(See also, Actor Sean Penn on his work in Haiti - the Charlie Rose interview.)
Two things we know for sure: Hollywood and Hip Hop get media attention. And, for Haiti that translates into big media hype and megaphones for actor Sean Penn and rapper-turned-presidential candidate, Wyclef Jean.
Forget
that people's trust and naive responses to
celebrities-turned-scholar -on-Haiti and Haiti's future are unseemly and
utterly appalling.
Think: how may we use this upcoming and
unprecedented 3-months media glare - the elections are scheduled for
November 28, 2010 - to help the 2 million Haitians made homeless by the
earthquake stay alive, sheltered, not in rotted tents but more
permanent abodes, with water, food, medicine and maybe some jobs; push
for the monies raised to be used for Haiti's domestic growth and the
victims directly, for fair trade not sweatshops and poor Haiti
subsidizing toxic Monsanto's future profits, et al and push to get rid of the
poverty pimp NGOs, end the UN occupation by showing the failures, these
last six-years, of the UN, the NGOs, Clinton, their repugnance? (Haiti ill-served by aid by Ezili Dantò of HLLN.)
How
to use this media glare? To take away the smiley face that was put on
tyranny, UN/US occupation and the benevolent face put on structural
poverty, white venality and vampirism in Black Haiti? The real
narrative on Haiti cannot be allowed to fall through the cracks while
this PENN/WYCLEF-hype gives the US corporatocracy and Haiti oligarchy more cover to continue their pillage, plunder of Haiti's resources, impoverishment and destruction of Haiti. There's work to do, people. (See, The Slavery in Haiti the Media Won't Expose; What UN Special Envoy Bill Clinton May do to Help Haiti, 2001- outline and full text; What Haitian Americans Ask of the New US Congress and President; Haiti's Riches - expose the false stereotypes; A map of some of Haiti's mining resources; The Poverty Pimps' Masturbating on Black Pain: Monsanto joins the pack and Vision of Plantation Haiti - A White Pearl, Again!)
"As a result of these US free trade policies, over 830,000 rural Haitian jobs were lost and hundreds of thousands of Haitians were forced into the capital looking for work, where eventually they would meet up with Jan 12 at 4:53. " (Vision of Plantation Haiti - A White Pearl, Again!" ; "We accomplished our own ends in the United States on the tears of Haitian children."- Intro of the panelists at an MIT presentation on Haiti-Video.)
*
WYCLEF'S RUN FOR PRESIDENT OF HAITI, SEAN PENN TAKE:
So far, the Sean Penn's script in Haiti, has been written by USAID and the US State Department as we noted back in May when he testified before the foreign relations committee. (Sean Penn, new spokesperson for Colonialism, Exclusion and Haiti's Oligarchy: he says, don't encourage Haiti's independence, that's premature and murder!)
But, the Hollywood's bad boy, one time heroin user, reputed cokehead, former husband to Lady Gaga's godmother, Madonna, who once filed assault charges against him, is starting to get a clue almost 7-months into his Haiti sojourn and the Charlie Rose interview marks that demarcation.
Still, Penn's paternalism and white privilege arrogance is so offensive that even if he's starting to see the NGO's are a business in Haiti, his notion that he's qualified to speak about Wyclef's run because of his six-months in Haiti, is blatantly offensive.
Penn is not an opportunist. I have it on good eyewitness authority that he genuinely manages the best tent camp in Port au Prince. But he seems to believe he has STANDING and legitimate media authority to say, not the Haitian people, but for HIM to say, because of his running the tent camp, that Wyclef Jean should not be running for president. There are just no words to express the temerity of these white boys sometimes. Penn is simply NOT the proper person to take this issue to - the people in Haiti are! How is it that they are being by-passed for Penn's opinions? How could Sean Penn not even get it that seven-months after the earthquake, his very presence in Haiti, still at a tent city golf RESORT, which he puts HIS name on, is merely further evidence of the Jake Sully/Tarzan messiah complex as played out in Haiti, in Africa, everywhere in Black and Brown countries, not much different from the NGO as a business issue he is denouncing. (Haiti and the Aid Racket: How NGOs are Profiting Off a Grave Situation.)
There are forces behind each of these people - Penn and Wyclef Jean, with political interests that may not be similar to what the masses in Haiti see for themselves. Forces perhaps that neither Penn nor Jean are fully aware of, and may not understand who pull the strings and manipulated them into both being stooges for empire.
For one, recall how, before the earthquake Wyclef Jean was a media darling and a US/UN/Clinton favorite in Haiti. He was Ambassador-at- Large with a security detail and VIP treatment at the airport. When the earthquake hit that favor was transferred to clueless, first-time-doing Haiti-charity-work, Sean Penn! Not the security detail, but his crew had access to the airport when regular Haitians and more veteran search and rescue and first responders were being denied; access to military logistics while Wyclef Jean's crew had to come in through the Dominican Republic! At one point in the early days, when Wyclef Jean went to the airport with a crowd of Haitians to pick up the mounds of food, water, medicines that was just piling up there, he was denied, the crowd of eager-to-help Haiti youths who had followed him witnessed this treatment of Wyclef, embarrassed and shamed and force to leave empty handed.
Meanwhile Sean Penn's star in Haiti was rising, in his
safe compound on a golf resort area fully protected by the military.
Nevermind that most Haitians in Kafou Fey and elsewhere outside this
"green zone," had no access to medicine, water, blood transfusions, no
safety or that in general, and notwithstanding Sean Penn's well run
camp, many of the World Relief organizations and various other NGOS
are, in the main, using aid monies for paying their high-end salaries,
traveling, for shipping fees to their own companies, for attending
meetings ad nausea, some buying prostitutes and living the high life in
Haiti.
World Vision, among other NGOs are leasing homes in the
Haiti mountains of upper Petionville for from $6,000 to 12,000 per
month paying for electricity and everything else plus renting huge SUVs
from the Haitian Oligarchy. While the Haitian elite are taking this
opportunity to leave Haiti and rent their plush homes for big money
raised for earthquake victim relief. The new ROTATIONS from the World
Relief organizations and the extra UN/US deployed personnel since the
earthquake have comfortably replaced those flown out as the "new
foreign elite moving in."
All this is going on. But none of the
top Haiti charity moneymakers' tax returns were publicly exposed by the
IRS or were dressed down by the media for their misuse of Haiti funds.
NGO businesses like Red Cross, World Vision, Care International,
Catholic Relief Services, UN world food programs, known charities that
have been collecting on Haiti's poverty and pillaging Haiti for decades
after decades, none of them were dressed down for their misuse of
dollars collected in Haiti. But soon after the earthquake, ONLY Wyclef
Jean's Yele foundation was singled out and uncovered to have IRS
problems and a more than $410,000 questionable handling issue in his
management of Yele Haiti foundation funds.
Before the
earthquake, these problems were not made public or cited anywhere that
we know about. Wyclef was needed then to put a smiley Haitian face to
US imperialism. But he's being reigned in now and there is a reason. A
black messiah who save earthquake victims, has Hollywood cache, a tent
city, and who was not stopped from competing with Red Cross for
donation dollars probably isn't controllable enough for the US
Kingmakers in Haiti. It's no surprise to us at Ezili's HLLN that today
the actor Sean Penn, the new carefully cultivated Haiti "expert,"
suddenly is the one 'suspicious' of Wyclef Jean's bid for Haiti president and getting a huge mainstream platform to say so. Notice, in the USA Today article photo, Sean Penn is wearing his Haiti medal. He's our new white expert on "all things Haitian!" ( See, also Sean Penn Hopes His Critics Get Rectal Cancer ; Youtube Video - Sean Penn 'suspicious' of Wyclef Jean's bid for Haiti president .) Where's Paul Farmer, ya'll? We've
gone into cartoon land. The sideshow eclipses the living, breathing,
suffering Haiti people enduring over 6-nightmarish years of US/US
occupation and slaughters and NGO pillage never covered by the
mainstream media. The election carnival is just beginning and has
reduced, for the moment, the worst disaster in recorded human history
to what actor Sean Penn has to say about hip hop rapper Wyclef Jean's
run to sit at the crumbled National Palace in Haiti! Elections under
occupation? Neither are saying - krik, not a word, about that!
