HATIANS WILL NO LONGER NEED A VISA TO TRAVEL TO RUSSIA
August 24, 2019. - The Haitian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Edmond Bocchit, announced, in the newspaper Le Nouvelliste, that soon Haitians will be able to go to Russia without needing a visa and it will be the same for Russians wishing to visit Haiti. Minister Edmond Bocchit made these statements after meeting with the Russian Ambassador, Vladimir Fedorovich Zaemsky, accredited in Haiti and whose residence is in Caracas (Venezuela).
LACK OF FUEL
August 23, 2019. - For nearly two weeks, there has been a shortage of fuel in the Nippes Department, particularly in the municipality of Miragoâne, where the few service stations that have fuel are not ready to serve customers. Motorbike taxi drivers quickly adjusted the price of their fare, due to the scarcity of gasoline seen through service stations.
A YOUNG ARTIST CHARTS THE JOURNEY FROM HAITI TO HOOD
By Doreen St Félix in The New Yorker
Daveed Baptiste’s mother could not secure the proper paperwork allowing her to travel from Haiti to America, so she made the painful but not uncommon decision to send her three children without her.
But, in his self-directed maturation, distanced from the choke of tradition that parents pass down, Baptiste loosened himself from the mantra placed on Haitian children, the three Ls: lekol, legliz, lakay. School, church, home. His mind wandered to New York City and its downtown saints. He watched “Paris Is Burning,” and documentaries on Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, who himself was born to a Haitian father. He grew infatuated with Destiny’s Child. His brother loved 50 Cent. “You’re thrown into the American version of blackness,” Baptiste told me recently, over the phone. “You learn to be a Negro.”
“Haiti to Hood” is a theatrical series, focussed on the nostalgic power of materials. And the nostalgia is not simply personal; Baptiste’s models appear in two sets, a living room and a bedroom, which are cluttered with objects that symbolize the activity of surviving under empire. “Before my father had dipped out on us,” he told me, “we spent a lot of time indoors, inside the house. I was trapped in the crib.” Baptiste loves spending time in the homes of other people, intuiting their personalities not only from the objects accrued but from their juxtaposition. He thinks about the politics of food, how one’s tastes convey class, and culture—for Haitian families, jugs of Tampico juice and bags of Madame Gougousse rice. He also thinks about cultural consumption; on the puckered walls of his bedroom scenes are posters advertising “Grand Theft Auto,” barbershop cuts, Pokéman cards, and sneaker colorways. Above a table, a photograph of John F. Kennedy smiles, and Destiny’s Child poses.
The photographs, at first glance, seem like they could be documentary. In fact, they are heavily constructed. Baptiste is a tinkerer of surfaces. “Haiti to Hood” was shot in his studio at Parsons, where he is studying fashion design. According to his artist’s statement, he used textiles such as “denim, wool, and cotton satins to make furniture slipcovers, floor textures, and table cloths,” giving the photos a dimension of tactile trompe-l’oeil. The walls are made of dyed felt; he digitally rendered patterns and printed them on fabrics that are fashioned to look like curtains and sheets. “Nothing is thrown away, everything is used until it breaks,” he told me, referencing the duct-taped chairs in his living-room still-lifes.
What excites me about Baptiste is his prismatic approach to disciplines, his cyclical twining of the mediums of photography, direction, and fashion design. When we spoke on the phone, he was in Turkey, attending a three-week residency. He was spending eight hours in a factory learning about denim production. He worried that if we got into the bloodied history of cotton and indigo production, he would keep me on the phone too long. In truth, I could have talked to him for hours.
Haitians seek to ban ‘Sweet Micky’ from appearing at New York’s West Indian Day Parade
AUGUST 22, 2019 07:06 PM, UPDATED AUGUST 23, 2019 07:24 PM
- It is where Caribbean culture and celebration intersect with American life.
- Every Labor Day, hundreds of thousands of revelers, carrying their nations’ flags, crowd New York City’s Eastern Parkway for theWest Indian Day Parade, dancing to the beat of steel drums and carnival rhythms behind extravagant floats and elaborate foot bands adorned in colorful sequined costumes, feathers and masks.
- But this year, there is one carnival performer some Haitian Americans don’t want to see: former Haiti president Michel Martelly, also known as “Sweet Micky,” the name for his anti-establishment, raucous alter-ego stage performer.
- In an open letter to Democratic presidential hopeful and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Haitian activists and organizations are asking that Martelly be banned from participating in all activities surrounding this year’s West Indian Day Parade. As New Yorkers, they say, they should not be subjected to the former president’s foul-mouthed incendiary speech and misogynistic performance antics that include attacks on women, and his political enemies and critics.
- “His presence at the West Indian Parade is dangerous for women and goes against the values that make New York City a good place to live,” the signers of the letter, written in English and French, said. “In the era of #MeToo, the participation of Michel Martelly in activities that celebrate diversity in a city that values gender equality and mutual respect appears indecent and incoherent.”
This is not the first time that Martelly, who served as president of Haiti from 2011-16, has faced opposition to his controversial performances.
Last year, two major Haitian cities banned him from their pre-Ash Wednesday Carnival celebrations after women’s groups, religious leaders and human rights activists protested his appearance following an unfiltered, foul-mouthed rant against his critics at a January concert in Port-au-Prince.
Then earlier this year, Haitian Quebecers in Canada, citing misogynistic statements and alleged complicity in the corruption scandal surrounding his presidency, launched a similar protest. They wrote to both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante asking that Martelly be blocked from performing in Montreal.
Three days before the scheduled March 22 concert, Martelly released a video on social media saying that his performance had to be canceled due to two of his musicians facing visa problems.
The most recent protest against Martelly’s “Sweet Micky” alter ego comes as Haitians in New York are increasingly flexing their political muscle and winning public offices, and as the ex-president’s own popularity appears to be waning.
Martelly’s concerts and appearances, which once attracted crowds, are receiving a lukewarm reception in some quarters as Haitians everywhere grow increasingly frustrated and exhausted with their country’s dismal reality: no working government, increased gang violence, fuel shortages, soaring food prices, 18 percent inflation and a rapidly deteriorating domestic currency, to name a few.
At the center of the blame in the growing socioeconomic and political crisis is Martelly’s hand-picked successor, President Jovenel Moïse. An inexperienced politician who had never held public office, Moïse survived an impeachment vote on Thursday by the Lower Chamber of Deputies, 53-3 againstimpeachment.
But the victory could well be short-lived, as political allies in the upper Chamber of the Senate line up to sink his latest choice for prime minister — the fourth in three years — amid continued calls for his resignation. Anti-corruption activists and political opponents accuse Moïse of not governing and have cited a government audit implicating him in the Venezuelan aid corruption scandal surrounding Martelly’s administration.
Haiti President Michel Martelly, also known as 'Sweet Micky,' entertaining a U.N. delegation from the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) last May at Brasserie Quartier Latin in, Pétionville.
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Though Martelly holds no official post in Moïse’s administration, some politicians and foreign diplomats say he still wields considerable power and influence, like deciding who should occupy what ministries in future governments. There is also belief that he is mounting his own presidential bid.
Martelly, who performed on Wednesday in Trinidad at the Caribbean Festival of Arts, CARIFESTA, could not be reached for comment. But on stage and in interviews, he has told critics to keep their hands off “Sweet Micky.” He’s always sought to separate his controversial, gyrating stage persona from the politician, dismissing his antics as being done in good humor.
But Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder and former publisher of the New York-based Haitian Times, said that while some Haitians may still buy that argument, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make that distinction given Sweet Micky’s lascivious public rants against enemies and recent music like his Carnival méringue “Ba’ l Bannann Nan” (Give her the Banana) deriding renowned Haiti journalist Liliane Pierre-Paul.
In the open letter to de Blasio copied to other New York politicians, the song’s lyrics are described this way: “This carnivalesque merengue presented the President as a doctor who called his audience to insert various objects in the private parts of Liliane Pierre-Paul.”
A critic of Martelly during his presidency, Pierre-Paul is a 1990 recipient of the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage Award in Journalism who is credited with helping champion press freedom in Haiti. During the Duvalier dictatorship, she was arrested, tortured and forced into exile.
Attacking Pierre-Paul isn’t his only fault, the letter says. During Martelly’s appearance at the West Indian Day Parade last year he lashed out at a reveler who inquired about the squandering of billions of dollars in the Venezuelan aid corruption scandal overshadowing his administration and PHTK political party. He told the reveler that he had hid the money in the private parts of the reveler’s wife.
“It’s getting to the point where people are tired,” said Pierre-Pierre, citing other examples of Sweet Micky’s vulgarity. “It’s unbecoming of an ex-president. You would think that would command a certain level of responsibility and respect. But for him it’s the opposite.”
In a letter signed by the president of the West Indian American Day Carnival Association, and shared with the Miami Herald, association president Jean Joseph confirmed that registration had closed for participants. There are only four Haitian groups that are registered: T-Vice, Tony Mix, Kreyòl La and Banboche, a costumed band.
Edens Desbas, one of the signers of the open letter to de Blasio, said they needed stronger guarantees about the parade, which celebrates 52 years this year. Citing Martelly’s penchant for jumping on stage to join the party even when not on the billing, Desbas said they want de Blasio to “give an executive order to the police to prevent him from going on any of the floats.”
So far, no word from de Blasio, who himself has paraded down the parkway, albeit not in costume. His office did not respond for comment.
Miami Herald - Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.
First black woman nominated to be Marine brigadier general
By Sophie Tatum, CNN
Washington (CNN) Marine Corps Col. Lorna Mahlock has been nominated to serve as the first black female brigadier general, the Marine Corps media office said.
Mahlock was nominated by President Donald Trump, and Defense Secretary James Mattis announced the nomination on Tuesday.
According to his announcement, Mahlock is currently the deputy director of the Operations, Plans, Policies, and Operations Directorate at the Marine Corps headquarters in Washington. Her nomination was one of several by the President that Mattis announced Tuesday.
Last year, an infantry battalion at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina received the first female infantry Marines, who were set to serve in the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, with specializations as rifleman, machine gun and mortar, 1st Lt. John McCombs, a Marines spokesman, said at the time.
Scientist who called out Bolsonaro on Amazon deforestation is fired
(CNN) Brazil has fired the head of a government agency that found a steep rise in deforestation in the Amazon, following a public spat with far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Ricardo Galvão, the director of Brazil's National Space and Research Institute (INPE), said he was terminated on Friday after defending satellite data that showed deforestation was 88% higher in June compared to a year ago.
Galvão said in a video statement on Facebook that the agency let him go after a meeting with Brazil's Minister of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications, Marcos Pontes.
He added that the scientific institute would continue to operate and it would now be up to Pontes to decide on his successor. An advisor to Pontes confirmed Galvão's comments to state news agency Agencia Brasil.