The NED took American intervention in the domestic affairs of foreign nations out of the shadows and made it respectable – a brilliant political coup. Most sinisterly, the Trojan Horse NED subverts the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party, acting as a “point of contact” between these institutions and covert U.S. operatives (although unionists and Democrats will deny this, and some may actually be oblivious to the company they keep) and with corporate agents bent on further exploitation of foreign lands. In Haiti and Venezuela, this American public-private-labor project became inseparable from coup-making.

In the case of Haiti, the International Republican Institute component of the NED, under the slogan “party building,” almost single-handedly constructed the “civil society” political “opposition” that now advises the U.S. occupiers in Port-au-Prince (and nurtured the armed elements in their Dominican Republic sanctuaries, as well). But it was Bill Clinton who put Jean Bertrand Aristide in a structural straightjacket on his return from exile in 1994….

”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.”

Underpinning the historical saga of US and French imperialism in Haiti is a racist contempt for the ordinary Haitian people.  Today, for instance, we have the evidence of the testimony of Bob Shacochis (see Washington Post, March 4) that, according to an unnamed US Ambassador, "Haitians are maggots."  By actively promoting this latest coup d'etat, Powell and Rice have not only shown themselves as collaborators in this heinous travesty against all black people but (as you correctly propose) made themselves persona non grata in all venues that we interact.

Powell's actions in the past four years of serving the imperial designs of the Bush gang not only confirm the truth of Harry Belafonte's evaluation (those of us who've watched his earlier evolution would have surely predicted this outcome) but also indicate a steady metamorphosis into a severely diminished and tarnished creature, dishonest, malevolent, petty in the extreme (witness his response to a lowly staff-person at the recent Committee hearings in Congress), and lacking even the  personal courage of a Paul O'Neill to rescue the last vestiges of self-respect.  All of this, no doubt, for the irresistible reward of continuing to rub shoulders with the high and mighty.  But at what cost?  The true measure of the man is that he would sell himself and sacrifice his people for such coin.  History will not absolve him.

As for Rice, you've said it all. "Skeeza is as Skeeza does."

You guys have called this to a tee over the last year. Anyone reading your publication, including the massively enlightening work of Kevin Pina in Port-au-Prince, was way ahead of the curve on this plot to subvert Haiti once again.  Thank you for being you!

Keep up the good work!  Get the truth out!

I just read the article about the "Godfather" Colin Powell. This is staggering. Except I shouldn't find it staggering, because it's quite normal.

Here in Canada, I'm starting to get the feeling that even those willing to point out the truth about the US's and France's criminal actions are not so quick to add Canada's part in the whole mess. Traditionally, Canada will act--predictably enough--in its own corporate interests; if these interests coincide with US interests, and they usually do, then our leaders will happily go forth to save the "natives"...from themselves.

Canada's non-alignment on Iraq was an exception to the general rule. Now we're back on track, as obedient, lesser ally of the US machine.

It's depressing. But I'm glad to have read that insightful and honest article.

Thank you for the hard-hitting article about the US-led coup in Haiti and the key role played by Colin Powell.  This administration is waging blatant class and race wars all over the world, and won't be satisfied until they have puppet regimes in place on a global level.  In light of the atrocities being committed everywhere, but most notably in Haiti over the past few weeks, it is commendable that members of the Black Congress are leading the fight for truth, transparency and accountability in this administration of wealthy white lunatics.  I have been following the words of Randall Robinson, Hazel Ross Robinson, Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee during this time, and I especially enjoyed the excerpts from the questioning of the greasy slime devil, Roger Noriega – both Waters and Rangel showed him for the filthy little liar and coward he is.

I really appreciate the courage of your publication in telling it like it really is - and Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice should be ashamed of the way they have sold their heritage and their souls for the chance to be included in this white man's grab for global domination.

Outstanding analysis and exceptionally informative article on Haiti, the Bush Gang's latest aggressive misadventure in nation destroying.

Undermining the authority and kidnapping a duly elected representative of the Haitian people is the latest diplomatic "tactic" perpetrated by America's current D.C. based gang of thugs.  I assume this act was intended to put the government of Venezuela on notice that they may be next (although thankfully the U.S's first meddlesome attempt at removing President Chavez, i.e. regime change, was unsuccessful).

As egregious as the above acts were I am more concerned about the current administration's use of the threat of international terrorism (demonizing Islam etc.) to cover the dismantling of America's economy and their personal financial gain i.e. Halliburton etc.

The truth is that the Bush Gang has committed "high crimes and treasonous activities" against the American people that dwarf in magnitude any alleged crimes committed by the leaders of any nation anywhere in the world today.

Thanks for another excellent, incisive, informative article on the facts behind the facade of America's present domestic/foreign policy decisions and actions.

I happened upon The Black Commentator a few weeks ago, subscribed to the weekly newsletter, and I've been thoroughly appreciative of your work ever since. I have particularly appreciated your in-depth reporting on Haiti. You present a very balanced and reasonable perspective; the articles are thorough, original and clear; and quite obviously you provide a voice that is so sorely lacking in the corporate media. I don't know how you fund it, but please, continue on!

Ms. Couric did her best hard hitting journalism with statements like, “You sound like an obnoxious jerk to work with.” Blair just looked embarrassed and agreed that he was, “a pain to work with.” However, the would be investigative reporter did not tell viewers that her colleague at sister network MSNBC, Mike Barnicle, was fired by the Boston Globe for committing the same infractions as Jayson Blair.

Katie Couric inadvertently exposed more than she realized. Real journalism just doesn’t exist on television anymore. If Katie Couric was going to spend her time talking to Jayson Blair she could have asked serious questions about his substance abuse and bipolar disorder. She might have asked if he had advice for functioning addicts who reach the inevitable point where they cannot function. Unfortunately, “how do we know you aren’t lying now” is all that Ms. Couric can manage.

Freedom Rider's piece on Jayson Blair was excellent. She humanized someone who I'd thought was just a spoiled punk, and she put things into perspective. White people really did jump all over this one, as I recall many of them used the incident as an excuse to trash affirmative action. Her comparison between Mr. Blair plagiarizing stories and Judith Miller prostituting herself to publish Chalabi's lies showed who really disgraced the New York Times.

Meanwhile, from the department of pride against hopeless odds – my family and I are all voting Peace and Freedom this year. Leonard Peltier is their candidate here in California. I realize with the need to get the Pirates out of the White House such a gesture is not only futile but maybe stupid. Nevertheless, we will support our Native Brother.  Leonard has been behind bars for 28 years while the murdering rapist [former congressman and prosecutor] William Janklow who railroaded him went on to political success (cut short by drunkenly killing a motorcyclist). When the White man takes everything else, futile gestures are all we have left!

Take care my friends and keep up your great work.

Mr. Ford opined that he isn’t “a fan” of Black History Month because he looks forward to the day when it will no longer need to be celebrated. It is unclear what utopian age in the future would make it unnecessary to remember American history. Even if our ancestors’ dreams are realized and we reach the nirvanas of equality and justice we will still need to ponder the past.

How ironic that on the day that I get your issue commenting upon Harold Ford, Jr., he should be speaking in town here in Nashville at the gathering of the Music Row Democrats.

I went to hear him speak. 

Listening to him was an exercise in patience.  The whole time he was coming out with tired Kerry/DLC talking points and rhetoric, my sense of inner disheartenment did nothing but grow.

I will give him credit for this:  He is very good and very slick with spouting the John Kerry/DLC bullshit.

Perhaps all politicians are this way in the end. However, it is clear to me that there is only one thing that this guy cares about:  His own political ambitions.

What was most disheartening, however, was seeing how he "wooed" a crowd of people with his crap.  Obviously, most people don't know him very well.  Otherwise, there would have been more knowledge about what he's about.  But it is sad to see such an ignorant, herd mentality take place among human beings.

Combining that all-beef patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun may require a form of production, but it doesn’t constitute a product.  Would Mr. Bush differentiate between the fast food employees who make the sandwiches and those who ring up the orders?  How about between the ones who cook the French or “freedom” fries and the ones who “bust” the tables?  That sandwich may be as popular as a BMW but it is not assembled in a factory and shipped to outlets, creating jobs for truck drivers, railroad employees and air and sea workers.  For most Americans, a trip to a fast food establishment is an abbreviated visit to a full-service restaurant.  What can we expect to see next, the job of making a Singapore Sling reclassified to one of manufacturing?

I enjoyed the article.  But Congressman Clyburn might want to remember there is a title and job description for what those employees of fast food restaurants do.  They are short order cooks, and what they do is called cooking.  I think that is the nomenclature that was used in the 40’s and 50’s.  I appreciate the distinctions he is making tongue in cheek, but labeling the activity by its rightful appellation, I believe, obviates any argument the Bush administration might try to make as to what kind of jobs are done, and what they should be labeled as at fast food restaurants.  

By not making a declarative sentence it gives these slimy weasels just the opening they need to raise an argument.  Plain talk beats the heck out of whatever obfuscation these men try.  The more convoluted they become, the plainer and straighter we should be.

The fact is that white people desperately want to believe that Jesus was white….

Throughout Europe there remain a number of places of worship which feature paintings, statues and frescoes of a dark-skinned Jesus and His mother Mary such as the cathedral of Moulins in France, the Church of Annunciata, the Church of St. Stephen at Genoa, the St. Francisco at Pisa, the Church of St. Theodore at Munich, etc. While not conclusive, these facts offer at least as much proof that Jesus was a man of color as any that may support his having been a fair-skinned, flaxen haired Caucasian, but you’d never know it. Ironically, the only person I’ve heard discuss the issue of the film’s casting of a white actor portraying Jesus is NBC‘s "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno. To paraphrase, Leno insisted that only a black man could have been arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced to death and executed within twelve hours!

I went to see the "Passion" shortly after its release. I was struck by the obvious difference in how Jesus looked, compared to even his disciples.  Many of the film's actors certainly did not look Afro-Asiatic; but at least their hair was not thin, straight, and could easily blow in the wind!  The actor who played Jesus had a thin pointed nose, thin lips, pale skin, and long thin straight hair. The only alteration to the usual European look of Jesus was the absence of blonde hair.

In reviewing the film's credits, it was amazing that Mel Gibson used one and only one theological consultant in the production of this film.  Perhaps this is why some of the sequences of events in the film were not as they appear in the Gospels.  Interestingly, the sole theological consultant was a Ph.D. Catholic Jesuit priest.  Mr. Willis was absolutely correct that religion has played a major role in fostering racism and supremacy.  Dr. James W. Peeples, publisher of The Original African Heritage Study Bible (1993), names just two of untold numbers who used religion to lift up one race and put down another race:  Catholic priest Bartholomo de las Casas ( Preface, pg. 1), and Bishop Reverend William Mead (Preface, pg.9).

Although the film makers made it a point to have Jesus portrayed as white as possible, they inadvertently sent a subtle message I know others besides myself picked up.  The character cast as Simon of Cyrene was obviously African, as should have been; after all Cyrene is in Africa! Initially forced to help Jesus carry the cross, Simon showed more compassion for Jesus than anybody else who didn't already have a relationship with Jesus.  So, the next time some white person wants to try to say that Jesus was white, I'll just remind them that it was a kind hearted Black man who helped Jesus carry His cross while the white folks were kicking Jesus' behind!!!

Finally, there are enough Black people with millions ($) in the film industry to do an accurate historical, cultural, and theological film on the life and death of Jesus to shut everybody up!!

Miles Willis has done us the favor of drawing out a big lie that all sides of a popular debate are agreed upon, by asking not "Was it the Jews' fault?" or "Did they have to show Jesus being hurt?" or some other incoherent pseudo-question, but rather "Why did they make Jesus white?"  I commend him.

I think I can top him.  I think there's a question that even Willis hasn't asked, namely: Why are we supposed to care more about the details in the life of a single admirable person who died millennia ago than about the lives of people living today and the lives of the many moral leaders that have passed before us or are sharing the planet with us now?  Why, after the passage of these millennia, do we insist on pretending that death isn't really death and refuse to acknowledge that we're on our own and had better start living up to the fact?  Living up to that fact should include banning the dumping of millions of dollars into any movie, regardless of the casting, while children are starving. 

We are morally weak, and religion helps keep us that way, helps sanctify the status quo while diminishing the importance of "this existence."  Let's grow up, shall we.

It is not intentional, in your face, “we don’t want Blacks” in our law school, kind of discrimination.  No, it is that hard to understand and even harder to eliminate institutional racism.

Institutional racism occurs where an institution adopts a policy, practice, or procedure that appears neutral on its face but has a disproportionately negative impact on a racial or ethnic minority group.

In the case of law schools, the discriminatory practice is the misuse of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) in the admission process.  Specifically, it is estimated that at least 90% of law schools, have admission practices that presumptively deny applicants based on how they fall on a grid formulated around LSAT and Undergraduate Grade Point average (UGPA). It is this misuse of the LSAT that has a discriminatory impact.

I was a law student at John F. Kennedy University Law school in Walnut Creek, California in 2001-2002.  Apparently, at the time I was admitted, the school was under pressure to admit more minorities and women, because some student raised a stink about the lack of diversity in the Law School. So the school gets a hired gun by the name of Michael Guarino, a former DA from Los Angeles, to come in and beef up enrollment of minorities and women.  I know for a fact that the LSAT was not a contributing factor in my admission because I scored 135 on the last LSAT I took, eight years before I was admitted.  In other words, the school ignored my LSAT score because of their need to get the EEOC off their backs, and it was an easy way for them to get cash (i.e., federal student loans).

I was diagnosed with severe anemia in 2002 - this condition affected my ability to perform in law school.  Subsequently, I was disqualified because of low grades.  I was told to re-apply, but in being considered for re-admission, I would have to take the LSAT.  Yet there were white students who flunked out of JFK and cited illness as their reason, and were re-admitted to the school.  They didn't have to take the LSAT to be readmitted, either.  Additionally, at the time of my rejection, a former law professor (African-American) who taught at JFK had just published the results of studies he had done to prove that the LSAT was, and is, a tool designed to systematically screen out African-American and Latino students.

The professor made a valid argument for the test to be tossed. In fact, one of my classmates, a Latina, was also disqualified after citing illness as her reason for flunking out (she had a liver condition and had to be hospitalized on a couple of occasions).

When you take the LSAT, even the test designers and administrators tell participants up front that the test has NOTHING to do with assessing one's ability to do well in law school; but that they were asked by law school deans to design an admission test that was designed to screen out minorities and reduce the numbers of minorities being admitted to law schools.  So the deck is stacked against an African-American or Latino before he hits the door.

Once Dean Guarino got the numbers up for the school, the academia repaid him.  He made the mistake of actually being concerned about the students that he was tasked to recruit; he wanted to see them succeed.  Once I put together the pieces of this pie, I filed an EEO complaint with the U. S. Department of Education.  They rubber-stamped the position statement given to them by the school, without doing a thorough investigation (in fact, the investigator told me because the Bush Administration's attitude towards civil rights didn't make discrimination issues a "priority" my case would not be processed vigorously).  I forwarded a copy of my complaint to my then Congressional representative, Pete Stark, and to his credit, he demanded they re-open my case.  That was two years ago, with no response forthcoming from Education Secretary Rod Paige's plantation....

The LSAT is a racist test designed to ensure that the admission of minorities to law school remains low.  It is also a good indication that Bush's amicus curiae brief supporting the plaintiff's position in Bollinger v. Grutter (Univ. of Michigan Law School Affirmative Action case) was not necessary because the Hard Right already has tools in place to continue facilitation of discrimination.  Tools like the LSAT.  And the Law Schools go along with this until they are embarrassed and forced to defend their position while trying to posture as an equal opportunity facility.

As Walter Cronkite would say "And that's the way it is...”

Just wanted to take a moment to let you know how much I appreciate the thoughtful content and easy style of your Web-forum.  Not only do I share articles (and suggestions to subscribe) with my Black friends and colleagues, but also with colleagues and friends across the cultures and classes.  Even when I don't agree with a particular writer's viewpoint (or should I say, if I did disagree), I feel that there is a capacity on the site to be as inclusive as possible in the debates that may be unleashed.

Most important, I would like to thank the various writers who contribute material, taking the time to construct and contribute so many of the same thoughts and feelings I, too, would share -- if I could write that well and if I had the time! 

Thanks again, and I hope that your site is doing well in the parallel universe.  

What a pleasure to read The Black Commentator! In this period of irresponsible reporting, your views are particularly necessary.  Well pointed and well written--great combination.

March 18 2004
Issue 82

is published every Thursday.