The Devil's Cookroom

Common Sense
John maxwell

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 organiser, 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 programme 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/) 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 Cité Soleil, where people need food, not violence; where people need work, jobs, not violence? And we have tanks surrounding Cité 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 civilisation of love."