News and Notes

Recently I've run across some interesting articles regarding race in regards to Barack Obama's candidacy.

First a blog entry over at NPR's News and Notes discussing why Michelle Obama is fair game;
Why Michelle Obama is "Fair Game"

Here is the NY Times article on Mrs. Obama;
After Attacks, Michelle Obama Looks for a New Introduction

- Just an aside; I truthfully think that the opposition will be attacking Michelle for the reasons they can't attack Barack; namely she Black; I mean she is a full blooded Afro-American. While a highly accomplished and articulate woman she does not come at you in the "post-racial" way as her husband ;and her frankness is something the right can clearly go at.

The creator of the infamous Willie Horton ad, Floyd Brown, is ready to attack Sen. Obama. There's just one thing; he's broke again article NY Times;
Ready to Attack Obama, if Some Money Arrives

Here's an interesting take on the Rev. Wright situation in the NY Review of Books;
Obama & the Black Church

Finally two articles on Obama from the Times; one describing his effect om Blacks in France; the other on how his back story made him accessible to the voting public;

For Blacks in France, Obama’s Rise Is Reason to Rejoice, and to Hope

Where Whites Draw the Line

Cyd Charisse recently died; in her honor here she is dance with Fred Astaire

"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits. "

I come not to bury George Carlin because he's already dead

Sorry, for the bad joke but I think Carlin might chuckle or beat my ass. We mark the passing of comedian George Carlin who died this week at age 72. For many of us he was one of those dudes in the background; the one who made you inclined to laugh at the utterance of a four letter expletive. And while we might not have agreed with everything he thought white boy was funny.....


To take us out, his most famous piece The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television

Reunion

I hope you can see the picture,



This past weekend marked my Ten year High School Reunion, I'm now old enough to have a reunion

A REUNION!

I feel so old right now

I am now old enough to know some small child's momma or daddy. One of who's child reminds me of her at that age. I know have to halfway admit that I was winded taking stairs I use to take with little effort. I am now an adult (or more succinctly a future old ass man). I had been slightly apprehensive about going. In comparison to my life every little knucklehead I once spent a period of my life had changed. But the funny thing was when I walked up them steps and saw the first of the hundred or so that made it we slapped hands and hugged and fell back into familiar grooves with some differences. Some where married with kids some not. Many had enjoyed a few good meals. but they were the same the light in the eyes same personalites.

And we did what you do when old compatriots gather; we reminisced fell back into old patterns and went back if only for a while to a less complicated phase of our lives

And after three days, while happy to see them come I'm happy that's its over

I don't need nobody trying to age thru osmosis.

I AM NOT OLD!

Class of 1998 GO WARRIORS!!!

The Day After

Before I begin and this is in no ways disrespect

*&%$ Kansas, I mean it, $#@& them


Today is the day after the Final NCAA Men's Tournament. To say it has been a hell of a night would be an understatement. I do not know what to say or how to convey what I and possibly the millions of Tiger basketball fans are feeling. Not without using expletives. I am pissed and mad off my ass; I can't think on the subject for to long without violent fits or fists clenched at the heavens.

So bleep Kansas and Texas and Michigan and Mississippi State and most especially Tennessee.

Okay I also want to congratulate our University of Memphis Tigers for what was a great ass season 39 wins two losses. Beating the bleep out of UCLA taking this city on a wild ride and proudly repping this city. I want to shout out the reemergence of Tiger basketball and the sea of blue and gray that was seen this year. Thanks to CDR, Rose, Dorsey, and Allen for raising to the occasion. And to Coach Cal (I don't care if they think you slick you our slick). Thanks to Geof Caulkins for reminding us of Tiger's past.

Thanks for the ride March (and April) are a Brotherhood

want to say it has been a great experience for the school

Sorry but I don't have the Heart........

To Blog after the ?!@#$ over the weekend Memphis v. UT Knox we lost. How the could they you can loose to anyone and receive forgiveness but not if you loose to UT no; bull. So I've been in the position in the corner on media blackout. here is an article by the Memphis Commercial Appeals' movie critic John Beifuss (perhaps the only man in TN who didn't watch or care about the game)

Stuck Inside of Memphis With the Oscar Blues Again

Info Dump 1

This is the beginning of an info dump on a range of topics; I saw this on the NY Times site.

First will. i. am on this year's presidential campaign


http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=22579fdf5a2f5fc0c8fd1ab0562ad7cfc15da7ea



Second bloggingheadsheads.tv; scholars John McWhorter [Manhattan Institute]and Glenn Loury [Brown University] talk about Obama becoming Black; and McWhorter saying how Obama's speech pattern will appeal to the street; calling him [Obama] and Colin Powell "mutts"

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=780438158da4f132882263fca258a907357e7500


Finally, the article that may affect John McCain's chances of winning the Presidency;
For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk

Later

Observations from a Halfhearted Observer

I have been avoiding updating for awhile out of pure laziness; so sorry if you had to wait until now for something new.

With his recent successes Obama is posed to run away with this thing; which is probably pissing the hell out of Clinton. I can't blame; she has been planning this run since 99. She was the one who was the anointed one, she'd made the plans plotted the course, and now she is in second place. She should've seen it coming. All the negative karma that generated around the Clinton presidency got stored in her; Hillary was and is compared to every evil shrew of a wife found in history except Marie Antoinette. She has none of her husband's ability to convey empathy. She is more of a bureaucrat in regards to politics [someone who can create policy but not really sell it]. Secondly she doesn't have the new politician smell or back story that Barrack has. people know Hilary or at least the Hilary of the Lewinsky affair; some remember her on health care; and others about her years as a Senator voting for the Iraq resolution. She is not new nor is she magnetic in the way he is. The press likes him his entry and everything his image conveys makes him a topic for discussion even among those who don't like him. Clinton on the other hand is seen as a calculating and racist. A friend of mine remarked that Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" remark was racist; I remember hearing it and thought it not racist. So to close this ramble off a few facts about the race


Hillary Clinton has been on this course for more then ten years; do not expect her or her people to play nice or for her to take the VP position (and if she did it would be like JFK/LBJ ugly)

Whoever wins the nomination will have to face John McCain who is the most viable Republican candidate

Ralph Nader or Mike Bloomberg might get in

The same situation we are in now we will be in in 09

If Obama gets in making change happen might get in the way of governing [hope and change is good but not everybody has that on the agenda]

Lastly, here is an article by everybody's favorite race commentator Greg Kamiya on how he is saddened by Obama's choosing to be Black (I did not know it was a choice)

Biracial, but not like me

Something New

First off thanks to all of you that read this blog more are on the way promise; to be different while I'm making minor changes Lupe Fiasco ft. Nikki Jean. this is a good one

MLK 2008

Happy MLK Day,

Before I go further I want to mark the passing of David Ramsey who was choir director and minister of music at First Presbyterian Church. May he rest in peace.


On this day we are called to reflect on the words of Dr. Martin Luther King; on his works in the field of humanities and civil rights. In this period of time; when the first woman and Black person to seriously run for Presidential nomination; when talk of King's importance to the passing of Civil Rights legislation is raised; when we talk of how the Dream is finally given flesh; we should think about all those who were involved in the struggle. The history of Civil Rights in America did not begin with King or end with Him so on this day while you meditate on his life and words or spend your day in bed think about those who walked with him and those who came before. We should also think about those who also worked for equality in big and small ways; those sanitation workers, teachers, students, house workers, and others. Those who had much and little to gain. For those who prayed and acted. Remember on this day the ones whose names will never appear in the history books.

Three Days Later

I was planning to write this right after the Iowa primary but I didn't. Honestly, the words that I am about to type will probably piss off a number of people but since I post infrequently and I do not know how many people actually read it; I'm safe for now. Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus, lets repeat this

Barack Hussein Obama won the Iowa Democratic Caucus; he is the first Black person ever to this and it is an historical event which may lead to the first Black President in the History of America.

Pause and think about it
(Here the pundits, op-ed columnists, and others in the know inhale deep)

Now why am I not juping up and down like a madman, crying like there's no tomorrow?

This is a day many never would thought possible in their respective lifetimes

So why do I feel so cold?

Maybe I don't have the Audacity of Hope

Maybe I don't share the values of the BMC*

Maybe it hasn't sunk in

Maybe I don't think he's Black enough

Maybe I'm not Black enough

Maybe it was Oprah

Maybe it was too soon

Or maybe it's the negative implications or should I clarify the deification of Obama; on one hand it is a calculation on his part. He is hope and change. He is the break from the old order to a more pure democracy. The coming of New Jerusalem that shining city on the hill. But it is also the back-handed compliments by pundits like Bill Bennett; or the columns by M J Rosenberg for TPMCafe. They say he is an example for Black America in that he doesn't bring race into the equation (translated he is a palatable Black leader who doesn't bother us with racial problems like Jesse or Al; none of that nigger shit). for others he is the communion bread and wine to America's church. The instrument by which we as a nation can expunge our past (in a way that does not bring race into it). And maybe this is really a good thing. Race is outdated we're Americans. And he is perfect a man who is of biracial heritage born to a non-American Black; raised outside the main areas of contention; and never emersed into Black culture until adulthood. I'm trying really hard to not be a buzzkill, but I can't get behind him.

Now I ain't voting for Hilary, I liked Bill but she is not him. But I don't know or trust Barack that much. I believe that his run is being propelled by as much negative forces as positive ones. And I know this is rambling but I don't fully have thoughts on this together. i just don't know.

Respond back or not

Peace

Interesting Articles

I'm working on some more detailed entries so in their place I'm linking to some interesting articles I've seen.

First from the NewsHour website an article on African-American recruitment into the US Military;

	Iraq War Impacts Enrollment of Blacks in Military

Next LA Times columnist Steve Lopez talks about comparisons between the most recent California fires and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

Katrina comparisons are a different class of wrong

Two articles on the importance of being the Rev. Al Sharpton

first Ta-Nehisi Coates : The Irrelevant Rev Sharpton

secondly a response by Charlie King (a members of Sharpton's organization): If He's So Irrelevant, Why's He in The Post?


Additionally, belated RIP's for Robert Goullet and the photographer Ernest Withers. More updates soon.

The I'm late I know and I will do better Post

To the reader,

Sorry for the delay this blog will resume soon; Today is the anniversary of the Little Rock 9. Just a reminder that not too long ago None of us would be out here today if not for these and others take beat downs, hoses, and other stuff we cannot imagine so think about it.

Happy MLK Day

In honor of the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. and in light of the current events that are occuring in America and the world, I thought it would be fitting to post this speech by King in 1964 on the Vietnam War. This speech is long but it is important in that it illustrates one of the many issues Dr. King dealt with in addition to Civil rights. Additionally the subject of war and its meaning to America as a nation in a cnflicted time rings true today as it did then to hear him say it go here:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellowed [sic] Americans, *who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision.* There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath --
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954** [sic]; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence *in 1954* -- in 1945 *rather* -- after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China -- for whom the Vietnamese have no great love -- but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. *Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.

Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies.* What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call "VC" or "communists"? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.

Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than *eight hundred, or rather,* eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote).

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

*I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.

Five: *Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

Part of our ongoing...part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. Meanwhile... meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

*As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors.* These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

*This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations.* These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. *We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.*

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong

Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.

If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Today in Black America

Long time no see (well not see but any other choice comes of strange)

Here at the offices of the New Negro there has been many changes largely personal, partly being lazy assed about updating. So let me see if I can recap the biggest news o the last few months:

Barrack Obama is considering a run for the Presidency

A black man was shot and killed by the NYPD under curious circumstances

Michael Richards aka Kramer went bat shit crazy at a LA comedy, repeatedly saying Nigger a total of six times and even added an allusion to lynching

Paul Mooney has renounced the N-word

The Wire returned with a vengeance looking at the public school system and will soon make an appearance on BET.

Wesley Snipes stupid ass just got arraigned on tax charges

More later

The News of the World

Hear at the NNF we strive to always be topical and especially in this current enviroment (with marches, high crimes and the like) we've decided to let you read some of the news for yourself

Teacher bans laptops; Students take to the virtual seats
- This is a local story; University of Memphis law prof June Entman has banned the use of notebooks in her class begininng this month. Some students have begun to petition the rule but it appears to have the support of the law school's dean and doesn't infringe on ABA rules. The incident has brought up multiple questions especially about how technology affects classroom education. Here are the Links:

Slate (toward the bottom), "The Revolution Delayed"

The Commercial Appeal, "Laptop ban Revolt"

Concuring Opinions, "Should Proffesors ban Laptops in Class"

The Middle Eastern Conflict (Academic Edition)
- Recently to noted political science proffesors John Mearsheimer (Univ. of Chicago) and Stephen Walt (Harvard) recently made public a working paper on pro-Isreali interest groups. In the paper the proffesors suggested there is a loose confederation of interest groups, persons, and other organizations that have a great influence on American policy in regards to Isreal and the Middle East. Additonally, they argue this has negative conotations for our foreign policy. This is a controversial topic because it brings up issues of anti-semitism and the trick nature of the US/Isreali relationship. Also if someone like David Duke agrees with you, you're bound to catch fire. As with the above some articles for your parusal:

The Washington Post, "Of Isreal, Harvard, and David Duke"

The LA Times, "Who's Afraid of the Isreal Lobby?"

and the article itself, The Isreal Lobby


Two views on Black America: "Marriage is for White People" and "Plight Deepens for Black Men"
- From the NY Times and the Wash. Post respectively. The first article deals with the changing nature of marriage is seen from the perspective of Black women and men from the op-ed column. The second article describes how Black men continue to lag behind in the job market and some of it's causes.

Marriage is for White People-- Joy Jones

Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn-- Erik Eckholm

If I didn't get to any stories you wanted to get covered, STUFF IT! it's my blog get your own. I will try to update the edtiorials tommorow. As always check out my boy Marcus Seaberry's blog which you can find on the side , thank you for reading , feedback is always welcomed. Till later......

2006

I haven't been a good blogger....

Mind you the quality has been better than the quantity (even if grammaticaly incorrect). It has been a rough year for me as well as the billions of others on this strange blue orb. The events of the year 2005 are almost biblical in their symetry; war, pestilence, famine, and disease. Death seems to be flowing out of every crack and orifice. There was corruption and the taint of corruption in politics. Here in Memphis politicians danced the Tennessee Waltz and ended up in jail (of note State Sen. John Ford) our mayor went AWOL and showed back up with a baby in tow. In Washington, a man named Abrhamoff was investigated; Tom deLay was arraigned; and Bush is now considered a liar. We have seen new fads, technologies, and a war on christmas (and I apologize becuase I was really wanting to let loose with the Save Baby Jesus sticker).

Well lets see what else...
in '05 BBC brought back the Doctor (I was glad) My computer went bloop (I was sad) and My brother died (I was mad and sad) I got a job (which turned out to be temporary)

So what am I trying to say; I don't really know. I don't even know if I should write wishing good tidings for '06 (I'm too much a contrarian). So I wish you luck, I wish you peace(or good medication to simulate such), I wish you good humor, moments of clarity, light in dark moments, but above all a good new year and one good thought... till next time

How not to write a Blog

You know I applaud anyone who can successfully do a blog; the kind with the links on the side , good sytax and sentence structure, and timely (none of which this site is). I strive to publish a continuous blog but many things get in the way(life, BS, etc.). So the finished product is often a haphazard work of the type often associated with third graders. So if you don't want to be like me here are tips so that you too can be a big leaguer:

Have a good hook (You just don't realize how a good title can bring the readers)

Be Topical (and not just the traditional political topics but something really controversial such as Seaseme Street's secret advocation for the use of hallucinegenic drugs)

Have links (people just love links and will visit you often)

Use adult language (look at how popular it made Richard Pryor)

Get on TV (Talk about the the Bloggis revolution and the end of the mainstream media)

Use only Blogger.com ('Cause it's free)

Do these things and you'll be HUGE

For My Brother

It is funny how we answer complicated questions with simple answers; how we view things through a prism seeing how things were and how they are all in the same viewing. And that is how I view my brother. I tried doing this earlier but it wasn’t coming (people say I have a gift for words but they are all flat to me)’ but I keep writing hoping the right ones come. As it says in the byline this is for my brother, whom died Saturday of last week. What do you say about the one who was your kin; your weekend tormentor and sometimes fellow TV watcher? How do you describe the boy you had had to preempt to a dinner table and gave you uncalled kisses on the cheek while in a headlock? How do you encapsulate a life that you’ve seen from varying perspectives? I don’t know. I can describe the instances and events that happen between brothers, the obvious fights and jealousies that encapsulate any relationship bound by blood. The time he tried to buy my silence with pizza or the time he gave me chickenpox. When I was there at his funeral I realized there was a lot I didn’t know about him and a lot of things left unsaid. I can’t say I always liked him and he was not an angel; but he was my brother, my big brother. He was the one who gave me my nieces. He was the one who I set some of my standards by. If there is one regret it is that I didn’t talk to him more. In the past week I’ve heard from people who said what he thought of me but I rather heard from him. And who I didn’t tell I loved and respected him. In the end I don’t know, He was a man; a good man and one who tried to walk with god. This is for my brother, for Quinton Roy Fowler; whom I loved.

shoutouts

Found this in my draft box and thought this was about a good way to start as anywhere else. Without delay the second post of the new year; I liked to give a shout out to anyone who has read an entry and came back (even just to place an ad). Also this is for my fellow bloggers especially those who either have blogger's block or overflowed with too much information. To my boys Paul West, Angry Nick, and Marcus S. aka King Indie aka Anwar Sadat aka MSea.(check out his site which you can find a link on the side right to the right). Also I want to hollerout to those I know who I don't see but keep in my thoughts (sorry but I forgot y'alls names). Big ups to those who labor in the shadow and the light; those who clean up our messes, the media, the buracrcy, dissenters, and all those women in the world that have made me stutter. Keep hanging, keep strong, and keep loose.

GO SIT DOWN!!

(This is a contiuation of my previous rant)

There is a new a single making the rounds on the radio lately by Maceo and it really encapsulates what some of these politicians and pundits and just plain dumb mafrockers need to do when then don't have something intelligent, helpful, or gramaticaly correct to say: HOE SIT DOWN!

(insert said idiot) sit down, every time I come around
u hollering, screamin, jumpin up and down
Jump around me h_e, I'ma hit ya wit a bow
knock ya down, and don't give a f_k if u get up hoe

On another line of thought; there should be a law against a motherfrocker showing up on TV when something happens just to say they were there (and in turns meant they did something) or to congradulate people who ain't did nothing and only did so because they thought it would play well in their district *


in the previous entry I tried to tell you how the New Negro viewed the political sitch here are some articles by those who can but the words into complex sentences.

John Dickerson "Political Hurricane" slate.com

Howard Kurtz "Media Notes " washington.com

David Remick "Under Water" newyorker.com

For an alternate view (I know you're out their Mr. Conservative)

The Big O (Ophrah) is on the loose nytimes.com

Also to see reporters gone wild check out this salon.com

also peep out Kanye West's new album it's good.


* be forwarned, the nytimes site requires membership to view articles (it's free 99). salon requires you to watch an add for a day pass.



*This doesn't mean I don't advocate such in certain times; but one should neither be blatant with it or try to do it if they don't have the brains or emotional range for it.