Back When I Was An African American I believed...

We Blacks in America came from the West Coast of the continent of Africa.  Coming over on ships, packed like sardines for a voyage from the east to America.  I later found that even Blacks from the central portion of the continent were also bought and sold into the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.  The people of the Kongo would march as many as 500 miles from the interior of Africa to the Ghanian sea coast, into Goree Castle to be shipped to the Americas as chattel.  This was big for me, after having been spoon fed on the idea of the powerful Mandingos (I never could pin down whether there was ever a people called Mandingos), Ashanti and Mau Mau (I later learned the Mau Mau had nothing to do with a tribe or nation of Africans on the west coast.)  My belief in this version of our history would be later confirmed by a book I thought long and hard as to whether I would read it or not.  Not only was I Black, and African American from a world view, but I also knew Jesus was a Black man.  I was a Christian.  Black and Christian.

 Years and years ago there was this huge book store chain called Book Star that soon appeared in several major cities.  Now that I think about it, it probably was one of the first of the big book store chains that was dedicated to books as the primary product.  At any rate, a friend and I would frequent this book store at least once a week to go and read, thumb through and eventually buy books.  We rarely read the same genre, but we would break off and later somehow bump right into each other at some point in time in the store.  On the way out one night a book caught my attention, The Secrets Of Voodoo by Milo Rigaud.  Black Power Vic wanted it right off the rip, but Christian Vic said "maybe you shouldn't buy that and put that in your home.  It says Voodoo right on the cover.  Christian Vic won out. In fact Christian Vic won for several more years too  .Eventually Black Power Vic got his way after reading so much about Egyptian Religion and eventually reading African Origin of Major World Religions by Dr. Ben Jochannan.   In the book Dr. Ben  clearly states Christianity comes directly from Voodoo.  After about 5 years of mental battle and evolving, Black Power Vic could finally read about Voodoo from an Haitian Perspective.

Mr. Rigaud's family is/was part of the branch of free Haitians during and after the revolution known as the Mulattos and his direct decendent was Andre Rigaud rival to Jean Jaques Dessalines.  Milo Rigaud does a masterful job of showing the inter-relatiions of the Vodou to Judaism and Christiantiy.  Yet, at the time, the most powerful information that came clear to me was learning the several nations of people that actually came to the Americas from Africa. This was based on what Vodou rites that exists on Haiti. The nations of people enslaved on Haiti each had their own Vodou rite.  There was the Congo rite, Nago rite, the Ibo rite, the Rada rite from Ouida in Benin and the Petwo rite.  The Petwo rite is said have been the only rite to develop in the Americas and not have an origin in Africa. 

Haitian Cholera Is A Lie

This past Sunday 60 minutes ran a piece on the cholera outbreak on the island of Haiti.  Not once did the program note that the strain of cholera that's killing the Haitian people is not native to the Western Hemisphere.  So, lets set the record straight.  According to the World Health Organization the strain of cholera found in Haiti is the Vibrio cholera 01 Ogawa strain, and is not "native' to the western hemisphere.  In fact the strain can be traced to South Asia, more specifically Nepal.  Nepalese soldiers are "peace keeping" on the island, but on the contrary fighting with the Haitian people.

Shortly after the outbreak, local news agencies were reporting the people on the island were attacking U.N. peacekeepers and not letting them through with much needed supplies to combat the disease.  The U.S. kept up it's attack by saying the people were stopping the soldiers from coming into the area of St. Marc, because the soldiers were giving the people cholera.  It was reported as if it were a conspiracy theory and we should ignore the dumb natives.  Sure enough, the people were right!

Haiti: an unwelcome katrina redux...Cynthia McKinney

I found this gem on the Trinidad Express blog, which is a reprent of an article written by our esteemed former Georgia congress woman and former candidate for president in 2008 running on  the Green Party ticket, Cynthia McKinney. This article brings home some thoughts I had on the quick response by President Obama and his deployment of the U.S. military's most leathal combat units, the 82nd Airborne and U.S. Marines, to Haiti.  This article was originally posted on Global Research where you can read the full post.

Haiti: An Unwelcome Katrina Redux

By Cynthia McKinney
January 22, 2010 – globalresearch.ca

President Obama’s response to the tragedy in Haiti has been robust in military deployment and puny in what the Haitians need most: food; first responders and their specialized equipment; doctors and medical facilities and equipment; and engineers, heavy equipment, and heavy movers. Sadly, President Obama is dispatching Presidents Bush and Clinton, and thousands of Marines and U.S. soldiers. By contrast, Cuba has over 400 doctors on the ground and is sending in more; Cubans, Argentinians, Icelanders, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and many others are already on the ground working – saving lives and treating the injured. Senegal has offered land to Haitians willing to relocate to Africa.
 
The United States, on the day after the tragedy struck, confirmed that an entire Marine Expeditionary Force was being considered “to help restore order,” when the “disorder” had been caused by an earthquake striking Haiti; not since 1751, 1770, 1842, 1860, and 1887 had Haiti experienced an earthquake. But, I remember the bogus reports of chaos and violence that led to the deployment of military assets, including Blackwater, in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One Katrina survivor noted that the people needed food and shelter and the US government sent men with guns. Much to my disquiet, it seems, here we go again. From the very beginning, US assistance to Haiti has looked to me more like an invasion than a humanitarian relief operation.

On Day Two of the tragedy, a C-130 plane with a military assessment team landed in Haiti, with the rest of the team expected to land soon thereafter. The stated purpose of this team was to determine what military resources were needed.

An Air Force special operations team was also expected to land to provide air traffic control. Now, the reports are that the US is not allowing assistance in; shades of Hurricane Katrina, all over again.

On President Obama’s orders military aircraft “flew over the island, mapping the destruction.” So, the first US contribution to the humanitarian relief needed in Haiti were reconnaissance drones whose staffing are more accustomed to looking for hidden weapon sites and surface-to-air missile batteries than wrecked infrastructure. The scope of the US response soon became clear: aircraft carrier, Marine transport ship, four C-140 airlifts, and evacuations to Guantanamo. By the end of Day Two, according to the Washington Post report, the United States had evacuated to Guantanamo Bay about eight [8] severely injured patients, in addition to US Embassy staffers, who had been “designated as priorities by the US Ambassador and his staff.”

On Day Three we learned that other US ships, including destroyers, were moving toward Haiti.

Interestingly, the Washington Post reported that the standing task force that coordinates the US response to mass migration events from Cuba or Haiti was monitoring events, but had not yet ramped up its operations. That tidbit was interesting in and of itself, that those two countries are attended to by a standing task force, but the treatment of their nationals is vastly different, with Cubans being awarded immediate acceptance from the US government, and by contrast, internment for Haitian nationals.

US Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson IV reassured Americans, “Our focus right now is to prevent that, and we are going to work with the Defense Department, the State Department, FEMA and all the agencies of the federal government to minimize the risk of Haitians who want to flee their country,” Watson said. “We want to provide them those relief supplies so they can live in Haiti.”

By the end of Day Four, the US reportedly had evacuated over 800 US nationals.

For those of us who have been following events in Haiti before the tragic earthquake, it is worth noting that several items have caused deep concern:

1. the continued exile of Haiti’s democratically-elected and well-loved, yet twice-removed former priest, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide;

2. the unexplained continued occupation of the country by United Nations troops who have killed innocent Haitians and are hardly there for “security” (I’ve personally seen them on the roads that only lead to Haiti’s sparsely-populated areas teeming with beautiful beaches);

3. US construction of its fifth-largest embassy in the world in Port-au-Prince, Haiti;

4. mining and port licenses and contracts, including the privatization of Haiti’s deep-water ports, because certain offshore oil and transshipment arrangements would not be possible inside the US for environmental and other considerations; and

5. Extensive foreign NGO presence in Haiti that could be rendered unnecessary if, instead, appropriate US and other government policy allowed the Haitian people some modicum of political and economic self-determination.

Therefore, we note here the writings of Ms. Marguerite Laurent, whom I met in her capacity as attorney for ousted President of Haiti Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ms. Laurent reminds us of Haiti’s offshore oil and other mineral riches and recent revival of an old idea to use Haiti and an oil refinery to be built there as a transshipment terminal for US supertankers. Ms. Laurent, also known as Ezili Danto of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN), writes:

“There is evidence that the United States found oil in Haiti decades ago and due to the geopolitical circumstances and big business interests of that era made the decision to keep Haitian oil in reserve for when Middle Eastern oil had dried up. This is detailed by Dr. Georges Michel in an article dated March 27, 2004 outlining the history of oil explorations and oil reserves in Haiti and in the research of Dr. Ginette and Daniel Mathurin.

“There is also good evidence that these very same big US oil companies and their inter-related monopolies of engineering and defense contractors made plans, decades ago, to use Haiti’s deep water ports either for oil refineries or to develop oil tank farm sites or depots where crude oil could be stored and later transferred to small tankers to serve U.S. and Caribbean ports. This is detailed in a paper about the Dunn Plantation at Fort Liberte in Haiti.

“Ezili’s HLLN underlines these two papers on Haiti’s oil resources and the works of Dr. Ginette and Daniel Mathurin in order to provide a view one will not find in the mainstream media nor anywhere else as to the economic and strategic reasons the US has constructed its fifth largest embassy in the world – fifth only besides the US embassy in China, Iraq, Iran and Germany – in tiny Haiti, post the 2004 Haiti Bush regime change.”

The 4th branch is alive and functioning. Check news sources other than NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC AND FOX.

Since the devestation of Mother Earth shifting, ravaging Haiti, the media has been attempting to shape our minds around the story.  President Obama was praised for acting so quickly.  One of the first moves by the president was to mobilize 3,500. Army Airborne troops and, 2200 Marines  Wow, I thought Airborne, Marines???  Airborne and Marine units are far from humanitairan units.  I wondered why not Army combat engineers or Navy Construction Battalion (C-Bees), these units would be most beneficial in this environment.  Nope, True combat teams came in first.  The Coast Guard Cutters Tahoma and Valient were the first on scene and in effect the USCG took control of Haitian skys.  The U.S. allows or disallows flights into the airport in Port Au Prince.  They control what countries land and deliver aide and what countries do not.  I Thought of the rebuilding of New Orleans and the no bid contracts awarded to Bush cronies.  And, I wondered to whom would this president award contracts?  The fast move did a lot to strengthen, in the eyes of some Black people, the resolve that president Obama didn't hesitate to save the Haitian people, much as G. W. Bush didn't act in New Orleans after Hurricaine Katrina.  Yet, president Obama invited G. W. Bush to a news conference, a man many Haitians hold a great deal of contempt. 

Now, the "news" is  attempting to shape our thoughts, into seeing the poor Haitians becoming violent  due to the lack of aide and food they weren't receiving and order must be attained.  I suppose when the 82nd Airborne and Marines fire on civilians it will be justified in order to bring about order.  The Haitian National Police have all run off, they're telling us.  Then the Airborne and Marines will have to "act."  Yet, there are other news agencies bringing us another perspective of what is happening in Haitil  Check this video and you decide.

Haiti Devastated

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