US Gov't under Obama rejects the former Haitian President Aristide's return to his Homeland

"Meanwhile, the US government that helped oust Aristede and his wife in 2004, now insists that the Aristides not return to their homeland."

Dear friends,

As usual, President Obama is betraying all of those who look like him, by siding with our enemies. People argue, "Well, he's not just the president for Black people..He's everybody's president." That' funny. The standard of being "everybody's president" has never been applied to a single one of Obama's predecessors

Meanwhile, the US government that helped oust Aristide and his wife in 2004, now insists that the Aristides not return to their homeland. On the link below, a video piece by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now reveals the despicable actions of Barack Obama's "everybody's" administration.

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/16/amy_goodman_reports_from_south_africa
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Haitians' Cholera Epidemic emphasizes the need for them to Contol their own Economic Development

“In light of the deadly cholera epidemic in Haiti. while huge amounts of cash and other resources are currently, and rightfully so, being directed towards Haiti…”
Dear friends,

In light of the deadly cholera epidemic in Haiti. while huge amounts of cash and other resources are currently, and rightfully so, being directed towards Haiti, it seems that an equal amount of attention and concern should be geared towards the Haitian people themselves in efforts to help them take the reins in rebuilding their nation.

People need food, for example. Now is a time to set up small cooperative food outlets that acquire their provisions from farms that are owned and operated by families. That would require some of the money that has been donated being used to develop more arable soil.

Forest gardening , for example, could be used to establish new eco-systems on the island where both fauna and flora can proliferate.

The land should be collectively-owned with a governmental body only having the role of coordinating and networking, as opposed to controlling and regulating resources in areas such as food production and home building.

Private corporations outside of the body of people who are doing the farming and building should be prohibited. This will be the start of two forms of new industry on the island.

Next, having been trained by licensed master carpenters from developed countries, Haitian workers will learn how to build earthquake-resistant buildings like those found in California. Additionally, homes and small factories could be built for producing clothes, tools, electrical goods, and so forth.

But traditional industries are not enough. There will be a need for both school teachers and college professors alike, medical professionals, and in order to maintain a civil society, there will need to be many people trained in the area of law and its enforcement.

All of the here-to-mentioned will require that the Haitian people are encouraged to recognize their inner powers like both physical and mental energy, discipline, persistence, concentration, and memory, for instance.

As well, Haitian citizens must reject becoming a possession-oriented society like ours, and, instead, start embracing value judgments that will allow them to develop genuine communities.

This process should begin on a small scale. Of course, there are already any number of Haitians there and abroad who can get this started. Now, the main problem will be to keep lecherous and rapacious North American companies from undermining genuine economic development in Haiti.

One Love,
G. Djata Bumpus
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Elmer Smith on Haitian "looters" and Baby Doc

"Even more outrageous is the idea that a police force in a town with no real law will shoot to kill to protect property from starving people. "


Dear friends,

With television images of the "looting" going on in Haiti, it's easy to miss the real looters of that small island nation who now are pretending to be "donors".

On the link below, my dear friend and brother Elmer Smith of the Philadelphia Daily News delivers a brilliant analysis that reminds us of the real thieves in this whole miserable scenario. Check it out!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20100122_Elmer_Smith__There_are__quot_looters_quot__-_and_then_there_s_Baby_Doc.html
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What about Haitian "economic development"?

"Genuine economic development is human. In others words, it is not the amount of trinkets and baubles that people produce or even the dollars that they earn that represents growth."

Dear friends,

I saw the article on the link below on a friend's Facebook post. The article was written by Nicholas Kristof, a veteran columnist of the New York Times. Kristof concentrates his work on non-Europeans; I guess because he thinks that he knows what's best for us.

Nevertheless, the aforementioned article is vintage Nicholas Kristof. His answer to Haitian economic development is to create a bunch of sweatshops. This, of course, came after he hinted at the historical exploitation of Haitians, beginning with the French.

Genuine economic development is human. In others words, it is not the amount of trinkets and baubles that people produce or even the dollars that they earn that represents growth. Rather, it is the ability for people to socially reproduce themselves, as a population group, through time, choosing their own direction in life, on their own terms.

Moreover, it’s people like Kristof who argue that slavery was actually good for Africans. Still, we have sweatshops right here in this country. What kind of future lies ahead for those caught up in that cycle of poverty and despair? After all, the people who own the sweatshops and so forth also own the politicians. Let’s keep it real.

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/opinion/21kristof.html
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Danny Glover interviewed about Haiti

"Is the militarization of this earthquake relief effort all about 'security', as I heard one retired US Army general explain on televiion? Let's look down the road as well., while the world is engaged in cleaning up this severely stricken island nation"

Dear friends,

Is the militarization of this earthquake relief effort all about "security", as I heard one retired US Army general explain on televiion? Let's look down the road as well., while the world is engaged in cleaning up this severely stricken nation.

After receiving an e-mail about the prorressive activism of many Americans both here and on the island nation of Haiti, I thought that I should share it on this blog. The 15 minutes-long video on the link below shows the hard-working artist/activist Danny Glover getting some things done. Please check it out!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/19/actor_and_activist_danny_glover_on
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Elm Smith gives us a personal view of Haiti as a veteran journalist

This was Port au Prince before the earthquake of 2010, before the hurricanes of 2008, just after the unintended cruelty of a U.S.-backed embargo helped to starve thousands of Haitians for their own good."

Dear friends,

On the link below, the incomparable Elmer Smith of the Philadelphia Daily News puts this whole Haitian disaster in perspective, based upon his personal experience with a land that has been afflicted by both social and natural turmoil countless times. What's next?

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/columnists/elmer_smith/20100115_Elmer_Smith__Only_latest_disaster_for_poor_Haiti.html
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Dr. Ndibe Shows Connection between Nigeria and Haiti through History

"In a move that did great credit to its revolutionary credentials, Haiti became the first nation in the world to recognize the legitimacy of the Biafran cause – and to extend diplomatic recognition to the embattled Biafrans. "



"Haiti’s tragedy, Biafran memories"

by Okey Ndibe

Exactly a week ago, Haiti was struck by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that reduced much of that misfortunate nation to a colossal ruin. The quake’s epicenter was a mere 16 miles offshore on the western side of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s heavily populated capital.

Earthquakes are hardly ever innocuous; but this one was particularly catastrophic. Its proximity to the capital – home to more than three million people – proved disastrous. As I write, Haitian authorities were estimating that 140,000 had perished from the devastating quake. That toll is, as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rightly stated, is of biblical proportions. The prognosis is even more dreadful. Some experts predict that many of the tens of thousands officially listed as missing, as well as many of the critically wounded, will explode the casualty figures.

To see the horror of Haiti is to come to terms to a modern-day apocalypse. For me, it was especially harrowing to look at images of children and the elderly with mangled limbs, gashed heads and swollen faces.

When a natural tragedy strikes on this scale, it’s almost as if the living, in their forlorn despair, begrudge the dead the joys of a grave. Except that most of the Haitian dead were not buried, but abandoned on the streets. I was brought to tears when television cameras panned streets strewn with decomposing bodies. Nigerians have fashioned a unique obituary style where each deceased person is “called to heavenly glory.” Glory was not a word that came to mind when one saw the cadavers that littered the streets of Port-au-Prince.

And yet, Haitians, who in 1804 became the first black-run nation ever to achieve independence, have a lot of glory in their past. Two figures from their revolutionary history, Toussaint l’Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines, are venerable heroes not only for Haitians but also for all people of African descent. These two warriors took on and ultimately vanquished the better-armed forces of Napoleonic France. Though Toussaint was tricked by the French, captured, and transported to France where he died in 1803, his collaborator, Jacque Dessalines, lived to become Haiti’s first leader.

Thanks in large part to meddling by France and, more recently, the US, Haiti has fallen short of its revolutionary aspirations. The American media habitually announce, with something approaching glee, that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Haitians are a much-beleaguered people. Eighty percent of the populace lives on less than $2 a day. In recent times, the island nation has been buffeted by hurricanes and widespread hunger that forced desperate people to eat mud.

That specter will become worse in the aftermath of the earthquake. About ten percent of the homes in Port-au-Prince, a hilly city with wide swathes of ghettoes, were destroyed by the quake and its aftershocks. That means that more than 300,000 inhabitants face the grim certainty of prolonged homelessness in a city whose infrastructure, rudimentary to begin with, is now decimated.

It’s in the nature of natural disasters to be blind in their fury and destruction. This earthquake did not discriminate between rich and poor, old and young, the powerful and the feeble. It shook the Presidential palace to its foundations and leveled the Parliament. The offices of the United Nations were wrecked, more than twenty members of the organization’s staff were confirmed dead, and (at the time of this writing) scores more were still trapped in a pile of rubble. Hotels, churches, and hospitals were also laid to ruin.

With a calamity that touched every sector, the task of providing medical care to the legions of the wounded and getting food to the displaced, drifting masses was bound to be difficult. Even though the US, China, Canada and a plethora of relief agencies responded quickly with shipment of food, water and medicines, Haiti’s battered roads frustrated efforts to immediately reach the victims of the earthquake. Four days after the quake, the vast majority of Haitians were yet to receive succor. Doubtless, many of the dead would have survived had help got to them sooner.

A tragic occurrence like an earthquake offers a measure both of our human fickleness and vulnerability as well as our heroism, staying power, and resilience. The Haitian people, great in the past, will – there’s no question – find a way to rise from their current nightmare.

The earthquake is an opportunity for other peoples and nations to demonstrate the depth of their fellow feeling and generosity – and to offer a hand to their besieged Haitian brethren. Many nations and individuals rose, admirably, to the challenge.

Sadly, to one’s profound shame, the Nigerian government failed to stir much less show continental leadership in the face of Haiti’s peril. Nigeria’s invisibility during the darkest time for the people of Haiti betrays a monumental lack of a sense of history among those running (that is to say, more aptly, ruining) the country.

Last week, author Chinua Achebe issued a statement that must have been a veiled rebuke as well as a cry from the heart. He pleaded with Nigeria and South Africa “to more vigorously join the international community – particularly the remarkable and admirable example of the United States and the European Union – and provide much needed funds and other forms of aid to the people of Haiti for disaster relief.”

Achebe’s plea has a particular resonance at this time, the 40th anniversary of the formal end of the Biafran war. In a move that did great credit to its revolutionary credentials, Haiti became the first nation in the world to recognize the legitimacy of the Biafran cause – and to extend diplomatic recognition to the embattled Biafrans.

With the Nigerian idea in disarray, that Haitian position strikes one today as highly discerned. A Nigerian that doesn’t respond to the travail of the Haitian people is a construct of fundamental questioning.
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20 minutes-long video of Randall Robinson interview on Haitian Situation

"George Bush ordered the invasion of the sovereign nation of Haiti, in 2004. The duly-elected president and his wife were taken from their home and forcibly brought to another country (South Africa) - not allowing them to return, even to this day."

Dear friends,

The 20 minutes-long video on the link below is a brilliant assessment of what the disaster that just occurred in Haiti means for the future of a people that have been subjected to alien marauders, ever since they freed themselves from slavery by the French in 1804 , all the way up to modern times.

Worse yet, George Bush ordered the invasion of the sovereign nation of Haiti, in 2004. The duly-elected president and his wife were taken from their home and forcibly brought to another country (South Africa) - not allowing them to return, even to this day. With the whole world watching, will the Obama administration finally end this oppression and exploitation?

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/15/bush_was_responsible_for_destroying_haitian
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More on US attacks against Haiti's democractically-elected Government

http://www.haitiaction.net/HFTH/hfth1.html
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