StraightWords E-Zine

Real Relief for Katrina Survivors and Others in Need Means Justice Not Charity

By Corlita Mahr

For millions of us living in America, this year's holiday season does not bring much in the way of cheer.  The heightened consumerism and commercialized sentimentality linked with home and hearth only bring into sharp focus the painful contrast of living poor and displaced in the USA.

Thanks to deeper cuts in social programs, what little safety net left after Reaganomics has been torn to shreds.  Millions of men, women and children continue to fall through the ever widening cracks.  Some of us are veterans and disabled - aging men from wars decades ago and young, mostly poor, working-class men of color more recently disabled by combat in Iraq.  Some hundreds of thousands of us are displaced by the tragic management of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  Many more of us cannot point to any specific tragedy.  It may have started when the schools were de-funded and ill equipped to prepare us for jobs, or when the jobs moved off shore or when a family member got sick and we did not have enough insurance to cover mounting bills.  How ever we got here, we are all on the rooftops now watching the flood waters of poverty and neglect consume our lives.

As a survivor of Katrina displaced from New Orleans, I am acutely aware that what little attention there is on issues of poverty is focused on hurricane survivors.  People who have been waiting for housing and other services for years are now pitted against newcomers displaced by the hurricane.  Under the current rules, there's just not enough to go around - unless you are already rich.  If your million dollar home slides down the Malibu Hills for the fifth time in ten years or you live in a predominantly white community in the Gulf, then you get a completely different set of government rules.    

This has to change.   

Hurricane survivors are organizing with others abandoned by the government to fight together, not each other, for new policies and services to address poverty and dislocation.  As survivors, we want justice not charity.  We need inclusion for the hundreds of thousands of African Americans and others from marginalized communities that have been shut out of the rebuilding process, a real safety net that puts an end to Gulf area evictions, mortgage support and a victims' compensation fund.  Yet, our vision is much larger than that because we know that in order to gain justice for survivors, we need justice for all of us. 

Hurricane Katrina exposed how the erosion of public infrastructure - hospitals, schools, public safety, social services - can endanger lives. Trends in Congress and at the state level will only make things worse, unless we come together and make them turn things around.

This week, Katrina and Rita survivors will be gathering in Jackson, Mississippi to do just that.  Although there will be concerts, cultural gatherings, celebrities and the like, our main business is to solidify a plan of action. On December 10, survivors and others of goodwill will take our issues to the streets in a march on New Orleans.  The march is one of many efforts to demand fairness in the rebuilding process and new policies to expand the public safety net and expand opportunities for all of us washed away by public abandonment and neglect.  Of course, this fight did not start with Katrina nor will it end with this march.  This effort is part of centuries of struggle to rebuild an America that honors its promise of "freedom and justice for all."

If you cannot join us in New Orleans, there is still much you can do to help.  Find out how you can support local organizing efforts on the web at www.katrinaaction.org.  Call your elected representatives and demand they do all they can to stop the funding cuts and to be a part of a just rebuilding effort.  Better still, drop by their offices while they are in town for the holiday recess and have the conversation in person with them or their staff.

Toy giveaways, free turkeys and warm clothing are nice, even necessary, but they cannot address the real challenges inherent in bad policies and unequal infrastructure.  Saint Augustine once wrote, "Charity is no substitute for justice withheld."  This holiday season, commit to be a part of efforts to address justice withheld from tens of thousands of Katrina survivors and many others left stranded by poverty, war and dislocation.  Turn your outrage to action and join the millions of us who say to the government, to the companies profiting from our loss, to those who would rather look away, "Never again."

Corlita Mahr is a displaced resident of New Orleans. She is the coordinator for People's Hurricane Relief Fund communications.  http://www.katrinaaction.org.
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Sharpton, Obama and the Promise of America

Vol. 1 No. 13 Lead Story Guest Commentary

By Dedrick Muhammad

Forty years after the Democratic National Convention refused to seat an integrated delegation from Mississippi led by Fannie Lou Hamer, the Democratic Party and the nation as a whole still finds itself challenged by African American Democrats to create a more inclusive society.

Reverend Al Sharpton, former Democratic candidate for president, described the promise of America in his address at the convention: “The promise of America says we will guarantee quality education for all children and not spend more money on metal detectors than computers in our schools. The promise of America provides that those who work in our health care system can afford to be hospitalized in the very beds they clean up every day.”

Illinois Senate candidate Barack Obama provided a healthy balance between public and individual responsibility a balance that so often eludes public policy discussions. Obama affirmed the government role in creating the ladder of opportunity. His white grandfather went to college on the GI Bill and got an FHA mortgage, programs that most often were not open to African Americans at the time.

It is ironic that Obama, who may have the opportunity to be the only Black U.S. Senator next year, exemplifies not only Black excellence and diligence but also white privilege. This white privilege seems to be taboo in public discussion. It is usually concealed with the racist rhetoric that white Americans are more prosperous because they worked harder and upheld better moral standards. In recent years, Charles Murray¹s book “The Bell Curve” and Ronald Reagan’s demonization of the welfare queen have helped keep these stereotypes on the public stage.

When it comes to the racial divide in this country and de-facto white supremacy, the primary cause is not the moral behavior of Blacks, or the types of music we listen to, it’s institutionalized racism.

African Americans with graduate degrees are two to three times more likely than whites to engage in the rough-and-tumble world of entrepreneurship with small business start-ups. Employed Black workers work more hours per week and per year than white workers.

When sociologist Dalton Conley analyzed educational outcomes, he found that family net worth, not race, was the best predictor of high school graduation and college enrollment. At a given level of assets, Black students are actually slightly more likely to graduate from high school than white students. The dropout rate for Black students has declined 44 percent since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yet African Americans have not been rewarded for all this effort. For every dollar of per capita white income, Blacks had 57 cents in 2001, up from 55 cents in 1968. The racial wealth divide is even worse: the typical Black family has less than one-tenth of the median white net worth of $120,000.

In the decades when white income and wealth soared, it was not only due to hard work and talent. It was because of public investment in a ladder of opportunity. The New Deal and the generous post-WWII veterans’ benefits largely excluded people of color. Since that time, public investment in opportunity has eroded. Federal spending on affordable housing was cut by three-quarters in the 1980s, and the majority of families of color have been unable to achieve the American dream of homeownership.

Obama and Sharpton, in their speeches, stressed that government must be held responsible for its failures and for countering discrimination. They also both stressed that citizens must be responsible for taking hold of these opportunities. As Obama asserted, “with just a change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.”

Rev. Sharpton articulated how, from Crispus Attucks to Fannie Lou Hamer until today, African Americans have been at the forefront of demanding opportunity for all Americans.

Let us all work to continue the African American tradition of both living up to our own personal responsibilities and demanding that the government live up to its promise.

(Dedrick Muhammad is the Racial Wealth Divide Coordinator at United for a Fair Economy and co-author of UFE’s report “The State of the Dream: Enduring Disparities in Black and White.”)
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Read more about United for a Fair Economy ...
http://www.faireconomy.org

Hip Hop Reflections on Ronald Reagan

Vol. 1 No. 11 June 16, 2004 Guest Commentary
by Davey D
Guest Columnist

Well, today is June 11th, and I'm watching all these TV stations play Ray Charles rendition of 'America' [Brother Ray just passed away yesterday] while showing the funeral of former President Reagan. Some stations are even showing pictures of the two men together. I can't help thinking something is not right about what I'm seeing. In the words of Public Enemy, 'Can't Truss It' .

To start with, I feel like my senses have been assaulted all week with non stop news coverage that seemed designed on getting me to believe that we had just experienced the passing of a Saint. I keep asking myself how is this happening?, because when I think back to the Reagan years I recall some very troubling and contentious times that we are still recovering from.

It has been suggested by President Bush that we stay home to mourn and reflect upon the life and times of Ronald Reagan. Well, when I reflect, I like to do it to music. So I guess it was only appropriate that I pulled out Gil Scott Heron's 1981 album 'Reflection' which contained a highly charged 12 minute spoken word song called "B-Movie", which was directed at Reagan shortly after he took office. I also pulled out a landmark record from pioneering rapper Mele-Mel called 'Jesse' which was released in 1984. Both these songs spoke truth to power and help me cut through all the hoopla, fanfare and blatant rewriting of history with regards to Ronald Reagan. Gil Scott starts off his B-Movie song by saying:

"Well, the first thing I want to say is.'Mandate my ass!'

"Because it seems as though we've been convinced that 26% of the registered voters, not even 26% of the American people, but 26% of the registered voters form a mandate -- or a landslide. 21% voted for Skippy and 4% voted for somebody else who might have been running.

"But, oh yeah, I remember. In this year that we have now declared the year from Shogun to Raygun, I remember what I said about Reagan. Meant it. Acted like an actor. Hollyweird. Acted like a liberal. Acted like General Franco when he acted like governor of California, then he acted like a Republican. Then he acted like somebody was going to vote for him for President. And now we act like 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate. We're all actors in this, I suppose."

-- from '-B-Movie-' by Gil Scott Heron

As I listened to all this lavish praise being bestowed upon Reagan, and US Senators proposing that his face be put on a 10 dollar bill and carved into Mount Rushmore, I kept asking myself -- is this the same guy who immediately started cutting back social service programs and started scapegoating folks in the hood as the reason for inflation and overspending in government? Gil Scott early on let us know just what we were up against, as he kicks his third stanza.

"... What has happened is that in the last 20 years, America has changed from a producer to a consumer. And all consumers know that when the producer names the tune. the consumer has got to dance. That's the way it is. We used to be a producer -- very inflexible at that, and now we are consumers and, finding it difficult to understand. Natural resources and minerals will change your world. The Arabs used to be in the 3rd World. They have bought the 2nd World and put a firm down payment on the 1st one. Controlling your resources we'll control your world. This country has been surprised by the way the world looks now. They don't know if they want to be Matt Dillon or Bob Dylan. They don't know if they want to be diplomats or continue the same policy -- of nuclear nightmare diplomacy. John Foster Dulles ain't nothing but the name of an airport now.

-- from '-B-Movie-' by Gil Scott Heron

Mele-Mel -- who helped kick off a wave of message-type songs from Hip Hop's then-emerging scene, starting with his groundbreaking song 'The Message' in 1982 -- also brings home some salient points. After dealing with 3 terrible years of Reagan's economic policy, the 'trickle-down' theory, also known as 'Reaganomics', Mel summed up the situation in the first verse of his song 'Jesse':

See Ronald Reagan speaking on TV
Smiling like everything's fine and dandy
Sounded real good when he tried to give a pep talk
To over 30 million poor people like me
How can we say we got to stick it out
When his belly is full and his future is sunny
I don't need his jive advice
But I sure do need his jive time money.

from '-Jesse-' by Mele-Mel

I'm listening to these songs -- reflecting and asking myself how in the world are 200 thousand people standing on line waiting to see this cat's body? Was this the same Ronnie Reagan who had no problems closing down mental wards and setting all those ill patients to fend for themselves back in our community?

Is this the same Iran-Contra scandal Ronnie who back in the 80s showed his first signs of Alzheimer's by stating he didn't recall all the corruption taking place right under his nose?

Was this the same Ronald Reagan, the jovial jellybean eating, 'great communicator' who is credited with ending communism and bringing down the Berlin Wall, but vetoed a bill calling for sanctions against the racist South African Apartheid Regime?

Is this the same Ronald Reagan who wouldn't lift a finger to help end Apartheid, but in 1983 was more than willing to send US troops to smash the Black Government of the small Island of Grenada, who they said had links to Cuba and Communism?

Was this the same Ronnie Reagan who got called out and embarrassed by Noble Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu, who said he was "evil, immoral, and un-Christian" because of his 'Constructive Engagement' policies toward South Africa. This article in the Boston Globe gives the breakdown on this:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/06/09/reagans_heart

I kept asking myself with such a sordid track record that impacted so many and continues to impact many, how are folks shedding so many tears for this guy?

Thank God for Gil Scott, who gives the breakdown as he eloquently explains the American mindset. Peep the lyrics:

"The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can -- even if it's only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse -- or the man who always came to save America at the last moment -- someone always came to save America at the last moment -- especially in "B" movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan -- and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at -- like a "B" movie.

"Come with us back to those inglorious days when heroes weren't zeros. Before fair was square. When the cavalry came straight away, and all-American men were like Hemingway to the days of the wondrous "B" movie. The producer underwritten by all the millionaires necessary will be Casper "The Defensive" Weinberger -- no more animated choice is available. The director will be Attila the Haig, running around frantically declaring himself in control and in charge. The ultimate realization of the inmates taking over at the asylum. The screenplay will be adapted from the book called "Voodoo Economics" by George "Papa Doc" Bush. Music by the Village People, the very military 'Macho Man'.

"'Macho, macho man!'

"Put your orders in, America. And quick as Kodak, your leaders duplicate with the accent being on the nukes -- cause all of a sudden we have fallen prey to selective amnesia -- remembering what we want to remember and forgetting what we choose to forget. All of a sudden, the man who called for a blood bath on our college campuses is supposed to be Dudley "God-damn" Do-Right?

"'You go give them liberals hell, Ronnie!' That was the mandate. To the new 'Captain Bly' on the new ship of fools. It was doubtlessly based on his chameleon performance of the past -- as a 'liberal democrat' -- as the head of the Studio Actor's Guild. When other celluloid saviors were cringing in terror from McCarthy -- Ron stood tall. It goes all the way back from Hollywood to hillbilly. From liberal to libelous, from "Bonzo" to Birch idol -- born again. Civil rights, women's rights, gay rights -- it's all wrong. Call in the cavalry to disrupt this perception of freedom gone wild. God damn it ... first one wants freedom, then the whole damn world wants freedom.

"Nostalgia, that's what we want ... the good ol' days, when we gave'em hell. When the buck stopped somewhere, and you could still buy something with it. To a time when movies were in black and white -- and so was everything else. Even if we go back to the campaign trail, before six-gun Ron shot off his face and developed hoof-in-mouth. Before the free press went down before full-court press. And were reluctant to review the menu because they knew the only thing available was -- Crow.

"Lon Chaney, our man of a thousand faces -- no match for Ron. Doug Henning does the make-up -- special effects from Grecian Formula 16 and Crazy Glue. Transportation furnished by the David Rockefeller of Remote Control Company. Their slogan is, "Why wait for 1984? You can panic now ... and avoid the rush."

"So much for the good news.

"As Wall Street goes, so goes the nation. And here's a look at the closing numbers -- racism's up, human rights are down, peace is shaky, war items are hot -- the House claims all ties. Jobs are down, money is scarce -- and common sense is at an all-time low on heavy trading. Movies were looking better than ever, and now no one is looking -- because we're starring ... in a "B" movie. And we would rather had John Wayne. We would rather had John Wayne.

-- from '-B-Movie-' by Gil Scott-Heron

Deregulation, calling ketchup vegetables, the busting up of unions, trickle down theory economics, attacks and roll backs on civil rights legislation is what I recall about Reagan. For the most part, it wasn't good. Reagan was the great communicator because he had a nice way of smiling and a jovial way of talking while he put a foot up your ass. The effects of Reagan are still being felt to this day.

As Mele-Mel noted:

The land of the free and the home of the brave
But it might as well be the home of the slave
They got me walking around saying freedom's come
But my body is free and my mind is dumb
The people ain't black but the house is white
And just because I'm different they don't treat me right
They done cast me aside and held me down
Dragged my name down to the ground
Oh beautiful for spacious skies
With your amber waves of untold lies
Look at all the politicians trying to do a job
But they can't help but look like the mob
Get a big kick back and put it away
Watch the FBI watch the CIA
They want a bigger missile with a faster yet
But yet they forget to hire you, the vet
Hypocrites just talkin trash
Liberty and Justice are a thing of the past
They want a stronger nation at any cost
Even if it means that everything will soon be lost

from '-Jesse-' by Mele-Mel

Mele-Mel went on to completely embarrass Reagan, by chronicling this all-but-forgotten incident when Reverend Jesse Jackson succeeded where Reagan failed:

The 30th day that's in december
Is a day that everyone's gonna remember
Because on that day a righteous man
Thought about taking a brand new stand
The name of the man is Jesse Jackson and his call
Is for peace without an action
Cause now is the time to change the nation
Without just another negotiation
He went to the East for human rights
To free a lieutenant shot down in flight
Just another statistic and the government knew it
They didn't even want the man to go do it
Before he left he called the president's home
And Reagan didn't even answer the phone
But I tell you one thing and that's a natural fact
You can bet he calls Jesse when Jesse got back

from '-Jesse-' by Mele-Mel

(DaveyD is another talented writer and all-around hip hop hip head whose commentary is always enlightening. E-mail: MrDaveyD@aol.com to reach the author. Also check out http://www.daveyd.com for more of this brother's work.)
END

Dungeons and Demons

Vol. 1 No. 11 June 16, 2004 Guest Commentary

By Salim Muwakkil
Guest Commentary

Part of the blame for the abuse of prisoners connected with the “war on terrorism,” lies in the process of othering.

Among the questions raised by the spiraling scandal of U.S. abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison is this one: Why so many pictures? Seymour M. Hersh’s May 10 New Yorker article first revealed the horrendous treatment of Iraqi detainees. But the accompanying photographs are what lit the public bonfire beneath the issue of detainee abuse.

Why would a bunch of Army MPs document such abusive (and indictable) behavior? Apparently they had little if any fear of consequences. The smiles and triumphant poses of the male and female GIs in the photos certainly don’t indicate shame.

The photos’ conspicuous emphasis on sex and nudity seemed specifically intended to outrage Islamic sensibilities. Incredibly, those sophomoric expressions of cultural hostility were encouraged by those higher up in the chain of command, according to Hersh’s May 24 New Yorker piece. Hersh reports that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally approved the expansion of a “secret operation, which had been focused on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq.” This operation reportedly allowed abusive interrogation methods of prisoners, including sexual humiliation. Hersh writes, “It was thought that some prisoners would do anything —including spying on their associates—to avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends.”

But the jocular attitude that accompanied this abusive behavior reveals more than just a dedication to grim duty. These American GIs may have been pushed to humiliate the Iraqis, but they took to their task with considerable relish. Their disdain, openly conveyed by a choreography of cultural contempt, has a peculiar historical resonance.

“Clearly these are a people with very racist intents. But it does certainly play on the stereotypes and the dark humor that underlies this type of racial oppression. If you can take it lightly, it’s much easier to institutionalize it,” said Monique Guillory, a professor at Jackson State University who coordinated an exhibit called “Without Sanctuary” that showcases photographs of lynchings in the United States from 1882 to 1981. The exhibit has been shown in New York City and Atlanta and currently is housed at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi.

Guillory was referring to the lynching photos, not Iraq, when she made that comment to Scott Simon, host of National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition” on May 8. But I heard definite similarities.

“It’s amazing and curious to consider why people who participated in the humiliation and hanging of a human being would want to photograph that crime and send the picture through the mail,” said Simon, struck by the smiles on the faces of the crowd. “There’s no sense of shame, chagrin.”

Guillory agreed. “That’s one of the things that strikes people most about the images is the comfort, the ease of the crowd.” Ironically, she said, “it was precisely through the sadistic nature of the act and the murderer’s desire to revel in it” that atrocities were revealed that otherwise would not have been documented.

The lesson of the images in “Without Sanctuary” and of Abu Ghraib prison abuse is not that they reveal the depravity of American whites at home and abroad, but that we are all capable of horrendous acts toward demonized “others.”

The Western demonization of Arabs, and of Muslims in general (a process the late scholar Edward Said termed “Orientalism”), has allowed Americans to conflate Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein with all the nefarious Muslim stereotypes roaming the American imagination—from Ali Baba and his 40 thieves to the Caliphs of the Crusades.

Part of the blame for the abuse of prisoners connected with the “war on terrorism” lies in the process of othering. Othering also explains the similarities between treatment of the Iraqi detainees and America’s perennial “others” (and largest prisoner population), African Americans.

In fact, a member of a U.S. team charged with reconstructing Abu Ghraib was a man named Lane McCotter, who resigned as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in the wake of an abuse scandal. What’s more, two of the reservists accused of abuses were former corrections officers at U.S. prisons troubled by accusations of prisoner abuse.

For those who would argue that African Americans and other Americans of color are not “others” but full-fledged Americans, let me offer President Bush’s very words on this matter. Appearing in the Rose Garden with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, Bush, apropos of nothing, said the following to the gathered press: “There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily—are a different color than white can self-govern.”

Nuff said.

Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times, and a very talented writer. StraightWords E-Zine is proud to present his work. Salim called this piece "late but timely."

Bush Needs a 12-Step Program, Not a Five-Step Plan

Vol. 1 No. 10 May 27, 2004 Guest Commentary

By William D. Hartung

President Bush's May 24 speech on his administration's five-step plan for a transition to sovereignty and democracy in Iraq was highly persuasive, if you happened to have spent the past year in a soundproof room, sealed off from even the faintest whiff of reality. But for those of us who have been paying even
intermittent attention, it was far too little, far too late.

The central issue at hand is the president's credibility. After two years of spin, dissembling, and outright lies about Iraq's great and gathering arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and Saddam Hussein's ties to Al Qaeda, the Bush crowd abruptly changed their rationale for going to war there. No longer had we risked lives and treasure to displace an imminent threat to national security. Instead, it ends up, we had cast Saddam Hussein into the dust bin of history in service of a breathtaking mission to spread democracy in the Middle East and beyond. This was supposed to have collateral security benefits, as the flowering of democracy eventually undermined support for Al Qaeda and other global terror groups, at some indeterminate date in the future.

The photos of torture at Abu Ghraib prison – and it was torture, no matter what verbal gymnastics Donald Rumsfeld chooses to perform – have cast serious doubt on the latest rationale for the war. In Iraq, throughout the Arab world, and even among America's closest allies elsewhere, the torture photos send a
message of disrespect for Iraqi life that seems incompatible with treating Iraqis as democratic citizens worthy of the fundamental rights and responsibilities of self-governance. Recent polls indicate that 90 percent of Iraqis view American troops as occupiers, not liberators, while a majority of Americans are finally starting to wonder what on earth the Bush administration thinks it is doing there.

As we now know, the cavalier disregard for international law and basic human decency suggested by the torture photos starts at the top, with President Bush, his top legal advisors, and Donald Rumsfeld and his merry band of yes men at the Pentagon. If this scandal is a about a "few bad apples," as the Bush PR machine would have us believe, those apples are at the top of the tree, not the bottom, and their names are Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and Cambone.

The Abu Ghraib scandal draws together all that is wrong with the Bush Doctrine in one deadly but concise package: (1) arrogance bordering on megalomania (2) failure to take into account the history, culture, or dynamics of the society being acted upon (3) poor coordination and confused lines of authority; and (4) a
congenital inability to acknowledge or learn from past mistakes.

This was the context for the President's speech, whose only genuine applause line was a promise to build a new prison and tear down Abu Ghraib, if the new Iraqi government was amenable to the plan. Talk about diminished expectations – “Operation Iraqi Freedom: Better Prisons, Thanks To American Intervention!"
– not exactly a slogan designed to launch armies, or staunch the President's sliding approval ratings.

It will take a lot more than five steps and six speeches to restore George W. Bush's credibility on Iraq in particular and foreign policy in general. What he really needs is a twelve-step program, to roll back his administration's parallel addictions to aggressive unilateralism and excessive secrecy.

Firing Donald Rumsfeld at this late date is probably besides the point, but heads should roll among the neo-con implementers of Rumsfeld's Iraq policy, including Paul Wolfowitz, his chief deputy, who was apparently so busy thinking big thoughts that he couldn't even tell a congressional committee how many U.S. military personnel had lost their lives in the Iraq war he helped to start; Douglas Feith, the raving ideologue who has
been the Pentagon's point man for overseeing the unbelievably inept Iraq rebuilding process; and Stephen Cambone, who may well have "set the conditions" for orders to be sent down the chain that led to the Abu Ghraib abuses.

The State Department should be given a much more robust role in running U.S. policy towards the rebuilding of Iraq, in conjunction with the United Nations and key U.S. allies.

The Bush administration should invite United Nations inspectors back into Iraq to find out what they can about the state of Iraq's weapons programs. They should also press for an international tribunal to deal with war crimes committed bySaddam Hussein's regime rather than the current partisan body run by Ahmed Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi.

The administration should openly renounce any designs on long-term U.S. bases in Iraq, and announce a date certain for a U.S. troop pullout. That date should be measured in months and years, not years and decades. The absurd investment law that was rammed through by Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional
Authority, which allows 100 percent of any Iraqi industry other than oil to be owned by foreign interests, should be repealed to make room for arrangements that will allow room for the flowering of indigenous Iraqi businesses. Future rebuilding contracts should be open to genuine competition, with preferences for Iraqi-owned concerns.

The administration should re-think its plan to embed U.S. advisors in each and every ministry of the transitional Iraqi government with veto power over major decisions.

In short, instead of the narrow, aggressive, "with us or against us" approach that got the U.S. into Iraq, the United States should pursue a genuine change of course that suggests that "we're all in this together." That would mean giving up its role as "occupier-in-chief" in Iraq and sharing political, economic, and military power with allies, the United Nations, and indigenous Iraqis who suffered under Saddam Hussein's rule.

Obviously, this kind of "about face" in U.S. policy would be more likely to occur if there were to be a "regime change" in Washington in November 2004 that sent the neo-cons and their imperial dreams packing. There would still be plenty of work to do to get John "Stay the Course" Kerry to disengage from Iraq rather than burrow in deeper, but at least advocates for Iraqi independence for U.S. occupation wouldn't have to contend with the ideological rigidity of the Cheney/Feith/Wolfowitz "axis of arrogance."

Would it be too much to ask Bush and Cheney to make one of the six speeches on Iraq a joint appearance, akin to their meeting with the Congressional 9/11 commission, at which they take a page from Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam era address and announce that "we shall not seek, nor will we accept, the nominations of our party to be the President and Vice President of the United States of America?" Just wishful thinking – but no more wishful than Bush's claim that he has a workable five step plan for bringing sovereignty, security, and democracy to Iraq.

(William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute and co-author of “How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy? A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration.”)

Covering up torture?

Guest Commentary Vol 1 No 9 May 13, 2004

by Frida Berrigan

So much has been said and written about the torture of Iraqi prisoners, that it is hard to feel like we have anything to contribute. Maybe the only thing to do is to bear witness, to watch, to continue to pay attention.

It is ironic (what an inadequate word!! Who was it who said that irony died when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?) that John Negroponte was confirmed as the new ambassador to Iraq in the midst of the torture scandal.

He has the Curriculum Vitae for the job.

Covering up for torture? Been there. Turning away families of the disappeared? Done that. Carrying water for the CIA? Years of experience. Finding justification and explanations for massacres? He should be able
to handle it.

Our friends at Foreign Policy in Focus did a profile of Negroponte when he was chosen as Bush's Ambassador to the United Nations. Here is an excerpt:

"During his tour as ambassador to Honduras that Negroponte earned his reputation for being soft on human rights abuses. From 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to Honduras, where he helped prosecute the contra war against Nicaragua and helped strengthen the military dictatorship in Honduras.

"Under the helm of General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, Honduras's military government was both a close ally of the Reagan administration and was disappearing dozens of political opponents in classic death squad fashion.

"On Negroponte's watch, diplomats quipped that the embassy's annual human rights reports made Honduras sound more like Norway than Argentina. Former official Rick Chidester, who served under Negroponte, says he was ordered to remove all mention of torture and executions from the draft of his 1982 report on the human rights situation in Honduras. In a 1982 letter to The Economist, Negroponte wrote that it was "simply untrue to state that death squads have made their appearance in Honduras." The Country Report on Human Rights Practices that the embassy submitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took the same line, insisting that there were "no political prisoners in Honduras" and that the "Honduran government neither condones nor knowingly permits killings of a political or nonpolitical nature."

Yet, according to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military. In a 1995 series, Sun reporters Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson detailed the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 316, that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." In 1994, Honduras's National Commission for the Protection of Human Rights reported that it was officially admitted that 179 civilians were still missing.

During Negroponte's tenure, U.S. military aid to Honduras, a country of five million, skyrocketed from $3.9 million to $77.4 million. Much of this largesse went to assure the Honduran army's loyalty in the battle
against political leftists throughout Central America. Embassy reports to Washington singled out for particular praise army chief Alvarez, a School of the Americas graduate who was direct commander of Battalion 316."

Soldiers Are Court-martialed: What About CACI and Titan Employees?

While U.S. soldiers involved in the torture of Iraqi prisoners are facing court-martial and military discipline, it is not clear what sort of punishment civilian contractors named in the Taguba report will face.

Contractors are hired under an arrangement that assures them they will not be prosecuted under Iraqi law, he said. They are also, because of Supreme Court rulings, not held accountable to the Uniform Code of
Military Justice.

Four civilians are named in the Taguba report: Steven Stephanowicz, John Israel, Torin Nelson and Adel Nakhla. They were assigned to work with the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.

Stephanowicz, a civilian interrogator employed by CACI, "made a false statement to the investigation team regarding the locations of his interrogations, the activities during his interrogations, and his knowledge
of abuses." He encouraged Military Police to terrorize inmates, and "clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse."

Civilians like Stephanowicz can be charged under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which gives federal courts jurisdiction over any crimes committed by civilian contractors working with the military abroad. But this four-year-old law, passed after DynCorp employees in Bosnia were accused of sex trafficking and escaped prosecution, has never been used.

Stephanowicz's employer, CACI International Inc., is based in Arlington, Virginia and provides technology services and application development and implementation for the military. It also provides non-IT related
services such as training, intelligence and national security services. Despite the revelations, the company maintains that its workers in Iraq have done "a damn fine job."

Titan, the other company named in the Taguba report, is already under SEC investigation for alleged corruption for allegedly making illegal payments to international officials. Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense contractor, is in the process of buying the troubled company for $2.4 billion. But these allegations could scuttle the deal.

Representative Janice Schakowsky (D-IL) has called on President Bush to suspend all contractors with civilian contractors for security, supervision and interrogation of prisoners. In a letter sent to the White
House she writes, "the sadistic abuses of Iraqis at a U.S. military prison raise serious questions about the accountability of U.S.-hired private contractors who are involved in illegal activities."
Frida Berrigan is a Senior Research Associate with the World Policy Institute in New York.

For more information:

Private Contractors and Torture at Abu Ghraib, Iraq Pratap Chatterjee and A.C. Thompson, CorpWatch, May 7, 2004 http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=10828

The Report: The complete text of Major General Antonio Taguba's report on the torture of Iraqi prisoners is online at http://www.corpwatch.org/upload/document/taguba.pdf

Read more about John Negroponte, the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq

http://www.fpif.org/republicanrule/officials_body.html#negroponte

In a recent speech, Noam Chomsky observed that around the time Negroponte was forward as the new Ambassador to Iraq, the Honduran government announced they would remove their troops from Iraq. Coincidence?

John Negroponte: The Right Man for the Job? Peter Ogden, Center for American Progress, April 26, 2004
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=48778

Climbing the White escalator

Special Report Guest Commentary May 4, 2005

by Betsy Leondar-Wright

"America is a meritocracy," my father always told me. The harder he worked, the more money he got: clear cause and effect. From individuals’ prosperity or poverty, he believed he could determine their effort and talent. Therefore the poor Black people in a nearby city clearly hadn’t applied themselves.

My father had a legacy that he couldn’t see, a legacy he only got because he is white. His ancestor, John Prescott, came from England in 1638. The Massachusetts Bay Colony granted him land in Central Massachusetts something no people of color got -- and he built the first sawmill there. As far as I can tell, none of his descendants have ever been poor. Some of my ancestors moved west to Ohio in the 1800s, where they may have received land under one of the Homestead Acts government programs closed to people of color.

My father is a World War II-era veteran, and he went to graduate school on the GI Bill. Most veterans of color were unable to access these education benefits. The few Black colleges were swamped with applicants, and most other colleges accepted white students only. Job training programs in the South were segregated and under local white control. African Americans were one-third of the WWII vets in the South but got one-twelfth of the job training slots.

My parents bought our first house with a Veterans Administration mortgage. The cheap subsidized mortgages of that era could not be used in mixed-race neighborhoods, or in inner cities. Because most banks issued only government-subsidized mortgages, most WWII veterans of color had to remain renters.

My father’s parents got Social Security old-age benefits, which spared my father from supporting them. This enabled him to pay for our college educations. Social Security initially excluded domestic and agricultural workers, which meant that most people of color did not qualify in the first decades of the program. The minimum wage still excludes agricultural workers. The parents of today's middle-aged people of color typically had to support their own parents, and so couldn’t save for college tuition as easily as my parents saved for mine.

Of course effort and talent make a difference in climbing the staircase to prosperity. But for most white men, the staircase has been an escalator powered by public assistance. I saw this in my own family. My father had a relative who was unambitious, sweet but slow-thinking. He got a middle-management job and stayed in it for decades, and lived in the same small house until he retired with a pension. He was carried gently up the escalator, ending up lower than my dad, who put a lot of effort into climbing and so reached upper management. That was the range for college-educated WASP men of their generation: middle management and small homes, or high-level jobs and big homes. They started in the middle of the staircase and got help to rise. Working-class white men may have started at the bottom, but in that era they had opportunities and assistance to climb upward.

Historically, for people of color, the escalator has been broken. Sometimes they have had to hike up a fast-moving down escalator. No matter how hard they worked, they rarely got the same rewards as white people. Their wages were lower, and many neighborhoods and schools were closed to them. In some eras and places, laws and violence kept them off the staircase to prosperity entirely.

Civil rights legislation has allowed people of color to step onto the staircase. But there’s no GI Bill today. The more recent government programs open to people of color, such as welfare and Food Stamps, have been tiny compared with the vast assets conferred on whites by the Homestead Acts and the GI Bill. And these recent programs have only helped with immediate living expenses, not college, homeownership, or other assets that provide security for coming generations. People of color have recently become homeowners in greater numbers thanks mostly to their own savings, without the kind of substantial government assistance that white families got in the 1950s and 1960s.

Government boosts for white people were invisible to my father. He opposed government handouts as destroying incentives to strive, without considering the handouts his family had received. In truth, prosperity comes from a mixture of individual effort and assistance from family and government. America won't be a meritocracy until the escalator rises at the same speed for everyone.

(Betsy Leondar-Wright is the Racial Wealth Divide communications director at United for a Fair Economy, an independent national organization that raises awareness of the damaging consequences of concentrated wealth and power. She can be reached at bleondar-wright@faireconomy.org)
END

Guest Commentary: Nero Fiddled, Bush Strikes

Vol 1 No 8 April 14, 2004

President George W. Bush throws out the first pitch during the St. Louis Cardinals’ season opener against the Milwaukee Brewers at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Mo., April 5.
White House photo by Eric Draper

By Frida Berrigan

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. What would he have to say about George Bush, who plays baseball while Iraq implodes?

Yesterday, the "leader of the free world" threw the opening pitch at the Cardinals/Brewers game in St. Louis (he even made a strike) and attended at fundraiser that added $1.5 million to his reelection coffers.

All he had to say about the harrowing violence in Iraq is that "we're now marching to peace."

He must not be getting his daily digest anymore. It must just be too depressing for him to read that U.S. forces are striking poor Iraqi neighborhoods -- and not the kind of strikes Cardinal fans cheered in St. Louis. It must be too much for him to contemplate Iraq's (and our) worst nightmare: a two front war in Iraq against both Sunni and Shia militants. Better to don a Cardinals jacket and glad hand big donors.

There is no march to peace in Iraq. There is widening, gaping war.

Since April 1st, 23 American soldiers have been killed, and four (that we know of) U.S. mercenaries were attacked, killed and brutally dismembered. An average of more than four Americans are being killed a day in Iraq now. Last month the average was less than half that.

As U.S. soldiers sought to reassert control over Sadr City, a slum of more than 2 million Shiites, eight were killed -- one of the worst single losses in any confrontation since last year. Scores of Iraqis were also
killed -- but no break down of how many were armed militiamen loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and how many were civilians. The firefight took place in a Shiite enclave that welcomed U.S. troops with flowers and called them liberators a year ago.

Democracy Now reported April 6:
"In the face of two resistance fronts the U.S. has opted for a high-risk strategy of attempting to crush both of them simultaneously.

"U.S. forces yesterday used Apache gunships to attack targets in Baghdad for the first time since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, opening fire over the Shia neighborhood of Shulla.

"Meanwhile, a force of some 1,300 US marines and Iraqi troops began moving into the Sunni-dominated town of Fallujah. The town has been sealed off but witnesses speak of shelling and blasts and the use of helicopter gunships. This according to the BBC. The U.S. has vowed to ‘pacify’ Fallujah, after four U.S. mercenaries were killed, torched and dismembered last week."
(http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/06/1354213)

President Bush is not listening to Democracy Now. And he is certainly not reading Naomi Klein's dispatches from Iraq. No time between fundraisers and empty promises about the economy.

Klein offers an important reminder to us who are watching from far away. Do not believe the lies. This is not a civil war. This was not inevitable. This is no march on the road to Bush's "peace." She says, "Make no mistake: this is not the ‘civil war’ that Washington has been predicting will break out between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Rather, it is a war provoked by the U.S. occupation authority."
(http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/04/1676318.php )
(http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040419&s=klein)
(http://www.nologo.org/)

(Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate with the World Policy Institute in New York.)

If There Was No Slave Trade

Guest Commentary March 17, 2004 Vol. 1 No. 6

By Kwaku Person Lynn, Ph.D.

One of the most unimaginable thoughts one could possibly think of is what the world would be like had there been no Trans Atlantic slave trade, or any form of slavery. The most obvious thing is that racism/White supremacy would not have existed. They were created out of slavery. Of course, there would be rivalries as there are high school and college rivalries, but not the negative brutal enslaving behavior based on the color of one's skin.

Attempting to survey this fantasy thought of no slave trade would require volumes of books to virtually reverse all of world history. Absent of that, let's briefly restrict our review to what it could have possibly meant for Afrika and America.

First, Afrika would be a completely different continent than it is today. It would have been the most scientifically advanced region in today's world. That may be a very difficult concept to digest considering the way Afrika has been portrayed for centuries as the dark continent with no intelligent history or culture.

In spite of this, it is no secret among scholars who have investigated and concluded that civilization, science, mathematics, engineering, technology as well as many of the elements needed to build a viable society had their genesis on the continent of Afrika. Had there been no slave trade, Afrika's scientific ingenuity would have evolved to an industrial/technological age creating modern societies.

One of the major differences may have been found in the economic organization.

Capitalism, the economic system of the western world, created during the slave trade, may not have existed in its present form. Amassing huge profits, sometimes at the deficit of human welfare, is the motivating factor of western capitalism. The economy would not have been dictated out of London or Paris, but from growing Afrikan financial centers. Because of a completely different value system in Afrika prior to European incursions, it is possible a more human-friendly economic system may have developed. There is a collective responsibility statement that supports that philosophy, "I am because we are. And since we are, therefore I am."

Without the deaths and illegal transport of some 40 to 100 million human beings in and out of Afrika, and no colonial period, most Black people in America today would have inherited the fruits of their ancestors on the continent. A common culture may have contributed to a more peaceful lifestyle. Afrika would have been a natural contrast of hundreds of ultra modern cities, deep forests and the maintenance of traditional societies. Dozens of first class universities would have existed. Thousands of corporations or similar entities would have been created to utilize the vast raw resources found nowhere else in the world. The collective insecurity and low self-esteem inherit with an enslaved population would have been non-existent. There would never had been a thought of being inferior to people of European descent.

What Afrika could have been without the slave trade is a reality we will never know. Of equal interest is what America would have been like. One thing we do know, there would have been no racial turmoil, slavery, segregation, civil rights movement, Black power movement or any struggles for equality. America would not be what it is today but for two basic reasons: one, European exploration would not have been as massive had Afrikans not given Europeans the boat technology and navigational skills to explore; two, the human labor would not have been available to build America with the absence of millions of slaves.

America today may have been equal to some of the underdeveloped areas of Europe. It certainly would not have been the world's playground. Places like Las Vegas may have never existed.

Taking that a little further, the Southwest portion of the country could have easily remained part of Mexico, with the Louisiana area still owned by France or Spain. The Caribbean Islands would not have a dominant population of Afrikan descendents, just the indigenous peoples who were there prior to the slave trade.

All of this is pure speculation. The possibility that strums up in the mind is simply a beautiful thing. There is no guarantee that this would have been a better world, for there still may have been a Napoleon or a Hitler somewhere. But if there was no slave trade, Afrika would have been strong and technologically sound enough to resist any successful invasions or conquering of its land. Because of the Afrikan spiritual heritage that fed world religions, maybe this could have been a better world. The only thing we do know, is that we will not know.

(Kwaku Person-Lynn is the author of “On My Journey Now - The Narrative And Works Of Dr. John Henrik Clarke, The Knowledge Revolutionary.” E-mail: DrKwaku@hotmail.com or visit www.drkwaku.com on the wide world web.)

Guest Commentary: 'The Passion' And The Truth?

Vol 1 No 5 March 3, 2004

By Kwaku Person-Lynn, Ph.D.

There has been a clarion call for the scholarly community to respond to the depiction of Jesus the Christ in the latest religious Hollywood blockbuster "The Passion Of The Christ."

A subterranean discussion has for decades centered on whether Jesus was a Black man. Before tackling this issue, let us first look at what various sources say about his mother. When attempting to discover who a person was, an effective methodology is to investigate that person's ancestry.

In one of the most important books on this subject, The Cult of the Black Virgin by Ean Begg, author, former member of the Dominican Order and psychoanalyst, a telling statement was made: "Emile Saillens (author of Nos Vierge Noires, Leurs Origines) estimates from the evidence that is available that by the middle of the sixteenth century, before the depredations of the Huguenots, there were 190 statuettes of the Black Virgin in France."

Continuing with Begg, a conversation he quoted in his book is very revealing. "In 1944, Leonard W. Moss, entering the church at Lucera in southern Italy, came across his first Black Virgin and asked the priest, 'Father, why is the Madonna black?' The response was, ‘My son, she is black because she is black.’ ”One of the most poignant pieces of evidence hangs in The Church Of The Nativity in Bethlehem, Palestine. The Discovery Channel aired a documentary on Jesus some time ago. Before entering the room of Jesus reported birthplace, at the top of the portal hangs an elaborate painting of Mary and her son, both Black.

It seems the authorities in charge would not do such a thing without a valid reason.

William LaRue Dillard, minister and author, in his book Biblical Ancestry Voyage, cites the following, "When Pope Pius was head of the Vatican state, an official postage stamp was issued with the Virgin Mary as a Negro on it.
There was a similar stamp in Spain commemorating the Black Virgin and Child."

Having taken a cursory look at the mother of Jesus, the Christ, let us now turn our attention to the main character. There are numerous portrayals throughout the globe, but the first to be found were in Europe, where the image of Jesus being Black is an old idea. Depictions can be found in France, the Cathedral of Millan; in Germany, the Cathedral of Augsburg; in Italy, the Church of San Francisco (at Pisa). There are several places where Jesus and Mary are both portrayed Black. For example, Our Lady of the Hermits at Einsiedeln, Switzerland; the Russian Black Madonna, the Notre Dame of Kazan; Shrine of the Black Madonna, Queen of the Pyrenees, Spain; The Sicilian Black Madonna, the Black Virgin at Tindari; the Black Madonna, Notre Dame of Hal, near Brussels, Belgium; Our Lady of Czestochowa, in Poland.

The Bible, King James Version, which many refer to as the word of God, has several chapters that refer to the color of Jesus. In Daniel (Old Testament) 7:9 says, "and the hair of his head like the pure wool.” Revelation (New Testament) 1:15 reveals “his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace." Additional references one can turn to are Ezekiel 1:27 and 8:2.

The beloved elder and the most published Black biblical scholar to date, Dr. Charles B. Copher, in one of his popular lectures, "Black People In and Of the Bible," traces the Black ancestry of Jesus, primarily using a genealogical approach. He also states that the original Hebrews, Israelites and Jews, including Abraham and Moses, were Black. Dr. Cain Hope Felder, the very renowned biblical scholar at Howard University, in his three essential works -- Troubling Biblical Waters: Race, Class, & Family, Stony The Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, and the African Heritage Study Bible, which illustrates the role Afrikans played in shaping Judaism and Christianity -- has provided tons of evidence describing Jesus physical appearance. According to Dr. Dillard, he also suggests the entire Old Testament has no Whites in it.

We cannot blame Mel Gibson for making the movie. After all, moviemaking is a business first, and he knew he had an instant hit. What is most important is what you believe. There is an abundance of evidence to confirm what has been stated. The key question is, are you strong enough to wipe away long held beliefs that can be mentally crippling, and continue on the path of a spiritual consciousness?

(Kwaku Person-Lynn is the author of On My Journey Now - The Narrative And Works Of Dr. John Henrik Clarke, The Knowledge Revolutionary. E-mail: DrKwaku@hotmail.com, or visit http://www.drkwaku.com/)