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Book by John Maxwell
How to Make Our Own News: A Primer for Environmentalist and Journalists
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The
Circular World of Colin Powell
By John Maxwell
On a chatboard to
which I subscribe, one subscriber recently excoriated Mr Butch
Stewart for allowing people like me to criticise the new Haitian
regime. Another subscriber came to Butch Stewart’s defence: Mr
Stewart, she said, was a publisher who does not interfere in the
editorial direction of his newspapers, preferring to let
democracy take its course. “That Mr. Stewart allows his
editors to publish articles that seem not in line with the
business interests of his social strata speaks positively for
him”.
That is a fact for
which I am personally grateful and proud – because the trend
has been, as A.J. Liebling said half a century ago –
“Freedom of the Press belongs to those who own one.”
In our world, our
fundamental rights and freedoms are becoming more and more, part
of international commerce, they are being globalised, and the
rights no longer belong to the people but to corporate entities,
who have bought media properties and in practice, the rights
which belong to human beings.
‘No-news’ is Good News!
The public
interest is now for sale to the highest bidder. Human rights are
privatised and traded and a collection of corporate interests
are increasingly becoming the ‘civil society’ which run
things – a monstrous incarnation of faceless entities imposing
their fundamentalist and authoritarian prejudices on the
rest of us.
Morris Cargill in
1962 stopped writing for the Gleaner for several years,
because the then editor, Theodore Sealy, refused to
allow Cargill to defend me (and the freedom of the press) in his
column. Cargill actually disagreed with what I
had said but was fiercely defending my right to say it.
“No-news “has
become “good “news. The US media have successfully obscured,
for nearly two years, the lies and obfuscations which led that
country into war with an Iraq already divided by no-fly
zones, bled white by a decade of strategic bombing,
sanctions, malnutrition, depleted uranium and cancer. Today,
they are fighting in Fallujah.
It was John Stuart
Mill who said more than a century ago, that the time for
uncomfortable questions, the occasion for the most serious
dissent, was on those occasions when, like the Gadarene
swine, humanity took it upon itself to stampede over
cliffs of ignorance and incomprehension in almost unanimous
hysteria.
And Tom Paine, the
man in whose memory this column is named once said “You will
do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously
supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however
different that opinion might be to mine” (Age of Reason:
Tom Paine , 1776).
Freedom of speech is
as essential to human life as air and water. But, as US Supreme
Court Justice Holmes said nearly a century ago, “Freedom
of Speech does not include the right to shout ‘FIRE’ in a
crowded theatre.”
My rights are
bounded and butted by yours. And the world since 1945, has
agreed to recognise that human rights belong to all human
beings, and that no person or nation has rights that are
superior to those of any other.
Aristide and Lumumba
Mr Colin Powell,
despite the evaporation of his celebrated argument for the
Bush invasion of Iraq, is still one of the most trusted people
on the planet and certainly one of the most highly regarded in
his native land. His native land, by an accident of history
happens to be the USA and not Jamaica, where his parents
were born. Everybody in Jamaica owes his or her freedom in part,
to the Haitian revolution, and every black American owes a
similar debt. The United States itself owes nearly half its
territory to the Haitian revolution.
Ethnic minorities
advance their development in many ways, one of which is by
helping each other. In their separate diaspora the Jews,
the Irish, the Italians, the Jamaicans and everybody else you
can think of does it. In hostile territory you stay close to
your compatriots – all for one and one for all – as Alexandre
Dumas, (a Caribbean black born two years before Haitian
independence) wrote in a somewhat different context.
It is Mr Powell’s
perceived failure to take up his black man’s burden which so
enraged Harry Belafonte, another Jamaican-American, that he denounced
Mr Powell as a ‘house-slave’.
But Mr Powell did
get help on his way to eminence. He was mentored by another
immigrant, a second generation Italian named Frank Carlucci.
Carlucci was Secretary of Defense in the Reagan
Administration and is now chairman of the Carlyle Group, a giant
investment firm in which the Bush family has interests.
Forty years ago, Carlucci was second secretary in the US Embassy
in the Congo, at the time when the US was convinced that
the Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was taking the Congo –
perhaps all of Africa – into the Communist fold. Lumumba,
a film made by a Haitian, Raoul Peck, identifies Frank
Carlucci as the embassy official who transmitted
President Eisenhower’s approval of the Embassy’s plan
to remove or kill Lumumba, thus decapitating the Congo’s hope
of democratic development and instituting the 36 year
kleptocratic tyranny of Mobutu Sese Seko. The filmmaker, Raoul
Peck, had fled Haiti to the Congo, to escape the murderous
attentions of Papa Doc Duvalier who reigned in Haiti
contemporaneously with Mobuto in Zaire (Based on: Carlucci
can’t hide his role in ‘Lumumba’: Lucy Komisar,
Pacific News Service, Feb 14, 2002).
And it is now
Carlucci’s protege, Colin Powell, who bears the responsibility
for the decapitation of Haitian democracy.
Sometimes the world
is not an oblate spheroid; sometimes it is perfectly circular.
Caricom and Mr Powell
On Monday last,
Colin Powell celebrated his 67th birthday in Port au Prince. Mr
Powell was there, he said, to “demonstrate [US] support
for Haiti” and “to help the leadership of Haiti make a
new beginning and to build a future of hope for the Haitian
people.”
Mr Powell was last
in Haiti in 1994 to negotiate a soft landing for American
troops. At that time Mr Powell was sure of the
integrity of an agreement he had made with General
Raoul Cedras, the tyrant then in charge. Powell said he trusted
the ‘soldier’s honour’ of Cedras. As it proved,
Cedras’ soldier’s honour was purely a figure of speech. One
hopes that Mr Powell will have better luck this time with La
Tortue and his ‘ninja tortues’, some of whom are convicted torturers
and mass-murderers.
Mr Powell says he
and Mr La Tortue spoke about a ‘truth and
reconciliation’ commission and Mr La Tortue even invoked
the names of Tutu and Mandela, but gave no further indication
that he was serious about this proposal. If he is, a substantial
component of his support will probably be forced to seek
asylum in Miami. Mr Powell
reported:
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I also said to the
prime minister . . . that I will be working hard to
reintegrate Haiti into the CARICOM community in the
months ahead. I assured the prime minister that all the
issues that he has mentioned to you today, the United
States will be providing him full support.” Obviously,
the full support of the United States will trump any
puerile cavilling by the Caricom group, which wants an
inquiry into the circumstances of Aristide’s
departure.
“I don't think any
purpose would be served by such an inquiry, but the
facts are very well known. On that evening, the
situation was deteriorating rapidly in the country,
especially in Port-au-Prince. We were on the verge of a
bloodbath, and President Aristide found himself in great
danger. He got in touch with our ambassador, and
arrangements were made at his request for him to depart
the country … and now I think it is important for all
of us to focus on what the Haitian people need now. |
In an interview
on Haiti’s Radio Metropole (conducted by Rothchild François,
Jr., a Haitian stringer for the Voice of America) Mr
Powell said: “I think we succeeded in preventing a great loss
of life by President Aristide's resignation and by the
introduction of multinational forces.” If Mr Powell’s
“We” means what it seems to, it would appear that President
Aristide was not involved in the transfer of power on
February 28.
Character
Assassination
In relation to
CARICOM, here is an exchange from Mr Powell’s
interview:
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MR.
FRANÇOIS: Secretary Powell,
politically, this government is facing a problem with
CARICOM; you know CARICOM doesn't want to recognize this
government, so what do you think about that and how will
the US help this government to obtain recognition from
CARICOM?
SECRETARY
POWELL: I will be working
with CARICOM and with the individual nations of CARICOM
to let them come to the realization that this government
now here is legitimate and represents the desire of the
Haitian people. And I hope that over the next couple of
months that CARICOM will change its position and welcome
Haiti fully into the CARICOM consensus. |
Caricom’s wish to
discover the truth of Aristide’s removal is dismissed.
Let’s move on – they will get over it. So too no
doubt, will the Haitian people who have stubbornly persisted
in electing Jean Bertrand Aristide, despite all American
warnings.
And perhaps we will
get over it too, since in the arbitrament of realpolitik
what really counts is that Jamaica’s debt repayments are
consuming 76% of our revenues. That statistic destroys courage,
resolve, and principle.
We need to get over
our legalistic, moralistic, humanistic perhaps even socialistic
preoccupation with principle, honour, declarations, treaties,
conventions, and solemn undertakings.
Murderers,
torturers, rapists and other depraved hooligans now walk the
streets of Haiti free, dispensing “justice’ to their enemies
– according to the news agencies. They are, says
Mr La Tortue, not criminals, but 'freedom fighters'. There will
be impunity for the murderers, but for the former President,
character assassination is what he deserves and at the hands of
Colin Powell.
At the joint press
conference with La Tortue, Mr Powell answered a question about a
rumoured ‘investigation’ by suspiciously anonymous
‘prosecutors’ in Miami.
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There are inquiries
being made by our judicial authorities in the United
States to see if there is any evidence of wrongdoing on
his part. I will have to wait until our legal
authorities and our investigators are finished before
offering any comment on whether he might be charged with
anything or what action the Haitian government might
take. My principal focus and the principal focus of the
United States government are on the future, not on the
past. |
Two
things are being said here:
One: Aristide is a
very bad man and we don’t like him; and
Two: While
there is absolutely no evidence that Aristide is a bad man
we still don’t like him..”
Case closed.
We need to
move on! The turtles are getting hungry!
Copyright 2004 John
Maxwell
maxinf@cwjamaica.com
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Heart of Darkness
By
Joseph Conrad
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in
Colonial Africa
By Adam
Hochschild
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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A Wreath for Emmett Till
By Marilyn Nelson; Illustrated by
Philippe Lardy
This memorial to
the lynched teen is in the Homeric
tradition of poet-as-historian. It is a
heroic crown of sonnets in Petrarchan
rhyme scheme and, as such, is quite
formal not only in form but in language.
There are 15 poems in the cycle, the
last line of one being the first line of
the next, and each of the first lines
makes up the entirety of the 15th. This
chosen formality brings distance and
reflection to readers, but also calls
attention to the horrifically ugly
events. The language is highly
figurative in one sonnet, cruelly
graphic in the next. The illustrations
echo the representative nature of the
poetry, using images from nature and
taking advantage of the emotional
quality of color. There is an
introduction by the author, a page about
Emmett Till, and literary and poetical
footnotes to the sonnets. The artist
also gives detailed reasoning behind his
choices. This underpinning information
makes this a full experience, eminently
teachable from several aspects,
including historical and literary—School
Library Journal |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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