Nelson Mandela celebrates his 90th birthday on Friday as a widely revered statesman, but South Africa faces a host of problems that challenge the dream he embodies of a harmonious rainbow nation.
Mandela, imprisoned for 27 years but forgiving of his former captors, is hailed as a shining example of the power of forgiveness and reconciliation.
His smile and sense of humour have made him a treasured international icon. He is rare among African leaders in agreeing to give up power quickly, after only one term following the 1994 end-of-apartheid elections.
He transcends races and opinions in South Africa itself, acclaimed by all sides of society, including white South Africans whose rule he fought to overthrow.
Yet his birthday comes at a time of crisis in the country under the rule of his successor, Thabo Mbeki, widely attacked for failures in fighting Aids, poverty, a major power crisis, violent crime and the disaster in neighbouring Zimbabwe.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Has SA betrayed Mandela's legacy?
Latoyia Figueroa (1981-2005)
It's been three long years since Latoyia and Nyla Figueroa's untimely death in 2005. She was missing on July 17, 2005. Her case has brought the attention regarding missing people of Color around the nation and the world. May she and her daughter rests in peace.
When White People Tell the Truth…They pay a price
The Angryindian
07.16.2008
In writing this editorial I find myself in a very surprising and somewhat awkward position. There are very few personalities within the arena of International mainstream news media that I genuinely respect as bona fide news-people and admittedly, I harbour virtually no respect, if any at all, for the American pseudo-news disinformation machine we are presently lumbered with. Aside from exceptional investigative journalists such as John Pilger and Greg Palast, it is extremely difficult to find someone accepted by the establishment that will dare look beyond the rhetorical defences of power to bring the how, where and why to a general public seeking answers.
This brings me to my current journalistic conundrum. As a young man trying to understand the world beyond my NYC ghetto, I watched conservative “opinion” programmes such as Firing Line and The McLaughlin Group on the principle notion that these individuals, (hosts William F. Buckley, Jr and John McLaughlin respectively) should be listened to primarily because they obviously were (and still are) the mouthpieces of the White colonial mainstream establishment, (i.e., “the Man”) and I wanted to be in the know.
There is much I can point to in regards to the late Mr. Buckley and out of respect for the recent dead I will not delve into his semantic misdeeds in spite of the fact that he showed no so such respect for others his brand of American conservatism branded “useless”. I can with great ease also list a plethora of heartless activity from Mr. McLaughlin over the years, but in view of his recent remarks about Barack Obama, I actually find myself coming not so much to his defence, but to the defence of an analysis that for once was dead on and honest.
What am I going on about? I ask the reader to peruse the following brief except from the July 11-13 broadcast of The McLaughlin Group: (Obtained from mediamatters.org)
McLAUGHLIN: OK, let's nail this thing down, and here's a sample of what Jackson apparently sees as Obama disparaging the black community.
OBAMA [video clip]: If we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that too many fathers are also missing. Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL. Missing from too many lives and too many homes. They've abandoned their responsibilities. They're acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our family have suffered because of it. You and I know this is true everywhere, but nowhere is it more true than in the African-American community.
McLAUGHLIN: Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for? Peter Beinart.
BEINART: Who knows what Jesse Jackson is thinking? But that's a completely unfair depiction of Barack Obama, who -- the genius of Barack Obama is that he moves seamlessly between the African-American world and the white world in a way that even Bill Clinton couldn't possibly match. And the tragedy of this experience is that you know who's spoken very eloquently for many, many years about personal responsibility in the black community? Jesse Jackson. He of all people should recognize, in fact, that what Barack Obama is saying is not contrary to the message of the civil rights movement, it is keeping with that message.
McLAUGHLIN: Now, let's nail it down a little bit more, for the sake of Jackson. The question is this: Jackson's point of contention is this -- this is the exit question. The point of contention is that instead of Obama solely lecturing African-Americans on parental duty, particularly fathers, he should also give equal attention to the large, and many believe prejudicial, incarceration rate for blacks, their lack of economic opportunities, and other public policy issues that limit choices for black males. Why doesn't Obama hit that as hard as he hits individual parental responsibility? That's what Jackson is complaining about.
BEINART: Barack Obama doesn't talk about jobs and health care? He talks about it all the time. If you wanted to talk about the fact there were too many people in prison, then you're asking him to do something that would lose him the election.
McLAUGHLIN: Oh. Oh. Oh.
BEINART: That is politically -- that no serious political strategist -- he's a man trying to win the presidency, John.
McLAUGHLIN: He's exactly what Jeremiah Wright says he is: He will do whatever is necessary to win.
BEINART: He's a practical politician --
To be absolutely clear with the reader, I want it understood that I am no fan of this long-running enterprise in soft pro-Europocentric propaganda. McLaughlin, a life-long conservative former priest who not only hosts racist neo-conservative muckrakers like Pat Buchanan but only seems to invite mainstream pro-capitalist journalists who adhere to the party policy of Malthusian theory, is nowhere to be found my top ten list of acceptable people. I still cringe when I see Chicago’s Uncle Tom number one Clarence Page offer his adulterous two-cents as if his opinion really mattered. But I must say this in all fairness, in this particular case, he is right. Barack Obama does not, has not and will not represent African people here in the colonial United States or anywhere else in the African Diaspora. He is a White Man's Negro point-blank and he knows it. So does the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and everyone else with clear political maturity deeply involved in this struggle we call "human rights".
Media Matters.org is calling for an apology from McLaughlin and generally I support their efforts to clean up mainstream media. But in this case I cannot in good faith condemn Mr. McLaughlin for speaking the truth. Like Jimmy the Greek before him, McLaughlin is not being disparaged for what he said as much as by his saying so he has lifted, most likely unintentionally, the American rug concealing all of the embarrassing White racial dirt the U.S. had swept beneath it for generations. I for one find it discomforting that while Barack Obama, the half-African Great White Hope of the moment, does not have the testicles to address traditional White American racial policy, an old-school White conservative like Mr. McLaughlin can point it out and be condemned for doing so. Hopefully this situation may be the impetus for a real discourse on what is the real crux of the issue. When members of the White ruling class point out that things are wrong or unjust with the “system”, it is much more difficult to argue that the system is just. When victims of the system grumble however, the response is just the opposite.
What most people are taking offence to is the term “Oreo” being used in reference to Barack Obama the Dark Candidate, not Barack Obama the Black Man with a Euro-settler mother from Kansas. Mr. McLaughlin never called Obama one, he merely pointed out that for people like the Rev. Jackson and this writer, he is an Oreo by the very definition of the term. As a rehabilitated Uncle Tom/Apple who in my youth used to employ skin bleaching creams and Sun-In brand hair bleach to look more like the cast of kids that starred on the Brady Bunch, my position is that it is not an insult to call Mr. Obama an Oreo, it is a statement based on keen and dispassionate observation. He is an Oreo and by extension based on his recent public activity towards his own assumed base, an Uncle Tom in the most classic sense of the term.
“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”
- American Abolitionist John Brown on the day of his death -
He has yet to address rank and file American African people or our collective issues directly; he distances himself from "troublesome" uppity activist types unless they are White males, (such as Bill Ayers, an advisor infamous for his direct involvement with the American terrorist group the Weather Underground) he promises to continue U.S. aid in eradicating what is left of the Palestinian Nation in favour of the Europocentric Zionist Ashkenazim power structure at home and abroad; he threatens Iran with self-serving U.S. belligerence without ever mentioning the deeply sordid history of U.S. meddling and regime change in that country in favour of American big business and basically kisses more White Supremacist arse with more grace and aplomb than either Condi Rice or Gen. Colin Powell (Ret.) ever could muster and retain a positive self-image.
White folks who blindly assume that the world exists only to revolve around them and their wants and needs will strongly deny that this analysis is valid primarily because it deflates the lie that Europeans have solely relied upon their imaginary superior wit and morality to win the world. The empirically demonstrated if rarely mentioned record of overwhelming violence and guile displayed by Europeans internally on the sub-continent and externally nearly everywhere else lays bare this hypocrisy. The realism of total Europocentric control over not just the socio-political and economic paradigms that effect Africans in the U.S. and throughout the Diaspora superficially overshadows the certainty of the psychological damage such endeavours leave in their wake. The United States in 2008 has yet to officially or unofficially concede that non-Europeans are forced by socio-political convention to conform to the psychosomatic slavery that has been instilled in us since first contact.
The wish to believe that Barack Obama, the hype surrounding his campaign and the White liberal pledge of “change” used in conjunction with his name does not reflect a direct result of past and present genocide says more into White communal concerns rather than humanistic and ethical social justice. The “change” American Whites are seeking is a new face for the same old game. Just as classic imperial-colonialist politick necessitates that positive control cannot be maintained against subjected populations with White-skinned military governors, Pax Americana at this point in the game needs a similar mask to remain relevant. Especially with a population at home becoming more and more brown each succeeding generation.
These are the long-recognised rules of empire. Mr. Obama does more than conform to these rules, has internalised them to such a degree that it is entirely fair to declare that the “Blackness” liberal White Americans enjoy pointing to when referencing Obama is purely and utterly mythical. In more honest political jargon, what Mr. Obama actually represents what used to be called in hushed terms a “Colonial Fix,” wherein the subjected population and their resources are managed by proxy by a cadre of establishment handpicked “leaders” who do little more than keep the rest of the rabble in line.
This is a pattern that can be seen universally wherever imperial and colonial impositions prey upon a weaker people regardless of the nationality of the imposing power. China pursues such policies in Tibet; France has had its Indochina and Algerian puppet governors and still maintains positive and unwanted control of French Guyana and Djibouti by means of “in-betweens” buffering and blurring the illusion of domestic national control. Britain steadfastly refuses to relinquish control of the Falklands, Northern Ireland or Wales (Cymru) respectively and Indonesia has never been held accountable for East Timor. The history of Africa and European colonialism has still yet to be fully and honestly written and continues unabated as I write this editorial. The European “conquest” of the Americas, while largely and incorrectly absent from most accounts of official abuses of xenophobic colonial power, by far remains the perhaps the single most horrible case in point of aggressive White Power known to human history.
Barack Obama not just honours this legacy of destruction and conquest but revels in it. He leaves little doubt that the only thing that will be different about his reign in the White House is the window dressing. Like the African emperor Septimus Servus who hit legitimate African and Arab rebellion harder than any other Roman head of state, centuries later Barack Obama promises more of the same, so whence cometh the change?
Mr. McLaughlin, an unapologetic supporter of American empire is, like most American corporatists at heart a pragmatist. He knows full well that it is not what Rev. Jackson said as much as it is what he meant in his spontaneous remarks about the candidate. Mr. McLaughlin is not a fool; he knows full well that the struggles led by people like Rev. Jackson and thousands of the nameless and faceless others littering the graveyards and prisons of the U.S. were not just fighting the Ku Klux Klan or the White Citizens Councils, they were resisting a centuries long process of state-sponsored genocide by a government representing a White populace hell-bent on eliminating Indigenous peoples, Africans and Asians not content with being anything more than exodus fodder for White Power.
McLaughlin is being pilloried for confirming that the Rev. Jesse Jackson, aside from the off-the-cuff comments that anger American White people, uniquely represents that narration, a dark, violent history of African survival against all odds, a history Barack Obama and his handlers use to great effect without employing one iota of its intrinsic substance. Proudly waving the flag of the White racialist revisionist re-packaging of the anti-genocidal efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Obama does his absolute best to portray himself as anything other than a real Black man living the Black experience in these United States of America.
I am reminded at this juncture of Sir Sidney Poitier, someone who has been unduly criticized by many American Africans as a sell-out for not being “Black” enough due to the revolutionary standards set by those who actually took the battle to the streets and courthouses of the U.S. While Sir Poitier did not wear an Afro or raise his fist in defiance of African rights, he has and continues to do much to represent African people across the globe as human beings, a quality Barack Obama does not possess. Sir Poitier to my knowledge has never bit his tongue when it came to demanding respect as an African and has never, at least on record, ever denied his “Blackness”, even at the risk of damaging his career. Before he became a world class actor and political representative of his home nation the Bahamas, he was Black. And after the final curtain falls, Sir Poitier will still be Black. And he will still not have apologised for being so.
Barack Obama it would appear, missed school the day this lesson in self-respect was taught. Mr. McLaughlin, though had enough common sense to pay attention if only like me, just to be in the know.
The Angryindian
Editor, Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo / The Indigenist Intelligence Review
Monday, July 14, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Jesse Jackson shows his true colors,a commentary
by George Cook www.letstalkhonestly.com
I waited a day to write this because I was initially very upset with Jesse Jackson's remarks about wanting to pull out a certain part of Barack Obama's anatomy and anything I wrote might just be plain hateful.
That day off helped me to empathize with Jesse Jackson. I mean you have to realize that he and Al Sharpton's lives would change drastically if Barack Obama becomes president. I mean how can you cry about institutionalized racism and keep portraying black people as victims when you have a black president. Jesse Jackson would be forced to get a real job.
How would you like to go from saying "Keep Hope Alive" to " Would you like to super size that sir"
Hell, I'd be pissed to.
I'm going to tell you a secret and this is just between me and you. So Don't tell anybody.
Jesse Jackson is about as relevant in the African American Community as the WNBA is to sports fans.
We respect what he has done in the civil rights movement and the doors he opened but it's time for him to stand aside so some of us can actually get through the damned door.
Many of us are tired of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton being called black leaders. When did we have a meeting and vote them as such. Was there a memo? If there was a few million of us didn't get it.
I would ask that the main stream media unass the office chairs, stop hitting the speed dial button, and go out on the street and get opinions from black people on the street if they want to know what we think. And yes unass is not a word but you get the point.
I know this may get me in trouble but Jesse Jackson does not speak for many African Americans. We are mnore diverse than 1 or 2 "black leaders" and the media ignoring this leads to peoples monolithic view of African Americans.
Trust me when one of us goes to the bathroom we all don't wipe our ......
Doctors' Group Plans Apology For Racism
AMA Once Barred Black Physicians
By Holly Watt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 10, 2008; Page A01
The country's largest medical association is set to issue a formal apology today for its historical antipathy toward African American doctors, expressing regret for a litany of transgressions, including barring black physicians from its ranks for decades and remaining silent during battles on landmark legislation to end racial discrimination.
The apology marks one of the rare times a major national organization has expressed contrition for its role in the segregation and discrimination that black people have experienced in the United States.
In a commentary in the July 16 Journal of the American Medical Association, Ronald M. Davis, the organization's immediate past president, noted that many of the organization's questionable actions reflected the "social mores and racial discrimination" that existed for much of the country's history. But, he wrote, that should not excuse them.
"The medical profession, which is based on a boundless respect for human life, had an obligation to lead society away from disrespect of so many lives," Davis wrote. "The AMA failed to do so and has apologized for that failure."
AMA officials declined yesterday to discuss specifics of the apology, including how it came about, saying that information would be released today. But the Davis article refers to a committee of experts convened and supported by the organization to examine "the historic roots of the black-white divide in U.S. medicine."
Specifically, the panel noted that the AMA permitted state and local medical associations to exclude black physicians, effectively barring these doctors from the national organization. In the early 20th century, the organization listed black doctors as "colored" in its national physician directory. In addition, the AMA was silent during debates over the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, and, for years, declined to join efforts to force hospitals built with federal funds to not discriminate.
Jackson apologizes for comment about Obama
CHICAGO (AP) — The Rev. Jesse Jackson apologized Wednesday to Barack
Jackson said the "hurtful and wrong" comments Sunday came in response to a question from a fellow guest during a break from taping "Fox & Friends." The guest asked about speeches on morality Obama has given at black churches.
Jackson said at a news conference that he had replied that Obama's speeches can come off as speaking down to black people and that there were other important issues to be addressed in the community, such as unemployment, the mortgage crisis and the number of blacks in prison.
He said he was not aware the microphone was still on.
Jackson declined to repeat the comments, but said he decided to apologize publicly after hearing from Fox that it would air them.
In an interview with The Associated Press earlier Wednesday, Jackson said he didn't remember his exact words, but said he was "very sorry." He told CNN the remark was "regretfully crude."
Fox News aired Jackson's comment Wednesday night, including a slang reference to his wanting to cut off Obama's testicles. The report bleeped out the slang but made clear what Jackson said.
"It was not a public speech or a declaration," Jackson said at the news conference, adding the comments "will not be helpful."
The Remains of Dixie Square
For those who don't know the story of Dixie Square, a little history is provided at the start of the vid. For those who are familiar, this was shot shortly after "developer" John Deneen bailed on the place.
Not sure if it was even worth the effort to put this together, but I figured a few people might be interested in seeing it so what the hell. It doesn't do anyone any good just sitting on a DV tape in my desk.
Music by Kevin MacLeod of incompetech.com
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Remember the Victims of S.C. Hate Crime
Let's also remember Megan Williams, who was another hate crime victim.
Related links and posts:
More on the Racial Hate Crime in S.C.
May these women never be forgotten.
President Obama? Many White Supremacists are Celebrating
With the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate clinched, large sections of the white supremacist movement are adopting a surprising attitude: Electing America’s first black president would be a very good thing.
n the content of his character, not his skin. On the contrary. A growing number of white supremacists, and even some of those who pass for intellectual leaders of their movement, think that a black man in the Oval Office would shock white America, possibly drive millions to their cause, and perhaps even set off a race war that, they hope, would ultimately end in Aryan victory.
“He will make things so bad for white people that hopefully they will finally realize how stupid they were for admiring these jigaboos all these years,” “Darthvader” wrote on the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network web forum. “I believe in the motto ‘Worse is Better’ and Obama certainly fits that description.” Just last week, another poster on the same thread chimed in with this: “I hope Obama wins because in four years, white people just might be pissed off enough to actually do something. … White people aren’t going to do a thing until their toys are taken away from them. So things have to be worse for things to be better.”
“Oh man,” enthused “Centimanus” on the white nationalist Stormfront website. “I am gleefully, sadistically looking forward to Obama as president. … It will be a beautiful day when the masses look at the paper and truly realize they have lost their own country. Added “Fulimnata”: “To the average white man and woman, they could look at Obama and see plain as day that whites are not in control.” Another message, from “TheLastOfMyKind,” agreed: “Could it be that the nomination of Obama finally sparks a sense of unity in white voters? I would propose that this threat of black, muslim [sic] rule may very well be the thing that finally scares some sense back into complacent whites throughout the nation.” “Actually,” said another poster, “if Obama were to win, it would be the best thing that ever happened to the Klan. They would have massive growth.” And “TeutonicLegion” said that “a whole bunch of people will join us and find these boards” if Obama becomes president.
David DukeEven David Duke (right), the neo-Nazi and former Klan boss who is the closest thing the movement has to a real intellectual these days, sees clear advantages in an Obama victory in the fall. “Obama will be a signal, a clear signal for millions of our people,” Duke wrote in an essay entitled “A Black Flag for White America” last week. “Obama is like that new big dark spot on your arm that finally sends you to the doctor for some real medicine. … Obama is the pain that let’s [sic] your body know that something is dreadfully wrong. Obama will let the American people know that there is a real cancer eating away at the heart of our country and Republican aspirin will not only not cure it, but only masks the pain and makes you think you don’t need radical surgery. … My bet is that whether Obama wins or loses in November, millions of European Americans will inevitably react with new awareness of their heritage and the need for them to defend and advance it.”
Opinion on the radical right is far from unanimous on the topic of a possible Obama victory. Many of those writing on the topic — perhaps half of those who have posted recently — think an Obama presidency would destroy the country and oppose it mightily. On the other hand, there is virtually no enthusiasm on the radical right for presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, who is widely seen by white supremacists as a sellout, particularly on the issue of nonwhite immigration into the United States. But increasing numbers think that a bad situation with a black president will be good for their movement.
“Thomas Dixon Jr.,” a Stormfront poster using the name of the racist author who wrote the classic novel The Clansman, put it like this: “As WLP [William Luther Pierce, the late leader of the neo-Nazi National Alliance] would say… ‘What is bad for the system is good for us.’” “Obama,” added “The Patriot” in the same thread, “would be better for our cause in the long run, no doubt about it.”
The Firefighters, Paramedics, and Utility Workers are Watching You
Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as "Terrorism Liaison Officers" in Colorado and a handful of other states to hunt for "suspicious activity" — and are reporting their findings into secret government databases. "Suspicious activity" is broadly defined in TLO training as behavior that could lead to terrorism: taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code.
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