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October
3, 2001
Ariel
Dorfman:
America
the Wounded
Lennie
Brenner
Dr.
Watson in Afghanistan
Steve
Perry:
Ashcroft's
Scare Tactics
October
2, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn:
Inside
an Afghan Hospital
Richard
Manning:
A
Vietnam Vet on Patriotism
St. Clair/Cockburn:
Tarnished
Star,
Tom Ridge in Vietnam
October
1, 2001
Noam
Chomsky:
Memo
to Hitchens
Hizam
Bitar:
Refuting
Michael Kinsley
David Grenier:
The
Good, The Bad,
and the Ugly
Douglas
Valentine:
Homeland
Insecurity
Carl
Estabrook:
Stop Bush's Killing
Mahajan/Jensen:
Food,
Fear and War
Patrick
Cockburn:
Ready
to Strike
Cockburn/St.
Clair:
Things
Could Be Worse
Terry
Allen:
Early
Profit-taking and 9/11
September
29, 2001
Steve Perry:
The
Pentagon's Blueprint
Patrick
Cockburn:
When
Will the Missiles Fall?
September
28, 2001
Edward Said:
Backlash
and Backtrack
John Troyer:
When
Language Fails
Patrick
Cockburn:
In
Afghanistan, Waiting for the Real War to Start
Steve Breyman:
War,
Oil and Renewables
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October
3, 2001
"No
Palestinian Ever Called Me Nigger"
By Lorenzo Komboa Ervin
Curtis Gatewood is the outspoken leader of the
Durham, North Carolina branch of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He recently made "controversial",
though truthful and courageous remarks denouncing the United
States government for planning military retaliation for the Pentagon
and World Trade Center attacks, and the use of Black males as
cannon fodder and mercenaries in any front line attack.
At a September 15th monthly local NAACP
meeting, he said that African Americans should not have to fight
in any military action, and that a violent U.S. counterattack
would be wrong. "Black males can no longer be used as sacrificial
lambs at the time of war," he said in his three-page statement.
"Those black males who make it back
home alive from war are likely to come home and be discriminated
against by the [very] people whose businesses were headquartered
in the World Trade Center, racially abused/profiled by an American
police officer, killed on the streets in their crime-infested
neighborhoods, or harmed by Bush administration policies,"
he said.
He also said that the U.S. government
has oppressed Africans, Middle Easterners, and other people of
color worldwide. Because Bush was selected president by a "right-wing
Supreme Court", he said, the attacks were *not* "an
attack on freedom."
Media reports of the remarks sparked
threatening phone calls to the NAACP offices, according to an
NAACP officer, Anita Keith-Foust. It also caused NAACP national
President, Kweisi Mfume, to denounce the remarks and to apparently
silence him from making other such comments in the future, similar
to the fashion former Nation of Islam spokesperson Malcolm X
was silenced by NOI leader Elijah Muhammad in 1963, when he spoke
out about the assassination of President John Kennedy, calling
it a case of "...chickens coming home to roost..."
What should we make of all this? These
comments by Gatewood certainly echoed my own, and I am sure those
of many other Black people. We are supposed to, as Malcolm X
put it over 35 years ago, "...bark when the white man says
bark, and bite when the white man says bite!" He was referring
to our being used as troops all over the world. Now we are supposed
to fight and die for a racist corrupt government in yet another
imperialist war, when it is the USA which has clearly brought
on this attack. We are supposed to fight for a country where
we still have limited social, economic and political rights,
and where we are still subject to death by any racist cop or
citizen, where there is widespread poverty, mass imprisonment
of the youth, and massive unemployment concentrated in the Black
community. The obvious question is what the hell are we fighting
for? To avenge America? To mourn America? Why, we don't owe this
country anything, and what we do owe them, they don't want! They
have killed and enslaved generations of our people, down to the
present day. They have yet to pay reparations for those crimes
they have committed against our people; they refused to even
discuss the matter at the recent World Conference Against Racism
in Durban, South Africa.
Our fight is *in America* and *with America*
for full human rights and liberation, not in Kabul, Pakistan,
Khandahar, Islamabad, Algiers, or hundreds of places we know
nothing about and have no beef with their people. It is this
country which is *our* enemy, and which is depriving us of our
human rights. This hypocritical country, which is bleeding us
dry and subjecting us to continued oppression and servitude in
numerous forms. We ain't got this situation straight yet, and
now we are supposed to go galavanting across the globe to fight
for this white racist government. Colin Powell may be a dog for
Bush, but it don't mean the rest of us have to
be!
Curtis Gatewood just said something that
all of us should be saying. We need an *independent political
stance* away from military intervention, and to say *no you cannot
just use Black kids for the next Vietnam*. However, shamefully,
most of the Left, Liberal, and Black organizations (even so-called
"radical", or "nationalist" groups) did not
follow the lead of this courageous man, instead they mourned
with America.
Well, our time of mourning has to be
tempered with the cold understanding that we have to look out
for *our interests*, not the Pentagon's or Wall Street's. We
regret the thousands of deaths of people who died in the process
at the WTC, but we know it is Washington's fault this happened.
We also know that if this happened in the Middle East, carried
out by Israel or the US Army, hardly anybody in this country
would say anything.
Clearly this country is not the "peace-loving,
innocent country" that George W. Bush claims it is. This
is the biggest gun runner in the world, and the biggest instigator
of wars. This is a government of thieves and enslavers, and they
have dominated the peoples of color of the world with military
and economic force ever since its creation. We cannot jump like
dogs to defend these people.
It is not the people in the Middle East
or Africa who call us nigger, and keep us oppressed, it is the
white government in America. If anyone on the face of the earth
attacks the slavemaster's plantation, I ain't going to be standing
out front growling to stop them from setting his house on fire.
That's his problem, and you reap what you sow. The real terrorists
are in the Pentagon, the executive boardrooms on Wall Street,
and in the White House, where they have always been. Hell, the
United States secret intelligence services (CIA, military intelligence,
DEA and others) created the Taliban as a government and Osama
Bin Laden as a terrorist, if that is what he is. Do we now want
to die and kill others over this cynical reality? Don't be fooled
by right-wing patriotism, which is nothing but American fascism.
So we should support Curtis Gatewood,
hold him up as an outspoken hero. We need to ask why all of the
other Black and progressive organizations have not been as forceful
in their comments, and we need to ask why they are not building
an anti-war response to this military retaliation planned by
Bush.
We need to all start to speak the truth
to our people, and not curry favor for jobs or social approval.
We need to do things which are considered unpopular in a hysterical
climate, but have to be said and done nevertheless. George W.
Bush is not our friend, Colin Powell is not our brother. They
want to kill us off, either in war, in prison, or with a policeman's
gun. We face genocide from this government, always have. Now
we need to get organized to build a movement which can put forth
a progressive agenda on how to use military spending, so that
money they want to squander on war can be used for schools, hospitals,
and to rebuild the inner cities of this country which look like
bombed out cities already.
Whatever organization you belong to,
start to push them to come out against the war and to actively
campaign against war in the Middle East or anywhere else. We
have got to get our kids to say "Hell no, we won't go!"
and "No Viet Cong ever called me a Nigger!" just like
they did during the Vietnam war of the 1960s. CP
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