Valuable Lessons

 

 

There continues to be clashes found in Egypt. There has been a growing death toll from the massacres of the Egyptian Army indeed. There has been much conflict in Egypt. The military junta is trying to harm protesters. The streets are filled with blood. There has been the massacre of Wednesday. Supporters of Morsi continue to peacefully protest. Others have attacked government buildings all over the nation. The army ousted Morsi in the July 3 coup. This was aimed at pre-empting developing mass working class protests against Morsi's reactionary policies (though Morsi is not worse than others). Yet, the military backed dictatorship now is becoming even worse than Morsi. This comes after the 2011 uprising against Honsi Mubarak. The casualties from Wednesday's bloodbath mount into the thousands and the fighting spreads. The coup is placing Egypt on a path towards civil war and mass upheavals. Thousands of the relatives of the victims of Wednesday's massacres have flocked to the morgues and mosques. This was where the bodies of the victims are being held. They chanted the words of: “The army and police are one dirty hand!” Health Ministry sources reported yesterday that the death toll from Wednesday’s crackdown had risen to 638, with at least 4,200 injured—more than double the initial official figures. These figures, which do not include the bodies of protesters at facilities controlled by Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB), are still substantial underestimates. Reuters reporters counted a further 228 bodies at northeast Cairo’s Al-Imam mosque alone, and the MB has issued estimates that over 2,000 were killed and 10,000 wounded in Wednesday’s crackdown. The death toll is rising. Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi issued a statement praising the police for their "self-restraint" and justifying the massacre. He said the following words: “The state had to intervene to restore security and peace for Egyptians.” Some groups of Morsi supporters have attacked police stations in Giza, Port Said, Assuit, Helwan, Minya, and Fayoum. They also stormed and torched the Giza governor's office recently. They blocked Cairo's major Ring Road in both directions. This caused traffic in the capital to a halt. The police also broke up a protest by several thousand Morsi supporters on the Corniche in Alexandria. This killed 3 and wounded dozens. MB spokesman Gehad El-Haddad spoke to Reuters via Skype. He said that Wednesday's crackdown was a very strong blow to his organization. He estimated that the death toll at eight times the official figures. He said that several MB leaders had gone missing. He said the following words:  “We can’t confirm the whereabouts of all of them yet. Two of the top leaders have been shot but are not yet dead, as far as I know. About six of them have lost their sons and daughters.” El-Haddad said that MB's central concern is that protests against the junta might escalate and escape their control. He said that the arrests and killings of MB leaders meant that the MB had lost central coordination, added that: "After the blows and arrests and killings that we are facing, emotions are too high to be guided by anyone.” “It's beyond control now. There was always that worry. With every massacre that increases,” Haddad said about anger among opponents of the junta. “The real danger comes when groups of people, angry by the loss of loved ones, start mobilizing on the ground.” What the Muslim Brotherhood, the junta, and its imperialist backers fear is that the rising violence and protests may trigger an independent movement. This independent movement can unite the working class against the reactionary policies which both the Muslim Brotherhood and the junta supporters. All of the factions of the Western establishment and the military junta in Egypt desire austerity measures including cuts to vital fuel and food subsidies (this will attack and crush the real revolution in the world). Governments worldwide fear the explosive fallout from the massacre. The West has been allied to the junta. US President Barack Obama issued a brief statement yesterday canceling joint Egyptian-US military exercises, but made no shift in US support for the junta. Washington still refuses to label the army’s July 3 toppling of Mursi a “coup,” so it can continue providing $1.3 billion in yearly subsidies to the Egyptian army. The office of French President François Hollande also issued a statement, declaring that “everything must be done to avoid civil war,” after Hollande summoned Egypt’s ambassador in the wake of the crackdown. Turkey's Islamist premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan brutally suppressed mass protests against his own regime in June. He fears a coup like the one that ousted Morsi. He criticized the massacre in Egypt and the U.S. backing for the Egyptian army. “Those who ignore the coup and don’t even display the honorable behavior of calling a ‘coup’ a ‘coup’ share in the guilt of the massacre of those children,” Erdogan said. “At this stage, what right do you have to speak of democracy, of universal values, of human rights and freedoms?” Some in the liberal bourgeoisie and other affluent middle class in Egypt have loved the coup and the massacre. The persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood can only militarize them not destroy them in the longer term. Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei resigned since he tried to distance himself from the crackdown that he had supported. We must never forget that ElBaradei helped plan the July 3 coup and supported repeated bloody crackdowns against pro-MB protesters. His maneuver was also exposed by recent revelations that, during the junta’s internal discussions preparing Wednesday’s bloodbath, he called for a resort to the “use of force within the limits of the law.” The supporters of the Tamarod or Rebel alliance have been coup supporters. Many of the Tamarod and some of his own Constitution Party including the NSF (or the National Salvation Front) have criticized ElBaradei's decision. They feel that he is abandoning the country in a critical time instead of staying the course.

 

There is one issue where conservatives, liberals, and those from across the political spectrum can agree on. We can agree on ending the War on Drugs once and for all as a means to have reasonable alternatives to assist the human race. We realize that mandatory minimum sentences, the Drug war, and mass incarceration have harmed the black community in many ways. We are still fighting against racial profiling and other injustices. All real folks want radical, revolutionary, and comprehensive changes in the world as a means to address these issues beyond just token concessions. Attorney General Eric Holder has been very controversial. Recently, he wants to use action as a means to address the horrendous prison state. For about 55 months, Holder has done very little on this issue and now he wants to address (in the aftermath of the evil verdict sent to the murderer George Zimmerman). Previously, Holder has never pushed seriously for the repeal of minimum drug sentences. Holder merely says that he'll instruct federal D.A.s not to file drug charges which under federal law invoke the mandatory minimum sentences in small scale cases where the feds see no violence or gang affiliation. Some federal D.A.s will not follow these instructions. These proposals do not affect state law. We know about the immoral criminal justice system. That system profiles illegally and immoral black males. Its laws make black and brown people arrested often, charged more aggressively, sentenced more harshly, and serve longer sentences than whites (even if blacks and whites are charged with the exact same crime. That is racism period). There should be a reduction of the Federal Bureau of Prisons which grew 4 percent in our era of budgetary austerity. There can be a closure of some prisons. There can be funds to give educational opportunities and decent medical care to 2 million plus human beings in state and local prisons including jails. There could have been a commuting of the sentences of thousands of human beings who already served excess prison time under the old and outlawed 100 to 1 crack vs. powder cocaine penalties. President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act in August of 2010 reducing the 100 to 1 crack vs. powdered cocaine penalties to 18 to 1, but the Department of Justice refused to actually reduce the sentences of prisoners already serving time. In July 2011, after resisting pressure from the families of prisoners serving that unjust time for ten months, Attorney General Eric Holder announced sentence reductions would be implemented, but only retroactive to August 2010. That hasn't happened either. These unfair crack vs. powder sentences continue to pur. There is a Reuters story that the NSA is linking with local police departments nationwide (via the DEA) as a means to deal with the War on Drugs. This network is concealing its evidence form judges and prosecutors. So, we have the current policy of keeping crack defendants in jail serving longer sentences. There has been the NSA-DEA pipeline of laundered evidence in countless local drug trials. Many of the white establishment and the black bourgeoisie elite refuse to talk about these things since it is against their agenda (of making sure that the status quo remains with token, cosmetic changes to the system instead of revolutionary changes to the system).

 

Many Republicans are showing an extreme hatred against the President beyond legitimate dissent. There have been signs lying that say that he was born in Kenya. There have been those mocking him like a rodeo clown and folks wishing for his impeachment. Regardless of our views of the President, he doesn't deserve slurs or sick disrespect. We know about what Jackie Robinson had to deal with. If it was wrong for Jackie Robinson to be called epithets then the President doesn't deserve to be classified in epithets either. President Barack Obama has endured birther slurs. It is fine to disagree with the President on a reactionary foreign policy and a neoliberal economic policy. Although, it is wrong to question his humanity and his fundamental love for his family though. One time, the reactionary media machine wanted to force the public to respect the Supreme Court decision to select him or George W. Bush as President of the United States back in 2000. His brother's friends in Florida and his father's friends in the Supreme Court allowed George W. Bush to be elected President. Back then, newspapers like the NY Times and the Washington Post pretended that Bush really did prevail in Florida. The reality is that Al Gore would have won if all of the ballots considered legal under Florida law were counted. President Bush has gotten more respect by the wider public with his stumbling over speeches than President Barack Obama (whose oratorical skills are as impressive as the baseball talents that Jackie Robinson displayed on the field). NY Times Maureen Dowd on one time criticizes Obama for not working enough with Republicans and then later he is not connecting with important of Washington elites. The reality is that the Republicans want to destroy the White House politically. Dowd seems to ignore that the Democrats having overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate influenced the power of Lyndon Johnson to pass important social legislation (with many moderate Republicans favoring effective governance). Republican obstructionism is real regardless of how Obama acts. Even when the President courted Republican moderate Senator Olympia Snowe on health care reform, she voted no for claiming it went too far (not because it didn't go far enough). But perhaps most offensive is Dowd’s nastiness toward Obama’s character. Her tone has the unmistakable attitude of elite racism. In a May 25 column, Dowd fawningly quotes historian Robert Draper making some clever but facile contrast between Bush-43 and Obama-44. As Dowd and Draper visited Bush’s new library together, Draper says: “So 43 grew up entitled but could display a commoner’s touch, while 44 grew up hardscrabble yet developed this imperial mien. The former is defined by incuriosity, the latter by self-absorption. … They can each make you kind of miss the other.” Apparently, neither historian Draper nor columnist Dowd can put Obama in the historical context of his not only being the first African-American president but his having grown up in societies – both the United States and Indonesia – where a mixed-race son of a white woman was frowned upon or worse. We know that Obama was stoic against the racism he experienced in Indonesia by being pelted with stones. Obama restrained himself and did not stoop to the level of his detractors. He refuted the extreme bigot Donald Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner with style and humor without bitterness. The President should be legitimately criticized on real issues, but he is falsely held into a standard of perfection that was never applied to a Ronald Reagan or even a George W. Bush. Now, this does not mean that all of the White House's policies are paragons of virtue though. We have the right to disagree with the White House on NSA, civil liberties, neoliberal economic policies, foreign policy, refusal to love a single payer, universal health care plan, and many other issues. As we get older, we see that the evil, capitalist system (that murdered over 1 billion human beings since the 16th century) has influenced the harm in the States and throughout the world. It is a system that has contributed to the  growing economic inequality in the world too.

 

 

 

 

There is always the deception made by many establishment conservatives about out of wedlock births in the black community. The conservatives use this canard as a means to demonize the black community. The reactionaries distorts evidence about social pathology issues in black communities with regard to crime and out of wedlock childbirths. When the conservative talk about an illegitimacy crisis in black America and claim that rising out of wedlock birthrates are the real cause of black human beings' problems, they show a failure to understand statistics. The truth is that the birth rate of unmarried black women (or births per 1000 of such women of childbearing age) is dropping not rising. For black teenagers, the birth rate has fallen by half since 1970 and now at its lowest point ever. Black women are great human beings. Their out of wedlock birthrate is down by about a third in that same period of time. It is true that the percentage of births that are out of wedlock as a share of all black births has rising (nearly doubling since 1970 and now stands at just over 72 percent). Both of these things are true: declining birth rates and fertility rates for unmarried black women (i.e., unmarried black women are increasingly being more and more “responsible” in conservative terms, not less), and also a climbing share of out-of-wedlock kids as a share of all black kids born. So, the reality is that all single parents are never the product of misbehavior of single women and single men. It is about the fact that married couples are having even fewer kids than single women were. This is what is happening in America. Single black women have cut back on how many babies they have while unmarried and married black women have cut back even further.  So if single black women have reduced their birthrates by a third, but married couples have cut theirs by over half, or even two-thirds (which is the case), then obviously the percentage of births in the black community that are out-of-wedlock will rise. That is why the reactionaries are unfair to seize on this issue without understanding the context. The reality is that the black community is cutting back on out of wedlock births in a dramatic way. In other words, the trend lines in that regard are positive. To suggest a pathological — and increasingly so — black culture when it comes to out-of-wedlock childbirth is entirely dishonest. If anything, “black culture” if we really want to suggest it is linked to the decision to bear children out-of-wedlock, must be improving, rather than regressing. We know that African American youth teenage pregnancy rates have fallen massively from 1991 to 2010. From 1991 to 2010, the rate of births to black teens, 15-19, fell by more than half, with a full 9 percent drop just between 2009 and 2010 alone. Likewise, from 1980 to 2008, the birthrate for all black women under 18 fell by more than half. Indeed, the birth rate for African American teenagers is now at an all-time low. So conservatives should be celebrating these trends. The big picture is that the reactionaries are blaming black people and black culture falsely for the crises facing the African American communities in America. This slander has increased after the George Zimmerman's verdict. Black human beings have every right to talk about and expose racism in the world. Racial profiling and poverty are scourges in the world. They or the enemy always hate black people. The violence in Chicago is a serious problem that we must address. Yet, the homicide death rates today are actually far lower for black men than in the past. In 1950, for instance, the homicide death rate for black males was 38 percent higher than in 2008, with 47 black males dying from homicide for every 100,000 black men in the population, as opposed to 34 per 100,000 in 2008. And although crime and homicide spikes in a few places like Chicago have been quite real, these seem to be outliers, as violent crime nationally (including crime committed by blacks) has continued to fall in recent years and now stands at rates that are well below those of twenty years ago. In some mostly black cities like Washington, D.C., homicide rates now stand at their lowest point in the past half century. This information refutes the lie that black culture is equivalent to cultural dysfunction (or hip hop is responsible for the problems in the black community collectively). There was no Lil Wayne in 1950 or in 1973 when the violent crime rate nationwide was more than three times higher than today. White reactionaries ignore the positive trends in the black communities of America and they ignore the much pathology in other communities like in some white communities too. One in seven white women, for instance, smoke cigarettes while pregnant, thereby endangering the health of their soon-to-be-born children: a rate that is 60 percent higher than the rate for black women. White women were also about 30 percent more likely than black women to drink alcohol when pregnant in 2010-2011, thanks to a significant reduction in gestational alcohol consumption among black women compared to previous years and a slight increase in such consumption among whites. There is much higher rates of suicide among whites than blacks. In 2010, for example, white men were nearly twice as likely as black men to die from an opioid overdose and white women were more than twice as likely to die from such an overdose as black women. So, all of the human family has issues. Black human beings being made the scapegoats for all evils in America is a lie.

 

Sister Trojan Pam and Brother Kushite Prince created excellent words about the Butler film. I need to not mention anything more than what they have excellently and eloquently mentioned. Now, this movie seems to have a generational situation. Many older members of our community love it since they feel it represents real history. The story revolves around a famous butler serving many numerous Presidents in the White House. The butler suffered indignities, hardships, and other forms of unjustified oppression by racists basically. The movie ended during the age of Obama when he was elected as the first African American President in history in 2008. 2008 is 5 years ago, which I remember like it was yesterday. This movie is similar to Django Unchained where the actors and actresses are sincere (with a huge following in the African American community), while the message in the film is slick and tries to justify the oppression of white supremacy.  The Butler outlines white society's depiction or interpretation of black life not the total authentic view of society in the lens of black eyes (or the total truth of the history of black consciousness in general). Hollywood loves to do this completely. The movie issues the deception that there is joy in us as blacks showing passivity toward oppression. The movie talks advances the lie that we should suffer in a submissive way as a means for us to to be integrated in mainstream white society (which is a society that hates our very being as black human beings). The truth is that suffering unjustly is never morally redemptive. There is redemption in God inspiring us to use militant action and confronting the evil system of white supremacy without accommodating to it (or accepting token concessions that never benefits our people in the long term anyway as Malcolm X said. Even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had to admit that the wickedness of white society is abhorrent and this is Dr. King). The movie portrays the Black Panthers as some almost nihilistic faction of militants when the Black Panthers had Brothers and Sisters literally doing many things constructively (as a means to enrich the lives of society. They were not collectively running around and killing cops randomly. They were using self-defense and working in the black community. The Black Panthers were well read and utilized great, intellectual argument in explaining their views to the world. In fact, the FBI murdered many innocent Black Panthers for no reason and that will never be placed in the film). The FBI, the CIA, and other likeminded organizations have a notorious history of terrorism against the black community and other members of the human family worldwide (which has been going on for decades). Films like the Butler present the archetype of the "good white folks" helping the "grateful black folks" that should thank the white Saviors for granting them their own liberty. The truth is that black human beings have a leadership role in their own liberation. As Trojan Pam eloquently wrote, it is still taboo for Hollywood to show movies about strong, conscious, and Excellent Black Men and strong, conscious and Excellent Black Women working together and loving each other as a means to solve their problems in a mass level (especially in the 2nd decade of the 21st century). The Butler outlines the noble domestic servants for white people motif. This archetype has been common in Hollywood for decades. I have more  sympathy for Brothers and Sisters back then than today in dealing with servant roles (black folks were starving in the streets looking and fighting for dignified roles back then). The reason is that back then Brothers and Sisters were lynched and murdered overtly by white racists in epidemically higher levels than now. We still suffer these things now, but back then it was overtly worse. Today, there is no excuse for this servant stereotype stuff now definitely. The domestic servant stereotype is about the lie that the natural position of black humanity must be about serving white people instead of building up the black community independent of white social expectations. The white supremacy system always wants us (who are black) to be passive to their wicked system instead of fighting it. In our time, we still experience racism and overt violence against our people. So, the goal of white supremacy plainly is to advance white domination and black submission. Hollywood is not progressive as its supporters claim since its film then and now show the most debased stereotypes against black human beings in general (from the sick show Scandal [that degrades a beautiful, smart black woman as a mistress and a sex object to a corrupt white President] to Django Unchained). As black human beings, we can never serve, sex, and sacrifice our life for our enemies. Also, Lee Daniels has a known history of directing controversial films that degrade his own people from Monster's Ball to Precious. Recently, he even wanted white people to have the right to say the N word, which is highly disturbing. So, we as blacks should express empathy towards each other and make sure that our minds psychologically are in favor of BLACKNESS and enriching BLACK HUMAN LIFE. The Butler is more sophisticated Hollywood propaganda than Django Unchained since it tries to distort history (in dealing with the story of Cecil Gaines) as a means to gain interest among an audience while Django is a film filled with fantasy. I will write much more later on about this film. We should continue to be leaders not servants of the establishment. We are leaders.

 

By Timothy