectively re-enslaved Black people identified as vagrants, replacing their freedom with forced labor.

After the brief period of Black involvement in government known as Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1877, Black freedom was also denied for almost 100 more years by legalized racial segregation under the Jim Crow laws. After winning their freedom in the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history, Blacks were in many cases and places denied basic human, civil and political rights: the right to vote, the right to employment, the right to freely move about, the right to own land, the right to education, the right to decent housing, the right to adequate food and clothing, the right to a fair and just judicial system and much more, literally forcing New Afrikans back into slavery by denying them a right to life. Jim Crow segregation in one form or another was practiced nationwide.

Pattern of practice

Our Afrikan ancestors were forced to make their own way, while being denied everything and subjected to vicious racist attacks by local, state and federal government officials. The state would use vagrancy laws in order to criminalize New Afrikans because they did not have a job. Unemployment was considered a violation of state law, although the same system shut them out of the job market.

Once they were convicted under the vagrancy laws, they would be off to the penitentiary, where they would be forced back into slavery, legally, under the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. So the government was able to use its judicial proceedings in order to incarcerate thousands of New Afrikans under these vagrancy and Jim Crow laws in order to force them back into free slave labor, which was the government’s objective.

Pattern of practice

The struggle for civil rights in this country can easily define what I mean by pattern of practice. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson, but the law still passed. It was supposed to give New Afrikans citizenship and extensive civil rights for all men born in the United States, except “Native Indians.” The Enforcement Act of 1870 was passed to re-enact the Civil Rights Act of 1866 once the 14^th Amendment made its enforcement unquestionably constitutional.

Much of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 was codified into federal law as Section 1983, but its influence waned as Reconstruction ended. Then the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was passed to outlaw discrimination in public places because of race or previous servitude. But in 1883, the act was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, which stated that the 14th Amendment, the constitutional basis of the act, protected individual rights against infringement by the states, not by other individuals.

Pattern of practice

The Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1968 were basically testaments to the consistency of a resistance struggle for civil rights in this country by New Afrikans and the countless human beings who would join in this Civil and Human Rights Movement, yet the system would continue to interfere with and obstruct the human and civil rights of New Afrikans every step of the way for over 100 years. And today we are right back where we started, fighting for our human and civil rights.

Despite the decades-long fight against segregation, schools are more segregated today than when it was legal. And the little boy’s sign, saying students are treated like prisoners, describes a practice that is far more common now than it was then. – Photo: National Archives

Pattern of practice

We very well could be fighting for our human and civil rights in this country as long as the Congress – the Senate and the House of Representatives – the legislative branch of the United States government, continues to deny New Afrikans our human and civil rights indefinitely. Government intransigence forces New Afrikans to address this issue every 20 years or so. This is where the real injustices occur, speaking to the real racist application of such pattern of practice. Throughout our struggle, the Civil Rights Movement was and is of astronomical value in our Resistance Movement.

Brief historical perspective

It would be counterproductive not to mention Denmark Vesey, Martin Delaney and especially Marcus Garvey and the contributions he and the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) made toward our struggle for independence, which nationalized us as a people, because that organization would be the catalyst for many freedom movements to come.

The civil and human rights organizations were all instrumental in laying a foundation for more progressive struggles that would take center stage in our struggle to be liberated, starting with the Nation of Islam (NOI), the Black Liberation Movement (BLM), which would give life to the Black Panther Party (BPP), Republic of New Afrika (RNA), Black Liberation Army (BLA) and countless other revolutionary formations that would become the face of the struggle for Black liberation, i.e., freedom in Amerika.

We must begin to see these Sistas and Bruthas as our honorable men and women who have made sacrifices and continue to stand in struggle, while always remembering those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

The New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) would be established and our struggle continue for self-determination, enabling us to govern ourselves as a New Afrikan independent nation within the borders of Amerika. New Afrikans would attempt to mobilize our people around socio-cultural, political and economic principles that speak to our humanity as a people, bringing into focus an ideology that represents the core of our identity, life style and beliefs that’s inclusive of all humanity.

The civil and human rights organizations were all instrumental in laying a foundation for more progressive struggles that would take center stage in our struggle to be liberated.

These movements would progress until the mid-1970s , when state and federal governments made a concerted effort to stamp out all New Afrikan movements. Whether they were peaceful or radical, the government would conduct a vicious campaign, where the local, state and federal law enforcement agencies would work in conjunction to murder and incarcerate any New Afrikans who dared to fight for their basic humanity and right to self-determination.

These repressive attacks by the government jeopardized our political and ideological development as a people. The brutal suppression programs waged against our people put fear in many, and the struggle for freedom had to take a back seat. To some extent, fear took the fight out of the people.

Pattern of practice: Lost communities

This would open up the floodgates to the many street vices that would be introduced and unleashed on the New Afrikan communities: extreme poverty, drugs, alcohol, police, guns, etc., etc. – all weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, New Afrikans would move toward re-assimilation into the fabric of Amerikan society, especially the professional New Afrikans, who could provide a service that could be exploited for the interests of corporate Amerika, not the people, and many abandoned their old neighborhoods. The more economically deprived the New Afrikan community was, the more desperate it became, and it is here where all sense of community would begin to be lost – where each individual would be trying to survive at the expense of everyone else, by any means necessary.

The generations to come, from 1975 to the present, would be left to their own devices, causing many to be compromised by the very vices just spoken to.

Pattern of practice: Weapons of mass destruction

In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, PCP pills and heroin were heavily pumped into our communities; in the 1980s and 1990s, it was PCP and crack cocaine; in the mid-1980s and 1990s, guns saturated our communities – every inner city ghetto and all the other residential areas largely populated by New Afrikans. Drive-by fast-food joints saturated the community, causing mass obesity; liquor stores saturated the community, causing addiction to a legal substance; toxic chemical plants saturated the community, causing all kinds of ailments. Militarized police departments saturated – and occupied – the community, murdering our children and people with impunity.

The Black Panther Party ignited a powerful movement – here, a crowd listens to Eldridge Cleaver speak at UC Berkeley – that was quickly snuffed out through subversion, murder and the incarceration of dozens of political prisoners still locked up nearly half a century later. – Photo: Pirkle Jones

Over the years, the government declared and waged war on the New Afrikan communities: In the 1800s, it was a war on unemployed “vagrants,” where countless so-called newly freed slaves were incarcerated in order to re-enslave them under the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; in the 1970s and 1980s, it was a war on crime, and thousands of New Afrikans would be criminalized; in the 1980s and 1990s the war on drugs would be used to imprison New Afrikans at alarming rates, until 40-50 percent of the population of the prison industrial slave complex (PISC) would be New Afrikans; in the mid-1980s, 1990s and 2000s the war on gangs would be used to terrorize the New Afrikan communities, with battering rams, SWAT teams, gang injunctions, gentrification, illegal evictions and mass incarceration.

In the mid-1990s, the war on domestic terrorism would seal the fate of thousands of prisoners serving life sentences, when the then so-called first Black president, Bill Clinton, signed off on the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) that would subject thousands of poor New Afrikans to civil death.

These are all coded declarations of war on the New Afrikan people.

Pattern of practice: Economic deprivation

Government and corporate Amerika have been active participants in making sure that New Afrikans and their communities are economically deprived by refusing to keep up the property they own and control. The people who were born and raised in these communities have to watch their property values drop while they are not allowed to maintain or utilize those facilities for the interests of the community.

And when the people offer to purchase such desolate property, then the true intentions of the government and corporate owners are exposed. They attempt to hide behind some state or federal policy to explain why the property cannot be sold or given to the people to improve, or the corporate owners will attempt to place some huge, out-of-the-ordinary price on such desolate property that they have no use for, other than as an instrument to devalue the already struggling, economically deprived communities.

This is nothing but a scheme that’s been used for over a century to create poverty-stricken environments all over Amerika, especially in the New Afrikan communities.

Pattern of practice: Political prisoners

State and federal prisons hold the many New Afrikan political prisoners all over this country in solitary confinement units, where they are tortured by state and federal government workers for their political beliefs. We’re talking about the most educated of our people, kept in isolation for decades, with no end in sight for release from these state and federal torture chambers.

After more than 400 years of Black history in this country, Black children must still remind the public of their humanity.

Many have dedicated their lives to helping improve our living conditions and empowering the people to control the socio-cultural, political and economic systems that ultimately dictate their lives. We must, as fellow humans, reach back to these men and women who have sacrificed so much.

Pattern of practice: Modern day slavery

The government deliberately calculated that building its prison industrial slave complex (PISC), which is humongous, throughout the United States in strategic areas would not only provide a surplus of modern day slaves. The new system of plantations would be welcomed into many dilapidated, economically deprived white, rural communities with its promise to create jobs – at the expense of other impoverished human beings – which has been a very clever way of laundering taxpayers’ money back into white communities. We’re talking about billions of dollars, if not trillions, over a period of time.

Pattern of practice: Main culprits

Corporate Amerika works hand in hand with the United States government against the New Afrkican community by using its institutions to carry out race and class warfare, by glamorizing on the television and in movies a malignant sub-culture that was to dehumanize, devalue, degrade and desensitize New Afrikans to the rest of the world, as well as ourselves – a marketing campaign toward our genocide. There has always been an indictment against New Afrikans in the U.S. by local, state and federal goverments that is implemented through policies and laws that can be tracked easily from 1619 to today.

The politicians who are the power brokers of this nation use the Black establishment, the Asian establishment, the Latino establishment etc. as willing participants in carrying out institutionalized racist policies that have been genocidal toward humanity.

Pattern of practice: Conclusion

Mutope Duguma

We, the people, have to address corporate and institutionalized racism if we are truly about social justice. It is the only way we can attempt to achieve something in respect to ending the prevalent injustices that plague us as humans.

One love, one struggle!

Mutope Duguma

Send our brother some love and light: Mutope Duguma, s/n James Crawford, D-05996, PBSP SHU D2-107, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532.

by Mumia Abu-Jamal

In the wake of the Senate Intelligence Select Committee’s report on CIA torture of terror suspects, we are reminded how little Americans know about how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency rolls in the real world.

This is an image allegedly of a prisoner in a stress position at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The CIA paid two psychologists $80 million to develop “enhanced interrogation techniques” like this. – Photo: AP

Predictably, the 500 page summary (of a 6,700 page report) erupted into a political and media firestorm. Networks and cable news outlets are as happy as kittens on catnip.

But, truth be told, this ain’t a new story. The CIA, the executive hand of the president, has been involved, deeply, in every crime known to man – for decades!

Journalist John Kelly, in an article published in the 2002 book, “Into the Buzzsaw,”* cites a pretty interesting source for his revelation that the CIA commits, literally, hundreds of crimes a day and thousands per year. The source? The CIA itself.

In his piece, Kelly cites a U.S. House Intelligence Committee staff report citing such crimes. They have overturned governments, launched assassinations, armed criminals to attack their governments – and we’re shocked that they’ve tortured people? Seriously?

Every president since the 1930s has been seduced by the lure of the CIA to make the world in their image, sometimes by removing leaders they didn’t like. Power like that is irresistible.

And the CIA, made immune by a law passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton on Dec. 27, 2000, can violate any law, domestic or foreign, any treaty, or the Constitution itself with complete immunity, as long as they’re following a presidential order.

Is that deep or what?

So, did they torture people? Yup.

Did they kill people? Yup.

Did they violate laws? Yuuuup.

But guess what? Under the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2001 they’re immune from prosecution.

That’s American law. The “law” of the outlaw.

*Source: Kelly, John, “Crimes and Silence: The CIA’s Criminal Acts and the Media’s Silence,” pp. 311-331, from “Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press,” Kristina Borjesson, ed. (Amherst, NY; Prometheus Books, 2002)

© Copyright 2014 Mumia Abu-Jamal. Read Mumia’s latest book, “The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America,” co-authored by Columbia University professor Marc Lamont Hill, available from Third World Press, TWPBooks.com. Keep updated at www.freemumia.com. For Mumia’s commentaries, visit www.prisonradio.org. Encourage the media to publish and broadcast Mumia’s commentaries and interviews. Send our brother some love and light: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335, SCI-Mahanoy, 301 Morea Road, Frackville, PA 17932.

by The People’s Minister of Information JR

Writer, reporter and Pan Africanist Obi Egbuna, the U.S. correspondent to the Zimbabwean national newspaper The Herald, is one of the most active and knowledgeable people that I know of in the country when it goes beyond just spouting rhetoric about his beliefs. He recently finished, alongside co-executive producer M1 of dead prez, the third volume of the “Battle Cry for Cuba and Zimbabwe” compilation, which is a cultural protest against how the two countries have been unfairly sanctioned by the U.S. government.

At the heart of the June 2014 concert for the Cuban 5 in Washington, D.C., were Obi Egbuna, Stic Man, Mistress of Ceremonies Chioma Iwuoha, M1 and a background singer with Roots Radics. – Photo: Amoa Salaam

Check out Obi Egbuna in his own words, as he discusses African history, as well as the U.S. government’s history in trying to stifle the self-determination of these two revolutionary countries that have defied U.S. imperialist aggression for decades.

M.O.I. JR: What made you originally start this project, which concentrates on two nations that the U.S. government considers enemies?

Obi Egbuna: In the past, when asked a similar question pertaining to the “Battle Cry for Cuba and Zimbabwe” project and movement, I would instinctively talk about the dynamics surrounding this effort. However, in this interview, I feel obligated to start at the very beginning.

In 1997 after the hip hop star The Notorious Big was gunned down in Los Angeles, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan held a meeting at his residence in Chicago. His guest of honor was none other than Kwame Ture, who was given the opportunity to address the artists in attendance. This was one year before Kwame lost his battle with prostate cancer.

I had a lengthy phone conversation with him about that meeting. He was extremely positive but nevertheless determined to push the artists to be directly involved in our organizational efforts. The main feedback I provided was the views and sentiments of the artists represented a microcosm of the so-called African American community as a whole.

At that point those hip hop artists involved in struggle embraced a narrative that the vote was our only outlet of political expression. During the Rodney King rebellions at the height of our movement against police terrorism and brutality inside U.S. borders and African youth fighting military neo-colonialist dictators on our mother continent, Rev. Jesse Jackson was strongly considering hiring Sister Souljah as his voter registration coordinator in the summer of 1992.

Speaking at the Rainbow Coalition’s national convention, Sister Souljah said she could deliver 500,000 youth to the voting booth. The next day Bill Clinton attacks her at the same convention. Clinton was the main beneficiary of our outrage over the Rodney King verdict in particular and police terrorism and brutality in general.

The third volume of the “Battle Cry for Cuba and Zimbabwe” compilation is a cultural protest against how the two countries have been unfairly sanctioned by the U.S. government.

In 2004 you then had a hip hop convention in Newark where the end result was to rally behind John Kerry in his quest for the U.S. presidency. I promised my brother and comrade Kwame Ture we would reverse this trend. When we speak of Cuba and Zimbabwe in this context, our people can understand what inspired the “Battle Cry for Cuba and Zimbabwe” project and movement.

For those Africans who look at life itself through the lens of the Democratic Party, they must be reminded that in the case of Cuba, it was the Kennedy administration who imposed this monster after the CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion failed the year before. Out of the 635 assassination attempts on the life of Commandante Fidel Castro, the first 100 were spearheaded by the Kennedy administration.

In the case of Zimbabwe, it was the Lancaster House negotiations in which Jimmy Carter in the last year of his presidency, along with his British counterpart, the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, negotiated with the leaders of the liberation movement, Robert Mugabe of ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) and Joshua Nkomo (Zimbabwe African Peoples Union). Then Ronald Reagan informed Comrade Mugabe he was not obligated to honor this agreement, where the U.S. and British governments between 1980 and 1990 would put up the currency to help the former settlers transition as indigenous Zimbabweans settled on the land lost to them since Zimbabwe was colonized in 1890.

What is laughable is how Carter is masquerading as the savior of the Palestinian people but has never explained why he never insisted that his successors honor the Lancaster House agreement that he was responsible for negotiating in good faith. The point is when we look at the U.S. blockade on Cuba or the U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe, the hypocrisy and deceit of the Democrats is front and center.

Cuba is our home away from home and Zimbabwe is for Africans what Palestine is for Arabs and Bolivia is for indigenous people in this hemisphere: a rallying point for daughters and sons in Africa in all 125 countries where we are living today. In 2005, M1 and I were part of a press conference with the Grass Roots Artists Movement and New York Councilman Charles Barron, where we called for Cuban doctors to be allowed to come to New York City due to the public health crisis. This was a complement to a similar campaign we had in connection to the closing of D.C. General Hospital when we called for Cuban doctors to come to D.C. and keep the doors of the hospital open.

In 2007 at a concert in Washington, D.C., highlighting police terrorism and brutality around the death of Deonte Rawlings, who was gunned down by two off-duty police officers, M1 and I met physically for the first time. We discussed the press conference we organized together. We agreed that our community dropped the ball around Hurricane Katrina, when Cuba offered to send 1,500 environmental disaster specialists to the Gulf region, yet we focused more on trivial matters like Kanye West stating Mr. Bush doesn’t like Africans.

There was no end of talent at the Cuban 5 concert last June. Here, from left, Prhyme Element, assistant producer of the third volume of the “Battle Cry for Cuba and Zimbabwe” compilation and writer of “Tupac’s Aunt,” Bomani Armah, whose song “Chimurenga” is on the first album, M1 of dead prez, Obi Egbuna and Stic Man, the other half of dead prez, salute solidarity. The T-shirts were designed by PanAfricanTees.com. – Photo: Amoa Salaam

We then discussed the attacks on President Mugabe by the hip hop icon Nas, on Damien Jr Gong Marley’s debut album “Welcome to Jamrock.” The next thing we agreed on is we would do a couple of songs about the U.S. blockade on Cuba and U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe.

In 2009 we sent an appeal to the U.S. government calling for the immediate lifting of U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe. In 2010 I interviewed M1 in the Herald, the Zimbabwe national newspaper, where it was shared with the world what our intentions were.

The next phase was M1 stating we needed to build a movement around artists vehemently opposed to U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe and the U.S. blockade on Cuba. He felt a couple of songs wouldn’t do these issues justice.

I want the whole world to recognize M1’s vision for calling for a movement of artists to stand with the people of Cuba and Zimbabwe. I was a tad bit hesitant because of our schedules to make a call that bold and the bulk of the work would fall on me as an organizer.

With that being said, I wouldn’t change a thing, and I thank M1 for challenging me. That is one of history’s beautiful characteristics – the challenges it imposes on servants and frontline fighters in the people’s struggle. We then shifted strategic focus and planned to do an album instead of two songs.

We will be doing albums until both the U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe and the U.S. blockade on Cuba are lifted once and for all.

It took three years to release the first album, which was released in December of 2013. The album that was released two weeks ago is our third offering in less than a year and a half. We will be doing albums until both the U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe and the U.S. blockade on Cuba are lifted once and for all.

M.O.I JR: How did you select the artists that were on this edition of the project?

Obi Egbuna: We did not select any artists. M1 put out a call to action in the fall of 2013 that was published on Your World News by our Brother Solomon Commissong. The response of the artists was inspiring.

What I respect about each and every artist is they made their contributions to this project because they felt historically obligated to stand with the people of Cuba and Zimbabwe, not because they wanted to add to their resumes they were part of a project with M1 of dead prez. When you collaborate with an artist of Brother Mutulu’s stature (M1’s full name is Mutulu Olugbala), that is a calculated risk you are taking.

On the one hand I am glad to see a protest artist of the highest order embraced and celebrated by his peers. However, it becomes a problem when artists who have so much to offer at this crucial moment in history are star struck by M1 but could care less about lending their voices to this effort to defend Cuba and Zimbabwe. We had a few artists who contributed material that had nothing to do with Cuba or Zimbabwe.

M1 put out a call to action in the fall of 2013 that was published on Your World News by our Brother Solomon Commissong. The response of the artists was inspiring.

The role I played was writing bullet points about both Cuba and Zimbabwe that served as the backdrop behind many of the original songs made by artists towards the project. With that being said, a few artists still sent material that had nothing to do with Cuba or Zimbabwe. One artist even sent us a song about Selma, for crying out loud, and felt it was something we could use. The explanation was he lost his voice. When it was all said and done, he never contributed anything.

We had another manager of an artist swear he emailed material from his artist that we never received. I only raise this because some artists and managers feel if they already have a personal relationship with M1 or dead prez as a group, they may not feel in the final analysis that this particular project is something they need to contribute to.

The main point I’m making in relationship to this matter is the sole objective of the “Battle Cry for Cuba and Zimbabwe” project is to put both our former colonialists, slave masters and freedom loving people all over the world on notice that we are building a cultural army to fight for the lifting of the U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe and the U.S. blockade on Cuba. On this there is no compromise.

We would like the artists who have been hesitant to become part of this project and movement to reconsider and contribute to the next volume. That would speak volumes concerning their political maturity and integrity.

I spent the entire month of February in Zimbabwe, which provided me the opportunity to engage artists on the ground. Some of them heard the first two albums played on Star FM, one of the country’s national radio stations. The track called “Trap Zimbabwe,” in which the beat was produced by the other half of dead prez, Stic Man, was done by an artist out of Portland named Mic Crenshaw, who is part of a group called the African Hip Hop Caravan, which has artists from Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Farafina Kan’s Denu drummers and dancers, ages 3-7, opened the concert. Small but so full of energy these little performers make thunder and lightning on stage. – Photo: Amoa Salaam

I had the pleasure of spending time at Morgan Zintec College in Harare. I heard their choir performing at the unveiling of the super computer at the University of Zimbabwe. We received two contributions from a hip hop group in Zimbabwe called Final Warning. One song is congratulating President Mugabe for assuming leadership of the African Union and the other song is celebrating his 91st birthday.

When I shared the project with their director, Mrs. Nhamo, she loved the music and informed me their choir would contribute some material toward the project. The group Bituaya is from Venezuela. For those who may not know, Zimbabwe’s President Comrade Robert Mugabe is the only African head of state to receive both the Jose Marti Award, Cuba’s highest honor, and the Simon Bolivar Award, Venezuela’s highest honor.

The Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C., shared the previous two albums with Bituaya. When they heard what our objectives were, they contributed three outstanding pieces of material. Another positive aspect of this third volume is, like the previous two, it is also multi genre; however, the cross generational appeal is rather humbling indeed.

The original singer of the legendary R&B group, The Moments, sent us a song called “Dreamin.” The DC labor chorus sent us a song called “None of Us Are Free.” It was confirmed that song was co-written by none other than Brenda Russell, best known for her epic songs, “Piano in the Dark,” “Get Here” and “So Good So Right.”

The youngest artist was a 12-year-old named Amoa Salaam, who recited a tribute poem to the late president of Mozambique, Samora Machel, who allowed President Mugabe and ZANU to set up a guerilla camp in Maputo. When his plane crashed in October of 1986, two Cuban doctors were on the flight.

We also received two pieces from Umar Bin Hassan, one half of the Last Poets.

The sole objective of the “Battle Cry for Cuba and Zimbabwe” project is to put both our former colonialists, slave masters and freedom loving people all over the world on notice that we are building a cultural army to fight for the lifting of the U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe and the U.S. blockade on Cuba.

M.O.I. JR: What is the story behind you getting the legendary Umar Bin Hassan of the Last Poets to participate?

Obi Egbuna: I had the honor of meeting Brother Umar four years ago when he was performing with the comedian Paul Mooney in Washington, D.C. The minute I shared what M1 and I were planning to do, a very warm smile immediately appeared on his face. He promised to contribute some material.

After hearing this, a smile appeared on my face, because I realized what that would do for our project and movement. When Brother Umar heard the first album he called and was very complimentary, I jokingly told him approval from him would make us impervious to the criticism that we would receive from Cuba and Zimbabwe’s detractors.

After we released the second album in April of 2014, Brother Umar promised to have something ready for the third album. In my capacity as the U.S. correspondent to The Herald, I would send Brother Umar my articles because he told me the propaganda aimed at discrediting President Mugabe and ZANU-PF was extremely intense.

The pieces he contributed made me realize when it comes to decolonization and overcoming the slave mentality, we have three phases of art. The first phase deals with identity and pride. This helps us love our parents, relatives, children, wives, husbands and entire community.

The second phase deals with enlightenment. Whether it’s in the form of a song, film or painting, the social commentary being made is glaringly obvious. The third phase is protest art in which the goal of the artist is to remind you fighting on the battlefield is not an option but your historical obligation. This is what Paul Robeson was speaking of when he said, “The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery.”

For those who realize our history is invaluable, I am humbled to say I played a small role in developing a project connected to Cuba and Zimbabwe in conjunction with M1 of dead prez and Umar Bin Hassan of the Last Poets. I feel the best way to gauge one’s commitment to our struggle is by the contributions you make to struggle.

M.O.I. JR: How have people reacted to the project? How have people in other countries reacted to the project?

Obi Egbuna: Inside U.S. borders, honesty compels me to say a combination of gratitude, shock and a tad bit of envy. Those who have met M1 know he is extremely affable and as accessible as his schedule allows him to be.

Playing major roles in the Cuban 5 concert, in addition to Obi Egbuna and Stic Man and M1 of dead prez, are the 12-year-old photographer for the show Amoa Salaam, Sister Anjahla, who performed at the concert with Roots Radics and sang “A Mighty Road” on the second album, and Renee Flood-Wright of Red Lantern Photography. Amoa Salaam, a student of Obi’s in his Mass Emphasis Children’s History and Theater Company, also recited “Your Spirit Soars Through the Sky,” a tribute to Samora Machel. – Photo: Amoa Salaam

I say this to say M1 is an organizer first and an artist second. This is why he has a multitude of projects with activists and artists in every corner of the world that are pending and will eventually be done. If one is on the outside looking in, this could be perceived as disorganization, where in all actuality it represents a higher level of organization – a protest artist of M1’s caliber who courageously and unapologetically embraces the organizers and organizations whom he feels best represents our African fighting spirit.

For organizers who question our brother’s commitment to our struggle, all I have to say is listen to the three “Battle Cry for Cuba and Zimbabwe” volumes and remember this was not only his brainchild, but think of all the artists from Harry Belafonte, Carlos Santana to Miriam Makeba who have visited Cuba but never organized artists to make material calling for the immediate lifting of the U.S. blockade on Cuba. You then realize that Bob Marley’s historical performance in the Rufaro stadium on April 18, 1980, during Zimbabwe’s independence celebration, was 35 years ago. And as captivating as it was, it was just one song.

M1 refused to make a song. He decided to build a worldwide movement of artists who would fight for the lifting of U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe. You then have to look at the artists who have been attacking Zimbabwe since they embarked on the land reclamation program: Thomas Mapfumo, Hugh Masekela, even Lupe Fiasco.

In the case of Cuba, you remember the statement put out in 2009. The so-called Afro-Cuban Carlos Moore organized a statement entitled “Acting on our Conscience,” a declaration of African American support for the civil rights struggle in Cuba. Some of the artists who signed this statement were Ruby Dee, Melvin Van Peebles, Susan Taylor of Essence magazine, Randy Weston and also the social critic and academician Dr. Cornel West.

This was an attempt to peddle the falsehood that racism that exists in Cuba is not a carryover from colonialism and slavery but negligence in the revolutionary process. This means we should be investigating incidents of racism instead of fighting to lift the blockade on a nation that has done more to eradicate racism than any other nation in the Western Hemisphere.

M1 refused to make a song. He decided to build a worldwide movement of artists who would fight for the lifting of U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe.

We choose to fight the blockade rather than validate a statement spearheaded by a mercenary who sold his soul to the Ford Foundation to get his book published and a group of artists who function from the understanding that celebrity allows you to pedal falsehoods and confusion.

One of the pitfalls of living and functioning in a capitalist society is, even in our struggle, you encounter would be comrades who are extremely cut-throat and competitive. They are well aware of this project and movement but choose to ignore it.

This decision is partly because they embrace a narrative of our struggle rooted in victimization, not resistance. If you count all the critics in our community who are critics of hip hop and popular culture, your tongue would be as dry as the desert.

One of the pitfalls of living and functioning in a capitalist society is, even in our struggle, you encounter would be comrades who are extremely cut-throat and competitive. They are well aware of this project and movement but choose to ignore it.

They simply can’t relate to organizers who develop projects, campaigns and initiatives aimed at intensifying our resistance instead of running around the country immortalizing our former colonialists and slave masters. The people of Cuba and Zimbabwe are very pleased not only with the three volumes of material we have created but appreciate our resolve.

When the Cuban diplomats in D.C. saw our concert around the Cuban 5 last June, they couldn’t believe their eyes. The concert exceeded our own expectations. When the chairman of the Zimbabwe Music Awards heard the music, he started screaming for joy. The project has been received very well from comrades and friends all over the world. We have been complemented not only for our efforts but the material as well.

When the Cuban diplomats in D.C. saw our concert around the Cuban 5 last June, they couldn’t believe their eyes. The concert exceeded our own expectations.

M.O.I. JR: What is the purpose of creating these compilations? What do you hope people get out of them?

Obi Egbuna: That our struggle to make our cultural and political expression synonymous continues and we have reached a level and conclusion that the U.S. blockade on Cuba and the U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe are blatant examples of diplomatic terrorism and naked aggression.

Just recently President Obama met with Commandante Raul Castro in Panama and shook his hand in public for the second time. The first time was at Madiba Nelson Mandela’s funeral in 2013.

We must remember in his quest for the U.S. Presidency in 2008, Obama launched scathing attacks on Cuba, and his concept of normalizing relations mentions nothing of lifting the U.S. blockade on Cuba. Just last year M&T Bank shut down the bank account of the Cuban diplomats not too long after a group of demonstrators campaigning for the release of the Cuban 5 were not allowed to protest in front of the White House even though they had permits. They were told by the Gestapo Secret Service to go to the Justice Department and the FBI building to protest. I guess the cameras down there work a lot better.

The U.S. blockade on Cuba and the U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe are blatant examples of diplomatic terrorism and naked aggression.

Thanks to history, we know normalized relations with U.S. imperialism mean nothing. When the CIA overthrew Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah in February of 1966, not only did Ghana and the U.S. have normalized relations, the U.S. ambassador to Ghana went to Lincoln University with Nkrumah.

When Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in the Congo in 1961, the two countries had normalized relations. When Muammar Qaddafi was assassinated in Libya after seven months of bombing by the U.S.- NATO alliance, he was taking steps towards normalized relations with U.S. imperialism.

We are not impressed with President Obama’s impersonation of Richard Nixon. This was the cavalier manner in which Nixon approached China. It was reading the writing on the wall, not an act of conscience and good will.

Brother Pete of the International Hip Hop Association joins Stic Man, Ma Dukes, mother of the late legendary producer J Dilla, and M1 at the concert in June 2014. – Photo: Amoa Salaam

In the case of Zimbabwe, the Obama administration makes no secret they are heavily invested in a regime change agenda. As a senator, he wrote President Bush a letter urging him not to lift sanctions on Zimbabwe until the dark cloud of Mugabe was ousted from power.

We humbly believe the “Battle Cry for Cuba and Zimbabwe” project and movement is the missing ingredient, aimed at complimenting the most genuine efforts inside U.S. borders. The bulk of nations and peoples on the planet are unequivocally against both the U.S. blockade on Cuba and U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe; however, U.S. imperialism has been able to contain the political efforts inside U.S. borders.

We believe the additional dimension of music and poetry being spearheaded by the children of the ‘60s generation will not only help intensify Cuban and Zimbabwean solidarity efforts, but help create the strongest ties with our people throughout the Americas and Southern Africa. We must not let this generation of youth grow up accepting this fascist and white supremacist definition of America that the Democrats and Republicans shove down your throat from the moment you are ready to receive information.

We say to them Fidel Castro is the greatest president in American history. That includes Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, the white liberals Africans worship like gods, politically speaking. We follow that up by saying the slave ship is the first form of public transportation. This forces Africans in the U.S. to realize that our political cultural and economic strength lies in our ability to strengthen ties with our people in the rest of the Americas. Defending the Cuban revolution is part and parcel of this process.

The bulk of nations and peoples on the planet are unequivocally against both the U.S. blockade on Cuba and U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe; however, U.S. imperialism has been able to contain the political efforts inside U.S. borders.

If one summarizes the situation in Mother Africa, it is almost inevitable you will arrive at the logical conclusion that Northern Africa is the most isolated part of Africa, East Africa is the most chaotic and West Africa is the most corruptible. Helping Southern Africa remain stable is the key to continental redemption.

This puts the Zimbabwe question on center stage. President Mugabe at the tender age of 91 has raised the bar on a level we will not collectively appreciate until our children are having children. However, what must be done must be done.

Through melody, rhythm and harmony we plan to take the efforts to defend Cuba and Zimbabwe to new, unprecedented heights. We are optimistic that people will join the fight on a massive scale.

Those of us from the ‘90s generation had an ideological struggle around the question of leadership and historical responsibility. Some of them were mentees of the civil and human rights workers who studied Gandhi.

Because of this influence, they believe leadership and visibility are one and the same. For this reason they make being seen or heard a crusade. For them, it’s all about pursuing accolades and recognition instead of challenges and responsibility.

Through melody, rhythm and harmony we plan to take the efforts to defend Cuba and Zimbabwe to new, unprecedented heights.

I used to love when Kwame Ture would say Africans in the Democratic Party illustrate visible powerlessness. When I first heard that, I started studying the lives and work of Ahmed Seku Ture and Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah. Since then I have functioned from the understanding that the challenges that history presents us with are its most beautiful characteristic.

In 2004, shortly after my contract in the Department of Housing and Residence Life at Bowie State University expired, I was contacted by the campus police, who informed me that an FBI officer was at the school asking questions about me. I contacted my lawyer, who, after speaking with the agent, was told this was standard procedure when someone spends significant time with the Cuban diplomats in Washington. I say that to say if the disciples of J. Edgar Hoover are going to violate my rights, I couldn’t think of a better reason than for standing with the people and revolution of Cuba.

Around this same period the former Zimbabwe Ambassador to the U.S. Dr. Simbi Mubako informed me that the NAACP went to Zimbabwe for the purpose of observing the 2002 presidential elections. After returning to the U.S., they had a meeting with U.S. State Department officials. Whatever transpired in that meeting, they decided not to publish their report, which was the reason why they went in the first place.

This upset President Mugabe – not just because the NAACP wouldn’t publish the report. Even worse, a copy was never sent to Zimbabwe, which diplomatically speaking is a blatant sign of disrespect. After some persuasion, the NAACP decided to take their report to Ambassador Mubako and he immediately sent it to President Mugabe’s office.

We want our people to know that the blockade has cost Cuba over $100 billion and ZDERA (Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001) has cost Zimbabwe over $40 billion. They must realize these measures are aimed at destroying the social and economic infrastructure of both nations.

The audience gave the performers a well deserved standing ovation at the concert for the Cuban 5. D.C.’s Cuban diplomats were thrilled with the concert, and the chairman of the Zimbabwe Music Awards started screaming for joy when he heard the music. – Photo: Amoa Salaam

We are still used to conventional warfare and since we live in the country Dr. King correctly called the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, equally as important, this is the work that Malcolm, Amiri Baraka, William Worthy, Julian Mayfield, Mae Mallory and Shirley Graham DuBois engaged in.

This is what historical responsibility is all about, expanding on the work of those who came before you. They stood with Cuba before we were born. The Zimbabwe work represents our commitment to build ties with the driving force behind the most stable region of Africa.

M.O.I. JR: Who are some of the other artists who participated, and where are they from?

Obi Egbuna: I mentioned quite a few of them earlier. I want to bring attention to an artist known as The Pinnakal, who is the only artist to contribute material on all three albums. He was born and raised in Washington, D.C., to be a hip hop artist, which is not easy. As you know, D.C. is the home to go-go music, which is D.C.’s spin on R&B, like Motown is to Detroit, TSOP in Philly, STAX in the South.

I have known him since he was a student at Bowie State University. Many years ago we advertised a program where the flyer stated we were showing “The Godfather” and “Scarface.” When the students got there, they realized they were set up; it was a seminar about Cuba.

As many of our brothers who credit Brian DePalma’s rendition of Scarface as what inspired them to deal crack cocaine, we forget too easily that film begins with the Cubans who chose to be part of the Mariel boat lift and come to Miami, where they were coerced to join terrorist organizations like Brothers to the Rescue and Alpha 66.

The terrorist groups are responsible for several of the 635 assassination attempts on the life of Commandante Fidel Castro. We wanted the students to understand how a movie originally made by the billionaire Howard Hughes about the life of Al Capone was remade in Miami and became a crucial piece of propaganda against the Cuban revolution.

On one hand, this film promotes genocide in our communities inside U.S. borders and at the same time aims to justify undermining a revolution where 70 percent of the people are Spanish speaking Africans with the best education and health care in the world, free of charge. The Pinnakal reminded me of that program, and said from that moment he was waiting for the right time to make a song about Cuba.

The Pinnakal is the only artist to contribute material on all three albums.

He then reminded me he was present when we brought the former Zimbabwe ambassador to the U.S., Dr. Simbi Mubako, to campus and discussed Zimbabwe 24 hours before the 2002 presidential elections. On the first album, his song has a sample of Kennedy announcing the blockade on Cuba and President Mugabe discussing the land reclamation program in Zimbabwe.

The first song, “Resilience,” is by Aziza Lisa, a neo-soul artist based in Chicago who I met at Chicago State University when we organized a showing of the film “Mugabe: Villain or Hero,” produced by our comrade and brother Roy Ageymang, who won the special jury recognition award at the Pan African Film Festival a few years back.

Another powerful song and PSA is by Tasleem Jamila, also based out of Chicago. The name of her song is “We are Still Screamin for Freedom,” which celebrates Brother Malcolm. As 2015 marks 50 years since Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem on Feb. 21, and that happens to be President Mugabe’s birthday, we wonder how those who claim to love and be inspired by Malcolm sit idly by and do nothing about the sanctions on Zimbabwe and the blockade on Cuba.

M1 and Stic Man of dead prez close out the historic concert for the Cuban 5, who were released from long prison terms shortly thereafter. – Photo: Amoa Salaam

We have Iman Shabazz, who is based in Richmond, who did a powerful song called “Chimurenga.” We have an icon in the spoken word community, Nubia Kai, who did a poem, “In Defense of the Cuban Revolution.” One of my former students, Alan Price Jr., who is studying at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, did an amazing violin solo performance of “Guantanamera.” We also have Native Sun out of the U.K. who contributed two songs to the project.

M.O.I. JR: How can people get the compilation?

Obi Egbuna: They can go to the link battlecubazim.wordpress.com. What is also important to mention is the work we have done that is connected to this project. We are about to launch an educational project entitled “Merging Our Experiences.” The aim is to ensure moving into the future.

In the field of education, African children no longer are force fed the narrative that colonialism and slavery are separate episodes in African history. We will create a timeline in conjunction with the Southern African nations. Those of us living in this hemisphere will start our part with when our ancestors arrived as slaves all over the Americas. The SADC countries in return will chronicle their history, starting with when they were colonized up to the current day.

In addition to highlighting our resistance we will focus on our contributions to art, science, music and medicine. The project will run for an entire year upon completion. The information from the timeline can be used to create new curriculums, text and workbooks, case studies etc.

On the link, people can see the appeals we sent to the Obama administration and African Union. The one to the administration demands Cuban doctors be allowed to come to Native American reservations, prison infirmaries and clinics and hospitals that were forced to close down inside U.S. borders.

We sent an appeal to the African Union demanding a joint fund be created to finance the 4,000 member HIV-AIDS brigade that Cuba offered to send to Africa as their contribution to the millennium fund. We will still pursue this, especially since President Mugabe is the chair of the African Union.

Thank you for this interview. I also wrote a children’s play called “Cuba’s Greatest Army: A Tribute to the Cuban Doctors.” It was performed three years ago at the Venezuelan ambassador’s amphitheater.

Another play I wrote was called “Maintaining Resistance Behind the Bars,” which highlights the Cuban 5. It was performed at the Students Against Mass Incarceration’s national conference in 2013. Another play I wrote was called “Sally Mugabe Lives Forever,” which was performed a few years ago on the 20th anniversary of her death.

I also just co-wrote two plays in Zimbabwe in February with Nyaradzo Tongogara, the baby daughter of the late guerrilla icon and freedom fighter Josiah Magama Tongogara, who died in December of 1979 in a car crash in Mozambique on the way back to Zimbabwe.

People can also see our appeal to the U.S. government demanding the immediate lifting of U.S.-E.U. sanctions on Zimbabwe and a resolution we did concerning Zimbabwe being denied access to the Global Fund due to the land reclamation program. This has been a long journey, but it is only beginning.

The People’s Minister of Information JR Valrey is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’” and “Unfinished Business: Block Reportin’ 2” and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe” and “Block Reportin’ 101,” available, along with many more interviews, at www.blockreportradio.com. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com. See also stories by Obi Egbuna previously published by the Bay View: “Looking at the life of freedom fighter Obi Egbuna Sr.” and “At 91, President Mugabe leads Zimbabwe, SADC and African Union – with vigor.”