Thursday, November 24, 2011

OWS: A 4TH WORLD Thanksgiving Greeting 2011


ABORIGINAL NEWS GROUP CALLS FOR THE PEOPLE TO STAND AND DECOLONIZE THE FOURTH WORLD

A Communiqué from the ANG Public Information Bureau:

To the Peoples of the Fourth World

To the Mass Media

The Fourth World -- 11.22.2011 -- The international blog-journalists
association, the Aboriginal News Group (ANG), a stateless, independent
media guild organised by persons representing a broad variety of
independent viewpoints and comprised principally of concerned
individuals from Autochthonous/First Nations communities, wishes to make
public its support for the international #Occupy movement and to declare
our solidarity with all those who are taking an active part in
pro-democratic street demonstrations and in the international digital
efforts that support the public communications challenges of this
important struggle.

We also wish at this time to state our support for our Brothers and
Sisters struggling bravely against violent state and neo-colonialist
repression in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Palestine and especially within the
continental United States, the presumed ideological and spiritual home
of political freedom, objective justice and genuine democracy.

Having said that,

We, the ANG, go further by appealing to all Indigenous peoples around
the world and the grassroots organisations that represent them to
peacefully and non-violently sustain this international movement by
standing up to their respective Tribal governments in order to
#Decolonize the state and corporate occupied ancestral territories that
rightfully belong to the nations and peoples of the Fourth World.

We demand that the international community not just talk about
Aboriginal/First Nations rights but that they actually substantiate
their coquettish rhetoric by standing aside and allowing the people of
the Indigenous world to actualise their own political, economic and
cultural development without undue interference, coercion or other forms
of subversive repression routinely utilised against Indigenous Peoples
and movements.

We believe that the time for an intellectual, cultural and spiritual
insurrection in the minds and hearts of the Peoples of the Fourth World
is NOW.

As original human beings of Mother Earth and as rational citizens of the
world, we are appalled by the belligerent and Machiavellian disregard
displayed by ‘elected’ governments and establishment politicians, the
international moneyed-classes and the obtuse attitudes of
conservative-citizens who sanction government mistreatment against the
cordial, democratic exercise of  public dissent.

The malevolent conduct of the ownership-classes of the world have proved
them to be a group of people beyond reason, compassion or common-sense.
Through their own negative actions, the authoritarian conservative
social dynamics stubbornly opposed to the belated rise of international
People’s Power has demonstrated itself to be a threat to the hard-won
democratic freedoms of all logical-thinking people.

The extant power structure has shown that they are willing to go to
virtually any extreme, no matter how revolting, in order to preserve the
unfair global arrangement that places Anglo-phone, vulture-capitalist
hegemony above the rights of defenceless peoples, the working masses and
the planet’s already weakened ecosystem.

For the past several months, the global public has been witness to
numerous intensely vicious and grossly irresponsible examples of
state-sponsored brutality. From Tahir Square in Egypt to the campus of
The University of California, Davis in the United States, the use of
systemic violence by military and civilian law enforcement against
cool-headed, law-abiding, non-violent civilian protesters and other
non-combatants has lamentably become the norm.

The indecent, unnecessary and illegal use of indiscriminate
pepper-spray attacks, evening protest-ground raids and
nightstick-assaults being employed by many law enforcement departments
and their officers is without a doubt a frightful and revealing symptom
of a sociopolitical system that is out of control, out of touch and
utterly resistant to the public demand for authentic, representative
democracy.

This is the situation all across the world. And as Original Peoples and
caretakers of Mother Earth we are calling for an immediate end to the
madness.

We stand together with the people of the #OWS Movement in the struggle
against neoliberal exploitation of the Fourth World, the poor and the
working-class.

We Demand:

An immediate end to institutional anti-Indigenous genocide!

An immediate end  to racial, cultural, spiritual, judicial, educational,
territorial and economic discrimination against Original Peoples!

That Indigenous governments and NGO’s charged to represent Indigenous
Peoples represent them, not the colonial, neoliberal and landed gentry
classes!

That there be an immediate end to opportunistic anti-Indigenous violence
from racist civilians, unsympathetic law enforcement and predatory
paramilitary forces who engage in violence against Indigenous peoples.

That there be an immediate end to the abhorrent escalation of sexual
brutality perpetrated against our women around the world and that this
issue be addressed by an international, Indigenous-led council of review
and recommendation.

That the repression against the global Indigenous Community END NOW!

Democracy!
Social Justice!
Indigenous Autonomy!


Please Circulate--LIBERATOR

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

OWS: The dance from tragedy to farce



Here is the emerging character of the "New American Democracy" under Obama: 
The State simply engages in wholesale armed assault on citizens who even stand in the vicinity of non-violent protests. This military repression is now an equal opportunity policy. Thusly, middle class white students find themselves biting the rubber bullets usually reserved for "the Negroes of the world."

This is NOT a replay of the 1960s, hippie nostalgia aside. Obama is riding shotgun on a categorical shift in the tactics the ruling stratum will use to hold onto its privilege. Again, repeat after me: BARACK OBAMA IS NOT YOUR FRIEND NOR YOUR SAVIOR  (Black or otherwise).

Don't believe that? Then the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

The escalating brutalization of  US protesters is occuring under an erstwhile left-leaning and  Black president. How is Obama trying to stop the urban paramilitary assaults? How is Obama simply ignoring the lawlessness? The farce that Marx speaks of is the stuttering and stammering highjinks of the US palace Left , as it avoids answering the questions above and stating the obvious.

Comrade Sekou OSEI

DIEUDONNE' : The French Richard Pryor

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Election 2012: Barack Obama IS NOT THE ANTICHRIST!

I AM!


"Better sell-out  in Washington than serve in Heaven!
My Demonic Party members  and myself take great offense to some dizzy, Bible-thumping folks asserting that Pres. Barack Obama (a.k.a. Buckwheat) is the ANTICHRIST. Nothing could be further from the truth. Obama wishes he had the integrity of an Antichrist. Obama is an impostor!

Hell, I actually stand for something: ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT, ONE WORLD RELIGION, ONE WORLD ECONOMY. That's ambitious stuff, don't y' think?
That's real policy you can really fear I'll make happen. BELIEVE that! We HOPE you understand how serious we are.

Hey man, Obama couldn't even stand up for single-payer health insurance in the
US! What are these fools shootin' at him for???!!!

So, my fellow Americans, when you cast your vote in 2012, don't be deceived by an immitation false prophet. Pick a genuine beast for a CHANGE.

The apocalypse is in your hands.

Thank you and may Satan bless you."

Dr. Triplesix Faustus, D. Sc. (Univ. of Georgia)

Thursday, November 17, 2011

We need a revolutionary leader today?


Federal prosecutions of financial crimes are now at a 20-year low under the Obama regime. Ronald Reagan actually had a better record of jailing white-collar thugs. The Occupy Wall Street folks demand that the financial market laws be enforced in the interest of the 99%. That's not going to happen with Our Little Rascal at the helm.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Is there a cure for Obamamania?




by Malik Sekou OSEI / William PLEASANT

Oh, well...Let us say it again: Pres. Barack "Buckwheat" Obama is simply the glib stand-up comedy warm-up act for the main event, namely the economic rape of poor and working American people. All the cheap t-shirts, wall calendars and preacher-borne allusion to how far Black people have come to finally have one of their own (????) in the White House will not change that fact. Obama is not a sellout to the Black-led working class agenda. He was never bought into it. That is why he was enthroned by the corporate elite in the first place. And he has more than repaid his benefactors, literally with the blood of poor people.

Obama is not the lesser of two evils, vis-a-vis the Democrat and Republican brands (with or without condom) of rape. He is the clear and present evil, a class enemy. Black people know this in their bones. The slums of America resound with their cries of misery. They know that Buckwheat has forsaken them, but they fear  to speak up. Remember the millions of Black folks who stampeded to the polls on behalf of a Black savior in 2008? Well, they have nothing to show for that nearly unananimous act of devotion, except growing heartbreak.

But an army of cultural nationalist fakirs, chicken wing preachers, party hacks and tired Social Democrats (the Democrats' Socialists), has been employed to insist that the horror in the streets of urban America is merely a speed bump on the road to Buckwheat's Promised Land. They tell the howling masses that their steep and rapid cultural and economic decline can in no way be blamed on Buckwheat and his policies. And even if it is overly apparent that our blood is on Buckwheat's hands, then we are urged to forgiveness. This is the yarn that Buckwheat had to stab the poor in the back with a steak knife first in order prevent the mean 'ol Republicans from gutting us with a butcher knife. He was doing us an act of mercy, after all. Any writer who dares fail to genuflect before this--the sum of Obama's progressive aspects--is made to pay through public denunciation as a "race traitor" and/or puppet of the right.

A political madness has seized the Left inteligentsia in this country. Obamamania--driven by Black sentimentalism and hippie nostalgia--coupled with the Social Democrats' (Communists', too!) lesser-of-two-evil electoral paradigm, has left poor people in the US politically disarmed and disorganized today. This social backwardness will not abate until there arises a broad and organized independent political OPPOSITION in this country. That means a pro-working class formation that is not afraid to flush Buckwheat and his Democratic Party turds down the toilet. As cultural workers and social activist, how do we contribute such a development? The first step is to go for the jugular vein of hegemonic American political pragmatism in word, song and vision.

Capitalism and private enterprise are still seen as the proper and only vehicles for mass economic stability and actual development. Polite conversation, even among erstwhile socialists, completely avoids the fact that monopoly capitalism is an utter failure at meeting the needs of people on a global scale. Today, even the relatively priviledged workers in Europe are crying bloody murder. Meanwhile, legions of people from Mexico and Central America risk their lives to slip into the US every year to ESCAPE monopoly capitalism in their countries where it, as a system, has uttely descended into outright barbarism.  Can we, as progressive social changers, stand up and insist that exploitation and abuse are not NATURAL, i.e., some sort of divinely ordained, biologically-determined order of things? Can we insist that exploitation and abuse cannot be accommodated? President Buckwheat can't and won't do that. He is not a leader of working and poor people. Can we say that? That is what is called for today.

Nearly three years into an administration that has overseen the biggest transfer of wealth from the public treasury to the financial elite in history—with no strings attached—and that has refused to take any serious measures to address the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression, a period in which poverty and social deprivation have soared alongside record corporate profits and CEO pay, Buckwheat and the Democrats now present themselves as the saviors of jobs and social justice. Can we exposed their posturing as a genocidal lie. Or do we fear that Obama and his crew are all that stand between the poor and the herd of right wing buffoons in the Republican Party? Do we really believe in ourseleves, in the decency and power of the people?

What do we do with the collapse of MF Global, once headed by DP honcho and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine? Some $633 million of clients’ funds--mostly pension funds--are still unaccounted for. The corporate 7-11 was robbed by men in blue suits, while the cops (Obama's Securities and Exchang Commission--SEC) munched doughnuts in the parking lot. That was no accident.

Corzine’s career typifies the revolving door between the boardroom and government office, and the intimate ties that bind the Democratic Party to Wall Street. The multi-millionaire banker/politician, now under criminal investigation for stealing clients’ funds, is a major fundraiser for the Obama reelection campaign. He hosted Obama’s first fundraiser this year at his posh Manhattan apartment. Are we afraid to point that out, to teach the deliberately befuddled working class and poor that corruption comes in both dominant political party wrappers?

The US Palace Left hailed the crumbs of Obama's pseudo-populist American Jobs Act as heavenly gifts. Like every other measure proposed by his administration to "create jobs," this caper was just a corporate welfare package of business tax cuts and other regressive measures, including cuts in payroll taxes for employers as well as employees that will drain the Social Security trust fund. Can we say that crumbs are crumbs, that the entire cake belongs to the people who produced it?

Counting on the Republicans to block the jobs bill, Obama readied his "We Can’t Wait" road show, in which he staged announcements in various cities of token executive actions supposedly addressing urgent social issues such as home foreclosures and student debt. In fact, all of the measures Obama has announced have been thoroughly vetted by the banks to insure that they do not in any way encroach on their profits. Can we insist that Barack Obama is at best an imbecilic failure? Can we show that, even with the best of intentions, he cannot put the Humpty Dumpty of monopoly capitalism together again?

Buckwheat's reform agenda is utterly substanceless when compared with the concerete needs of the prople. For example, he recently spoke at a Head Start center in the Philadelphia suburb in Yeadon, Pennsylvania. In the name of "reform" and "accountability," Obama announced a new rule that will defund Head Start programs across the country on the pretext that they have failed to meet national achievement standards. This represents an extension of the so-called "reform" agenda that has shut hundreds of schools and laid off hundreds of thousands of teachers. It was just a sugar-coated and Blackfaced version of GW Bush's NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND hoax. In other words, just another unfunded federal mandate that ultimately punishes poor local jurisdictions. Never forget: THERE IS NO NATIONAL STANDARD OF LOCAL SCHOOL SYSTEM FUNDING.

The political venom that intoxicates and paralizes poor and working people in the US must be eliminated. To say that Buckwheat and his Democratic Party minions are the current active ingredients of that psycho/cultural poison would be an under statement. The notion that the oppressed and repressed must somehow accommodate themselves to the lawlessness and savagery of the ruling strata as the NATURAL ORDER of human organization has to be confronted and smashed without mercy. In our capacity as cultural workers, our challenge is to discover the ways that our gifts and charms can be applied as a progressive anecdote.
--30--

Monday, November 14, 2011

Bad coaches / Good business


 By Nana Ama Tanks for LIBERATOR

The Penn State scandal is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the abuse of youths in erstwhile "positive" settings, such as sports programs, boy scouts and grade schools. Across the US, young men and women are routinely subjected to sexual exploitation by adults in authority. Has there been an increase in instances of child molestation? That has yet to be determined. But what is certain is that new communication technologies and the willingness of parents and victims to speak out have made it increasingly difficult for pedophiles to hide. 
Nonetheless, the right wing points to the decline in what it calls morality (i.e., the rise of homosexuals in polite public forums, and the sexual liberation of women) as the driving force in what it percieves as an escalation in criminal sexual perversity. Of course, this notion is simply a pseudo-sociological figleaf for naked homophobia.  The truth of the matter is that it is quite lawful that current US institutions would not only tolerate but actually encourage the abuse of children--as they do poor women, immigrants, the disabled and other specially vulnerable strata of society.
As capitalism implodes,  the socially vulnerable increasingly become consumables in the productive process--be it making sneakers in a sweatshop or making a Big 10 football brand. This is the operative definition of FASCISM, in scientific materialistic terms. But that is a subject for another posting.
The Penn State fiasco hit the headlines because it threatened a multi-billion dollar entertainment factory. But what happens when the stakes or much more modest?
Nana Ama Tanks illustrates below how a BAD COACH can be allowed to not only walk on charges of child molestation, but also get a pat on the back when the victims and the "program" are small and non-white.
--William PLEASANT/ Sekou OSEI

Fifteen years ago multi-millionaire Lou d'Almeida was seen, in his car, performing oral sex on a young boy.  Lou d'Almeida is founder and coach of the renowned "Gauchos", a South Bronx basketball program for young South Bronx boys, ages 8-14 years old.

Former member and tutor for the "Gauchos" Joseph Luethke, witnessed d'Almeida sodomizing a young "Gauchos” basketball member in a car parked a few steps from the "Gauchos" gymnasium entrance.  He reported it to then "City Sun" journalists, Milton Allimadi, who broke the story in 1996.  The "Daily News", "The Times" and "Sports Illustrated" initially declined to publish the story and did not do so until the "City Sun" article was released.

Recruitment of new members dropped as news of d'Almeida's predilection for young boys spread.  "Team Work Foundation Inc.", the funding arm of the "Gauchos" program, started to waiver in their support.  Leading sneaker and sports apparel manufacturer "Adidas" refused to honor their commitment to provide sports equipment and sneakers to the program.  "Getting free stuff" was a major draw to enrolling young boys in the program.

It was reported in 1999 that d'Almeida, due to public scrutiny and pressure, was forced to step down and relinquish all duties relative to the "Gauchos" program.

Subsequent reports revealed other elements at play in d’Almeida’s life.   Johnette Howard of Sports Illustrated, wrote an article which said that in 1969, Lou d’Almeida was charged with second degree manslaughter in the shooting death of a 20-year-old acquaintance, Gerald Gerardo.  The article further revealed that coach d’Almeida and the Manhattan District Attorney, Gino Gallina, concocted a deal whereby the original charge of second degree manslaughter would be (knocked down) reduced to criminally negligent homicide.  d’Almeida in turn was required to testify against a former associate of his the D.A.’s office had identified as a known member of organized crime (Mafia).  The deal was struck.  The D.A.’s office spoke favorably on d’Almeida’s behalf to the judge and d’Almeida was convicted and sentenced to a five year probation.

However when d'Almeida showed up at the sixth annual Gala "Gauchos" fundraiser in September 2010 at the new Yankee Stadium, he was greeted with applause and accolades.
Last summer 2010, a team of "Guerilla Journalism" reporters interviewed a reporter from a large nation-wide news publication who has spoken with one of coach d’Almeida's alleged victims. The reporter requested his name not appear in print. The reporter said that he "found his [alleged victim] story to be credible, absolutely believable", but for “fear of legal action, our lawyers decided not to publish the story, however yes, yes we think d'Almeida is a pedophile."

To date "Lou d'Almeida has not denied the sexual abuse of a minor allegations" states Mr. Milton Allimadi, fromer writer of the City Sun.
--30--

PSU and the Martyrdom of Saint Joe


Malik Sekou OSEI and William PLEASANT

The student riots at Pennsylvania State University last week proved once again that the Great American Stupid Machine is still in full effect. Indeed, hundreds of Penn State students ran amok in support of the recently fired head football coach Joe Paterno. Windows were broken, fires were set and public property was abused on the State College., PA campus. But there were no tear gas clouds, no stun guns, no baton-wielding palace guards on hand to answer the veritable uprising. Not one rubber bullet was fired! Unlike young folks who have recently taken to the streets across the country to protest joblessness, political corruption and economic disparity, who are routinely abused by the police and arrested, the Penn State mob had its night of wilding and safely returned to its dormitories, punished by little more than a mild tounge-lashing. America cannot tolerate youths who rage against their political degradation, but vandalism on behalf of wounded college team pride is obviously not only swallowed as just the youngsters sowing their righteous oats, but encouraged by the mass media. For who could stand idly by and watch the unjust crucifixion of Joe Paterno?

Coach Paterno was, more or less, the eternal saviour of Pennsylvania's white male identity, to the extent that it was represented by the Penn State football program. Last week, Paterno, after nearly 50 years on the job and after being enthroned as the winningest coach in college football history, was given the boot by the university board of trustees. The university president, Graham Spanier, was also shown the door. Heads continue to roll at Penn State. Why were they, the epitome of big college success, so ungratefully cast out of the kingdom? The story is by now well known to all. Paterno, his staff as well as school administrators tacitly and sometimes actively participated in a cover-up of child abuse perpetrated by another Penn State icon named Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky, a veteran assistant football coach and Paterno honcho, currently faces at least 40 felony pedarasty charges. In short, Sandusky has been accused of child sexual molestation. He allegedly liked to screw little boys and he got away with it for years under the protection of Paterno, et al.



Homophobic sensationalism aside, we must examine, as Marxists, why a routine case of serial child rape not only provoked a riot but continues to keep lips flapping from one end of the TV dial to the other. Indeed, people who work with children have been known to take sexual liberties with their charges. Some professions actually attract criminal sexual deviants. Sadists like to be police officers and prison guards. Buggerers go in for cub scout master and assistant school principals gigs. And when it comes to amateur youth sports, the coaching profession is a lightening rod for child molesters. They love it! Where else can a combination of adult social authority, naked physicality and naive juvenile trust pruduce such a harvest of readily available and terrorized victims? The Pennsylvania prosecutor's evidence strongly suggests that Sandusky was just a run-of-the-mill perverted sports coach. The case should end there and the trial should begin. But the consternation over Sandusky's locker room antics has little to do with the barbarism of child sexual abuse or the fact that he preyed upon "at risk" youngters--namely impoverished Black middle school boys--and everything to do with commodity aesthetic.


Many sport and political pundits will readly come to the defense of Joe Paterno by arguing that the old coach never personally knocked boots with a pre-teen, after all. And he covered for his pal Jerry Sandusky over nearly ten years in an effort to protect the image of the football program and the university in general. Far from an act of crass indifference and cronyism, Paterno's collaboration with serial child molestation was in fact a noble act in defense of The Nittany Lions. The prestige of the football program had been compromised. He had no choice. And anyway, given that the alleged victims were ghetto urchins, there had to be enough petty cash about--from the school administration or wealthy team boosters--to buy the silence of the victims and their outraged parents. In fact, that is the way these matters are usually handled in other US institutions. For example, the Roman Catholic Church has secretly paid settlements in the tens of millions of dollars to the child victims of their boy-crazy priests. Hell, why string up Our Saint Joe of College Station for acting like the Archbishop of Boston? Hells-bells, he didn't lose his job!

Money and intimidation make these sorts of messy matters fade away under usual circumstances. Right? The Church may be able to pray itself to social forgiveness, but the Penn State football program does not run on the grace of God. It runs on cash and it produces a surplus that is socially gobbled by everyone from the hot dog slingers in the stands to the blue-suited moguls who own the mass media in this country.

Neither school honor, pride nor moral integrity led the calculated actions of Paterno, his staffer nor the school administration. Looking bad as a consequence of Jerry Sandusky's misbehavior was really never the issue. Sandusky could have been booted from the university and thrown to the wolves a decade ago if that was the case. There was ample evidence suggesting that his relationships with the children he interacted with were less than wholesome. Paterno and Company were never interested in protecting the reputation of Penn State. They were entirely invested in protecting the Penn State BRAND NAME. Why? Because that is where the college sports treasurechest is hidden.

College sports, particularly football and basketball, are multi-million dollar industries, rooted in the virtual enslavement of young athlete/performers. Their exploits on the court or on the field provide reason for billion-dollar stadium construction contracts, great goo-gobs of licensed knicknacks--ranging from t-shirts to customized automobiles--and super-lucrative broadcast fees. Penn State football is actually an industry, a factory of sorts that yearly generates billions of dollars for the university and its clients. Students and athletes actually play the role of temporary workers in this production arrangement. Grazed silly on school spirit and team rivalries, students and atheletes provide the leading cast of the Penn State football spectacle.

But quite frankly, there is little difference between a gang of bleecher-bound folks hollering at two packs of dudes chasing a ball and wallowing in the dirt at Podunk Junior College and the same activity going on at the Rose Bowl. It's just a game, after all. But when the same category of spectacle is invested with millions of dollars and promises to generate billions of dollars in return, then we witness the transubstantiaton of spectacle/commodity to brand. Penn State footbal, the fans, the soap opera of players and coaches are a single package, no different from candy bar. But in the case of Penn State, as with other big college sports programs, the candy is the wrapper, the inards are actually generic. Hard value in the form of cash was added to Penn State--literally the nam PENN STATE.

Return is made on that investment by the fact that once the final whistle is blown on a Penn State football game, the students, fans or just plain bored folks across the US can wear Penn State, drive Penn State, even eat Penn State licensed goods. Moreover, various products lines also pay a pretty penny to ride the coattails of the Penn State brand through multi-milion dollar sponsorships.

In the end, the Jerry Sandusky scandal and the subsequent cover-up campaign exposed large segments of the US public to the extent to which big college sports industries will go to protect their brand appeal. That is the big story, and it won't go away soon. But the cries of the victims will quickly fade to oblivion. So what if a dozen or so Black boys had to be sacrificed to a pervert? They were just consumables in the productive process of making Penn State make money, as far as the Joe Paterno, the college administration, the fanatical boosters and the gluttonous brodcast outlets were concerned.

 --30--

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Israel's War Dance: The Political Theatre of the Absurd (Made in the USA)


Facts First:
  • The settler regime in Palestine possesses at least 300 nuclear warheads, ultimately funded and maintained by the United States government and its NATO partners.
  • Israel is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), therefore its nuclear program is not subject to any UN inspection regimen nor regulation. In concrete terms of international law and custom in regard to nuclear weapons, Israel is a longstanding renegade, with the active political backing of the US government.
  • Israel has a history of engaging in un-provoked military attacks on neighboring nations.
  • Iran has no nuclear weapons whatsoever. Of course, it can have such weapons if it wants to, as with any nation possessing the funds, technical facility and will to go nuclear.
  • Iran is a signatory to the NPT and has consistently allowed UN inspection of its nuclear facilities.
  • Iran has no history of military aggression anywhere.
Nonetheless, Israeli PM Benny Natanyahu is currently threatening Iran with wholesale attack. Meanwhile, the US and its NATO underlings sit in the amen corner. What is going on here? What is the war cry all about? Why would Barack Obama even consider condoning and supporting a 3rd party attack on a nation that is at peace and poses no strategic threat to the US? Why would he risk a confrontation that would further cripple the US and European economies by driving the price of petroleum through the roof? Why provoke a conflict that could readily escalate into a global war by dragging in the Chinese and the Russians (real nuclear powerhouses)? Maybe the answers to these questions have next to nothing to do with a real or imgained or "existential" threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and everything to do with the symbiotic relationship between the Israeli settler regime and the corruption of the US government.

Israel's frenzied sabre rattling today and its seeming support from the US and its lackies stems from a singular political act, namely the adoption of UN Ssecurity Counsel Resolution 1929. On June 9, 2010 , the Security Council backed the imposition of a fourth round of sweeping sanctions against The Islamic Republic of Iran. UNSC Resolution 1929 called for an expanded arms embargo against Iran, as well as "tougher financial controls." It proclaimed:


"[Resolution 1929 (June 9, 2010)] ...[A}ll States shall prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to Iran, from or through their territories or by their nationals or individuals subject to their jurisdiction, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, and whether or not originating in their territories, of any battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles or missile systems .... , decides further that all States shall prevent the provision to Iran by their nationals or from or through their territories of technical training, financial resources or services, advice, other services or assistance related to the supply, sale, transfer, provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of such arms and related materiel, and, in this context, calls upon all States to exercise vigilance and restraint over the supply, sale, transfer, provision, manufacture and use of all other arms and related materiel." (Security Council Imposes Additional Sanctions on Iran, Voting 12 in Favour to 2 Against, with 1 Abstention, Includes complete text of UNSC Resolution 1929, UN News, June 9, 2010 )

Both the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China caved in to US pressures and voted in favor of UNSC Resolution 1929. In November, following a decree issed by president Dmitry Medvedev, Moscow announced the cancellation of its military cooperation agreement with Iran pertaining to the S300 air defense system. Without Russian military aid, Iran was a "sitting duck." Its air defence system depends on continued Russian military cooperation.
These developments strike at the very heart of the structure of military alliances. They prevent Russia and China to sell both strategic and conventional weapons and military technology to their de facto ally: Iran. In fact, that was Washington's major objective of Resolution 1929. It had nothing to do with nuclear weapons!

But UNSC Resolution 1929 was based upon a fundamental hoax. It upholds the notion that Iran is an upcoming nuclear power and a threat to global security. It also provides a green light to the US-NATO-Israel military alliance to threaten Iran with a pre-emptive punitive nuclear attack, using the UN Security Council's blessing.

The US-led posture in the UN Security Council was grounded in intelligence documents that supposedly substatiated its charges against Iran. They were the EVIDENCE that Iran was hatching an aggrssive nuclear weapons arsenal.

This carnard goes back to a November 2005 New York Times reportIn November by William J. Broad and David E. Sanger entitled
"Relying on Computer, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran's Nuclear Aims". Wahington's evidence against Iran resided in an allegedly stolen laptop computer, according to the NYT.

The contents of the computer allegedly included "a series of drawings of a missile re-entry vehicle" which allegedly could accommodate an Iranian-produced nuclear weapon. Sanger and Broad reported:




"In mid-July, senior American intelligence officials called the leaders of the international atomic inspection agency to the top of a skyscraper overlooking the Danube in Vienna and unveiled the contents of what they said was a stolen Iranian laptop computer.
The Americans flashed on a screen and spread over a conference table selections from more than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments, saying they showed a long effort to design a nuclear warhead, according to a half-dozen European and American participants in the meeting.
The documents, the Americans acknowledged from the start, do not prove that Iran has an atomic bomb. They presented them as the strongest evidence yet that, despite Iran's insistence that its nuclear program is peaceful, the country is trying to develop a compact warhead to fit atop its Shahab missile, which can reach Israel and other countries in the Middle East."(Relying on Computer, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran's Nuclear Aims - New York Times, November 13, 2005)

These "secret documents" were subsequently submitted by the US State Department to the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA, with a view to demonstrating that Iran was developing a nuclear weapons program.  While their authenticity has been questioned on several occasions, a recent article by investigative reporter Gareth Porter confirms unequivocally that the mysterious laptop documents are fake. The drawings contained in the documents do not pertain to the Shahab missile but to an obsolete North Korean missile system which was decommissioned by Iran in the mid-1990s. :





In July 2005, ... Robert Joseph, US Undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, made a formal presentation on the purported Iranian nuclear weapons program documents to the agency's leading officials in Vienna. Joseph flashed excerpts from the documents on the screen, giving special attention to the series of technical drawings or "schematics" showing 18 different ways of fitting an unidentified payload into the re-entry vehicle or "warhead" of Iran's medium-range ballistic missile, the Shahab-3.

When IAEA analysts were allowed to study the documents, however, they discovered that those schematics were based on a re-entry vehicle that the analysts knew had already been abandoned by the Iranian military in favor of a new, improved design. The warhead shown in the schematics had the familiar "dunce cap" shape of the original North Korean No Dong missile, which Iran had acquired in the mid-1990s. ...
The laptop documents had depicted the wrong re-entry vehicle being redesigned. ...
(Gareth Porter )
Gareth Porter suggests that Israel's Mossad has been a source of fake intelligence regarding Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program:




The origin of the laptop documents may never be proven conclusively, but the accumulated evidence points to Israel as the source. As early as 1995, the head of the Israel Defense Forces' military intelligence research and assessment division, Yaakov Amidror, tried unsuccessfully to persuade his American counterparts that Iran was planning to "go nuclear." By 2003-2004, Mossad's reporting on the Iranian nuclear program was viewed by high-ranking CIA officials as an effort to pressure the Bush administration into considering military action against Iran's nuclear sites, according to Israeli sources cited by a pro-Israeli news service." (Ibid)Is today's anti-Iran war dance but an instant replay of the WEAPONS OF MASS DESTUCTION hoax that drove the US invasion of Iraq, allegedly under the mantel of the UN Security Council? Certainly, the same cast of characters are at play here, ranging from flocks of neo-con chicken hawks to the fanatically pro-zionist hucksters in the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC and the American Jewish Council. Meanwhile, with few exceptions, Democrats and Republicans in the federal legislature are tripping over themselves for a shot at paid oratorical performances in support of Israel's security. Is this a case of Deja Vu all over again?

No. The means may be the same but the political objectives are entirely different. War on Iran is out of the question. It is even doubtful that if the settler regime launches a strike on Iran--and suffers nearly guaranteed military pulverization at the hands of the furious Iranis--then the US will intervene on Israel's behalf. The "accidental'" open mike session last Thursday in Cannes between Obama and French Pres. Sarkozy made clear that Benny-boy Netanyahu (Likud) has no friends, and the Political Theatre of the Absurd is open for business. What Natanyahu does have is desperation. The Cannes "gaffe" has was just gasoline on the fire. The settler colony in Palestine is politically isolated. Its only good suite is the system of corruption that guides US foreign policy in the so-called Middle East. Israel's threat on Iran is just a sort of political blackmail. It is an attention-getting device--a vaudeville routine--designed to poltically mobilize the US government and US mass consciousness--via the corporate mass media--to put out more on Israel's behalf--namely, more money, more free weaponry and more political self-humiliation before the world. Isreal is a very needy urchin these days more than ever.


Today, Sen. John McCain, the chief bottom bitch of the US arms industry--a ferocious beneficiary of in the "special relationship"--complained, "Israel is under more pressure and probably in more danger than they've been since the 1967 war. That kind of comment is not only not helpful, but indicative of some of the policies towards Israel that this administration has been part of."

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said the chat between Obama and the French leader was "decidedly unpresidential." Abraham Foxman, ADL mouthpiece, pleaded that the Obama regime would "do everything it can to reassure Israel that the relationship remains on a sure footing and to reinvigorate the trust between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, which clearly is not what it should be." In short, the pro-zionist la costa nostra is on the run. 
Our Little Rascal, Barack Obama, is as cynical as he intelligent. He will play the game, extorting larger and larger bribes from the pro-zionist mafia while delivering fewer and fewer benefits to his paymasters. They will simply need to pay more for less. And in this election season, they will be forced to bleed green.
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Tuesday, November 8, 2011

The UNESCO fiasco or Obama, Sarkozy and the price of love...


By William PLEASANT

LIBERATOR WROTE ON Nov. 4--The US hegemony over the UN system has been substantially weakened by the Palestinians, who will undoubtedly use the leverage of UNESCO admission to win official recognition from other UN bodies and agencies. The US has relied on its muscle to dictate global polices. That influence is waning now. What happens when US can't get its way with the International Telecommunication Union which allocates radio spectrum usage globally, "including the spectrum reserved for military and commercial use?" The World Health Organization is clearly important to the US for pumping money into the pocket of US-based pharmaceutical monopolies. The World Meteorological Organization? The World Intellectual Property Organization?...

Well, we hit the nail on the head. The US anti-Palestinian vote at UNESCO will cost the US people plenty. Painted into a corner by pro-zionist domestic political corruption, Obama has to do damage control.

AFP reports today that Obama let the cat out of the bag and confirmed our assessment in an unguarded 3-minute private conversation with French President Sarkozy while attending the Cannes G-20 Summit on Thursday. He forgot that the microphones were on, so they say...

OBAMA to SARKOZY
"I didn't appreciate your way of presenting things over the Palestinian membership of UNESCO [Oct. 31]. It weakened us. You should have consulted us, but that is now behind us."

As a result of the globally repudiated attack on the Palestinians bid to join UNESCO, Washington is compelled to halt its funding for UNESCO under a 1990s law that prohibits the US from giving money to any UN body that grants membership to groups that do not have full, legal statehood. In fact, the measure was greased through the US congress as a specifically anti-Palestinian ploy.

On Thursday, Obama told Sarkozy that he was worried about the impact if Washington had to pull funding from other U.N. bodies such as the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation and the IAEA nuclear watchdog if the Palestinians gained membership there. Of course, his fears had zero to do with the human impact of defunding these vital global agencies and everything to do with infuriating the corporations that financially benefit from US hegemony over the UN system.

But the real threat was always that the Palestinians could, given their admission to UNESCO, also apply for membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC) system. In short, the settler regime in Tel Aviv could be brought up on global human rights charges for its well-documented daily atrocities committed against the Palestinians.

OBAMA to SARKOZY
"You have to pass the message along to the Palestinians that they must stop this immediately," Obama reportedly urged his French henchman, as the media slyly listened in.

SARKOZY to OBAMA
"I can't look at him [Netanyahu] anymore, he's a liar." (Arret Sur Images reported)

OBAMA to SARKOZY
"You've had enough of him, but I have to deal with him every day."


These quotes were confirmed by Reuters.

Without a doubt, Obama's response to Sarkozy's stated aversion to the Israeli leader implies that he also detests Natanyahu. But he cannot seemingly take the luxury of uttering his true feelings, even in whispers. Obama has to "deal with him every day," after all.

Truth of the matter is that Barack Obama does not have to deal with Benny-boy Netanyahu every day, nor the Israelis in general. But he is compelled to kow-tow to the pro-zionist kleptocracy in Washington, DC around-the-clock. This is an election year, so the big bribes are on the table. Needless to say, the presidential candidate who drools and grovels best before the "special relationship" gets to snatch the cash.

So, did Pres. Buckwheat's loose lips sink his chances for copping the pro-Israel campaign treasure chest? Not hardly. The OBAMA/SARKOZY slip of tongues last week was no accident. The two homeboys actually employ platoons of well-paid flunkies to assure that not one unsanitized breath is released to the cognitively challenged mainstream media. It was rather an open telegraph to zionists in the US who will now scream that Obama must eat his words and proclaim his love for Benjamin Natanyahu (Israel's neo-fascist Likud block), or pay the consequences. The operative term here is PAY. But our beloved LITTLE RASCAL just made clear on Thursday that the price of his sell-out-for-Israel minstrel act has gone up.

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Monday, November 7, 2011

Blacks & Chinese in AmeriKKKa: How strangers are manufactured



By William PLEASANT
(c) 2011 Thunder Publications, Inc.

Unknown to most, Black people and Chinese people once enjoyed an intimate social relationship in the United States dating from the pre-Civil War era. Since then, China–the perennial "sick man of Asia"– has miraculously emerged as one of the pre-eminent political and economic powers on Earth. The fortunes of humankind in the 21st century may rest on the success to which traditional European powers, especially the United States, cultivate respectful and mutually beneficial relationships with the rising Red Dragon and its billion-plus population. If the superficial ethnic identity of US Pres. Barack Obama is to have any positive value in the coming critical economic and political dialogues between the governments of the United States and the People’s Republic of China, then there must be firstly a rudimentary historical understanding of the relationship between Black and Yellow when the two peoples were neither separated by ideology nor the Pacific Ocean. They were not strangers.

The case of Blacks and Chinese in Mississippi offers a compelling example of how the two communities once came together as allies and were, under the ferocious regimen of Jim Crow repression, ultimately torn apart. In short, Black people came to be rejected by their Chinese neighbors–and often family members– in an unique application of the "one drop" or hypo-descent rule of racial categorization in the United States.

The historical record of the Mississippi Chinese and their racially mixed descendents (Sino-Africans) demonstrates the extent to which racial categorization is manufactured and manipulated to bolster white supremacy. Chinese and Blacks once worked together in the cotton fields as sharecroppers in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. According to Vivian Wu Wong (Somewhere Between White and Black: The Chinese in Mississippi, Magazine of History, Volume 10, No 4, Summer 1996), "The majority of the Chinese who settled in the Mississippi Delta arrived between the years 1910 and 1930. However, questions concerning the social, economic, and political future of the Chinese in Mississippi began much earlier, starting in the mid-1800s when a number of Chinese ‘coolies’ (indentured laborers) from Cuba were brought to the American South as a substitute for [B]lack labor."

Needless to say, the Chinese workers who found themselves in the Deep South’s color-coded society were at once mystified and the source of mystery to the Black and white inhabitants. "A vast social and economic gulf yawn[ed] between the dominant white and subordinate [B]lack. Yet one group in Mississippi, a ‘third race,’ the Chinese…managed to leap that chasm. Negroes [did not] consider them exactly white; Caucasians [did not] consider them [B]lack. They [were] privileged and burdened with an ambiguous racial identity ."[1]

This situation allowed the Mississippi Chinese the opportunity to employ racial identity to their advantage. To Blacks, they were "brothers". To whites, they were "not nigras". To the Chinese themselves, they were just in HELL. Make no mistake, racial identity was and remains the cultural, social and juridical property of the white master race–i.e., herrenvolk stratum. This meta-aristocracy ultimately and murderously determined its own membership requirements. Within the strict matrix of manners and terror that gripped post-Reconstruction Mississippi, the Chinese simply learned to navigate to their best advantage, given the situation.

Special Case Chinese

The Mississippi Chinese bear little resemblance to the Chinese who migrated to the Pacific Coast of the U.S. West Coast Chinese were relegated to the bottom of the social hierarchy, mere millimeters above the surviving Native Americans and the Mexicans. They were the target of fierce anti-immigrant sentiment on the part of whites. White laborers flew into a rage as Chinese were recruited as low wage union busters. Pogroms against Chinese and other Asian immigrant groups were not uncommon. As pawns in the labor-capital clash, the Chinese of the West inevitably found themselves socially and culturally isolated, corralled in so-called Chinatowns.

In the U.S. South, the story was quite different. The original, ante bellum Chinese population spoke Spanish, an European language, so they were not entirely alien.[2] But more importantly, The South already had a permanent racial underclass, namely the descendants of the African slaves. Nobody, for very profound social and cultural reasons, could ever vie for the African American’s station at the bottom of the racial inferno. Thus, Mississippi’s Chinese enjoyed an unique social mobility, relative to race and class.

The United States Census of 1880 listed 51 Chinese in Mississippi, mostly in Washington County. Like most Chinese immigrants to the United States, those coming to Mississippi were mainly from relatively commercially sophisticated Guandong, a province in South China. Immigrants from there were likely from the peasant and artisan classes. Traditionally, young males from that area sought work elsewhere to supplement the family income. The Chinese did not come to settle in Mississippi but to make money and expatriate it home. By 1960, the U.S. Census recorded that 14 Delta counties accounted for over ninety percent of Mississippi’s Chinese population. The Delta had the largest concentration of Chinese in the entire South. The 2010 U.S. Census found that roughly 4,500 Chinese lived in Mississippi, out of a statewide Pacific Asian population of 18,626. Despite the 50-year trend of Mississippi Delta depopulation, the Chines population there is actually growing! (Lynn Woo, et al., University of Mississippi Center for Population Studies-September 2011).

In Mississippi, the development of the Chinese Baptist Church, the presence of relatively more Chinese females, and the absence of clans, clubs and quasi-criminal gangs made the Chinese there more acceptable to Mississippi whites than their West Coast counterparts. The Chinatowns of the West Coast afforded Chinese immigrants a sort of social/cultural oasis. But Mississippi was as sterile as the moon for its Chinese. Consequently, the Chinese hatched their own society, what Loewen calls ‘parallel institutions,’ social organizations which were structured to replicate those of the dominant white society. These institutions, particularly the Chinese churches, showed the white community that the Chinese man ‘was already perhaps beginning to believe that American ways [were] better’ .[3]

Why Mississippi and why Chinese?

The Chinese people, primarily men, who landed in Mississippi either from Cuba, the West Coast or directly from China began as laborers, specifically "colored" laborers. They were, like their Black neighbors, sharecroppers. The Chinese relationship to the existing Black laboring masses was actually pivotal to their racial identity as Chinese in the South and the evolution of their socio-economic strategy for holding their own, and sometimes even prospering in Mississippi.

Before the Civil War, Chinese workers were merely viewed as answers to the labor shortage created by the U.S. ban on African slave importation and the relatively high cost of purchasing and maintaining Black slaves from the existing national stocks. After the war, Chinese workers were imported to Mississippi based upon a notion among some elements of the white aristocracy that somehow they would undermine the political and evolving economic power of native freed Blacks. The Chinese were employed as an instrument of white supremacy. Black people could vote. Chinese could not. In fact, the white elite believed that even if Chinese were enfranchised, then they still would not vote. There was another dollar and cents argument, namely that Chinese coolies would accept wages that the newly freed Black slaves would spit upon. [4] Chinese importation quite simply targeted ornery Black labor. Railway construction, agricultural production–cotton and rice–were the central pillars of post-Civil War southern economy, and these industries were dominated by restive Black workers. Something had to be done about that, since Blacks, recently released from chattel status, necessarily had a racial/political chip on their shoulders. Chinese were seen as the answer by many, but not by all among the white elites. Some would argue that re-introduction of the African slave trade would be preferable to bringing in the "yellow peril" to meet the labor shortage at the outbreak of the Civil War [Gen. William H. Chase, 1857].

On the other hand, another white faction–railroaders and factory owners– welcomed imported Chinese based upon reports from Cuba, Peru and elsewhere in Latin America where they were described as hardworking and law-abiding. This group was, of course, shouted down by the pro-Black faction–large agriculturalists– who argued that negroes, though troublesome at times, worked hard, too. But more importantly, they–southern whites–had several centuries of experience in exploiting Black labor. For these whites, when all was said and done, a free Black laborer could be easily terrorized by the Klan and robbed by the landowner at the commissary store–after all, the law was literally on the side of the nightriders and thieves. That was a fact. Chinese workers in the agricultural sector were just not trusted to endure that kind of abuse.

In the end, both arguments became moot. Chinese workers proved to be as costly as Black workers, especially when they were brought from China. Likewise, as the West industrially expanded it demanded more Chinese laborers, and lured them with higher wages. The campaign to break the political and economic power of Black people with Chinese coolies fell flat on its face. Chinese never became a significant demographic factor in Mississippi nor anywhere in the South, as a consequence. But their significance on the landscape of Mississippi racial politics was never a mere reflection of their numbers.

Neither Black nor White, but definitely not poor.

Like most southern folks, the Chinese of Mississippi drifted away from plantation life. King Cotton was on his deathbed by the late 1880s, bludgeoned by competition from Egyptian and Sudanese crops that were cheaper. Likewise, over-cultivation of a single cash crop had ruined the region’s soil. Black farm people began the slow migration to urban areas as a consequence. The Chinese pursued a different strategy. They became small, rural shop owners.

There is some heated debate over why Black sharecroppers failed to follow the same course. One would assume that the level of capital accumulation and access afforded Chinese and Black agrarians would be relatively the same. Loewen argues that Black were simply too underdeveloped and devastated by the slavery experience to enter commerce, even micro-commerce. But there is a rather simple and compelling counter-argument. Blacks did not thrive as small business people just because they were Black. A Black commercial stratum never developed in the Mississippi Delta because whites would not allow it to develop. White wholesalers would not extend credit to Blacks. White banks would not extend credit to Blacks. White shippers would not ship to Blacks. And in the end, Blacks who sought to circumvent this stranglehold of naked racism were simply run out of town by the nightriders. There is little evidence that the nascent Chinese merchants faced these sorts of obstacles.

By the early to mid-twentieth century, close to 80% of the Mississippi Chinese were grocers. They were able to establish stores in the vicinity of the plantations and in the Black quarters of the Delta towns. In Mississippi–as in the rest of the South–there were no Chinatowns. But there was always a "China-mans" around, a small general store where can goods, toiletries, ammunition and remedies could be purchased. Chinese simply filled the commercial void created by the race-driven economic exclusion of Blacks. The Chinese groceries prospered for several reasons:

*1.) Chinese enjoyed virtual monopoly on retail sales to Blacks. White shops often refused to serve Black customers, and when they did the Black customer more often than not exited white establishments sans money and personal dignity.
*2.) The Blacks developed a genuine affinity for the Chinese merchants because they almost always lived in Black neighborhoods–often in a back room of their stores.
*3.) The Chinese were perceived by Blacks as sharing the same burden of racial discrimination at the hands of whites. Genuine solidarity developed between the two lower-strata communities.

Chinese commercial success commanded the respect of Mississippi whites. The Chinese managed to create a sort of structural independence from the wealth they accumulated from the Black community. To the white racists they were still "colored," but coloreds with their own money. Chinese became the "middle men" that white racism begat in Mississippi, and a relatively well-heeled market for local white merchants and banks.

The social birth and political murder of the Mississippi Sino-African.

"If the Delta Chinese sometimes fell through the cracks of segregation, those who started families outside the Chinese fold fell away from the community. With immigration laws making it extremely difficult for Chinese men to bring their wives to the United States, it was not uncommon for a Chinese man in the Delta to have a common-law wife, either [B]lack or white." [5]

The close social intercourse between Blacks and Chinese in Mississippi inevitably led to sexual intercourse and a slew of Black/Chinese children. Chinese sharecroppers were almost exclusively single men. So barring liaison with white women, their pool of possible mates was invariably Black women. The offspring of Chinese males and white females never raised much of a social issue--if there were any hackles, then they were thoroughly muted. But at one point as many as 25% of the Mississippi Delta Chinese were married to Black women. [6] This fact, of course, raised problems for both the white racists and those Chinese bent upon using their new wealth to fuel social assimilation with the herrenvolk–to essentially cement their immunity to the Jim Crow laws. Chinese as Chinese were easy to discern as middle men. But what about the Black Chinese? Would Sino-Africans be afforded the same relative privileges as "full-blooded" Chinese?

Mississippi’s Jim Crow statutes were specifically spawned to socially and economically ostracize Black people. They were never meant to apply to the economically useful Chinese. Likewise, for upwardly mobile Mississippi Chinese eager to ingratiate themselves to polite (white) society, the stain of Blackness in the family was anathema. If Chinese wanted to be honorary whites (by Mississippi legislation), then they had to stiff-arm their Black friends and the demi-Blacks in their families. Whites demanded this. The Mississippi Chinese bowed to the racist dictate.

Writes Zhou Yao Kuan (Bobby Joe Moon), a native of Boyle, of the social upheaval affecting Mississippi Chinese: "Racial climate: We could sense the growing tension between Blacks and whites as we were growing up in the late '50s and early '60s leading up to the Civil Rights Freedom Marches. Being in the white world for public schools, our parents had to donate money to the White Citizens' Council [the public arm of the Klu Klux Klan–Ed.] and yet try to be supportive of the Blacks from whom they were making their livelihoods. Again, this was very confusing for us. We were taught to hate the Blacks by being in the White world. We were taught that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Communist. I thought the South was going to have a Civil War between the Blacks and whites when Emmitt Till was lynched." [7]

Nine years before the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Topeka ruling outlawing racial segregation in public schools, Mississippi lawmakers made their move. Chinese were declared white by statute, meaning that Chinese children could attend school with white students. Mississippi could crow that its schools were already "integrated". Moreover, politically speaking, the caucasianization of the Chinese assured that Mississippi’s Blacks could not rely upon their old friends as allies in the burgeoning fight against Jim Crow.

The task of "cleansing" the Chinese of Black blood was given to the Chinese themselves. This fact makes the case of Mississippi unique. Upwardly mobile Chinese pulled the trigger on their own people, with abandon. Wong writes, Mississippi’s Chinese were stampeded away from their old Black friends by the pro-assimilationist camp "pressuring Chinese men to end their relationships with [B]lack women and to abandon their bi-racial children, or forcing [B]lack-Chinese American families to leave the community." Put simply, Chinese who persisted in hanging out with Black folks forfeited their right to be Chinese.

Reverend Ted Shepherd, the white pastor of Greenville’s Chinese Mission Baptist Church recounts how severe the post-WWII racial rift within the Chinese community had become.

"Let me give you an example, "explained Shepherd to Emilee Erwin during a 1999 interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program (F341.5 .M57 vol. 748, pt. 2) "Arlee Hen was an elderly Chinese woman in Greenville who was half Chinese and half [B]lack. A very wonderful person. I enjoyed talking with her a great deal. Her husband was J. S. Hen, a pure-blood Chinese. And because he had married a half Chinese, half black, this is what they did at his funeral. Joe Ting handled the whole thing. And he went to the police department and got six policemen to carry that man's casket. And brought his casket there and placed it under the tent. And they allowed Arlee Hen to come in and sit. But Joe Ting would not [quote] ‘disgrace any Chinese men by asking them to be pallbearers of one who had married a half Chinese and half [B]lack’ [ unquote]"


In this regard and maybe thousands of other incidents of rejection, a new inter-cultural, interracial ethnicity was literally strangled in its cradle. The Sino-Africans of Mississippi vanished.

CONCLUSION

The story of the Mississippi Chinese demonstrates that formal ethnicities, as defined by culture and statute, are little more than political playthings of the white elite. As long as the Mississippi Chinese kept their places as the commercial middle men in the rural economy they were accorded certain liberties afforded only whites. The Chinese never bucked the system, except to insist that they were constitutionally entitled to enjoy the same backwards relationship to Black people as white Mississippians. In the U.S. Supreme Court case of Lum vs. Rice , the Chinese plaintiff, a girl barred from a white school simply because she was non-white, argued, "If there is danger in the association [with Negroes], it is a danger from which one race is entitled to protection just the same as another…The white race creates for itself a privilege that it denies to other races; exposes the children of other races to risks and dangers to which it would not expose its own children. This is discrimination." [Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78, 80 (1927)]

In LUM v. Rice, the Mississippi Chinese were inclined to invoke the 14th Amendment to argue that if, under the Mississippi Constitution, schools were segregated to protect white children from the threat of Black children, then Chinese children deserved equal protection from that threat! It was one of the most heartbreaking moments in the modern civil rights movement. Why? Because, under the Mississippi Constitution, Chinese children had absolutely no right to public education until 1944. (They could not attend white designated schools nor Black designated schools because Mississippi schools were ONLY for white or Black students). LUM ( Martha Lum [age 9], daughter of Gong Lum) could have argued against that, but she argued that she should have white privilege. 

But Blacks did rebel, demanding an end to the Jim Crow horror and equal justice under the law. This political challenge forced a re-organization of the Chinese socio-political status in Mississippi. In the heat of the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century there could be no "middle men". The majority of Mississippi’s Chinese clearly chose sides in the battle for Jim Crow’s survival. They chose the losers.

This article merely scratches the surface of the Black/Chinese relationship in Mississippi and elsewhere in the U.S. South. Hopefully, future writers will more thoroughly explore the narrative contours of what it meant for Blacks and Chinese to literally part ways on the social landscape. For example, what did it really look like for a Chinese father to abandon his children? What became of the Black women and these children? How did Chinese impose de jure whiteness on their community? Who led this movement in the Chinese community? These are potentially explosive questions that must be answered in order to get to the feverish heart of U.S. racism and its psycho-cultural maiming of all social strata.

When President Barack Obama walks into the conference room with the leaders of China, he must necessarily carry, among other things, the story of Mississippi–Black and Yellow–in his vest pocket.

[This article is partially excerpted from William Pleasant’s upcoming book, Mélange: The social contours of interracial coupling in America. It is scheduled for release in August 2012.]

NOTES
1. James W. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 2.
2. Lucy M. Cohen, Chinese in the Post-Civil War South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1984), 57.
3. Loewen, Mississippi Chinese, 84.
4. Shih-shan Henry Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986), 56.
5. Somini Sengupta. Published: November 1, 2000, New York Times.
6. Loewen, Mississippi Chinese, 74.
7. Zhou Yao Kuan (Bobby Joe Moon). USADEEPSOUTH.COM (http://usads.ms11.net/bjm.html) 2004.

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