19848: Esser: Godfather Colin Powell: The Gangster of Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

The Black Commentator
http://www.blackcommentator.com
Issue 80 - March 4, 2004

Godfather Colin Powell: The Gangster of Haiti
Kevin Pina’s notes on the ‘killing fields’


“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 on St. Kitts in the
U.S. Virgin Islands, 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 Kopple’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.”
.