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CounterPunch
October
28, 2002
Horowitz, Powell and Belafonte
by KURT NIMMO
David Horowitz,
I had a chuckle this evening reading
your tirade directed against Harry Belafonte. I find it absurd
you place so much emphasis on what Belafonte has to say. But
then, of course, you are in the business of pounding the bushes
in search of enemies of the state. I bet, if you asked Colin
Powell about your campaign to place a $58,000 ad in college newspapers
he would tell you, like the character in mafia films, to forget
about it. He has apparently already written the incident off,
why can't you? Oh, I think I know why -- because you need enemies
to hunt down, particularly African-American enemies.
As for Powell, if you ever get a chance
to speak with him personally, you may want to ask him why, as
a staff army major in Vietnam, he felt in necessary to suppress
the inquiry into the My Lai massacre, or why, as a military assistant
to Caspar Weinberger during the Reagan administration, he helped
to deceive Congress about the trading of weapons with Iran, the
illicit proceeds of which went to finance another illicit operation
in Nicaragua. Or what about the declassified documents implicating
Powell in the secret arming of Iraq in the years before the Gulf
War? Maybe you can include these things in your $58,000 ad. I'm
sure more than a few university students would be interested
in why our government sold chemical and biological weapons to
a dictator they now insist must be disarmed.
Some of us are old enough to remember
when you supported the Black Panthers, that is until they killed
your book-keeper Betty Van Tanner. Of course, that was a terrible
crime, the work of thugs, akin to what a paramilitary thug in
El Salvador might do to a "progressive" nun. More than
a few of us who know your history, even read your old magazine,
are sadden by the vehemence and viciousness you direct at progressives,
especially progressives of color. I can't speak for others, but
I never seriously considered Belafonte a progressive. You may
want to go back to bashing Noam Chomsky. At least he has some
substance you can dig your neo-con, former pinko incisors into.
He sincerely inspires you to pile up the rancorous adjectives.
I am increasingly startled and, alternately,
amused by your far right-wing "fatwas" against Hollywood
types (do you really take Barbara Streisand seriously or, for
that matter, Oliver Stone? -- you need to find enemies of more
substance) and, of course, the Stalinist fellow travelers you
imagine ensconced in universities. Mountains are rarely made
of mole hills, but never mind.
I work for a university in New Mexico.
No, I am not one of those Marxist professors you rant about.
I am professional staff, which is to say I build distance education
websites for K-12 children, teaching them math, history, and
geography. Last time I checked, we were not inserting Marxist
propaganda on those web pages; no hatred preached against whitey,
no multicultural propaganda, no excuses for al-Qaeda, not even
antiwar sentiment. Of course, thanks to your hero, our unelected
president, we may lose much of our funding. I guess spending
billions of dollars on the up-coming decimation of Iraq is more
important than literacy for impoverished children. I can't think
of anything more patriotic than making sure children receive
a decent education.
Please go ahead and publish your ad in
our campus newspaper. I'm sure they can fit it in there next
to the antiwar demonstration announcements which are, as of late,
plentiful. I also encourage you, Bill Bennett, and Daniel Pipes
to come down here and explain to the students why they should
support the bombing of innocent Iraqis. Or, for that matter,
locking up Americans sans due process because they may have searched
"dirty bomb" on the internet. I might even attend such
a meeting. Lately, there has been quite a bit of antiwar activism
on the campus here, as well as on others all across the country.
Did you happen to notice the 100,000+ people opposed to Bush's
impending war in Washington this past weekend? Dare I say you
have a lot of work cut out for you? More $58,000 ads will be
needed, and soon. You may want to explain to the young folks
here why people such as Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh,
Richard Perle, and you didn't bother to serve in the military.
Well, I know why you didn't, being a Marxist at the time, but
what about the others? College students tend to notice those
kinds of things, especially when their elders climb up on high
horses and preach about service and country.
Finally, in regard to the $58,000. Maybe
you could skip the vindicative campus ads taking Mr. Belafonte
to task for his remarks and donate the money to one of the schools
here. New Mexico is the poorest state in the union; there are
a lot of kids -- white, Hispanic, and Native American -- who
would sincerely appreciate a computer in the classroom or more
books in the library. But then, of course, that would not be
an ego boost for you, nor would it advance your agenda or make
you feel better about your "red diaper" past. It would
help out the kids, though.
Sincerely,
Kurt Nimmo
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
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