28 February 2004

The Opposition in Haiti —What You Should Know
Part II


Individual Players: Otto Reich, Roger Norriega, Andre Apaid
Otto Reich — Part of the incompetent team .:running:. U.S. Policy in Latin America.

Beginning in the 80's, under Ronald Reagan, he was chief of the Office of Public Diplomacy. Its purpose was to .:spread disinformation:. to the American public about Central America and smear the reputations of reporters the administration didn't like. With Reich at the helm, the Office of Public Diplomacy lied to "journalists, Congressional committees, and the U.S. people." Congress discovered the illegal operations and closed it down. ...never forget the Iran/Contra hearings.

After the Contra war Otto was .:appointed:. Ambassador to Venezuela. He secured the release of the Cuban exile terrorist, Orlando Bosch— jailed for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane, which killed all on board. "The U.S. Justice Department had evidence of Bosch's involvement in more than 30 other terrorist acts, ...including a rocket attack on a Polish ship in Miami." Jeb Bush the assisted Otto with getting Bosch .:pardoned:. by George Bush I in '92.

Reich .:became part:. of the current administration in 2001. Courtesy of a "special loophole" that enabled Bush to temporarily (1 year) appoint him, sans any approval from the Senate. After that year passed, he was again appointed to a post that didn't require approval; he was made a "special Latin American envoy to the National Security Agency." Noriega led many of the efforts to disrupt the government of Venezuela. Venezuela is the biggest American oil producer, and since President Hugo Chavez is a democratically-elected leader who nationalized the country's oil revenues he is a target of this administration. Otto .:met with:. Chavez "upper-class opponents" in Washington to plot his overthrow. His preferred method of sowing dissent in the country is to use Venezuela's media, which is owned by the upper-class opponents. The fight to topple democracy in Venezuela is ongoing.

Roger Noriega —Heads up negotiations of international efforts in Haiti. He's a former .:chief of staff:. to the rabidly racist Jesse Helms. Noriega has a "long history" of siding with the elite, anti-Aristide business owners in Haiti.

He also .:openly met:. with Venezuelans to plot the first failed coup against Chavez.

Andre Apaid — This is an American-born .:sweatshop owner:. who has aligned himself with former members of the Haitian military. As an American citizen, he has no right to hold office in Haiti. Apaid was a .:Duvalier-supporter:. and often acts as the .:spokesman:. for Group of 184 (European-funded businesses).


Protest America's Hypocrisy
Tell your elected representative to support Congresswoman Maxine Waters' Resolution to .:Prevent a Bloodbath in Haiti:..

Write your .:Representative:. or .:Senator:..

Canada
Find and contact your .:MP:. to demand that Canada stop supporting the US in its quest to undermine Haiti's democractic process.

Contact .:Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham:. to demand he cease support of US attempts to corrupt democracy in Haiti.

Contact the .:NDP:. to demand they stand against the Liberals' complicity in the imminent disaster in Haiti.
Donate to Humanitarian Relief
.:MADRE:.
The Opposition in Haiti —What You Should Know
Part I


US Government and NGO's Financially Back the Haitian Opposition:
Approximately $70 million has been given to organize an opposition to President Aristide between 1994 and 2002. There are numerous opposition groups that make up the .:Democratic Platform:.

Two of those sub-groups are the .:Democratic Convergence:. and the .:Group of 184:. (Haitian business owners and the professional elite). Though often referred to by the media, there is no mention of their affiliation with the US government and the Brookings Institution (right wing think tank), USAID, and the International Republican Institute, whose .:board of directors:. includes elected Republican officials.

The US may also have funneled arms to .:paramilitary groups:. operating in Haiti. The coincidence of the simultaneous acquisition of new M-16s by Haitian paramilitaries and a military aid shipment of US-made M-16s to the Dominican Republic is extraordinary. Even more extraordinary is that the coincidence is of no interest to mainstream media.

In recent days, American officials have made statements indicating that Aristide should step down. They have no compunction in supporting a coup against a democratically-elected leader in Haiti, while telling the American people that our country will support democracies around the globe.

Protest America's Hypocrisy
Tell your elected representative to support Congresswoman Maxine Waters' Resolution to .:Prevent a Bloodbath in Haiti:..

Write your .:Representative:. or .:Senator:..

Canada
Find and contact your .:MP:. to demand that Canada stop supporting the US in its quest to undermine Haiti's democractic process.

Contact .:Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham:. to demand he cease support of US attempts to corrupt democracy in Haiti.

Contact the .:NDP:. to demand they stand against the Liberals' complicity in the imminent disaster in Haiti.
Donate to Humanitarian Relief
.:MADRE:.
Black History Question Answer from February 21:
.:Sharpsville:. (Sharpsville Massacre)

27 February 2004

Democratic Debate

*sigh* Thoughts on that later ...

26 February 2004

Talking Loud & Saying Nothing

I drove the car without the cd player so I was forced to listen to the radio. I punched the channel changer over and over again trying to find a station I could stomach for the 15 minute drive to the plantation (I mean that literally, the building's architectural style is like a plantation). I stopped mashing the button when I landed on Hot 107—Florida's premier radio station (*pppbbbbbbbbbbbbbbtt*).

It sounded like there were four people on the air, three men and one woman, who was reading the morning news bytes. It's difficult to tell anyone's age on the radio, but based on their grasp of various political events, it was obvious they were not just young, but partly apathetic and mostly ignorant.

The woman was doing a bad job of ad libbing about Haiti's political crisis when a male voice began talking over her. He matter of factly said that when there is talk about "violence in countries that aren't American" (go figure that one out) after the first few words all he hears is "blah blah blah." Then he asks why there's unrest, what are the people rebeling against.

A second male voice weighs in with his infuriating misconception of the situation. According to this guy, Aristide hasn't done anything for his people and the people are tired of it. That's it! That was all he knew ...he'd shot his wad of information (misinformation) in just a few wrong words.

He knew nothing about the background of the opposition. He knew nothing about FRAPH, or who trained and armed them. He knew nothing about those who .:publicly fund:. the opposition. He has no idea that U.S. ReTHUGlican organizations like the .:National Endowment for Democracy:. and the International Republican Institute plays a large part in the unrest in Haiti, and they do so without shame or public accountability.

Neither he nor his on-air buddy know much because they don't want to know. As a result, they'll keep polluting the airwaves with American-made white lies and half-truths.

25 February 2004

A Part of Ourstory from January 25, 2003

"They're killing us like dogs out here, pure dogs!" said Stansbury's mother, Phyllis Clayburne, a police department crossing guard. "It's not right and it needs to stop!"
Timothy Stansbury was shot in the chest and killed while using a routine shortcut across the rooftops of his housing project. It was reported that he and two other friends were on their way to another friend's house. Three Black young men, full of life and potential, doing what all young people do—now there are two.
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24 February 2004

A Part of Ourstory from February 10, 2003

Marcus Dixon, an 18 year old former National Honors Society member and athlete, who earned a 3.96 GPA and 1200 on his SATs, was charged and convicted of raping a 15 year old girl.
A jury of nine whites and three blacks found Dixon innocent of all charges after deliberating for 20 minutes, finding little to no merit in the girl's testimony.

However, the jury was forced to find Marcus guilty of aggravated child molestation and statutory rape since the girl was three months shy of her 16th birthday and that during the intercourse she was "injured" because she was a virgin.

Under Georgia's seven deadly sins laws, the crimes he committed carried a 10-year minimum sentence.
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Warning to Black parents of young men: keep them away from little white girls unless you know that Becky or SuzyQ won't consent to sex and then cry rape when daddy finds out her sexual partner is b-l-a-c-k!!

At this point in ourstory, your junior is less likely to become a piece of strange fruit, but more likely to be subject to biased prosecution and unknowing jurors, who are oh' so sad because they thought your boy could be convicted, but go straight home and into your loving arms.

23 February 2004

Ramping Up

This is Black History month and I feel compelled to honor that. However, I'm dismayed that so few realize ourstory today is being turned into history tomorrow. We also forget that ourstory is comprised of the good, the bad and the ugly; frequently we focus on the good, as though any attention to the bad and the ugly will negate the good. It won't.

I'm saving some space here for the badness and the ugliness ...

A Part of Ourstory from December 2003

Mr. Kenny Walker of Georgia was shot in the head, execution-style, after being stopped by police for suspected drug trafficking.
According to the Sheriff's Department account, Deputies, acting on behalf of information from the Metro Narcotics Task Force, pulled over a gray Yukon on I-85 around 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 10. However, what happened after that is an issue, which remains cloudy, with few answers and even fewer facts. What has been clearly established is that Mr. Walker was not involved in any criminal activity. Mr. Walker did not have a criminal record. Mr. Walker was not armed. Mr. Walker did not 'resist' arrest. Mr. Walker was shot twice by a deputy who the Sheriff's department refuses to name. Mr. Walker was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead at around 2:25 a.m. on Thursday, December 11.
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This is still a part of ourstory in the 21st century. Should we choose to ignore it, or relegate incidents like these to the unfortunate incident pile we do a disservice to our children and to ourselves.
Oprah Researchers Confirm My Suspicions

I found this information on another blog.
True or False: African-American men have the biggest penises.

True Research confirms that Asian men are the smallest, followed by Caucasians, with .:African-American men:. being the largest.
I think this is important. Why? Because over the years I've heard people, including some Black men, adamantly assert that this was a myth. As a result, I attributed my experiences to savvy in picking the right partners. *wink* Now I find out that what I thought was true, is indeed t-r-u-e!

All those who denied the facts should now recognize their penis envy for what it is.

22 February 2004

Support Our Troops — It's Not Just a Slogan

Eric Umansky of .:Slate:. details the support we're giving our troops, in Iraq and Afghanistan, by way of armored humvees that transport troops and patrol war-torn streets. To sum it up in two words: not enough.

This war-profiteering administration is following its established pattern of underfunding matters of importance, in this case a matter of life and death. The White House claims it doesn't need the $50 billion budgeted for war operations now, even though Congress was presented with a document showing the "military has an existing $323 million shortfall" for retrofitting the humvees already being used by the troops. To produce humvees with armor would significantly increase the amount of the shortfall.

While the troops are fighting for their lives with insufficient equipment, the dull-eyed, flag-waving warhawks at home continue to stike a macho pose and mutter meaningless slogans about supporting our troops.

No New Taxes

Cheap labor conservatives are pushing hard to make the tax cuts .:permanent:., and their supporters are unable to understand that less revenue flowing into government coffers means less money to fully fund the war effort. What we're doing is borrowing against the future to fund our expenditures today. Not only does that increase the national deficit, but it burdens our progeny with the bill. (See MoveOn.org .:ad:. for an illustration.)

Actually .:Grover Norquist:., a key adviser in Smirky's administration has said, "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." That's the type of fiscal responsibility we can expect from the prodigious fabricators of the GOP.
Doonesbury Ups the Ante
In 2000, concerned veterans in both Texas and Alabama offered cash rewards to lure former guardmates of Mr. Bush into stepping forward, to no avail. The problem, in our view, was that these enticements weren't serious enough, that the sums offered were insulting. In contrast, we at the DTH&WP respect how inconvenient it can be to subject yourself to worldwide media scrutiny in general, and Fox News in particular, and are thus prepared to sweeten previous offers by a factor of five. That's right, we're offering $10,000 cash! Yours to either spend or invest in job creation. All you have to do is definitively prove that George W. Bush fulfilled his duty to country.

.:Link:.

My morbid curosity makes me eager to see what crawls out of the woodwork.
Is There a Doctor in the House?

I'm always taken aback by Black who people acknowledge the inequities our ethnicity faces in these united states, but will then proceed to defend the very people responsible for it. In too many instances, people of African descent adopt the same beliefs (expressed by parroting jinogistic platitudes heard or read in mainstream media) undergirding the systemic racism that creates the obstacles of injustice we are forced to traverse daily.

One example of those beliefs is the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" refrain, unthinkingly bandied about by recipients of white privilege, family wealth, nepotism, cronyism, or government assistance in any of its many forms, e.g. grants and contracts. Rarely have this country's wealthy or powerful become so based solely on merit. This is evidenced by old-money families like the .:DuPonts:. —whose wealth is maintained partly because they subordinate the educational rights of children (in foreign countries) to "working in dungeon factories" for the "profits of global exporters and importers" in the US— and the .:Bushes:. —whose wealth was helped along by its banking services to the fascist Nazi regime.

I have come to believe that our neurotic need to embrace and emulate those who delight in reciting a litany of our group's supposed shortcomings could be caused by undiagnosed .:Stockholm Syndrome:. The discovery of this phenomenon follows:
"... On August 23rd, 1973 two machine-gun carrying criminals entered a bank in Stockholm, Sweden. Blasting their guns, one prison escapee named Jan-Erik Olsson announced to the terrified bank employees "The party has just begun!" The two bank robbers held four hostages, three women and one man, for the next 131 hours. The hostages were strapped with dynamite and held in a bank vault until finally rescued on August 28th.

After their rescue, the hostages exhibited a shocking attitude considering they were threatened, abused, and feared for their lives for over five days. In their media interviews, it was clear that they supported their captors and actually feared law enforcement personnel who came to their rescue. The hostages had begun to feel the captors were actually protecting them from the police. One woman later became engaged to one of the criminals and another developed a legal defense fund to aid in their criminal defense fees. Clearly, the hostages had "bonded" emotionally with their captors.

While the psychological condition in hostage situations became known as "Stockholm Syndrome" due to the publicity – the emotional "bonding" with captors was a familiar story in psychology. It had been recognized many years before and was found in studies of other hostage, prisoner, or abusive situations such as:
  • Abused Children
  • Battered/Abused Women
  • Prisoners of War
  • Cult Members
  • Incest Victims
  • Criminal Hostage Situations
  • Concentration Camp Prisoners
  • Controlling/Intimidating Relationships
In the final analysis, emotionally bonding with an abuser is actually a strategy for survival for victims of abuse and intimidation. The "Stockholm Syndrome" reaction in hostage and/or abuse situations is so well recognized at this time that police hostage negotiators no longer view it as unusual. In fact, it is often encouraged in crime situations as it improves the chances for survival of the hostages. On the down side, it also assures that the hostages experiencing "Stockholm Syndrome" will not be very cooperative during rescue or criminal prosecution. Local law enforcement personnel have long recognized this syndrome with battered women who fail to press charges, bail their battering husband/boyfriend out of jail, and even physically attack police officers when they arrive to rescue them from a violent assault.

...It's important to understand the components of Stockholm Syndrome as they relate to abusive and controlling relationships. Once the syndrome is understood, it's easier to understand why victims support, love, and even defend their abusers and controllers. ..."

It is well-documented that slaves had to develop a number of coping skills. It seems reasonable to me that those skills were simply the Stockholm Syndrome before it was given the name. The coping mechanism of identifying with, supporting, loving, and protecting those who subjugate our ethnicity has been passed down through the generations without interruption. It is worth noting that the emergence of figures like .:Marcus Garvey:. and .:MalcolmX:., neither of whom excused white people for their barbarity, nor sought to love them into accepting the group, was shocking to a system (and the people behind it) that thrived on compliant and fearful Black men and women.

Perhaps it is an explanation for the bizarre behaviors of right wing frontmen like Armstrong Williams, or any African American calling themselves a part of the conservative movement. Is there a doctor available to take on these patients?