Obama Kisses AIPAC Ass. Show's Stripes..Again

The Chicago Sun Times has reported on Obamas recent talk to an AIPAC audience. He was there kissing AIPAC ass which is a requisite for a condidate of either party. It is clear to those of us paying attention that un-equivacal support of Israel is the unwritten requirement to hold office here in the United States.

Obama, who we busted making "racist" statements about Iran back in 2004, has continues with his "warrior" commentary:

Unfortunately, history has a terrible way of repeating itself. President
Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust. He held a conference in his
country, claiming it was a myth. But we know the Holocaust was as real as
the 6 million who died in mass graves at Buchenwald, or the cattle cars to
Dachau or whose ashes clouded the sky at Auschwitz. We have seen the
pictures. We have walked the halls of the Holocaust museum in Washington
and Yad Vashem. We have touched the tattoos on loved-ones arms. After 60
years, it is time to deny the deniers.



While we here at Garvey's Ghost mistakenly condemned Mr Ahmedinejad's statements because we mistakenly relied on faulty reporting. We now know that this statement is patently false. We know that Mr. Ahmedinejad statements regarding the Holocaust was in reference to "reparations" for that event and not on whether the event actually happened. Furthermore we know that if the Iranian government was against Jewish people then there would not be a Jewish population in Iran. So we see that Obama, doing his ass kissing duty is repeating false information in order to get the seal of approval from this group. Do not expect anyone outside of "progressive" circles to call him out on this.

More:

At the same time, we must preserve our total commitment to
our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military
assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense
programs. This would help Israel maintain its military edge and deter and
repel attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza. And
when Israel is attacked, we must stand up for Israel’s legitimate right
to defend itself. Last summer, Hezbollah attacked Israel. By using
Lebanon as an outpost for terrorism, and innocent people as shields,
Hezbollah has also engulfed that entire nation in violence and conflict,
and threatened the fledgling movement for democracy there. That’s why
we have to press for enforcement of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701,
which demands the cessation of arms shipments to Hezbollah, a resolution
which Syria and Iran continue to disregard. Their support and shipment of
weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas, which threatens the peace and security in
the region, must end.

This is also completely out of line. The use of cluster bombs by Israel (as supplied by the US) was in fact illegal both in terms of international law as well as US law which strictly prohibits the use of US sold arms in civilian areas. Of course Obama has nothing to say about this.

Secondly on the issue of Israel being attacks last summer we should be aware that specific information regarding the IDF has been kept from regular public consumption. Namely this particular item from Counterpunch:

Newsweek's Michael Hirsh of MSNBC.com, on July 12, said: "As a result, things are blowing up so quickly it's difficult to know where to focus any longer. After the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah in Lebanon on Wednesday, which the hard-line group linked to a similar kidnapping by Hamas the week before, the mideast seemed to be closer to all-out war."

AP also ran changed versions. On July 12, at 5:41AM Joseph Panossian wrote: "The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them."

Israeli sources went almost unnoticed. Cybercast News Service (CNSNews.com) of July 12 said: "The abduction of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah militants in southern Lebanon was not a terrorist attack but an act of war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Wednesday."

Australia's ABC News (Reuters) on July 13 quoted the IDF: "The sources say the Israeli soldiers had been seized at around 9am local time across the border from Aita al Shaab, some 15 kilometers from the Mediterranean coast. The Israeli army confirmed that two Israeli soldiers had been captured on the Lebanese frontier. Israeli ground forces crossed into Lebanon to hunt for the missing soldiers, Israeli Army Radio said."

Voice of America, Jerusalem, on July 12 said: "Speaking to reporters outside the Israeli Foreign Ministry, spokesman Mark Regev says Hezbollah is responsible for the violence. "It appears we have an escalation in the North," he said. "It is very clear that the escalation started on the Lebanese side of the border, and Israel will respond appropriately."

And I would suggest Mr. Obama read the following:

I live in northern Israel in the Arab city of Nazareth. A week into the war we were hit by Hizbullah rockets that killed two young brothers. The attack, it was widely claimed, was proof either that Hizbullah was indiscriminately targeting civilians (so indiscriminately, the argument went, that it was hitting fellow Arabs) or that the Shiite militia was so committed to a fanatical war against the Judeo-Christian world that it was happy to kill Nazareth's Christian Arabs too...

But to anyone living in Nazareth, it was clear the rocket attack on the city was not indiscriminate either. It was a mistake -- something Nasrallah quickly confirmed in one of his televised speeches. The real target of the strike was known to Nazarenes: close by the city are a military weapons factory and a large military camp. Hizbullah knows the locations of these military targets because this year, as was widely reported in the Israeli media at the time, it managed to fly an unmanned drone over the Galilee photographing the area in detail -- employing the same spying techniques used for many years by Israel against Lebanon.

Of course these pieces of information are not out in the public and in terms of what started the hostilities, the discourse was soon changed to make Lebanon and Hezbollah to be the aggressors and therefore the excuse, long planned to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon. So Obama is fooling no one. And again, he won't be challenged by "the media" since most of them are also in AIPAC's pocket scared to death of being labeled "anti-semetic".

Of course though. Obama is showing his qualifications to be president, one of which is to kiss AIPAC ass and then go to Selma and talk to black folk in church, most of whom, unfortunately have no clue as to what has been detailed above and are two blinded by the Audacity of Obama(tm), to heed Dr. King's warning about the content of his character. Any black person who needs to kiss AIPAC ass has serious character content issues. In fact I'll say the same for any other US citizen.

Of course no speech to AIPAC would not be complete without the requisite sympathy for Israeli victims of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism.

Just six months after I visited,
Hezbollah launched four thousand rocket attacks just like the one that
destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona, and kidnapped Israeli service
members. And we pray for all of the service members who have been
kidnapped: Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev, and Ehud Goldwasser, and I met with
his family this week. I offered to help in any way I can.

Oh yes Obama, has sympathy for some Israeli citizens and wants to do anything he can to help, but when he was in NYC, right after Sean Belle was murdered by the NYPD in a branzen act of wrecklessness, Obama couldn't even muster up the guts to call the shooting what it was. Nor did he even offer "help" to Sean Bell's family. But i understand, Sean Bell and his family are not wealthy white (and Jewish) donors, so they don't matter. I expect that kind of stuff from Hilary but Obama should know better, especially if he's going to tout the "different kind of politics". But the only thing different right now is the color of the face, and the texture of the hair.

Technorati Tags: Barak Obama, critique, Leadership, Middle East, Palestine, politics

Open Letter To Essie Mae Washington-Williams

You know, I'm really tired of the tired folk who need to apologize for white supremacist relatives. Yes I'm speaking to YOU Essie Mae Washington-Williams. You, Ma'am are tired.

It's bad enough that you thought it was honorable to allow Strom Thurmond to go about his white-supremacist ways, while hiding the fact of fathering a "black" child. That sad old Southern tradition of knockin' up the black maid or the tradition of going on the other side of town where white men could "split some wood" and get some sexual experiences without sullying the reputation of the Southern White Woman(tm). But To sink so low as go on the record against Al. Sharpton is extra low in my book. Extra extra low. It's all well and good that Pappy Strom was so kind to you and your family. I'm glad he took care of you. But that, my dear, is between you and him. And I suppose that the "good things" that Pappy Strom has done for the "people of South Carolina" would include the great economic positions that many black people there currently live in.

While most black folk in America, especially those of us who are not coal black, realize that we have white ancestors somewhere, it is not everyday that one of us, who have dedicated our lives to defending black people against segregationists and other white supremacists both in and out of office and in and out of uniform, find that our ancestors were the property of a family who included members who stood against everything that we are against. Perhaps you're to enthralled with Pappy Strom, to see that some of us black folk don't exactly take to such things well.

When we find that we have lived concurrently with persons who's words and actions helped to create an atmosphere that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of black people and the physical abuse of many thousands more and that persons family had owned as chattel, as debt payment, ancestors of ours, we don't particularly take that with a ho-hum attitude. but I suppose YOU wouldn't understand that would you.

So, let me close this with a little, itty bitty request. Since you had such high regard for a man who put you through school while denying you in public and creating an atmosphere of hate for millions of black people. Since you appear to understand the whole, don't disrespect someone who's done so much for people And Al Sharpton has done a lot for black people, the next time a newspaper or news program reporter asks you for your opinion about Al Sharpton's reaction to his historical connections to the Thurmond family:

Shut
Tha
Hell
Up.

Thank you.

Technorati Tags: Al Sharpton, critique, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, Stom Thurmond

On Reparations

Today I was watching Due Process, a legal show on channel 8 here in Northern New Jersey and there was Ron Daniels and Stanley Crouch discussing reparations. Ron Daniels was doing his thing and Stanley Crouch was, well, doing his. This is not going to be a recap of the discussion that happened on that show but rather I'm going to throw in my opinion on the matter.

The first thing that many people who are opposed to reparations as it concerns black folk in the US. is that we blacks now, aren't and have never been slaves. A logical point, to a point.

If, at the end of the Civil War, the US made good on the forty Acres and a Mule proposition, the entire reparations movement would have had one of it's legs knocked out from under it. This is an important point. It was clear to those proposing forty Acres and a Mule that in order for the African to "make it" in America, they needed to move from being dispossessed to asset holders. Hence the forty acres would be a means by which the emancipated African (And you''ll note I did not say "slave") would be able to stake property claims in America and have a source to secure funding.

The mule in the forty acres proposition would represent a means of gaining income. Most blacks at the time being involved in agriculture would naturally be suited to start in that area. Again by having assets, the African would be given a "leg up" out of dispossession and put on the same level as other immigrants. However; the forty acres proposition was not carried out and therefore the US government passed on the opportunity to deal with reparations directly to those emancipated at the time. Since the claim of reparations in the US goes back at least that far, the failure to resolve the issue is not the fault of the current claimants but rather the fault of the US Government. Therefore any person who objects to current blacks maintaining the claim to reparations ought not fault the blacks doing so, but rather ought to blame the US government for stalling.

The second argument, usually proffered by whites is that their ancestors came to America after slavery was abolished and therefore they should not have to pay for something they nor their ancestors had anything to do with.

There are any number of responses to this point. One point, which can seem callous to some would be "tough shit". Everyday the American tax payer pays for stuff he or she doesn't agree with. The Iraq war comes to mind. Public funding for "racist" politicians comes to mind. So really I could say I'm not much concerned with whether whites don't particularly "like" having to pay for something they didn't agree to or have a part in.

Another, less callous point would be that depending on when one's ancestors came to America, they quickly benefited from the racial hierarchy that placed blacks at the bottom of the employment and opportunity ladder. Though groups such as Italians and Irish were initially deemed "not white" they eventually earned their "white stripes" and fell in line with the benefits offered whites. This includes all material, economic and social benefits that has largely resulted in the current economic situation in which whites have far greater wealth than blacks. It should also be noted that the public school system which many whites, including immigrants, benefitted from was the act of the black congressmen from the reconstruction era. So while these "never owned a slave" whites were benefitting from their new whiteness, black were being Jim Crowed and discriminated against.

This brings us to the next argument which is that "slavery happened a long time ago".

The problem with this answer, as discussed before is that the reparations movement is for damages inclusive of slavery but now expanded into the legal disenfranchisement of blacks that followed emancipation. As I pointed out before, had the US government made good on the forty acres, then this may not have been a point. The legal discrimination of blacks in education, living and economic opportunities is legendary. We aren't just talking about the black poor, but even the doctors, lawyers and teachers and the like were circumscribed in their opportunities simply because they were black. That the one group of people who have been in the US since it's inception are not the founding owners of huge industries in manufacturing and banking and the like is a clear example of this. So the claim here is about slavery the Jim Crow that followed it and it's repercussions.

The next common argument is that "blacks have it good now".

Well OK. Jews have it pretty good too. Apparently the "doing pretty good argument" didn't apply to them so why apply it to black folk? Well the reason for this was discussed above with the "blacks now aren't slaves" point. But besides that point, blacks as a whole in American society represent a disproportionate amount of the poor in America. Even if we weren't disproportionately poor, the argument still wouldn't wash because the current state of the claimant does not negate the claim. Could you imagine a the court in the say OJ Simpson civil case that since the Brown family was pretty much well off, that they couldn't make any claim against OJ? And no this isn't a referendum on OJ, just an example. Therefore legally, even if blacks were over-represented in the top earners and wealth, we STILL could make the claim for reparations. I will be generous and state that most people, including most whites have absolutely no clue as to how, as a group, white Americans have far more wealth than black Americans. Many whites, when they do see blacks see Oprah and Hip Hop artists on TV and think that black people must have it good. Or they see their black co-workers who has spent much of their money on material items that depreciate and think that they wish they had (put item here) failing to realize that odds are that the black person is all flash. That doesn't mean there aren't well off blacks. But as I said before, the existence of Oprahs and Bob Johnson's are beside the point.

The last point I want to address is the "They'll just spend it on dumb ish"

Well there are a number of ways to answer that. The first is in line with a point I made above: It's not your business how the reparations are spent IF given as individual checks. Again, imagine if the judge in the OJ civil trial told the brown family that they could only have the money if they agreed to spend it in a manner the judge approved of. Utterly ridiculous. But I will agree that individual checks would be a bad idea. The reason for this is that I fear that if individuals are given checks the result will be a net transfer of wealth to white Americans. By that I mean that by and large the holders of mortgages, supermarkets, etc are non-blacks. Since many of these essential services and goods have to be acquired then a large amount of this money could very well find its way right back into non-black hands. Since a record number of blacks are in debt (along with many other Americans) Banks would also probably be the recipients of individual money. Therefore it would probably be a bad idea to give money out to individuals. Instead I agree with those that say such money should go into institutions to be used in such a manner as to keep such money within' black communities and institutions. I think such finds should be available to primarily boost education at all levels, though that should be the primary responsibility of the government (since it mandates primary and secondary education). But I would like to see a Higher Ed and Trade School funding made available. I'm also amenable to small business loans though that has it's risk since 75% of all startups fail. I was also considering housing subsidies in terms of home purchases but I'm worried that people will use such subsidies to get into homes they cannot afford. That may not be any of my business, but it's a concern.

Overall though, even if cheques are given to individuals if they blow it on dumb ish, the businesses that get that money will benefit and that will be the loss of the individual who then cannot complain. In the end, reparations in whatever form is the right thing to do irrespective of the opinions of the detractors. For those black folk who are opposed to reparations, I suggest a nice national registry for the objectors to make sure they are unable to participate and that their share is redistributed to others.

Misplaced Priorities

I simply could not let this pass. Apparently Mr. Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe who is currently overseeing an economy with 1600% inflation is threw himself a birthday party:

Zimbabwe’s economy is so dire that bread vanished from store shelves across the country on Wednesday after bakeries shut down, saying government price controls were requiring them to sell loaves at a loss. The price controls are supposed to shield consumers from the nation’s rampant inflation, which now averages nearly 1,600 percent annually...

The 21st February Movement, founded as a youth welfare organization in 1986, said it had raised 300 million Zimbabwe dollars — about $65,000 at black-market currency rates — from the public for Mr. Mugabe’s birthday party. The event, to be held in Gweru, Zimbabwe’s third largest city, is to feature a parade of specially chosen children delivering birthday greetings.

Real leadership would not have such a celebration, rather all that food and money would have went to the people. I mean how difficult is it to understand?

On These So Called "Black" Presidents

Diversity Inc has bombarded my inbox with an article entitled: Obama Wouldn't Be First Black President in which they posit that There were 5 "black presidents" already in office. They note:

Jefferson, who served two terms between 1801 and 1809, was described as the "son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginia mulatto father," as stated in Vaughn's findings. Jefferson also was said to have destroyed all documentation attached to his mother, even going to extremes to seize letters written by his mother to other people.

I see in the twisted "one drop rule" American conception of black. Having a half breed squaw and a "half breed" negro (and we don't even know the gene pool of that individual since the US never quite got wholly into the whole Quadroon, Octoroon thing. But since "we" accept this twisted definition of "black" We get to be handed this BS by people who apparently need to find Negroes in people's trees. I suppose then that a white man started the Black Panther Party and the Nation Of Islam, given the gene pools of the founders right?

Now there's a mighty fine example of a Black man if I ever saw one! Well anyway that would explain his attraction to Sally Hemmings right? And all dem slaves he owned and sold

Next:

President Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh president, was in office between 1829 and 1837. Vaughn cites an article written in The Virginia Magazine of History that Jackson was the son of an Irish woman who married a black man. The magazine also stated that Jackson's oldest brother had been sold as a slave.

Yep, Me and Mr.Jackson sho do look like kin folk! I never ever knew! I haven't read Vaughn's work so I can't account for the veracity of the information but I mean are we going by news articles? I mean there's no birth certificate? No way to track this woman down? No way to track black father? besides which if he had a black father don't we think that the picture would have been different? Oh no, that's right they needed to make him look white in order to keep up the conspiracy that he was in fact a "mulatto". Don't forget the wigs they liked to wear back then. That picture isn't even his own hair! And I suppose his oldest brother got all the "black looks" in the family and that's why he got sold off. I wonder if Mr. Jackson tried to find his brother? Or perhaps "passing" for white was far more important.

Next:

Lincoln, the nation's 16th president, served between 1861 and 1865. Lincoln was said to have been the illegitimate son of an African man, according to Leroy's findings. Lincoln had very dark skin and coarse hair and his mother allegedly came from an Ethiopian tribe. His heritage fueled so much controversy that Lincoln was nicknamed "Abraham Africanus the First" by his opponents.>

Man he look just like my daddy and grad daddy. That's some coarse hair too!. Did Lincoln user Afro-Sheen? how did he get all them naps out the kitchen? Inquiring minds want to know! Blackest man on the planet right thurrr!

You see, there's this old rule in the South. Don't talk about those illegitimate black kids you made until you're dead. Oh yes that's right that one applied to white men. I suppose then that Lincoln was the result of some cooch itchin'. Who knows We know those Ethiopians were all over West Africa just awaiting to jump in a slave ship and get to Illinois! I mean, we know there were some Africans that came by way of East Africa, but they represent a small small small percentage of those imported and Lincoln, by chance was the offspring of one of those Ethiopians. Hey, if a "racist" opponent says that you're black, heck then it must be so!

Next:

President Warren Harding, the 29th president, in office between 1921 and 1923, apparently never denied his ancestry. According to Vaughn, William Chancellor, a professor of economics and politics at Wooster College in Ohio, wrote a book on the Harding family genealogy. Evidently, Harding had black ancestors between both sets of parents. Chancellor also said that Harding attended Iberia College, a school founded to educate fugitive slaves.

You know I never quite understood why Marcus Garvey liked to write to this president so much. now I know. You'll note that this economics professor says that Harding had "black ancestors" between both sets of parents. Notice he didn't say he had black parents, you know like black people like me have. Nor did he say just where on the family tree these "black ancestors" were. But again on the twisted "one drop rule" racial categorization in America. That makes Harding a Black Man!! What up my N******! We do realize that at least 30% of those classified as white Americans have black ancestry and if one takes it far back enough, everybody got at least one black ancestor, the first human. So we're all black!!!!

Next:

Coolidge, the nation's 30th president, served between 1923 and 1929 and supposedly was proud of his heritage. He claimed his mother was dark because of mixed Indian ancestry. Coolidge's mother's maiden name was "Moor" and in Europe the name "Moor" was given to all blacks just as "Negro" was used in America. It later was concluded that Coolidge was part black.

Ahh yes another fine example of an Africoid man. Two Black presidents in a row. How many non-black as in non-African people are "mistook" for being black people? It happens all the damn time. In fact it happens very frequently because of the twisted American concept of who's black of which this whole entire post shows it's ridiculousness for all to see. Well let me tell you I've seen a whole lotta "dark" white people. some of whome are darker than many people classified as black. Yet and still, knowing full well the implications of such relatively dark skin, I know full well that they are not African, Black or whatever.

Simply then I'm not having this 5 black presidents argument because I reject the "one drop rule". The one drop rule was created specifically to guarantee the "purity" of whiteness. That the bulk of the US, which claims to not be racist and a publication that supposedly is attempting to eradicate discrimination, still clings to the white supremacist ideaology that is the "one drop rule". Is simply a reflection of the denial and rank ignorance that people in the US, both African and not, still have in regards to race.

Technorati Tags: critique, Diversity Inc., science

Obama and Black "Leadership"

The Black Agenda Report has a set of articles on the current state of black "leadership" that I think the readers of Garvey's Ghost ought to read up on. The first: Putting Black Faces on Imperial Policies is an important piece because it highlights a point I have made regarding the death of black protest politics as seen with the ouster of Cynthia McKinney. From the article:

"Barack Obama is our son and he deserves our support," declared Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr., speaking to a gathering of Black Democrats at the party's winter meeting, in Washington, earlier this month. By Jones' logic, Condoleezza Rice deserves automatic African American support as "our daughter," and Colin Powell, her predecessor as George Bush's Secretary of State, was due fealty as "our brother."



And yes, this issue does put Obama front and center. I'm not hating on the man for what he's trying to accomplish but rather I object to the symbolism that goes with him in particular. As I have stated before, white people who like him, like him because they perceive him as "post-racial". That is, he does not carry the "racial baggage" that the "rest of us" carry. That white mother of his, unlike a most if not all previous black candidates, carries much "soothing" weight with white voters. This is nothing new as anyone familiar with the American racial system will know that blacks with white kin, were often the buffer class that was used as it's leadership class since their "peculiar" breeding was percieved as making them smarter and more civilized than the "off the boat" Africans. But my issue with Obama goes beyond his gene pool (which is really not an issue for me, but rather an issue I have with white people who love him so much). My issue with Obama is his apparent lack of firmly held positions. For example, I thought his non-comment on the Sean Bell shooting (which has basically disappeared from the news media) was a slap in the face of black folk in NYC. I'm not comfortable voting for a man who doesn't have the back bone to say 50 shots, and emptying 2 clips at a civilian is not OK. I have a problem with a any candidate who thinks the Iranian are incapable of the intelligence to have nuclear weapons, especially given that the US has no qualms dumping depleted Uranium on civilian populations. Anyway, the second article, A Valley of Buzzwords: Obama’s Soulless Book goes into depth about Obama's apparent lack of grounding:

Obama gets a lot wrong from start to finish. While people may indeed have a shared reality - which means we witness the same things - we don't always feel, understand, process, or react to what we witness in the same way. The simplest example of not having a "shared understanding" is the difference in how blacks and whites view the police.

What is lacking here is devotion to principles, which Obama constantly sacrifices on the altar of "shared values." And of course the issue is not of shared values. It's how we rank our values. Many people value religion, but which religion has more value? In this country we all know the answer to that question. As proof that the United States government values Christians over Muslims, consider that the United States is at war with an Islamic country. Consider that Muslims in this country are subject to increased government scrutiny and racial, ethnic, and religious profiling. No one in their right mind could believe that the United States places a Muslim on an equal footing with a Christian or Jew. The daily body count dispels that notion.

Read the articles for more info. That first one is very important.

Technorati Tags: critique, politics

New Orleans on some Old Ish

So yesterday I ran across an article in the LA Times entitled: Post-Katrina, New Orleans still awash in violence which was a really sad commentary on the state of some black people. I encourage a full read of the article but a few things jumped out at me:

Duplessis, 24, could not resist the lure of the only hometown he had ever known. He would rap about it later, in recording sessions captured on a demo CD:
"Stressing on the phone with FEMA for hours
"While Nagin on TV, talking 'bout he need manpower
"I gotta head back to the N.O.;

"A-T-L too slow..."

He had partners in Dallas, he boasted, who could get him Ecstasy at wholesale prices. His shout-outs were to his old New Orleans haunts; his line of work was never in question:
"I'm a Einstein when it come to movin' that coke..." So home he went, about two months after the storm,to his old turf, and his old career.

On the one hand left to beg FEMA for shelter, when his old career..".. drugs paid his rent. They paid for expensive sneakers, a fancy GMC Yukon Denali truck, and for the upbringing of the daughter he had fathered with an estranged girlfriend."

See if this fool was such an "Einstein" he woulda had money aside for just such an emergency given that he lives way below sea level. But "Einstein" was only bright about what was in front of his face, and not even that bright, so it never occurred to him to save. Besides saving and living by some kind of rules for long life is, as he put it, "too slow."

But what of this demo CD? Well I suppose he will fancy himself a self styled "CNN" of the 'hood right?. Here he is:

In one verse, he compares himself to Jesus, predicting his return "on the seventh day" with a big haul of cocaine that will keep his people nourished "with water and bread."

Ahh yes, Crack vs. actual food. Oh, no, that's right, he sells crack to people to strung out and addicted to care about food, so he can make sure he has food on his table. Yes the logic is stunning isn't it. Though perhaps if I said this too him he'd get mad and try to kill me since he has a habit of not taking criticism:

Soon he started picking up drywall gigs for money, and for a while, he thought about going into business for himself. He even had a batch of business cards printed up.
But one day on the job, his boss, angered with his poor handiwork, tore up a wall Duplessis had just completed. Duplessis bristled at the insult, abruptly quit, and returned to the streets.


See that's the problem with these Negroes. Would rather do something illegal, get punked by the police, and risk death than take some criticism (which would have resulted in him being a better dry wall installer, resulting in more paying gigs) and step up his business game. Note to the too stupid: Difficult people come with legit work. You learn to either dish it back or suck it up, especially if YOU did a poor job. But apparently that is to hard for some people.

Now don't get me wrong. There is blame to be assigned to persons other than Mr. Duplessis:


Duplessis' mother sent him to a Catholic grade school until her drug habit ate into her finances. So he started sixth grade in a public school system that was considered among the nation's worst. Two years later, he dropped out.

Soon he was dealing in the streets. Finister thinks something snapped in her son when his grandfather, his only real father figure, died in 1994. Duplessis, in his songs, described a different kind of epiphany, one sparked by the sight of a friend from the 'hood who had acquired a slick new car.

It was "a whip [that] looked like a space shuttle," Duplessis rapped. "I knew right then my whole focus in life was to hustle."

It is simply unnacceptable that a country as rich as the US, does not spend enough money on it's public educational system. That failure is a large part of why Mr. Duplessis made the dumb decisions he made. It was very clear to him, especially having gone from a Catholic school, that the government could have cared less about his educational well being.

The second issue of note is that Duplessis was also a victim of his parents bad decisions. I have seen this too many times. There are too many parents simply do not understand that their most important job is to socialize their children. This means you can't be smoking crack and all that junk. You are there to instill values and teach your kids the importance of impulse control. It upsets me to see the fall out when children become victims of their parents bad (and I'm being clean here) choices.

However; that aside, there comes a point where people need to decide that a change needs to be made. I cannot understand, and perhaps a reader will help me with this, why after the devastation in New Orleans and the incredible need for community rebuilding these young men feel the need to kill each other at a rate that seems to be headed higher than before. I know there are some shady back room dealing going on, but DAMN. robbing people who are living in FEMA trailers? It's bad enough they have to deal with the toxic fumes emanating from the things, but to be getting robbed at gunpoint too? Just how low are these folks going to go?

The Blame Game

And so the US has decided to offer "proof" that Iran is "supplying' Iraqi "insurgents" with arms. It is such a laughable news report that I almost declined to comment on it. But then I realized that Bush will be in office for another 2 years and the Democrats still don't have the balls to be an opposition party and do things like, say, cut off funding for further warfare.

The whole report to me had a big "So what" about it. I guess that there is only a problem with "supplying arms" when it involved people other than the US or NATO allies. See the short memory of the US press and US people is in clear view of those paying attention. You see, the US was busy giving Iraq arms to kill Iranians. That, apparently, is OK. That Saddam Hussein was too stupid (or perhaps shook) to use his trial to reveal documentation on the US arms sales to Iraq and it's "wink and nod" attitude towards the use of said weapons including those pesky chemical ones that allegedly was used by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds. I say allegedly because the joke of a trial doesn't quite engender confidence in the "evidence" nor does the fact that there has been contradictory evidence on the matter, such as the report that the gas used was of Iranian origins.

So If the Iranians are supplying the "insurgents" with arms to kill American soldiers it would be a very nice case of Karmic justice wouldn't it? On the other hand why should we believe the "intelligence" community reports? This from an administration that clearly has a penchant for lying and telling half truths. We know full well that Bush and Co. have hard ons (and perky nipples) at the thought of getting at Iran. Ahmedinejad had it right when he said that the US ought to leave Iraq. It is simply unacceptable that that the residents of New Orleans can't get back into their homes or into new homes and billions are being spent to build Iraq. But that's not important is it?

Yah.. Iran supplies arms to Iraq.. Karma baby. Karma.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Obama Love

Not since Colin Powell has white America fawned so much over a light skinned African-American as we have witnessed with Barak Obama. They line up wherever he shows up. The News media follows his every move. There are many black folk who also love Obama, many for very obvious reasons. In trying to understand the Obama mania I came to understand what made him so palatable to so many white people: he's not "black".

No I don't mean he's not black as in of African descent. I'm not stupid. No, Obama is not black in the sense that his personal history is far outside the former black historical political realm. In other words, Obama, somewhat like Booker T. before him, plays very well to the insecurities that white people have about black people and black politicians: They will make us feel guilty and try to get back at us (play the race card). See Obama's platform was solidified at the DNC when he made his "There is one America" speech. You know, the "there is no Black America", etc., etc. " speech.

Now Obama the politician is not stupid. He knows that in order to get beyond being a congressional respresentative, where black representation has been locked into, one has to appeal to a wide range of voters. That means expanding your base to other, more numerous populations. In Illinois that means whites. In the presidential elections that will mean whites both Anglo and non-Anglo. The question has been for me, and I have been pondering this since the early 90's, is how does one address a national audience while staying true to your roots. Remember that most white candidates do not have to abandon their roots in order to reach out. Ahh but Obama has a unique characteristic that precludes this "roots" issue. His roots are not in the African-American collective history. For those of you unfamiliar with Obama, he is the product of a Kenyan father and a white American mother. The father left and the mother went on to raise Obama. PArt of that raising occured in Malasia. Some accounts of Obama's life reveals that he tried weed and hung with a "bad crowd" (supposedly black pseudo revolutionaries). He then shaped up and went on to do great things including, to his credit, marrying a black woman.

Now because of Obama's rather out of the ordinary life he can discuss unity. Remember that for much of his life, his primary allegiance was to his white mother, something most black people even today cannot have as a part of their history. Therefore I imagine that it would be difficult for Obama to have as must distrust of white persons and institutions as those who may have been victims of those same people. Thus Obama does not really have to compromise his history in order to reach out across lines, he simply can do what it is that he has always done for his life. This is in stark contrast to the black politicians of yesterday whom had to start from a black base and "keep it real". That is, many of yesterday's black politicians were motiviated to serve (we hope) by the conditions facing black people in their communities and elsewhere. They aim was supposedly to get into places of power to represent their people (and districts). Obama, from what I have heard and read, has no such motivation. Not that I'm saying he doesn't care about black folk (he really hasn't said much, or of real substance on race), but I'm not hopefull after his non-challant attitude toward the Sean Bell killing.

But what of black folk? Why are many black folk pulling for Obama? Black folk who are for Obama are for him for a single reason: He's Black. Anyone saying different is lying to your face. OK maybe not anyone, but that is the large sentiment. While whites are motivated by his bi-racial, non-confrontational attitude, black folks want to see a black face at the helm. Just about any black face will do, save perhaps Ward Connerly or Clarence Thomas. I spoke to some people in Chicago about Obama's comments on Iran. They didn't know about the commment. I don't think it would have mattered.

This is what bothers me about Obama. It appears that he is willing to take a position that will make him appear to be "moderate" and that would appeal to as many people as possible. Politically that may be good. But that is not leadership. Leadership is taking hard positions. Fact based positions and putting them out there and defending them and changing them when better information comes out. Leadership is calling Sean Bell's killing what it was. Leadership is calling Bush's war what it is. This is what would get me in the Obama camp. But Obama doesn't want to take the tough stands. The problem is, that in the long run it is going to cost him because people are going to press him on the issues and force him to take stands either way. While Obama may not suffer the Jackson reversal (the phenomenon where once the public realized that Jesse Jackson stood a chance at getting the Democratic nomination back in the 80's, his numbers started to fall off and eventually was snubbed at the convention.) He will be forced to make some uncomfortable stands.

Ultimately though, as I pointed out in my McKinney coverage, the age of black protest politics is coming to a close. It's not that America is less racist now, it simply has convinced black folks that they should stop bringing it up. Obama is the new role model for that movement.

Garvey's Ghost will return...

February 1 2007.
Needed a break.

Black on Black Crime and Corey Booker's Reality Check

This past week we, here in NJ have witnessed a great deal of murder. In East Orange NJ, a man was shot in his store eight times, four in the chest and four in the back in what appears to be a hit. I say a hit because there was nothing taken, it happened in the middle of the day and allegedly involved two other persons in a getaway car. Shortly after that there were two killings in Newark, NJ and then in Paterson NJ.

So roughly one week into the New Year and by the news reports at least 6 black people dead not by the hands of the police but by other black men out of uniform. It bears noting that all of this happened in areas with relatively poor black people live. This is important. So what about Corey Booker? Well if you recall the past two elections, Mr. Booker's main point was that there needed to be a change in Newark and that he could and would deliver a reduction in crime apparently simply by being seated in the "big house". Apparently he managed to convince a bunch of black folk in Newark to believe him as they handed him the seat to which he aspired. Well it was a bit more complicated then that but that's not the subject of this post. Of course Newark went on to have a record, or near record number of homicides, a trend clearly continuing into 2007.

Mr. Booker, channeling Guiliani has vowed, again, to "get tough" on crime in Newark, but I'm sure that the reality is slowly sinking into Mr. Booker's bright bald head:

It's not the policing.

See at first Booker and his supporters were to focused on Sharpe James, as if he was the one running around shooting people in Newark. While I'm sure that James had his dirt as most long time politicians do, James was not the problem facing Newark. I think James, among many others made, for better or worse, an uneasy peace with the crime in Newark. They knew, that policing was not going to change the problem because in the larger scheme of things, the problem isn't really crime.

Lest any newcomer to the blog think that I am going to excuse violence, lets be clear that those who pull the trigger are in fact the persons directly responsible for the crime and should pay for it. However; such lock 'em up policies are not addressing the real problem. poverty and friends. Let us be clear here that regardless to the amount of violence we see in black neighborhoods, as a percentage of the population, black offenders are, at most 2.5% of the total African-American population If we based that number on the incarceration rate. There are statistics about the convicted that are instructive to this issue. According to the Department of Justice, in terms of education the two groups with the highest conviction rates, 30.6% and 26&% respectively, are persons with "some high school" and "high school diploma". The conviction rates drop precipitously for those who get a GED (18%) which tells us a very important thing: Those who consciously go for their education are less likely to commit or be convicted of a crime. This would mean that those who see a purpose to education, since one must seek out a GED as opposed to being "forced" to go to school, are less likely to commit crimes. Therefore it would make sense to focus on education, as in increasing it's perceived value, as a means of addressing crime.

Another statistic of interest was the income of those arrested (from 2002 statistics available from the DOJ).

71% of those arrested had employment, 57% of which claimed full time employment. Of these persons a whopping 60% had yearly incomes of $11,900 or less. I don't have these income stats by race or location, but if we assume that this pattern holds in Newark, then it should be very clear that the two major indicators, if not causations of crime in Newark, East Orange and Paterson, would be the educational system and the economy. It is pretty much well known that the vast majority of business in Newark are owned by persons who do not live in Newark or are simply non-existant. By non-existant I mean that Newark is not Manhattan, the number of jobs available to black residents of that city (and I have a hard time calling it a city in comparison to NY but that's my hang up), is simply not the same as other parts of NJ. Much of the high paying jobs exist in office parks and other places where travel is prohibitive. One has to remember that the vast majority of middle class persons in NJ who work in NJ do not take public transportation. Therefore it would stand to reason that in many cases the crime we see in Newark is partially indicative of the lack of other viable prospects for income.

The incomes of persons in Newark are reflective of this issue. From the 2000 census we learn that Newark residents who are in households where the head is aged between 25 and 35, have a median income of $28,000. In Bergen County the median income is $63,000 for the same age group and among blacks in that county by contrast the median income of the same aged residents for Essex County is $40,000.

When we focus on per capita income among blacks in those counties we find that blacks in Essex County have a per capita income of $16,067. In Newark the number is $12,648 and in Bergen county it is $24,109.

By comparison whites in Essex County have a per capita income of $35,578. In Bergen County whites have a per capita income of $36,290
And in Newark whites have a per capita income of 15,024.

It is quite clear then that blacks in NJ in general and Newark in particular do not have the income of even their white fellow Newark residents and are clearly behind those blacks and whites in Bergen County (understood to be the richest in the state) where such crimes do not occur as frequently and the perpetrators, especially the older white ones (whites are arrested for more violent crimes than blacks once they reach 40+ years old) who can afford decent lawyers.

So what does this have to do with Corey Booker and the shootings in these relatively poor black neighborhoods? Well if Corey Booker is serious about crime prevention in the long haul, he is going to have to address the issue of education, which we demonstrated here is proven to reduce crime. School vouchers will not prevent crime simply because they move already scant resources from public schools (or some public schools) and puts them into a smaller pool. There must be a complete change in the educational system so that the quality of education is lifted dramatically. The second thing is the opportunity for decent employment. It is extremely hard to convince someone of the value of hard work and putting of gratification, when they see other people indulging in conspicuous consumption and they do not see the opportunities for the level of income they need to have in order to acquire these things. Furthermore, since much of the incomes shown here are below the poverty line, we may be dealing with the consequences of poor nutrition which has been proven to stunt intellectual development. If social services are not up to par in dealing with the relatively high poverty rate and possible malnutrition and combine that with poorly performing schools emptying out into a poor job market, where the best opportunities are afforded to those who can drive, you have a set up for the type of situation we are witnessing in Newark. I wont even get into the large percentage of inmates who had been sexually or physically abused prior to being arrested.

The only thing that gentrification projects and "extra policing" is going to do is move the poor into more concentrated areas of poverty and fill jails. Now that may be fine by the exploding private prison system, but it shouldn't be fine by Mayor Booker, if he is serious about saving the people of Newark. Newark needs serious economic help. It needs high paying jobs for it's residents, not for people who commute in from other counties.

There are a number of things that can be done to change Newark for the better and many of them are not going to be liked by the monied and the not monied. Perhaps I'll post a list of things I think ought to be done but that's optional for me. It is not for Mr. Booker. If he want's to be a "new leader" for Newark, he needs to stop running with the same ol' same ol'.

*Per Capita income is defined as the mean income computed for every man, woman, and child in a particular group. It is derived by dividing the total income of a particular group by the total population in that group.

Technorati Tags: Black Education, Black Employment, critique, governance, Black Crime

Quote of the Week

From the Detroit Auto Show, and perhaps lifted from somewhere else:

A person may fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he blames someone or something else.

Be back soon with the first of the new year's long blog posts.

Hero

This brother right here is a damn hero.

Wesley Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker and Navy veteran, faced both those questions in a flashing instant yesterday, and got his answers almost as quickly.

Mr. Autrey was waiting for the downtown local at 137th Street and Broadway in Manhattan around 12:45 p.m. He was taking his two daughters, Syshe, 4, and Shuqui, 6, home before work.

Nearby, a man collapsed, his body convulsing. Mr. Autrey and two women rushed to help, he said. The man, Cameron Hollopeter, 20, managed to get up, but then stumbled to the platform edge and fell to the tracks, between the two rails.

The headlights of the No. 1 train appeared. “I had to make a split decision,” Mr. Autrey said.

So he made one, and leapt.

Mr. Autrey lay on Mr. Hollopeter, his heart pounding, pressing him down in a space roughly a foot deep. The train’s brakes screeched, but it could not stop in time.

While black men are being, ignored, discriminated against, shot at by other black men and white men in and out of uniform, treated like they are un-needed and often unwanted pieces of flesh, this man right here showed the world what a real black man is.

Take note.

2007 Scholarship Application Available

The 2007 Olatunji Foundation for Pan-Africanism Scholarship(s) application is now available online.
If you or someone you know is attending an HBCU, has at least a 3.0 GPA and meets the other requirements, please get them the application.
The Foundation does not have Oprah money and no, there will be no news coverage or anything like that. We're simply people who are Pan-Africanists who are putting our money where our mouths are. More information here:


The Olatunji Foundation

If you want to support the Olatunji Foundation you may do so by making a direct donation. Any one making a donation for $25 or more will receive a "Garvey's Ghost" t-shirt. You can buy the t-shirt from the link to the right.

Technorati Tags: Black Education

Oprah's School

It seems that Oprah has joined Dikembe Mutombo by putting money into building African institutions. I've got my issues with Oprah and those issues still stand but I'm going to give credit where it is due. Today was the official opening of Oprah's The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy :

The academy selects girls whose family income is less than $700 a month.

The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy will eventually cater for 450 girls who show outstanding promise but whose families cannot support their education...

The school incorporates 28 buildings, across a 20 hectare (50 acre) site, with hi-tech classrooms, computers and science laboratories.

On Saddam's Death Sentance

I've been light on the Iraq posts because I think that the Iraq war is distracting to the very serious things going on in the African world. Secondly because anyone with 3/5 ofa brain knows that the War (in political terms) is lost. Anyone who has studied colonialism knows that colonialism always falls under its own weight and that Iraq is going to go the same route as Ghana, Algeria, Egypt, etc. Thirdly, the lies told to go into Iraq are so blatant and the violations of international law so blatant that the charging of crimes against humanity against Saddam and not this administration is grand hypocracy. But for those that need an Iraq fix, I would point you to a recent posting over at the DeskRat Chronicles which is an excellent summary of the life and times of Saddam Hussein and why he "needs" to die. Portions of his post references another bloggers post.

saddam was america's boy . he began his career at age 22 as a hitman for cia .
he was part of a cia assassination plot against iraq's leader colonel kassim .
kassim was viewed by the Us as too chummy with the soviets at the time .
kassim also was a populist who wanted to nationalize iraq's oil .
saddam and the other plotters ambushed kassim's car .
saddam was too impatient and blew it by firing too soon.
kassim was only wounded , his driver was killed and saddam had to flee the country.
saddam's cia handlers paid for his apartment in cairo for a year or so until another attempt on kassim succeeded and he was killed .

saddam returned to iraq , rode the coattails of an older cousin or uncle up the ladder of the baath party . ..

The decision to uphold the death sentence of Saddam Hussein by the sham Iraqi appeals court has gained worldwide condemnation, except for the U.S., of course. The court took two days to read 1,500 pages of documents presented by the defense. No court in the world can decipher this number of pages in such a short time, not even a legitimate court...

...I challenge all journalists who advocate the hanging of Saddam Hussein to take a few hours and research reality.
The standard figure of deaths attributed to the Ba'ath regime during the Anfal campaign is 182,000. Why have there not been any bodies found? If 182,000 people were killed, there must be piles and piles of bodies, yet none has appeared.
If 148 people were sentenced to death in 1982 for attempting to assassinate the president of Iraq, why are at least 24 still alive? And, those who were executed received a lengthy and fair trial that lasted about three years. They were fighting on the side of Iran while Iraq was engaged in a war with its eastern neighbor. In the U.S., this would be considered high treason. With Saddam Hussein, it was called mass murder. George Bush himself signed off more execution orders while the governor of Texas than did Saddam in the Dujail case.
If Iraqi military personnel gassed and killed 5,000 Kurds in Halabjah, why were only 300 bodies found? And, why was the gas used to kill the citizens cyanogen, a gas that Iraq did not possess but Iran did? Why have the CIA, the U.S. Army War College, Greenpeace, the main CIA analyst in 1988 (Stephen Pellitiere), the late Jude Waniski, the U.S Marine Corps Historical Report, and various other individuals and organizations blamed Iran for the gassing of the Kurds?

Read the full post here:

http://deskrat.blogspot.com/2006/12/hanging-saddam.html#comments

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Thoughts on Kwanzaa 2006

I'mma let ya'll in on a secret. Ready? I got a problem with Kwanzaa. I know I know for the past three years I've been out there defending Kwanzaa, but I gots to keep it real. I got a problem with Kwanzaa. My problem is this. I don't think it means what it used to anymore. Maybe I'm being too sensitive but let me give a couple of examples of what I mean.

Two weeks ago I was at a school concert and there were the Channuka songs and the Christmas songs and then this thing they called the 'African Noel" that was purported to be a Kwanzaa song. This feeling went over me that I could best describe as what I presume native Africans who don't know about Kwanzaa feel when they get wind of the celebration: This is just wrong.

See the problem here is that there is no Kwanzaa song as far as I know. Though folk may sing during Kwanzaa celebrations I ain't never ever heard of an African Noel. During this 'African Noel" the only principle of Kwanzaa brought up was Kujichagulia (self-determination). I presume that Kujichagulia and Nia and Imani (self-determination, Purpose and faith respectively) are the "safe" principles that people can discuss without 'guilt' or some sort of racial ill feelings. This is a problem. Kwanzaa's growing popularity is fueled, in my opinion, by making it a safe celebration. If you see mainstream news reports of Kwanzaa celebrations you'll see dancers and drummers and people in "african costumes". You'll see advertisements by major corporations featuring people in gran bubas and walking sticks. Wishing you the best!

See my problem stems from the seriousness I take my ideologies. I left the Christian church because I no longer shared the belief. I stopped attending because I thought it disrespectful to disrupt the services and beliefs of those who chose to believe the way they did. An open forum is one thing but going to the place of worship or celebration when one is not "in the spirit" is, in my opinion, pretty disrespectful.

When I learned of Kwanzaa, I understood it to come out of a culture nationalist tradition. Created by Maulana Karenga my understanding was that Kwanzaa was specifically made to address the cultural alienation that Africans in America have from their ancestral roots as well as to forward a cultural if not political Pan-Africanism among the AA population. It was never meant to be a replacement for any persons religious observations such as Christmas, Ramadan or Hannukah. Instead it was an addition specifically for African-Americans with the hopes of bringing them into a permanent , year round Pan-African ideology. So for example, the use of KiSwahili was used out of the recognition that Swahili is the largest native African language spoken in Africa that is not restricted by country or tribe...largely. The use of Red Black and Green is a direct reference to the Pan-Africanism of Marcus and Amy Garvey thus there can be no Kwanzaa without the discussion and meditation on Pan-Africanism. So to have a Kwanzaa song that is neither Pan-Africanist and attempts to strip Kwanzaa of it's roots is problematic to me.

Thus my problem. See just as I left the Christian church out of respect for those who did believe, I think that people who are latching onto Kwanzaa for reasons other than its intentions ought not participate. Aint no "Father Kwanzaa" aint no "African Noel" Kwanzaa song. If there are Kwanzaa songs, they are freedom rider songs. They are Bob Marley's "Get up Stand up". They are Peter Tosh's "African" They are Public Enemy's " Shut Em Down". No Kwanzaa greeting cards from Hallmark. You're supposed to make this stuff yourself.

Kwanzaa will not be Kwanzaa if the meaning is lost. It's like when the Malcolm X stamp was made in the US. It gave people the excuse to act like they "knew" Malcolm X. Everybody and their momma will tell you how much of a "human rights activist" he was but aint never read his works or studied his life. Similarly I now get non-black people telling me about Kwanzaa.

"Oh it's so nice."
"really?"
"Oh yes, you know."
"Really."
"The kids were singing this Kwanzaa song. I mean it was made up but it was so much fun."
"really. Fun you say? And what was the message?"
"oh, well. You know the black kids...."

Yes, Kwanzaa as black kid recognition time. the "you have some culture too" attitude. And I completely understand. The way these schools are and this society is, black folks culture is rap music, slavery and the civil rights movement. Every other group that is here can trace back specific traditions are religions to their home countries except African-Americans. Universally, Black Americans are people without their own and constantly latching onto what other people have, be it religion, dress, food.

So if people can go through Kwanzaa and learn nothing of Pan-Africanism or of African culture of the continent or the Diaspora, then really, what is the point?

Technorati Tags: Kwanzaa

Black Men PSA

Nuthin' lef' to say.

Happy Solstice

Today, well at 7:33 PM EST is the Winter Soltice AKA: The Reason for the Season. One of the great things about blogging for years (going into the 4th year of writing), is that you can start to go back and quote yourself. So for this solstice I will do a nice Sankofa move and pull a Solstice post from 2004:


...Folks there is a good a natural reason why we celebrate Christmas in the week that includes Dec 25. And note I did not say "the" 25th. Those who keep an eye on the length of daylight will know that the week of December 25th in the northern hemisphere is the shortest daylight time of the year. That is called the Winter Soltice. After the week of the 25th the daylight hours begin to lengthen and hence the sun is "reborn" Get it? The S[u]n of God (As depicted in Khemetic theology) is reborn on Christmas. Helloooooooo!...

Read the complete post: Solstice the Reason for the Season

Technorati Tags: critique, Solstice

Signs of Protest

Here is a small photo essay on the protest that occurred in NYC on Saturday Dec. 16, 2006. You will need QuickTime to view this.

Signs of Protest

Technorati Tags: critique, Jamaica Queens Shooting, March For Justice

Not my "Blood"

after the murder of Sean Bell and the near murder of TA Police in the vicinity, I read reports that the Bloods were seeking "justice" for Mr. Bell. I thought that was a nice joke given that this was coming from, well, the Bloods street gang. I didn't think anyone seriously calling for Justice for Sean Bell or out for the general safety of the black community at large would take the Bloods very seriously.
Unfortunately, The New Black Panther Party has decided to do so inviting them to speak at a rally in front of the 103 precinct where Malik Shabazz thought it wise to get on the microphone and tell the police "kill one of ours and we will kill one of yours."

It is unfortunate that Mr. Shabazz does not quite understand power in that if he was in fact serious about such a thing he would never have announced it. The reason being that by announcing such a thing, should any 103 precinct officer end up murdered, Mr. Shabazz will find himself on the receiving end of an arrest warrant much as the blind cleric Abdur Rahman did after the first World Trade Center bombing.
Secondly, he would have taken a page from the Mafia, and simply had the murder happen. No need for announcements when actions speak very very loudly. So, we know from these two things that Mr. Shabazz is talking junk and posturing for the camera and feeding off of the righteous anger of the crowd. That said, let me get back to the Bloods.

I don't have any problems with black organizations working with gangs or gang members in order to decrease the crime in the black community and rescue our children. None, whatsoever. I do have a problem with providing a platform for these gangs to make fake-ass revolutionary statements and slogans when we all know damn well that gang members, specifically the Bloods and Crips are the cause of much of the violence in NYC and other areas with high black populations. It would have been fine by me if the gang members had come to the stage and taken the microphone to announce that they were going to renounce community violence and drug dealing. It would have been nice to have an apology from representatives of each clique for the violence visited on the various poor communities they live in. That would have been nice.

Instead Shabazz gave these groups a platform to advocate more killing and by announcing an intention to kill police officers, they will have helped increase the tension and climate that will get more people killed. Thank you Mr. Shabazz. Exactly who's payroll are you on?



Look at the picture to the left. This is NOT black power.

Black power is not gang members in gang colors putting their fists in the air. Black power isn't even putting fists in the air. I will put cold hard CASH on a bet that none of the individuals here have read Kwame Ture and Charles Hamililton's Black Power. I'll lay hard cash that none of the pictured individuals have read Kwame Ture's auto biography or even know the definition given to Black Power at it's inception because if they had, they would not be Bloods. It's that simple. Being a part of an organization that kills more black people each year than the entire NYPD is antithetical to the concept of Black Power. Why then would an organization that supposedly supports Black Power allowing a group that is antithetical to black power to be legitimized? That is a good question. While I am appreciative of the work that the NBPP did in New Orleans after the hurricane, it is all to clear that this group is in need of guidance. They should read and re-read the critique that kwame Ture laid down on the Panthers in his autobiography (I'll need to go dig it out because it is very relevant here).

So the only time I want to see a Bloods gang member on stage at a rally is to announce a truce with other sets, and an apology for all past criminal activity and a plan to stop all future criminal activity. That would be the only Black Power thing that the Bloods can do for me and I would prefer that to the criminal prosecution of the police involved. WORD. You heard me. I'd rather the Police that shot Bell to walk, if it meant an end to gang violence. That my friends would be Black Power, until then we may be skin folks, but we ain't "blood". Heard?

Cynthia's Parting Shot

I want to post the official record of Cynthia McKinney's parting shot at el Presidente Bush:

Mr. Speaker:

I come before this body today as a proud American and as a servant of the American people, sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Throughout my tenure, I've always tried to speak the truth. It's that commitment that brings me here today.

We have a President who has misgoverned and a Congress that has refused to hold him accountable. It is a grave situation and I believe the stakes for our country are high.

No American is above the law, and if we allow a President to violate, at the most basic and fundamental level, the trust of the people and then continue to govern, without a process for holding him accountable-what does that say about our commitment to the truth? To the Constitution? To our democracy?

The trust of the American people has been broken. And a process must be undertaken to repair this trust. This process must begin with honesty and accountability.

Leading up to our invasion of Iraq, the American people supported this Administration's actions because they believed in our President. They believed he was acting in good faith. They believed that American laws and American values would be respected. That in the weightiness of everything being considered, two values were rock solid-trust and truth.

From mushroom clouds to African yellow cake to aluminum tubes, the American people and this Congress were not presented the facts, but rather were presented a string of untruths, to justify the invasion of Iraq.

President Bush, along with Vice President Cheney and then-National Security Advisor Rice, portrayed to the Congress and to the American people that Iraq represented an imminent threat, culminating with President Bush's claim that Iraq was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. Having used false fear to buy consent-the President then took our country to war.

This has grave consequences for the health of our democracy, for our standing with our allies, and most of all, for the lives of our men and women in the military and their families-who have been asked to make sacrifices-including the ultimate sacrifice-to keep us safe.

Just as we expect our leaders to be truthful, we expect them to abide by the law and respect our courts and judges. Here again, the President failed the American people.

When President Bush signed an executive order authorizing unlawful spying on American citizens, he circumvented the courts, the law, and he violated the separation of powers provided by the Constitution. Once the program was revealed, he then tried to hide the scope of his offense from the American people by making contradictory, untrue statements.

President George W. Bush has failed to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States; he has failed to ensure that senior members of his administration do the same; and he has betrayed the trust of the American people.

With a heavy heart and in the deepest spirit of patriotism, I exercise my duty and responsibility to speak truthfully about what is before us. To shy away from this responsibility would be easier. But I have not been one to travel the easy road. I believe in this country, and in the power of our democracy. I feel the steely conviction of one who will not let the country I love descend into shame; for the fabric of our democracy is at stake.

Some will call this a partisan vendetta, others will say this is an unimportant distraction to the plans of the incoming Congress. But this is not about political gamesmanship.

I am not willing to put any political party before my principles.

This, instead, is about beginning the long road back to regaining the high standards of truth and democracy upon which our great country was founded.

Mr. Speaker:

Under the standards set by the United States Constitution, President Bush-along with Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of State Rice-should be subject to the process of impeachment, and I have filed H. Res. 1106 in the House of Representatives.

To my fellow Americans, as I leave this Congress, it is in your hands-to hold your representatives accountable, and to show those with the courage to stand for what is right, that they do not stand alone.

Thank you.


It is a shame that a congressperson who does their job is being put out of office by spineless black folk in Georgia who were more concerned with media appearances than substance. I would also like to point the readership to the GNN interview with McKinney:

A few days after the Democrats won control Conyers echoed Pelosi’s statement saying, “I am in total agreement with her on this issue … impeachment is off the table.” Last week a spokesperson from Conyers office said that the resolution would not be reintroduced and that the Representative had no intention to pursue the matter...

Mike, an advisor to McKinney, mentions, “Conyers was supposed to have investigations. They were chomping at the bit 6 months ago to do subpoenas.”

McKinney quietly replies, “Now they say they aren’t even going to issue subpoenas.”

Looking up from her papers she takes a deep breath, “I’m going in alone on this one because now it is all about them playing majority politics.”


It would seem that regardless as to whether the whip is being wielded by a white man or a white woman, all these Kneegrows know how to say is: Yassa Boss!

Technorati Tags: Cynthia McKinney, US Constitution

White Boy Shot By Police. Why it matters.

When the murder in Jamaica queens occured I wrote about it and said the following:

But what makes this situation even more egregious is the fact that at least two of the bullets fired that morning went into a home, which potentially could have killed a or the resident. Also another shot went into the AirTran station that resulted in two Port Authority police to be cut by flying glass. That shot could have easily killed either one of them. Therefore; not only was the shooting unjustified and in violation of NYPD regulations it was reckless and could have resulted in at least two other deaths of innocent parties. So what was it about the mentality of the police in that location that made them completely disregard the lives of the innocent people in the area?


Which was picked up by the NY Times Empire Zone blog. It is this question, What is the mentality of the police that they think it is OK to kill people. See the issue is larger than the shooting of black men by police. It is about a culture not only in the police departments but in the society itself that does not fully understand the founding document of the US. This lack of clarity regarding the rights of citizens extends from president Bush on down. That the US citizenry is largely unphased by the clear police state they have allowed to grow around them is particularly troublesome. But let me get back to the white boy shot by police.

Back when the PS3 was released to people with way to much time and money to waste a guy was PS3 jacked in NC shortly after purchasing the hard to get gaming system. The police tracked down a suspect to a house on a college campus and went to arrest him. Because the PS3 jacker had used some force to obtain the unit and was apparently armed at the time, the police were of the opinion that the suspect at the time of the warrant serving would be armed and dangerous. Now I'm not going to fault the police for taking precautions and I don't object to the police having firearms to apprehend dangerous people, it should be noted that any and all suspects are just that, suspects. They are, under the law, innocent of any wrong doing until convicted by a jury. Therefore one cannot pass a death sentence on an innocent person which this individual was at the time.

When the officers knocked on the door, the suspect was in the middle of playing a game. He got up to answer the door with the game controller in his hand. The police, trained professionals who apparently have problems discerning a gun from wallets, lighters and now apparently Play Station controlers, shot the suspect to death in his place of residence. Sound familiar? It should.

it is the same rush to judgement and willingness to kill on the part of police that caused this shooting as well as the Bell shooting. This is a problem. Now the police will say that "he should have done x,y or z" to submit to the police and therefore it is the dead man's fault for being killed by trained professionals. Let me lay it out to you this way. By the police's logic if you are in your house, you know, that place that supposedly the state cannot enter without a court order and without announcing themselves, and you are playing a game or whatever, and out of the blue some police barge into your home guns drawn and all and you happen to have a game controller in your hand as you reach for the sky as you've been trained to do when police point weapons at you, you should expect to be shot and killed and yes, it is your fault. Never mind the issue of your innocence or the fact that the police may be at the wrong location. Anyone else see a problem with that? Apparently not too many people do since it has been happening repeatedly with no consequences to the trained professionals involved.

Clearly then the word is out for "law" enforcers that the killing of constitutionally innocent parties is OK or it would not be happening.
See a part of the problem here is the lack of understanding of 'protect and serve" so let me clarify it for some. Police are here to protect innocent people from harm. Since by the constitution all citizens, including suspects are innocent until proven guilty, that means that even the suspect is to be protected. Secondly, Police are here to serve the public, and yes that includes those pesky suspects who I will remind the reader are innocent until proven guilty by a jury of their peers. This means that police are, in situations such as this obligated to protect the live and limb of any suspect who has not attacked them. Let's make sure we are clear here, a police officer who kills someone because he thinks the suspect is going to do them harm, has committed a crime. it's called murder. A police officer who kills a suspect because he thinks the suspect has a gun has committed murder. A police officer who has been shot at can kill a suspect. It's called self defense. Let's be clear here, this is why police have vests, backup, and many other means of determine whether a suspect is dangerous. the citizen has none of these things when confronted with the state monopoly on violence. it is the police officer's job to put themselves in harms way in order to uphold the law. The law is more important than the officer's life. Yes it is. Any law enforcement person who does not understand this should not be in that line of work.

When police fail to understand and respect their duty then we have a reckless armed body of people. When police do not follow procedure they put themselves and the citizenry in danger as was clearly the case in Queens. There were options for the police that morning. The plain clothes officer could have called for backup, given the plates of the vehicle and had it followed and pulled over later. the plain clothed officer could have hung back to see if the party did indeed get a gun and attempted a return. over all the police officer could have waited until an actual crime occurred since the last time I checked claiming to have a gun is not a crime. Not a bright thing to do, but not a crime.

Similarly, in the case of the North Carolina man, the police could have sent a plainclothes officer to the door to ask directions or ask for the suspect in question for whatever reason, thereby determining if he or anyone else in the house was armed. They could have abused the motor vehicle laws (as is regularly done) and given him a parking ticket that required a desk appearance. But no, instead, because the culture of policing is so militarized and reeking with an attitude of "we can do what we want" they went looking for a confrontation. The trained professionals could not even conceive of a means to deal with a constitutionally innocent person other than to barge in locked and loaded and ready to kill.

So ultimately there is no excuse for the police in both cases to not be brought to justice. Any Mayor or Justice department concerned with those pesky rights of citizens ought to be willing and eager to send a message to those in uniform that the blatant disregard of the safety of the public and the rights of citizens will not be tolerated. No race card even needs to be played because all the cards needed to win are already on the table. All that is needed is for those who know how to play the game to do so. if the police get away with either or both of these shootings, then white America may finally be getting the notice that black folks got with the Dred Scott decision:

You have no rights that the court is obliged to recognize.

That should bother a whole lot of people.

Technorati Tags: critique, Jamaica Queens Shooting, politics, US Constitution

Ban the C word

Didn't really intend to weigh in on the "N-Word" debate because I think that right now it is about a whole bunch of pontificating people trying to do moral one-up-manship over the word. But let me enter into the record that I am firmly opposed to the banning of the word "Nigger" in any of it's permutations.

I remember when I first picked up the word for casual use. Thinking back, it's pretty funny that it happened at all given that my first memory of having to deal with the word was from the mouth of some white schoolmate who in order to end an argument called me a nigger. Yes she did end the conversation but I can say that given I got to play doctor on her some years later, I can suppose it was a term of "affection".

In truth since I didn't attend a school populated by any more than 3 black students until Junior High I was wholly unaware that black folk actually used the term to refer to each other until I was 11 years old. it came as quite a shock to me but there it was, nigga this, nigga that. It was quite disturbing for me given that up until that point that was the one word I understood black people to despise. Later, the word "nigga" went mainstream, at least for me, when Louise Jefferson of the show The Jeffersons turned to George after one of his usual stupid arguments and said "Nigga Please!" Oh what a day! Nigga done went prime time!

Oh the cat was out the bag for me at that point. Well mostly, No matter how grown I thought I was, Nigga was never used in front of my parents well in my case, parent or any grown relatives. but of all places it became a regular term used by me and my friends at church. Oh yeah, we cought the "My nigga" disease quick and we loved using the phrase. "Oh he my nigga." "Dat my nigga. Dat nigga right der!" and of course "Nigga po-leees!" Like cussin' it was kind of a gateway to being grown. Yeah, I could say Nigga and a few other choice words as well. For a while I picked up the cussin' habit (outside the home) until I decided that I would stop.

It was an interesting situation that got me to stop cussin'. I had promised myself that I would not cuss in front of children, that is younger children. Well one day I was on a bus and cussin' with the friends and spotted a child. I had broken my promise. What was worse to me was that I realized that I could no longer control the words coming out of my mouth. That bothered me. I don't like not being in control of myself. furthermore I found myself to be lacking in eloquence since it was easier to say "fuck", "shit" or some other word instead of actually wracking the brain for another adjective, noun or whatever part of grammar was being substituted by the cuss words. For a time I tried to get a friend of mine to stop too. We put in penalties of 25 cents for each offense. I got rich, as in lunch money rich and he got out.

Not too long after this, NWA came out and all hell broke lose. Nigga was on pressed tapes and Hip Hop was about to take a serious nose dive in the intelligence department and my immersion in the art form would become shallow as I, as an amature musician, one of the last generation to not have a 365/24/7 diet of Clear Channel Hip Hop and one who didn't care to hear all the new extra vulgarity in Hip Hop moved on to other forms of music with more "positive vibrations". I mean LL Cool Jay's "Dear Yvette" Just Ice's "Latoya" and Whodini's "I'm a Ho" was racy enough for me. Heck I could even get down with BDP's "Criminal Minded" but "Fuck the Police?" Not exactly something I could get with.

Even still I never actually rejected the term nigger outright. By the time I had become a full fledged member of the "consciousness" subclass of black folk, I had come to realize that you simply could not delete the word nigger from the national or international vocabulary because it would erase an important aspect of African history. Thus my position was that "Nigger" should be used in historical context. Persons should feel free to use the word when it serves to make a non-insulting, non-threatening point. I cannot imaging a movie on the civil rights movement not having "niggers" as a part of its soundtrack and I don't think it should be bleeped or dropped out. I can't imagine a reading of slave biographies where they referred to each others as "the niggers". But that all assumes that people want to act 'responsibly" with words.

The problem with having this discussion in the US is that whole freedom of speech thing. See I can't really advocate restricting someone's speech because I don't like it not the least because I then open myself up to being censored for the same exact reason. Speech would then be defined by the person with the least amount of skin, backbone or tolerance for other viewpoints. I'm not comfortable with that 'cause I definitely have opinions and the like that a whole mess of people don't like. The problem with "Nigger" and its derivatives is that having been propelled into the mainstream, and in the face of industries with severe double standards and a desire to not be seen as "racist", blacks can be seen on TV calling each other "Niggas" (a derivative of Nigger and coined by African Ancestors with a poor grasp of English and later adopted by southern white folk) but will have "Mother fucker" "Shit" and other expletives bleeped or dropped even though it is clear that many black people do not find the usage of "Nigger" in public in public forums acceptable.

One point brought up whenever this is discussed is that other groups aren't seen in public or public arts such as movies and song, calling each other ethnic or racial insults. This is generally true. I say generally 'cause I really don't watch a lot of other ethnicities media so I can't say definitively whether it happens or not. However; we can suppose one of two things regarding the lack of Wop, Spick, Kike and whatever else is out there, in the media. Either the writers simply do not write those things in OR they are censored by the media companies. While I believe it is a combination of both I think that the former is the real reason for the lack of other. I think that the writers of other groups, specifically white ethnic groups know that their communities will simply not tolerate that kind of material. Ethnic jokes and slurs stay in the group and out of the sight and consumption of the general public as a matter of group pride. But the exceptions are made for blacks because over all, "that's how niggas do." After all the unique place of the black person in America has seen him as entertainment for whites. Most black performances for white audiences depended largely on the black person making fun of himself and his group in order to be successful. In fact if one looks at the history of black presence in American entertainment you will find that after the musician (asked to sing and dance for white dinner guests) the black comic was the means by which blacks could "make it". Where the black person was absent, the black faced white actor would step in. Hence black entertainment in mass media in America exists for the express purpose of "Niggardly" behavior. And no, I don't mean niggardly as defined in the dictionary.

Ultimately the proposition to "ban the N-word" will simply fail because it will be viewed as censorship. In terms of business, the comedy club that bans the usage of the word, will send it's customers to the inevitable place that will allow it. Since the government can't legally proscribe the term's use private companies will continue to choose what they will and will not broadcast and I think that whatever the rule it should apply equally to all ethnic and racial "names". No need to exempt blacks from N-word usage. If black folk don't like the Kramers of the world using the term nigger then black folk need to stop giving license for it's public usage. When others see that black folk take the word seriously then they will respond in kind.

Let me leave you with an alternative to Nigger and it's derivatives. In the nationalist community we have means of distinguishing between different types of black folks. we do this with a couple of words. First we have the African. When we call someone an African that is the highest compliment. It's higher than the common descriptive "black" because a black person under white supremacy who identifies with Africa is a special person. Not to repeat myself but next down the line is black. Close to African but not as strong and can at it's weakest refer to any person of African descent. It doesn't necessarily connote anything other than phenotype. next we come to the interesting names.

Negro. As James Baldwin noted, Negroes, strictly speaking exist only in America. The negro is the creation of the "white man". When a nationalist calls someone a negro, all is not well. A Negro can be of any socio-economic class, but they are identifiable. Next down the line from Negro is "Kneegrow". now phonetically one usually distinguishes the Kneegrow from Negro by the emphasis on "Knee". the Kneegrow is a particular breed of sellout. They are the spineless black folk who such up to white folk in power. They are white folks emissaries if you will. see Negroes may or may not act as direct agents of white power structures and at times are known to have boughts of guilt for some agency they have done on the part of the white power structure. The Kneegrow knows full well that he or she is the antithesis of black folks collective worldview but they don't care. Think Malcolm X's house negro field negro dichotomy: We sick boss!
The last of the categorizations is the "Nigro". Yes the Nigro s the black person who simply has no social graces at all. See we ain't call him a nigger, but the pronounciation on "Nig" makes it real clear what we are talking about. Now there may be many black folk who don't use the term nigger, even in regular conversation but I guarantee that they have used the term Nigro any number of times. No way to mistake that term for some endearment either. So there you have it. A whole set of vocabulary words ripe for the usage on stage and for the Laugh Factory: Fine free.

Technorati Tags: critique, N-Word

Segregation Vs. Separation

So the Supreme Court is gong to decide a case about using race in assigning students to schools in order to achieve some kind of "desegregation". You know, It really gets my blood pressure up to listen to people talk about how and where to send black children in order to get them educated. I'm kind of tired of the ole 1954, "if your kid isn't next to a white kid then they will be damaged for life", type of reasoning that is going on. I simply say: show us the money. Let us be clear here, today in 2006 there are no legally segregated schools. Period. Let all the multi-culti, kumbyaa singin', hand holdin' folks say what they want. They are lying to each and every one of you and they need to be called out.

first off, this is supposed to be a free country. given that it is a free country one can live wherever ones cash can land you. Aside from the fact of red-lining most people want to live around people like them. You want proof of that you look at Queens NY and all the black folk who live there. Look at any "ethnic" neighborhood and you'll see the same thing. It is f&*^% insulting to focus in on black folk and claim that we are "segregated" when the same can be said of any number of communities. However; you never, ever hear about those communities being segregated. The reason for this is that everybody thinks it is their duty to study the "darkies" and manipulate their lives.

So let's get the difference between segregation and separation clear since it appears that even the Supreme Court Justices have a problem understanding the difference. Segregation, in the social sense of the term means a lawful policy of separating people and accommodations by race. This is enforced by institutions and law and affected black people regardless of income. In stark contrast to this is separation. Separation, in the social sense, is when a group voluntarily decides to live, work, whatever with others in that same group. In terms of race that may mean that black students may choose to attend a black college or University in order to avoid the issues and complications found at white colleges. In terms of religion it may be an Evangelical Christian going to a Christian school thereby separating themselves from the secular society in terms of education. All of these examples are not only legal but they are rights guaranteed under the constitution. It's called freedom of association which also means the freedom to NOT associate.

This brings us to the public school system. The public school system is set up so that people go to zoned schools which is convenient and in some way can foster community cohesion by having age sets grow up together. The problem with the public school system is that it is funded from property taxes which means that in a country where income stratification is high, there are vast differences in the money available to public schools in wealthy neighborhoods and those available to poor neighborhoods. This results in a two tier system where the poor often get substandard resources though they often face the hardest circumstances. Due to America's particular history a disproportionate number of African-Americans are poor and therefore find themselves in the bottom of the system.

The solution to this problem is change how public education is funded. It is clear to anyone that the property tax model is not working. Clearly there needs to be a pot that is either split equally across a given state or proportionally to the population of each school in a state. Once that is done you have a means to bring the now poor schools up to par. The other issue is that in poor neighborhoods there are other social issues that impact the schools whether it be cracked out parents, gangs, under-employed parents, housing issues, whatever. Money will have to be spent on programs that address those issues that impact the quality of schooling as well.

Once the structural inequities of the schools are addressed the whole "what race is where" question won't even be a question. If all the schools provide an equal quality education, then the whole "school choice" thing becomes moot. Of course we'll be left with the social experimentalists who insist on telling us where our children ought to go or not to go and further distract black people from working with each other. We know this is the case because any number of black students will tell you outright that going to a black college is "not the real world" despite the numerous black college grads working all over the place in the "real world". But it tells you what the real reason is for spreading black students so that they form minorities in otherwise white school districts:

You will always be in the minority and you will always have to deal with us. Conform or else.

Technorati Tags: Black Education, critique, Supreme Court, US Constitution