Godfather Colin Powell: The Gangster of Haiti

“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.

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:

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 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….

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.

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!)

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”: