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Dessalines Is Rising!!
Ayisyen:
You Are Not Alone!
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Beyond
The Pale
By
John Maxwell
The
Haitian National Anthem | La Dessalinienne
| Dessaline's Song |La Desalinyen (audio)
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Dessaline's
Song
Lyrics:
in Kreyol, French, and an English
translation of the French
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BEYOND
THE PALE
By John Maxwell
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/
20060603t160000-0500_106036_obs_beyond_the_pale_.asp
Katherine Dunham, who died last week at 97, was one of the most
important
figures of twentieth century culture. The daughter of a black father
and a French Canadian mother, she immersed herself in scholarly
explorations of African/Caribbean cultures, particularly among the
Maroons of Jamaica and the people of Haiti. She even became a voudun
‘priestess’ while completing her masters degree in anthropology.
Katherine Dunham’s life was a century of struggle to restore
the dignities of the peoples who resided in her soul. She was not
only a major figure and powerful influence in modern dance but was,
at the same time a leader in the struggle for civil rights in the
United States and in Haiti. Fourteen years ago, at the age of 82,
she survived a seven week hunger strike in protest at her government’s
treatment of Haiti.
She must have died of a broken heart.
There are eight million Haitians in a country turned into a concentration
camp. Their leader was stolen from them and transported as cargo
to the heart of darkness where he was no doubt expected to to be
killed and perhaps, eaten.
After two years of brutal repression – supervised by the United
Nations Security Council on behalf of the civilized world –
the people of Haiti have been reduced to a condition in which they
are less free than they were 200 years ago. Their legitimate leaders
are in exile or in jail, and the civilized world looks on approvingly
as these uppity blacks are starved and coerced into good behavior.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they were among
the original signatories, 60 years ago, obviously cannot apply to
them.
They have elected a President, under rules set by people who don’t
believe in rules and scorn elections.
The omniscient and all wise President of the United States, Mr.
Bush says the Haitians are not entitled to freedom and his judgment
is backed up by that certified black intellectual, Dr Condoleezza
Rice and by Mr. Annan, the world’s Commissioner of Police
cum Ombudsman – also a black person, and a citizen of Ghana.
These two, who undoubtedly benefited from the struggles of Katherine
Dunham and people like Martin Luther King and Marcus Garvey, provide
American racism with all the legitimacy it needs to cancel the human
rights of the Haitian people and millions of others.
It was the Haitian people after all, who were the first nation in
the world, before
the Americans, the French and the British, to proclaim and promulgate
the universal rights of all human beings, whatever their sex, race
or economic condition, to democratic equality.
Cultures of Abuse
The Haitians were, of course, premature and presumptuous. As William
Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State, famously
said 90 years ago: “Imagine! Niggers speaking French!”
That, plus their democratic pretensions, was enough to damn them
forever.
Some people have rights; most of us have nothing more than the illusion
of freedom. It’s been obvious for five hundred years, long
before Kipling write about ‘lesser breeds without the law’.
Generalissimo von Rumsfeld put everything into perspective three
years ago as platoons of looters ravaged the history of civilization,
stealing to order, priceless artifacts protected over 8,000 years
by the people of Iraq. They too were presumptuous. The free market
rules – or as the generalissimo said: “Stuff happens.”
Stuff happens.
On my computer filed on March 15, 2006, under ‘War crimes/Massacres’
is a Reuters story “US accused of killings, Saddam urges resistance”
in which it is reported: “ Iraqi police accused U.S. troops
of killing five children in a raid on an al Qaeda suspect on Wednesday
as ousted leader Saddam Hussein used his televised trial to call
on people to "resist the invaders".
It is an odd story, because details of a massacre are entangled
with a report of an incident at the trial of Saddam Hussein. But
the story is clear enough”
‘[Iraqi] Police and witnesses said 11 members of one family
were killed in a U.S. raid overnight in Ishaqi, a town in Saddam's
home province north of Baghdad. The U.S. military said two women
and a child died as troops arrested an al Qaeda militant.
A senior Iraqi police officer said autopsies on the bodies, which
included five children, showed each had been shot in the head. Community
leaders said they were outraged.
Television footage showed the bodies of five children, two men and
four women in the Tikrit morgue. One infant had a gaping head wound.
All the children seemed younger than school age’.
The American press has just this week discovered this story, which
is strange, since it was carried in the New York Times a day after
the Reuters story. In a bylined piece by Jeffrey Gettleman the incident
was relocated to Balad:
* “American soldiers demolished a farmhouse near the Sunni
Arab town of Balad on Wednesday after encountering unexpectedly
heated resistance from insurgents, killing a number of civilians
in the process.The American military said that only three civilians
had been killed, while Iraqi officials said an entire 11-member
family — from a 75-year-old grandmother to a 6-month-old baby
— had died in the attack.
Maj. Tim Keefe, a military spokesman, said American troops were
on their way to capture an insurgent in a rural area north of Baghdad
when insurgents opened fire from the farmhouse.
Coalition forces returned fire, utilizing both air and ground assets,"
Major Keefe said.
The results were devastating, according to images broadcast on Arab
TV: dead cows, scorched cars, a smashed house and 11 bodies rolled
up in blankets.”
This week the US media ‘discovered’ the story. What
has obviously happened is that the Iraqi ‘government’
has been raising a stink about the incident to the point where the
US Army has been pushed to arrest several soldiers and is charging
them with murder.
As in previous cases, only ordinary servicemen are charged, only
ordinary ‘grunts’ – no officers, although it is
clear from both stories that a Major Keefe was involved.
This replicates the pattern of Abu Ghraib where it was clear that
senior officers, including General Jeffrey Miller and the senior
commander in Iraq, General Sanchez, must have been involved. A number
of grunts are serving time for their aberrant behavior at Abu Ghraib.
One wonders if any of them speak French, like Haitians.
We don’t do torture, President Bush has said. American soldiers
do not commit atrocities; except of course for a few underprivileged
peasants from places like West Virginia who obviously got into the
army on false pretences.
Three years ago I wrote in one of these columns:
‘It is the contempt that is so obvious, and so offensive.
The total disregard of public opinion, the failure to make even
a gesture toward the norms of civilized behavior. Even more amazing,
is the disrespect for their own Anglo-American traditions, norms
and law.
‘It is the absolute setting aside of any idea of a duty to
act according to law, or custom, or convention; the arrogation of
authority to do, and to try to get away with, whatever one wishes
to do; to do whatever is necessary to get one’s way; to impose
one’s will, to kill, to destroy, to humiliate, and finally,
to abrogate the human and property rights of others.
‘Dexter Filkins of the New York Times, reporting on March
29,[2003] provided a vivid picture of the Allied mind-set:
‘ “At the base camp of the Fifth Marine Regiment here,
two sharpshooters, Sgt. Eric Schrumpf, 28, and Cpl. Mikael McIntosh,
20, sat on a sand berm and swapped combat tales. The marines said
they had little trouble dispatching their foes, most of whom they
characterized as ill-trained and cowardly. "We had a great
day," Sergeant Schrumpf said. "We killed a lot of people....
We dropped [sic] a few civilians," Sergeant Schrumpf said,
"but what do you do?" [In one incident], he recalled watching
one of the women standing near [an] Iraqi soldier go down. "I'm
sorry," the sergeant said. "But the chick was in the way."’
It is as if the Marine was apologizing for running over a cat in
the road.”
I wrote that on April 12, 2003.
I reprint it here because it is so easy to say that you knew that
all the time. I reprint it to demonstrate that not only did we ‘know’
about these abuses, we wrote about them. And no one did anything.
We heard the lies, the transparent pretexts, knew about the subhuman
savages transported to Guantanamo Bay, straight-jacketed, blindfolded,
gagged and shackled to the bare floor of the C-130 transport planes
to prevent them chewing their way their way through the plane’s
hydraulic lines; about the German Arab whose fortuitous liberation
enabled him to tell of his kidnapping, torture, rape and imprisonment
as a suspected terrorist. We know of the gulags where ‘invisible’
prisoners’ brains are systematically turned to blancmange;
we know about people too demoralized to want to live , choosing
not to eat but force- fed like Strasbourg geese. All in a place
described by a British High Court judge as a ‘law-free zone’
presided over by the President of the United States. We know about
the leveling of Fallujah, destroyed in order to save it from the
insurgents. And we have now heard about the massacre in Haditha.
We know about the Palestinians in their concentration camp, essaying
democracy, only to be told that they can have any government they
may choose, as long as they do not choose the one they want. We
know that Israel claims the right to kill whomsoever it chooses
and has defied more UN resolutions than all other countries put
together.
So, why are we whining about a few more dead Iraqis. Half a million
babies died in the run up to the war, hundreds of thousands were
maimed or died from the effects of depleted uranium so that the
civilised world may be assured of oil for air conditioning, for
ATVs, SUVs and cruise shipping and the US vice president can be
guaranteed against loss from his public service.
What is all the fuss about 24 dead Iraqis in Haditha? They were
killed by young men who thought they were doing their duty, scared
out of their wits by the knowledge that insurgents were everywhere,
coming out of the woodwork – unable to distinguish between
friend and foe when everybody is on the other side. The US military
insists that these are all isolated incidents. The troops are to
be lectured on “core values” – Loyalty, Duty,
Respect and Iraqi cultural values.
A few will be court-martialed as an example to the others and life
and war will go on, as after Abu Ghraib and all the other ‘few,
isolated incidents.’
Stuff happens!
So! What else is new?
Why, there is the huge story about the Americans deigning to offer
the Iranians the chance to talk to Mr John Bolton, the American
Ambassador to the United Nations. The Americans and their noble
allies in the rest of the civilized world are offering the Iranians
a choice between the most delicious carrot and the most punishing
stick, a choice usually offered only to donkeys. The US will talk
to the Iranians if the Iranians surrender, in advance, their right
to process uranium fuel for power generation. It is, according to
the US media, a hugely significant breakthrough.
The Americans don’t believe the Iranians only want to generate
power. They believe the Iranians want to go much further, to produce
nuclear weapons of mass destruction. In this, they resemble the
Cubans, whose biochemical industry is not geared to produce medicine
according to Mr Bolton, but to manufacture bio-terrorist materials.
The Iranians have, as the Americans calculated, rejected the carrot
and the stick. The Americans and their noble allies can now proceed
to Stage Two – designing an elaborate pavane to lead Iran
to the punishment table, and if possible, to the fate of Iraq.
Nearly a decade ago General Lee Butler, head (1992-94)of the US
Strategic Air Command, declared that it was "dangerous in the
extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle
East, one nation [Israel] has armed itself, [with] nuclear weapons,
perhaps numbering in the hundreds, and that inspires other nations
to do so. An October 1998 "Memorandum of Agreement" between
the US and Israel, upgrading their military and strategic relationship,
was widely interpreted to mean that the US regards Israel's nuclear
arsenal "not only as a positive factor in the regional balance
of power, but also as one it should support and enhance" (Foundation
for Middle East Peace – Special Report, Winter 1999)
It is such a pity that people like the Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians,
Hamas and the Iranians persist in believing that universal human
rights apply to them, that justice is for all and that people like
John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George Bush are not
prophets of God.
Five hundred years of history have obviously taught them nothing.
As my grandmother used to say: “If you can’t hear, you
must feel”.
Copyright ©2006 John Maxwell
jankunnu@yahoo.com
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Mp3
audio of inaugural speech in Kreyol
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Join
HLLN's Media Campaign to FREE political prisoners in Haiti, protect
the Feb. 7th vote and to stop media bearing false and racists
witness to the plight of the people of Haiti
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HLLN's
Media Campaign
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Investigate
the electoral fraud:
COUNT
ALL THE VOTES!!!!
HLLN'S "Protect the Feb. 7th vote and the "NO-protectorate-for-Haiti"
campaign
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- HLLN's
position of the sham elections
Standing on Truth, Living without Fear: HLLN's position on foreign-sponsored
elections under coup d'etat, dictatorship and occupation | Haitian
Perspectives by Marguerite Laurent, October 31, 2005
- HLLN's
responds regarding position
taken on sham elections, Windowsonhaiti
There are no free rides
http://www.haitiforever.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12214#12214
-
“We’re Not Participating In Selections!” Says
Haitians in Haiti
(May 27, 2005) Ezili
Danto Witness Project
- NY
Fanmi Lavalas denounces Marc Bazin and his renegade Fanmi Lavalas
acolytes
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Condemn Sham Elections in Haiti
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 Those
who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it:
See, the first US occupation and administration of Haiti
and how, then too, President Wilson of the US called the US. marines
exploits on behalf of New York bankers and multinationals, an
exercize in "civilizing" and "developing"
the "corrupt," "failed" and "inept"
blacks of Haiti....Charlemagne
Pèralte Speaks!
-
Inquiry into Occupation and Administration of Haiti," The
U.S. Senate Investigates the Haitian Occupation
interview Haitians about marine conduct in the guerrilla war against
Haitian resistance.
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See Also:
Conclusions
and Recommendations by the Commitee of Six Disinterested Americans
The
People Were Very Peaceable": The U.S. Senate Investigates
the Haitian Occupation
The
Truth about Haiti: An NAACP Investigation
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“Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow
yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or
arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.”
Ralph Waldo Trine
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HLLN's
Work
from the HLLN pamplet
"...HLLN dreams of a world based on principles, values, mutual
respect, equal application of laws, cooperation instead of competition
and on peaceful co-existence and acts on it. We put forth these
ideas, on behalf of voiceless Haitians, through a unique and unprecedented
combination of art
and activism,
networking, sharing info on radio interviews, our Ezili Danto
listserves and by circulating our original
"Haitian Perspective" writings. We make presentations
at congressional briefings and at international events, such as
An
Evening of Solidarity with Bolivarian Venezuela.
With the Ezili
Danto Witness Project, HLLN documents eyewitness testimonies
of the common men and women in Haiti suffering, under this US-installed
regime, the greatest forms of terror and exclusion since the days
of slavery; conducts learning forums on Haiti (The "To-Tell-The-Truth-About-Haiti"
Forums), and , in general, brings the
voices against occupation, endless poverty and exclusion
in Haiti directly to governments officials, international policymakers,
human rights organizations, journalists, the corporate and alternative
media, schools and universities, solidarity networks. We are often
quoted in major alternative and even the corporate papers and
press influencing the current thinking of readers today."
HLLN, November 9, 2005.
See, The Nescafé
machine, Common Sense, John Maxwell Sunday, November 06, 2005
, quoting
HLLN's chairperson, Marguerite Laurent, Esq.
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Boycott
Disney and the ABC Network
(Support HLLN's
Campaign 5)
(in 1990)"...Haitians, through
the ballot box, rebelled against their neocolonial status. They
rebelled against a racist world economy that locked them into
the role of producers instead of consumers. Under Aristide, they
wanted to complete what they began in 1803 – joining the
world community as equals. If
Haiti, as the hemisphere’s poorest nation, was successful
in escaping from their international debt and seizing control
of their own destiny, it could prove to be as devastating to the
global sweatshop economy as Haiti’s first revolution was
to the slave trade.......
"...the new (US-imposed Miami) government
also, as one of its first acts in office, cut Haiti’s minimum
wage by 50%, from about $3.60 for a 12 hour day, down to $1.60.
This is a big perk for Haitian-American Andre Apaid, owner of
numerous Haitian garment manufacturing plants making cheap wares
for American companies such as Disney, owner of the ABC network.
ABC joined the US corporate media in selling this American citizen
as a legitimate leader of Haiti’s “civil resistance”
to the popular Aristide Government. "Our
nasty little racist war in Haiti by Michaeli,
NimN, June 7, 2004 | Source:
http://coldtype.net/Grip.04.html
(Scroll down to 7 June 2004) |
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Dessalines
Is Rising!!
Ayisyen: You Are Not Alone!
"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
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THE
HAITIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM:
La Dessalinienne / Dessaline’s Song / La Desalinyen
http://www.geocities.com/ernsly/haitiladessalinienne.mid
(Audio file)
http://www.thelouvertureproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=La_Dessalinienne
(Lyrics: in Kreyol, French, and
an English translation of the French)
DESSALINE’S SONG
For our country,
For our forefathers,
United let us march.
Let there be no traitors in our ranks!
Let us be masters of our soil.
United let us march
For our country,
For our forefathers.
For our forebears,
For our country
Let us toil joyfully.
May the fields be fertile
And our souls take courage.
Let us toil joyfully
For our forebears,
For our country.
For our country
And for our forefathers,
Let us train our sons.
Free, strong, and prosperous,
We shall always be as brothers.
Let us train our sons
For our country
And for our forefathers.
For our forebears,
For our country,
Oh God of the valiant!
Take our rights and our life
Under your infinite protection,
Oh God of the valiant!
For our forebears,
For our country.
For the flag,
For our country
To die is a fine thing!
Our past cries out to us:
Have a disciplined soul!
To die is a fine thing,
For the flag,
For our country.
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Dessalines
Is Rising!!
Ayisyen: You Are Not Alone!
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| HLLN's
controvesy
with Marine
Spokesman,
US occupiers |
| Lt.
Col. Dave Lapan faces off with the Network |
International
Solidarity Day Pictures & Articles
May 18, 2005 |
| Pictures
and Articles Witness Project |
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_____________
 Drèd
Wilme, A Hero for the 21st Century
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Pèralte
Speaks!
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Yvon Neptune's
Letter From Jail
Pacot -
April 20, 2005
(Kreyol & English)
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| Click
photo for larger image |
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| Emmanuel "Dread"
Wilme - on "Wanted poster" of suspects wanted by the
Haitian police. |
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Emmanuel
"Dread" Wilme speaks:
Radio Lakou New York, April 4, 2005 interview with Emmanuel "Dread"
Wilme
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The
Crucifiction of Emmanuel
"Dread" Wilme,
a historical
perspective
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Urgent
Action:
Demand a Stop
to the Killings
in Cite Soleil
*
Sample letters &
Contact info
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Denounce Canada's role in Haiti:
Canadian officials Contact Infomation
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Urge the Caribbean
Community to stand firm in not recognizing the illegal Latortue
regime: |
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| Selected
CARICOM Contacts |
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Key
CARICOM
Email
Addresses |
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Slide
Show at the
July 27, 2004 Haiti Forum Press Conference during the DNC
in Boston honoring those who stand firm for Haiti and democracy;
those who tell the truth about Haiti; Presenting the Haiti
Resolution, and; remembering Haiti's revolutionary legacy
in 2004 and all those who have lost life or liberty fighting
against the Feb. 29, 2004 Coup d'etat and its consequences |
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