Table of Contents

There are 17 chapters in this issue

About BlackCommentator.com

Cover Story: Homeland Terrorism - Not an Excuse for Demagoguery By BC Guest Commentator Rosa Santos

Terrorthon - Political Cartoon By Zapiro, South Africa

Quote to Ponder: "Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.” - Harry Belafonte

How Do You Spell 'Terrorism'? - The African World - By Bill Fletcher, Jr. - BC Editorial Board

Getting To The Roots Of Terror - Understanding How The Boston Marathon Turned Into The Boston Massacre - A View from the Battlefield By Jamala Rogers, BC Editorial Board

Detained 11 Years in Gitmo - Political Cartoon By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

Will Boston Marathon Bombing Rev Up Islamophobic Domestic Terrorists? - Inclusion - By The Reverend Irene Monroe - BC Editorial Board

America on “Tip-Toe” Stance: Reflections of the Birmingham Jail Letter in the Aftermath of Boston - Between The Lines - By Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad, PhD - BC Columnist

Education Yes, but Young Workers Need Jobs Now - Left Margin - By Carl Bloice - BC Editorial Board

What a Difference a Word Makes - Solidarity America - By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

Peace and Justice Woman - Art By Shepard Fairey

Tracheal Intubatio - Nafsi ya Jamii - By Wilson Riles - BC Columnist

“Hatred Begets Hatred, and Terrorism Begets Terrorism” - Represent Our Resistance - By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD - BC Editorial Board

Barack Obama - Keeping the Nation Mired in Ignorance & Fear - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

Guilty until Proven Innocent - Did Boston Police Target the Wrong Suspects for the Marathon Bombing? - The 5th Column - By Jonathan David Farley, D.Phil - BC Columnist

NYC Library Sale - Political Cartoon By Mark Hurwitt, Brooklyn NY

This is an eBook version of BlackCommentator.com - An independent weekly internet magazine dedicated to the movement for economic justice, social justice and peace.

BC Provides commentary, analysis and investigations on issues affecting African Americans and the African world.

BC was established April 5, 2002 and is published weekly on Thursday.

Executive Editor: David A. Love, JD - Managing Editor: Nancy Littlefield, MBA - Publisher: Peter Gamble

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

Members of the BCEditorial Board represent African Americans and the African world. Theyare dedicated activists, thinkers and writers. The BC Editorial Board includes the following in alphabetical order by last name:

Lola Adesioye, Carl Bloice,Julian Bond, Rose Brewer PhD, Horace Campbell PhD, Imani Countess,Lenore Jean Daniels PhD, Bill Fletcher Jr., James Jennings PhD, BadiliJones, Martin Kilson PhD, Sharon Kyle JD, David A. Love JD, JulianneMalveaux PhD, Manning Marable PhD, Syreeta McFadden, The Reverend IreneMonroe, Leith Mullings PhD, Jacqui Patterson, Larry Pinkney, StevenPitts PhD, Barbara Ransby PhD, Jamala Rogers, Ethel Long-Scott, Amy V.Simmons, William L. (Bill) Strickland, Chuck Turner, Nathaniel Turner,Ron Walters PhD, Emira Woods, Jeanne Woods JD.

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

My sense of justice and compassion for the victims of violence is precisely why I feel I have to say something. The United States, in general, and the Boston community in particular, experienced not just a threat to their safety but an actual attack on their security; an attack against individuals, families and communities the moment that the two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon on the afternoon of April 15, 2013. The 9/11 attack in New York as well as the Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, CT, among others, flung affected communities and the United States into a sense of chaos, insecurity, grief and anger. No one, in their right mind, would declare it is not so.

Coming from a Third World country, I am quite familiar with the face of terrorism. My country experienced it in the Philippine-American War (1899-1911), in the form of naked aggression against my people by the government of the United States. It has continued to this day through low intensity conflict strategies, joint US-Philippines military exercises, and extra judicial killings of Filipino activists (and civilians), blatantly ignored by the US government and objectively supported by their ally, the government of the Philippines. I am tempted to say to the people of the United States: “So now you know how it feels when you are under siege”. I had this similar reaction during the 9/11 attack. I reigned in these feeling out of respect to those who have fallen during these violent events. And I did not want my sentiments to be misunderstood, as if I were somehow cavalier regarding the loss of life. I am anything but.

The reaction of Bostonians as well as New Yorkers was that “We shall overcome” and that “we would come together and let this not defeat us. We are strong!” And yes, it is reasonable for people of the United States to fight, even violently, to eliminate their source of insecurity.

And so, Boston was shut down and the law enforcers did their best to capture the suspect for the sake of the community’s security and well-being. It was emotional and even dramatic as the news unfolded minute by minute. As expected, the city’s sense of insecurity came to an end with the death of the older “terrorist” and the capture of the younger brother. The citizens of Boston as well as the rest of the United States cheered in relief and applauded the law enforcers. I shared a sense of relief that the suspects were no longer running free.

Yet, I had to wonder when would the people of the United States realize that a similar scenario is also happening continuously in Syria, Gaza, Philippines, Nicaragua and other parts of the world, and has been for a very long time now. Communities in these countries are under siege, often from death squads, paramilitaries and also government troops, frequently supported by the United States government. These communities have every right to protect themselves and resist the aggression against them. Yet this resistance and the efforts to protect themselves against what terrorizes them has been met by more aggression from the U.S. and made worse by labeling them as terrorists for defending their homeland against foreign invasion. Before anyone tries to dismiss my arguments as allegedly excusing terrorists, let me be quite clear that nothing stated here negates the threat from terrorists, i.e., those who use military means against civilians in order to advance political purposes. The question in this case is: Who terrorizes whom?

My point, and one that may be difficult for many people to address at this moment, is that the people of Boston, or the rest of the United States are not alone in their sense of insecurity. There are more people out there who are under threat or in actual warfare for not just a week but for years now. The challenge is for the people of the United States to look beyond themselves and see what is on the other side of the world and the role of their own government in fostering violence and hatred locally and globally. Reducing violence and terrorism is a two-way process.

This is a complicated moment. It is a moment of relief but also a moment to reflect. Americans should not allow bigotry, labeling and racism to rule their judgment of what is just and compassionate. It will be quite easy in the coming days, weeks and months, for demagoguery to prevail; to return to the Islamophobic attacks, suggesting that all terrorists are Muslim, as if no one ever heard the name Timothy McVeigh. It will be easy to blind ourselves to the terrorism that takes place overseas, often with the support of our own government.

As a community struggles to overcome terrorism from the outside, so must this cultivate a culture that is just and compassionate inside of their own walls and radiating among those gathered at the edge.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Rosa Santos, is a former human rights activist from the Philippines who knows all too well about terror having had half of her relatives killed or 'disappeared' during the US-supported Marcos dictatorship. Contact Ms. Santos.

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

Jonathan Shapiro is a South African cartoonist, famous as Zapiro, whose work appears in numerous South African publications and has been exhibited internationally on many occasions.

Licensing & Syndication Rights

Zapiro is always keen that his cartoons are published as widely as possible. There are many circumstances where the use of Zapiro cartoons can help you get your message across or increase the sales of your publication. For example:

- syndication for regular use in a newspaper or magazine

- on websites and other promotional materials

- in fan websites dedicated to Zapiro or cartooning in general

- in reports and books to emphasise or illustrate issues

- in printed and online collections of cartoons either by Zapiro or by cartoonists in general.

Whatever your use please only use Zapiro's cartoons for your own website, publication or presentation once you've got his prior consent — they are both his livelihood and his copyright.

Normally permission will be granted quite readily provided that your use doesn't conflict with or misrepresent the message in the cartoon. Sometimes there will be a fee for using the cartoon(s) — particularly for commercial or quasi-commercial purposes.

For further information about licensing Zapiro's cartoons please click here to make a Licensing Enquiry.

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

More about Harry Belafonte

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

The bombings in Boston left me with a feeling of having been kicked in the stomach. They represented an atrocity. And in the immediate aftermath I kept thinking about not only the actual victims of the bombings but also my friends in the Boston area who could have become victims of, if not that bombing, further bombings.

The killing of one suspect and the apprehending of the second, therefore, was satisfying to many people, affected as we were not only by the brutality of the killings and woundings, but as well by the arbitrariness associated with the bombings.

Until the identification of the suspects, there were multiple discussions of which I was part where there was speculation as to the identity of the murderers. In virtually every discussion at least one person said the same thing: "...I hope that they were white supremacists because if they were foreign-born, there will be a racist and anti-foreign reaction..." And so, for the last week there have been some interesting exchanges about just that question. The identity of the suspects as Chechens complicates reactions since they are generally classified as "white" when they come to the USA but they are also, in his case, Muslim. Ugh, amazing how white supremacy makes everything so difficult!

There remains this open question - if not open wound - as to how we, in the USA, understand terrorism. I do not mean the question of whether President Obama should have used the word "terrorism" in describing the Boston bombing - a reference that brings with it certain legal implications - but rather how regular people understand terrorism.

The BC Cover Story this week is a commentary on just this question, focusing on the international implications. The other side of the coin is domestic. Specifically, terrorism is, in fact, being used in the USA as a word to describe political killings that serve a political motive that arbitrarily place white people in danger. Terrorism, though having no official international definition, is the explicit targeting of civilians ("soft targets") for political reasons. But the additional words I am adding in my definition reflect how terrorism is defined in real terms in the USA.

In examining the history of the USA there are countless examples of terrorism. The destruction of Native American villages; the lynchings of African Americans and Chicanos; the burning of the Asian homes and persons...the list could go on. There are specific organizations that have engaged in various forms of terrorist activity, e.g., the Ku Klux Klan, Black Guard, Posse Comitatus. Rarely, unless discussed by those on the Left, are such incidents and organizations described as "terrorist." Sometimes they are called "extremists", sometimes other terms are used; generally they are thought of as crazy or misguided; but rarely are they understood to be manifestations of terrorism, and in some cases, state-sponsored terrorism (i.e., sponsored by specific components of government in order to conduct extra-legal actions).

Subsequent to the Boston bombings many commentators discussed this as the first successful terrorist action conducted in the USA since the 11 September 2001 attacks. Yet such an assertion is patently untrue. First, the actual motivations of the suspects remains far from clear. Were they, for instance, driven by a coherent world view, e.g., Timothy McVeigh, or were they living in their own fantasy world or driven by personal demons, e.g., Columbine? Second, in the years since 9/11 there have been numerous police assaults on civilians, not to mention right-wing attacks and killings directed at people of color, or in some cases, as we have recently seen, representatives of the government. Yet these actions are not described by the elite media as terrorist.

What we found, in the aftermath of Boston, is a reminder that when violence, arbitrary or targeted, is conducted against people of color, the elite classifies it as anything but terrorism. When, on the other hand, violence directly affects whites or when the arbitrariness of it has the potential to negatively affect, whites, it becomes terrorism. It is this sense that violence against people of color - and in fact other dispossessed groups - can somehow be contained and not affect the 'legitimate' population that results in a de-sensitization of white America to the atrocities that befall those of us who have experienced the underside of the 'American Dream.'

The confusion that currently exists surrounding how to understand the motivations of those who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings should offer us all an opportunity to re-open a discussion not only about terrorism in the current moment, but about the manner in which terror has been a central component of the development of the USA, whether utilized against people of color, or utilized against any significant portion of the population that threatened the status quo.

In the mean time, our hearts go out to the families of those who were murdered on April 15th, and to the individuals who were wounded as a result of the sociopathic act witnessed and replayed to millions.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum, and the author of “They’re Bankrupting Us” - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions. He is also the co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice, which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

This country faces terrorist threats from home and abroad. I suggest that Americans pull themselves from the bowels of reality TV, from the drowning waters of excessive consumerism and other distractions to pay attention to U.S. foreign policies. Civilians in other countries are paying very close attention.

The world knows that the U.S. military invaded Iraq under false pretenses. According to the Costs of War Project, nearly 200,000 Iraqis died and the country’s infrastructure was decimated. The invasion costs U.S. taxpayers about $2 trillion adding to the financial crises we are still drowning in. The costs of taking care of veterans from the Iraq War and rebuilding Iraq will take additional billions over the next several years. From all accounts, the war invigorated Islamic radicals and created fertile ground for new recruits who experienced first hand the death and destruction around them caused by the U.S. military.

The existence of Guantanamo Bay remains a thorny policy. Despite President Obama’s promise to close it, Gitmo remains open, housing 166 men who have never been charged with anything and therefore have never been given a day in court. Many of the detainees have been held at Gitmo for a decade despite a call by the United Nations to shut it down. Amnesty International has documented torture and abuse at the camp which has now been met with a hunger strike by half of the detainees. What do they have to lose?

The world is acutely aware of the deadly havoc that U.S. drones are creating. Just like in the tragedy of Newtown where innocent children were killed and maimed, U.S. drones are doing the same thing in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. Our sensibilities about these deaths seem to be tempered by the notion that drones are justified in the war on terror. Some experts on terrorism are arguing that the policy is creating more terrorists than the U.S. military can ever kill.

Add to all of the above the U.S. forked-tongue policy that financially and politically supports Israel while at the same time mouthing the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Then there’s rendition. There’s U.S.financing of mercenaries and other rogue forces around the globe whose main goal is to undermine legitimate, democratically elected governments.

Stir in the racial profiling of black, brown and Muslim citizens. CNN has not issued an apology for John King’s report that the FBI was looking for a “dark-skinned man.”

Yes, the peoples of the world are taking notes.

The cumulative impact of these acts of violence continues to take its toll in different ways. We must demand the transparency the Obama Administration promised. We must know what’s being done in our name in other countries where U.S. military and U.S. corporations are destroying the lives, culture and land of sovereign nations. Where those acts are illegal, the American people must rise up to end them; where they are immoral, we must at least have an open and honest discussion about it. I believe both of these would go a long ways in turning off the spigot of violence in the world.

While we mourn the families and loved ones touched by the Boston bombings, it’s high-time that U.S. citizens stop asking rhetorical questions and start asking pointed questions that get us to the root causes of terrorism and other forms of violence. It is equally important that we stand firm on democratic principles regardless of who is the victim and who is the perpetrator.

“How could this happen here?” is a dead end question to the acts of violence that are happening with more frequency and with more intensity. “Why does this happen?” will at least get us to looking at root causes. Then would come the difficult part - doing something about the conditions that nurture and promote violence.

I encourage progressive activists and organizers to come out of the blogosphere and educate their communities about why domestic attacks are likely to persist. We must help our communities grasp the interconnection between violence and injustice. “If you want peace, you must fight for justice” is more than a slogan on a tee shirt being worn by the chickens coming home to roost. It’s a starting point for understanding the human response to enduring inequities and merciless repression.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Jamala Rogers, is the leader of the Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis and the Black Radical Congress National Organizer. Additionally, she is an Alston-Bannerman Fellow. She is the author of The Best of the Way I See It – A Chronicle of Struggle. Click here to contact Ms. Rogers.

Apr 25, 2013 -Issue 514

BlackCommentator.com cartoonist/artist Eric Garcia produces "historically based, politically charged criticism, with the goal of creating dialogue about contemporary issues”. That’s how Garcia describes his artwork. A versatile artist working in an assortment of media, from paintings, to hand-printed posters, to sculpture installations, Garcia’s art has a common goal of educating and challenging. Click here to contact brother Eric. His website is southvalleyart.com. Follow Eric on twitter garciaink@twitter.com or friend Eric J. Garcia on facebook.

Apr 25, 2013 -Issue 514

The Tsarnaev brothers - Tamerlan and Dzhokhar - of Cambridge, MA are, at present, the sole perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar are of Chechen descent and are also Muslim.

“Please, God don’t let it be a Muslim.” This was Arsalan Iftikhar’s immediate thought upon hearing of the Boston Marathon bombing.

In fact, since 9/11, Iftikhar has had that thought about every bombing and mass shooting in every corner of the world, but particularly in his home country, the U.S. The April 2007 Virginia Tech shooting; the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting the 2012 Colorado movie theater massacre; the December 2012 Newton school shooting all had him hoping the perpetrator wasn’t Muslim. Iftikhar, senior editor with Islamic Monthly, and popular blogger of “The Muslim Guy,” worried (like so many peace loving and law-abiding Muslims did) that an onslaught of Islamophobic vitriol and violence would follow violence committed by a Muslim.

His fear is, sadly, rooted in fact. Just hours after news spread globally about the Boston tragedy, anti-Muslim vigilantes surfaced. NPR reported that just outside of Boston, a woman wearing a hijab (traditional headscarf worn by Muslim women) was attacked while strolling with her baby. In New York, a Bangladeshi man was accosted, resulting in having his shoulder dislocated by someone who yelled Islamophobic epithets.

Ruslan Tsarni, the Tsarnaev brothers’ uncle, expressed thoughts about collective guilt when he told news reporters that his nephews brought shame upon all Chechens.

“They’ve never been in Chechnya. This has nothing to do with Chechnya. Chechens are different. Chechens are peaceful people.... He put a shame on our family,” Tsarni told the reporters. “He put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity.”

But the weight of the brothers’ actions bares not only a collective guilt placed on Chechens as Tsarni expressed, it also places a collective shame and backlash on Muslims, as Iftikhar worries.

“The term terrorism in post-9/11 America has sort of been co-opted to really only apply when it’s brown, Muslim men... Already today, I have received several pieces of hate mail in my email inbox and I think many brown people in America are feeling very nervous right now,” Iftikhar told NPR.

And Iftikhar’s fears are not unfounded.

Salon magazine writer, David Sirota, expressed similar concerns. In his article, “Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber is a White American,” he stated, “There is a double standard: White terrorists are dealt with as lone wolves, Islamists are existential threats.”

And Tim Wise, one of the most prominent white American anti-racist writers and educators in the United States, wrote a similar article soon after the bombing titled, “Terrorism and Privilege: Understanding the Power of Whiteness.”

“White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation,” Wise wrote. “White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”

In August 2012, Wade Michael Page, an American white supremacist, Neo-Nazi and U.S. army veteran, murdered six Sihks and wounded several others at a Sihk temple in Wisconsin. Sihk males wear turbans and are often mistaken as Muslim terroists. Page’s act was aptly depicted by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder as “an act of terrorism, an act of hatred, a hate crime.”

Immediately following the Boston bombing several “Muslim-looking” suspects were apprehended to the chagrin of law enforcement, who later released them and offered an apology.

Not much has changed since September 11, 2001.

I’m reminded of a 2002 incident when Ayman Gheith, Kambiz Butt and Omar Chaudhary were then our poster boys of what it means to be “traveling while Muslim.” At a Shoney’s restaurant in Calhoun, Georgia, just two days after the one-year anniversary of 9/11, patron Eunice Stone heard the three men unabashedly discuss their supposedly conspiratorial plot to detonate a bomb in Miami. And Gheith, who had a long beard and wore a Muslim skullcap, cemented Stone’s suspicion.

In an interview on CNN that year , Ayman Gheith said, “I learned that injustice, regardless against whom, is wrong. It is against us today, tomorrow it could be against you.”

As I ask myself the question Gheith posed about who will be America’s next suspect, I am reminded of the pink triangle, a symbol known to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer community worldwide. The pink triangle dates back to the Nazi Holocaust when gay men were prisoners and confined to death camps because of their sexuality. Relegated to the lowest rung in the death camps’ hierarchy, gay prisoners were forced to wear the symbol which signified their rank, thus, making them among the first to die.

Suspicion of the “other” has always abounded in the psyche and soul of this country. And oddly, the suspicion of the “other‚” does not have to be a person who is an alien to this country or a person who is a stranger to this country’s morals or mores. Suspicion of the “other” is simply predicated on just being different.

And being different, these days, exacts a particular toll not just on Muslims, or African Americans or LGBTQ people. It exacts a toll on us all.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to MSNBC’s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not’So’Everyday Moments. As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Click here to contact the Rev. Monroe.

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

We send our prayers to the people of Boston, and the victims, of what our President called an “act of terror,” after two bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon. Tragedy, like terrorism, is colorless. We should have compassion for any and all persons in times of tragedy, and we should rebuke terrorism, in all its forms. The evil behind such an act, or those responsible for any acts of terror, should be brought to justice. With God’s permission, they will be brought to justice, for no one has a greater sense of justice than God. But now, the nation has again been reminded of its vulnerabilities in the return of the uncertainties that accompany random acts of terror. Each act “changes our lives” forever, changes how we socialize, changes how we congregate and changes how we see the world.

Another “new normal” in a world that is not so normal anymore.

Our compassion for and empathy with those directly affected by this sort of tragedy is a sensible, rational, humane and socially responsible response, but it doesn’t change the sobering realities of our new normality. We now have to be overly concerned about where we are and who is around us. As irrational terrorism has been racialized over the past twelve years (since 9/11/2001), xenophobia only foments our suspicions. America is back on “‘tip-toe stance,’ never knowing what to expect next, and is now plagued with inner fears and outer resentment,” to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tip-Toe Stance is a state of alarm, or anticipation, that hostility is a social constant and danger situations are always imminent. It is a quote from another time, in another irrational moment in our nation’s history. This lexicon is not specific to the events of Boston.

The Boston bombing only reminds us of a time when the national conscience had to be pricked and compassion had to be massaged to emit empathy (or sympathy) for innocent victims of terrorism in America. The lexicon associated with eminent fears amid imminent dangers was introduced into the societal conscience by letter, a letter now considered one of the ten most significant documents of the 20th Century. The original subject of my column this week was on the importance of a single letter. In deference to the tragedies of the moment, we can draw parallels around tragedy and terrorism in America that have significance in understanding why we all must be compassionate and vigilant in stemming irrational terrorism in the aftermath of the Boston tragedy. Why? Because it hasn’t always been the case in America. Not for everyone.

Fifty years ago this week (April 16th), Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. was in the midst of what was considered his most controversial direct action protest engagement, in Birmingham, Alabama. A boycott and protest marches were called for Easter week, to protest the treatment of black customers, the failure to hire black clerks, and maintaining segregated restrooms and lunch counters nearly nine years after the Brown decision. Easter, except for Christmas, was (is) the biggest shopping “holiday” season of the year. King was attacked by white clergy as being an egregious outside agitator who was being impatient and unreasonable in his demands. They also questioned why King targeted Birmingham when he lived in Atlanta. Birmingham was the largest city in Alabama, with the largest black population. Birmingham was also “the Capital of Southern Segregation,” having had more unsolved bombings than any city in America. Because of this heinous practice of terrorizing black residents, the city became known as “Bombingham.” I would encourage anyone who has never read this letter, to read it, absorb it and live by it.

The irony here is that fifty years later, bombings are considered “acts of terror.” If it is an act of terror in 2013, it was an act of terror in 1963. Times have changed - but the act, and the impact of the act, hasn’t. A bombing is a bombing, terror is terror and tragedy is tragedy.

King was being criticized for leading the protests from afar, and for putting women and children in “harm’s way.” Harm’s way was Birmingham’s Chief of Police and Public Safety Director, “Bull” Connor, who used all the force of the local government to disrupt the boycotts. The youth joined the protests, often ditching school to join the marches, and they were locked up. Connor arrested so many of them that the jails were completely full. Amid these sharp criticisms, King, Ralph Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth joined the protest lines, and thus were arrested on Good Friday. King’s arrest brought the protests to the nation’s attention.

While in jail, on April 12th, a full page ad was taken out by white pastors in the Birmingham newspaper issuing a “Call To Unity,” condemning King’s actions. King responded on April 16th, with his “Letter From Birmingham City Jail” (also known as “The Negro Is Your Brother”), questioning his brethren’s support of unjust law and advocating of gradualism. Dr. King sensitized them to the state of terror in which the Negro lived in America, and appealed to their sense of Christ-like justice. It was a significant moment in American religion, a test of sincerity, and an exposé in Christian hypocrisy, as to why the church, and the broader society had little (or no) compassion, or empathy, for what was happening to the Negro in the South.

King’s appeal rallied ecumenical support in the North after the letter was published in several Northern papers. However, despite a growing movement invigorated by the youth of Birmingham - that included the March on Washington - the terror continued. Less than three months after the March on Washington, five months after King wrote his letter, the world was shocked by the same sense of indiscriminate evil that was demonstrated in Boston this week.

This year, September 15th to be exact, will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the most egregious act of the movement, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where four innocent little girls were killed. The runners and spectators of the Boston Marathon who were killed and injured, were just as innocent, their deaths senseless. The outrage is not muted.

We, as a society, can never again allow our compassion and our empathy to be muted and dictated by our fears. Acts of terror betray us all. Not to acknowledge them, wherever they occur, deny our sense of humanity and civility.

Dr. Martin Luther King understood, fifty years ago, what we should all understand now, in this moment of senseless tragedy. We shouldn’t just pray for the families impacted. We should all join the call for justice to be served. Anything less is a scar on all our consciences and an indictment on our sense of collective humanity. And we shouldn’t indict any segment of society before all the facts come out - for injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. King said that, too - in the same letter. Wherever injustice is present, justice must also be present.

We need to pray for us all.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad, is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum and author of REAL EYEZ: Race, Reality and Politics In 21st Century Popular Culture and Saving The Race: Empowerment Through Wisdom. His Website is AnthonySamad.com. Twitter @dranthonysamad. Click here to contact Dr. Samad.

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

I was a wee lad when I first was told that figures can lie and liars can figure. It was a caution to be careful when looking at numbers. What brought that to mind the other day was a commentary “Why the US is Looking to Germany for Answers,” by Financial Times U.S. Correspondent, Edward Luce. Not that Luce is in any way untruthful; he’s one of the most insightful and clear-headed major media observers of the political economy of the United States today. But it was the blown up quote on the piece that caught my attention: “Siemens recently had 2,000 applications for 50 vacancies in North Carolina. Only 10 per cent passed the aptitude test.” That means that 200 qualified workers showed up to try out for 50 jobs. Luce didn’t speculate on how many unqualified applicants would have turned out if the Siemens opening had been in Stuttgart but that 1,800 people without the stipulated qualifications thought they might land work at the plant is an illustration of how desperate workers are in North Carolina where over 400,000 people are out of work and the February jobless rate was 9.4 percent. The same figure goes for the Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill metro area where Siemens has a plant and is looking for engineers. At the beginning of the year, the jobless rate for African American in the state stood at 17.3 percent.

“Not only did the state produce insufficient new jobs to bring down the overall unemployment rate, but the industries experiencing the best growth in an otherwise stagnant labor market are those industries that pay lower than average wages,” said Allan Freyer, public policy analyst with the Budget & Tax Center, a project of the North Carolina Justice Center.

In February, the North Carolina state legislature reduced the maximum weekly jobless relief check from $530 to $350 and set the duration of benefits from 73 weeks to between 12 to 20 weeks, depending on the unemployment rate. As a result of the action, an estimated 170,000 workers in the state will be denied Federal emergency unemployment compensation, which is intended to aid the jobless when their state benefits have been exhausted. “Hundreds of thousands of jobless workers thrown out of work through no fault of their own will face deepening poverty as a result of this decision,” said the Justice Center.

The situation in North Carolina is replicated in various parts of the country - particularly in the South - and Luce’s observation about it illustrates the seriously inadequate response to the unemployment crisis and confusion about what has caused it.

Luce maintains that, “the US is underskilled” and “US employers insist the shortage of skilled labor is a growing problem” and “with the US participation rate continuing to plummet - last month another 496,000 Americans gave up looking for work - many US politicians are scouring Germany for answers.”

Luce noted that, “Germany channels roughly half of all high-school students into the vocational education stream from the age of 16. In the US that would be seen as too divisive, even un-American. More than 40 per cent of Germans become apprentices. Only 0.3 per cent of the US labor force does so.” What he doesn’t say is that apprenticeships are not unknown in the U.S. but their availability has greatly declined over the years. Apprenticeship job training has largely been replaced with limited on-the-job training, vocational classes, or community college courses based on paid tuition.

And, one has only to look at joblessness in the construction trades, where such programs do exist, to see that lacking skills is not the primary reason why so many men and women are out of work.

New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, weighed in on the issue last Sunday also citing the described dearth of skilled workers in North Carolina and noted that “Today states are slashing budgets for community colleges, just when every good job requires more skill.”

Luce reports that in North Carolina, Siemens is training six high school dropouts to be “robot supervisors” at a cost of $165,000 each. He is perhaps correct that the idea of channeling 40 percent of young people into apprenticeships wouldn’t go over that well here. I’m not so sure. But I can say with certainty that there are a lot of jobless kids in my neighborhood who would welcome the opportunity to learn “mechatronics,” a mixture of mechanical engineering and computer science. Especially if there are jobs waiting for them when they finish the course.

Of course nobody in a position to do so is proposing spending money on an apprenticeship program that would engage jobless youth in Cleveland, Detroit or Los Angeles; not the White House, not anyone in Congress.

But we are confronted with a much bigger problem than a lack of skills. Right now there just aren’t enough jobs to go around.

The Great Recession, and what has followed, “decimated job prospects and earnings for young workers,” a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) briefing paper shows. In “The Class of 2013 young graduates still face dim job prospects,” found researchers Heidi Shierholz, Natalie Sabadish and Nicholas Finio. “For the fifth consecutive year, new graduates will enter a profoundly weak labor market and will face high unemployment and underemployment rates and depressed wages.”

“Because young workers always experience disproportionate increases in unemployment during downturns, young workers have confronted particularly high unemployment rates since the end of the Great Recession,” reads the paper released April 10. “For young high school graduates, the unemployment rate is 29.9 percent, compared with 17.5 percent in 2007, and the underemployment rate is 51.5 percent, compared with 29.4 percent in 2007. For college graduates, the unemployment rate is 8.8 percent, compared with 5.7 percent in 2007, and the underemployment rate is 18.3 percent, compared with 9.9 percent in 2007.”

“Young workers have also seen their wages decline,” says the EPI. “Between 2007 and 2012, the wages of young high school graduates dropped 11.7 percent, and the wages of young college graduates dropped 7.6 percent. However, the wages of young graduates fared poorly even before the Great Recession began, as most groups of young workers also saw wage declines between 2000 and 2007. In all, between 2000 and 2012, the wages of young high school graduates declined 12.7 percent, and the wages of young college graduates decreased 8.5 percent. For full-time, full-year workers, this represents a roughly $2,900 decline in annual earnings for young high school graduates and a roughly $3,200 decline for young college graduates.”

“While attaining additional educational is often identified as a possible option for young people during periods of high unemployment, there is no evidence of young workers ‘sheltering in school’,” the EPI report says. “Since the start of the Great Recession, college and university enrollment rates have not meaningfully departed from their long-term trend for either men or women. In fact, though some students have had the financial resources to take shelter in school, the lack of substantial increase in enrollment suggests this group has been offset by students who have been forced to drop out of school, or never enter, because a lack of work meant they could not afford to attend.”

“Through no fault of their own, these young graduates are likely to fare poorly for at least the next decade through reduced earnings, greater earnings instability and more spells of unemployment,” said Shierholz. “Instead of focusing on deficit reduction, policymakers should be passing policies that will generate demand for U.S. goods and services, and therefore demand for workers who provide them. This is the key to giving young graduates entering today’s labor market a fighting chance.”

A succinct and clarifying look at the relationship between unemployment was proven last week by Sherry Linkon, co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University. In “Is Education the Answer to Economic Inequality?” she wrote:

“One of the most common solutionsoffered to reverse America’s growing economic inequality is increasedaccess to education. President Obama may have started the trend withhis call for universal, high-quality preschool, but others have joinedthe fray. In March, Ronald Brownstein argued in National Journalthat ‘Education remains critical to reversing the erosion in upwardmobility that has made it harder for kids born near the bottom to reachthe top in the United States than in many European nations’.”

Linkon went on to cite commentary on how “colleges and universities are failing to make those opportunities available, because higher education has become too expensive and doesn’t do enough to help lower-income students succeed.”

“On the basis of justice, we should be outraged,” wrote Linkon April 15, adding that, “We should join the thousands of college students who have organized protests against cuts to public education. And those of us who are educators should heed Mike Rose’s prescription for addressing the needs of working-class students: ‘If we want more students to succeed in college, then colleges have to turn full attention to teaching’.”

“Still, the idea that more or better college education will ‘solve’ the problem of economic inequality is just silly,” wrote Linkon. “While a college education still provides economic advantages, increasing lifetime income, achieving that benefit is harder than it used to be. These days, getting a college degree doesn’t guarantee better middle-class job prospects, but it does often bring a lifetime of debt.

Unemployment rates for recent graduates remain high - 53 percent according to The Atlantic a year ago, and many have taken low-wage, hourly jobs that don’t require a college degree. Meanwhile, student loan debt has increased to an average of $26,600. For too many, higher education has become a trap door rather than an elevator.”

“I’m not suggesting that education isn’t worthwhile,” wrote Linkon. “Far from it. A good education brings many advantages, only some of which have to do with employment or income. Martha Nussbaum is just one of many scholars arguing that education has value for society. But education simply won’t address the root causes of today’s economic inequality.

“First, while state legislatures and business organizations pressure public universities to focus on preparing students for jobs in specific fields, like health care or fracking, the widely-touted ‘skills gap’ turns out to be a myth. The American economy is not being stymied by a lack of appropriately trained workers. Wharton School management professor, Peter Cappelli, suggests that we should ‘Blame It on the Employer.’ He suggests that employers ask themselves a few key questions starting with this zinger: ‘Have you tried raising wages? If you could get what you want by paying more, the problem is just that you are cheap’.”

Linkon concludes that “even when we talk about increasing access or establishing ‘universal’ programs, education addresses the individual, not the system.”

“Even at its best, education helps some working-class young people prepare to move into the middle class, an outcome that might improve the economic opportunities of those individuals but doesn’t address the broader economic structure,” wrote Linkon. “A thousand well-trained nurses might earn a decent living, but they will work alongside aides, janitors, and clerical workers who don’t. Simply put, moving some people into better paying jobs doesn’t eliminate the low-wage jobs they left behind.”

“Moreover, we should expect to see more low-wage jobs over time, not fewer, and education won’t change that.”

“If we want to improve the lives of low-wage workers and their families, we need public policies that will create more jobs, increase wages … and protect people from the financial ravages that often accompany illness, natural disasters, and other devastating and expensive events,” continued Linkon. “But how likely do you think it is that our state or federal legislators will create such policies?”

In a new report for Demos, “Stuck: Young America’s Persistent Jobs Crisis,” authors Catherine Ruetschlin and Tamara Draut examine the state of the youth employment today and find that while the overall economy is showing signs of improvement, young workers are still in a state of crisis. In an article described and made available on AFL-CIO Now April 15, they warn that if policy isn’t changed to address the challenges young people face, “we risk a generation marked by the insecurities of the Great Recession for the rest of their working lives.”

“The only possibilities for change lie in activism and organizing,” wrote Linkon. “And what does it take to foster resistance and build solidarity? As our labor studies colleagues might remind us, learning about economic, political, and social processes as well as the history of activism, theories of class, and narratives of oppression and resistance can prepare people to articulate and advocate for their own interests and for the common good.”

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. Other Carl Bloice writing can be found at leftmargin.wordpress.com. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

If you were the federal government, you might want to consider just calling it something else or, in one case, raise the acceptable level. A New York citizens’ environmental group has said government is doing just that, in the case of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, in which hazardous waste is just called “industrial waste.”

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) this month said that the White House “has given final approval for dramatically raising permissible radioactive levels in drinking water and soil…what its proponents call a new normal” and what PEER calls “a public health policy only Doctor Strangelove could embrace.”

The group’s membership consists of professional, scientific, and technical workers in governmental agencies for environmental research and regulation at state and federal levels across the country. It allows its membership, through PEER, to speak publicly about their concerns. In this case, PEER refers to the so-called Protective Action Guides or PAGs, which are issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The guides tell emergency management personnel and individuals how to respond to dangerous situations, but the group says that the new PAGs allow radiation cleanup “many times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted.”

For example, the new guides, given White House approval on April 5, allow long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000 millirems. In effect, said PEER, this would increase “a longstanding 1-in-10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1-in-23 persons exposed over a 30-year period…” The PAGs are much less specific regarding permissible levels of radiation in drinking water, merely declaring that the new guidelines would give officials more “flexibility” in any area where an incident or accident has occurred.

All of this is occurring during a time of transition in the EPA, where the agency’s administrator, Lisa Jackson, is scheduled to be replaced by assistant administrator for air and radiation, Gina McCarthy, whose nomination could be confirmed by the Senate within a matter of days or when senators return from a recess on May 4. During early hours of her confirmation hearing, McCarthy was described as someone who has worked well with industry and government, having worked for two Republican governors in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

PEER is not enthusiastic about Obama’s choice for the new EPA administrator, noting that the new PAGs are the product of her work in the agency. “If this (the new PAGs) typifies the environmental leadership we can expect from Ms. McCarthy, then EPA is in for a long, dirty slog,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “No compelling justification is offered for increasing the cancer deaths of Americans innocently exposed to corporate miscalculations several hundred-fold.”

But that’s what the administration is proposing. Why would it do that? One can only speculate, because most of the rationale for any governmental action is usually lost in the morass of bureaucratic rhetoric and it is usually taken to further enrich a wealthy campaign donor or a corporation with very deep campaign-money pockets.

Considering the state of the environment, in general, and considering that much of the toxic load on the earth and all of its creatures (including humans, of course), as well as most of the degradation of all of the earth’s systems, are man-made, or man-caused, some rather cynical political observers might survey the scene and say, “It’s too late to really do something about it, so let’s just adjust the numbers. The people will just have to get used to it.”

Could this be the rationale? That we have gone so far along exploiting the planet’s natural resources and maintaining dependence on fossil fuels to such an extent that the powers that be have found it impossible to shift gears from the current plunge to a safer more efficient and more sustainable way of life? The probable answer is that they can’t change now and maintain the same level of profit (that is, most of the wealth that is mined from nature) and they are not willing to lose that flow of money. When Corporate America looks at the problem, they see too much uncertainty in change to guarantee that they will continue taking most of the substance of the earth and its people to itself. To be sure, there are countries that are making the transition to a more sustainable world, but the U.S. is not one of them.

In moving toward a greatly increased tolerance for the nuclear, chemical, or biological load of toxins in our environment, the regulators seem to be throwing up their hands and moving toward the position of much of the Republican Party, which tells the American people that climate change (global warming) is a hoax, that the U.S. needs to eliminate regulations to allow Corporate America to do whatever it wishes, and that things are going along quite well. Things are not going well and we do need radical changes in the way we live and we need a long lead time to make those changes, because our dire circumstances did not happen overnight. No “leaders” are leading and they are not going about the country making speeches about the ways we have to change. And they have few, if any, solutions… just band-aids for the ills that seem acute at any given time.

The EPA’s move backwards in regulating radioactive content in the water we drink and the soil, out of which comes the food that we feed ourselves and our families, is a dangerous sign that our elected officials don’t want to confront the very uncomfortable truth that the American way of life is unsustainable and that we need to make major adjustments, now.

Internal EPA documents obtained by PEER “show that under the updated PAG a single glass of water could give a lifetime’s permissible exposure. In addition, it would allow long-term cleanup limits thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These new limits would cause a cancer in as much as every fourth person exposed.”

From a citizens environmental group, the Croton Watershed Clean Water Alliance (CWCWC) in New York State, we are warned of another industrial time bomb, hydraulic fracturing or fracking, a method of drilling for oil and natural gas that uses millions of gallons of fresh water mixed with chemicals to free the gas that is trapped in various shale deposits a mile or two under the ground. Problem is, as CWCWC and other groups have pointed out, the fracking water not only contains a cocktail of chemicals (which are considered proprietary by the oil and gas companies, so they won’t tell us what they are), but when most of the contaminated water is brought back to the surface, it also contains radiation, which occurs naturally deep underground.

CWCWC recently congratulated the Westchester County Board of Legislators for adopting a law that “prohibit(s) the sale, application, and disposal of waste products from natural gas drilling anywhere in the county,” and that includes attempts to “treat” water in municipal treatment plants for removal of dangerous substances, including radiation. This is important, says the group, because “radioactive fracking waste from gas drilling can potentially cause irreversible damage to water, air, land and food supplies.”

Fracking waste is hazardous, exceeding the legal criteria for hazardous waste classification, according to CWCWC, and it is categorized as “industrial” under federal and state laws as a result of special exemptions given to the oil and gas industry. One of the first acts of Dick Cheney as vice president in the Bush-Cheney Administration was to meet in secret with “energy companies,” one of which certainly was his company, Halliburton. No one was able to find out what Cheney and the oil and gas corporations discussed or planned (he stonewalled the issue through two terms), but one of the outcomes was an exemption from the clean air and clean water laws of the U.S. A simple change of a word, from “hazardous” to “industrial,” and the fracking problem seemed to be solved, at least, for the corporations.

It should not be too surprising that President Obama would allow more lax rules about contamination of our air and water. After all, he said that all options are on the table for making the U.S. energy independent, a virtual impossibility, because the oil from virtually any country is sold on the world market and rarely benefits the people of the producing nation so directly.

As well, there are powerful interests who have been pressing politicians for the past four or five decades to produce power with nuclear reactors...more than we now have. They continue to do that and they have their stable of politicians in high office who will do their bidding. There might be a leak here, a small accident there, but look at the power these plants produce, we are told. They already have forgotten Fukushima, because it’s already two years since it happened. Medical researchers have recently pointed out that there is an increase in thyroid problems in infants on the U.S. West Coast from the radioactive drift from the Japan disaster.

In addition, President Obama is apparently backtracking on a pledge he made a few years ago that he would not add or improve the U.S. nuclear arsenal, by preparing to spend $10 billion on the nation’s European nuclear cache in several countries, and spending another $1 billion to put fins on nuclear weapons that essentially turn them into missiles.

We have fracking, aging nuclear reactors scattered about the country, and the planned improvement of nuclear weaponry, all of which are likely to add, at one time or another, to the background radiation that the planet must learn to tolerate. It’s no wonder the government wants to loosen up the regulations, as demanded by their friends in the corporations. It affects every American and everyone and every creature on earth. It is intolerable. It will, however, be a constant assault, unless and until people stand up by the tens of thousands and demand the needed change.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a long-time former newspaper reporter and labor organizer, who lives in the Mohawk Valley of New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.

Mar 28, 2013 - Issue 510

Shepard Fairey is a contemporary artist, graphic designer, and illustrator. He first became known for his "André the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign, in which he appropriated images from the comedic super market tabloid Weekly World News. His work became more widely known in the 2008 U.S.presidential election, specifically his Barack Obama "HOPE" poster. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today's best known and most influential street artists. His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Click here to contact Mr. Fairey.

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

Tracheal intubation is when a plastic tube is stuck down your “trachea (windpipe) to maintain an open airway or to serve as a conduit through which to administer certain drugs. It is frequently performed in critically injured, ill or anesthetized patients to facilitate ventilation of the lungs… to prevent the possibility of asphyxiation or airway obstruction.” (Wikipedia) One of the consequences of this emergency procedure is that the patient finds it almost impossible to talk.

Although this medical procedure has been done for centuries, it was only until recently that the survival rates rose above a distinct minority of those upon which the procedure was applied. It is no longer necessary that the throat be cut to insert the tube; yet the procedure is still dangerous. “Alternative strategies for securing the airway must always be readily available.” It has been on too many occasions the treatment has caused rather than prevented death! Tracheal intubation is the primary reason that the suspected Boston bomber who is still living, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (age 19), has not been able to speak.

A number of critical questions are being raised for which it appears as if young Dzhokhar would have the most immediate answers. Some cause for this silencing treatment is undoubtedly due to his throat wound, presumably from a gunshot. Although he will likely be able to communicate in other ways, presuming he is conscious, his wound may prevent him from talking ever again. I know that two of the most important questions for some are whether there are others who wish to also strike “America” in a lethal way and why. Our airwaves and TV screens are over-saturated with these questions. Once the prospect of membership in Al Qaeda or an off-shoot are discarded, security experts, police investigators, and military hawks will either give you an off-the-cuff answer about mysterious pockets of alienation, mental illness, or the irrational, internet-mediated, self-generated disease of radical Islamic fundamentalism. The best of such promoters of militaristic solutions will declare that they are assiduously investigating the answers. Well… I have not been physically intubated yet and I think that I can answer both questions.

I have the same answer that Malcolm X had for the assassination of John F. Kennedy; his answer was the reason that the Nation of Islam silenced him for ninety days - after this period of silence Malcolm left The Nation. Malcolm’s answer was also voiced by Libertarian Ron Paul’s former chief of staff (Llewellyn Harrison Rockwell, Jr.) about prospects for further attacks on “America” and why. It is an answer that very few want to hear or talk about. If most “Americans” can, they will intubate, silence, or otherwise keep these words from passing lips or entering ears.

“The chickens come home to roost” Malcolm X said. His meaning is clear no matter how it may have been twisted. His full words can be found in Black Commentator’s archives. His ancient wisdom, simply put, is “what goes around comes around.” Malcolm talked about a climate of hate and violence that the U.S. has perpetrated throughout its history. He talked about Kennedy’s reluctance to fully support the aspirations of the civil rights struggle until he had little political choice and until too many people had been hurt and killed. Lew Rockwell talks about the military industrial complex and U.S. adventurism around the world. There is no question; the greatest perpetrator of terrorism in the history of the world is the U.S. government. There are so many examples it is hard to choose among them. If you know history, what indeed is the dropping of the A Bomb on Japan but national terrorism? What about drones that kill so many innocent people and cause “blowback?” Or even a police policy like stop and frisk that is designed to strike FEAR in a community. When the sun goes down, the chickens return home to roost.

Unlike 1963, when Malcolm stood alone defending his analysis, today on the margins one can find brief discussions of the Chickens-coming-home-to-roost. I heard it on a left-leaning talk show in addition to the libertarian blog where Rockwell made his statement. Times have only changed incrementally and they have not reached a place to bring about any serious reassessment of U.S. foreign or domestic policy. The military industrial complex and the incarceration industrial complex uses considerable hold on public resources to intubate any significant vocalization of treatments aimed at curbing attacks that do not themselves generate future attacks. As long as too few of us know that there are alternative approaches, these capitalist security complexes will hold sway over the minds and fears of the public. Margaret Thatcher’s famous dispiriting phrase about rapacious global capitalism - “there is no alternative” (TINA) - also is vigorously active for the capitalist security complexes. Thatcher is dead and global capitalism is being challenged in many places in many ways in this world. Is it time for more break-through challenges to the capitalism-of-false-security?

I have severe disagreements with Libertarian Lew Rockwell’s Anarcho-capitalism, in which he advocates total elimination of all elements of the state in favor of individual sovereignty in a totally free market. I also have severe disagreements with Malcolm X’s - at the time - belief in the divinity of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and that the prophet’s words equate with ultimate truth. However, I find common ground with them on the answer to the questions of more attackers and why they attack. Malcolm went on in an interview to sketch one alternative approach. When he was asked if we are making progress in this country, Malcolm said NO. He said that it was like putting a knife in one’s back to a depth of nine inches and then pulling it out to a depth of six inches. That is not progress. The knife is still in the back doing its damage. Even if the knife is taken out altogether, that is not good enough. Progress would be when the work is done to heal the wound!

The many, many wounded nations, communities, and individuals around the globe and in this country are desperate for justice. And their descendents, compatriots, and sympathizers are also seeking justice. It is deaf and blind idiocy to believe that “America” is being attacked out of envy for our “freedoms and prosperity.” Al Qaeda grew out of U.S. military bases plunked down on “sacred” Saudi Arabian land. Iran is still suffering from the U.S. overthrow of its democratically elected President, Mohamed Mosaddeq in 1953 at the behest of British Petroleum. Timothy McVeigh cited the Federal attack on David Koresh’s Branch Dravidian sect at Waco, Texas, in 1993 as one reason for his bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma. On top of many of these heinous U.S. actions must often be added attacks and counterattacks which themselves produce further blowback. This is little different from the gun fights between friendship groups and families on Oakland streets which mimic the feud (1863-1891) between the Hatfields and the McCoys of West Virginia and Kentucky area. If no effort is made to break the cycle and heal the wounds, “the chickens will come home to roost.”

The first step is to pull the intubation tube out of the throats of folks who have something critical to say. The U.S. must drop its false sense of superiority and exceptionalism born of racism and imperialism. The U.S. must clearly hear the charges and not mask them with counter-charges; there will be time enough for that. Any fair assessment would brand us the greatest perpetrator of terrorism and violence in the world and as the initiator of significant blowback. Lastly - to really make progress - we must begin to heal the wounds that we caused and to do this as a priority way above the needs of the security industrial complex. That would be proper treatment that is imminently survivable.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Wilson Riles, is a former Oakland, CA City Council Member. Click here to contact Mr. Riles.

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright had it right! His sermons spoke truthfully about the United States and its past and current engagement with terrorism. State-sponsored terrorism was his focus in a sermon Rev. Wright delivered on September 16, 2001 (“The Day of Jerusalem’s Fall,” The Guardian, March 27, 2008):

We bombed Hiroshima, we bombedNagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and thePentagon, and we never batted an eye... and now we are indignant,because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into ourown front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

Because the books written on this history do not utter the word “terrorism.” The history books written from the perspective of the conqueror, creatively refer to the glorious victory, to heroes and to the saving lives on the conqueror’s side of the ledger, and because educational institutions do not teach, and the corporate media cannot report the truth, Rev. Wright had to speak. Someone had to think and ask - how glorious is such a victory to those residents in Hiroshima and Nagaski, those men, women, and children dead and still suffering?

And the United States of Americagovernment, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descentfairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came totreating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She putthem in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizensof African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains, thegovernment put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, putthem in cotton field, put them in inferior schools, put them insubstandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them inthe lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of thelaw, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education andlocked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness. Thegovernment gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes athree-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no,no, not God Bless America. God damn America - that’s in the Bible - forkilling innocent people. God damn America, for treating our citizens asless than human. God damn America, as long as she tries to act like sheis God, and she is supreme. The United States government has failed thevast majority of her citizens of African descent... (“Confusing God andGovernment,” April 2003, BlackPast.org):

Rev. Wright spoke of terrorism. Terrorism was and still is the subject. But in 2008, with Barrack Obama on the campaign trail, ABC News, after repeatedly confronting Obama about his pastor, finally heard what it wanted to hear from the Black presidential candidate:

...[W]hen he [Rev. Wright]equates the United States wartime efforts with terrorism, then thereare no excuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. Andthey should be denounced. And that’s what I’m doing very clearly andunequivocally here today. (New York Times, April 29, 2008).

Rev. Jeremiah Wright was betrayed by an Individual who was more than ambitious but also duplicitous with an ideology that is no less violent than fascism or communism. It is an ideology we are all familiar with because we have experienced how it rewards careerists and collaborators who work on its behalf. The betrayer received his award.

It is an ideology that believes might is right, white is superior, others are just that - others. It is an ideology that depends on the full cooperation of everyone, anyone.

It was not just one individual, Rev. Wright, who was betrayed and not just one betrayer, Barrack Obama. The opposition to state-sponsored violence and terrorism, was also betrayed. The principles, values and convictions of the opposition to violence were targeted by a discrediting narrative, a violent narrative, that condemned and denounced all those unwilling to remain silent or to lie.

When wagers of this narrative violence conjured images of raving lunatic, or the anti-American traitor, or the devil in our midst, they knew what they were doing. The U.S. had done it before because before the fascists and the communists, there was the United States and Manifest Destiny. After the fascists and the communists, there was progress in the development of mind-control and weapons technology, legal tweaking to empower law enforcement and to create a Homeland Security apparatus with tentacles stretching globally, gulag-typed sites like our communications management units, and educational institutions partnering with corporate organizations to model corporate think.

Ultimately, the betrayal and denouncement of Rev. Wright represented for all the world to see and hear, a war! What else? It represented a significant battle between one ideology and the other, between the proponents of white supremacy and racial difference, between the U.S. Empire and the people. Only one side was confident it would suceed. Only one side held all the trump cards.

Did Black people think like this Rev. Wright? Are Black people still living in the past? Are they hateful, bitter, resentful? Are they still a threat to us?

So “Operation Black America,” let us call it (because the U.S. loves to label its warfare: Operation Condor, Operation Iraqi Freedom) to villify Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was sucessful. Operation Black America, churned like a machine. It was a sucessful operation because it not only forced the denouncement of one individual against another but also forced an entire society to denounce the individual and any alternative vision outside this madness. Anyone espousing the same thoughts, the same principles, values, and convictions is witness to the punishment.

No one can claim they did not know. They did not see, did not hear, did not participate.

But “Operation Black America” particularly targeted Black America, once again.

What did the discrediting narrative accomplish if not the obedience of Black America? It reminded Black Americans, on the one hand, of their inferiority. What else? (There is change?) Black America is impotent. Malleable. You are happy consumers! Consider all you have accomplished in the last 40 years! Consider our progress together, our post-racism era, our, the United States of America and its distance from the past. It then placed both Black men in the ring and turned its attention to Black America’s reaction.

Black Americans were forced to decide. Pick one! Pick only one! Wright or Obama! And Black America, once at the core of Left thought and action, are, for the most part, a success story: Black Americans no longer seek democracy and freedom.

How many Black middle-class liberal leaders, coerced by fear, urged Black Americans to denounce Rev. Wright and vote for Barrack Obama? Fear works wonderfully on a people not free and who can no longer envision freedom beyond that offered by the ideology of white supremacy.

But there was one thing refreshing: Rev. Wright did not confess. He did not admit guilt.

Barrack Obama should confess. Obama’s rhetoric is the real deal. He should admit guilt for sanctioning further repressive strategies and tactics, disregarding the Constitution and human rights, escalating drone warfare, warmongering rhetoric about what sovereign nation will or will not receive recognition from the U.S., and for refusing to allow the courts to bring criminal charges against warmongers, careerists and collaborators, reaping the rewards of an ideology that continues to protect their interests.

Rev. Wright said:

We bombed Iraq, we killed unarmedcivilians trying to make a living. We bombed the plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy - killed hundreds of hard-workingpeople - mothers and fathers, who left home to go that day, not knowingthey’d never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki andwe nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, andwe never batted an eye. Kids playing in the playground, mothers pickingup children after school - civilians, not soldiers. People just tryingto make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against thePalestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant?Because the stuff we have done overseas is brought back into our ownfront yards.

America’s chickens are coming home to roost. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism.

Truth!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

- Frederick Douglass

“The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”
- Rosa Luxemburg

Everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in the U.S. and throughout Mother Earth are under intense attack by a national and global power elite whose objective is to propagate ignorance and fear in order to economically, politically, and socially keep ordinary people in a state of lethargy and submission.

It has been said, “It is only totalitarian governments that suppress facts. In this country we simply take a 'democratic' decision not to publish them.” Translation: Keep the ordinary people ignorant and malleable, thereby keeping the people in a perpetual state of manipulated disarray and fear.

The horror of U.S. corporate/government war mongering and perpetual wars & military 'police' actions abroad, combined with increasing austerity, a de facto police state, corporate hegemony, non-transparency, interminable government subterfuge, and incessant corporate-stream media disinformation at home in this year of 2013, under the Obama / Biden regime (and their Democrat and Republican accomplices) is the staggering reality of the present.

The bitter irony of this is that by not acknowledging and addressing these staggering realities, the economic, social, and political pain and systemic servitude of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people are immeasurably exacerbated. And as the pain increases, the corporate-owned government and corporate-stream media provide scapegoats – when in fact it is the internal and external polices of this corporate government itself that are directly responsible for the pain of the people – which is being mercilessly pimped.

Fortunately, some in this nation are increasingly awakening. However, a disproportionate number of everyday people remain enslaved to the novocaine-type mindlessness and insidious propaganda of and by a U.S. government and media intent upon anesthetizing critical thought. It is a deliberately induced form of denial and slavery on a scale never before carried out against the people of this nation and world.
The terrible pain being heaped upon the people of this nation and world by Mr. 'Kill List' - drone man - Barack Obama and his minions, can only be sustained as long as the masses of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people are kept ignorant, uninformed, and/or misinformed. Being kept ignorant, misinformed, and/or uninformed is, in itself, a form of terrorism by the corporate-owned U.S. government against the people of the U.S. and against peoples of Mother Earth.

In the words of Rosa Luxemburg, “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.” Our task is to consistently and persistently awaken our sisters and brothers to their peril and to from where that peril is emanating.

Political, economic, and social justice is today, in the insightful words of Frederick Douglass, being “denied,” even as “poverty,” in real terms, is “being enforced,” and manipulated “ignorance” and disinformation “prevails.” None of this is by mere coincidence. This is all by design on the part of the amoral, blood sucking power national and global elite. But this situation, though perilous for everyday people, is far from being hopeless.

An informed, critically-thinking people are the effective antidote to the insanity of this diseased, avaricious national and global power elite. As Frederick Douglass also aptly noted, “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” Thus, women and men must disconnect ourselves utterly from the disinformation of the corporate government and its corporate-stream media propaganda arm. We must insist upon becoming and remaining an informed and critically-thinking people. We must consistently research and inform ourselves and one another, “proclaiming loudly what is happening.”

There is absolutely no reason to accept perpetual U.S. wars abroad. There is absolutely no reason to accept a police state and economic austerity at home. Moreover, there is no reason that we should accept the continued imprisonment and the brutality of the many U.S. political prisoners of all colors being held in the obscene prison gulags throughout this nation, not to mention Guantanamo!

Be all that you can be. Be human again! Be a critical thinker and doer - for the sake of yourselves, people everywhere, and for Mother Earth herself! This insanity must cease. Turn off your television sets and turn on your minds!

Barack Obama and his corporate-owned Democrat and Republican minions can keep this nation mired in ignorance and fear only if, we the people, allow them to do so.

Remember: Being kept ignorant and misinformed is a suppression of human rights and is, in itself, a form of terrorism, which in turn, breeds even more terrorism. It must not be accepted! So get busy!

Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward...!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, 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 News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. 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 view Larry’s interview of October 26, 2012. Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

Apr 25, 2013 - Issue 514

On February 7, 2003, I was on the T, stopped at the MIT station. Several policemen on the train platform looked at me, and I knew what was coming next. The doors opened and about six policemen came in and grabbed my arm, escorting me off the train.

The police said I resembled a bank robber.

On the platform, I shouted that I was an associate professor of mathematics at MIT, repeatedly, so that passengers could hear. The policemen wanted me to stop but I did not; this may have been the only reason I avoided being taken into custody, or worse.

If you believe the media, the American consensus is that the two Chechens the Boston police called “armed and dangerous” are in fact the Marathon Bombers. I’m not so sure.

Yes, conspiracy theories are often crazy. Once, I talked to some dancers who had performed a “vibration” at Tennessee State University, and one of the women suddenly said to me, “Do you know about the Reptilians?” She was not a herpetologist. Apparently “Reptilians” were aliens from Sirius who had come to Earth.

There are, however, conspiracy theories that are sane. (I’m talking to you, creator of BostonMarathonConspiracy.com.) For example, COINTELPRO, or Operation Northwoods, or the Lusitania. In fact, these aren’t conspiracy theories so much as conspiracy facts, just facts that few Americans know.

The post-9/11, pre-Iraq War American drone would argue that the police must have evidence they are not telling the public. Someone who knows what happened on December 4, 1969 would use Occam’s Razor: the only evidence the police had was a short video of two men wearing backpacks, like three out of every five consumers - really suspicious. The police claimed they had unreleased video footage (“We know where [the weapons of mass destruction] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat”), but if they have other footage, why not show it? Surely more than one video would have helped the public identify the suspects. Of course, I imagine that a video will turn up soon, showing a bald eagle attempting to pick up the bombs.

The question is: If the men were innocent, why did they run?

Innocent people do run. How about Angela Davis. The “man on the roof,” according to the police’s current theory about who committed the attack, is entirely innocent, yet he never came forward. Anyone from a quasi-totalitarian region, where to be accused is to be guilty (unlike America), and to be guilty means to be boiled in oil, might run. Any non-American, who consequently has his eyes wide open when it comes to America’s grotesque human rights abuses in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the studio of Chelsea Lately, might run. I knew right away that the Boston police had erred when they described the two suspects as “armed and dangerous.” That increased the likelihood that they would be brought in dead and reduced the chance they would come in voluntarily.

And we don’t know if they ran at first. We do know American police come in guns blazing, whether it’s warranted or not: Police killed an innocent 89 year-old woman in March 2013, an innocent 92 year-old woman in 2011, in 2005 police shot each other, in 2005 London police shot an innocent Brazilian seven times in the head following a terrorist attack, erroneously claiming that he, like the dead Chechen, was wearing a vest lined with explosives, which, in the Chechen’s case, miraculously did not explode even though he was shot multiple times - the list goes on. You can have fun Googling further examples yourself, and let me know if in a single one of these cases a policeman has ever gone to prison for a long time - or a short one. A “no” answer means that there is no incentive for a policeman not to kill the wrong person.

As Mark “Bloody Glove” Fuhrman said on tape, “Where would this country be if every time a sheriff went out with a posse to find somebody who just robbed and killed a bunch of people, he stopped and talked to them first… they shot them in the back. We still should be shooting people in the back.”

The crowds cheering when the remaining Chechen suspect was captured made me shake my head. The suspects’ friends and families agree that there was nothing suspect about them. “[I]t was just regular old Dzhokhar,” an acquaintance of the suspect told ABC News. “We had a typical conversation [after the bombing], he was not startled, he was not scared….” And yet one suspect’s in-laws, who need to re-read Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, concluded, “Our hearts are sickened by the knowledge of the horror he has inflicted.”

In other words, if someone acts like a non-terrorist, talks like a non-terrorist, and walks like a non-terrorist, he’s a terrorist! The settlers in Salem were more rational: at least it was possible to prove you were not a witch.

I am quite certain police will find bomb-making equipment in the suspects’ apartments exactly like the sort used in the attack, along with fingerprints like those a New York State policeman planted in a murder trial and O. J. Simpson’s bloody glove. When asked, “Did you plant or manufacture any evidence in [the O. J. Simpson murder] case?”, Fuhrman invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent to avoid incriminating himself. The remaining Chechen suspect may even confess to something he did not do: we live in a country that tortures people.

A hip-hop quoting, allegedly pot-smoking Muslim master bomber with no escape plan, calmly tweeting right after the attack (“stay safe people”?), a Muslim terrorist who is skeptical that Muslim terrorists were behind the 9/11 attack, a suicidal bomber who is not a suicide-bomber but a trained lifeguard and medical student - that’s someone who saves lives - doesn’t add up. And I’m a mathematician.

It disgusts me that in the last decade Americans seem to have forgotten about laws and evidence, Senator Church, and the well-earned distrust of the police and FBI.

I do not know if the two Chechen immigrants are innocent. All I’m saying is: Force the police to prove their case.

Or not. Take the blue pill. Tell yourself, That guy on the train platform, he must be a bank robber.

I mean, look at him, he’s surrounded by police.

BlackCommentator.comColumnist, Dr. Jonathan David Farley, wrote “How Al Qaeda Can Use OrderTheory to Evade or Defeat U.S. Forces: The Case of Binary Posets,” in Advances in Network Analysis and its Applications (Mathematics in Industry), Evangelos Kranakis (Ed.), Vienna, Austria: Springer Verlag (2012). Contact Dr. Farley.

Apr 25, 2013 -Issue 514

Mark Hurwitt is an Illustrator, Cartoonist, Designer, Writer and Teacher residing in Brooklyn New York

His website is HurwittGraphics.com

Click here to contact Mark