Cynthia McKinney: On My Way to Kuala Lumpur

[Anita Stewart]

Cynthia McKinney: On My Way to Kuala Lumpur

Hello! There's lots of good news on the accountability front. By now, I hope you know about the Brussels Tribunal's filing in Spain on war crimes committed in Iraq. I will write more on that later because in Luala Lumpur, I will meet with more Iraqi victims and will have a lot more to say after I've spoken with them.

John Boncore, Splitting the Sky, Native American freedom fighter now living in Canada attempted to hold George Bush accountable for his war crimes while Bush was on a visit in Canada. Splitting the Sky tried to serve a people's warrant on Bush. Splitting the Sky is right. Now, he has a court date in March 2010 and we need to support him. As I learn more from him, I'll definitely pass the information along. Some of us might need to plan a trip to Canada for March!!

In the meantime, I did receive lots of messages about the Mike Ruppert post. Many of you were wondering about him. Well, now you know.

I received messages reminding me about various interviews that Mike or others had done that were noteworthy, particularly on the issue of drugs in the U.S. and the so-called Drug War. I include their links here, as promised:

http://www.s6k.com/michaelruppert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znnRONNMDMQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd_3HowvKlA

Did I tell you that I'm working with some avid bikers to do a cross-country bike ride!!! And if I can do it, I know every one on this list that's near our route can do a part of it. And if you're not near our route, a solidarity ride can be organized in your area for sure!!! So, let's get our bikes tuned up and ready to roll!!

We're looking to start in July at the House of Common Sense in Oakland, California. I really am getting excited about this. We want everyone to get in the mood for pedaling!!! I'll send you the dates and route as soon as the experts at that are done. They are working feverishly now to get a great route that we all will enjoy. Of course, the plan is to end up at the White House which could use as much common sense as we can all muster. This is a bike ride for peace!! I understand that there is also a bike ride going on right now for peace in Palestine!

And, finally, I know that many of you on this list care very deeply about Haiti. I found this in my inbox and it is so distrubing that I had to include it in this message. As many of you know, Marguerite Laurent is Haitian-American. This message is from her:

Ron Daniels and the Haiti Support Project is at it again...
------------------------------------------
Published at: Haiti Progres
by Marguerite Laurent, March 11, 2005
*

Last August, political activist Ron Daniels, who heads the New
York-based Haiti Support Project, scandalized pro-democracy activists by
organizing a cruise to commemorate the Haitian bicentennial with leaders
of the U.S.-backed opposition front who had just helped overthrow Haiti'
s democratically elected government.

Today, Daniels is again working with pro-coup forces and presenting them
as "honest brokers, mediators and facilitators, people who are not tied
to or committed to any political party, organization or personality
within the broad array of progressive forces in the popular movement for
democracy in Haiti."

Daniels is convening a host of coup d'état participants, sympathizers
and supporters for a March 17 and 18th symposium at the Rayburn Office
Building in Washington, DC to supposedly "facilitate a serious and
substantive assessment and dialogue about the state of affairs in Haiti
with the objective of creating or contributing to momentum towards
positive, workable solutions to Haiti's social, economic and political
crises."

But Daniels' list of invitees reads like a who's-who of the very coup
elite which torpedoed Haiti's democracy on February 29, 2004. They
include: Frandley Julien, who led the "Group of 184" opposition front in
Cap HaVtien and was the public face in Haiti for Daniel's "Cruising into
History" junket last year; Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, a leader of the
opposition-aligned Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), who supported and
collaborated with armed "rebels" like death-squad leader Jodel Chamblain
when they rolled into Hinche in early February 2004, murdering two
policemen; Jocelyn "Johnny" McCalla, whose U.S.-State
Department-supported National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) has
been lambasted for justifying the illegal imprisonment of Prime Minister
Yvon Neptune, Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert, as well as Deputy
Amanus Mayette; Jim Morrell of the Washington-based Haiti Democracy
Project, which was the coup's think-tank and propaganda clearinghouse;
Lionel Delatour of the Center for Free Enterprise and Democracy (CLED),
a U.S. State Department-supported businessmen's group which has fought
Haiti's democratic forces for almost two decades; Gabriel Marcella from
the U.S. Army War College, who recently advocated in U.S. newspapers
that Haiti become an international "protectorate" run by Washington and
its allies; Alix Baptiste, the illegal, coup-installed Minister for
Haitians Living Abroad; and a gaggle of other U.S. government officials
and quasi-officials from agencies like USAID and the International
Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).

We should also note that no less than three representatives of Frandley
Denis' National Civic Movement are set to attend.

Is it conceivable that Ron Daniels, who postures as a progressive, can
be inviting this patently anti-democratic crowd to discuss "workable
solutions" at this hellish juncture in Haiti's most recent coup d'état?
It makes about as much sense as 9-11 survivors inviting Osama Bin Laden
to the Rayburn Building in Washington to sit with Congressional members
and discuss the future of the United States. It is like asking the Ku
Klux Klan to come discuss the future civil rights and development of
African-Americans in the U.S. after the murders of Emmett Till, Malcolm
X, Martin Luther King, Jr., or the Mississippi civil rights workers.

The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) has walked in the past
year, since the U.S.-backed and implemented coup d'état, hand-in-hand
with the poor disenfranchised masses of Haiti, with the majority who
disagrees with the coup and denounces illegal Prime Minister Gérard
Latortue's murderous death squads. Our collaborators have walked with
the people of Belair, Cité Soleil, Cité de Dieu, Fort National, Milot,
Cap HaVtien, and those throughout the provinces outside of
Port-au-Prince who face the coup d'etat's military forces and this
U.S.-backed and illegitimate Latortue regime. We support the women who
have been raped, the street children shot while they sleep, the
political prisoners, the families forced into exile, and the refugees
who cannot find asylum or Temporary Protected Status.

We know who has unequivocally denounced the coup d'état, fought for the
principles and process of democracy, and been on the firing line in this
merciless attack against Haitian self-determination and sovereignty. We
have stood with the Black Caucus, the African Union, Caricom and the
people's leaders on the populous streets of Haiti. We bear witness and
can credibly point to many who joined the Haitian majority in their long
walk to freedom as a new chapter began on Feb. 29, 2004. In that walk,
we have not run into the organizers of "Cruising into History." Au
contraire. They were one of our adversaries.
In the ranks of those fighting for Haiti's dignity and respect for the
one-person-one-vote principle, we certainly did not meet the pro-coup
representatives who make up almost 80% of the symposium invitees and
whom Ron Daniels calls "honest brokers" ready to discuss the future of
democracy and development in Haiti.

How is it possible that those who participated in the destabilization
and ouster of the constitutional government such as Jim Morrell,
Frandley Denis Julien, and Chavannes Jean-Baptiste can now have ANY
credibility to sit down and dialogue about a democratic future for
Haiti? And what about the people denouncing the coup? Why is Ron Daniels
not getting confirmation of attendance to his shindig from the champions
of democracy, from organizations who have sent delegations to Haiti in
2004 to report on the human rights situation, organizations such as
EPICA, Pax Christi, Miami Law Center, Haiti Accompaniment Project,
Amnesty International, National Lawyers Guild, the Haiti Commission of
Inquiry, the International Labor/Religious/Community (ILRC) and the
Haiti Action Committee.

Are these pro-democracy activists not "honest brokers"? If they were
invited, why have they decided to not attend? Why are organizations such
as Haiti Action Committee, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, Institute
for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, International Action Center,
Fondasyon Trant Septanm, Veye Yo, New England Organization for Human
Rights in Haiti, Haiti Support Network (HSN), Committee for the Defense
of Political Prisoners in Haiti, the Resistance Movement of the Popular
Bases (MRBP), the Communication Commission for Fanmi Lavalas, Vwa
ZansPt, AUMOHD Dwa Moun, Haiti Information Project, Haitkaah Social
Justice Project, Ottawa Haiti Solidarity Committee (OHSC) and so many
other pro-democracy forces not "honest brokers, facilitators and
mediators" but Haiti Democracy Project, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste,
Frandley Denis Julien, and Ron Daniels are? Why are so many
pro-democracy groups not participating in this symposium?

Is this a repeat of the symposium that was held on Dec. 10 and 11th in
Canada where the Canadian government invited "leaders in the Haitian
community abroad" who were simply coup-d'état leaders while
pro-democracy groups with credibility among the grassroots movement for
democracy in Haiti were not invited or welcomed at this meeting? Is Ron
Daniels taking a leaf out of Canadian Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew'
s book and now plotting to legitimize this idea of "protectorate" with
the Chalabis in the United States?

Where are the Haitian diaspora's representatives who have fought for
Haitian rights, who never called for the coup d'etat and denounced it
after it had taken place? On Daniel's list, why are there so few
undisputed supporters and delegates from Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti's most
powerful political party, who are in New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami,
Canada, and France?

Even if pro-democracy forces were to sit down with pro-coup people
(which pro-coup forces always refused to do before they took power), at
least the symposium's participants should accurately represent Haiti's
democratic reality. Without question, the vast majority of Haitians
oppose the coup while only a tiny minority supports it. The symposium at
present has these proportions reversed and is unbalanced in its
representation of the views of the Haitian majority. It's tantamount to
attempting a coup d'état in the U.S. Haitian diaspora to give legitimacy
to positions that hold no water with the Haitian masses.

I would say, based on the e-mail below and the compiled list of those
qualified to "discuss Haiti's future," that Ron Daniels is as clueless
today as he was last year when he tried, with Frandley Julien as his
spokesperson in Haiti, to bamboozle the African-American intelligentsia,
scholars, activists and well-meaning celebrities, such as Danny Glover
and other unsuspecting Black Americans, to join him in supporting and
collaborating with the "Group of 184" and the Latortue death regime in
Haiti in the name of celebrating our ancestors' bicentennial.

Despite Ron Daniel's high-placed friends, the August 2004 "Cruising into
History" project failed because it collaborated with putschists. Daniels
didn't succeed then and is plainly looking to humiliate himself once
again.

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