Dessalines Is Rising!!
Ayisyen: You Are Not Alone!

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U.S. Patterns in Haiti
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The Revolutionary Potential of Haiti, its creeds, values and struggle
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Dessalines' Law
Jean Jacques Dessalines ****** Ideyoloji Desalinyen, le Nouvelliste

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The real news here is ......July 28, 2007 marks the 92nd anniversary of the first US invasion of Haiti by US Marines in 1915. The Marines occupied Haiti until 1934. One of the first things the Marines did was steal all the gold out of the Haitian treasury, packed it on a boat and sent it to New York for deposit in the City Bank.

In 1926, a Haitian described the pattern of invasions and occupations:

“I know they throw the history of Haiti in our face – its long tissue of revolutions and massacres. Yet the American war with the Cacos killed more people than 10 or 20 revolutions put together; it devastated whole regions and ruined the cattle of Haiti, as veterinary experts can testify if they are honest. Revolutions were fomented by foreigners – English, French, American, Dutch traders – who risked nothing, and always profited. Loans which dealt rather in human lives than in merchandise were made at rates of 1,000 per cent and those who thus enriched themselves overthrew any government that was not subservient to them.”

–excerpt from a letter written by Dr. Normil Sylvain, a Haitian, in 1926 to Emily Balch who led a delegation of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom to Haiti to observe the effects of the US occupation.
(Source: Haiti-Cuba-Venezuela Analysis | August 3, 2007 |The Real News From Haiti: Haitian Resistance Continues, UN tries to Keep Lid On, August 5, 2007 by hcvanalysis )
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See: Media Lies and Real Haiti News
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Published on Monday,March 1, 2004 by the Taipei Times / Taiwan

The Fire This Time in Haiti was US-Fueled
The Bush Administration Appears to have Succeeded in its Long-Time Goal of Toppling Aristide Through Years of Blocking International Aid to his Impoverished Nation by Jeffrey Sachs

Source: CommonDreams.org

Haiti, once again, is ablaze. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is widely blamed, and he may be toppled soon. Almost nobody, however, understands that today's chaos was made in Washington -- deliberately, cynically and steadfastly.

History will bear this out. In the meantime, political, social, and economic chaos will deepen, and Haiti's impoverished people will suffer.The US position was a travesty. Aristide had been elected president in an indisputable landslide. He was, without doubt, the popularly elected leader of the country -- a claim that President George W. Bush cannot make about himself.

The Bush administration has been pursuing policies likely to topple Aristide since 2001. The hatred began when Aristide, then a parish priest and democracy campaigner against Haiti's ruthless Duvalier dictatorship, preached liberation theology in the 1980s. Aristide's attacks led US conservatives to brand him as the next Fidel Castro.?

They floated stories that Aristide was mentally deranged. Conservative disdain multiplied several-fold when then-president Bill Clinton took up Aristide's cause after he was blocked from electoral victory in 1991 by a military coup. Clinton put Aristide into power in 1994, and conservatives mocked Clinton for wasting America's efforts on "nation building" in Haiti. This is the same right wing that has squandered US$160 billion on a far more violent and dubious effort at "nation building" in Iraq.?

Attacks on Aristide began as soon as the Bush administration assumed office. I visited Aristide in Port-au-Prince in early 2001. He impressed me as intelligent and intent on good relations with Haiti's private sector and the US. No firebrand, he sought advice on how to reform his economy and explained his realistic and prescient concerns that the American right would try to wreck his presidency.

Haiti was clearly in a desperate condition: the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere, with a standard of living comparable to sub-Saharan Africa despite being only a few hours by air from Miami. Life expectancy was 52 years. Children were chronically hungry.

Of every 1,000 children born, more than 100 died before their fifth birthday. An AIDS epidemic, the worst in the Caribbean, was running unchecked. The health system had collapsed. Fearing unrest, tourists and foreign investors were staying away, so there were no jobs to be had.

But Aristide was enormously popular in early 2001. Hopes were high that he would deliver progress against the extraordinary poverty. Together with Dr. Paul Farmer, the legendary AIDS doctor in Haiti, I visited villages in Haiti's Central Plateau, asking people about their views of politics and Aristide.? Everybody referred to the president affectionately as "Titid." Here, clearly, was an elected leader with the backing of Haiti's poor, who constituted the bulk of the population.

When I returned to Washington, I spoke to senior officials in the IMF, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and Organization of American States. I expected to hear that these international organizations would be rushing to help Haiti.

Instead, I was shocked to learn that they would all be suspending aid, under vague "instructions" from the US. Washington, it seemed, was unwilling to release aid to Haiti because of irregularities in the 2000 legislative elections, and was insisting that Aristide make peace with the political opposition before releasing any aid.

The US position was a travesty. Aristide had been elected president in an indisputable landslide. He was, without doubt, the popularly elected leader of the country -- a claim that President George W. Bush cannot make about himself.

Nor were the results of the legislative elections in 2000 in doubt: Aristide's party had also won in a landslide.? It was claimed that Aristide's party had stolen a few seats. If true -- and the allegation remains unproved -- it would be nothing different from what has occurred in dozens of countries around the world receiving support from the IMF, World Bank, and the US itself. By any standard, Haiti's elections had marked a step forward in democracy, compared to the decades of military dictatorships that America had backed, not to mention long periods of direct US military occupation.

The more one sniffed around Washington the less America's position made sense. People in positions of responsibility in international agencies simply shrugged and mumbled that they couldn't do more to help Haiti in view of the Bush veto on aid. Moreover, by saying that aid would be frozen until Aristide and the political opposition reached an agreement, the Bush administration provided Haiti's un-elected opposition with an open-ended veto. Aristide's foes merely had to refuse to bargain in order to plunge Haiti into chaos.?

That chaos has now come. It is sad to hear rampaging students on BBC and CNN saying that Aristide "lied" because he didn't improve the country's social conditions. Yes, Haiti's economic collapse is fueling rioting and deaths, but the lies were not Aristide's. The lies came from Washington.

Even now, Aristide says that he will share power with the opposition, but the opposition says no. Aristide's opponents know that US right-wingers will stand with them to bring them violently to power. As long as that remains true, Haiti's agony will continue.

Jeffrey Sachs is professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

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Down with the white "saviors"
Down with occupation;
Down with privatization;
Long live a free and sovereign Haiti.
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Blan Mannan by Feliks Moriso Lewa
(English translation)
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It's Neither Hope nor Progress when the International Community is Running Haiti
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Media Lies and Real Haiti News

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Rewriting History: USAID's former mission director tries to give the US credit for the lowering of diseases in Haiti when Aristide was in office. See also: The Fire This Time In Haiti Was US Fueled by Jeffrey Sachs, March 1, 2004 and The Crucifixion of Haiti , June 2, 2005
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Mesi Papa Dessalines
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Three ideals of Dessalines
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Kouwòn pou Defile
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Libète Ou La Mò
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Dessalines' Songs *La Dessalinienne
Haiti's National Anthem-
(audio of La Dessalinienne)
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Defile Manman "Chimè?"
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What's in a name?
Some names horrify enslavers, tyrants and despots, everywhere...
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Dessalines' Law
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Blan Mannan by Feliks Moriso Lewa
(English translation)

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On the street
Life out here is tough: Surviving means begging, violence is rampant, and
children make easy targets for gangs ? and each other. As a generation of
AIDS orphans comes of age throughout the Caribbean, the situation, already
grave, likely will only worsen.
By Tim Collie

Sun-Sentinel, November 26, 2006

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- In major Caribbean cities, thousands of children live on the streets, sleeping in parks, crypts and crumbling movie theater doorways. Over the past five years, their numbers have soared.

The children, without education, medical care or even shoes, become harder and harder to reach. In Haiti, they are easy recruits for the kidnap, drug and political gangs that plague Port-au-Prince. Kingston, Santo Domingo, Port of Spain -- the capitals of Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Trinidad,
respectively -- all cope with the same problems.

The growing number of street children is due in part to AIDS orphans coming
of age. And the trend will likely continue. Women of childbearing age now
comprise the population with the highest new infection rate.

Their children can easily slip into the downward spiral that starts when
parents, and the nurturing they provide, disappear. Roughly 75 percent of
children born to infected mothers are HIV free. National health outreach
groups struggle to find ways to identify and treat the others.

Today, street kids are more violent, more prone to crime, according to
experts who have tracked the trend over the years. They often carry weapons
like razors, known here as gilettes, and sniff cobbler's glue, called ciment,
which staves off hunger and puts them, as the children themselves say, in a
"zombie-like" state.

Among the street children are these boys, who go to Centre d'Action Pour le
Development for meals. International agencies and the Haitian government pay
the center to feed 500 street children, as well as to house and educate 70
others.

Fritz Junior, 15:
"My mother is in the Dominican Republic. ...

My father died of AIDS. My uncle was the one who told me.

His hair was straight and fine, and he had a lot of sores all over his body.

He would talk to me about it, but then one day he just laid in bed and died.

My uncle is now in New York. So now I live in the street. ...

I wash cars, clean windows and make dice to sell out of dog bones.

Sometimes I get sick, a fever, a headache.

And sometimes I have cramps when it's too cold in the street.

They abuse me, the older kids, the men.

They burn you with matches when you sleep,
melt plastic containers and pour them on you while you're sleeping.

Sometimes they put matches in each of your toes while you're sleeping.

And if you shake your leg, your clothes may catch on fire.

The bigger kids, they pour pepper in your eyes or take a stick and beat you.

Sometimes they pour cold water on you.

After they do that to me, I do the same to them. ...

I know kids who rape other kids.

But it hasn't happened to me.

There's this one American here, he used to run a home.

And he does try to have sex with the kids. He pays them.

I used to live at his orphanage. ...

But I had already left the orphanage because I saw he was bathing the young
children and raping them.

He'd take them, bathe them, rape them and then give them money.

That's the way it was. ...

If my father was alive, I wouldn't be in the street ... .

I remember when my father was alive.

He'd feed us and send us to school.

Jerry, 12, whose last name is not being published because he is a rape victim:

"I was living with my stepmother.

She beat me if I didn't do the dishes.

I refused to wash dishes because I'm not a girl.

I ran away in September. I forget the year.

When I ran away, I took 250 gourds [about $6]. And when I got in the street,
friends asked me for the money, so I gave them some.

When I first got in the street, I got beaten up a lot.

I'd eat, people would beat me for food.

When I bought sandals, other kids beat me for the shoes.

When I was with my mother, I'd bathe every day.

I'd eat three times a day. ...

There was a white guy [and a friend]. ... They went to a hotel with me.

And they told me they'd give me $200 [for performing oral sex].

I ran away.

But they chased me, caught me and had me do it.

It was in the `Hotel One Dollar' in Petionville.

And after they finished with me, they didn't give me the money.

This happened on Dec. 24th.

They found me and told me they were going to feed me.

I never saw these white guys again."

Akim Jean Francois, 13:
"I didn't know when my mom died. I was living with relatives, my stepmother,
and they were mistreating me. ... I decided to go to the street.

I never went to school.

When I'm in the street, they burn me. They cut me with blades. They dropped
cinder blocks on my face here ... .

There's a lot of AIDS on the street.

All I know about it is what they say, that if you have sex with someone
without a condom, you can get AIDS.

You start throwing up, you get a fever, and you get real thin."

Emmanuel Petit-Homme, 13:
"I was in a center for a while, a center for street children, but they kicked
me out in December. ...

The police are really rough on us. ... One time, a policeman shot two kids
just for sleeping in the wrong place.

There's a lot of sex. We're paid for sex, the older kids, they ... always want to have sex with us.

There's this old woman. ...

She'll have sex with us for 10 gourds [about 25 cents]. ...
When I see other people [with AIDS symptoms], other kids, and they offer me
food, I don't take it. I know you can get AIDS from sharing the same food,
the same drinks with people."

Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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"When you make a choice, you mobilize vast human energies and resources which otherwise go untapped...........If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want and all that is left is a compromise." Robert Fritz