[News] Devil's Cookroom

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THE DEVIL’S COOKROOM

John Maxwell
Sunday, May 15, 2005
10:41 PM EST

<http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20050514t230000-0500_80402_obs_the_devil_s_cookroom.asp>http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20050514t230000-0500_80402_obs_the_devil_s_cookroom.asp


There is a small area of the Caribbean Sea, a few miles away from where I 
was born in Trelawny, which is marked on old maps as "The Devil's 
Cookroom." I imagine it got that name for the sudden, explosive storms 
which can develop there especially in winter.


But I have always thought that if the small patch of sea near Duncans 
deserved such a name how much more apt it would be applied to the entire 
Caribbean.

The Caribbean can probably claim a greater quantum of extreme human 
suffering over a longer time than anywhere else in the world. Millions of 
people were exterminated by the Spanish through ill-treatment and disease 
"they died in heaps, like bedbugs", Las Casas reported.

There was the Middle Passage with its bestial cruelty and slavery itself, 
degenerate and murderous, the brutal conquests of Central and South America 
on the same grisly pattern, and for five hundred years, slavery followed by 
colonial exploitation no less brutal or inhumane.

The paradoxes abound: Haiti, the first people in modern history to abolish 
slavery and to free themselves from the bonds of plantation colonialism, 
are now the most miserable and poorest, occupied by foreigners, ruled by 
psychopathic gangsters, convicted assassins, torturers and rapists;

Cuba, one of the last to abolish slavery, is now, unarguably, the most 
socially advanced, and, arguably the place in the world where people can 
claim to be most free.

Of course, freedom is different things to different people. Mr. Bush 
declares that he is spreading freedom around the world, notably in 
Afghanistan and Iraq both now in the throes of civil war.

In Haiti, agents of American freedom are busy preparing "free and fair" 
elections while the lawful prime minister is unlawfully incarcerated and on 
the point of death from a hunger strike.

The lawfully elected president is seven time zones and half a world away in 
an exile planned, promoted and executed by the same people who are 
preparing those free and fair elections.

Meanwhile, the majority of the Haitian people, marching for their 
president's return, are butchered and tortured by elements who seem to be 
the moral descendants of Henry Morgan and his cutthroat brethren who looted 
and raped Cartagena, Porto Bello and Panama.

As Dr Pangloss was declaring at the time of the Haitian revolution - 
everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. As it was 
then, so it is now. Mr. Bush now has the same kind of problem that Charles 
II had with Henry Morgan.

The King solved his problem by making Morgan a knight and Lieutenant 
Governor of Jamaica. President Bush is unequivocal: those who harbour 
terrorists are terrorists and those who are not against terrorism are 
themselves terrorists. So what does one do when a committed, veteran 
terrorist makes a present of himself to the US government?

Declassified FBI documents say Mr Posada Carriles spent time working for 
the CIA and blame him for the bombing of a flight from Caracas to Havana 
via Guyana and Barbados. The bombing killed 73 people. Some call it Cuba's 
9/11.

Posada Carriles hates Fidel Castro and has been plotting against him for 
more than 40 years, along with such partners as the CIA, the Mafia, the 
Iran Contra organizer, Oliver North and a host of others, some of 
distinguished ancestry and barnyard morality.

Mr Posada expects to be granted asylum by Mr Bush, as his equally murderous 
comrade in arms, Orlando Bosch, was granted a presidential pardon by the 
other President Bush.

He reasonably expects that after a lifetime of dirty work on behalf of 
well-heeled and important people, he should now be able to come in from the 
cold and live like a gentleman in Miami or somewhere else in Florida, where 
he has lots of friends, including many in very high places.

However, as the New York Times and other important newspapers around the 
world have pointed out, Mr. Posada is a professional terrorist, trained, 
like Mr Bin Laden, by the CIA.

According to the Cubans, former US undersecretary Otto Reich got Posada out 
of prison in Venezuela in the '80s and no less an intermediary than Colin 
Powell paved the way for his pardon in Panama last year. In Panama, Posada 
was jailed for plotting to blow up an entire auditorium of students in 
order to kill Fidel Castro.

The Cubans allege that the former president of Panama, Mrs. Meyrel Moscoso, 
was given US$4 million and a Lincoln Town car to sign pardons for Posada 
and his criminal associates on the day she demitted office.

The Cubans say Posada was flown from Panama in an unmarked plane to 
Honduras where he remained for months until he slipped away in a fishing 
boat sent by one of his rich Cuban patrons in Miami.

The Cubans say that Otto Reich's successor, Mr Noriega, oversaw Posada's 
translation to the US, although Mr Noriega strenuously denies that the 
United States has any idea where Mr Posada might be. This is strange, since 
any application for asylum must state the applicant's actual legal address.

The San Francisco Chronicle asks -"When is a terrorist not a terrorist? 
When he's an anti-Castro "freedom fighter'' hiding in Florida. The White 
House should lose no time in deporting Luis Posada Carriles, a prime 
suspect in the midair bombing of a civilian airliner that killed 73 people 
in 1976. It was a terrorist act by any definition."

The New York Times (NYT) concurs: "The one thing the Bush administration 
cannot do is to shelter Mr Posada by granting him political asylum.

Since 9/11, the United States has become so zealous in its efforts to 
exclude potential terrorists from American soil that it has made it much 
harder for genuine refugees fleeing deadly persecution in their home 
countries to find sanctuary here. Washington would offend American 
principles and set an extremely damaging precedent by making a special 
exception for an admitted terrorist"

The NYT demands a single standard for terrorists, despite the risks of 
"retribution at the polls from a ferociously anti-Castro Cuban-American 
community that has helped swing Florida into the Republican column in 
recent elections".

Venezuela has now officially demanded Posada's extradition.

Hopefully, that may happen before Mr. Posada dies either of old age or of 
one of those unfortunate accidents to which septuagenarians are so susceptible.

Neither the NYT nor any other major US news agency considers that the 
situation in Haiti may, as the Times puts it, "offend American standards".

Caricom has piously declared its concern but champions of freedom and human 
rights like the Prime Minister of Jamaica (Patterson) and Barbados (Owen 
Arthur) have been conspicuously silent, no doubt because they have ceased 
to be young, gifted or black.

Next week, supporters of constitutional legitimacy and human rights in 
Haiti will be making a special effort on Wednesday, May 18, to bring the 
noxious situation there to world attention.
I am scheduled to be the host of HOT 102's Disclosure program that day and 
I will be happy to discuss Haiti if you are minded to telephone me.

In the meantime I ask you to consider the appeal by Haiti's President, 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, speaking from exile in South Africa to the 
courageous American journalist Amy Goodman on Democracy 
(<http://www.democracynow.org/)>http://www.democracynow.org/) a few days ago.

"It is very sad what we have as information about our Prime Minister, Yvon 
Neptune. He is still in hunger strike. How long he will be able to survive, 
we don't know. That's why we grasp this opportunity to ask everybody who 
can do something to not hesitate, because it is a matter of life and death. 
We need to save his life.

". We need many, many voices to equal the voices of Haiti. The people of 
Haiti want life and not death. They want peace and not violence. They want 
democracy and not repression.. Whoever can say something, whoever can do 
something, please do it, because the Haitian people right now are waiting 
for your help..

"You arrest someone, as they did with Minister Pivert, So Ann and so many 
others - there are hundreds who are in jail - there is no basis, no legal 
basis for that. But they just put them in jail because they have power with 
them, weapons with them, support of the United States, France, Canada, some 
others..it's a matter of life and death. We need many voices to put that 
truth out and see finally if they can pay attention to that and save his life.

"Today, those who kidnapped me and continue to support those criminals 
while they're killing innocent people, while they keep Yvon Neptune the way 
he is, clearly they maintain the black holocaust. The United States, 
France, Canada and so many others should do something to repair, if they 
can, what they did.

Because what they did is a crime. The same way slavery is a crime against 
humanity, the same way what they're doing against the Haitian people, it's 
also a crime. And all of that [is] maintaining a black holocaust in Haiti..

They already killed more than 10,000 people. Can you imagine Cite Soleil, 
where people need food, not violence; where people need work, jobs, not 
violence? And we have tanks surrounding Cite Soleil, as if it were a 
concentration camp.

God, can you imagine what we have in Bel Air? Can you imagine what we have 
in so many popular areas, poor areas where they continue to kill people 
while people are asking for the respect of their votes? They voted for 
democracy, as our forefathers fought for our independence in 1804..

"But there is clearly a small minority in Haiti with their allies in 
foreign countries. Together, they said no to elections, because they knew 
once they respect the will of the people in a democratic way through free, 
fair democratic elections, then they will not be able to continue to live 
in a country where they don't pay tax, where they still have the wall of 
apartheid.

" Once we keep the line of peace, of nonviolence, we will win, because 
peace must be the way to go towards the victory. And love from my heart to 
all our friends, because we have many friends who love Haiti, who are 
trying to do their best to help the people of Haiti.

Of course, sharing that love, this is one way for me to express deep 
respect to them and also renewing my commitment to move with all of them in 
order to build, slowly but surely, a civilization of love."

Copyright©2005 John Maxwell
jonmax at mac.com

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