Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Haiti is fated to loom amidst the islands of the Caribbean as Africa does amidst the continents of the world – as a dark, destitute, diseased, desperate, disenfranchised, dishonest, disorganized, disassociated, dangerous and, ultimately, dysfunctional mess… And, even though white foreign faces appear as evil forces from time to time, black indigenous faces (like those… Read more.
The following excerpt – from “Return of Baby Doc,” January 20, 2011 – telegraphed (and effectively sums up) my thoughts on the timely death of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier: Theories abound about Baby Doc’s return – ranging from it being pursuant to a political plot orchestrated by the U.S. and France, to a desperate attempt to… Read more.
It’s easy to forget how promising Haiti’s future seemed when Jean Bertrand Aristide was elected in 1990. But, after 14 years of providing more political drama than national development, Aristide was escorted into exile on the paternal wings of the U.S. Marines… Aristide’s national ambition seems to be for his people to live in chronic… Read more.
In a deft and enlightened move, Martelly declared from the outset of his presidency that he wanted to make peace – not just with Aristide but with every other former Haitian leader as well. To this end he made quite a public show today of meeting with both Aristide and Baby Doc. Implicit in this… Read more.
No doubt Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide expected that his long-planned and long-anticipated return to Haiti on Friday would command at least as much international media coverage as his flight into exile in 2004. And it probably would have if the international media were not already preoccupied, if not obsessed, with coverage of not one but… Read more.
As if chronic poverty, corrupt governance, an earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands, and a cholera outbreak that is threatening to kill thousands more were not devastating enough. Now the poor, longsuffering people of Haiti, many of whom are still hovelling in post-quake, makeshift tents, are withering under the onslaught of Hurricane Tomas – with… Read more.
Here, in part, is how hip-hop star Wyclef Jean rationalized his decision to run for president of Haiti this November: If I can’t take five years out to serve my country as President, then everything I’ve been singing about, like equal rights, doesn’t mean anything. (TIME, August 4, 2010) But I suspect some Haitians will… Read more.
Donors to Haiti who don’t donate Last January, Haiti was devastated by a catastrophic earthquake, killing an estimated 250,000 people. Still reeling from the aftershocks, the country witnessed global leaders parading their pledges of support for relief and recovery efforts. In that context, I sounded a cautionary, perhaps cynical, note. I warned those managing relief and recovery efforts to beware of… Read more.
It is interesting, even instructive, to see how Haitians, displaced by last month’s earthquake, are reacting to offers by Africans to “return home.” Because, if nothing else, their reaction should put the (final) nail in the coffin of Pan-Africanism. Here, for the record, are two of the more widely reported offers Africans have made in… Read more.
Haiti has never been salvaged from the political strife and unconscionable poverty, hunger and disease that have earned it the perennial dishonor as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere…. American presidents are almost as responsible for creating the nightmarish living conditions in Haiti as the succession of incompetent, corrupt and ruthless leaders they’ve sponsored… Read more.
