Guerrilla History - Haiti as Empire's Laboratory w/ Jemima Pierre

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on the absolutely terrific Professor Jemima Pierre to discuss her vital piece Haiti as Empire's Laboratory, which came out in NACLA late last year.  Here, we discuss the history of Western Imperialist intervention in  Haiti primarily since the revolution, and why Haiti is often overlooked outside of analysis of the Revolution, or the current material situation divorced from any historical understanding.  You may remember our episode Haiti and Western Intervention w/ Pascal Robert, which came out just over a year and a half ago.  This conversation is in much the same vein, with some updating and additional analysis, so if you haven't already listened to that other conversation, please do so! Jemima Pierre is Professor at the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia and is the Haiti/Americas Coordinator with the Black Alliance for Peace. She is the author of The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race and numerous academic and public articles about Haiti.  Try to find her on her secret twitter account, one of the best follows out there, but you have to do the searching yourself! Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory   

You don't remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to Gorilla. Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckmacki, joined as usual by my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Henry. It's a real pleasure to be with you. Absolutely. Always nice to see you as well. We've got a super guest talking about about an incredibly important topic today. But before I introduce the guest and the topic,

I would like to remind the listeners that you can help support the show at patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. Any contributions there are what allow us to continue doing the show and continue making episodes like this. You can also, of course, just share episodes

with people if you aren't able to financially contribute. That is also a huge, huge help to the show. We can also keep track of everything that we're doing individually as well as collectively on Twitter at Guerrilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-Skore pod. As I said, we have a super guest today. We have Jamima Pierre, who is a professor at the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia.

Hello, professor. It's nice to have you on the show. Hello, thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. It's a pleasure. I've been a fan of your work for a very long time. And honestly, this conversation is long overdue. We're going to be basing this conversation off of the article that you wrote in NACLA, Haiti as Empire's Laboratory. But I think that, you know, this article is so wide-ranging that really what we're going to be having is a discussion about Haitian history and particularly the history of Western intervention in Haiti, particularly since the revolution. The way that I would like to open this interview with you is to mention first, listeners, we do have another episode on Haitian history after the Haitian revolution with Pascal Robert. This is going to be in many ways a very similar conversation, but the reason is is because when we talk about Haitian history, there's really two ways that it's usually framed. One, if people are using Haiti as a positive example, talk about the Haitian revolution, and that's it with no other history. And if reactionaries talk about Haiti, they talk about the conditions in the country today

divorced from any history. Again, both of these are completely unhelpful for actually understanding Haiti as a place and understanding how the material conditions in Haiti became the material conditions in Haiti. So, Professor, I'd like to open the conversation with you by asking you why you think it is that Haitian history is so almost forgotten. completely and when it is talked about why these are the only two polls that you ever see discussed anywhere. Yeah, thanks so much for asking that. It boggles my mind, actually. I do think one of the things that I think we underestimate is the resentment of the West for because of the

Haitian Revolution and the ongoing counter-revolution that we have to call the period after the revolution. And so there's a way that, you know, I was talking to someone the other day and, you know, we talked about the Haitian Revolution. We talk about the French Revolution, the American Revolution. We even talk these days in terms of the leftist circles of the Cuban revolution, the Chinese Revolution. The Haitian Revolution doesn't even come in the conversation around the Chinese and Cuban Revolution, which are actually, if you think about it in leftist circles, it's just as consequential, right? So I do think there's a reason, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a counter-revolution going on, but there is, you know, the West holds grudges, you know, and I think, I think we cannot underestimate how long the grudge, especially by the French, you know, has, has, has, has, has gone on against Haiti. And, and there's the fact that there's this, this black nation had the audacity, audacity to, to, to, to come into place. So there are two things going on. In the one hand, I do think the Haitian revolution is important. There's a, there's a renewed focus on the Haitian,

revolution, especially among white Western scholars, where they go into the details, right? You know, what was so-and-so-sane to so-and-so-in, you know, military strategy? So they get into the weeds, which is so cool to them, right? There's that. There is not, you know, so there's a focus on that, but there's not the continuation of talking about that afterwards and what it meant for a counter-revolution so that within a few years you had, you know, the French coming back with their armadas, the Spanish coming, the British coming and threatening another invasion, right?

This nonstop invasion that's been going on in Haiti. And so not taking that into account. And so you have that. You have the racism, I think, in terms of thinking about Haiti and not thinking and not linking Haitian and Haitian history to something that actually is about modernity, right? The fact that, for example, the Haitian Revolution helped, you know, Simon Boulevard, you know, liberate Latin America, right? And the fact that we provided ammunition and guns, right?

I mean, maybe Maduro, Venezuela's Maduro, Venezuela's Maduro, would recognize that we'll say that. Hugo Chavez all the time used to say that, right? And so there is something about the black people in this country that and formerly enslaved people who became independent at that time that they did for so long ago that people don't realize that they've been living this counter-revolution ever since. Right.

And then there's a, you know, manufacturing of consent, right? And I think there's an ideological war that's part of this counter-revolution where you don't think about Haiti in particular, clear, modern way. So, for example, and I'm going all over the place. But so Haiti, people would not know, was one of the founders of the League of Nations. You would not know this, right? This is 1919. But it was one of the founders of the League of Nations while it was under U.S. occupation, right?

So Haitian sovereignty has been something that's actually not allowed, not given. So, you know, so the U.S., who is not a member of the League of Nations, said if a Haitian representative of the country that it was controlling to be part of the League of Nations while denying it its own sovereignty, but making the well believe that Haiti was sovereign. So there's this contradictory view of Haiti as like not not doing enough, but also being used in particular. particular ways to actually deny its important legacy in the making of modernity. I don't know if that's, you know, I think I'll stop there for now. Well, I mean, I think we're going to have to talk quite a bit at some point about those uses of a kind of false image of Haiti sovereignty, you know, when we talk about, you know, kind of contemporary intervention.

But I wanted to stay just for a minute in that kind of post-revolutionary legacy and why it's so important is just also the world historical importance, particularly for colonialism and imperialism in the Western Hemisphere of the Haitian Revolution, the 13 years that ultimately led to the defeat of one of the world's most powerful armies that had lots of consequences. for the shaping of the modern world in the way that we understand it. I mean, the U.S. isn't the U.S. without Louisiana purchase. And of course, also the Caribbean as a place that was so significant for histories of labor, capitalism, and really the birth of kind of the modern world system in some ways. So I'm wondering if maybe before we get into, you know, maybe the 20, a century history of Haiti, if we could talk a little bit about the legacies of the revolution, the Haitian revolution on kind of, you know, the history of colonialism and imperialism. And I just one little footnote to launch that is that, you know, for example, like one of the other great third world anti-colonial, you know, revolutions that we talk about in the modern world is the Algerian revolution. But why were the French in Algeria? They weren't in Algeria in the 18th century, for example. They come to Algeria in the like early

mid-19th century, partly because they're no longer able to have their empire in the Western hemisphere because of the Haitian revolution and the sale of the Louisiana, you know, kind of territories. And of course, the loss to the British in the late 18th century in seven years war of Quebec, of New France. And so, maybe you could talk a little bit about why Haiti has been so significant in the history of colonialism and imperialism in the Western Hemisphere and even globally in a way. Well, yeah. I mean, I think you listed quite a number of all the things that I would have listed. I, you know, so and I have to, you know, say outright that I, I'm not, you know,

that's not my expertise necessarily. I know enough, right? So like early, early, you know, early colonial history is not my expertise necessarily. But I do know, you're absolutely right. because Napoleon had to give up the dream of having an empire extend into the Western Hemisphere after Haiti. And selling the Louisiana purchase doubled the size of the U.S. as a settler colony. And it was cheap, right? It was $9 million, which is actually cheaper than the indemnity that Haiti Haitians were forced to pay to friends, to France, right?

because the indemnity that Haiti was forced to pay actually made French even richer than French would have been because they were forced to pay 150 million francs, which actually kept the French economy afloat for a long time. It took us 122 years to pay that off. So there's that. It's interesting that you mentioned Algeria because what was interesting is I was doing research for something else, actually, around Egypt and Egyptology, which, you know, the French got there and supposedly found the pyramids and started, you know, came with a team of researchers and scientists to study the pyramids. But in the writing, just as a small footnote, the goal was to actually create a new Sendomeng in northern Africa. Sendomeng was Haiti.

You're absolutely right. And so the loss of Haiti, which was the richest colony for France in the world at the time, you know, it subsidized the entire French economy, just the, the the slavery, slave trade and this colony, then once you lose that, then you're absolutely right. So they went in that extended French Empire into North Africa, both into Egypt, you know, later on later on to Egypt, late 1800s in Egypt, but Algeria in particular because they've lost Haiti. You're absolutely right. And I think that that connection of Haiti to, you know, the thinking about the creation of the modern world is completely under-acknowledged and understudied. And I think you're absolutely right.

I mean, we always say, you know, Haiti struck a blow into the heart of white supremacy because this is the first time you had these Africans that you thought were enslaved that were less than defeated Napoleon. It struck a blow. It also reshaped slavery, right? Because then, you know, you have to have wolf plantations. You know, this actually gave a rise to sugar plantations in Cuba, increased plantations in Brazil. And it did all of that, right? And also, Haiti is the first free, modern free nation because it was the only one in the Western sphere that, you know, so the first free independent, not the U.S., which was independent a few years before, but it still had slavery. Haiti had a definition of citizenship that was based

not on race, but on blackness, which is, this sounds confusing, right? In the sense that anybody, Haiti was black, but anybody who supported Haiti would be considered black. So the link between blackness and nationhood. So there are these Polish, for example, soldiers who are fighting for Napoleon that stayed behind and basically stayed and fought with the Haitians against Napoleon's army. So there's still a Polish community in Haiti from the Haitian Revolution, right? And so you have to think, and so they were seen as Haitian and black, right? Because that was the way we defined citizenship with the Constitution and so on. So it had this remarkable constitution, remarkable understand of what the human was, right? The human was

free, you know, and in that itself actually is an important thing. Think about, you know, there's Susan Brock Morris' work. I don't know if you've heard about, was it something in Haiti, Hegel and Haiti. Hagle and Haiti, right. Hagle and Haiti, right? So how it impacted, how even Hagle was theorizing, you know, the relationship between Master. enslaved, right, how it impacted, you know, philosophy, right? How people thought about freedom. All of that is very much leaked to this Haitian revolution. And so I think I'm glad we take the time to do that because so it's not just enslaved Africans beat, defeated Napoleon's army, what it meant in terms of like the material realities, right, the loss of the French Empire,

you know, the beginning of the loss, the beginning of the end of the French Empire, the Western Hemisphere, the gain, the material gain of the U.S. in terms of clear land. A lot of the wealth, this guy named Gerard, that my partner, Peter Hudson, is a research on, took a lot of the wealth of the whites in Haiti during the Haitian Revolution. It took it to Philadelphia. So if you hear, if you've heard of the Gerard School, there's a private school for boys,

all that money was from Haiti coming in to help build, you know, Philadelphia in the wealth of this guy, the expansion of France into North Africa. All of that is the result of this. Haitian Revolution. And I think, I don't think people realize how extensive the influence of Haitian Revolution was down to the way that Western academics and philosophers were thinking about what the human is, what the human was, and how to deal, you know, how to talk about freedom and how to talk about humanity and rights. Yeah. So I would, uh, Adnan, go ahead. Okay. Oh,

I just, I just wanted to say that, you know, if we start moving forward, one of of the other legacies, of course, was that Haiti was seen as incredibly dangerous to the interests of the planter class around the entire region. And they feared the exporting of this kind of revolutionary equality, you know, around the Caribbean to the U.S. And, of course, that contributed to the isolation, the sense of Haiti as a threat that starts as a consequence of the revolution. And I think we see some of the characterization of Haiti as this lawless, dangerous, savage, you know, black republic, you know, that could spread its influence as very important, you know, even to the present as these stereotypes of barbarism and so on that have contributed to and justified and been the basis for Western imperial and colonial, well, attempts at, at, at, at, and. intervention, you know, in Haiti. And I'm wondering, just in the 19th century, Haiti is saddled with this indemnity. You know, they have to, you know, kind of pay. They essentially had to buy their

freedom or sort of buy off the French from reinvasion and pay for their freedom. But they're also punished and, you know, all the slave societies or the societies that are built upon forced labor of Africans in the region, you know, are very worried of. about, you know, the example and the model that Haiti sends. And I think that that's been something very important is to say this model doesn't work. And that's why it's so dysfunctional and to do everything to create dysfunction in Haiti's society to say you can't have, you know, black independence and self-governance. You know, that's impossible. So maybe you could tell us a little bit more about the consequences in the 19th century that you see as germane

to do the continuing Western and particularly U.S., as, you know, starts to be the case, but intervention in Haiti and the way in which this was framed and its consequences. I'd like to add on to that question because it actually relates to what I was going to ask, which is that when you're talking about this framing of Haiti, a lot of that framing was done between the period of the Haitian Revolution and 1915, which is when your article really picks up with American intervention really taking the forefront in Haiti. But a lot of that framing of Haiti, the grounds for that and the narratives around Haiti were really put in place before the American intervention really took the forefront

in terms of who was intervening in Haiti. All of those narratives were already in place between the period of the revolution and 1915. The U.S. is just, you know, they step up and took the mantle at that point. And so the question that I have that adds into Adnan's is can you talk about how that period between the revolution and 1915, that combination of, as Adnan put it, this isolating of Haiti, but at the same time, Western intervention in Haiti, these two pillars, isolation and intervention, as well as the creation of narratives of Haiti, really were formed in that period before 1915, because then we'll

move into a little bit more contemporary history after this. Yeah, you know, I mean, I think you've hit on it of COVID or not. I think it is important. You can do, there have been studies under this, right? That if you look

at the Western media, newspapers and rendering of the Haitian revolution, you might as you can read them today and think that this is the same thing, right? And in the sense of the representation of the revolution, which white people still believe, by the way, so many people believe that these Africans were killing white people, cannibalizing them, raping the white women, destroying everything in their weight. You get this narrative that

emerges during the 13-year insurrection that became a revolution of these savages that need to go back to Africa or these African savages that we've left, we've let loose. And what it does is it actually diminishes or replaces the actual cruelty of slavery itself, the institution. So people forget, for example, that the lifespan of an African in the Caribbean was five to seven years once they landed, which is why Haiti, it was so brutal, which is why Haiti had so many Africans by the time we had the revolution because they had, it was cheaper for them to replace these Africans than to do, for example, like the U.S., sort of quote-unquote

domesticate, right, in terms of allowing people to have children and so on. So it was, slavery is so brutal. And then that's one thing that I don't think we talk enough about, just how brutal slavery was. And so then, you know, the violence of the enslaved can never match the violence of the enslaver. And so that's the first thing, right? But the narrative, the ideological work that was put in play to dehumanize these Haitians, to make them the cannibals, to make them more violent than the enslavers themselves, really worked because just last week, I'm watching this Jamaican politician saying, if we're not careful, we're going to be like Haiti, right? And the ideological work has worked because even in the Caribbean, even black countries, especially francophone black countries, believe the view of Haiti as these cannibals, roots, and so on.

Which is why you have, like, the relationship with the Caracom, the Caribbean community in Haiti, is so fraught, right? And all of them, even the fact that the French territories, because that's what they still are, they're so colonies, right? Guadaluvenileque, they're not independent. nations, they still would prefer to be territories of friends than to be independent because they don't want to be like Haiti. So there's a few things that, right? So you have this isolation of Haiti, but it wasn't really in isolation because the British coming, the Spanish were trying, because once the French were kicked out, everyone tried to try to have this free fall. Actually, why Haiti took over the entire island to stop the Spanish from encroaching. So if

you go visit Haiti, for example, you know, in Citadel where, you know, they still have all the canons that they took during the revolution. You have French canons, Spanish cannons, British cannons, right? And U.S. canons, right? Because it's all the powers that they have to continually fight because people thought revolution in 184, 184 didn't, right? It's just, you know, it's just the fighting kept going, right? So you have that. I do say the Western media construction of Haiti has not changed and basically had a lasting impression. What also think of what happened at the end of with the Haitian Revolution. It's actually excellent in slavery, I think, in the Western Hemisphere for the rest of the world.

Because what ends up happening is they were much more brutal and fascists and controlling the Africans after the Haitian revolution, especially since they could travel and escape and end up in Haiti. So the slavery itself became much more entrenched, which is why it didn't, you know, slavery we didn't end in Brazil, for example, to 1888, in Cuba to 1880, you know, things like that. And so there is this, so this image then, you know, by the time you get to 1950, it is. People are saying what these, you know, you can read the, you can read the words of the U.S. officials, you know, saying things like imagine that these, you know, inward speaking French, right? Things like that, right?

And so this idea that these blacks cannot ever be civilized. And so you can read New York Times articles like from the 1800s, 1900s. I'll say, you know, I saw one the other day that I was like, Haitians eat U.S. Marine, right? This is a New York Times headline, right? And how's that different from like, you know, gangs have taken up? And so there is, there is this entrenched belief. including from black people in the region, that there's something unique, but not unique in a good way. There's something negatively unique about Haiti, down to like our language and our religion, right? The African religion of Vodou, which is used when he had Pat Robinson, you know, when he was alive, when the earthquake happened, saying like these people, you know, they're just, you know, God is punishing them for their, for their satanic religion. You have the Vatican, you know, you have the Vatican, very, much invested in Haiti. In fact, the Weekend League's papers show how deep the Vatican was

in the coup d'etat in 2003, 2004, right? So things like that, I think, and so that's the, and so the reason then, I think, why Haiti gets forgotten for, is because the ideological work that the West did to establish this country as the most exceptional, right? The, you know, this variant from the modern world actually works to make it seem like whatever happens to Haiti is par for the course right and so it's just oh yeah of course it's Haitians is again right oh yeah of course there are gangs in Haiti of course right they're killing each other they're eating each other right because that work has been so successful yeah that is an amazing set of reflections there I had wanted to mention religion and as well as one of the contributors

factors. If you think of like the Western Hemisphere, the missionizing that took place and the successful, you know, kind of establishing, you might say, of subjected Christian population from Africa. This is like kind of what was in some ways made the U.S. system successful, partly because people were born into this condition and acculturated and their religion and their identities were you know, changed forcibly by the system, whereas that wasn't the case. You could mention that, you know, life expectancy was only five to seven years. I've even heard sometimes it was, you know, less than that. So what it meant, of course, was a constant turnover of people, of enslavement and commerce in Africans from, you know, West Africa brought over. And but as a result, these were people who, um, still knew freedom, they had their identity, and thus they were a resistant population.

And so it's almost as if there were adjustments made to the slave system to avoid having, you know, a kind of repeat, yeah, a repeat of the situation. But religion was a really important part of it. I mean, we know, of course, that the Haitian revolution seems to have begun through, you know, a kind of ceremony. you know, that announced the uprising in the context of religious, you know, performance and commemoration and religious activities. So, you know, but it's quite interesting how, you know, even somebody like Aristide, who, you know, I'm jumping a whole forward, but just this question of religion is, you know, I think he was, wasn't he, you know, a priest, formerly a priest, and yet he's very much represented as kind of tapping into this non-Christian religion that is seen as so dangerous. And I think it's just quite interesting how in the Western Hemisphere, Christianity was very important in the sense of security. You know, you had to Christian. this population, otherwise you were at risk. And areas where there was, you know, still

African religions, I don't want to say they're syncretic, but whatever African rituals and religions, whether it's Islam or other kinds of forms, this was seen as very dangerous, you know, to white Christian consciousness. And that seems to carry over to today that Haiti is seen as somehow not fully Christianized, you know, even though, of course, the Catholic Church is important and so on. But that seems to be part of what makes Haiti special and dangerous, you know, and it's the same in the United States. You know, you could say that, for example, things like the Nation of Islam or other kinds of movements that combine some resistance to the system with a kind of religious identity that was non-Christians

were seen as just absolutely terrifying, you know, for the white power structure. So I just don't know. It's more a comment. I don't know if there's more to say, but perhaps you have more to say about the voodoo and about Haiti's, you know, religious identity as being important in how it's been viewed.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's the way, you know, people joke Haiti's 80% Catholic and 110% food, you know. So, I mean, I mean, we, you know, I, you know, I grew up in the church. My dad was a minister and I grew up in a Christian church, but, you know, the beliefs were still there. You know, you would think, you know, so-and-so, be like, oh, somebody sent, you know, bad spirit stores, you know, in the church, let's pray for them. So, you know, you believe that, right? Because it's a culture, religion is more than just religion, right? Yeah, I do think you're right.

Like, you know, even in the WikiLeaks papers of Vatican's calling Aristide the voodoo priest. because he was a liberation theologist, right? And they, you know, Catholicism and liberation theology don't go together, apparently. And so that was part of that. I wanted to, I wanted to actually quickly go back to Henry's question because I think, you know, this shift a little bit, I forgot to mention what, when Haiti, when the U.S. invaded and while I'm thinking about it, you know, the French still had control, the French and the Germans, in particular, the German bankers had control of the markets and the banks in the region at the time. And so this is, you know, 1950 right at the beginning of World War I.

And the U.S. wanted to establish and control, you know, and forces one rule doctrine to take the Europeans out of way and take over banking. And this is what's important in terms of like, you know, it's Citibank that was actually behind the invasion and occupation of Haiti in 1915, right? And so I just wanted to just quickly answer that. But to go back to religion, I think you're absolutely right. Until this day, they see, you know, everyone, you know. And the saddest part is those people in the Caribbean, the black people in the Caribbean, seeing Haiti as so exceptional as the voodoo practitioners,

which linked them to Africa in a way then that disavows for the rest of the region, Africa, in very specific ways. Yeah. And speaking of voodoo, that's actually one of the, episodes that I've been wanting to put together on the show, basically since we've started, but it's so hard to get materials to do this research on specifically the role of voodoo within the Haitian revolution. You often will find little footnotes here or there, mentioning how you know, you had all of these disparate communities that were thrust forth onto

the island with, in many cases, disparate language, disparate cultural practices, this disparate, you know, geographic location that they were taken from and brought to Haiti from, with very little connection. The thing that brought many of them together was this religious culture. And I say religious culture in much the same way that you had referred to it. You know, religion is more than just religion. It is this culture around religion. This religious culture in many ways, again, just in the little footnotes that I've seen here or there,

is mentioned as one of the things that allowed for the drawing together, of the forces in the Haitian Revolution. But there's very little in terms of dedicated study that I have seen on this topic that you can actually use as the basis for an episode. So just as an aside, that that's something that I've personally wanted to do an entire episode on, that one facet of the Haitian Revolution that never seems to get any attention. But clearly is a very important aspect of the Haitian Revolution. You know, it's very strange that there is never any dedicated study or extensive mention of that, despite, you know, in many sources, at least being a throwaway line talking about how important it was. You know, you think, hey, it's important.

Why are you not talking more about it? Anyway, that's something perhaps, Professor, we can work on together and getting something together in the future for a future episode, because I'm still keen on that. But turning towards intervention again, you know, you had gone towards 1915, and I just want to kind of re-litigate a few of these Western interventions on that nexus, pre-1915, post-1915. I know that, again, we had that episode with Pascal Robert, where we talked about the history of Western intervention in Haiti, but it might be useful for the listeners to once again here, you know, what were some of the interventions and the intervening forces that were taking place in that period before 1915, you know, not all the way back to the Haitian revolution, but just

before 1915. And then what was that shift that occurred in 1915 with U.S. intervention? And what did that signal in terms of, you know, the imperialist world system and particularly within the Western Hemisphere? Yeah, definitely. And, you know, I'm sure Pascal probably knows better than me about like all the detail of the interventions. I mean, the relationship with the West from the revolution, from independence to 1915, was one of a constant threats of intervention by the French, by the British, by the Spanish, over and over again, and especially the French. And I think there's one president that came in and said, they're not going to pay this indemnity. And soon enough, there was an armada, you know, surrounding the, you know, that part of the island

saying that you have to pay it or, or, you know, we come in. And, you know, the revolution was a brutal, scorched earth revolution. you know, at this point, these people don't want to fight anymore. They're tired. They don't have the resources to fight, so then they have to, like, succumb and pay that. The U.S. intervention was interesting, important, because the U.S. basically could also intervene around the same time. And they didn't occupy different places.

Like, they didn't occupy the Dominican Republic. You know, it was all over. It was really, really establishing. As World War I was raging, it was establishing its foothold in the region. occupying and putting in, you know, dictators and all these people, you know, that it worked with. And the Haitian intervention in Haiti was significant because it was the longest. It lasted from 1915, was 19 years long, 1915 to 1934. In that time, Haiti, the U.S. did exactly what is doing now. It basically installed the puppet government that basically

immediately signed over customs duties, control of the banks. It took Haiti's gold, U.S. Marines, took Haiti, opened up the bank, carried the gold in, you know, in, you know, these wagons to the waiting boats at the harbor, put the gold in until this day we haven't seen this gold, right? And so, you know, and stole the gold and put it in Citibank, right? And so you have that. And it took over all the customs, took over, all the financial and political apparatus of Haiti.

So this is where you have the one of the very beginning, a successful counter-revolution because Haiti has not been the same ever since, right? Because it basically controlled every aspect of the Haitian state down to the fact that everyone thought, you know, even under... So Haitian occupation did not count as occupation, right? It's the way I talk about it today. like Haiti is on the occupation, but no one would believe that Haiti is on the occupation.

And it's similar into 1915 in a sense that, well, how could it be under occupation, but you're still attending international meetings? You know, Haiti, for example, was one of two countries. This is way after occupation that agreed to the partition of Palestine in 1948 that was forced to change his votes, you know, by the U.S., right, Haiti and the Philippines. Right. And so part of that is you have the occupation that happens in 15 that really destroys the original Haitian state where the U.S. government under their darling, their liberal darling, FDR, Franklin and Delano Roosevelt, rewrite our Constitution, change the Constitution. The Constitution that had in it that no foreign and no white man can own land and could ever come back to the land as owner and and and, you know, and landowner, they removed that clause on the Constitution and rewrote the Constitution, right?

I mean, that is remarkable, right? And so, you know, for me, you know, do you have to think about, like, Haiti is actually, to me, the most successful counter-revolutionary space for the West in the sense that it, you know, from the things have not been the same ever since, right? Because it left, you know, 1950, for example, In 1919, Haiti was the first place where the U.S. dropped bombs, right?

It's the first time they used aerial bombardment and it was on the villages in the countryside in Haiti. This is like before like bombing, you know, this is Haiti, right? And so, and then they lead behind a gendarmerie, a military force that they train, which then becomes, you know, a problem for us when Duvalier, which they support it, takes power and becomes president for life. Yeah, I wanted to follow up a little bit on that in this wonderful article that we've been referring to. And now we're starting to get into the actual substance of Hades Empire's laboratory. You mentioned that, well, first, we could talk about the various ways in which it is a laboratory. You just mentioned one, testing armaments and new measures for control of, you know, population through everything.

bombardment. I mean, you know, we know that, of course, the British around the same time are exactly experimenting with this in its colonies, like in Iraq and places like that. And so we see the importance of, you know, colonial and there's a wonderful book, and we've been talking a little bit about it, you know, by, I think it's Anthony Lowenstein about, you know, Israel as a kind of laboratory for, you know, arms testing and the global arms trade and, and so on. And so we see that this has a deep and long history. But you also argued and suggested that Haiti is perhaps the longest running kind of experiment in neocolonialism, where these techniques have been refined. And perhaps since you've already talked a little bit about the sort of charade of Haitian sovereignty that is

used, while it's still under, you know, U.S. control or, you know, they're experimenting in other ways of controlling Haiti. Perhaps you can elaborate this kind of point about what are the forms and shape in which neo-colonialism has been worked through in the case of Haiti for such a long period of time, longer than really any other, because it's been free longer. I mean, it has been subject to, you know, more of these kind of attempts of reimposing colonial control, but in a new guise. and in different ways.

Perhaps you could tell us a little bit more in the 20th century how that has worked out. Yeah, I think one of the, I would have to actually come to 2004 because I think they perfected.

They perfected this neo-colonialism and control where Haiti's under occupation and no one knows Haiti's under occupation, right? And I think this has to go back to, I think,

the revolution, that's the revolution that happened in 1980s to Duvalier dictatorship, which is a major thing for Haitian people because this was a brutal dictatorship and fully supported by the U.S. because he was anti-communist, right? Duvalier in particular, right?

And opened up Haiti for whatever fleecing that was available. But what happens is, in 1991, when Aristide gets elected, late 1990s, early 1991, the U.S. was shocked because it had control Haitian electoral politics and politics for so long. And it had its own World Bank person who was running for office that they put in place. And they were shocked by the result of the elections, so much so that they actually, they sent Jimmy Carter to try and negotiate that Aristide resign before he even took office.

This is the early, this is the lovely Jimmy Carter that everybody likes to talk about, the U.S., the benevolent imperialists that he is, right? And so they were shocked, and I think they made the decision never again to allow free and fair elections, which is why they keep saying it. You know, Haiti needs free and fair elections is the way that they want to articulate. So they decided that because what happens is after the coup date, so within nine months, the CIA, you know, successfully remove ERISD from power, this military comes in. But coming back, you know, three years later, with the military occupation, which I don't talk about in this piece. In 1994, the U.S. negotiates with the military leaders that had taken over and brutalized and killed thousands of people and gives them and basically brings ERISD back. And if you look at the pictures,

Aristide is standing on states surrounded by U.S. officials, U.S. soldiers. I remember, you know, I'm dating myself, but I remember I was a young college student, very young, and I had gone to Haiti and with a friend, business people from New Orleans, right? We fly into Haiti to meet Eristee when he comes back, and you're climbing up the stairs of the National Palace as part of this delegation from the diaspora. And the first door you walk, when you walk through, there's a door that says U.S. officials only. And I'll never forget that because this was inside Haiti's National Palace and there's a big sign in a door that no one else could, you know, enter except the U.S. officials. So there's that. But he comes back with 20,000 troops and basically he has to sign it over. He has to take on the neoliberal changes that the U.S. government won in terms of privatization of major state industries and so on. But what's important about this moment as well is the fact that the U.S. gave the military

cushions that they flew, said that he was a military leader to Nicaragua. The U.S. government rented his properties in Haiti so he could have funding. They were paying him $5,000 a month. This is a military coup leader, right? And so you have that. But for me, when Arishti comes back, so the U.S., so from I think the date that we have to think about, the complete loss of sovereignty is September 30th, 1991 after that first coup d'etat.

Because the U.S. has controlled everything ever since then. But the 2004 coup d'etat is important because this is where the entire world, before it was just the U.S., but this is how you have the entire world participating in the occupation and in denial of sovereignty to Haiti. And what ends up happening is you have, you know,

the Canadian, the Canada government, and have the Ottawa initiative. They meet a year before in 2003 in Lake Meach, and they decide that they're going to get rid of Aressee who had asked France for reparation because one of the key reasons, the French ambassador at the time sent, Tierra Picard, admitted that France was concerned

about him demanding financial reparations. So it asked, he'd had a huge reparation conference at the National Palace the year before, and so it demanded, it was like $21 billion in reparations. So they meet. But think about that. this. So the coup d'etat happens February, the 200 anniversary of Haitian independence, which is not by accident. And I have to say this. And this is why I tell you, these Westerners don't, they

hold onto their grudges because they purposely, this coup d'etat, 2004, right? So, but it's two members of the UN Security Council, which is a gangster move, right? This is the U.S. friends, right? With the help from Canada, little brother imperialists, right? U.S. and France, initiate a coup d'etat, and there's, you know, we've recently found paperwork, for example, you know, in the archives, you're an archives where Dominicville-Pen, four days before the coup d'etat had already written to the UN Security Council of a transition plan for Haiti, including so-called peacekeeping missions, right? The coup d'etat happens February 29th. Dunmigil Pell wrote this letter February 25th, right?

So you have that. So you have two members of the UN Security Council, initiate a coup data. Within a couple hours, the same two members call an important UN Security Council meeting to ask for a military invasion, a stabilizing mission of Haiti. So basically what it does is it concentrates the coup, because at the time that Air Force is taking and put on a plane and flown to Africa on the night of the 29th. You have the U.S. ambassador drive to the Supreme Court Justice South, bring them to the Haitian Prime Minister's House, and swears them in,

which is completely against our Constitution. You cannot swear in a prime minister or interim president without the Haitian parliament. So the U.S. government does this, right, completely bypassed and creates a whole governing council, which is what's happening now, right? creates a governing council, and the UN goes along with it by allowing a peacekeeping mission and basically saying that the Haitian government asked us to bring a peacekeeping mission, right? So in this sense, you have a 12,000 force from all over the world participating in this occupation of Haiti based on a coup d'etat by two members of the UN Security Council.

And so in that sense, people don't see it. And then as the U.S. appoints a president, appoints a prime minister. So because Haiti as a president and prime minister, people don't see it as an occupation. And because it's a U.N., right? It just hides it. And there's a great article for your listeners by Chena Melville, which a law review article called Multilateralism as Terror. And it talks about the U.S. discussion, like the discourse around multilateralism as always already a good thing when it comes to global governance is actually not necessarily a good thing when it can be deployed, and this

person uses Haiti as an example, to show how the discourse around, this was a multilateral solution for Haiti, was actually about terrorism for Haiti, right? And then in this sense, then you have France, Canada, the U.S. make up over their disagreements over Iraq. So Haiti becomes the site. The Haitian occupation becomes a site through which the Westerners make up because they were against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I'm going to stop there for a second time. Well, there's so much that's interesting there. I do just want to mention that, you know, you've pointed out a couple of times how, you know, these European and Western powers just have such a long memory of grudges. But of course, colonized peoples, enslaved peoples need to get

over it. They have to forget that history. You know, it's time to more. move on. But they seem to remember all of these things. So I think that's an important point of their hypocrisy on that. But this is such a fascinating thing to me is the way in which the UN has been used so effectively. And also that with this kind of the core group and, you know, all of these collaborative groups being brought together, Meach Lake Accord, you know, at the Meach Lake you know kind of Ottawa initiative yeah yes and and that what's you know one of the ways it seems that neocolonialism is being refined here is that there's an offshoring or subcontracting you might say of US empire to these multilateral bodies so I'm definitely very interested in reading

this multilateralism as terror article but what one of the implications it seems to me that I was thinking about and reading your article and hearing you talk now about about the suppression of Haitian sovereignty under the guise of these multilateral institutions that give it a fake legitimacy to violate its sovereignty and violate, you know, democratic rule is that some of the participants in the core group and in these initiatives, whether it's Kenyan policing, you know, police forces being used or it's Brazil, you know, under a leftist government, you know, kind of being involved in, in these nefarious activities, is that I wondered if the design of these was a way to kind of recruit others into imperialism in a way and have them have buy-in. And that, you know, a lot of these countries seem to be interested and willing to participate in this because it gives them a sense of significance and importance that they're part of regional solutions or they're participating. And really what it is is kind of initiating them into the habits and structures of the

imperial system. It's something I haven't fully worked out how and why that happens. But I'm wondering if you've thought about that, what do you think about this as a device in some ways for recruiting groups and co-opting them and incorporating even what we would think of as leftist, sovereignist, anti-imperialist, kinds of governments into the project of imperialism in this kind of slate of hand. And specifically, I just wanted to underscore the point about Lula, because this is something that you, professor, I think, are more willing to underscore.

than anyone else, and I've looked at a lot of Haiti commentary, I think that you are the person who is willing to hold Lula most to account for the participation within the core group, which Adnan was underscoring, but I want to make sure that I put a fine line under Lula's name here for the listeners, because we have you here to be able to explain this. This is a long-term thing for Lula. Like, this was, you know, before this was his first term. This is all the way up until now. This is Loula's legacy.

Exactly. This is his legacy within the core group. And unfortunately, too many of our friends on the left are unwilling to levy criticism against somebody who they perceive to be a likely ally. You know, maybe Lula's not as far left as they are, but they perceive him as an ally of theirs. And so they're unwilling to levy this criticism against him. So I just wanted to underscore Lula's name here for this answer. that you're going to give to what Adnan asked

because, unfortunately, you are one of the few people who is really willing to highlight the role of Brazil and Lula's administration specifically within the core group and their actions on Haiti. No, it's true. They need to quickly answer that.

You know, I got a lot of slack from leftist. I wrote this article called the leftism of the America's crumbles at the door of Haitian sovereignty and really focused on Lula in the organization of American states in participating in what's happening. And Lula basically, you know, I called Haiti Brazil's training ground

because what it is was Lula was promised a seat on the Security Council, like a permanent. So they thought to use Haiti as a stage to establish their global, you know, to show that they can, you know, handle global affairs and so on and so forth. And so Lila actually asked to lead this intervention in Haiti in 2004. And people need to know that, which is why they're part of the core group. and they remain part of the court moves. What's interesting, Lula got payback because these same soldiers were the ones, you know,

the military went against him, which is why he was in prison for so long. And to me, that's payback. And he comes back and he's playing the same rule. Like, he's in the rule negotiating in Jamaica for another takeover of Haiti. This is in March, right? And so Brazil is very important. But I wanted to go back on, I do think this is important. And I think Chita mailed his essay, I've been thinking about this for a while, but it wasn't until I started looking through the WikiLeaks papers.

And so I want to read to you this statement from the U.S. ambassador in 2008, a table from 2008, and talking about the occupation was under the acronym Minista, right, which is the U.N. occupation of Haiti. And she says, this is Janice Sendersen, and she says, Minista is a remarkable product and symbol of hemispheric cooperation. in a country with little going for it. There is no feasible substitute for this UN presence. It is a financial and regional security bargain for the U.S. government. We must preserve Minista by continuing to partner with it at all levels in coordination with other major donor and Minista contributor countries from the hemisphere. That partnering will also help counterperceptions in Latin America in Latin contributing countries

to that see Haiti, Haitians see their presence in Haiti as unwanted. So the UN then is used as a way to make it seem like they're all working together, right? It's a cheap way for the U.S. to occupy without taking on all the bill, but to also then, you know, put all the blame, all the blame can be on the UN peacekeeping, but not the U.S. occupation. And it also basically counters, as she said, perceptions of Latin American countries, basically, that, that, you know, that see this as a hatred occupation. Since they're participating in helping Haiti, then they don't see it as an occupation. They see this being part of the UN machinery.

Right. And this is the new, you know, this is the Global Fragility Act that I start this article with. And what I'm saying is, like, there's a Global Fragility Act, which is about how the U.S. is basically its new Monroe Docton for the region. and for the world, right, is basically not use the military as the front, but to have a partnership between the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and USAID, which is, you know, the NGO's, right? And then use that to basically hide U.S. foreign policy objectives. So rule of these processes.

So you basically, you go into these countries and you control the NGO apparatus, right? Haiti has 10,000 NGOs, right, the Republic of NGOs, that has completely shaped discourse, right, into a new agency. liberal discourse that's taken young people who are activists, who are activists, and brought them into, made them, turn them into bureaucrats that are about going to the UN and like writing resolutions, right? As opposed to being on the streets, right? And so that's what the laboratory is that the U.S. has shifted, right? We see the proxy war, right, in Eastern Europe. We see the proxy war, you know, that's going on. And what's happening right now, what they did

with minister with the UN is basically have a new proxy war coming using Kenyan, right now only using black countries. So Kenyans, people from Binan, people from Jamaica, Bahamas, and so on, to hide, right, to take on the burden, to provide the bodies that are going to get killed, right, to provide the bodies while it hides under U.S. policy and say, well, we're just benevolent and we're helping and so on. So it is. I think this new multilateralism that is being deployed through the UN, the use of the UN, is very much, it's brilliant. It's a brilliant strategy. You have to say it because people buy into it. But it takes you back because people buy into it for Haiti because the groundwork had been laid to see Haiti as always already dysfunctional and as these black

people, you know, needing work. So it's very easy to manufacture consent, you know, about intervention Haiti. We have a freaking genocide happening right now. With Israel, the Zionist terrorist entity, it dumping 2,000-powering bombs people. This so-called gang violence in Haiti is happening in Port-au-Prince, a tiny area of a country of 12 million people. But we get the international intervention, not Israel. How crazy? And people go along with that. How crazy is that?

Just a quick comment. this is kind of apropos of nothing and I understand that this episode is going to be coming out a couple of weeks at least after we record this so it's not going to be as relevant to the listeners as it is for us sitting here but between us we're recording on May 15th listeners

you mentioned NGOs and how this spreads influence and you also mentioned Eastern Europe so I'm just going to tie these two things together with what's going on in Georgia currently the country of Georgia which by the way Georgia is an absolutely beautiful country highly recommend everybody travel there

it's where I got married although that was because I had to get married there long story Laceres for some other time patrons you know no I'm joking anyway what's going on right now in Georgia

if you haven't been following the news is that Georgia like Haiti is incredibly NGOified if I can make a word out of it, that the infiltration of NGOs into society in Georgia is incredibly pervasive. Now, obviously, many of these NGOs are doing good things, but the question is, what are they there for and where does the funding come from? And so there's a bill that's going through the Georgian parliament right now, which is on foreign influence and foreign agents. What this bill

essentially says, and of course, with these bills, they're all longer. than what I can summarize here, but the gist of it is that NGOs have to declare foreign currency and foreign, basically any money that's coming in from outside of Georgia to fund their organization as a foreign influenced organization. Now, on one perspective, you know, it's not nice to be called foreign influenced or a foreign agent because you have money coming in from abroad. But on the other hand, Like, is it really the end of the world that the people in Georgia are going to know who's funding these NGOs that are more or less running large swaths of society? Well, you know, who really knows? You know, is that really a terrible thing?

Well, the EU thinks so. The EU thinks it's a very terrible thing that these NGOs would have to disclose. Right, right. But in this case, they are spearheading that. But yeah, absolutely, they are, you know, apparatus of U.S.-led imperialism. realist system. And so what's happening is the EU is threatening to block Georgia's accession to the EU indefinitely. And just now, like within the last two hours, which is why I thought to bring this up, there are more demonstrations. There's been demonstrations for days and days

in Georgia against this foreign agents bill, you know, against the disclosure where funny is coming from. Right, exactly. But I just see, I'm watching, I have the video pulled up right now on my phone. Who were the people at the front of the demonstrations that were taking place today? Again, May 15th. The foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Iceland. I mean, is this really representative of Georgian society? So this is what we have when we're talking about like where does the money come from to NGOs in Georgia. You professor would know better than most, almost anyone, in terms of the pervasiveness of NGOs in Haiti. It is something that we've talked about.

in a couple of episodes in the past. But, you know, you mentioned there's 10,000 NGOs operating in Haiti. But like, how do they, how do they influence society in Haiti? And, you know, is there any sort of disclosure of where that money is coming from to those NGOs in the Haitian context? There's absolutely no disclosure. And, you know, one of the things that we went out. And first of all, I want to say the foreign, this NGO after. in Georgia is not that different from the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, because the U.S.

would not allow foreign NGOs to work here. I mean, there, right? And so that's one thing I have to say. The U.S. has its own anti-N.O foreign NGO laws that only, you know, that only they can deal with, right? A lot of people have been, you know, prosecuted under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. So there's that. But the thing is, you know, one of the things you have to think about is the National Endowment for democracy, which is the, I don't know if you've heard of it, which is the, the CIA, you know, the CIA front in the world that funds groups, right? And so they remove this. But if you look, if you look online and figure out which, which groups are being funded in Haiti by the NED, national endowment for democracy, which is, which gets its fund from, you know, from, from,

from the U.S. Department of State and so on and so forth. Then you start seeing how do you ideological war is done. So in the lead-up to the coup against Aristide, which you have with all these NEDE, National Endowment for Democracy, funded a couple of student groups where industry saying Eristead needs to go, we need democracy, and so on. At the same time, the opposition to Eristide in 2003-2004 was the Group 184 was funded by the, was the Republican branch of the NED, the International Republican Institute through the tune of like, I think, does it, $300 million a year or $3 million? I don't remember. It was a lot of money being funded the so-called opposition.

So you had student group opposition. I mean, you have to think about the Maidan, the Maidan Rebellion and the Maiden coup, right, in Ukraine, right? To think about the foreign, the role of foreign, foreign agent. These same so student groups. So all of a sudden you have these group newspapers writing about democracy and Aristide, you know, like being like, you know, the most evil thing there is and people pushing for coup d'etat. And these are the young people. So Claude Joseph, who becomes a prime minister and installed later on in 2021, was one of the student leaders against Erie's deed in 2003 funded by these NGOs. And then you can look like

the most recently is this newspaper called Aibo Post. And, you know, this is the cheapest thing. It's funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, right? And all you need to give them is like $100,000. If you look at the NED site, it tells you how much it gives each group. Although they've removed a lot of it, right? Tells you how much it gives each group. So then to write stories. So what's the biggest story now is this canal that the Haitian locals are building in the northern Haiti

to get water to water their plants. And it's just talking about like, I think, $1,000 or something that seems misappropriated. this is the big story they're writing as opposed to the story of the oligarchs you know they could have written a story about the oligarchs bringing in guns into the country and so forth so this is the work of the NGOs are ideological and i see that in africa which is where actually most of my work is where you have you know all these people kids who are like protesting in the 90s against shell and so on and so forth turn it into bureaucrats where basically you get the NGOs come in and say you know you just to write a grant

you know, you change the language, it becomes like this pro-capitalist language, it becomes the anti-imperialist discourse gets left out, and it just becomes about like, you know, they fund women's organizations in Haiti and so, so it makes it seem, it's smart, right, because it makes it seem like they're helping civil society and so on, but they're doing it ideologically because in order to actually even get the NGO grade, that you actually have the particular kind of politics they want, and the application, right application forces your you're thinking to be shaped in very specific ways. You have to use specific language and so on and so forth.

So Haiti has that. And I always say if I were to come in as a leader of Haiti, the first thing I would do is shut down every single NGO in that country. Kick everyone out. Keep every foreign NGO out because that's what's really shaping the discourse. They're the ones that then turn around and do, you know, they say we did a poll that 80% of Haitians want foreign intervention, which is a lie.

right but this is the same Polden that Reuters uses and that everyone else starts using so NGOs are the cheap thing and that's the thing about that Haiti and the Global Fugility Act which I say has already been going on in Haiti because in addiction so the and I don't know if I told you so the they the US we published this in Black Agenda Report the US had has a 10 year plan for Haiti right that is a 45 page document that I was in the State Department, which they've removed since we started talking about it, and I can send it to you. But it was like, it was, so it's part of the Global Forgivoli Act. So if you think this invasion is about just dealing with gangs, I've got a bridge in Baltimore to sell you, right? Because the reality is this is a 10-year plan to establish front. And one of the key aspects of this 10-year plan is the funding of what they didn't name them, 230 NGOs in Haiti for the ideological work of, you know, preparing the population for whatever

it is that they're trying to do. So, yes, I think the new U.S. policy is the ideological work that the NGOs do through USAID. That's why the Global Fugility Act includes USAID, along with the Department of Defense and along with the Department of State. That doesn't diminish U.S. military things. But the U.S. military then becomes also the military exercise. So just last week, you had Operation Trade Wins, which is in the Caribbean, where you had like 30-something Caribbean countries with the Netherlands, France, conduct military exercises in the region, right? So this is how you do. So you're basically training people to take over and do the dirty work for the U.S., right? So you have military exercise in the region. You have U.S. military

started flying over Guyana, you know, in its supposed fight against Venezuela, because the U.S. is militarizing the region while creating a carrie of like these young bureaucrats, taking them, making them, moving up from activists to bureaucrats to provide the ideological framework for their taking over the region. I mean, it's a brilliant strategy. And everyone's falling into it because the money come from the U.N. or they say, you know, they get jobs and, and this is not about, you know, military, it looks like they have autonomy when they don't. Yeah, wow. This really brings up so many interesting lines of inquiry.

I was going to ask you a little bit more about what you think is going to happen in Haiti right now. But actually, maybe there's a way to connect what you were just talking about, which is about this U.S. plan. What are the U.S.'s geostrategic interests in Haiti? How does that fit with what you were just talking about? about in terms of its plans within, you know, militarizing the Caribbean and so on. And why is it pursuing this? And I guess I just have one thought about this, which is that, you know, we're talking about globally about the U.S. kind of decline of power and influence. If we look at what's happening in West Asia, you know, it seems like policy is being run, you know,

out of Tel Aviv and not out of Washington sometimes. It seems like that just because of the you know, but also the fact that the United States has not been able to put together, say, a, you know, a genuine coalition with regional partners to try and suppress the Ansara law, you know, interdiction of commercial trade in the red speed. All power to the Yemeni people. Absolutely. Absolutely. We had a wonderful episode about Yemen recently. And, you know, but so, you know, so there are lots of indications with realignments with bricks and regionally in West Asia. They're, you know, normally. of what used to be a completely reliable U.S. ally in Saudi Arabia and their normalization with Iran. And so there's a lot of things that are taking place globally that suggest that U.S. influence and the way in which it has managed, you know, post-Cold War, you know, empire is suffering, you know, some cracks and it's having to kind of reassure. it in various ways. One of the consequences I wonder is if it is having to kind of really

refocus on, you know, a kind of neo-Munro doctrine. You mentioned that that's what this global fragility act seems to be like. So maybe you could talk a little bit more about the place of the Caribbean, have Haiti in kind of the prospects of U.S. Empire. If it's the, you know, kind of imperial laboratory. What, what, you know, what, you know, do we city that's happening in Haiti now that is kind of a, you know, perhaps giving us insight into the U.S. position geopolitically. And, you know, what can we learn from, you know, Haiti as Empire's laboratory at this moment with these plans, perhaps for another intervention, but certainly, you know, manipulating Haiti's politics, you know, with this presidential council and a new, a new, you know, a newly chosen,

I guess he used to be a sports minister, the new prime minister, you know, what does this say about what's going on more broadly in U.S. empire, if you can connect the two. Right. And so I want to say just two things. So the presidential council is, is fraudulent. So I want to come out and say this because it was, it was, it was, it was, um, handpicked by the U.S., right? It was the same thing by the core group. Brazil is part of this. In Mexico, by the way, the presidential council

was handpicked, and one of the condition to be part, to have a seat at the table, those who were handpicked had to agree that the first thing that they agreed to was foreign intervention. So the U.S. would not allow you to be part of the transitional council, so this so-called Haitian solution, if you did not agree,

to foreign intervention. And it really used Mia Motley for this. Mia Motley of the darling of the West, right, of the Prime Minister of Barbados, who has been promised the secretary generalship of the UN, right? So she does whatever the U.S. wants. And then Ershana Ali, who's the president of Guyana. Those two are the ones who are bullying Haiti, these Haitian folks, who were handpicked.

but who also agreed to this. And so for me, that's treasonous. I think every single member of that presidential council is a treason, you know, has his should be tried for treason. So that's, that's, and the presidential council is unconstitutional. But then again, you know, there hasn't been anything constitution by Haiti since 2004. So, so, so, so we have, we have that part, right? And I think it's important.

The other thing I want to point out before I get to the geopolitical things, this is not a UN mission. And I want people to know this. It's a UN sanctioned mission, which is why I also say Haiti is a laboratory, because they did not have to go to the UN to get the UN sanctioned. But they wanted that in writing. So this is not a UN mission. In fact, the U.S. isn't trying to get this military evasion since 2022. And Russia and China kept vetoing.

And they kept vetoing and said, there's no, this doesn't have a plan. It makes no sense, you know. And I think then they sent the. Caribbean people to talk to Russian and they step back and they abstain, which is what allowed this to go forward as a UN mission. The other thing is, they made this a Chapter 7 mission, even though it's not a UN mission. And the difference with Chapter 6 to Chapter 7 are very important because Chapter 7 means these foreigners can use any force, air, land, and sea, military force against the population. So here we have this crazy situation where you have armed invaders coming

into Haiti, not a UN mission, which is why the U.S. is paying Kenya upward $600 million to send a thousand police, paying in Canada's training using its base in Jamaica to train the Caribbean people. So imagine this. Under the UN occupation, Haitians suffered from cholera that the UN brought into the country where they dumped their feces in the local water and gave people cholera, we have 30,000 dead and, you know, a million sick and it took six years for the UN to acknowledge this until this day we haven't had reparations. So imagine this force coming in. Effective mercenaries under no one's purview. So there's no legal, so they can shoot up and kill whoever, these Kenyans and no recourse. Tell me, like what other country

gets away with, like, what, who else get, no one would, you wouldn't do that to another country. But Haiti gets it. And it was a unanimous vote, except for the extensions from, unanimous votes from like the entire Security Council, because the U.S. had, you know, did it, done it, right? Except for the assumption of Russia and China. So there's that. Haiti is very important for the U.S. geographically.

The U.S. has been wanting a military base in Haiti since the 1800s. In fact, that's why it has Guantanamo because the Haitian government continuously say no. In fact, they sent Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist, who was like representative of the U.S. government, State Department in late 1800s to try to negotiate this land that they have is of northern part right near Cuba, right near Fontanamo, and the Haitian government said no. The Haiti is in the windward passage. It's the easiest place to go through your ships. You come from the eastern U.S. go through between Cuba and Haiti, the windward passage, directed the Panama Canal, as the U.S. prepares for whatever it

thinks it is going to be, it's a war with China. The U.S. needs this, the Caribbean region. It needs to get through there, the fastest way, to get to the Panama Canal, right? Instead of going, you know, from the west coast across, right? So that's important because what it is, the whole point is to remove Chinese and Russian influence in the region, to militarize the region to go against Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Nicaragua, with Russia's help, is building a different canal. That's not the Panama Canal.

So Haiti is very important in that. That's why they have a 10-year strategic thing. What's going to happen with this is the Canadians are going to get defeated because people are so angry. They're going to send these black soldiers to get killed first, and then they're going to use that as an excuse to ask the UN to send a peacekeeping force to consolidate their power. But the other part that's important for Haiti is that the U.S. isolates itself for China because it's a bully that can't play when it's being beaten. It's like you're being beaten on the court. You take your ball and you go home, right?

It needs Haitian labor power and it needs Haitian land. Haiti is one of the most populous nations in the Korean. And people don't know this. People in Canada, you know, Canadian sweatshops are in Haiti, gilden t-shirts. The U.S. used to use Haiti for baseball and so on. But Haiti is also one of the few places in the Caribbean where 75% of the people own their land. They want to remove the people from the land. Sell out the land to multinationals,

but you have a cheap labor force that they can use to provide the products that they will no longer get out of China once they attack, once they begin whatever war they think they're beginning with China. So this is it. This is a geopolitical reason. They're militarizing the region because they want access to it. They want access to the oil, Venezuela's oil. They want the lithium. They want Guyana and Venezuela's oil, but they also want to keep China and Russia out of the region. So just, you know, you're touching on something that I was going to bring up as my closing question of this interview. But just briefly, since you mentioned the Presidential Council and you mentioned how you see them all as, you know, traitorous and treasonous. Yeah.

It reminds me of a wonderful quote from Walter Rodney in the groundings with my brothers about white-hearted black men and how they all. uphold the white capitalist system despite the color of their skin. That's a terrific quote. I've got the book over there. I'm not going to pull out the exact quote because I've quoted it on the show several times in the past, but listeners, it's in the groundings with my brothers. You should read the whole book anyway. Then you'll find the quote.

It's a terrific work. But, you know, talking about China, I would like to focus a little bit more on China in closing because as you point out just briefly. in this article. And I'm going to quote you directly here. When you're talking about the GFA, you say the act and its prolog clearly articulate that the main goals are to advance U.S. national security

and interests and to manage rival powers, presumably Russia and China. So can you talk a little bit more about what the perceived threat of China and Russia, probably to a lesser extent, in the case of Haiti, but what the threat of China to U.S., and listeners, I know this is a podcast, so you can't see the air quotes, but threats to national interest and security, China would pose by its, you know, working with Haiti in any prospective future and why it is so critical to the Western imperialist order led by the United States

that they prevent China from making any inroads within Haitian society? Well, yeah, it's a matter of influence, right? You don't want China's influence to spread. But the other thing is, you listen to this line out. No, Haiti is one of the few countries that recognize Taiwan and not China and not China. Right. And so that's an important thing that we have to know. And, you know, if that was the other thing, I'd get rid of the NGOs and then I'd recognize China.

If I was in charge, first thing I did get rid of all the NGOs. dissolved the core group, get all the UN offices that are still there out of Haiti, and recognize China. Because China has actually come in and said, you know, they would build roads and railroads and they'd be willing to build bridges and so on and so forth.

And the U.S. is completely against that. One of the little known things, like Jovenile of Mouyez, the Haitian president that was assassinated, people think it's his meeting with the Russian representatives. I think he flew to Turkey, I think, and had a meeting with him. that actually did amend in terms of like the U.S. giving the goal ahead to have them assassinated.

Right. And so, so that's an important thing to know. So this is how, you know, so the U.S. does not want Chinese influence at all in the region, but it thinks it controls Haiti. And so with Haiti being key for the U.S., it definitely does not want any Chinese influence in Haiti whatsoever. Adnan, you looked like you had a thought that you were going to hop in with. Well, only just to say, you know, for anybody who thinks that that sounds far-fetched, how could it just be about one meeting? I mean, look what happened in Pakistan. Imran Hunt, I was going to bring that up. Oh, my God, yes. Yes. We recently had an episode with Powell Wargon about the Pakistani elections,

you know, and of course, the whole story there is that the United States saw a client state, leader of a client state acting independently and forging, you know, commercial and other diplomatic relations with a rival power and immediately worked to undermine them. So it's... To underscore that point more specifically, to underscore that point more specifically, Adnan, and I'm not sure that this is something that we brought up in that episode with Pavel, but it was a very unfortunate timing on Imran Han's part because he went to Moscow and had a meeting with the Russian government. Do you know what day he happened to be in Moscow, which was pre-prepared, by the way, that had been announced months in advance.

It was the day of the announcing of the special military operation. The same day. I was really the thought in Ron Khan, man. I was just like, you could do it, you could do it. And then, you know, the U.S. won out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So very unfortunate timing on his part. As soon as the U.S. saw that, you know, you say, I can't just be because of this one meeting.

I mean, that meeting had been prepared months in advance. Right. But the things, a lot of it is, you know, I joke around and I say a lot of it. It's like people think it's conspiracy when you make these things. Like you're making things up. But there is something to be said about the U.S. wanting to keep, you know, the colonies that it thinks it has under us. You know, one of the same Haitian statesmen who was actually the representative at the League of Nations in 1919. What he said was the God is too far and the U.S. is too close. And for us, that, you know, that to me sums up our relationship to the U.S. And I think what it's led to is two camps. You have, you know, most Haitians and most people think, well, you cannot not deal with the U.S. You have to make your compromises in order to, you know, in order to like, you know, survive. And then you have the rest of us.

So like, well, why don't we all get together and defeat the U.S., right? And I don't think people are there yet, right? But I do think the time is coming as we have the shifting politics and economics in particular. Because I think the U.S., look, the U.S. cannot afford an occupation right now of Haiti. It can't even make its military numbers. Like, it can't even recruit enough people, right? Which is why you're right to end with your quote, like these Caribbean, you know, this is like blackface empire right it's just like you know imperialism and black face this is why

they're using these black countries to come in because they don't have to do the dirty work and until the black people in these other places in the Caribbean realize how they're being pawns of empire um you know our fight is even you know it's harder than it is against the u.s right now absolutely and and that quote that you said about being uh too close to the U.S. and too far from God. Yeah. The, uh, that exact quote came up. I believe in the recent interview that we did with Alex Savina about Israel's role in Latin

America. So listeners, you know, I told you that to find the quote that I was quoting from the groundings with my brothers, you just have to read the whole book. I'm also going to say that if you want to hear that quote brought up in context, you have to listen to that whole episode with Alex. You're not going to regret it. I mean, everybody loves when Alex is on the show anyway. So go find that.

episode and listen to it. It was relatively recent. But, Professor, you've been incredibly generous with your time, and I do want to, you know, cordially invite you back. Maybe we can plan something to talk about. We'll do in the Haitian revolution. That's something, like I said, I've been wanting to do an episode on that for about three years now and have not had the opportunity to actually get it over the line yet. So perhaps that, and of course, there's a million and other things that we could talk with you about. So, again, listeners. Yeah, absolutely.

It's the intervention that's coming. So hope, you know, keep hope alive for us that we fight against another intervention in Haiti. And, like, you know, let's keep hope that the people fight back and protect themselves. Absolutely. Absolutely. So again, listeners, our guest was Professor Jamima Pierre, who is a professor at the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia, we've been talking about her article, Haiti is Empires Laboratory, which was in the recent NACLA reported of the Americas. We will have that linked in the show notes if you want

to check out the article. Professor, it was a pleasure having you on the show. How can the listeners find more of your work and keep up to date with things that you're speaking about? Oh, yeah. Well, I'm an academic, so you can put myself on Google Scholar necessarily. But I work with the Black Alliance for Peace. I'm the Haiti America's coordinator, and we produce a lot of information about Haiti. So you can just go to Black Alliance for Peace.com slash Haiti. We have all the resources you need if you ever want to know about Haiti. And so that's what most of the work is the activist's work, you know,

to go against imperialism and, um, and, and occupation. So that's, that's where you'll find me. Yeah. Absolutely. You're also one of my favorite Twitter follows, but, you know, if you don't want to announce you. Yeah, that's about to be for private, you know. We'll keep that private.

All right. All right. Immigrant in Canada. I'm still, you know, wait for my paperwork. All right. I'll keep your Twitter timeline all to myself then. Wahaha. The listeners get none of that. That's or we can just say it's your quest listeners. You know, you have to read the whole book. You have to listen to the whole episode. And you have to look through all of Twitter to find the professor's profile in case you want to enjoy.

But yeah, it was a great pleasure. Adnan, how can the listeners find you and your other podcast? Well, you can find me on Twitter and I may get myself expelled from Canada. I don't know. But you can, you know, enjoy me going out in flames at Adnan-A-Husain-H-U-S-A-I-N on Twitter. And, you know, check out the M-A-L-L-I-S. We have a couple of episodes coming out. It's the podcast of the Muslim Society's Global Perspectives Project at Queens. And if you're interested in, the Middle East Islamic world, Muslim diasporic culture. We have a variety of episodes. So do check us out there on all the usual platforms. I think we're on Spotify now as our main outlet. So check us out there. Yeah, absolutely highly recommend that. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. I have no plans on being expelled from Russia anytime soon, unlike Adnan and his plans with Canada. But you can find me on Twitter at Hutt 1995. I also want to make sure that I announce before I forget that the historical documents of the PLO book that we collaborated with

Iskra Books on and wrote one of the forwards to is now available. As mentioned, all books through Iskra have free PDFs available, IskraBooks.org. But this book, in particular, as well as some of the other Palestine-related materials that have been coming out from ISCRA. If you buy the physical copy, 100% of the proceeds go to the Middle East Children's Alliance. Again, 100% of the proceeds go to Middle East Children's Alliance. So if you were ever going to buy a physical book from ISCRA, that would be a very good opportunity to do so because you will be directly contributing to highly efficacious and principal charity, benefiting those in the afflicted region.

As for the show, listeners, you can help support the show at Gorilla under, sorry, Patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can keep up to date with everything that we put out individually and collectively at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod. And until next time, listeners, Solidarity. You know what I'm going to do. Thank you.