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At some point in recent
history the U.S. corporate media, formerly mere racist butt-kissers
to the powerful, abandoned the profession of journalism entirely
to become active agents of disinformation. Nowhere is this more evident
than in the criminal conspiracy that poses as American press coverage
of Haiti’s 200th anniversary as the first Black republic
on Earth. On New Years Day and
other publications received the following letter from Michelle
Karshan, Foreign Press Liaison for Haitian President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide:
I am still
in shock by the numbers who turned out for today's celebrations at
the National Palace. The foreign press had been reporting for
weeks that there was nothing to celebrate and that the President
had a hard time getting crowds out in support of his government. Well,
I guess the people of Haiti do feel that they have something to celebrate
despite living under a crushing, debilitating economic embargo!
During today's celebrations
at the National Palace I asked lots of people working in the Palace
how many people did they think were in the streets around the Palace
and on the Palace grounds. They all looked at me and said a lot,
too many to count! I asked them whether they thought the numbers
were the same as the annual carnival and they said there were more
folks. Carnival is typically reported at 1 million or 1 1/2 million.
Many of the people I talked
to said the foreign press would tell the truth today because they were
here and saw for themselves how many people there were. I shook
my head no, that telling them that the foreign press has personally
witnessed many events in Haiti and still under reported the numbers. I
did ask a couple of foreign press what their estimates were and they
stared back as if to say it was beyond their capability to estimate
such a large crowd.
Well today takes the cake
as I just read Paisley Dodd's AP piece which says: "About 10,000 Haitians gathered at
the palace hours after celebrating New Year's Day with fireworks crackling,
shots ringing out and drums pulsing in the darkness." What
Palace was she at, pray tell?
I ask all of you who were
here to send me your estimations to the press with copies to me and
I will share them with the press as well! Of course, they are
busy filing their stories as I am writing this but perhaps it will
have some impact down the line. Also, please everyone share with
me the numbers that you are reading, hearing on radio, or the angles
of the shots shown on television to see if there is accurate reporting
on this historic occasion.
I remember when I marched
in the demonstration in New York against the coup d'etat and the police
put the numbers at 80,000. Those numbers were fixed by New York City
Police authorities and we believed them to be underestimated at the
time. Well, today's celebration was several times the numbers I saw
that day in New York.
I just discussed this with
an astute friend of mine who pointed out that perhaps journalists will
keep the numbers down so as not to reflect any crowd that may be larger
than the demonstrations waged by the opposition lately. Maybe
that's what accounts for this week’s reporting when journalists reported
just thousands of Lavalas demonstrating in Petionville when everyone
here on the grounds knew it was an enormous rally forcing even conservative
press to call it significant and important in numbers. So sad
the outside world may never know about it!
Yesterday President Aristide
spoke of a systematic organized disinformation campaign against Haiti.
I need say no more.
The same Paisley Dodds that
Karshan spoke of filed a January 2 Associated Press report on the
bicentennial celebrations that failed to include a single quote from
President Aristide, visiting South African President Thabo Mbeki,
or any member of over a dozen official foreign delegations. Instead,
the despicable Dodds provided her global platform to Andy Apaid Jr.,
a leader of the U.S.-backed opposition. President Mbeki’s visit “brought
oxygen to a dying dictatorship" said Apaid, the corrupt business
oligarch. The Washington Post ran Dodds’ story under the headline,
“Haiti
Opposition Demands Aristide Resign” – as if that were
news!
The New York Times’ January
2 headline dismissed the celebration and the entire post-slavery
history of Haiti – in almost exactly the words predicted by Ms. Karshan:
“200
Years After Napoleon, Haiti Finds Little to Celebrate.” The
vast throng described by the Haitian press liaison was shrunken
to a “crowd, which filled a city block and rows of bleachers set
up in front of the white presidential palace in the center of the
city.”
The Times followed up on
Sunday with an Op-Ed article by a University of Virginia professor,
titled “For
Haiti, 200 Years of Mixed Results.” The piece called
for a “transitional government” in which Aristide would “share power
with a prime minister from the opposition” – in effect, an overthrow
of Haiti’s elected government. This is undoubtedly the position of
the editorial board of the New York Times, as well.
Thus, the U.S. corporate
media actively suppress the news in service of the propaganda
and goals of the party in power in Washington.
TransAfrica founder Randall
Robinson framed the issue succinctly in his January 1 article, “Haiti – A call for Global Action: Honor Haiti, Honor Ourselves;
Forget Haiti, Forget Ourselves.”
We must
reject being manipulated by the corporate media into embracing the
notion that in France, Germany, the United States and other “civilized
nations” elections are the only legitimate determinant of the will
of the people, but in Haiti those street demonstrations specially
selected by the corporate media for coverage tell us all we need
to know about anybody’s will….
Today, “the
world’s leading democracies” cluck and gloat at their ongoing
stranglehold – in the form of a crushing financial embargo – on
today’s descendants of Toussaint, Dessalines, and their freedom
fighters. Throughout the Americas, we who benefited from the
daring war waged by the slaves of St. Domingue, must reject
the maneuverings of the world’s most powerful nations in Haiti
and find ways to build bridges to the Haitian people and the
officials they choose – through the ballot – to lead them.
LES MARCHANDES
Dedicated to the women of Haiti
Details
about painting and Mari Hall ~ Artist
Hard times coming
What role does mass racist
delusion play in world history? Since we are speaking of mass white delusions,
and since white people maintain a near-monopoly on history as studied
in the United States, readers will find few reliable, i.e., non-delusional
sources of inquiry into this subject (except, of course, for studies
of the German variety of fascism).
Yet mass delusion is central
to any examination of popular support for the Bush Pirates’ lunge
for world supremacy – a doomed adventure that is accelerating the
inevitable decline of the U.S. In our January 1 Cover Story, “Black
America Must Prepare for the Long, Deep Slide,” we describe the circumstances
that are combining to topple the U.S. and its dollar from the global
commanding heights. In shock, fear and disgust, nations and elites
are quietly drawing a red line around the U.S.
Redlining
is insidious, operating in the phantom world of things undone and,
therefore, not subject to measurement. The lasting impact of the
shock Bush’s Pirates have deliberately inflicted on the world psyche
through their declaration of War on Order will be hidden in the realm
of negatives: development projects launched in China, Indonesia or
Brazil with little or no American participation; office towers in
Baltimore or Chicago that fail to garner foreign investor backing.
As this process unfolds,
however, there will be domestic hell to pay, as white delusions of
Manifest Destiny are shattered by resistance from the rest of the
planet.
”No matter
how phased or gentle the transition, the impact on the United States
domestic economy will be – difficult to imagine. What is certain
is that the retrenchment will require a militant Black leadership
that is willing to go toe-to-toe with corporate power, lest African
Americans be overwhelmed in the scramble for scarcer resources.”
We at measure
our “presence” in
the world by the caliber of our readership. Ella Baccouche makes
us feel worthy of our audience.
By interpreting
and analyzing past and current events with such clarity and insight,
empowers
us, extends our knowledge base, enabling us to make better choices
and to reflect seriously on our condition. is,
without a doubt, a myth-busting, truth-bearing institution allowing
not only
the African-American community but all justice seekers to exhale
every Thursday by reinforcing the belief that truth will set us free.
Writing about the redlining
of America, you said something about us being in the "belly of
the Beast." After contemplating that metaphor for a time, I hypothesized
that all peoples living in America and many others are kept in that
figurative "belly." Of course, the somewhat mad greedy
neo-con Pirates who hijacked the US government in 2000 by disenfranchising
thousands of Black voters in Florida are the "brain” of the "Beast" and
they have put the accelerator to the floor in a vehicle that was traveling
since WWII toward "Empire." There is some evidence
that the majority of the residents of the "belly" are the
life force of the "Beast." They cheerfully enter its
blood stream to keep it ALIVE. These self-serving residents are
the corrupted Congressional members who only represent corporate interests;
the content-controlling mass media; pharmaceutical companies among
other monopolizing corporations; those arrogant intellectuals associated
with universities and think-tanks who, spellbound by the Horatio Alger
possibilities and proud and honored to be the lapdogs of the moneyed
elites and the powers-that-be, make every effort to rationalize and
support double-standard racist policies; your everyday white racists
who believe that "white privilege" is a God-given right;
those blue collar workers who said something to the effect that they
will vote for Bush, even if it is against their best interests, because
having that particular white man in the White House assures them that "white
privilege" is safe; those give-no-pass-to-think-they-are-doing-good-see-no-racism
white folks who leave unquestioned apparent contradictions in their
environment to the detriment of our black children (see Tim Wise);
those one-sided worldview delusional white folks; and then there are
the usual assortment of house Negroes and black sellouts.
More evidence reveals that
in another part of the "belly" at some distance from the
cheerleaders are the people of conscience, the believers in democracy,
the peacemakers, and the people who cry out for equity and justice. We
dread nourishing the "Beast," but are forced to contribute. We
witnessed our leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Fred
Hampton, Medgar Evers, among others assassinated. We were horrified
and terrorized by these events. As a result we are afraid. We
live in fear. We are being terrorized now by the relentless gutting
of the US Constitution, our social contract, of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, of our own Bill of Rights, of international laws and
treaties, and of environmental regulations. Yes, we are the dissenters,
the manufactured enemies, the labor unions, the uneducated and the
undereducated, the uninsured, the illiterate, the underpaid, the heavily
taxed, the poor, the unemployed, the ever growing number of can't-make-the-rent
Wal-Mart employees, the voiceless, the marginalized, the Muslims who
are the scapegoats of the day, the people from Afghanistan and Iraq
who come from the places where the "Beast" is currently having
a feeding frenzy, and the unjustly incarcerated.
Since the US military, with
all of its weapons of mass destruction cannot make the dollar the center
of the world economy, the redlining of America will be a long-term,
indefinite process. I agree, its impact won't be pretty. But,
it will substantially weaken the "Beast," enough, perhaps,
to permit the many ill at ease, forced inhabitants of the "belly" to
escape into a saner world. Once free from bondage, the key to
our survival depends on our willingness to become steadfast in our
convictions, vigilant, informed, and focused. We must support
one another with sincerity. Cynthia McKinney said, "We must offer
true friendship..." because, as Dr. King said, "There will
be some difficult times ahead."
M.J. Parrish, from Lawrence,
Kansas intended to write us a letter about our piece, but it turned
into a wonderful mini-essay. We are proud to share it:
Thanks
once again for a prescient article, far ahead of the mainstream media,
which offers infotainment to anesthetize the masses. The
coming retrenchment you speak of seems unavoidable with at least
another year of Bush and neocons steering the ship of state toward
the shoals. Current trade agreements plus those on the
drawing board – FTAA and CAFTA, plus 30-32 bilateral trade agreements
being pushed through almost faster than the trade ambassadors can
sign them – will administer the coup de grace to the American economy,
ably assisted by further planned tax cuts for the wealthy, further
dismantling of the social safety nets, and massive wartime profiteering.
The result will most certainly
be, as you predict, a time of retrenchment for Black Americans, but
also for wedge politics against every possible group
that can be singled out to blame for the dire financial straits so many will
find themselves in. The truth is that working families have been on
a long, slow slide since 1968, when income inequality, according to GINI
measures, was the most equal it has been in modern history. The most recent
figures rank the US at number 79 in the world in terms of relative income
equality, between Moldova and Thailand – and the data in this 2002 report
is based on records that are now 4 - 5 years old. It's evident that
2003 figures would find the US even further down, among Burkina Faso and
Malaysia.
http://www.925iwish.com/distribution.html
The propagandists
of corporate America can't afford to have Americans wake
up and realize the source of their misery, so the Republican
party will play wedge politics for all it's worth. We
see it in the Medicare pork-fest, where younger Americans
are told that seniors are picking their pockets for their
own selfish gain; that refrain will be repeated during
the '04 campaign when Bush rolls out his plan for partial
privatization of Social Security. We see union workers
blamed for the offshoring of jobs, we see those opposed
to tax cuts for the wealthy blamed for pushing corporations
offshore, we see every single social program blamed for "raising
my taxes higher than they've ever been," as goes the
mantra from the Limbaugh flock – at a time when federal
taxes are lower than they've been since pre-Kennedy days.
The plain truth
is that even if the countries of the world hold off on
extensive redlining, and even if they delay switching to
the Euro – which has been under consideration by the EU,
Russia, and the OPEC countries – the US economy simply
isn't sustainable. We have an unsustainable debt,
an unsustainable budget deficit, and an unsustainable trade
deficit that's worsening every year. American
workers are being required to compete for jobs with Chinese
workers who are paid $1.00 a day, and they'll soon also
be required to compete with an even greater influx of Mexican
workers, imported by the Bush administration specifically
for the purpose of forcing domestic labor costs still lower. Professionals
whose jobs have gone to India or who have been replaced
domestically by H1-B and L-1 workers will be competing
for fast food jobs or work as a night janitor, forcing
still more workers with high school diplomas, or less,
out of the workforce.
Bush's "ownership
society" plan will do away with employer-provided
health care, pensions, and employer contributions to unemployment
insurance (for the few in this country who qualify under
the stringent rules). Instead, Americans will be
expected to put aside money (in spite of real unemployment
figures of upwards of 10%) in separate savings accounts
for their health care and retirement, and the plan is for
taxpayer dollars to provide a one-time pittance called
a "personal re-employment account," with which
those whose jobs have gone away will be expected to pay
house payments, child care, retraining expenses and perhaps
relocation expenses. Once that's gone, there'll be
no more assistance.
Under the no-tax,
cheap labor Republicans as represented by Grover Norquist
and a host of Senators and House members, American workers
will be treated as they're regarded: as lazy bums
who must be forced to go to work and forced to take
personal responsibility in order to prevent them from following
their "normal inclinations" to sit around and
demand a free ride. Bush calls this his "self-reliance,
industriousness and responsibility" plan – a phrase
which rings with contempt for the average American. Workers
can take at least meager solace in knowing that American
seniors are also going to be expected to "take personal
responsibility" for much of their own health care. The "personal
responsibility" crowd in Congress, who couldn't vote
fast enough to overturn an amendment that would make them
live by whatever "benefits" they offered seniors,
have stated clearly that seniors as well as others aren't
having to pay enough out of pocket for their health care,
and so are frivolously consuming far more scarce health
care dollars than necessary; this makes them responsible
for much of the increased cost of medical care in the U.S.,
according to the corporate libertarians' version of the
story.
It is indeed
time for militancy in the U.S. as everyone who's not in
the top 1% prepares to retrench. But we're all in
this together, and I hope our militancy will include efforts
to make common cause with all of the other disenfranchised
groups as we redirect people's attention to the corporate
oligarchs who have engineered misery never seen in the
U.S. since the Great Depression.
Republicans and
DLC Democrats to a certain extent will make every effort
to divide us by color, gender, religion, age, and national
origin so that we're too busy blaming one another to band
together against the real authors of our misery. Let's
reach out to each other in our militancy, and while we're
at it reach out to citizens of other countries as well
who have suffered from greedy, self-serving U.S. trade
agreements. They're ahead of us in mobilization, having
suffered longer, and in ways many of us in this country
are only about to experience.
Thank you once
again for seeing the big picture and sounding the warning.
The coming crunch
Where we see U.S. international
decline as having profound domestic ramifications, J. Damu believes
that the coming crunch will simply amount to more of the same for
Black Americans.
Well, better
late than never. As fascinating a read as this commentary makes it
comes nearly 40 years after the fact. America's economic slide
began in the early 1960's when the overall rate of profit for U.S.
corporations began to slump. Ironically (perhaps) America's
economic downturn began at the height of the civil rights movement,
which then witnessed the dismantling of the economic base of black
communities through government policies such as urban renewal (removal)
and private industry's beginning the trend to move industrial
enterprises over seas.
At the least, Black
America has been well into the long, deep slide for at least
two and half decades. What we are likely to witness, if the
author is accurate, is an intensification of the slide. Furthermore
the visible wealth displayed in such locales as Atlanta
is illusory. Nearly 40 years after affirmative action the
mean net wealth of black families is just one-eight of that of
white families – less than before affirmative action.
Black reparations
as a matter of public policy cannot help but positively impact the
entire U.S. economy. Reparations Now!
Mr. Damu misinterprets our
statement: “Today’s Atlanta…could not have been possible under Jim
Crow; however, absent the explosion of economic growth, Jim Crow
might have stood his ground a lot longer.” We didn’t say a word about
Black living standards in Atlanta, which in some demographic respects
resembles Newark, New Jersey with a bigger skyline. We meant that
Atlanta could not exist as a world class city for business under
a Jim Crow regime. That’s one reason powerful corporate forces collaborated
in the demise of legal segregation.
Alassan Kamara shares some thoughts on our article, and gives us a
continental tour.
Good insights
into the competition between the euro and dollar for preeminence
as the world's reserve currencies, and the potential impact on the
African American community. However, people who have some capital
might just pool their capital and buy euros and gold. On the other
hand the preeminence of the dollar with its attendant balance of
payments problems only helped those who traded on the stock market
or imported products from Asia and Europe. It's a good thing that
the dollar has some competition not only from the euro but also from
gold, but it's unclear whether those Asian nations (China, Japan
and Taiwan especially) that fund the U.S. balance of payment deficits
would want to pull the plug by cashing in and switching to euros.
They might just decide to diversify – holding percentages of both
currencies.
Your point about Africa being
beyond the pale for serious political analysis is quite correct however.
Africa has 4 OPEC members and Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Sudan
also produce oil and would no doubt take cues from OPEC. South Africa
is the world's second largest producer of gold and has been reaping
benefits form the recent increase in gold prices which has had a positive
effect on the rand. The problem in Africa in general is debt, lack
of capital, low exchange rates, and unemployment, but there are
exceptions. Botswana holds lost of reserves, so too Namibia. We
must recognize that Africa is almost as big as North and South America
combined and that its population is some 850 million people, which
makes for a lot of economic variety from region to region. But,
in general, most Africans are not worse off than most blacks in South
America or Haiti or most Indians in India.
Given the size of Africa,
most people never experience war as the media might erroneously
suggest. But there is a general problem: an evident disconnect
between governments and their populaces – from Egypt down
to Cape Town. Yet because of the West's intrinsic and seemingly
invincible racism Africa always gets a bad press which exaggerates
and fabricates as it sees fit. However, the whites and Lebanese who
flock to Africa to do business or just enjoy never want to leave.
Or if they leave they always rush back, so maybe it can't be all that
miserable for everybody. I meet them all the time.
replied:
If oil-producing
nations switched to "market basket" pricing – a prudent
and rational form of diversification – it would have nearly the same
effect as a switch to the euro. An imperial dollar cannot sit in
a market basket with the rest of the crowd and remain... imperial.
The dollar would no longer constitute such a fearsome “strategic
asset” for use as a weapon against the rest of humanity – a huge
step towards ending America’s “unnatural” advantage.
David Elliott dropped us
a note from Florida.
Thanks for continuing
to function as a voice of reason by cautioning of hard times
ahead for Black Americans. Too many of us remain in a state
of denial about how easily the economic gains of the past 50
years could be lost. We indeed live a tenuous existence in this country,
as detailed in Samuel Yette's The Choice: The
Issue of Black Survival in America. It is my fear that as a
group, we're simply not prepared for the troubled times which
will inevitably arrive at our doorsteps.
The unforgivable sin
Marcus Dixon had just turned
eighteen, stood 6’5”, weighed 265 pounds, and was on his way to Vanderbilt
University on the strength of a 1200 SAT and phenomenal athletic
prowess. He now sits in a Georgia prison doing ten years for having
sex with his white girlfriend who was just shy of sixteen. As Tim
Wise reported on January 1 (“Sex
Across the Color Line: Marcus Dixon, Emmett Till and the New/Old
South”), Dixon was convicted under
a racist misapplication of the state’s Child Protection Act, although “no
other teens in Georgia have ever been prosecuted under this law,
despite the almost certain likelihood that somewhere, as I write
this, the law is being broken by several couples up and down the
length of the Peach State…”
Dixon’s adoptive parents,
Ken and Peri Jones, are white. Yet they seemed oblivious to the fierce,
pervasive racism among their fellow whites, and failed to prepare
young Marcus for the deadly environment of Rome, Georgia. “But by
virtue of their own innocence, and I use that term in only its most
ironic sense here, they put this child at risk in a way that his
black family likely would not have,” wrote Wise.
Had the
Joneses understood the ways of the white folks in charge of the justice
system, even on a local level, there is no way Peri would have advised
Marcus to be cooperative with police and “tell them anything they
wanted to know,” even without an attorney in the room. Few black
parents would have told their black male child, suspected of raping
a white girl, to do such a thing, and precisely because they would
understand the intrinsic danger of the lamb trying to make nice with
the wolves who have encircled it.
This case cries out for
justice, writes Ed Grothus, of Los Alamos, New Mexico.
I hope
that some remediation of the injustice done to Marcus Dixon is possible.
I hope that some appeal to higher authorities is possible. This is
no way to treat a valuable and intelligent human being. To express
manifestations of love with another human being is not a grave sin.
May common decency eventually prevail.
Ser Seshs Ab Heter, also
known as CM Boxley, writes to Mr. Wise “from the heart of Dixie,
Natchez, Mississippi.”
Thank you
for being such a clear writer and making it plain about white supremacy
domination in Amerika. The sex across color line thing is so deep,
it’s hard to know where to start. You have explained in no uncertain
terms where the source of white supremacy behavior needs to be addressed:
in the kitchens and mirrors of white Amerika. This is why Kwame Toure
(Stokely Carmichael) in the mid-1960s told whites to go home to their
own communities and organize against racial injustice and racist
behavior. Most importantly, your writings on the whole underbelly
of the racial divide need to be used to teach and awaken today's
adults and youth who live in a make believe world.
Tim Wise is in fact a full-time
anti-racism activist, educator, lecturer and author. He informed
us about two links dedicated to assisting Marcus Dixon:
Act
for Justice
http://www.actforjustice.com/
Help
Marcus
http://www.helpmarcus.com/
Mr.
Wise suggests that readers write to both the Georgia Pardons and
Paroles Board, which has the authority to set Dixon free, and Georgia
Governor Sonny Perdue, who can influence the board’s decision.
A
message can be sent to Gov. Sonny Perdue at:
http://www.gov.state.ga.us/document.asp?doc=contacts
Letters
should be addressed to:
The Honorable Sonny Perdue
Governor
State of Georgia
203 State Capitol
Atlanta, Georgia 30334
404-656-1776
State Board of Pardons and
Paroles,
Milton E. Nix, Jr. - Board
Chairman
2 Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr., SE
Suite 458 Balcony Level
East Tower
Atlanta, GA 30334-4909
(404)
656-5651 (phone)
(404) 651-8502 (fax)
The
Georgia State Supreme Court will hear Marcus Dixon’s appeal,
this month.
White Terror
In our Christmas issue we
reported on the terror conspiracy case that Attorney General John
Ashcroft and his friends in the corporate media have conspired to
hide from public view. America’s best kept secret is “White
Terror,” the title of our Cover Story.
George Bush and John Ashcroft
don’t want you to hear about White Terror, understandably fearing
that the lyrics of white supremacy strike the same racial chords
as the Pirates’ own War on Terror theme, itself a rearrangement
of the many martial tunes written throughout American history in
praise Manifest Destiny. Less than a decade ago Timothy McVeigh’s
band of terrorists got carried away with the logic of America as
a White Man’s Country, and may have cost the Republicans the White
House in 1996. That’s why the homeland security colors didn’t change
in May of this year, when federal agents arrested a white racist
couple dealing in weapons of mass destruction in a small town near
Tyler, Texas. The feds seized a cyanide bomb capable of unleashing
a deadly, poison cloud, chemicals and components for additional
WMDs, gas masks, 100 conventional bombs, an arsenal of automatic
weapons, silencers and half a million rounds of ammunition….
Tens of thousands of members
of a racist legion operate openly in every corner of the nation – men,
women, juveniles, extended families, cells, gangs, churches, clans,
militias, border armies, all engaged in what they consider to be
a war to the death against non-white America….
But these are white Americans
with special dispensation to engage in an ancient yet familiar
rampage. They can hide in plain sight, because nobody’s really
looking.
Rosemary Stewart-Stafford
battles White Terror on Ashcroft’s home turf. She writes:
I was
delighted to see your cover story on "White
Terror." I
am a longtime civil rights worker in John Ashcroft's hometown, Springfield,
Missouri and have volunteered to go undercover working with the (pre-Ashcroft)
FBI to meet with white supremacists.
Just since his appointment
as Attorney General, we have had a Hammerskin Nation concert celebrating
Hitler's birthday; the desecration of our Jewish
cemetery; a stabbing by skinheads of a black man who was with a white
woman in a local Denney's restaurant; the murder of a mixed blood foster
child
by a white foster parent and a hanging of a Kenyan immigrant from a tower
in downtown Springfield that duplicated a 1906
Easter Weekend triple lynching here.
The local police pretended
the concert did not take place, made no arrests in the cemetery
desecration or the
stabbing, refused to deal with racism in the death of foster child
Dominic James and immediately declared Leonard
Gakinya's hanging to be
a suicide without acknowledging that Gakinya had made an internal
affairs complaint about his mistreatment by Springfield police
and immigration
jailers the week before his body was found.
Dominic James' killer, John Dilley, was found guilty of child abuse
but remains free on a $3,500 bond. Many blacks accused of nonviolent
crimes are jailed before trial on bail in the $50,000 to one million
dollar range. There is great disparity in bail set for white methamphetamine
dealers and black crack users even though Greene County, Missouri has
one of the highest rates of meth labs in the USA.
No one has ever spent
a moment in jail for a hate crime here even though the region is
home to dozens of KKK, Christian
Identity and
other racist groups. It was bad here before our homeboy became
Attorney General. It is much worse now.
In the Texas
White Terror case, CBS TV network news refused to pick up the story
developed by its own Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate. “I
guess they didn’t think it was important enough,” said
local news producer Todd Bensman. Neither did any of the other networks
or the corporate print media. As veteran journalists, the publishers
of conclude
that the “story was squashed by the Bush
Administration with the active collaboration of editors throughout
corporate media.”
Various alternative media picked up on the story. But Ric Dodson had
not heard a word about the Texas arrests from his vantage point in
Antioch, California.
Your articles
are informative and timely. I was not aware of the situation
in Texas and was very pleased
with your reporting on this
issue.
I hope to see more such articles in the future. In my humble opinion
this is a great source of your strength and value as an online publication.
Whose Queen is it, anyway?
“God Save the Queen!” Britain
no longer rules the waves but the anachronistic pledge of fealty
and allegiance is still heard
in 53 nations, all but a handful of them non-white. Zimbabwe
recently quit the “club,” but only after enduring “continuing
public humiliation” at the hands of the Queen’s
far-flung subjects, as Mark P. Fancher put it in his December
25 commentary,
“To Hell With the British
Commonwealth.”
If Africa’s true objective is independence (and it should
be), then it is imperative that the continent abandon all vestiges
of its colonial past. This includes institutions like the British Commonwealth
that deprive Africans of the freedom to fully exercise their right
to self-determination….
For purposes of security and future prosperity,
Africa does not need the guidance and protection of its colonial masters.
Africa must
unite as never before and strengthen the relationships between
African countries and other underdeveloped countries throughout the
world.
To hell with the Commonwealth! Africa has its own future to build.
Steve L Sharra wrote from Michigan State University, East Lansing,
in search of more information.
I thoroughly
enjoyed Mark Fancher's article. I was even more thrilled to note
that he has written a book titled "The Splintering of
Global Africa: Capitalism's War Against Pan-Africanism." I
have searched for it on websites where I find most books
I need, including
rare, out of print ones, but I can't find it.
Thank you so much for your very kind comments. You
can order the book from me, or you can have your local bookstore special
order it.
If you want it direct, you may send a check for $15
(includes postage) payable to Mark Fancher, P.O. Box 4112, Ann Arbor,
MI 48106. Thank
you again. Victory is certain.
Freedom Rider
Columnist Margaret Kimberley
brings an enthusiastic and growing audience to these pages, weekly.
Her January 1 piece, “Shoshana
Johnson and the Gangsters of War,” tackled the
tricky question of how to separate the actions and
statements of individual American
soldiers from the crimes and objectives of Bush’s Iraq war.
When Johnson
was recently discharged she said that she didn’t
regret her military career. I find it very difficult to believe that
she is telling the truth. A mere $500 per month is not enough money
to justify being shot in both ankles, held prisoner, and suffer post
traumatic stress. In my latest fantasy I hear Iraq war veterans say
the following. “I got screwed. I was sent on a fool’s errand
and I’m mad. I wish I had taken out college loans instead of
believing that stupid commercial that said I would be an army of one.
If I had it to do over again I wouldn’t go.”
Robert Allender has some thoughts on the subject, from Charleston,
West Virginia.
I enjoyed your article and the overall point made
by the late Gen. Butler was well taken. However, you miss one point
with the words you
would like for Ms. Johnson to have said:
" ...
I wish I had taken out college loans instead of believing that
stupid commercial that said I would be an
army of one. ..."
If the option of obtaining a college degree and
well-paying job was available to everyone, then the Army would never
be able to meet
any enlistment quota. However, we know there
are several problems for graduating high school students (please note
I do not mean to imply
that any of these may or may not apply to Ms. Johnson individually):
1. The
cost of attendance in residence at almost any state college or
university is not taken care of by financial aid
plus the "expected
family contribution." Thus, unless a family has the means and
will to contribute substantially more than "expected," that
option won't work.
2. A two-year degree at a local community college
here in West Virginia will help you obtain an $8.50 per hour job with
something that more
or less could pass off as health insurance,
as opposed to the going rate of $6.50 to $7 for high school grads without
the benefit of this
training. While enrollment rates in these
programs is relatively high, the lack of opportunity does function
as a deterrent.
3. And finally, and most importantly, there are
millions of high school graduates who have neither the aptitude nor
the interest in
attending college. These individuals also
deserve decent employment, not dreams that someday 97 percent of Americans
will obtain college
degrees. And throughout history, these
are the individuals who have borne the brunt of infantry service.
The unrepentant preacher
Ms. Kimberley reached lots
of pews in various denominations with her December 25 column, “Rev.
Henry Lyons: Repentant or Still Scheming?” Lyons was, in Ms.
Kimberley’s words, a “fraud
and a thief” who in 1998 “pled
guilty to tax evasion, embezzlement and
grand theft committed while he served
as president of the National
Baptist Convention, USA Inc., the largest
black denomination in America.” She
doesn’t believe the recently released
minister has sincerely changed his ways,
and cautions against welcoming him so
soon back to
the fold.
The Lyons
saga should be an opportunity for introspection for others as well.
I admit that until the scandal broke I did not
know who headed
the NBC although I belong to a member
church. I am still uninvolved with church affairs. Lyons thievery was
committed in part because of
this detachment and subsequent lack
of oversight. When combined with knee jerk reactions to defend black
people in trouble and “don’t
criticize the preacher” attitudes,
it is easy for the Lyons of the world
to do their worst.
A reader named Dave bears witness to gross materialism among some
clergy.
Thank you so much for saying what a lot of other
feel but don't have the platform to express ourselves.
I live in Philadelphia and was invited to present
a program showing churches how to develop programs for ex-offenders,
last spring. Before
I could present, the 15 or so local
ministers were discussing how much money they would send to Rev. Lyons
this year because they had done
this since his incarceration. It
totally amazed me that with all the priorities of life and death issues
surrounding our communities, sending
money to this felon occupied a significant
period of time. Of course I was grilled about where the money would
come from to help ex-offenders
from the community and unless I could
tell them where to get the money, forget ex-offenders.
By the
way, I got lost going to the church and was unsure until I saw the
Lexus's, BMW's, and other high-end cars parked outside and
then knew I had to be at the right place.
David Williams describes
himself as a former “bible thumper” who
turned away in disgust.
I'm a Black
Commentator subscriber who awaits anxiously each Thursday for you
to deliver your weekly, precious pearls of wisdom.
And this
week, you hit a homerun that
would make Josh Gibson blush! I, too, was a Bible thumping Missionary
Baptist, who became disillusioned with
some con-artist-styled "Pastuhs" who used the Bible and Black
folks' predicament of "dire straits" to
fleece the flock. I converted
to Islam for a few years
and now am back trying to
fit
into the Missionary Baptist scheme of things once again.
You wouldn't believe it,
but maybe you would, but here in Indianapolis, we have two big
time, mega-ministers who are
playing king of the hill
with Black folks' hard earned
money. One minister will build a mega-church one month and seemingly,
the next month be outmatched by the other
mega-minister. One newly
arrived "Pastuh" has convinced his
flock (hmmm) to buy him a jet plane so that he can fly to his "other" church
down south every other week. The flock agreed and now he has new jet
plane, but wait a minute...his wife is asking for a matching jet for
her travel. Ms. Kimberley, I kid you not. Some "Pastuhs" here
are more concerned with big mansions, multi-Mercedes and trying to
be Pacer star, Reggie Millers' next door neighbor while in the inner-cities,
Black folks are losing jobs, homes, getting on welfare and losing faith
in God. There used to be a time when some "Pastuhs" believed
in saving souls but now it seems like it’s getting to be a "Pimp
Hustle." When will we
wake up and drive out the
money changers?
There are some decent, sincere African-American ministers who truly
are about the word, but the insincere, con-artists get all the ink!!!
Whose Congressman is it, anyway?
Baltimore Rep. Elijah Cummings,
Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, was getting ready to
endorse Howard Dean for President in early
December when, according
to newspaper reports, some local Jewish “leaders” threatened
to make trouble for Cummings
in his home district. They didn’t
approve of Dean’s stance
on Israel. The Cummings endorsement
went forward, anyway, but
the incident once again raised
questions about Black political
independence. Margaret Kimberley
explored the
issue in her December 18
column, “Congressional
Black Caucus – Target
of Pro-Israel Lobby.”
Members
of the Congressional Black Caucus have been particularly vulnerable
to the pressures exerted by the pro-Israel
lobby. In 2002
Cynthia McKinney of
Georgia and Earl Hilliard of Alabama were both defeated by challengers
who
raised large sums of money from Jewish
groups outside of their
states. Both McKinney and Hilliard committed the sin of being even
handed. The message was not lost on other members
of the Congressional Black Caucus. Toe the line or lose your seat….
The issues raised by this concentration of power effect more than
the election chances of
black politicians. The same forces that give black politicians pause
when dealing with Israel also helped bring
about the disastrous American
invasion of Iraq. The neo-conservatives who run Bush foreign police
advocated this war partly on the premise
that getting rid of Saddam
Hussein was good for Israel. I wonder when someone will experience
an epiphany and figure out that expanding settlements
on the West Bank hurts Israel.
Ms. Kimberley’s column
seems to have irritated Rabbi Michael Lerner, publisher of Tikkun,
the magazine that describes itself
as “the liberal alternative to the voices of Jewish conservatism.”
In a recent article you wrote about the pressure
to support Ariel Sharon's policies on Black politicians, you gave no
mention of the
existence of a strong
pro-peace voice in the Jewish world, led by The Tikkun Community. Did
you not see the full page ad we recently bought
in the NY Times in
support of the Geneva Accord? Have you not been aware of our activities?
If not, would you please do something to rectify
this in a future column
by suggesting to your readers that they a) join the Tikkun community
(co-chaired by Cornel West, Professor at
Princeton U. and Susannah
Heschel, chair of Jewish
Studies at Dartmouth) and b) come to the Teach-In to Congress in support
of the Geneva Accord
for Middle East Peace which will take place in D.C. April 24-27th.
To get the full picture
of our perspective on why the only way to be pro-Israel is to be
pro-Palestine as well, and
the only way to be
pro-Palestine is
to be pro-Israel as well (we call this our "progressive
Middle Path), please
read our website www.tikkun.org or
subscribe to Tikkun Magazine or read my new book Healing Israel/Palestine.
I am aware of the Tikkun Community and its support
of the Geneva peace accord. However, the purpose of my column was to
bring attention
to those forces
whose intolerance for differing views has posed such a grave danger
to America and to the world.
I applaud your
efforts but frankly
it is far more
important for readers
to be aware of
the challenge
posed by the anti-peace
elements
who are committed
to silencing those
who do not move
to their marching
orders. McKinney
and Hilliard are
no longer in Congress
because their local
constituencies
and larger constituencies
across the country
were surprised
by the effort to
defeat them and
were therefore
unprepared
to marshal the
financial and political support that might
have kept them
in office. I find
it amusing that
current members
of Congress
used precious
time to discuss
whether the name "French" should
be applied to
a fried potato
but others have
been removed who
spoke to one of
the most serious
issues of our time.
In the interests
of
our democracy
we must not allow
the fate of McKinney
and Hilliard to
be repeated again.
Adam Engel, a New York City
writer, says there’s no point in
trying to mollify Zionists.
I've so
thoroughly "had it" with Israel, from the propaganda
they tried to drum into my head in Hebrew School, to the current Nazi-like
suppression of Palestinians, that I believe I've lost my ability to
think "even
handedly."
I write columns
for CounterPunch,
and it is interesting
that, though
I point out that
I'm no more "Jewish" in
my beliefs than
I am Muslim or
Catholic, I am
often labeled "self-hating
Jew" for
criticizing
a Nation State
that has nothing
to do with
me or my ethnicity,
much less religion
(of which I
have none).
Be that as
it may, I think
the Democrats
showed their
true colors
when they refused
to stand up
for Cynthia
McKinney. She
was a victim
of Republican
shenanigans
and New York
area Zionist
money, yet
not a word
was said in
her defense
by the "leading
Democrats."
In fact,
the only words
of criticism
for Israel's
barbarity and
AIPAC’s
frightening
influence (after
all, Israel,
despite the
so called "special
relationship" is
NOT America;
it's citizens
should be no
more important
to the decisions
of Congress
than French
or Egyptian
citizens) seem
to come from
black members
of Congress,
and they must
pay dearly
for them. It
is precisely
Dean's "support" for
Israel that
cancels him
out, on my
list, as someone
who will be
considerably
different from
Bush. But it's
never enough.
One must bow
to the right
wing fundamentalist
Christians
and Jewish
Zionists in
absolute submission,
or one does
not "support
Israel," or
for that matter,
America.
Those who support U.S. policy in the mid-east in general, and Israel's
suppression
of the Palestinians in particular have no right, as you intimated,
to feign shock or surprise when the next suicide bomber
literally blows up in their face.
Mark Bruzonsky publishes
Mid-East Realities. That makes him persona non grata to the
Israel lobby, which, he says, tries to enforce
the political quarantine.
Thank you
very much for the article about the Israeli Lobby and the CBC. Years
ago now, when the First Intifada was raging,
CBC held
a hearing and
when they agreed to let myself and a colleague “testify,” the
then Executive Director of AIPAC (Tom Dine) pulled out.
Marcus Wilder sees deep
and cruel irony in all the talk about Israeli “vulnerability.”
Thank you
Ms. Kimberley it seems someone has the guts to speak the truth. I
personally find it quite disturbing that
my brother is currently
serving
in Iraq to rid Saddam of WMD, just in case he decides to attack Israel,
when that country is the only country in the Middle East with
the nuclear
bomb! But they are defenseless – just how stupid
does this administration think I am!
Minister Ajabu approaches the subject from a very different angle.
I just read your article concerning the reservations
that Cummings had about endorsing Dean. Even though the endorsement
was carried out,
it still
raises the question for me; why do we as people of African descent
have to seek other people to look out for our interest. Why
does not
some black elected official have the nerve to say we should initially
support Sharpton, who is of our kind? Once the primary is
over then
we can negotiate our support for the winner if the winner is not Sharpton.
Are we afraid to be free?
Dean’s superlatives
Our logs indicate a steady
stream of visitors continue to arrive at our December 11 Cover Story,
“Dean Makes
Racial-Political History.” Some
undoubtedly
believe
that we
have endorsed
Dean’s
candidacy,
which is
not true.
But we
did use
the strongest
superlatives
to describe
Dean’s
December
7 speech
on race: “Not
since Lyndon
Johnson
vowed to
harness
the power
of the
federal
government
to redress
the historical
grievances
of Black
America
has a potential
or sitting
President
made such
a clear
case against
racism
as a political
and economic
instrument – and
even Johnson
failed
to indict
corporate
interests,
or anyone
in particular,
for wielding
race as
a political
weapon.
Howard
Dean points
the finger
straight
at executive
boardrooms,
and directly implicates members of his own party in the coded conspiracy.”
The corporate media, who nowadays act more like bookmakers than journalists,
took little note of the Columbia, South Carolina speech:
In 1968,
Richard Nixon won the White House. He did it in a shameful way – by
dividing Americans against one another, stirring up racial prejudices
and bringing out the worst in
people.
They called
it the "Southern Strategy," and the Republicans
have been using it ever since. Nixon pioneered it, and Ronald Reagan
perfected it, using phrases like "racial quotas" and "welfare
queens" to
convince
white
Americans
that
minorities
were
to
blame
for all of America's problems.
The Republican Party would never win elections if
they came out and said their core agenda was about selling America
piece by piece
to
their campaign contributors and making sure that wealth and power is
concentrated in the hands of a few.
To distract people from their real agenda, they
run elections based on race, dividing us, instead of uniting us.
Portia Anderson was impressed.
I am again
hopeful. To hear a mainstream white candidate speak so clearly on
how a wealthy class of political campaigners use
the politics
of hate and lies to pit white folk against black folk and others is
stunning. I hope it isn't an aberration. And I hope white folk can
really shed their seemingly comfortable place of self-delusion and
see the real center of their problems: It ain't black folk. Thanks
for your wonderful and insightful coverage.
Whose trial is it, anyway?
The trial of Saddam Hussein
(, December 18),
should it ever take place, must be conducted in a way that compliments
George Bush’s
re-election campaign, conforms to standards of international law,
satisfies Iraqi notions of justice, and somehow avoids implicating
the United
States in Hussein’s
CIA-assisted rise to power and subsequent domestic and
international depredations.
It is difficult
to imagine that the administration would allow such a productive
proceeding to occur. However, events
since Saddam’s
capture…confirm
that the Bush men are incapable
of escaping, or even recognizing,
the trap they have set for
themselves, one that
is likely to accelerate
the dissolution of their
fragile arrangements with
the Iraqi appointees, and
seems certain to further
alienate world opinion.
Mark King has plenty of Saddam trial scenarios floating around in
his head.
Although any trial decided upon should blow up in
their faces, I think, unfortunately, they've got contingency plans
they don't intend
us to find out about; among them, perhaps:
(a) suitable
open-court testimony – in return
for a nominal sentence and then profitable exile for him and his
family in the Witness
Protection Program – from
a powerful minion like
Tariq Aziz; who might
also give location-points
in
the desert of pre-planted
WMD evidence;
(b) Hussein being found conveniently dead in his
cell from suicide or heart-attack before his court appearance;
(c) postponing the trial until early November, before damage
is done at the hustings.
And other carefully planned
covert scenarios which I'm sure are being considered right now and
which most Americans will be easily guided
away from suspecting.
In the absence of an acceptable arbiter of justice, Mary Gravitt
seeks guidance elsewhere.
There is no way in this world or the next to come
that Saddam can get a fair trial. There is an old Negro Folktale about
a chicken getting
a fair trial when the judge is a fox and the jury is composed of foxes.
I don't know what Saddam did because all that are accusing him
are liars, but in order for him to do what he did he had to have plenty
of help from both the United States and Britain alike as well
as for those 59 Other Welfare States that form the Coalition of the
Willing.
Like the Prophet that the Bush insiders claim to serve and model
themselves on and after, said to those about to stone the woman who
committed adultery: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Hollow Hip Hop “politics”
Having been marketed as
a “life style” and “culture” through
which to sell billions of dollars in merchandise, Hip Hop now provides
the background ambiance for political hustlers seeking instant authenticity
among the vast, commodified (and steadily aging) consumer cohorts.
What a racket! Harvard’s
Dr. Martin Kilson has seen snake
oil salesman of all kinds come
and go in his 72 years. Back on
July 17
of last year, Kilson took aim
at the new class of pretenders in
his Think Piece, “The Pretense
of Hip-Hop Black Leadership.”
The fact
of the matter is, there’s nothing
whatever that’s
seriously radical or progressive about hip-hop ideas and values. It
is sad that there are university academics among us like Michael Dyson
and Todd Boyd (respectively at the University of Pennsylvania and
University of California) who fail to recognize the political emptiness
of most
hip-hop expression. Hip-hop entertainers and its entertainment modalities
do not represent a “new worldview” for African Americans.
Quite the contrary, the “hip-hop worldview” is
nothing other than an updated
face on the old-hat, crude, anti-humanistic
values of hedonism and materialism.
Chauncey H. Robinson ran
across Dr. Kilson’s piece, and immediately
connected.
The article by Dr. Martin Kilson was right on time.
As a 29 year old member of the Hip Hop Generation, I view Michael Dyson,
and Tavis
Smiley as minstrel and side show. Nothing can compare to the sacrifices,
blood, sweat, and tears that our predecessors contributed. Lately,
Michael Dyson, Tavis Smiley and company are holding a tour throughout
the country called Pass the Mic at a cost of $50 plus. The civil rights
movement was about sacrifice. Unfortunately, Michael Dyson and Tavis
Smiley seek capitalism.
Compliments from Iraq
We were delighted to receive this holiday message from Buthaina Alnasiri.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
I would like to tell you that your website is one of the best designed
ever. Congratulation. I am an Iraqi woman writer and I sometimes
republish some of your articles (after translating them into Arabic)
in my website
(www.iraqpatrol.com) which is in Arabic.
Wishing you the best.
www.blackcommentator.com
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