Haiti’s Creole: Language of Revolution
Theories vary about the genesis of Kreyòl, or Haitian Creole, the most plausible one being that Taino Indians and West Africans, who had evaded slavery together on Haiti’s mountains, probably intermarried and developed a new language. The country’s name itself, Ayiti, is an Arawak word that means mountainous land. The word Vodou, which is essentially […]
Dominican-Haitian Tensions: Wag the Dog or Prelude to Genocide?
A decision that strips citizenship from over 200,000 Black Dominicans was passed by the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court on September 23, 2013. This highly flawed ruling designates at least four generations of DR-born individuals who descended from migrant Haitian laborers between 1929 and 2007, as being the offsprings of transients and therefore unqualified for citizenship. […]
Fragmentation of News and Causes: The Urgent Need to Think Globally
By Gilbert Mercier and Dady Chery “When the blind men had each felt a part of the elephant, the king went to each of them and said to each: ‘Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?’” When a typhoon hits the Philippines, an earthquake ravages […]
In the Fight Against Imperialism, Beware the Peddlers of Despair
All around us – Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, the Congo, Ivory Coast, Palestine, Somalia, Libya, and elsewhere – empires are tearing a trail of destruction. This is not a sign of strength but of weakness, because the aim of empire is not to destroy but to conquer. Since conquest cannot be achieved without the collaboration of […]
Haiti: Where Democracy and Justice Make a Stand Against Corrupt Power
In Haiti, in early July 2013, no criminal case was more important than the one handled by Magistrate Jean Serge Joseph, a 58 year-old Haitian-Canadian who had returned to work in his country of birth after earning his degrees abroad. Judge Joseph was examining a complaint of corruption, embezzlement of public funds, money laundering, and […]
