On Liberal, Conservative and Other False Dichotomies

Black folks can’t afford to buy into phony paradigms – but we buy them by the carton just the same.

I was reading a congratulatory blog post here on the ‘Spear, by a member of the Project 21 Group, re. the recent Massachusetts Senate election. One white Republican candidate “upset” a white Democratic candidate endorsed by President Barack “Goldmund Sachs” Obama. Conservative values won the day, drove a stake through the evil liberal administration’s heart according to this commentator’s observation.

Having been screwed by both Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives and Tories since the slaveship…how in the hell can we split hairs between political parties that are both controlled by fat cats with greenbacks and whose party platform can be summed up in the old saying:

“Our pockets are so phat, they look like they got the mumps – and getting fatter, bitches!”

Well, what about your pockets, black ideologue?! And what about the pockets and pantries of the black masses? What is the medicine prescribed by these white paragons of free market strychnine for the ills of our people – a heaping teaspoon full of black capitalism, the golden-gilded market – Jesus?? That’s helped bunches, hasn’t it; took us from the plantation South to the ghetto-fied North…Up, up and away.

Its beautiful that you believe in “Conservative values”, but across the board, a hand me down religion?? You think that touting your squalidly self-righteous, religio-political voodoo on “Life,” forcing your bland,  koolaid down everyone else’s gullet when your white Nazi  brethren have committed more live homicide than Hitler…whose life are we fussin’ about?  And is your Liberal Stepinfetchit routine during each election cycle, groveling before the (faux) liberal Clintonian-fucks who poop a little pork into your saucer a recipe for  “real change??????”

There is the reality of CNN and Fox and the NY Times and the Post – that you believe in like porridge served on a tray by a friendly bear as you lay in bed in your intellectual jammies – and then there is “REALITY!!!” This reality is the reality of overthrown governments, political assassinations, toxic weapons, torture training programs, rape, pillage and genocide – all presided over by both parties and men and women of all political persuasions – in these United States of America.

You doubt the word of your Negro narrator?! Well, the great Dr. Martin Luther King of April 4th, 1967 knew what I mean. That’s why they killed him one year to the day later. The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, according to MLK in 1968 – was the United States of America. And in 2010? WE’RE NUMBER ONE!!!

We are still the world leader in violence: violence at home, violence abroad, retail and wholesale violence, as Noam Chomsky likes to say. The violence that we perpetrate is “so wide, you can’t get around it, so low you can’t get under it, so high you can’t get over it.” We make it and we sell it, violence. Guns, bombs, missiles, tanks, bazookas, grenades. We proudly sell more than anyone else – and wonder why the world is in flames, why flesh is on fire the world over.

But the black ideologue is bewitched by rhetoric, a true believer in Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, suckered by flesh peddlers, by what is said by their iconic leash holders, rather than by what these devils did and still do. “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of slavery…” OUR Bill Rights (that didn’t even apply to us ), shredded by the Patriot Act — “but I’m gon’ believe it anyway, Massa, cuz believin’ is all I gots, its what I’s held onto when them chariot wheels weren’t nowheres ta be found.”

The world that we live in today, according to Morpheus, is the world pulled over your and my black, bloodshot eyes. We live on a prison planet and the Head Warden in Charge is a Blackchurian candidate, a Trojan Horse, a palliative, a crack hit, a nether man. He done put ya’ll to sleep with his smooth gait and his slick gift for gab. Novocaine on two legs.

Neither major political party in the US offers truth or justice, offers a program of real change: except from your hand to theirs. But its not real, structural, economic change that you want; its the cosmetic, paint job, the conference room table in Tower 1, its the political conk that you’re after, that you’ll settle for.

We get 30,000 more troops in a noxious war against the impoverished people of Afghanistan – billions of dollars are stolen from us, from our grandchildren and airmailed to Iraq, Pakistan and to defense contractors and Wall Street bigwigs. And still we rise…like bloated corpses on the Mississippi.

There’s just the slightest difference between the two criminal co-conspirators that you pledge your allegiance to like a virginal intellectual neophyte. The choice between a pedophile and a serial rapist, at best. In the end you, or someone you love, gets fucked.

I can’t understand the kind of cataracts that allow Kneegroes to pick up Democratic or Republican pom-poms and shake their distended groove things to the sound of “Taps”. Or, identify with the false dichotomies of conservative-liberal-nationalist-assimilationist-ad infinitum.

YOU black man/black woman, are a member of the global oppressed, the non-white, Kentucky-fried, nigga-tried rabble that Washington-London-Paris and the other European capitals and capitalists feel comfortable raping out of their natural resources and their right minds. And brainwashing them/you/us into good little placard waving stooges.

STOP      STOP        STOP       STOP        STOP         STOP

STOP looking to the hand me down party that enslaves you – to save you!

Look to yourself and others in the same boat as you.

We need a poor people’s campaign – like Dr. King Proposed42 years ago – a campaign with an invitation to Americans of every shade and every hue with one mission: to make America America…or die trying.

sat’day riddymz

“The Hate and the Quake – Rebuilding Haiti,” by Sir Hilary Beckles

From The Colorful Times:

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES is in the process of conceiving how best to deliver a major conference on the theme Rethinking and Rebuilding Haiti.

I am very keen to provide an input into this exercise because for too long there has been a popular perception that somehow the Haitian nation-building project, launched on January 1, 1804, has failed on account of mismanagement, ineptitude, corruption.

Buried beneath the rubble of imperial propaganda, out of both Western Europe and the United States, is the evidence which shows that Haiti’s independence was defeated by an aggressive North-Atlantic alliance that could not imagine their world inhabited by a free regime of Africans as representatives of the newly emerging democracy.

The evidence is striking, especially in the context of France.

The Haitians fought for their freedom and won, as did the Americans fifty years earlier. The Americans declared their independence and crafted an extraordinary constitution that set out a clear message about the value of humanity and the right to freedom, justice, and liberty.

In the midst of this brilliant discourse, they chose to retain slavery as the basis of the new nation state. The founding fathers therefore could not see beyond race, as the free state was built on a slavery foundation.

The water was poisoned in the well; the Americans went back to the battlefield a century later to resolve the fact that slavery and freedom could not comfortably co-exist in the same place.

The French, also, declared freedom, fraternity and equality as the new philosophies of their national transformation and gave the modern world a tremendous progressive boost by so doing.

They abolished slavery, but Napoleon Bonaparte could not imagine the republic without slavery and targeted the Haitians for a new, more intense regime of slavery. The British agreed, as did the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese.

All were linked in communion over the 500 000 Blacks in Haiti, the most populous and prosperous Caribbean colony.

As the jewel of the Caribbean, they all wanted to get their hands on it. With a massive slave base, the English, French and Dutch salivated over owning it – and the people.

The people won a ten-year war, the bloodiest in modern history, and declared their independence. Every other country in the Americas was based on slavery.

Haiti was freedom, and proceeded to place in its 1805 Independence Constitution that any person of African descent who arrived on its shores would be declared free, and a citizen of the republic.

For the first time since slavery had commenced, Blacks were the subjects of mass freedom and citizenship in a nation.

The French refused to recognize Haiti’s independence and declared it an illegal pariah state. The Americans, whom the Haitians looked to in solidarity as their mentor in independence, refused to recognize them, and offered solidarity instead to the French. The British, who were negotiating with the French to obtain the ownership title to Haiti, also moved in solidarity, as did every other nation-state the Western world.

Haiti was isolated at birth – ostracized and denied access to world trade, finance, and institutional development. It was the most vicious example of national strangulation recorded in modern history.

The Cubans, at least, have had Russia, China, and Vietnam. The Haitians were alone from inception. The crumbling began.

Then came 1825; the moment of full truth. The republic is celebrating its 21st anniversary. There is national euphoria in the streets of Port-au-Prince.

The economy is bankrupt; the political leadership isolated. The cabinet took the decision that the state of affairs could not continue.

The country had to find a way to be inserted back into the world economy. The French government was invited to a summit.

Officials arrived and told the Haitian government that they were willing to recognize the country as a sovereign nation but it would have to pay compensation and reparation in exchange. The Haitians, with backs to the wall, agreed to pay the French.

The French government sent a team of accountants and actuaries into Haiti in order to place a value on all lands, all physical assets, the 500,000 citizens whovwere formerly enslaved, animals, and all other commercial properties and services.

The sums amounted to 150 million gold francs. Haiti was told to pay this reparation to France in return for national recognition.

The Haitian government agreed; payments began immediately. Members of the Cabinet were also valued because they had been enslaved people before independence.

Thus began the systematic destruction of the Republic of Haiti. The French government bled the nation and rendered it a failed state. It was a merciless exploitation that was designed and guaranteed to collapse the Haitian economy and society.

Haiti was forced to pay this sum until 1922 when the last installment was made. During the long 19th century, the payment to France amounted to up to 70 per cent of the country’s foreign exchange earnings.

Jamaica today pays up to 70 per cent in order to service its international and domestic debt. Haiti was crushed by this debt payment. It descended into financial and social chaos.

The republic did not stand a chance. France was enriched and it took pleasure from the fact that having been defeated by Haitians on the battlefield, it had won on the field of finance. In the years when the coffee crops failed, or the sugar yield was down, the Haitian government borrowed on the French money market at double the going interest rate in order to repay the French government.

When the Americans invaded the country in the early 20th century, one of the reasons offered was to assist the French in collecting its reparations.

The collapse of the Haitian nation resides at the feet of France and America, especially. These two nations betrayed, failed, and destroyed the dream that was Haiti; crushed to dust in an effort to destroy the flower of freedom and the seed of justice.

Haiti did not fail. It was destroyed by two of the most powerful nations on earth, both of which continue to have a primary interest in its current condition.
The sudden quake has come in the aftermath of summers of hate. In many ways the quake has been less destructive than the hate.

Human life was snuffed out by the quake, while the hate has been a long and inhumane suffocation – a crime against humanity.

During the 2001 UN Conference on Race in Durban, South Africa, strong representation was made to the French government to repay the 150 million francs.

The value of this amount was estimated by financial actuaries as US$21 billion. This sum of capital could rebuild Haiti and place it in a position to re-engage the modern world. It was illegally extracted from the Haitian people and should be repaid.

It is stolen wealth. In so doing, France could discharge its moral obligation to the Haitian people.

For a nation that prides itself in the celebration of modern diplomacy, France, in order to exist with the moral authority of this diplomacy in this post-modern world, should do the just and legal thing.

Such an act at the outset of this century would open the door for a sophisticated interface of past and present, and set the Haitian nation free at last.

“Hope and Change and Pick-Up Trucks” By Lisa Fritsch

Op-ed submission by Project 21 

Just a year ago, Americans were so eloquently sold on hope and change that came from a shiny, new black sedan of a limousine liberal. It turns out what they really wanted was something that came from the likes of Scott Brown’s old Chevy truck.
 
Once dazzled by the illusion of Barack Obama’s hope and change sloganeering, it took Americans a year to the day to make it clear they are through with liberal shenanigans and are taking matters into their own hands.
 
Republican Brown’s election in Massachusetts to the U.S. Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for almost 50 years is a definitive rejection of the Obama agenda.
 
Yet there are liberals still defiantly invested in the folly of Obama’s now-tarnished vision of hope and change. If Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi stubbornly continue to push the President’s unpopular bill of goods despite the new math in Washington, they risk unleashing the full wrath of the American voter upon themselves and their colleagues this November.
 
Scott Brown’s victory is less about opponent Martha Coakley’s poor campaigning than an awakening to conservative values in the bluest of blue states. It’s a major step toward enacting true hope and change over the politicians’ desires. It’s something all parties and persuasions should take to heart.
 
Brown’s win in Massachusetts exhibits the mood of the rest of America. Unlike our global neighbors, Americans are no longer under the spell of bouffant speeches and bankrupt promises.
 
The jig is up for the Democrats, and Republicans would be wise to take note of conservative momentum of now.
 
For fear of appearing unrefined, racist or out of touch (or all of these things, if you watch MSNBC), Republicans have been resistant to embrace true conservative voices in their ranks: the southerner “hicks” so offensive and uncouth to the Georgetown elite; abortion opponents who fight for the right to life over the self-serving wisdom of Washington aristocrats; NRA members who know the last defense against tyranny is self-defense and those who may or may not believe in climate change but know cap-and-trade will devastate our economy.
 
Now is not the time to shy away from the pro-lifers. With confident compassion and humility, one can articulate that being against abortion is not about limiting a woman’s choice or ruining her life, but rather choosing love and the beauty of a woman’s ability to give it.
 
Now is the time to speak proudly about clinging to guns and religion, for both are critical in keeping our nation at peace and in freedom.
 
Now is the time to call a terrorist a terrorist, lest we all become faceless potential hijackers.
 
Spoken in earnest and with conviction, conservative values are the values most Americans trust.
 
For Republicans, Scott Brown’s victory should not make them overconfident. It is not enough to simply rest on the discontent and distrust for the current Washington culture. There is still much work to be done. While Brown is no Jesse Helms, any return to a platform that is diffuse and weak ramblings of conciliation will mean renewed defeat.
 
Brown’s win undoubtedly caught the Democrats’ attention. While a leopard cannot change its spots, expect at least some Democrats to try to alter their message to broaden their appeal. That’s what Bill Clinton did after his 1994, and it worked.
 
While liberals sulkily chalk Martha Coakley’s loss to bad campaigning, PMS bloat or some other null excuse to justify their continued push for this administration’s ill-fated agenda, conservatives must be ready to lead. Brown’s campaigning for reason on taxes, terrorism and health care is what the people in Massachusetts – and the rest of America – favors.

Lisa Fritsch is a member of the national advisory council for the Project 21 black leadership network and a writer and radio talk show host in Austin, Texas.

“A fool does not care whether he understands a thing or not; all he wants to do is to show how clever he is.” Prov 18.2

One of the advantages and dangers of the cyber age, is that anyone can post their opinion for the world to ingest. One of the things I sometimes struggle with is whether or not to post and/or comment on an article which I find incredibly distasteful. In a way I am giving that person a platform to spread their message further. However there are times when I know I must confront a train of thought based on total ignorance.

“Dear Haitians, First of all, kudos on developing the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Your commitment to human rights, infrastructure, and birth control should be applauded. As we prepare to assist you in this difficult time, a polite request: If it’s possible, could you not re-build your island home in the image of its predecessor? Could you not resort to the creation of flimsy shanty- and shack-towns? And could some of you maybe use a condom once in a while?
Sincerely, The Rest of the World”

This diatribe is from an article by former NBA player and blogger Paul Shirley (read the whole article here). I heard about the controversy and after I read the article for myself, I know that Mr. Shirley is not alone in his beliefs. There are lots of people, White and Black, who agree with him. He is not simply a “cold-blooded bastard” or a “White right-wing racist”. What struck me first and foremost about Mr. Shirley in reading his article, is that he is an ignorant. Not just simply ignorant of history and facts in regards to the Haitian people. Ignorant is fundamentally who and what he is, the essence of his being, the substance of his DNA. His ignorance is born of arrogance and is nurtured by privilege. His type of ignorance is one that manifests itself in rational, intellectual arguments. He equates his ignorance as intelligence… as being clever. According to the Word of God, he is a fool. According to my life experiences… what I have read, heard and seen… he is not the only one.

So how does one respond to a “Paul Shirley”. One fights darkness with light. Educate. Provide information. Share knowledge. And pray for them. They will not always see the errors of their thoughts. In fact their arrogance, like the condom which Mr. Shirley references, prevents the conception of wisdom (read here). But I must respond as futile as it may seem. 

“I am very keen to provide an input into this exercise because for too long there has been a popular perception that somehow the Haitian nation-building project, launched on January 1, 1804, has failed on account of mismanagement, ineptitude, corruption. Buried beneath the rubble of imperial propaganda, out of both Western Europe and the United States, is the evidence which shows that Haiti’s independence was defeated by an aggressive North-Atlantic alliance that could not imagine their world inhabited by a free regime of Africans as representatives of the newly emerging democracy.” By Sir Hilary Beckles (read the rest of his article “The hate and the quake”)

Documentary Thursday: Evidence of Revision

The “Underneath.” What’s really going on?! Here is a documentary, a part of series, that reexamines major events, unearthing material that will make you think.

Part I: The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Perhaps you’ve never asked yourself who, why or how, never questioned what happened. Maybe you just don’t care.

Some view this event as the turning point in American history. Speaking of history; long live Howard Zinn!!!!!

The AfroSpear presents: Evidence of Revision.

Holocaust Memorial Day

I had never heard of Holocaust Memorial Day until I read about it at the Afro-Europe blog. It is held internationally on the 27th January each year and commemorates the genocides of World War II, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. This date was chosen as it is the anniversary of the day in 1945 on which the Soviet Army liberated the largest Nazi concentration camp: Auschwitz-Birkenau. Click on the banner above to be taken to it’s website for more information, resources and to light a virtual candle for the Legacy of Hope… I was the 19183rd person to light a candle.

A couple days ago I watched a film, Sometimes in April, starring Idris Elba (aka Stringer Bell in “The Wire”), about the Rwandan genocide. It was quite powerful and hard-hitting… a much more personal story than Hotel Rwanda. Afro-Europe also featured a story about Anton de Kom, a Surinamese/Dutch freedom fighter and human rights activist, who died in a concentration camp in Germany. Read it here and also watch the short documentary about his life… it’s very interesting and informative, especially since Black History Month begins next week.  

“There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done. One person, a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, a Martin Luther King, Jr., one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone, that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.” Elie Wiesel

sat’day riddymz

Speaking truth to power. Still true, still relevant, still powerful.