My uncle Tom and me (and many others!) at the Broward County Dean Meetup Wednesday night: click the pic to see the postage!
I have never been to HAITI, but it has always held a special place in my heart. Growing up in South Florida, I have known many Haitians in school and from places I've worked, and I have found them to be, virtually without exception, the most kind, open-hearted, laid-back people I have ever known. Not to mention hard-working! What better group of people should we be welcoming into our country?
Yet the US treats Haitians like garbage. It's especially always struck me to view how they are treated by the US government in comparison to Cubans: while Cubans need only put one wet foot on dry land to be allowed to stay forever, Haitian refugees, if caught by the authorities, are sent back to Haiti on the next plane.
This always especially pissed me off because Haitians were generally fleeing to Florida seeking freedom from death-squads and violent oppression, and Cuba, by all accounts, is a stable communist dictatorship where the people are in relatively little danger. (Unless you consider paucity of capitalistic opportunity to be danger -- I do not.) Cubans come to America and yell and scream that Castro stole their family plantation, freed their servants, and turned their mansion into apartments for the smelly masses. Then they all become Republicans. My heart bleeds.
It's money, money, money: this planet is overrun by the wickedest, cruelest, Mammon-worshipping monsters. And the otherwise well-meaning American people sit by and believe the corporate media. I think it was Voltaire who said the devil's greatest trick was convincing the world he did not exist: I disagree. The devil's best trick was convincing people he was speaking on behalf of God and light, and all that is good and right, and getting them to follow him into Hell.
Read this
BlackCommentator.com article on Haiti; it is excellent:
"The deed is done. Haiti has been raped. The act was sanctioned by the United States, Canada and France." -- Editorial, Jamaica Observer
Colin Powell is "the most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence in the world in my lifetime." -- TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson
"All the people that supported [Aristide] will be dead in three months." -- Haiti government attorney Ira Kurzban
The new order congeals like blood on the streets of Port-au-Prince. Haiti's dance of death begins anew, a convergence of low-life assassins, high-living compradors, preening French imperialists and global American pirates -- an unspeakable bacchanal.
(Click the text for more....)
KARAOKE is Japanese for "silly drunk singing white people who can't remember the words."
Here are some fine examples from karaoke night, last night:
boyus grinnus steveius, girlus grinnus chandraea, boyus singus mikeus
two fine specimens of girlus grinnus sambucus, heatheria and tinaea
i participated in the strange ritual, but lacked the cojones (quite large to the karaoking natives, but rather lacking in pedantic researchers such as myself), to go it alone. fortunately, the girlus grinnuses were more than happy to oblige.
