"When this country here was first being founded, there were 13 colonies. The whites were colonized. They were fed up with this taxation without representation. So some of them stood up and said, liberty or death. I went to a white school over here in Mason, Michigan. The white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot and George Washington—wasn’t nothing non-violent about old Pat or George Washington.
Liberty or death was what brought about the freedom of whites in this country from the English. They didn’t care about the odds. Why, they faced the wrath of the entire British Empire. And in those days, they used to say that the British Empire was so vast and so powerful, the sun would never set on it. This is how big it was, yet these 13 little scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire, liberty or death." --Malcolm X, February 1965.
The Midwest--I've been watching the carefully selected clips on CNN and Fox News going in heavy-rotation (and inverted-ratiocination)--I'm still not finding anything factually incorrect in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons in any respect, they are accurate and truthful. The truth hurts. Readers should note that most of the sermons are being culled from 2003, five-years-ago. Why weren't they important then? We know why, and we know why they're being run constantly: to hurt Obama's chances at victory over Clinton and McCain. The move is a racist one in every respect.
Telling the truth...that's not the Rev. wright's fault, nor is it his problem--we've had enough of blaming the messenger. The truth is the truth. Whether we like it or not, it's simply the truth. America has a bad habit of not only attacking, but killing the messenger. It's likely that the "greatest generation ever" murdered the last great one when Dr. King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel on April 4th, 1968. This country also murdered one the greatest minds in the Black liberation struggle and the American struggle for a just society with the assassination of Malcolm X on February 21st, 1965. There are many other tragic examples, and the list of America's victims is virtually endless. It almost reads like a slow-motion holocaust.
A very kind reader felt a little hurt by Dr. Wright's comments on the events surrounding September 11, 2001. They lost someone in the collapse of the World Trade Center, and I my heart goes out to them and everyone who lost someone in the attacks. A high school classmate of mine was also killed in the destruction of the World Trade Center, I didn't know them, however.
This is not to take away from anyone's loss: how does this loss change the fact that the foreign policy of our government caused the attacks? Shouldn't we all be angry at Congress and the White House, namely those who have been in power for the last few decades? If one compares the death-toll to what we have done to people in other nations, 9/11 is a blip on the historical radar. But there are points-of-comparison again--the toll is very close to the 1989 invasion of Panama by the current president's father, another war criminal badly-in-need of prosecution.
The Clintons also fit this bill (pun-intended), as does former President Jimmy Carter for his support of Indonesia in the invasion of East Timor. Carter is guilty of a number of other crimes of this nature. America allows her own terrorists a free-pass (think Alpha-66, the original Minutemen, the old KKK, certain private security firms, Indiana reservation "goons," and armies of criminal informants and puppet dictators and proxy armies). American lives are more valuable than those of "the darkies" in the third world, especially when they have mineral-wealth underneath their feet. Possession being 9/10's of the law, we dispossess them violently. Nigeria, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans come-to-mind...
Like the invasion of Iraq and Grenada, Panama was an illegal invasion, and the toll is often estimated at around 3,000 dead. Nearly all of them were poor, as our forces were ordered to target the poorest neighborhoods for annihilation. What's disturbing is that we may never know the full body count from Panama since many of our troops were ordered to destroy as many of the remains as they could. Space doesn't permit a full-listing of our misbehaviors on the world stage in just the last 30-40 years, but in knowing them, Rev. Wright's comments don't seem so extreme. What seems extreme is our collective reaction to his comments. The only thing more extreme has been our foreign policy since the end of WWII. Rev. Jeremiah Wright: he's no Louis Farrakhan--the very reason he's being so viciously attacked.
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