Desert Planet O1

Early pencil sketches & digital paint for the 'CORSAIRS' Draw-Off Art Contest 2012. Still got some work to do on this illustration ... will post the final pic when it's complete.

Haiti 2 Years Later

On this day two years ago, a 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti. An estimated 316,000 people had died, 300,000 had been injured and 1 million became homeless.

Two years later Haiti still faces many, many challenges. More than 500,000 people remain on the street. Families continue to live in plastic tents. Over 200 people are dying of cholera per month. Some say in much of Haiti, it appears as though the earthquake hit two months ago, not two years ago.

It has been reported that half the money world governments pledged to Haiti never showed up. Half the money American private donors raised for Haiti hasn't been spent. And many millions went to things other than direct aid. Some experts say it will take another 10 years of spending before people see serious results ... WHAT?

Kreyòl:
Sou jou sa a de zan de sa, yon tranbleman 7.0 tè devaste Ayiti. Yon valè estime 316,000 moun ki te mouri, te gen 300,000 te andomaje epi 1,000,000 te vin sanzabri.

De ane pita Ayiti toujou ap fè fas anpil, defi anpil. Plis pase 500,000 moun yo rete sou lari a. Fanmi yo kontinye ap viv nan kan anba tant twal plastik. Plis pase 200 moun ap mouri nan kolera chak mwa. Gen moun ki di nan anpil nan Ayiti, li parèt tankou si tranbleman tè a frape de mwa de sa, se pa de zan de sa.

Li te gen te rapòte ke mwatye gouvènman yo mond lajan plede an Ayiti pa janm parèt vin. Mwatye lajan Ameriken donatè prive yo leve soti vivan pou Ayiti pa te depanse. Ak anpil milyon te ale nan lòt bagay pase èd dirèk. Gen kèk ekspè yo di li pral pran yon lòt 10 zan nan depans devan tout foul moun wè rezilta grav ... KI SA?

Française:
En ce jour il ya deux ans, un séisme de 7.0 a dévasté Haïti. Une estimation 316,000 personnes avaient été tuées, 300,000 avaient été blessés et 1,000,000 devenu sans-abri.

Deux ans plus tard Haïti est confronté à encore beaucoup, beaucoup de défis. Plus de 500,000 personnes restent dans la rue. Les familles continuent de vivre dans des tentes en plastique. Plus de 200 personnes meurent du choléra par mois. Certains disent que dans une grande partie d'Haïti, il semble que le tremblement de terre a frappé il ya deux mois, et non pas il ya deux ans.

Il a été rapporté que la moitié des gouvernements du monde de l'argent promis à Haïti ne s'est jamais présenté. La moitié de la monnaie américaine donateurs privés levés pour Haïti n'a pas été dépensé. Et plusieurs millions allé à d'autres choses que des aides directes. Certains experts disent qu'il faudra encore 10 ans avant de passer les gens voient des résultats sérieux ... QU'EST-CE?

Haiti Election - Preliminary Results

On April 4, 2011 a senior Haitian official announced that Michel 'Sweet Micky' Martelly won the run-off Haitian Presidential Election against candidate Mirlande Manigat. However, official results are not expected until April 16.

Kreyòl:
Sou 4 Avril 2011 yon wo ofisyèl Ayisyen anonse ke Michel 'Sweet Micky' Martelly te ranpòte dezyèm tou Eleksyon Prezidansyèl Ayisyen kont kandida Mirlande Manigat. Men, rezilta ofisyèl yo pa atann jouk 16 Avril.

Française:
Le 4 Avril 2011 un haut officiel Haïtien a annoncé que Michel 'Sweet Micky' Martelly a remporté le deuxième tour des Élections Présidentielles Haïtiennes contre le candidat Mirlande Manigat. Cependant, les résultats officiels ne sont pas attendus avant le 16 Avril.

Aristide returns to Haiti, days before election

(latimes.com)

Port-au-Prince, Haiti— In the face of international pressure to keep him out, former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned home Friday after seven years in exile, tossing a combustible new ingredient into the presidential election that is scheduled to take place Sunday.

Aristide arrived on a charter flight from South Africa, where he has lived for most of the time since he was flown out of Haiti on a U.S.-supplied plane amid turmoil in 2004.

He was greeted at a VIP arrival area at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, by some supporters and 100 or so airport workers, some waving little Haitian flags.

Aristide, in a dark suit, waved and clasped his hands as he stepped down to the tarmac, and was then swarmed by dozens of journalists.

Aristide, a leftist former priest, remains a deeply polarizing figure in Haiti, where he is revered by many poor residents as a defender of the downtrodden but detested by wealthy elites and others who see him as a volatile force in the country's politics.

Speculation over Aristide's return had gripped the country since the Haitian government issued him a passport in February, just weeks after former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier made a surprise return.

But it became clear only in recent days that Aristide would return, as his supporters and lawyer began to promise that he would be back on Haitian soil before Sunday, when voters go the polls to choose a new president and parliament.

At the house on the edge of Port-au-Prince where Aristide once lived, workers repainted a tall surrounding wall in faint rose pink and planted scores of tiny Haitian flags along the top.

U.S. officials, including President Obama, had sought to keep Aristide from making the trip home, arguing that his arrival could prove a destabilizing factor during the closing phase of the presidential runoff between Michel Martelly, a popular singer, and Mirlande Manigat, a university vice rector who was once Haiti's first lady.

But South African officials said they had no power to prevent the former Haitian leader from going anywhere he chose.

Aristide left Johannesburg late Thursday, accompanied by his wife, two daughters, actor Danny Glover and the former leader's Miami-based lawyer.

Aristide has said he wanted to return to work in the education field, not politics. He has also said chronic eye problems are aggravated by South Africa's cold weather.

But Aristide's profile and the fractured condition of Haiti left may make it difficult for him to stay out of political life entirely.

Haiti Election - March 20, 2011

Haiti to combat vote fraud
(upi.com)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Haitian election officials say providing help for voters and better-educated poll workers will ensure fairness in the upcoming presidential runoff election.

Presidential candidates Mirlande Manigat and Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, the top vote-getters in the preliminary round, will square off March 20, along with the two top candidates in legislative districts where no one got 50 percent of the vote, The Miami Herald reported.

The Provisional Electoral Council has set up a call center that provides 24-hour assistance for voters. In addition, all poll workers will be required to have a high school education and workers at the polling stations where fraud was most noticeable have been dismissed.

Gaillot Dorsinville, the council's president, told candidates the body is "prepared to make all of the corrections necessary to better the second round.''

The Organization of American States has also increased its delegation of observers from 120 to 200 for the runoff.

Haitian observers are dubious about the changes. Pierre Esperance heads a group that reported massive fraud in the preliminary voting.

"I have no confidence in the electoral machine," he said.

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UN plans to reinforce police for presidential run-off elections
(un.org)

The 3,500-strong United Nations police force in Haiti is planning to reinforce its support of national police for the presidential run-off election on 20 March, although it does not expect trouble, according to the head of the contingent.

“I don’t see any major risk for this second round,” Marc Tardif, head of the police component in the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), told the UN News Centre in an interview.

“Clearly it’s going to be a tense period but I don’t think we will have big trouble. We have a good working relationship with the national police and our robust presence will deter anybody wanting to create problems,” he said, noting that in the first round in November the two forces worked together, and despite some incidents, the poll took place in much greater calm than previous elections.

“Still, we’re going to reinforce our positions at those places that were unstable during the first round,” he added.

Trouble broke out after the announcement of provisional results in December from the first round, with thousands of protesters rampaging through the streets of Port-au-Prince, the capital, accusing the ruling coalition of rigging the polls, after tallies put former first lady Mirlande Manigat and outgoing President Rene Préval’s party candidate Jude Celestin in first and second place, thus qualifying for the run-off.

Popular musician Michel Martelly was less than one percentage point behind in third place, but thus excluded from the run-off, and his supporters set up burning barricades of timber, boulders and flaming tires.

After a re-examination of the ballots, the Provisional Electoral Council last month announced that Mr. Martelly had come in second and would thus face Ms. Manigat in the run-off.

Apart from its police component, MINUSTAH, which has been on the ground in Haiti since mid-2004 after then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide went into exile amid violent unrest, fields some 8,500 peacekeeping troops in the impoverished country.

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Haitian candidate wary of Aristide's planned return
(reuters.com)

MIAMI - A candidate in Haiti's decisive presidential run-off said on Thursday she hoped popular former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide would delay his planned return to the country until after the election later this month.

"Personally, as a citizen, I would prefer that he comes back after the elections," former first lady Mirlande Manigat said in a news conference at Miami's International Airport.

"We are waiting for elections and the situation has been particularly agitated," she added.

Manigat, 70, faces musician Michel "Sweet Mickey" Martelly in the March 20 run-off. She emerged as a front-runner in the November 28 election in the volatile, earthquake-ravaged Caribbean country. The poll was widely criticized as chaotic and fraudulent.

The election also drew controversy over the fact that Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party was barred from running a candidate in the poll.

The run-off comes against the backdrop of Aristide's recent announcement that he is planning to return home, ending his prolonged exile in South Africa. He has kept everyone guessing about the timing.

"I think what we need now is more peace," Manigat said, The return of Aristide, a fire-brand left-wing populist, only threatened more "agitation" ahead of the election, she said.

Manigat did not elaborate on her comments suggesting possible unrest. But Aristide, a charismatic former Catholic priest, is loved by many of Haiti's poor and loathed by business leaders and the wealthy elite.

He became Haiti's first freely elected president in 1991 but spent much of his first five-year term in exile after a military coup. Elected again in 2000, his second term was soured by economic instability and gang and drug-related violence. He was finally ousted in a 2004 rebellion led by former soldiers. Aristide says Washington orchestrated it.

Haiti's outgoing government, under intense international pressure to keep shaky U.N.-backed elections on track, has said it cannot keep a citizen from returning and has issued a diplomatic passport for Aristide.

But the possibility that he could return before the March run-off has led the United States, the United Nations and other major western donors to signal they would view such a move as, at best, unhelpful, and at worst, potentially dangerous.

Not too late to prosecute Baby Doc: UN

(CARIBBEAT - Jared McCallister)

As expected, Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier's return to Haiti after a nearly 25-year exile continues to make news. Last week, the United Nations announced it's not too late to prosecute Duvalier - and it will help.

"Under international law, there is no statute of limitations for serious human rights violations such as torture, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and rape," said Navi Pillay, UN high commissioner for human rights.

Agency officials offered Haiti assistance in prosecuting Duvalier for crimes committed under his regime.

"Haiti has an obligation to investigate the well-documented serious human rights violations that occurred during the rule of Mr. Duvalier and to prosecute those responsible for them," said Pillay, a former UN war crimes judge.

"Such systematic violations of rights cannot remain unaddressed. The thousands of Haitians who suffered under this regime deserve justice," added Pillay.

Meanwhile, Duvalier was also trying to get access to funds frozen by Swiss banks, AFP reported.

"In 25 years [in exile], I have never had any accounts frozen, in Switzerland or anywhere," Duvalier told the Spanish-language Univision network.

Switzerland blocked millions of dollars suspected to have been stolen from the Haitian people under its recently enacted "Duvalier law," designed to return the funds to the impoverished Caribbean country.

"As soon as they release those funds, most of them will be used to rebuild the city of my mother's birth," told the network.

In addition, there is a 25-year legal battle between Swiss authorities and the Duvalier family over an additional $5.7million inallegedly embezzled funds.

Time for Haiti to Withdraw from the OAS and the U.N.

(Max A. Joseph)

At the beginning of the Cold War (1945) until its end (1991) the western powers, preoccupied with stopping the Soviet juggernaut, abandoned the principle of direct rule of less advanced nations in favor of nominal independence. With the exception of France and the US, the leading western powers refrained from direct military interventions in the Third World throughout that period and institutionalized a policy of organized chaos as an alternative. Naturally any country that stretches its autonomy away from the western world’s economic and political umbrella finds itself confronting economic sanctions or embargoes, indigenous armed rebellions, military coups and other stratagems calibrated to bring it back into the fold. In Africa, particularly, even countries that toed the line did not fare any better in terms of economic, social and political development, which remained subordinate to the interests of the western world.

Fast forward to the aftermath of the Cold War (1991) and the policy became more disturbing. Sparing down their costly military expenditures following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the western nations adopted a novel approach to interventions in the Third World: having these countries police themselves. As Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, retreats into introspection and China, an emerging giant unsure of itself, dares not challenge the west’s political supremacy, the unrestrained power of the Security Council is invariably used by the western powers to implement the New Order. Thus Third World nations, which could eventually be victimized under the same policy, are defending the world against “the threat to international peace and security” in Haiti as decreed by the western-dominated Security Council. The policy, which should be dubbed “Domination by proxies”, is absurd and highlights the temerity of its architects and many participating nations. Presently, dysfunctional luminaries such as Benin, Burundi, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Guatemala, Madagascar, Nigeria and Niger are not only protecting the free world against the “Haitian threat” but also helping built Democracy and the rule of law in Haiti.

Founded upon the inalienable right to self-determination, incidentally a core principle of the United Nations Charter, Haiti became the most prominent victim of that policy in the year of its bi-centennial (2004). That year, an armed rebellion against the democratically elected government of that country, instigated by Canada, France and the U.S, was used as rationale for the designation of Haiti “a threat to international peace and security” by the UN Security Council under the repressive Chapter VII, which authorizes military actions against the offender.

Almost 7 years into this fateful decision, the so-called threat is being dealt with in the form of a protracted and deliberate process of steering the Haitian state into oblivion. An army of foreign-funded and administered Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) has practically taken over the administration of the country with the tacit approval of the current government. Haitian women and children are facing the gun barrels of the occupiers daily while thousands of their fellow compatriots have died or are dying from an imported cholera epidemic that seems to have fallen below the radar of both the U.N and the government’s priorities. Needless to say, the panacea to Haiti’s problems under the UN occupation (2004-?) remains as elusive as the western world’s unending quest to subjugate the population by sheer intimidations and institutionalized terror.

Roger Noriega, Assistant U.S Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs (2003-05) and primary coordinator of the policy, which led to the February 29, 2004 invasion of Haiti, was unapologetic for his role. Despite the thousands of deaths resulting from the endeavor, he would later declare nonchalantly and condescendingly “We (the U.S) are glad to see Aristide (the deposed president) gone. Haiti is better off without him. Though we had no right to change presidents in Haiti, that doesn’t means we cannot make logical decisions as to what is best for the country.” Having made a logical decision for Haiti, Roger Noriega is now a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, probably improving his infallible judging ability and devising ways to deal with similar threats to world peace and security.

The commission appointed by Ban Ki-Moon, the UN General Secretary, to probe the origin of the cholera epidemic and the OAS technical team’s recommendation that the November 28, 2010 election results be partially overturned are palpable instances of Haiti being a plantation. Ki-Moon’s decision was taken without the authorization of the Haitian government and not one Haitian health expert was assigned to the panel, an ominous indication the presumptive culprit, the Nepalese battalion attached to the MINUSTAH, will be exonerated. As for the OAS technical team’s edict, it probably came with a warning to Préval that he’ll be held accountable for a recurrence of last December riots, in the event his candidate refuses to accept it.

The fact that Haiti has been on the right side of justice, hence on the wrong side of tyranny, apparently justifies its designation as a threat to world peace and security. A new approach to dealing with its tormentors is needed, if the country were to overcome the two centuries of methodical harassments that have made it a laughingstock. Forfeiting its membership in the OAS and the UN is the prerequisite to Haiti achieving that goal, since most Haitians cannot in good conscience countenance these organizations’ responsibility in the subjugation of their country.