Showing posts with label Malcolm X. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Malcolm X. Show all posts
Monday, March 4, 2013
"The gun is the only thing that will free us..."
"The gun is the only thing that will free us — gain us our liberation.”
So said The Black Panthers, a group who had a more consistent and passionate defense of Second Amendment gun rights than the GOP or NRA ever have:
Inspired by the teachings of Malcolm X, Newton and Seale decided to fight back. Before he was assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X had preached against Martin Luther King Jr.’s brand of nonviolent resistance. Because the government was “either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property” of blacks, he said, they had to defend themselves “by whatever means necessary.” Malcolm X illustrated the idea for Ebony magazine by posing for photographs in suit and tie, peering out a window with an M-1 carbine semiautomatic in hand. Malcolm X and the Panthers described their right to use guns in self-defense in constitutional terms. “Article number two of the constitutional amendments,” Malcolm X argued, “provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun.”
Guns became central to the Panthers’ identity, as they taught their early recruits that “the gun is the only thing that will free us — gain us our liberation.” They bought some of their first guns with earnings from selling copies of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book to students at the University of California at Berkeley. In time, the Panther arsenal included machine guns; an assortment of rifles, handguns, explosives, and grenade launchers; and “boxes and boxes of ammunition,” recalled Elaine Brown, one of the party’s first female members, in her 1992 memoir. Some of this matériel came from the federal government: one member claimed he had connections at Camp Pendleton, in Southern California, who would sell the Panthers anything for the right price. One Panther bragged that, if they wanted, they could have bought an M48 tank and driven it right up the freeway.
Along with providing classes on black nationalism and socialism, Newton made sure recruits learned how to clean, handle, and shoot guns. Their instructors were sympathetic black veterans, recently home from Vietnam. For their “righteous revolutionary struggle,” the Panthers were trained, as well as armed, however indirectly, by the U.S. government.
Civil-rights activists, even those committed to nonviolent resistance, had long appreciated the value of guns for self-protection. Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in 1956, after his house was bombed. His application was denied, but from then on, armed supporters guarded his home. One adviser, Glenn Smiley, described the King home as “an arsenal.” William Worthy, a black reporter who covered the civil-rights movement, almost sat on a loaded gun in a living-room armchair during a visit to King’s parsonage.
The Panthers, however, took it to an extreme, carrying their guns in public, displaying them for everyone—especially the police—to see. Newton had discovered, during classes at San Francisco Law School, that California law allowed people to carry guns in public so long as they were visible, and not pointed at anyone in a threatening way.
In February of 1967, Oakland police officers stopped a car carrying Newton, Seale, and several other Panthers with rifles and handguns. When one officer asked to see one of the guns, Newton refused. “I don’t have to give you anything but my identification, name, and address,” he insisted. This, too, he had learned in law school.
“Who in the hell do you think you are?” an officer responded.
“Who in the hell do you think you are?,” Newton replied indignantly. He told the officer that he and his friends had a legal right to have their firearms.
Newton got out of the car, still holding his rifle.
“What are you going to do with that gun?” asked one of the stunned policemen.
“What are you going to do with your gun?,” Newton replied.
By this time, the scene had drawn a crowd of onlookers. An officer told the bystanders to move on, but Newton shouted at them to stay. California law, he yelled, gave civilians a right to observe a police officer making an arrest, so long as they didn’t interfere. Newton played it up for the crowd. In a loud voice, he told the police officers, “If you try to shoot at me or if you try to take this gun, I’m going to shoot back at you, swine.” Although normally a black man with Newton’s attitude would quickly find himself handcuffed in the back of a police car, enough people had gathered on the street to discourage the officers from doing anything rash. Because they hadn’t committed any crime, the Panthers were allowed to go on their way.
The people who’d witnessed the scene were dumbstruck. Not even Bobby Seale could believe it. Right then, he said, he knew that Newton was the “baddest motherfucker in the world.” Newton’s message was clear: “The gun is where it’s at and about and in.” After the February incident, the Panthers began a regular practice of policing the police. Thanks to an army of new recruits inspired to join up when they heard about Newton’s bravado, groups of armed Panthers would drive around following police cars. When the police stopped a black person, the Panthers would stand off to the side and shout out legal advice.
To read the full article:
The Secret History of Guns
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Dragging Malcolm X to Obamaland
Manning Marable’s rendition of Malcolm X’s life should be read very carefully, so as not to confuse Malcolm’s evolving worldview with the late Columbia University professor’s left-reformist politics. “Marable tries to convince us that Malcolm must have contemplated a reformist political path in his mind, if not in practice.” The author’s mission is to discredit revolutionary Black nationalism as outdated and primitive. Black Democratic Party activism and support for President Obama are hyped as the new Black Power.
Wed, 04/27/2011
BAR executive editor Glen Ford
http://blackagendareport.com/content/dragging-malcolm-x-obamaland
“Marable grows so bold in pushing his back-to-the-future reformist fantasies, by page 333 he describes a Malcolm X who has become ‘race-neutral.’”
In packaging the life of Malcolm X for a wide audience, the late Dr. Manning Marable has presented us with an opportunity to reignite the debate over the meaning of Black self-determination, a discussion-through-struggle that effectively ended when the Black Freedom Movement became no longer worthy of the name. Unfortunately, it appears this was not Dr. Marable’s intention, since Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention is largely an attempt to render useless the vocabulary of Black struggle. Essential terms such as “self-determination,” “Black nationalism,” “revolutionary” and “empowerment” lose their meaning, abused and misused in order to portray the great Black nationalist leader as inexorably evolving into a “race-neutral” reformer on the road to Obamaland.
This article does not address the complaints of those angered by Marable’s insistence that Malcolm X had a youthful homosexual relationship with an affluent white man, although it is shocking that Marable would throw this in the mix based on wholly inferential evidence and the author’s own psychological speculations. Our overarching concern is that Malcolm’s politics have been distorted by often clumsy, sometimes clever manipulation of the language of struggle, so that the politics of today’s left-reformers and Obama supporters, like Marable, appear vindicated.
Marable’s interventions in Malcolm’s mental processes begin in earnest on page 285, in the “Chickens Coming Home to Roost” chapter. It is early 1964, and Malcolm is contemplating a final break with the Nation of Islam. Marable takes over as the Black icon’s muse, deconstructing Black Muslim theological doctrine, as he speculates Malcolm must have struggled to do, and concluding that “a new religious remapping of the world based on orthodox Islam would not necessarily stigmatize or isolate the United States because of its history of slavery and racial discrimination. Instead of a bloody jihad, a holy Armageddon, perhaps America could experience a nonviolent, bloodless revolution.”
“Malcolm derided those who conceived of revolution as anything other than bloody.”
While Malcolm was certainly questioning the catechism of inevitable, white man-scorching, Allah-directed Armageddon, it is another thing entirely to have Malcolm pondering a “bloodless revolution” in America. Malcolm derided those who conceived of revolution as anything other than bloody, and he was speaking in secular, not religious, terms. His best-known speech on the subject is “Message to the Grassroots,” October 10, 1963.
“There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. [The] only kind of revolution that’s nonviolent is the Negro revolution. The only revolution based on loving your enemy is the Negro revolution. The only revolution in which the goal is a desegregated lunch counter, a desegregated theater, a desegregated park, and a desegregated public toilet; you can sit down next to white folks on the toilet. That’s no revolution. Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.”
Malcolm never did accept the notion of revolution as bloodless, nor did he recognize the fight against segregated public accommodations as revolutionary. But Marable tries to convince us that Malcolm must have contemplated a reformist political path in his mind, if not in practice. This is William Styron-style biography, as Morgan State University’s Dr. Jared Ball has suggested, with Malcolm forced to play Styron’s Nat Turner.
By 1964 Malcolm had made a strategic decision to support Black integrationist efforts, at least rhetorically, but there is nothing that leads us to think that integration had become his end-goal, or that he believed integration was revolutionary. He had decided to become part of the broad “movement,” in order to both influence and benefit from it. Marable would have us believe (page 298) that Malcolm’s public endorsement of desegregation and voter drives signified that he had scaled down his liberationist aspirations, or that he thought voting equals or leads to African American self-determination –some very faulty logic. Revolutionary Marxists have also seen the value in electoral politics at certain junctures, but that didn’t mean they stopped preparing for the forceful overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, Marable tells us that Malcolm’s movement activities “marked an early, tentative concession to the idea that perhaps blacks could someday become empowered within the existing system.”
“Marable would have us believe that Malcolm’s public endorsement of desegregation and voter drives signified that he had scaled down his liberationist aspirations.”
The clear inference is that Malcolm was wilting in his desire to wipe “the existing system” off the map. What existing system does Marable refer to, precisely? White supremacy? Capitalism? Bourgeois electoral pay-for-play democracy? Marable keeps Malcolm’s mind vague and cloudy, although in his actual historical voice the “evolving” Malcolm hates capitalism and U.S. imperialism more intensely than did the “old,” Nation Of Islam Malcolm. Marable also introduces his trick word “empowered,” which he will use repeatedly in the book to confuse, rather than clarify. Blacks “could someday become empowered within the existing system” – to do what? To determine their collective destinies? To defy white majorities? To push aside the rule of capital? Marable tries to cage Malcolm, while assuring us that the revolutionary Black nationalist was “tentatively” becoming a liberal reformer.
Gratuitous, non-defensive violence, in Malcolm’s NOI talks, always came from the hand of Allah. Malcolm never rejected the right of self-defense; otherwise, he would not have become Malcolm the icon. Marable knew this, so he again invades Malcolm’s mind (page 302). “By embracing the ballot, he was implicitly rejecting violence, even if this was at times difficult to discern in the heat of his rhetoric.”
What kind of violence was Malcolm rejecting? Certainly, not defensive violence. And Malcolm had never publicly urged Blacks to commit unprovoked aggressions against whites. The purpose of Marable’s sentence can only be to show alleged movement by Malcolm toward some state of non-volatility, which we are expected to associate with political moderation: reform.
Marable grows so bold in pushing his back-to-the-future reformist fantasies, by page 333 he describes a Malcolm X who has become “race-neutral.” On May 21, 1964, Malcolm spoke at Chicago’s Civic Opera House, telling a crowd of 1,500 people, “Separation is not the goal of the Afro-America, nor is integration his goal. They are merely methods toward his real end – respect as a human being.” Malcolm went on the say: “Unless the race issue is quickly settled, the 22 million American Negroes could easily adopt the guerilla tactics of other deprived revolutionaries.” Not that he necessarily advocated that. (wink)
“Obamites cannot imagine that others are not as enamored of Power as they are.”
Three days before he was assassinated, Malcolm said, “I’m man enough to tell you that I can’t put my finger on exactly what my philosophy is now.” But, not to worry, Dr. Marable has the vision and the answer. He concluded that Malcolm had “made his race-neutral views clear in Chicago….” There is no rational basis for Marable’s amazing interpretation, other than he thought it moved his political story line on Malcolm’s evolution (or race-neutralization) forward.
The opposite of race-neutral, Malcolm lived and died a Race-Man, meaning simply that he put the Race first. As he wrote to an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood luminary who was disappointed that Malcolm was so decidedly non-race-neutral, “As a black American, I do feel that my first responsibility is to my twenty-two million fellow black Americans.” (page 368)
In the final “Reflections on a Revolutionary Vision” chapter, Marable speaks for himself – in the process confirming that he has been sneaking his own words, thoughts and politics into Malcolm’s head for four hundred pages. The Columbia University professor of African American Studies claims to know what Malcolm really, really wanted: “What Malcolm sought was a fundamental restructuring of wealth and power in the United States – not a violent social revolution, but radical and meaningful change nevertheless.”
Although the description is so vague, wishy-washy and – damnit!! – so soft and noncommittal as to bear no resemblance to any incarnation or developmental stage of Malcolm X, it fits the self-image of Manning Marable and his circle perfectly. They are the left Black Obamites, purported radicals who have a perpetual love affair with Power. Such people cannot imagine that others are not as enamored of Power as they are, and are eager to graft their own vacillations and corruptions onto others, by rhetorical hook or literary crook.
If this assessment seems harsh, it is certainly not as outrageous as Marable’s gall in superimposing his politics on Malcolm X. Even when Marable speaks in his own voice, he manages to intimate that Malcolm would agree with him. “If legal racial segregation was permanently in America’s past,” wrote Marable on page 486, “Malcolm’s vision today would have to radically redefine self-determination and the meaning of black power in a political environment that appeared to many to be ‘post-racial.’”
“Marable insists that Malcolm would be forced to redefine self-determination and its sibling, Black Power.”
Marable appears to think these are heavy questions, but they’re actually products of an unfocused, but deeply biased, mind. First of all, legal segregation was defeated before Malcolm’s death, and no sane person at the time thought it would be brought back. Malcolm had time to find out what life was like for Black southerners without state-sanctioned Jim Crow. Marable’s question is badly put. If he means, What would Malcolm think about today’s levels of segregation, then the answer would be that the northern cities would remain very familiar to him in their racial composition, and are in fact blacker than in Malcolm’s day – which might tend to indicate to Malcolm that self-determination was an even more critical concern.
Still, Marable insists that Malcolm would be forced to redefine self-determination and its sibling, Black Power. But self-determination, as a foundational principle of relations among peoples, requires no redefinition. Marable understands it as “the right of oppressed nations or minorities to decide for themselves their own political futures,” and he agrees that Malcolm “never abandoned” the “ideal.” Why then, would Malcolm in 2011 have to “redefine” self-determination and the “meaning of black power?” Because the political environment “appeared to many to be post-racial?” Who is it that thinks the environment appears post-racial? If Marable is speaking of white people, or any non-African American people, their opinions cannot be cause for “redefinition” of another people’s right. If he meant that Black people in the mass believe we live in a post-racial nation, he was a damn fool. But even if such Black folks existed, that would not require a redefinition of self-determination. African Americans would simply “determine” that they love post-racialism and want to do nothing to change it, as is their self-determinationist right.
Marable risks making himself look stupid simply to make the intended point that Malcolm and his Black Nationalism and self-determination talk are passé and should be dismissed except as historical artifacts. For Marable and his Black left Obamites, Malcolm’s only other use is to somehow authenticate today’s reformers – and even President Obama! – as heirs to yesterday’s revolutionary Black nationalists. This is the purpose put to Malcolm by Peniel Joseph, the Tufts University professor of history and author of Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama, which attempts to draw a straight-line historical connection between Malcolm X and the corporate politician in the White House.
“For Marable and his Black left Obamites, Malcolm’s only other use is to somehow authenticate today’s reformers – and even President Obama! – as heirs to yesterday’s revolutionary Black nationalists.”
Manning Marable was up to the same trick. “Given the election of Barack Obama,” Marable writes on page 486, “it now raises the question of whether blacks have a separate political destiny from their white fellow citizens.” He does not explain why Black destinies have changed just because a Black Democrat who raised more corporate money than the Republican won a presidential election. How did that electoral fact entwine Black/white destinies in ways that did not previously exist? How were the Black masses empowered by Obama’s victory, and if they were somehow empowered, why would that draw them closer to whites?
It would have been better for Marable to have left out his last chapter of Reflections – it reflected badly on his powers of reasoning.
Finally, Marable attempts to create artificial space between Malcolm X and his direct political progeny, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. On page 403 he wrote:
“Had Malcolm continued to mainstream his views, it is unclear how he would have negotiated relations a few years later with the Black Panthers, a group born of much of the intellectual framework Malcolm had assembled in the early to mid-1960s.”
It is nearly impossible to conceive of a Black Panther Party had there not been a Malcolm X. Marable insults a generation of Blacks that came into political consciousness in the Sixties – a cohort to which he chronologically belonged. He substitutes his imagined, inferred, reinterpreted Malcolm for the man whose words and bearing called forth and virtually sculpted the youthful Party that debuted in the year following his death. Marable projects Malcolm as if he would be a stranger to the Panthers, with whom he would have to “negotiate,” when Malcolm’s life tells us it is far more likely that the emergence of a militant revolutionary nationalist youth movement that spoke his language – because they learned it largely from him – would compel Malcolm to take the struggle to an even “higher level.”
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
Wed, 04/27/2011
BAR executive editor Glen Ford
http://blackagendareport.com/content/dragging-malcolm-x-obamaland
“Marable grows so bold in pushing his back-to-the-future reformist fantasies, by page 333 he describes a Malcolm X who has become ‘race-neutral.’”
In packaging the life of Malcolm X for a wide audience, the late Dr. Manning Marable has presented us with an opportunity to reignite the debate over the meaning of Black self-determination, a discussion-through-struggle that effectively ended when the Black Freedom Movement became no longer worthy of the name. Unfortunately, it appears this was not Dr. Marable’s intention, since Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention is largely an attempt to render useless the vocabulary of Black struggle. Essential terms such as “self-determination,” “Black nationalism,” “revolutionary” and “empowerment” lose their meaning, abused and misused in order to portray the great Black nationalist leader as inexorably evolving into a “race-neutral” reformer on the road to Obamaland.
This article does not address the complaints of those angered by Marable’s insistence that Malcolm X had a youthful homosexual relationship with an affluent white man, although it is shocking that Marable would throw this in the mix based on wholly inferential evidence and the author’s own psychological speculations. Our overarching concern is that Malcolm’s politics have been distorted by often clumsy, sometimes clever manipulation of the language of struggle, so that the politics of today’s left-reformers and Obama supporters, like Marable, appear vindicated.
Marable’s interventions in Malcolm’s mental processes begin in earnest on page 285, in the “Chickens Coming Home to Roost” chapter. It is early 1964, and Malcolm is contemplating a final break with the Nation of Islam. Marable takes over as the Black icon’s muse, deconstructing Black Muslim theological doctrine, as he speculates Malcolm must have struggled to do, and concluding that “a new religious remapping of the world based on orthodox Islam would not necessarily stigmatize or isolate the United States because of its history of slavery and racial discrimination. Instead of a bloody jihad, a holy Armageddon, perhaps America could experience a nonviolent, bloodless revolution.”
“Malcolm derided those who conceived of revolution as anything other than bloody.”
While Malcolm was certainly questioning the catechism of inevitable, white man-scorching, Allah-directed Armageddon, it is another thing entirely to have Malcolm pondering a “bloodless revolution” in America. Malcolm derided those who conceived of revolution as anything other than bloody, and he was speaking in secular, not religious, terms. His best-known speech on the subject is “Message to the Grassroots,” October 10, 1963.
“There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. [The] only kind of revolution that’s nonviolent is the Negro revolution. The only revolution based on loving your enemy is the Negro revolution. The only revolution in which the goal is a desegregated lunch counter, a desegregated theater, a desegregated park, and a desegregated public toilet; you can sit down next to white folks on the toilet. That’s no revolution. Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.”
Malcolm never did accept the notion of revolution as bloodless, nor did he recognize the fight against segregated public accommodations as revolutionary. But Marable tries to convince us that Malcolm must have contemplated a reformist political path in his mind, if not in practice. This is William Styron-style biography, as Morgan State University’s Dr. Jared Ball has suggested, with Malcolm forced to play Styron’s Nat Turner.
By 1964 Malcolm had made a strategic decision to support Black integrationist efforts, at least rhetorically, but there is nothing that leads us to think that integration had become his end-goal, or that he believed integration was revolutionary. He had decided to become part of the broad “movement,” in order to both influence and benefit from it. Marable would have us believe (page 298) that Malcolm’s public endorsement of desegregation and voter drives signified that he had scaled down his liberationist aspirations, or that he thought voting equals or leads to African American self-determination –some very faulty logic. Revolutionary Marxists have also seen the value in electoral politics at certain junctures, but that didn’t mean they stopped preparing for the forceful overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, Marable tells us that Malcolm’s movement activities “marked an early, tentative concession to the idea that perhaps blacks could someday become empowered within the existing system.”
“Marable would have us believe that Malcolm’s public endorsement of desegregation and voter drives signified that he had scaled down his liberationist aspirations.”
The clear inference is that Malcolm was wilting in his desire to wipe “the existing system” off the map. What existing system does Marable refer to, precisely? White supremacy? Capitalism? Bourgeois electoral pay-for-play democracy? Marable keeps Malcolm’s mind vague and cloudy, although in his actual historical voice the “evolving” Malcolm hates capitalism and U.S. imperialism more intensely than did the “old,” Nation Of Islam Malcolm. Marable also introduces his trick word “empowered,” which he will use repeatedly in the book to confuse, rather than clarify. Blacks “could someday become empowered within the existing system” – to do what? To determine their collective destinies? To defy white majorities? To push aside the rule of capital? Marable tries to cage Malcolm, while assuring us that the revolutionary Black nationalist was “tentatively” becoming a liberal reformer.
Gratuitous, non-defensive violence, in Malcolm’s NOI talks, always came from the hand of Allah. Malcolm never rejected the right of self-defense; otherwise, he would not have become Malcolm the icon. Marable knew this, so he again invades Malcolm’s mind (page 302). “By embracing the ballot, he was implicitly rejecting violence, even if this was at times difficult to discern in the heat of his rhetoric.”
What kind of violence was Malcolm rejecting? Certainly, not defensive violence. And Malcolm had never publicly urged Blacks to commit unprovoked aggressions against whites. The purpose of Marable’s sentence can only be to show alleged movement by Malcolm toward some state of non-volatility, which we are expected to associate with political moderation: reform.
Marable grows so bold in pushing his back-to-the-future reformist fantasies, by page 333 he describes a Malcolm X who has become “race-neutral.” On May 21, 1964, Malcolm spoke at Chicago’s Civic Opera House, telling a crowd of 1,500 people, “Separation is not the goal of the Afro-America, nor is integration his goal. They are merely methods toward his real end – respect as a human being.” Malcolm went on the say: “Unless the race issue is quickly settled, the 22 million American Negroes could easily adopt the guerilla tactics of other deprived revolutionaries.” Not that he necessarily advocated that. (wink)
“Obamites cannot imagine that others are not as enamored of Power as they are.”
Three days before he was assassinated, Malcolm said, “I’m man enough to tell you that I can’t put my finger on exactly what my philosophy is now.” But, not to worry, Dr. Marable has the vision and the answer. He concluded that Malcolm had “made his race-neutral views clear in Chicago….” There is no rational basis for Marable’s amazing interpretation, other than he thought it moved his political story line on Malcolm’s evolution (or race-neutralization) forward.
The opposite of race-neutral, Malcolm lived and died a Race-Man, meaning simply that he put the Race first. As he wrote to an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood luminary who was disappointed that Malcolm was so decidedly non-race-neutral, “As a black American, I do feel that my first responsibility is to my twenty-two million fellow black Americans.” (page 368)
In the final “Reflections on a Revolutionary Vision” chapter, Marable speaks for himself – in the process confirming that he has been sneaking his own words, thoughts and politics into Malcolm’s head for four hundred pages. The Columbia University professor of African American Studies claims to know what Malcolm really, really wanted: “What Malcolm sought was a fundamental restructuring of wealth and power in the United States – not a violent social revolution, but radical and meaningful change nevertheless.”
Although the description is so vague, wishy-washy and – damnit!! – so soft and noncommittal as to bear no resemblance to any incarnation or developmental stage of Malcolm X, it fits the self-image of Manning Marable and his circle perfectly. They are the left Black Obamites, purported radicals who have a perpetual love affair with Power. Such people cannot imagine that others are not as enamored of Power as they are, and are eager to graft their own vacillations and corruptions onto others, by rhetorical hook or literary crook.
If this assessment seems harsh, it is certainly not as outrageous as Marable’s gall in superimposing his politics on Malcolm X. Even when Marable speaks in his own voice, he manages to intimate that Malcolm would agree with him. “If legal racial segregation was permanently in America’s past,” wrote Marable on page 486, “Malcolm’s vision today would have to radically redefine self-determination and the meaning of black power in a political environment that appeared to many to be ‘post-racial.’”
“Marable insists that Malcolm would be forced to redefine self-determination and its sibling, Black Power.”
Marable appears to think these are heavy questions, but they’re actually products of an unfocused, but deeply biased, mind. First of all, legal segregation was defeated before Malcolm’s death, and no sane person at the time thought it would be brought back. Malcolm had time to find out what life was like for Black southerners without state-sanctioned Jim Crow. Marable’s question is badly put. If he means, What would Malcolm think about today’s levels of segregation, then the answer would be that the northern cities would remain very familiar to him in their racial composition, and are in fact blacker than in Malcolm’s day – which might tend to indicate to Malcolm that self-determination was an even more critical concern.
Still, Marable insists that Malcolm would be forced to redefine self-determination and its sibling, Black Power. But self-determination, as a foundational principle of relations among peoples, requires no redefinition. Marable understands it as “the right of oppressed nations or minorities to decide for themselves their own political futures,” and he agrees that Malcolm “never abandoned” the “ideal.” Why then, would Malcolm in 2011 have to “redefine” self-determination and the “meaning of black power?” Because the political environment “appeared to many to be post-racial?” Who is it that thinks the environment appears post-racial? If Marable is speaking of white people, or any non-African American people, their opinions cannot be cause for “redefinition” of another people’s right. If he meant that Black people in the mass believe we live in a post-racial nation, he was a damn fool. But even if such Black folks existed, that would not require a redefinition of self-determination. African Americans would simply “determine” that they love post-racialism and want to do nothing to change it, as is their self-determinationist right.
Marable risks making himself look stupid simply to make the intended point that Malcolm and his Black Nationalism and self-determination talk are passé and should be dismissed except as historical artifacts. For Marable and his Black left Obamites, Malcolm’s only other use is to somehow authenticate today’s reformers – and even President Obama! – as heirs to yesterday’s revolutionary Black nationalists. This is the purpose put to Malcolm by Peniel Joseph, the Tufts University professor of history and author of Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama, which attempts to draw a straight-line historical connection between Malcolm X and the corporate politician in the White House.
“For Marable and his Black left Obamites, Malcolm’s only other use is to somehow authenticate today’s reformers – and even President Obama! – as heirs to yesterday’s revolutionary Black nationalists.”
Manning Marable was up to the same trick. “Given the election of Barack Obama,” Marable writes on page 486, “it now raises the question of whether blacks have a separate political destiny from their white fellow citizens.” He does not explain why Black destinies have changed just because a Black Democrat who raised more corporate money than the Republican won a presidential election. How did that electoral fact entwine Black/white destinies in ways that did not previously exist? How were the Black masses empowered by Obama’s victory, and if they were somehow empowered, why would that draw them closer to whites?
It would have been better for Marable to have left out his last chapter of Reflections – it reflected badly on his powers of reasoning.
Finally, Marable attempts to create artificial space between Malcolm X and his direct political progeny, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. On page 403 he wrote:
“Had Malcolm continued to mainstream his views, it is unclear how he would have negotiated relations a few years later with the Black Panthers, a group born of much of the intellectual framework Malcolm had assembled in the early to mid-1960s.”
It is nearly impossible to conceive of a Black Panther Party had there not been a Malcolm X. Marable insults a generation of Blacks that came into political consciousness in the Sixties – a cohort to which he chronologically belonged. He substitutes his imagined, inferred, reinterpreted Malcolm for the man whose words and bearing called forth and virtually sculpted the youthful Party that debuted in the year following his death. Marable projects Malcolm as if he would be a stranger to the Panthers, with whom he would have to “negotiate,” when Malcolm’s life tells us it is far more likely that the emergence of a militant revolutionary nationalist youth movement that spoke his language – because they learned it largely from him – would compel Malcolm to take the struggle to an even “higher level.”
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Mothership Connection
http://amirfatir.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/Mothership.htm
Underlying all spiritual movements is an esoteric system of thought that's often obscured by the movement's own public rhetoric.
Few movements have been less understood than the Lost-Found Nation of Islam established by W. Fard Muhammad July 4, 1930 in Detroit, Michigan.
Most people are familiar with the Nation because of charismatic members like Malcolm X, boxer Muhammad Ali, singer Joe Text and Minister Louis Farrakhan.
Some of the Nation's doctrines have shocked and horrified the general public while fascinating those who are sympathetic to its goals.
All of the Nation's teachings are actually symbols and myths that serve as codes for deep, universal truths.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad inherited the leadership from Master Fard Muhammad who was, himself, believed to have succeeded Noble Drew Ali.
All of these men held Masonic titles, i.e., noble, honorable and master. As masons, they'd taken vows of secrecy and could not reveal the deeper wisdom to the uninitiated.
So they spoke in codes.
So deep and multilayered were those codes that few, to this day, have a notion of what they were really teaching.
"I am the Supreme Ruler of the Universe"
When Elijah Muhammad met Master Fard, he asked, "Who are you?"
Master Fard replied, "I am the Supreme Ruler of the Universe."
The spiritual masters often say things like that, things that blow our minds. Such masters are not lying. We simply don't understand what they mean.
Jesus made a similar statement: "Be of good cheer for I have overcome the world."
The "universe" that W. Fard Muhammad ruled is represented by his astrological influences. In 86% of us, the signs and planets rule us. But the 5% who reach mastery rule, by consciousness and will, their astrological configurations.
Each of us, consciously or not, constantly creates the universe in which we live. A master, however, controls what she or he creates by controlling the input into the subconscious generator. Please see Seth Speaks for a complete discussion of how every person creates and co-creates the universe.
Every person can become "the supreme ruler of the universe" by developing their spiritual abilities as did Jesus and Master Fard Muhammad (and many others).
Before UFOlogy became popular, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that a large spaceship had been built "to destroy the white man's world." He called this spaceship "the Mother Plane." He also referred to it as "the Mother of Planes." The various parts of the ship were build in factories across the world, but the workers had no idea of what they were actually building. It was eventually assembled in Japan in 1929.
Often, when Mr. Muhammad was dropping a part of the secret wisdom, he'd let out a little chuckle before finishing a sentence.
The Mother plane, he taught, was one-half mile by one-half mile in size. It stayed primarily in outer space but entered the Earth's atmosphere every six months "to take on air."
The purpose of this Mother Plane was to "destroy the white man's world."
In Nation of Islam esoteric symbolism, white, black, red and yellow "people" were symbols of states of mind. Very few people in the Nation, however, knew that most of the doctrine was given metaphorically and symbolically. The rank-and -file membership considers the teachings to be "actual facts."
We will return to the "white" man a bit further.
The Mothership was piloted by "Black men 4 1/2 feet tall." (I don't know where the women were during those extended orbits.)
There were 1500 "baby planes" on the Mothership, each plane possessing three bombs.
Those bombs had drills on their tips and, when deployed, would drill a mile deep beneath the surface and, upon explosion, force up a mountain a mile high.
The Messenger taught that such bombs were used to separate the Moon from the Earth 66 trillion years ago.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that Ezekiel's vision of wheels was a vision of the Mothership.
The 4500 bombs would all strike land. None, Mr. Muhammad taught, would fall into water.
America was the first nation the Mothership would attack. Before striking and releasing its bombs, it would drop leaflets printed in English and Arabic warning of the coming destruction.
Some unspecified time later it would emit a high-pitched, piercing sound to warn that the attack is imminent. At that point, it was too late. The destruction would commence.
When I first learned of these things I wondered what the purpose of the warnings were and why, in America, would Arabic leaflets be dropped. Few Americans read Arabic.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad once gave a strong clue that the Mothership material was symbolic. He wrote that Master Fard Muhammad told him that the ship flew 40 miles above the Earth's atmosphere but that he thought that the 40 miles was a sign of his own 40 year mission.
Upon reading that, I wondered: "If the 40 miles high is a sign, how much more of this teaching is also symbolic?"
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that there were two safe places to which people could repair to survive the destruction brought on by the Mothership.
After the bombing, America would burn for 310 years and require 690 years to cool off. After the destruction, a "new world" would be born and "a new God" would bring in "a new Islam" and "a new Quran."
Mother of Planes
In speaking of the "Mother of Planes," Mr. Muhammad provided a clue that he was really speaking of planes of consciousness, not physical spacecrafts.
In Qaballah wisdom the planes of consciousness were named Assiah, Yetzirah, Briyah and Atziluth. Assiah incorporated the physical plane and the lower part of the astral plane. The mentality focused upon that plane was called "the Asiatic Black man."
The astral plane is the "mother of planes" because the astral plane becomes impregnated by all the consciousness seeds and eventually "gives birth" to a physical event or object. In addition, spiritual development has to commence from the level of the astral or mother plane.
The astral plane was identified with the Virgin Isis, the Virgin Mary and other "mother goddesses."
It is the consciousness plane that includes alpha states, trance states, dreaming states, daydreaming states, and emotionally charged states.
The Mother Plane, then, represents the trance state of consciousness. By cultivating such altered states, all the peoples in the world participated in producing elements of the universal spiritual wisdom.
No single nation developed all the wisdom-elements alone. Each cultivated a part of the universal truth. So The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that parts of the Mothership were build in factories all around the world.
Some people mastered the use of herbs and plants, others mastered use of sounds and chants, others mastered astrology, martial arts, hatha yoga, tantra, use of gems and stones, energy manipulation, pranayama, spiritual dancing etc. But when they are all assembled and used in their appropriate place, then we have a "vehicle" that can take us to "the new world."
Japan is symbolic of joppa, a yogic meditation technique which involves chanting a work of power (mantra) repeatedly until a trance state is attained.
Assembling the Mothership in Japan represents the use of joppa to unity all the various spiritual techniques.
The year 1929 symbolizes 19 forces and 29 Arabic letters and lunar days.
Upon it are 19. And we have made none but angels to be friends of the fire.
-Quran 74:30-31
There are 19 energy points on the Microcosmic Orbit which accord with the 12 zodiacal signs and seven "personal planets."
There are 29 Quranic surahs which begin with mystic letters that actually form mantras.
The 29 Arabic letters are mantras that are used to achieve high spiritual states, especially when used on their appropriate day of the lunar month.
½ x ½ = ¼. The Mothership's size simply encode the four cardinal signs which, back when most of the spiritual language was developed, were Aquarius, Leo, Scorpio and Taurus.
The fellows operating the craft were said to be 4 ½ feet tall. Four and one-half represents the number of breaths per minutes one must breathe in order to achieve the lower level of waking trance (which is rather like lucid dreaming without falling asleep).
In the Western Hemisphere people breathe at an average of 15 breaths per minute. These are 15 hundred baby plane, i.e. each breath is a subplane of consciousness.
The bombs are symbols for mantras. Three bombs represent the three breaths per minute which results in full waking trance.
At three breaths per minute (while mentally chanting a mantra) the ego (the symbolic "white man") succumbs and one's awareness of and focus in the physical world evaporates.
That is what The Honorable Elijah Muhammad meant by the Mothership destroying the white man's world.
In the spiritual language, killing, destroying, sacrificing et al. doesn't really mean doing such things literally.
For example, the Egyptian symbol for Amen was a ram on a sacrificial offering tray. Once the symbol was well-known the offering tray alone meant a ram being sacrificed on an offering tray.
The ram symbolized the sexual urge, the urge to ejaculate. Sacrificing the ram didn't mean killing or extinguishing the sex function. On the contrary, many Amen-level masters were quite sexually active. Ram sacrifice meant controlling, refining, sublimating the sexual function by transforming it into a more spiritual (tantric) level.
Taoists achieve this in the Enlightenment of Kan and Li practices.
The ram itself symbolizes Aries which is ruled by Mars and which, astrologically, controls the sex organs, energy and activity.
%
Conscious awareness is often equated with light and depicted by the color white. In the West the ego dominates the consciousness. Mr. Muhammad used "white man" as a symbol for the part of the psyche called the ego.
There were a total of 4500 'bombs' on the Mothership. forty-five hundred is just a code name for the same 4.5 breaths a minute that is also symbolized by the 4 ½ feet height of the Ship's crew.
Each bomb (mantra) goes a mile deep under the Earth. That symbolizes the fact that mantras effect the subconscious mind.
The hour drew near and the Moon was rent asunder.
-Quran 54:1
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that "a Black scientist" blew up part of the Earth by digging a shaft to the center of the Earth and filling it with dynamite. This scientist was upset because he couldn't get everyone to speak the same dialect. So he tried to destroy the world. But he only succeeded in getting part, the current Moon, to break off and drop its water down to the Earth.
I won't delve into all of the heavy symbolism here. Suffice it to say that Earth/Moon united equates to a whole mind: spiritual/rational, left and right brain hemisphere etc.
Sixty-six trillion years equals 12 zodiacal signs (6 + 6 =12). After the world split off from the astrological paradigm, people's spiritual and rational consciousnesses were no longer integrated, i.e., "the Moon [spiritual consciousness] was separated from the Earth [rational consciousness]."
The same kind of bombs, taught Mr. Muhammad, would now be used to 'destroy the white man's world." Dynamite symbolizes "dyn" (pronounced "deen"), an Arabic word which is usually translated "religion."
America being "destroyed first" actually conceals an important code. America would become foremost in spiritual development as an eventual balance to its overweighted technological focus.
Land and earth often stand for concrete thinking. When the Honorable Eljah Muhammad said all the bombs would hit land and not water, the meaning is that they'd end a materialistic view of the universe.
Most English translations of the Quran are written with English on one side of the page and Arabic on the other. The Mothership's leaflets, then, really refer to the Quran. Once a person achieves trance/Mothership consciousness she can understand the Quran at a very different level.
The sound that the plane emits is code for the high-pitched sound that is sometimes heard in meditation. Eckankarists call it the Flute of God. The Quran refers to it as "a single compelling cry." This sound announces the arrival of a very deep level of trance.
After that the "bombs explode," meaning that the mantras succeed in reaching the deepest subconscious regions. Sometimes the meditator experiences becoming enormous in size. This expansive effect on the energy body is "the mountain a mile high."
At the waking trance state the physical world ceases to exist, it is metaphorically destroyed.
That the Mothership enters the atmosphere every six month (1/2 of a year) is a sign that the first level of trance commences at breathing 7.5 breaths per minute. This brings on mediumistic trance.
Seven point five breaths per minute are ½ of the 15 breaths per minute people average. That is encoded by the Mothership's entering earth's atmosphere "to take on air" every half year.
The two places that are safe represent the two primary spiritual approaches: trance cultivation and energy development.
Using gematria, America's 310 years of burning amounts to 4(3 + 1 + 0 = 4). The four represents the four sons of Horus, four cardinal signs, four directions, four fundamental chakras, four elements (air, fire, water and earth) and four "wives" of Islam.
American's "burning" symbolizes the kundalini heat that ignites the chakra centers at the heart (Leo/fire), throat (Taurus/earth), sex organs (Scorpio/water) and third eye (Aquarius/Air).
The 690 years of cooling amounts to the number 15(6 + 9 + 0 = 15) and describes the meditator's eventual return to normal breathing patterns and the cooling down of the kundalini heat. The 15 becomes the number 6 (1 +5 = 6) which, according to Elijah Muhammad, is the number of creation (Cf. Theology of Time by Elijah Muhammad).
In later writings, Mr. Muhammad discussed the Mothership in nearly astrological terms. He discussed the wheel (solar system) within the wheel (galaxy). In that respect the wheel refers to the circular movement of chi in the Microcosmic Orbit.
All of the Nation of Islam teachings are symbolic, even those which sound distinctly political or economic in nature. The symbolism is the power within the teachings -- which Mr. Muhammad called "the germ" -- that has such an attractive force upon many people. Master Fard Muhhamad used to call those teachings "mathematical theology."
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that every human being was actually a god who had lost the knowledge of himself and was living a beast (i.e. astrologically influenced) life. When we decipher what the great teachers actually meant when they taught we can put those ancient and modern truths into practice to actualize the god experience in our lives.
"I'm down here in the mud and nobody can see me."
One of the last times I saw the Honorable Elijah Muhammad he was giving a Savour's Day speech. I happened to be sitting in the third row next to Muhammad Ali who was seeking reinstatement into the Nation.
Mr. Muhammad seemed to stop his main subject and look at me. Then he said, "Brother, I'm down here in the mud and nobody can see me." There seemed to be deep sadness in his voice.
It is highly unlikely that the Messenger was speaking directly to me, but that is how it felt.
For years I pondered what he'd meant. Much later I learned that "mud" is an ancient symbol for material and I have no doubt, now, that Mr. Muhammad was saying that his teachings were only being viewed as material teachings and that nobody could see the advanced spiritual science inside those seemingly material ideas.
Mr. Muhammad once said, "I'm a preacher. My ministers will be the teachers."
No prophet, sage, seer or messenger interprets himself. That task is left to the people who work with his teachings and explain them to later generations.
Most of the world is suffering a kind of spiritual anguish. If we grasped the deep ideas that sages like Mr. Muhammad brought and put them into practice we could heal the world, eliminate suffering and advance to the next level of human evolution which is intended to culminate in our experience of divinity.
Caucasians and Asians have just as much right to benefit from Mr. Muhammad's spiritual science as do Africans for, despite what would seem obvious upon the surface, Mr. Muhammad was not just for Blacks. He signed all of his later letters and official statements, "Messenger of Allah to you all."
Underlying all spiritual movements is an esoteric system of thought that's often obscured by the movement's own public rhetoric.
Few movements have been less understood than the Lost-Found Nation of Islam established by W. Fard Muhammad July 4, 1930 in Detroit, Michigan.
Most people are familiar with the Nation because of charismatic members like Malcolm X, boxer Muhammad Ali, singer Joe Text and Minister Louis Farrakhan.
Some of the Nation's doctrines have shocked and horrified the general public while fascinating those who are sympathetic to its goals.
All of the Nation's teachings are actually symbols and myths that serve as codes for deep, universal truths.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad inherited the leadership from Master Fard Muhammad who was, himself, believed to have succeeded Noble Drew Ali.
All of these men held Masonic titles, i.e., noble, honorable and master. As masons, they'd taken vows of secrecy and could not reveal the deeper wisdom to the uninitiated.
So they spoke in codes.
So deep and multilayered were those codes that few, to this day, have a notion of what they were really teaching.
"I am the Supreme Ruler of the Universe"
When Elijah Muhammad met Master Fard, he asked, "Who are you?"
Master Fard replied, "I am the Supreme Ruler of the Universe."
The spiritual masters often say things like that, things that blow our minds. Such masters are not lying. We simply don't understand what they mean.
Jesus made a similar statement: "Be of good cheer for I have overcome the world."
The "universe" that W. Fard Muhammad ruled is represented by his astrological influences. In 86% of us, the signs and planets rule us. But the 5% who reach mastery rule, by consciousness and will, their astrological configurations.
Each of us, consciously or not, constantly creates the universe in which we live. A master, however, controls what she or he creates by controlling the input into the subconscious generator. Please see Seth Speaks for a complete discussion of how every person creates and co-creates the universe.
Every person can become "the supreme ruler of the universe" by developing their spiritual abilities as did Jesus and Master Fard Muhammad (and many others).
Before UFOlogy became popular, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that a large spaceship had been built "to destroy the white man's world." He called this spaceship "the Mother Plane." He also referred to it as "the Mother of Planes." The various parts of the ship were build in factories across the world, but the workers had no idea of what they were actually building. It was eventually assembled in Japan in 1929.
Often, when Mr. Muhammad was dropping a part of the secret wisdom, he'd let out a little chuckle before finishing a sentence.
The Mother plane, he taught, was one-half mile by one-half mile in size. It stayed primarily in outer space but entered the Earth's atmosphere every six months "to take on air."
The purpose of this Mother Plane was to "destroy the white man's world."
In Nation of Islam esoteric symbolism, white, black, red and yellow "people" were symbols of states of mind. Very few people in the Nation, however, knew that most of the doctrine was given metaphorically and symbolically. The rank-and -file membership considers the teachings to be "actual facts."
We will return to the "white" man a bit further.
The Mothership was piloted by "Black men 4 1/2 feet tall." (I don't know where the women were during those extended orbits.)
There were 1500 "baby planes" on the Mothership, each plane possessing three bombs.
Those bombs had drills on their tips and, when deployed, would drill a mile deep beneath the surface and, upon explosion, force up a mountain a mile high.
The Messenger taught that such bombs were used to separate the Moon from the Earth 66 trillion years ago.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that Ezekiel's vision of wheels was a vision of the Mothership.
The 4500 bombs would all strike land. None, Mr. Muhammad taught, would fall into water.
America was the first nation the Mothership would attack. Before striking and releasing its bombs, it would drop leaflets printed in English and Arabic warning of the coming destruction.
Some unspecified time later it would emit a high-pitched, piercing sound to warn that the attack is imminent. At that point, it was too late. The destruction would commence.
When I first learned of these things I wondered what the purpose of the warnings were and why, in America, would Arabic leaflets be dropped. Few Americans read Arabic.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad once gave a strong clue that the Mothership material was symbolic. He wrote that Master Fard Muhammad told him that the ship flew 40 miles above the Earth's atmosphere but that he thought that the 40 miles was a sign of his own 40 year mission.
Upon reading that, I wondered: "If the 40 miles high is a sign, how much more of this teaching is also symbolic?"
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that there were two safe places to which people could repair to survive the destruction brought on by the Mothership.
After the bombing, America would burn for 310 years and require 690 years to cool off. After the destruction, a "new world" would be born and "a new God" would bring in "a new Islam" and "a new Quran."
Mother of Planes
In speaking of the "Mother of Planes," Mr. Muhammad provided a clue that he was really speaking of planes of consciousness, not physical spacecrafts.
In Qaballah wisdom the planes of consciousness were named Assiah, Yetzirah, Briyah and Atziluth. Assiah incorporated the physical plane and the lower part of the astral plane. The mentality focused upon that plane was called "the Asiatic Black man."
The astral plane is the "mother of planes" because the astral plane becomes impregnated by all the consciousness seeds and eventually "gives birth" to a physical event or object. In addition, spiritual development has to commence from the level of the astral or mother plane.
The astral plane was identified with the Virgin Isis, the Virgin Mary and other "mother goddesses."
It is the consciousness plane that includes alpha states, trance states, dreaming states, daydreaming states, and emotionally charged states.
The Mother Plane, then, represents the trance state of consciousness. By cultivating such altered states, all the peoples in the world participated in producing elements of the universal spiritual wisdom.
No single nation developed all the wisdom-elements alone. Each cultivated a part of the universal truth. So The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that parts of the Mothership were build in factories all around the world.
Some people mastered the use of herbs and plants, others mastered use of sounds and chants, others mastered astrology, martial arts, hatha yoga, tantra, use of gems and stones, energy manipulation, pranayama, spiritual dancing etc. But when they are all assembled and used in their appropriate place, then we have a "vehicle" that can take us to "the new world."
Japan is symbolic of joppa, a yogic meditation technique which involves chanting a work of power (mantra) repeatedly until a trance state is attained.
Assembling the Mothership in Japan represents the use of joppa to unity all the various spiritual techniques.
The year 1929 symbolizes 19 forces and 29 Arabic letters and lunar days.
Upon it are 19. And we have made none but angels to be friends of the fire.
-Quran 74:30-31
There are 19 energy points on the Microcosmic Orbit which accord with the 12 zodiacal signs and seven "personal planets."
There are 29 Quranic surahs which begin with mystic letters that actually form mantras.
The 29 Arabic letters are mantras that are used to achieve high spiritual states, especially when used on their appropriate day of the lunar month.
½ x ½ = ¼. The Mothership's size simply encode the four cardinal signs which, back when most of the spiritual language was developed, were Aquarius, Leo, Scorpio and Taurus.
The fellows operating the craft were said to be 4 ½ feet tall. Four and one-half represents the number of breaths per minutes one must breathe in order to achieve the lower level of waking trance (which is rather like lucid dreaming without falling asleep).
In the Western Hemisphere people breathe at an average of 15 breaths per minute. These are 15 hundred baby plane, i.e. each breath is a subplane of consciousness.
The bombs are symbols for mantras. Three bombs represent the three breaths per minute which results in full waking trance.
At three breaths per minute (while mentally chanting a mantra) the ego (the symbolic "white man") succumbs and one's awareness of and focus in the physical world evaporates.
That is what The Honorable Elijah Muhammad meant by the Mothership destroying the white man's world.
In the spiritual language, killing, destroying, sacrificing et al. doesn't really mean doing such things literally.
For example, the Egyptian symbol for Amen was a ram on a sacrificial offering tray. Once the symbol was well-known the offering tray alone meant a ram being sacrificed on an offering tray.
The ram symbolized the sexual urge, the urge to ejaculate. Sacrificing the ram didn't mean killing or extinguishing the sex function. On the contrary, many Amen-level masters were quite sexually active. Ram sacrifice meant controlling, refining, sublimating the sexual function by transforming it into a more spiritual (tantric) level.
Taoists achieve this in the Enlightenment of Kan and Li practices.
The ram itself symbolizes Aries which is ruled by Mars and which, astrologically, controls the sex organs, energy and activity.
%
Conscious awareness is often equated with light and depicted by the color white. In the West the ego dominates the consciousness. Mr. Muhammad used "white man" as a symbol for the part of the psyche called the ego.
There were a total of 4500 'bombs' on the Mothership. forty-five hundred is just a code name for the same 4.5 breaths a minute that is also symbolized by the 4 ½ feet height of the Ship's crew.
Each bomb (mantra) goes a mile deep under the Earth. That symbolizes the fact that mantras effect the subconscious mind.
The hour drew near and the Moon was rent asunder.
-Quran 54:1
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that "a Black scientist" blew up part of the Earth by digging a shaft to the center of the Earth and filling it with dynamite. This scientist was upset because he couldn't get everyone to speak the same dialect. So he tried to destroy the world. But he only succeeded in getting part, the current Moon, to break off and drop its water down to the Earth.
I won't delve into all of the heavy symbolism here. Suffice it to say that Earth/Moon united equates to a whole mind: spiritual/rational, left and right brain hemisphere etc.
Sixty-six trillion years equals 12 zodiacal signs (6 + 6 =12). After the world split off from the astrological paradigm, people's spiritual and rational consciousnesses were no longer integrated, i.e., "the Moon [spiritual consciousness] was separated from the Earth [rational consciousness]."
The same kind of bombs, taught Mr. Muhammad, would now be used to 'destroy the white man's world." Dynamite symbolizes "dyn" (pronounced "deen"), an Arabic word which is usually translated "religion."
America being "destroyed first" actually conceals an important code. America would become foremost in spiritual development as an eventual balance to its overweighted technological focus.
Land and earth often stand for concrete thinking. When the Honorable Eljah Muhammad said all the bombs would hit land and not water, the meaning is that they'd end a materialistic view of the universe.
Most English translations of the Quran are written with English on one side of the page and Arabic on the other. The Mothership's leaflets, then, really refer to the Quran. Once a person achieves trance/Mothership consciousness she can understand the Quran at a very different level.
The sound that the plane emits is code for the high-pitched sound that is sometimes heard in meditation. Eckankarists call it the Flute of God. The Quran refers to it as "a single compelling cry." This sound announces the arrival of a very deep level of trance.
After that the "bombs explode," meaning that the mantras succeed in reaching the deepest subconscious regions. Sometimes the meditator experiences becoming enormous in size. This expansive effect on the energy body is "the mountain a mile high."
At the waking trance state the physical world ceases to exist, it is metaphorically destroyed.
That the Mothership enters the atmosphere every six month (1/2 of a year) is a sign that the first level of trance commences at breathing 7.5 breaths per minute. This brings on mediumistic trance.
Seven point five breaths per minute are ½ of the 15 breaths per minute people average. That is encoded by the Mothership's entering earth's atmosphere "to take on air" every half year.
The two places that are safe represent the two primary spiritual approaches: trance cultivation and energy development.
Using gematria, America's 310 years of burning amounts to 4(3 + 1 + 0 = 4). The four represents the four sons of Horus, four cardinal signs, four directions, four fundamental chakras, four elements (air, fire, water and earth) and four "wives" of Islam.
American's "burning" symbolizes the kundalini heat that ignites the chakra centers at the heart (Leo/fire), throat (Taurus/earth), sex organs (Scorpio/water) and third eye (Aquarius/Air).
The 690 years of cooling amounts to the number 15(6 + 9 + 0 = 15) and describes the meditator's eventual return to normal breathing patterns and the cooling down of the kundalini heat. The 15 becomes the number 6 (1 +5 = 6) which, according to Elijah Muhammad, is the number of creation (Cf. Theology of Time by Elijah Muhammad).
In later writings, Mr. Muhammad discussed the Mothership in nearly astrological terms. He discussed the wheel (solar system) within the wheel (galaxy). In that respect the wheel refers to the circular movement of chi in the Microcosmic Orbit.
All of the Nation of Islam teachings are symbolic, even those which sound distinctly political or economic in nature. The symbolism is the power within the teachings -- which Mr. Muhammad called "the germ" -- that has such an attractive force upon many people. Master Fard Muhhamad used to call those teachings "mathematical theology."
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that every human being was actually a god who had lost the knowledge of himself and was living a beast (i.e. astrologically influenced) life. When we decipher what the great teachers actually meant when they taught we can put those ancient and modern truths into practice to actualize the god experience in our lives.
"I'm down here in the mud and nobody can see me."
One of the last times I saw the Honorable Elijah Muhammad he was giving a Savour's Day speech. I happened to be sitting in the third row next to Muhammad Ali who was seeking reinstatement into the Nation.
Mr. Muhammad seemed to stop his main subject and look at me. Then he said, "Brother, I'm down here in the mud and nobody can see me." There seemed to be deep sadness in his voice.
It is highly unlikely that the Messenger was speaking directly to me, but that is how it felt.
For years I pondered what he'd meant. Much later I learned that "mud" is an ancient symbol for material and I have no doubt, now, that Mr. Muhammad was saying that his teachings were only being viewed as material teachings and that nobody could see the advanced spiritual science inside those seemingly material ideas.
Mr. Muhammad once said, "I'm a preacher. My ministers will be the teachers."
No prophet, sage, seer or messenger interprets himself. That task is left to the people who work with his teachings and explain them to later generations.
Most of the world is suffering a kind of spiritual anguish. If we grasped the deep ideas that sages like Mr. Muhammad brought and put them into practice we could heal the world, eliminate suffering and advance to the next level of human evolution which is intended to culminate in our experience of divinity.
Caucasians and Asians have just as much right to benefit from Mr. Muhammad's spiritual science as do Africans for, despite what would seem obvious upon the surface, Mr. Muhammad was not just for Blacks. He signed all of his later letters and official statements, "Messenger of Allah to you all."
Sunday, March 1, 2009
The Day the Music Died
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1037&Itemid=1
The Day the Music Died: Malcolm X's Assassination
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
by Roland Sheppard
"When I looked up, I saw Malcolm X standing up and glaring down at one of his assassins. At that point, from the corner of my eye, nearby to my left, I saw a flash from a gun as I watched Malcolm X fall down and back about ten feet."
An earlier edited version of this article appeared in the San Francisco BayView National Black Newspaper.
"It was the saddest day of my life."
In the afternoon, on January 21, 1965, I went to the Audubon Ballroom to hear Malcolm X speak. I also went to sell the newspaper, The Militant, a radical newspaper, which at that time, printed the truth about Malcolm X, his speeches, and publicly defended him.
When I got to the Ballroom, things were radically different -- there were no cops. (Normally Malcolm's meetings in Harlem were crawling with cops.) As I was selling papers, Malcolm X approached the Audubon Ballroom, I offered to sell him the latest issue, but he told me, "not today Roland, I am alone and in a hurry."
A while later, as I entered the meeting room I again did not see any cops. I went in to sit down, where I normally sat along with the rest of the press in the front and the left side of the room. On the way to my seat, Gene Roberts, who later surfaced as a police agent member of the Black Panther Party, told me that I could not sit at my regular place, but on that day I had to sit in the front row on the right side of the hall, facing the stage.
As I sat down, I glanced over, to where I normally sat, and saw a large Black man, with a Navy Blue-gray trench coat. When the meeting started all was quiet, as the crowd listened to Benjamin X introducing Malcolm X.
When Malcolm approached the podium, he gave the normal Muslim greeting for peace, at that point a disturbance occurred in the room. Two men were standing about halfway back in the room and to the right of the Malcolm on stage. One was shouting "Get your hand out of my pocket." Malcolm was trying to calm things down, when the men, one later identified as Talmadge Hayer, started running down the aisle shouting and firing a pistol at Malcolm and ran out the exit doors by the stage, to the right of Malcolm X.
"I saw a flash from a gun as I watched Malcolm X fall down and back about ten feet."
Suddenly I heard gunshots fired from all over the place, and I instinctively hit the floor. When I looked up, I saw Malcolm X standing up and glaring down at one of his assassins. At that point, from the corner of my eye, nearby to my left, I saw a flash from a gun as I watched Malcolm X fall down and back about ten feet. In that instant, when Malcolm died before my eyes, I suddenly realized how big he was and I realized that he was a giant in stature, in the world. This vision of Malcolm X, being assassinated, has haunted me till this day. (The fatal blast, which I later found out to be from a shotgun, came from the area where I had seen the large Black man, with a Navy Blue-gray trench coat!)
When I left the hall, Malcolm's bodyguards told me that they had caught two of the assassins, one who was shot (Talmadge Hayer) and one whom the police took away.
A few weeks later, when I was questioned in the Harlem Police station, I was shown a series of photos of people whom I recognized as members of the Nation of Islam or Malcolm's organization. I also saw a picture of the large Black man, with a Navy Blue-gray trench coat, that I had seen at the Audubon Ballroom. I was thinking of how to respond to the cops and how to say that I did not recognize the photos of Malcolm's friends and supporters and the members of the Nation of Islam.
I then told the cops that I had to go to the rest room. When I got to the men's room door, I saw the same large Black man, coming out of the men's room, that I had seen in the Audubon Ballroom and in the photos that were just shown to me. Then he walked by me, he walked past the desks of the secretary pool, and went to his office inside the police station! At that point I knew that he and the government either killed Malcolm X or were part of the assassination plot. I became very nervous thinking about what I was going to say to the cops when I got back and how I was going to get out of the station alive. I then came up with, "I can not recognize anyone, for all Black people look the same." The cops nodded in agreement and I was then allowed to leave the police station.
"At that point I knew that he and the government either killed Malcolm X or were part of the assassination plot."
Malcolm X was my one of my heroes. He was the most honest mass leader that I have ever known or seen. He was a great orator and his speeches seemed like a conversation between himself and the audience. His speeches were like music to my ear and have inspired me for the rest of my life in the fight for social justice.
He was so human in his orations, I still remember him when made the Harlem 'Hate Gang' Scare speech at The Militant Labor Forum, on May 29, 1964 and other speeches when he chuckled a 'heh heh' when he was about to make a special comment. At that Forum he said: "It's impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg... The system of this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system period. It is impossible for it , as it now stands, to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country - it is impossible. And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, (heh heh) I'm certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken. (heh heh)"
Both he and Martin Luther King had come to similar positions about capitalism and the Vietnam War at the time of their death. That is why this government assassinated them. No one has followed in their footsteps. From the point of view of this government, the world leader in political assassinations, the two assassinations worked. For to this day, no mass leader has had the courage to pick up where they left off. They were able to silence the art, science, and truth, of these two great orators. To me, February 21st is "The day the Music Died." It was the saddest day of my life.
Roland Sheppard is a writer and activist and former BA of the Painters Union in San Francisco. Email him at rolandsheppard@gmail.com and visit his website, http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret.
The Day the Music Died: Malcolm X's Assassination
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
by Roland Sheppard
"When I looked up, I saw Malcolm X standing up and glaring down at one of his assassins. At that point, from the corner of my eye, nearby to my left, I saw a flash from a gun as I watched Malcolm X fall down and back about ten feet."
An earlier edited version of this article appeared in the San Francisco BayView National Black Newspaper.
"It was the saddest day of my life."
In the afternoon, on January 21, 1965, I went to the Audubon Ballroom to hear Malcolm X speak. I also went to sell the newspaper, The Militant, a radical newspaper, which at that time, printed the truth about Malcolm X, his speeches, and publicly defended him.
When I got to the Ballroom, things were radically different -- there were no cops. (Normally Malcolm's meetings in Harlem were crawling with cops.) As I was selling papers, Malcolm X approached the Audubon Ballroom, I offered to sell him the latest issue, but he told me, "not today Roland, I am alone and in a hurry."
A while later, as I entered the meeting room I again did not see any cops. I went in to sit down, where I normally sat along with the rest of the press in the front and the left side of the room. On the way to my seat, Gene Roberts, who later surfaced as a police agent member of the Black Panther Party, told me that I could not sit at my regular place, but on that day I had to sit in the front row on the right side of the hall, facing the stage.
As I sat down, I glanced over, to where I normally sat, and saw a large Black man, with a Navy Blue-gray trench coat. When the meeting started all was quiet, as the crowd listened to Benjamin X introducing Malcolm X.
When Malcolm approached the podium, he gave the normal Muslim greeting for peace, at that point a disturbance occurred in the room. Two men were standing about halfway back in the room and to the right of the Malcolm on stage. One was shouting "Get your hand out of my pocket." Malcolm was trying to calm things down, when the men, one later identified as Talmadge Hayer, started running down the aisle shouting and firing a pistol at Malcolm and ran out the exit doors by the stage, to the right of Malcolm X.
"I saw a flash from a gun as I watched Malcolm X fall down and back about ten feet."
Suddenly I heard gunshots fired from all over the place, and I instinctively hit the floor. When I looked up, I saw Malcolm X standing up and glaring down at one of his assassins. At that point, from the corner of my eye, nearby to my left, I saw a flash from a gun as I watched Malcolm X fall down and back about ten feet. In that instant, when Malcolm died before my eyes, I suddenly realized how big he was and I realized that he was a giant in stature, in the world. This vision of Malcolm X, being assassinated, has haunted me till this day. (The fatal blast, which I later found out to be from a shotgun, came from the area where I had seen the large Black man, with a Navy Blue-gray trench coat!)
When I left the hall, Malcolm's bodyguards told me that they had caught two of the assassins, one who was shot (Talmadge Hayer) and one whom the police took away.
A few weeks later, when I was questioned in the Harlem Police station, I was shown a series of photos of people whom I recognized as members of the Nation of Islam or Malcolm's organization. I also saw a picture of the large Black man, with a Navy Blue-gray trench coat, that I had seen at the Audubon Ballroom. I was thinking of how to respond to the cops and how to say that I did not recognize the photos of Malcolm's friends and supporters and the members of the Nation of Islam.
I then told the cops that I had to go to the rest room. When I got to the men's room door, I saw the same large Black man, coming out of the men's room, that I had seen in the Audubon Ballroom and in the photos that were just shown to me. Then he walked by me, he walked past the desks of the secretary pool, and went to his office inside the police station! At that point I knew that he and the government either killed Malcolm X or were part of the assassination plot. I became very nervous thinking about what I was going to say to the cops when I got back and how I was going to get out of the station alive. I then came up with, "I can not recognize anyone, for all Black people look the same." The cops nodded in agreement and I was then allowed to leave the police station.
"At that point I knew that he and the government either killed Malcolm X or were part of the assassination plot."
Malcolm X was my one of my heroes. He was the most honest mass leader that I have ever known or seen. He was a great orator and his speeches seemed like a conversation between himself and the audience. His speeches were like music to my ear and have inspired me for the rest of my life in the fight for social justice.
He was so human in his orations, I still remember him when made the Harlem 'Hate Gang' Scare speech at The Militant Labor Forum, on May 29, 1964 and other speeches when he chuckled a 'heh heh' when he was about to make a special comment. At that Forum he said: "It's impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg... The system of this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system period. It is impossible for it , as it now stands, to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country - it is impossible. And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, (heh heh) I'm certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken. (heh heh)"
Both he and Martin Luther King had come to similar positions about capitalism and the Vietnam War at the time of their death. That is why this government assassinated them. No one has followed in their footsteps. From the point of view of this government, the world leader in political assassinations, the two assassinations worked. For to this day, no mass leader has had the courage to pick up where they left off. They were able to silence the art, science, and truth, of these two great orators. To me, February 21st is "The day the Music Died." It was the saddest day of my life.
Roland Sheppard is a writer and activist and former BA of the Painters Union in San Francisco. Email him at rolandsheppard@gmail.com and visit his website, http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Making Sense of the 60s
Making Sense of the 60s
October 3-5, 2008
Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is hosting a three-day conference on the assassinations of the sixties, dealing largely with the latest evidence regarding the conspiracies in these cases, which have had lasting effects on our politics for the last nearly half a century.
I know most of you live far from this venue, but if you can come, this should be an event well worth the time and expense.
Here’s the info on the conference, for any with an interest in attending:
http://www.duq.edu/makingsense/
This is the list of people I’m sharing the stage with. I’m really thrilled and honored to be a part of this crowd. I’m also one of only two women speaking on this subject, something I hope changes in the years to come.
Gary L. Aguilar, M.D.
Head, Division of Ophthalmology, Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, San Francisco
Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco
Assistant Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology, Stanford University Medical Center
The Honorable Joe Brown
Host, Judge Joe Brown
Former State Criminal Court Judge, Shelby County, TN (presided over James Earl Ray appeals)
Ted Charach
Writer/Director, The Second Gun
Roger Bruce Feinman, J.D.
Independent JFK Assassination Researcher
Former Attorney and CBS News Production Assistant
Isaac Farris, Jr.
CEO, The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change
Nephew, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Robert J. Groden
Author, High Treason and The Killing of the President
Former Staff Photographic Consultant, U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations
Godfrey Isaac, Esq.
Former Counsel to Sirhan Sirhan
The Honorable Robert J. Joling, J.D.
Fellow and Past President, American Academy of Forensic Sciences
Founder and Former Chair, Forensic Science Foundation
Co-author, An Open & Shut Case
Robert Blair Kaiser
Author, R.F.K. Must Die! Chasing the Mystery of the Robert Kennedy Assassination
William Matson Law
Co-producer, RFK
Henry C. Lee, Ph.D.
Chief Emeritus, Connecticut Department of Public Safety, Division of Scientific Services
James H. Lesar, Esq.
Freedom of Information Act Attorney, Washington, D.C.
President, Assassination Archives and Research Center
Former Counsel to James Earl Ray
Joan Mellen, Ph.D.
Author, Jim Garrison: His Life and Times, The Early Years and A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case that Should Have Changed History
Professor of English, Temple University
Shane O’Sullivan
Author, Who Killed Bobby?
Writer, Director and Producer, RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy
Lisa Pease
Chief Archivist, Real History Archives
Co-author/co-editor, The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X
William F. Pepper, Esq.
Counsel to Sirhan Sirhan
Former Counsel to James Earl Ray
Author, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King and Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King
Erik Randich, Ph.D.
President, Forensic Materials International
Paul Schrade
Former RFK Campaign Aide (wounded during RFK assassination)
Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley
Author, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (2003), The Road to 9/11 (2007) and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (2008)
David Talbot
Author, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years
Founder and Former Editor in Chief, salon.com
Philip Van Praag
Co-author, An Open & Shut Case
Electrical engineer and author, Evolution of the Audio Recorder
Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D.
Forensic Pathology Consultant, Author and Lecturer, Cyril H. Wecht & Pathology Associates
Former Coroner, Allegheny County
Member, Forensic Pathology Panel, U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations
Consultant, JFK
David R. Wrone, Ph.D.
Author, The Zapruder Film
Former Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point
I hope you are well, and would love to hear from you, especially those of you whom I haven’t talked to in a very long time!
Lisa Pease
lpease@gte.net
Blog: http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/
Site: http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/
Book: The Assassinations
***
http://www.duq.edu/makingsense/
Forty years after the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, and 45 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, questions still abound about both the circumstances and impact of their murders.
Following up on its historic 2003 conference on the JFK assassination, The Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law this fall is convening many of the top experts on the JFK, RFK and MLK cases for three days of presentations and panel discussions.
About the Symposium
Forty years after the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, and 45 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, questions still abound about both the circumstances and impact of their murders.
Were these shootings really just the acts of lone gunmen, as the history books have so long advocated? Or are there clues in these crimes that might yet prove what so many seem to believe -- that James Earl Ray, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan and Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone?
On the cusp of another historic presidential election, voters and historians alike ponder why these men died, what they might have become, and what their political legacies are today.
Following up on its historic 2003 conference on the JFK assassination, The Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law this fall is convening many of the top experts on the JFK, RFK and MLK cases for three days of presentations and panel discussions.
From matters of ballistics and trajectories to questions of conspiracy and cover-up, these three cases present fascinating and important topics for students of all ages and disciplines.
The Wecht Institute
It is the mission of The Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law to create and support multidisciplinary courses of degree and non-degree study designed to educate students about the vast applications and reach of the forensic sciences in today’s society.
The Wecht Institute seeks to inform the local and national communities about the revolutionary impact of the forensic sciences through scholarship, conferences, seminars, workshops and publications. It also seeks to engender in all of its participants a multidisciplinary approach to applying science to the law in our collective search for the truth.
Pittsburgh 250
Pittsburgh 250 is much more than a birthday party. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to encourage people inside and outside our region to imagine a bright future here. We are celebrating an important milestone in American history – the 1758 Forbes Campaign that led to the naming of Pittsburgh, and the founding of Bedford, Ligonier and other communities west of Carlisle – and the 250 years of innovation and accomplishment that have followed.
October 3-5, 2008
Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is hosting a three-day conference on the assassinations of the sixties, dealing largely with the latest evidence regarding the conspiracies in these cases, which have had lasting effects on our politics for the last nearly half a century.
I know most of you live far from this venue, but if you can come, this should be an event well worth the time and expense.
Here’s the info on the conference, for any with an interest in attending:
http://www.duq.edu/makingsense/
This is the list of people I’m sharing the stage with. I’m really thrilled and honored to be a part of this crowd. I’m also one of only two women speaking on this subject, something I hope changes in the years to come.
Gary L. Aguilar, M.D.
Head, Division of Ophthalmology, Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, San Francisco
Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco
Assistant Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology, Stanford University Medical Center
The Honorable Joe Brown
Host, Judge Joe Brown
Former State Criminal Court Judge, Shelby County, TN (presided over James Earl Ray appeals)
Ted Charach
Writer/Director, The Second Gun
Roger Bruce Feinman, J.D.
Independent JFK Assassination Researcher
Former Attorney and CBS News Production Assistant
Isaac Farris, Jr.
CEO, The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change
Nephew, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Robert J. Groden
Author, High Treason and The Killing of the President
Former Staff Photographic Consultant, U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations
Godfrey Isaac, Esq.
Former Counsel to Sirhan Sirhan
The Honorable Robert J. Joling, J.D.
Fellow and Past President, American Academy of Forensic Sciences
Founder and Former Chair, Forensic Science Foundation
Co-author, An Open & Shut Case
Robert Blair Kaiser
Author, R.F.K. Must Die! Chasing the Mystery of the Robert Kennedy Assassination
William Matson Law
Co-producer, RFK
Henry C. Lee, Ph.D.
Chief Emeritus, Connecticut Department of Public Safety, Division of Scientific Services
James H. Lesar, Esq.
Freedom of Information Act Attorney, Washington, D.C.
President, Assassination Archives and Research Center
Former Counsel to James Earl Ray
Joan Mellen, Ph.D.
Author, Jim Garrison: His Life and Times, The Early Years and A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case that Should Have Changed History
Professor of English, Temple University
Shane O’Sullivan
Author, Who Killed Bobby?
Writer, Director and Producer, RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy
Lisa Pease
Chief Archivist, Real History Archives
Co-author/co-editor, The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X
William F. Pepper, Esq.
Counsel to Sirhan Sirhan
Former Counsel to James Earl Ray
Author, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King and Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King
Erik Randich, Ph.D.
President, Forensic Materials International
Paul Schrade
Former RFK Campaign Aide (wounded during RFK assassination)
Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley
Author, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (2003), The Road to 9/11 (2007) and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (2008)
David Talbot
Author, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years
Founder and Former Editor in Chief, salon.com
Philip Van Praag
Co-author, An Open & Shut Case
Electrical engineer and author, Evolution of the Audio Recorder
Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D.
Forensic Pathology Consultant, Author and Lecturer, Cyril H. Wecht & Pathology Associates
Former Coroner, Allegheny County
Member, Forensic Pathology Panel, U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations
Consultant, JFK
David R. Wrone, Ph.D.
Author, The Zapruder Film
Former Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point
I hope you are well, and would love to hear from you, especially those of you whom I haven’t talked to in a very long time!
Lisa Pease
lpease@gte.net
Blog: http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/
Site: http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/
Book: The Assassinations
***
http://www.duq.edu/makingsense/
Forty years after the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, and 45 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, questions still abound about both the circumstances and impact of their murders.
Following up on its historic 2003 conference on the JFK assassination, The Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law this fall is convening many of the top experts on the JFK, RFK and MLK cases for three days of presentations and panel discussions.
About the Symposium
Forty years after the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, and 45 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, questions still abound about both the circumstances and impact of their murders.
Were these shootings really just the acts of lone gunmen, as the history books have so long advocated? Or are there clues in these crimes that might yet prove what so many seem to believe -- that James Earl Ray, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan and Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone?
On the cusp of another historic presidential election, voters and historians alike ponder why these men died, what they might have become, and what their political legacies are today.
Following up on its historic 2003 conference on the JFK assassination, The Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law this fall is convening many of the top experts on the JFK, RFK and MLK cases for three days of presentations and panel discussions.
From matters of ballistics and trajectories to questions of conspiracy and cover-up, these three cases present fascinating and important topics for students of all ages and disciplines.
The Wecht Institute
It is the mission of The Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law to create and support multidisciplinary courses of degree and non-degree study designed to educate students about the vast applications and reach of the forensic sciences in today’s society.
The Wecht Institute seeks to inform the local and national communities about the revolutionary impact of the forensic sciences through scholarship, conferences, seminars, workshops and publications. It also seeks to engender in all of its participants a multidisciplinary approach to applying science to the law in our collective search for the truth.
Pittsburgh 250
Pittsburgh 250 is much more than a birthday party. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to encourage people inside and outside our region to imagine a bright future here. We are celebrating an important milestone in American history – the 1758 Forbes Campaign that led to the naming of Pittsburgh, and the founding of Bedford, Ligonier and other communities west of Carlisle – and the 250 years of innovation and accomplishment that have followed.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Is Obama the End of Black Politics? Lord, No
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=738&Itemid=1
Is Obama the End of Black Politics? Lord, No
Wednesday, 13 August 2008
by Mel Reeves
The New York Times magazine predicts that Black politics will fade into "mainstream" American politics as happened with the Italians and Irish, conveniently forgetting that "the Irish and Italian machines were white!" Moreover, the article seems to maintain that "electoral politics is the primary form of black political struggle" when "the most significant black struggle has occurred in the streets." Black electoral politicians aren't rated too highly in the ‘hood. "If asked to name black heroes off the top of their heads, most blacks would instantly nominate Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X - neither of whom held elective office."
"The author is clearly out of touch with US history and the history of US race relations."
Through its Sunday magazine, the New York Times asks, "Is Obama the end of black politics?" The most obvious problem with the question is that it assumes that electoral politics is the primary form of black political struggle. Some clarification is in order.
Most of the struggle for black politics or a black piece of the pie has taken place outside of electoral politics. Rather, the most significant black struggle has occurred in the streets. The long list of black heroes in the quest for justice and equality in the US - the real black politics - includes very few politicians. In fact, if asked to name black heroes off the top of their heads, most blacks would instantly nominate Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X - neither of whom held elective office. If you asked most blacks to name the top ten African Americans of all time, maybe, just maybe, a baby boomer or two would suggest former Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell.
However the author, Matt Bai, limited his version of politics to the electoral kind. With one exception, he ignored everyone on the progressive side of the black spectrum. Clearly, his list of promising black leaders are all elected, relatively conservative Democrats - black politicos such as Newark mayor Cory Booker, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter and Alabama Congressman Artur Davis. Mr. Bai seems to hope that the ascendance of the Booker-Nutter-Davis crowd will put an end to black "whining" - and thus, black politics.
Therefore the very question seeks to put black folks in a box that we should be very careful to avoid. Electoral politics - often a game of placing black faces in previously white places - has at best yielded mixed results in our community. To be fair, black elected officials have a tough job, but they have seldom succeeded in substantially bettering the conditions of poor black folks without the corresponding protests of people in the street. A simple observation of where blacks are located along the misery index will serve to make the point.
"Mr. Bai seems to hope that the ascendance of the Booker-Nutter-Davis crowd will put an end to black ‘whining' - and thus, black politics."
There really is no such thing as a basic conflict between the "civil rights" generation versus the younger (or "Hip Hop") generation in our community. Both generations are confronted with racism. There are, no doubt, generational competitions between those in the electoral milieu who are jockeying for HNIC spots. However, the author is clearly out of touch with US history and the history of US race relations when he suggests that, "the resistance of the civil rights generation to Obama's candidacy signified the failure of their parents to come to terms, at the dusk of their lives, with the success of their own struggle - to embrace the idea that black politics might now be disappearing into American politics in the same way that the Irish and Italian machines joined the political mainstream"
The Times writer could at least have waited for the black historical actors to die off before he started revising African American history. First of all: the Irish and Italian machines were white! Mr. Cai is comparing apples and oranges. He is trying to wish into existence an historical transition that has not yet occurred for black people - and my never occur. Yes, there are more opportunities for blacks in America, but the hurdles of race remain extraordinarily high. Just look at the foolishness Barack Obama encounters on an almost daily basis. No matter how much he panders to the fears of whites, a significant percentage are not quite comfortable with the "colored boy." Either the author is an ostrich and has been living with his head in the ground, or a 21st century Rip Van Winkle and has been sleeping through this government's refusal to rectify or even sincerely address the damage done to black citizens by institutional racism. More importantly, the misinformed writer fails to comprehend the importance of the oil of racism to the capitalist machinery.
The most foolish statement of the article came from the mouth Cornell Belcher, an Obama campaigner who declared, with astonishing conceit, "I'm the new black politics. The people I work with are the new black politics. We don't carry around that history. We see the world through post-civil-rights eyes. I don't mean that disrespectfully, but that's just the way it is."
In essence, what the not-so-young brother said, is that he is blind and ahistorical, yet nevertheless he and others like him are going to lead black folks into the new millennium.
An incredibly shallow person, Belcher puts Obama at the center of the African American universe. "Barack Obama is the sum of their struggle. He's the sum of their tears, their fights, their marching, their pain. This opportunity is the sum of that."
No, not-so-young man, the struggle has always been for the full social, economic and political equality of black America as a whole, not for just a few individual and token achievements.
"An incredibly shallow person, Belcher puts Obama at the center of the African American universe."
Ben Jealous, the new elected president of the NAACP, was the only person who made any sense in this very deceptive article when he said, "It's still a human rights struggle. This isn't a struggle that began in the 1930's or 1960's. It's a struggle that began in 1620."
Judging from what we have seen and heard, even if there is a president Obama in the White House in 2009 the struggle will continue. Unless Obama breaks with the political-economic-social system we know as capitalism and attempts to break the bonds of income disparity by redistributing the wealth and providing real equal opportunity and equal access to quality public education, universal health care, full employment, affordable housing, an end to military adventurism, and a fair shake from our justice department, then we will have to keep our marching boots at the ready.
Mel Reeves is an activist living in Miami. He can be contacted at mellaneous19@yahoo.com
Is Obama the End of Black Politics? Lord, No
Wednesday, 13 August 2008
by Mel Reeves
The New York Times magazine predicts that Black politics will fade into "mainstream" American politics as happened with the Italians and Irish, conveniently forgetting that "the Irish and Italian machines were white!" Moreover, the article seems to maintain that "electoral politics is the primary form of black political struggle" when "the most significant black struggle has occurred in the streets." Black electoral politicians aren't rated too highly in the ‘hood. "If asked to name black heroes off the top of their heads, most blacks would instantly nominate Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X - neither of whom held elective office."
"The author is clearly out of touch with US history and the history of US race relations."
Through its Sunday magazine, the New York Times asks, "Is Obama the end of black politics?" The most obvious problem with the question is that it assumes that electoral politics is the primary form of black political struggle. Some clarification is in order.
Most of the struggle for black politics or a black piece of the pie has taken place outside of electoral politics. Rather, the most significant black struggle has occurred in the streets. The long list of black heroes in the quest for justice and equality in the US - the real black politics - includes very few politicians. In fact, if asked to name black heroes off the top of their heads, most blacks would instantly nominate Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X - neither of whom held elective office. If you asked most blacks to name the top ten African Americans of all time, maybe, just maybe, a baby boomer or two would suggest former Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell.
However the author, Matt Bai, limited his version of politics to the electoral kind. With one exception, he ignored everyone on the progressive side of the black spectrum. Clearly, his list of promising black leaders are all elected, relatively conservative Democrats - black politicos such as Newark mayor Cory Booker, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter and Alabama Congressman Artur Davis. Mr. Bai seems to hope that the ascendance of the Booker-Nutter-Davis crowd will put an end to black "whining" - and thus, black politics.
Therefore the very question seeks to put black folks in a box that we should be very careful to avoid. Electoral politics - often a game of placing black faces in previously white places - has at best yielded mixed results in our community. To be fair, black elected officials have a tough job, but they have seldom succeeded in substantially bettering the conditions of poor black folks without the corresponding protests of people in the street. A simple observation of where blacks are located along the misery index will serve to make the point.
"Mr. Bai seems to hope that the ascendance of the Booker-Nutter-Davis crowd will put an end to black ‘whining' - and thus, black politics."
There really is no such thing as a basic conflict between the "civil rights" generation versus the younger (or "Hip Hop") generation in our community. Both generations are confronted with racism. There are, no doubt, generational competitions between those in the electoral milieu who are jockeying for HNIC spots. However, the author is clearly out of touch with US history and the history of US race relations when he suggests that, "the resistance of the civil rights generation to Obama's candidacy signified the failure of their parents to come to terms, at the dusk of their lives, with the success of their own struggle - to embrace the idea that black politics might now be disappearing into American politics in the same way that the Irish and Italian machines joined the political mainstream"
The Times writer could at least have waited for the black historical actors to die off before he started revising African American history. First of all: the Irish and Italian machines were white! Mr. Cai is comparing apples and oranges. He is trying to wish into existence an historical transition that has not yet occurred for black people - and my never occur. Yes, there are more opportunities for blacks in America, but the hurdles of race remain extraordinarily high. Just look at the foolishness Barack Obama encounters on an almost daily basis. No matter how much he panders to the fears of whites, a significant percentage are not quite comfortable with the "colored boy." Either the author is an ostrich and has been living with his head in the ground, or a 21st century Rip Van Winkle and has been sleeping through this government's refusal to rectify or even sincerely address the damage done to black citizens by institutional racism. More importantly, the misinformed writer fails to comprehend the importance of the oil of racism to the capitalist machinery.
The most foolish statement of the article came from the mouth Cornell Belcher, an Obama campaigner who declared, with astonishing conceit, "I'm the new black politics. The people I work with are the new black politics. We don't carry around that history. We see the world through post-civil-rights eyes. I don't mean that disrespectfully, but that's just the way it is."
In essence, what the not-so-young brother said, is that he is blind and ahistorical, yet nevertheless he and others like him are going to lead black folks into the new millennium.
An incredibly shallow person, Belcher puts Obama at the center of the African American universe. "Barack Obama is the sum of their struggle. He's the sum of their tears, their fights, their marching, their pain. This opportunity is the sum of that."
No, not-so-young man, the struggle has always been for the full social, economic and political equality of black America as a whole, not for just a few individual and token achievements.
"An incredibly shallow person, Belcher puts Obama at the center of the African American universe."
Ben Jealous, the new elected president of the NAACP, was the only person who made any sense in this very deceptive article when he said, "It's still a human rights struggle. This isn't a struggle that began in the 1930's or 1960's. It's a struggle that began in 1620."
Judging from what we have seen and heard, even if there is a president Obama in the White House in 2009 the struggle will continue. Unless Obama breaks with the political-economic-social system we know as capitalism and attempts to break the bonds of income disparity by redistributing the wealth and providing real equal opportunity and equal access to quality public education, universal health care, full employment, affordable housing, an end to military adventurism, and a fair shake from our justice department, then we will have to keep our marching boots at the ready.
Mel Reeves is an activist living in Miami. He can be contacted at mellaneous19@yahoo.com
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