Colin Powell: The Gangster of Haiti
Tempest
http://www.blackcommentator.com/80/80_cover_haiti.html
"The deed is done. Haiti has been raped. The act was sanctioned by the
United States, Canada and France." - Editorial, Jamaica Observer
Colin Powell is "the most powerful and damaging black to rise to
influence in the world in my lifetime." - TransAfrica founder Randall
Robinson
''All the people that supported [Aristide] will be dead in three
months.'' - Haiti government attorney Ira Kurzban
The new order congeals like blood on the streets of Port-au-Prince.
Haiti's dance of death begins anew, a convergence of low-life assassins,
high-living compradors, preening French imperialists and global American
pirates - an unspeakable bacchanal.
"I am the chief," declares Guy Philippe, the 36-year-old, Green
Beret-trained, three-time coup-meister and sometime police chief. "The
country is in my hands."
Not really. Haiti is in the same American and French hands that snatched
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the Central African Republic - an
involuntary destination on its face, where a French-approved military
dictator sits in a palace that he seized from an elected President
precisely one year ago. Pleased with the finesse of the "perfect
coordination" between Paris and Washington, French Foreign Minister
Dominique de Villepin no doubt savors the grotesque, near-symmetric
poetry of this joint venture in international piracy, in which Aristide
is transported from the site of one coup to another.
"The niceties of democracy were thrown out the window, and the matters
of principle so vigorously defended by President Chirac and Foreign
Minister de Villepin over Iraq were quickly shunted aside," said the
Jamaica Observer in a March 1 editorial. "And new Canadians went with
the flow." The Caribbean Community must understand, "if they thought
otherwise," that "democratically-elected leaders are easily expendable
if they, at a particular time, do not fit the profile in favor with
those who are strong and powerful."
In the shadow of death
Mini-megalomaniac Guy Philippe's assignment is to liquidate Aristide's
grassroots supporters. In that sense, he is "the chief." Even so,
Philippe overreached on Tuesday when his troops were prevented by U.S.
Marines from arresting Prime Minister Yvon Neptune. Earlier that day,
Associate Editor Kevin Pina and Andrea Nicastro of the Italian daily
Corriere della Sera, interviewed Neptune in his office. With Philippe's
troops massed nearby, Pina and Nicastro worked in haste to elicit the
following responses from the Prime Minister:
1. "Even though I am the legal Prime Minister I am a prisoner in my
office. That's a fact."
2. "The President called me a few hours before he was taken out of the
country and told me, 'Where I am now, I am like a prisoner.'
3. "Whoever has allowed those armed bandits in the opposition to get
into Haiti and to sow violence and death, they should be in the position
to control them." Asked whether he was referring to the Bush
administration the Prime Minister answered: "Statements were made asking
the Haitian government to meet certain requirements so that the armed
gangs would not be allowed to come into the capital. That statement was
made. They wanted us to quiet the demonstrators asking for President
Aristide to finish his term. They wanted us to force the to stand down
and stop demanding new elections. They wanted that vast majority to
remain quiet. They wanted us to tell them to sit down quietly and allow
the coup machine to crush them."
4. "Some in the international community don't want Haiti to become a
democracy where the majority of the poor have a voice."
5. "The coup machine is in motion because the opposition knows they
cannot win elections with President Aristide in the country."
6. "The resignation of the president is not constitutional because he
did that under duress and threat."
7. "The chief of the Supreme Court [Boniface Alexander] was brought here
into my office by representatives of the international community. I was
not invited or present when he was sworn in [as President]."
Notes from Haiti's Killing Fields
The corporate media are in no danger from Guy Philippe, having acted as
international public relations agents for the "opposition" during the
entire coup-building process. But such immunities do not apply to Kevin
Pina - a people's reporter - who filed this dispatch, Wednesday.
Every night I get frantic calls from friends and contacts I have met and
interviewed in the past. In the background I hear the thunder of heavy
automatic weapons and the screams of terror as they describe to me the
carnage being met upon them. The calls come from places like Bel Air,
Cite Soleil, La Saline and Martissaint. The poorest of the poor who
supported President Aristide and democracy are being slaughtered by the
former military and FRAPH. There is a 6 p.m. curfew imposed by the
international forces but it does not seem to apply to these killers.
Naturally, the Haitian press remains silent along with their buddies in
the corporate media who are more enamored of the romantic notion of the
former killers returning than of the killing itself. I can't blame them
though, as the groundwork had already been laid by the Haitian and
Washington elites. Haiti's poor had already been dehumanized in the eyes
of the international audience. They are just "chimeres" or violent gangs
allied with the president, so we can ignore when they are killed en
mass. They deserve it, after all, as payback for having thought they had
a place in Haiti's political life. They are only good for two things
now, to make money off of or to kill - and who will really know the
difference?
No one in these poor neighborhoods believes that President Aristide
resigned of his own freewill. The very first day of the coup (let's call
it what it really is) they had already begun spreading the rumor that he
had been kidnapped. Poor they may be, but stupid they ain't. Now they
must suffer for that same intelligence as the world stands by, ignoring
their screams of terror.
Philippe's men chased former Aristide officials to the airport on
Wednesday, but were blocked from entering the terminal by U.S. Marines
who say their orders now include protecting Haitians from "reprisal"
attacks. However, these are the lucky notables with money for a ticket
out. The Marines will not protect "Bel Air, Cite Soleil, La Saline and
Martissaint."
The mad dogs unleashed by (the even madder) George Bush and Colin Powell
have methodically burned buildings erected to serve the poor. Kevin Pina
is a supporter of a school for poor children in Petionville, a
relatively rich Port-au-Prince neighborhood - but the poor are
everywhere in Haiti. On March 1 Pina wrote:
"I have just received word that the SOPUDEP school, which provides a
free education and hot lunch program for over 400 of the poorest
children in the community, is being threatened. Opposition thugs and
former military have spread word through the neighborhood that they are
planning to attack and burn the school very soon. The administration and
staff take this threat very seriously and many of them have already gone
into hiding until the situation changes. My own ability to help protect
the school is very limited given the current situation."
The SOPUDEP school was organized under Aristide's National Literacy
Project, one of hundreds erected since Aristide's return from exile in
1994. Like the Haitian folk art gleefully cast into bonfires by
Philippe's men, every vestige of popular initiative and grassroots
political expression is marked for destruction. Every man and woman who
stands up will be cut down. "Pinochet made Chile what it is,'' Philippe
"gushed" when asked his favorite historical figure. "Number 2 on
Philippe's list is former US President Ronald Reagan," the Miami Herald
reported.
The executioners plotted for ten years at their U.S.-furnished bases in
the Dominican Republic in anticipation of the day when the Haitian
nation would be wiped clean of Aristide and his Lavalas movement.
History will be rewritten, they vowed; the Gangster-in-Chief will make
it so. And he did.
"It's the beginning of a new chapter in" in Haiti's history, said Bush,
as Aristide sat on the plane to Bangui.
French Foreign Minister de Villepin once again exhibited "perfect
coordination" with his imperial partner: "Everyone sees quite well that
a new page must be opened in Haiti's history."
Powell: Hands-on gangster
African Americans in particular must now face squarely the horrific
nature of the current regime in Washington. For reasons of race,
proximity, culture and common history, the Haiti atrocity wounds Black
America directly. African American leadership has been grievously and
cavalierly insulted at every stage of the rolling conspiracy against
Haitian democracy.
The administration has given its finger and simultaneously showed its
ass to the Black nations of the Caribbean, whom the Bush men hold in no
higher regard than bellhops. Colin Powell pretended to embrace a Caricom
plan that envisioned President Aristide remaining in power until the end
of his constitutional term in 2006; replacement of the prime minister,
to be selected by the Haitian government, opposition and the
international community; new elections for parliament, whose members'
mandates have expired. Nothing remains of this plan, because it was a
monstrous scam from the beginning - Colin Powell's personal deceit.
Aristide's response was unequivocal: "I accept the plan, publicly and
entirely... In one word, yes." It was the right answer; but Powell
wasn't asking an honest question. He is a professional prevaricator -
please, let us no longer call him a diplomat.
Unlike Donald Rumsfeld's closely held Iraq operation, the rape of Haiti
was Powell's hands-on criminal enterprise. On Monday, February 23,
Powell caused his spokesman to assure concerned Black lawmakers and
world opinion that the Secretary was standing firm against opposition
demands for Aristide's physical removal; that the U.S. supported the
Caricom agreement. "We went back at them," said Gonzalo Gallegos. Powell
"emphasized how good this was. He made clear to them that this was the
best thing they had going." What is now perfectly clear is that there
was never any U.S. intention for Aristide to remain on Haitian soil.
Powell assured the Haitian elite of this fact, and prepped them to
reject the Caricom plan, thus presenting the planet with the farce that
a gaggle of Third World businessmen were thwarting the will of the
United States.
Bush and his confederates lied in the faces of massed Black
congressional representatives in the days leading up to Aristide's
departure (see "US House Members to Bush, Powell: Don't Usurp Aristide's
Power," February 26), with assurances from the President that, "We still
hope to be able to achieve a political settlement between the current
government and the rebels." We now know that the Bush men and France
were even then seeking "perfect coordination" in removing Aristide.
Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice sat like bookmarks at Bush's side as
he lied to nineteen Black members of Congress.
Are these two conspirators fit to speak at any Black gathering, ever
again in life? Who in the Black community will debase their
organizations with the presence of such "role models?" An invitation to
Powell or Rice should be viewed as proof of a moral deficit on the part
of the inviter.
'Nonsense' and 'conspiracy theories'
"The constitution is the guarantee for life and peace. The constitution
should not sink in the blood of the Haitian people. That's why, if
tonight my resignation is the decision that can avoid a bloodbath, I
consent to leave with hope there will be life, not death." - President
Aristide's purported letter of resignation, alleged to have been written
sometime Saturday night, February 28.
The multi-racial Bush lie-machine and its agents in mass media had only
just begun to heap vicious calumnies on Black leadership. The world's
most famous liars - the fantasists of phantom Weapons of Mass
Destruction - would call into question the veracity of Black America's
most outspoken and respected voices. Dutifully, the corporate media took
their cues from the liars and embellished on these signals, in a brazen
effort to make it appear that African Americans had gone crazy.
On the Monday morning following Aristide's purported voluntary exile,
Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters called Democracy Now! to report
that the Haitian leader had not resigned, but had been kidnapped. "He is
in the Central Republic of Africa at a place called the Palace of the
Renaissance, and he's not sure if that's a house or a hotel or what it
is and he is surrounded by military," Waters told host Amy Goodman.
"It's like in jail, he said. He said that he was kidnapped; he said that
he was forced to leave Haiti. He said that the American embassy sent the
diplomats; he referred to them as, to his home where they was lead by
Mr. Moreno. And I believe that Mr. Moreno is a deputy chief of staff at
the embassy in Haiti and other diplomats, and they ordered him to leave.
They said you must go NOW….
"You have no choice, you must go and if you don't you will be killed and
many Haitians will be killed. We are planning with Mr. De filliped to
come into Puerto Rico. He will not be alone he will come with American
military and you will not survive, you will be killed. You've got to go
now!"
TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, now living in the Caribbean
British Commonwealth nation of St. Kitts, is a familiar voice to the
Aristide household. Robinson spoke with the Aristides as often as ten
times a day as the U.S.-backed bands tightened their noose on the
capital. However, Robinson was unable to reach the President or his
wife, Mildred, on Saturday evening and night. Something was amiss, he
thought. Then Robinson got the call from Bangui. "He did not resign. He
did not resign," Robinson told Amy Goodman, confirming Rep. Water's
earlier account.
"He was kidnapped and all of the circumstances seem to support his
assertion. Had he resigned, we wouldn't need blacked out windows and
blocked communications and military taking him away at gunpoint. Had he
resigned, he would have been happy to leave the country. He was not."
Robinson reported that he had worked the phones to find out the State
Department's story and been told that South Africa had refused Aristide
asylum. Robinson spoke with South Africa's foreign minister, who said
that Aristide had not asked for asylum. (Of course he hadn't - he had
not planned to be leaving the country!)
"So, you see the State Department is telling an interested public,
including members of the congress, that South Africa refused asylum. The
State Department knows better. They know that President Aristide was not
allowed to request asylum from South Africa or anybody else because he
was not allowed to make any phone calls before they left Haiti, during
the flight, and beyond."
Colin Powell's Big Lie was unraveling - and now it emerged that the
Secretary of State had taken upon himself the role of Godfather. Ron
Dellums, the distinguished former Congressman from the San Francisco Bay
area who worked as a lobbyist for Aristide's government, got a call from
the Head-Negro-In-Charge on Saturday, warning in no uncertain terms that
gunmen were coming to kill Aristide on Sunday morning. The U.S., said
Powell, would not lift a finger to stop them. When the Americans come to
call, Aristide must leave with them.
It is a mind-boggling measure of the Bush Pirates' ferocious lawlessness
that Powell would personally initiate the overt, criminally culpable act
in the kidnapping of a head of state. This aspect of the crime alone
should send him to The Hague.
The news had a disorienting effect on corporate newsrooms. How could
they bury such accusations, now circling the globe via the Internet?
Just as Maxine Waters was telling CNN of another call from the Central
African Republic, this time from the Haitian First Lady, Donald Rumsfeld
stepped to the microphone at the Pentagon. The Defense Secretary feigned
surprise, actually chuckling at the very idea of a presidential
kidnapping. "I don't believe that's true that he is claiming that. I
just don't know that that's the case. I'd be absolutely amazed if that
were the case."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan derided Waters and Robinson:
"That's nonsense. Conspiracy theories do nothing to help the Haitian
people move forward to a better, more free and more prosperous future."
That's all the corporate newsreaders and wisecrackers needed to hear. A
CNN anchor speculated that Aristide was "fabricating revisionist history
on the fly," with the transparent inference that Rep. Waters was a dupe
or liar, herself. "Do you think we would make that up?" the
Congresswoman asked, shocked and offended.
The same trained corporate seal then presented clumsily leading
questions to one of the usual "security experts" that bounce around
branded newsrooms spouting nonsense all day. Waters' tale of diplomats
accompanying U.S. troops to take Aristide away was - ludicrous on its
face. "You wouldn't have diplomats side by side with the military,
right?" said the faux newsperson. It couldn't have happened that way,
the "expert" assured her.
Once the White House and Rumsfeld had spoken, the conversations with
Aristide became "alleged phone calls," and remained so until Aristide
confirmed the events in his own voice. Aristide had asked Waters and
Robinson to "tell the world it was a coup!" Corporate media tried their
best to discredit the messengers and the victim.
Agents of corporate consensus
The Bush men's incessant rampages against reality are bringing their
corporate media partners into disrepute right along with them. As we
wrote in 's January 29 Cover Story, "The Awesome Destructive Power of
the Corporate Media":
In the past year we have seen consciousness-shaking evidence of the
corporate media's implacable hostility to any manifestation of
resistance to the current order. Media rushed to embed themselves in the
US war machine's Iraq invasion, and collaborated to actively suppress
public awareness of a full-blown movement against the war. Hundreds of
thousands of protestors were made to disappear in plain sight. Corporate
media conspired - which is what businessmen in boardrooms do as a matter
of daily routine - not only to shield the public from dissenting
opinions (their usual assignment), but to drastically diminish, distort
and even erase huge gatherings that were profoundly newsworthy by any
rational standard.
In the case of Aristide's kidnapping - and that is the objective name of
the crime, since he left in the coercive custody of the U.S. under
threat of death from none other than the Secretary of State - the media
collaborated with the perpetrators to justify the "disappearing" of a
head of state. What shall we call such media? "Lackey" and "stooge"
don't work. The terms connote subservient status, and a kind of
haplessness. But there is nothing hapless or subservient about Big
Media, who are, through their interlocking ownerships and financial and
directorship ties "full members of the presiding corporate pantheon."
"Agents" is the most accurate term we can think of, although we invite
other suggestions. The corporate media act as agents for the corporate
consensus on the way the world should work. Far from being "stooges" or
"lackeys," corporate media frame reality in ways that leave the people
few options but to accept the corporate consensus. Like an army, they
dominate and overwhelm the national conversation. In addition, as a
social force - possibly the most important social force in the American
cultural "bubble" - corporate media are profoundly racist, upholding
collective white privilege as well as corporate dominance.
It is useful to compare Big Media's framing of contemporary Haitian
realities with their journalistic forbearer's treatment of a previous
U.S. occupation, 1915 - 1934. In "The Tragedy of Haiti" chapter of Noam
Chomsky's 1993 book, The Year 501, the scholar draws upon the work of
renowned historian John Blassingame, editor of the Papers of Frederick
Douglass.
Through the bloodiest years of the occupation, the media were silent or
supportive. The New York Times index has no entries for Haiti for
1917-1918. In a press survey, John Blassingame found "widespread
editorial support" for the repeated interventions in Haiti and the
Dominican Republic from 1904 to 1919, until major atrocity stories
surfaced in 1920, setting off congressional inquiry. Haitians and
Dominicans were described as "coons," "mongrels," "unwholesome," "a
horde of naked niggers," the Haitians even more "retrograde" than the
Dominicans. They needed "energetic Anglo-Saxon influence." "We are
simply going in there...to help our black brother put his disorderly
house in order," one journal wrote. Furthermore, The US had a right to
intervene to protect "our peace and safety" (New York Times).
Times editors lauded the "unselfish and helpful" attitude that the US
had always shown, now once again as it responded "in a fatherly way" as
Haiti "sought help here." Our "unselfish intervention has been moved
almost exclusively by a desire to give the benefits of peace to people
tormented by repeated revolutions," with no thought of "preferential
advantages, commercial or otherwise," for ourselves. "The people of the
island should realize that [the US government] is their best friend."
The US sought only to ensure that "the people were cured of the habit of
insurrection and taught how to work and live"; they "would have to be
reformed, guided and educated," and this "duty was undertaken by the
United States." There is a further benefit for our "black brother": "To
wean these peoples away from their shot-gun habit of government is to
safeguard them against our own exasperation," which might lead to
further intervention. "The good-will and unselfish purposes of our own
government" are demonstrated by the consequences, the editors wrote in
1922, when they were all too apparent and the Marine atrocities had
already aroused a storm of protest.
It is estimated that 15,000 Haitians were slaughtered during the 19-year
occupation. The New York Times and its fellows blamed the carnage on the
innate barbarity of the Haitians. Today, the corporate media blather
about "cycles of violence" in Haiti - as if the victims were both cause
and effect of the phenomenon. Not a single member of the corporate media
questions the "unselfish purposes of our own government," which could
not possibly be guilty of crimes against humanity and world order.
The corporate media employ a very simple yet devastatingly effective
trick when "fabricating" their own "revisionist history on the fly" -
they "forget" every previously reported fact and occurrence that does
not jibe with the official line. Thus, most of what we know about
disbanded Haitian army and secret police activities in the Dominican
Republic during the post-1994 decade is derived from the corporate
media, themselves - yet these same outlets uniformly excised these facts
from the record once the contra invasion began in early February.
'Disappeared' facts
For nearly a year there had been a steady stream of U.S. press reports
of frenetic activity among exiled Haitian killers in the Dominican
Republic. These reports appeared in the most influential American
newspapers. For example, on May 15, 2003, soon after began its
collaboration with Haiti-based reporter Kevin Pina, an AP story served
as the bases for the following item in our Issues section titled, "US
Plots Regime Change in Haiti."
A May 10 Associated Press report tends to confirm that Haiti's armed
opposition operates with near-impunity in the Dominican Republic. Under
pressure from the Haitian government, authorities on the Dominican side
of the border arrested and then released five men in connection with the
attack on the hydroelectric plant:
The man Haitian authorities have accused of plotting to overthrow
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government says he supports a coup but isn't
planning one.
Guy Philippe told The Associated Press that he wasn't plotting
Aristide's ouster but that the time for a peaceful solution has passed.
He wouldn't say, however, whether he would take up arms in the future.
Dominican authorities released Philippe, a 35-year-old former Haitian
police chief known for his flashy cars, expensive taste and strong-armed
tactics to battle crime in the impoverished Caribbean nation,
Thursday after finding no evidence he and four others were conspiring
against the Haitian government. Haitian authorities told their Dominican
counterparts Philippe and others were plotting against the Haitian
government from neighboring Dominican Republic.
"I would support a coup," Philippe said in Spanish during an interview
in a Santo Domingo hotel. "We have to get rid of the dictator." ...
Declining to say how he makes a living or what he does to spend his time
in the Dominican Republic, Philippe said the international community
needed to do more to push Aristide from power, but he said he would not
support an armed invasion.
On the day Philippe was detained on the Dominican side of the border,
police raided the house of Port-au-Prince mayoral candidate Judith Roy
of the Convergence opposition. They claimed to have "found assault
weapons, ammunitions, and plans to attack the National Palace and
Aristide's suburban residence," said the Associated Press. Haitian
authorities say Roy is close to Philippe, the former police chief of Cap
Haitian.
The pace of the Haitian contra buildup escalated as the year progressed,
as did the very public meetings between the International Republican
Institute, Bush administration officials and Haitian ex-military in the
Dominican Republic. "Chief" Guy Philippe and his cohorts' invasion
preparations were common knowledge, and certainly well-known to the
American press on both sides of the island of Hispaniola.
When armed attacks began against police stations in the north of Haiti,
the U.S. press noted that the fighters were a mix of gang members and
former soldiers that had relocated to the Dominican Republic after
President Aristide returned in 1994. On February 15, newspapers across
the U.S. carried Associated Press reports that "reinforcements" had
arrived to bolster the "rebels" in Gonaives. In fact, the new guys
included elements of the exile army's high command:
Haitian rebels seeking to topple the president brought in reinforcements
from the neighboring Dominican Republic, including the exiled former
leader of 1980s death squads and a former police chief accused of
fomenting a coup, witnesses said, as police fled two more northern
towns.
Twenty commandos arrived Saturday, led by Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a
former Haitian soldier who headed army death squads in 1987 and a
militia
known as the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, or FRAPH,
which killed and maimed scores of people in the early 1990s.
The "former police chief" is Guy Philippe.
So the origins of the "rebel" army were no secret to the corporate
media. Yet on Sunday, as Jean-Bertrand Aristide's flying prison made its
way across the Atlantic Ocean, the major media all ran political
obituaries, "fact" pages and timelines that made no mention whatever of
the Dominican roots of the month-long fighting. It was as if the
"insurgency" sprang from the soil, or was a natural expression of the
fratricidal proclivities of the Haitian people.
The purpose of the sudden, universal corporate media amnesia is simple:
to exclude from public debate facts that would implicate the United
States and its Dominican allies in the overthrow of Aristide. Reality
was "disappeared." The Americans were once again on a reluctant "rescue
mission." There was to be no questioning of the "unselfish purposes of
our own government."
'Crazy' Aristide
The corporate media will doubtless "forget" that they acted as agents
for a discredited CIA disinformation campaign against Aristide during
the deposed President's U.S. exile, 1991 - 94. Leila McDowell-Head's
Washington, D.C. public relations firm represented Aristide during that
period. "They clearly launched a campaign to paint him as
psychologically unbalanced," she told . "An investigation showed the
charges were specious and baseless, but not before the corporate media
had a field day with it. But I think we'll see a reprise of this
disinformation campaign."
It's already begun. The toad-like Deputy Secretary of State, Roger
Noriega, this week appeared on Ted Koppel's ABC Nightline to slander
Aristide as an "erratic and unreliable" personality who made up the
kidnapping story. "He's demonstrated within the last few hours that he's
not a responsible person," said Jesse Helms' former chief of staff.
Having somehow failed to kill Aristide, they will assassinate his
sanity.
Noreiga and Condoleezza Rice have been saying the same things for years
about Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, another president whose constituency is
based among the poor. Anti-government demonstrators have begun carrying
signs reading, "Bye bye Aristide, Chavez you're next." Unlike the
former priest, Chavez answers his critics in kind. Commenting on the
advisors that urged Bush to instigate the 2002 coup attempt against his
government, Chavez told a roaring crowd: "He was an asshole to believe
them."
--
"The tyranny of a prince is not so dangerous to the public welfare as
the apathy of a citizen in a democracy."
- Baron de Montesquieu, 1748