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April 15, 2010 - Issue 371
 
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Decloaking the Deadly Foxes in Our Midst
Keeping it Real
By Larry Pinkney
B
lackCommentator.com Editorial Board

 

 
 

It has been correctly written that: �Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.� Indeed, the very system of capitalism is in fact, sustained systemic terrorism against the poor. Years of corporate-government subterfuge, disinformation, discreditation, wrongful imprisonments of political activists, and outright assassinations in this nation continue to be important mainstays of and for this filthy, rotten, hypocritical, capitalist system.

Economic exploitation and racism are fundamental components of capitalism. What better way to fool, manipulate, and continue dividing and exploiting everyday people than to install a biologically colored person as the head of the U.S. Empire acting in the fake names of �change� and �hope,� to actually perpetuate capitalism and its concomitant egregious inequities. Consequently, virtually any who oppose the systemic economic blood sucking and war policies of this de facto Wall Street / military presidential puppet are quickly and fallaciously depicted and smugly dismissed, by the corporate media and phony �progressives,� as being either racists, unrealistic, or chronic complainers. Thus, the blood sucking of the everyday Black, Brown, Red, White, and Yellow peoples by this system continues unabated, unexposed, unchallenged.

There are numerous deadly systemic gatekeeper foxes in the very midst of everyday people. They can be found among the Democratic Party foxes and the Republican Party wolves. They are insidiously pernicious to the needs, wants, and aspirations of everyday people. Many of these gatekeepers masquerade as �liberals� and/or �progressives,� giving new meaning to hypocrisy and double-speak, even as everyday people increasingly suffer in this nation and throughout the world.

Without the complicity of these systemic gatekeeper foxes of differing colors, the chicanery of the pro-apartheid Zionist Obama / Biden / Rahm Emanuel administrative regime could not be effective. An example of a systemic gatekeeper fox can be found in the rhetoric and actions of U.S. Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota.

A Case In Point: Antics of a Gatekeeper - U.S. Representative Keith Ellison

Representative Keith Ellison rhetorically claims to be a so-called political �progressive� but his actions (or lack thereof) belie his words.

With reference to an upcoming April 8, 2010, so-called �public forum,� the long established organization known as WAMM (Women Against Military Madness) noted that �it is important to recognize that neither [Keith] Ellison nor his invited speakers call for ending direct military and economic support for the Israeli government as it continues atrocities against Palestinians. Congress grants approximately $2.5 billion in aid to Israel each year, and Ellison has voted in favor of all these bills since he has been in office. The money that Ellison supports directly buys weapons that Israel has used and continues to use to attack the civilian population in Gaza and the West Bank, and provide further economic support for Israel�s policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.�

These actions and inactions by Ellison are directly in line with, and in support of, the apartheid-Zionist policies of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Rahm Emanuel; and demonstrate the hideous hand of the disproportionately powerful Zionist lobby known as AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which controls virtually every U.S. elected official in Washington, D.C., from the White House on down, at the horrible expense of the �American� people collectively. AIPAC�s money is seemingly endless, and its propaganda machine is hideously effective - against the best interests of the vast majority of people in this nation and throughout the world.

Nevertheless, many elected representatives, including Keith Ellison, who rhetorically espouse to be anti-apartheid and/or �progressive,� are actually about the business of studiously supporting various forms of systemic exploitation, including apartheid-Zionism. This is horrible on the part of any and all who do this, but it is especially reprehensible on the part of so-called black (i.e. �African American�) elected officials, including Keith Ellison.

Adding insult to the injury of everyday people: On February 28, 2010, at a presentation at which Mr. Dhoruba Bin Wahad (Black Panther Party veteran and wrongfully convicted U.S. political prisoner for 19 years) was the invited guest speaker, Representative Keith Ellison attempted to publicly deride Mr. Bin Wahad, as being essentially nothing but a complainer. Ellison attempted to ridicule Dhoruba by saying publicly to him, among other things, that �At the end of the day all you [Dhoruba Bin Wahad] have, is a complaint.� Dhoruba is, and has been, a long time grass roots political activist, taking action with respect to the legitimate complaints of everyday people. It would behoove Representative Ellison to take note that at bare minimum, specific �complaint[s]� against the ongoing and intensifying injustices of this filthy, racist, hypocritical system in this nation, as they affect people of all colors, are in fact not only legitimate but also absolutely imperative! �Moreover, it is not the �end of the day� that everyday people need and seek, but a seriously different day, a day of and for real systemic change! Moreover, Representative Keith Ellison�s brazen but unsuccessful, attempt to red bait Dhoruba Bin Wahad as being a �socialist� was correctly refuted as being inaccurate; notwithstanding of course, the fact that real systemic everyday people�s socialism does represent a viable alternative to this blood sucking, war mongering capitalist system.

As with Barack Obama, the current, articulate fork-tongued head Democratic Party fox; systemic gatekeepers such as Representative Keith Ellison, consistently engage in practicing their skills at double-speak in a nonstop effort to keep everyday people bamboozled, confused, and controlled. Two specific examples of the use of the double-speak tactic with respect to Representative Ellison are the following:

1. The Black Commentator article titled, The Judas Factor: Barack Obama and a Movement Betrayed (or �for Those Who Have Joined the Empire�), of April 10th, 2008, said, in pertinent part, that �Barack Obama and his Democratic Party are unequivocal and cynical frauds. I recently read a message from his [Barack Obama�s] colleague U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison�s Spring, 2008, Fifth District Community Newsletter which stated in relevant part that �we must end the war in Iraq by redeploying our troops out of the region.� How utterly and despicably misleading, nebulous, and cynical to the �American� people and the entire world. The American Heritage Dictionary specifically defines the word redeployas meaning, �To move (military forces) from one combat zone to another.� This is NOT bringing U.S. troops back home to the United States. This is spreading the war internationally, and is the zenith of hypocrisy and deceit��

Undoubtedly, Representative Keith Ellison knew full well that his above-mentioned double-speak rhetoric in the Spring of 2008 was misleading the people and giving them false hope. It is now the Spring of 2010, and the bloody U.S. war in Iraq rages on, and has in fact been expanded and �spread internationally,� with many thousands of additional U.S. troops, between the years of 2008 and 2010; having been sent to be maimed or killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and/or Pakistan. This is what double-speak is all about - misleading the people by raising false hope, and in so doing, manipulating them to the hilt! This is inexcusable and it is utter deceit.

2. Virtually no socially and politically conscious person in this nation does not know about the fact that there are many unjustly convicted and imprisoned political prisoners in the U.S. gulag prison system, including the much publicized cases of our beloved freedom fighters Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, and Lynne Stewart (to name but a very few). Representative Keith Ellison, as an astute political observer, is certainly cognizant of these and no doubt other such cases.

Nevertheless, recently, when members of an audience (including some who are Representative Ellison�s constituents) specifically insisted on knowing what his position is on political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, Ellison replied, like a slippery fox, that he �hadn�t thought about it.� (Reference Twin Cities IndyMedia).

The fact is that having purportedly been a politically-active attorney, and having reportedly had �a close connection to the NLG� (National Lawyers Guild) which has repeatedly delineated and disseminated detailed information about the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, it would be the height of absurdity to actually believe that Representative Ellison was not, and is not, very much aware of Mr. Abu-Jamal�s case or that he has not �thought about it.� This is deceit, chicanery, and double-speak on the part of Representative Ellison, and this is precisely what should be expected from the Democratic Party foxes and the Republican Party wolves. The fact that Representative Ellison eventually went on to state that he will �consider� a congressional resolution questioning the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is, in substance more double-speak and utterly meaningless; and simply served as an attempt to temporarily placate those who had questioned him about Mr. Abu-Jamal�s case and the decades-long gross injustices thereto. It�s called systemic gate keeping.

U.S. Representative Keith Ellison is by no means the only systemic gate keeper. He has many cohorts in the Democratic Party foxes and the Republican Party wolves nation-wide who utilize essentially the same or similar tactics.

Where Do We Go From Here?

In the wake of the fairly recent Democratic Party foxes� passage of the phony health care �deform� package (as noted writer, journalist, and Black Panther Party veteran Kiilu Nyasha describes it), and as Obama and his Democratic and Republican colleagues push for environmentally insane off-shore drilling, and the de facto support for, and proliferation of, nuclear weapons and the nuclear power industry in this nation, and as the wars rage on in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, and as joblessness, homelessness, home foreclosures, and prison incarceration rates steadily climb, we face some very urgent decisions and concomitant tasks.

First and foremost, it is time to reject the dangerous corporate-perpetuated, gate keeper myth that real, systemic, and positive change can only be brought about through the Democratic or Republican Parties. The Democratic Party foxes and the Republican Party wolves are themselves an oxymoron to real, systemic, positive change. They have demonstrated this repeatedly. These corporate political parties are the systemic grave yard of people�s movements for real change in this nation.

The everyday people in this nation are methodically played as perpetual political ping-pong balls at the mercy of the Democratic Party foxes and Republican Party wolves. We must stop allowing this. The Democratic Party and its cohorts are playing directly into�� the hands of the Republican Party and its �tea-bagger� ilk, and vice versa; always to the detriment of everyday people, as a whole. Black people (particularly the massive Black underclass), and our Brown, Red, White, and Yellow sisters and brothers are hurting at an increasingly horrible rate, even as the corporate media, acting as the propaganda arm of these corporate party foxes and wolves, uses omission, diversion, and outright lies to keep us divided, manipulated, and controlled. These systemic gate keepers understand the words of the late Steven Biko, when he said that, �The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.� It is time that we understand this, and act accordingly.

We must organize in the towns, the cities, the schools, colleges, and universities, the work places, the country-side, in-the-streets, and in every nook and cranny of this country. We must organize collectively for an end to this systemic death grip of the Democratic and Republican Party foxes and wolves upon us. We must organize - each one teach one - for a different and more humane tomorrow! But we must organize today!

We must become creative revolutionaries, believing in and acting upon the faith of the revolutionary. This is not about reform. It is not about reforming a hideously corrupt and politically bankrupt political system. It is about freeing our minds and consciously struggling for the creation of a sustainable society and planet based upon fulfilling human needs and not upon cyclical greed and subterfuge.

In the immortal words of Joe Hill, �Don�t mourn. Organize!�

Onward now sisters and brothers. Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS NewsHour, formerly known as The MacNeil/LehrerNewsHour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book). Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

 
 
 
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