APRIL-MAY2008
*From The Ramparts*
Junious Ricardo Stanton
*Obama, the Sean Bell Verdict: White Supremacist Overkill*
“Three detectives were found not guilty Friday morning on all charges in the shooting death of Sean Bell, who died in a hail of 50 police bullets outside a club in Jamaica, Queens. Justice Arthur J. Cooperman, who delivered the verdict, said many of the prosecution’s witnesses, including Mr. Bell’s friends and the two wounded victims, were simply not believable. “At times, the testimony of those witnesses just didn’t make sense,” he said. His verdict prompted several supporters of Mr.
Bell to storm out of the courtroom, and screams could be heard in the hallway moments later. The three detectives — Gescard F. Isnora, Michael Oliver and Marc Cooper — were escorted out of a side doorway. Outside, a crowd gathered behind police barricades, occasionally shouting, amid a
veritable sea of police officers.” /3 Detectives Acquitted in Bell Shooting By MICHAEL WILSON Published: April 26, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/
This has been a rough week for us psychologically. On Tuesday the Clinton’s pulled off their mugging of Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary in broad daylight using obviously racist overtones and Orwellian illogic to paint Obama as an unpatriotic, un-AmeriKKKan elitist. Today a
New York Judge named Arthur J Cooperman ruled the three New York City detectives who shot and killed Sean Bell, an unarmed innocent Black man, were not guilty of all charges saying the prosecution failed to prove their case. Once again police walk after shooting an unarmed Blackman, this time fifty times! Why are we surprised at this? Black life has always been deemed “less than” in AmeriKKKa, which is exactly the message the Clintons have been openly saying and implying about Barack Obama as a candidate. While I have no delusions Barack Obama will effectuate any meaningful changes in AmeriKKKa core values or policies if he’s elected president,
nevertheless is has been quite educational watching the Clinton faction (with help from Karl Rove and his pals) of the plutocratic puppets work their white magic on the masses. The Clinton campaign successfully demonized Obama and in the words of one of their supporters “punked him”
with the willing assistance of the mainstream media.
The race for the Democratic nomination has gotten progressively uglier as the Clintons fell behind in delegates and popular vote count. In utter desperation the Clintons and the corporate media resorted to playing the tried and true “race card”. They first attempted to link Obama to Minister
Farrakhan, but that failed. Next they dragged out videos of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s sermons, took snippets of his speeches out of context, played them over and over and tied them to Obama. Their strategy was to paint Obama as un-AmeriKKKan, suggesting both Wright and by extension
Obama were at least conspiracy believing kooks and at worst unpatriotic terrorist sympathizers. Working in collusion with the corporate media (the last “debate” between Obama and Clinton is a classic example) they bum rushed Obama, effectively tarred and feathered him in the media undermining his carefully crafted nonthreatening “Good Negro” image. Usually a news cycle around a controversial issue lasts about two weeks unless the corporate media wants to do a psychological-operation (mind game) on the masses.
If it is part of a psy- op propaganda campaign, it is prolonged and becomes a protracted melodramatic circus played out in the mass media. The Clintons and the media have been dragging the Wright thing out for months using a “Chinese water torture method” the steady media drip about Wright’s bigotry and Obama’s unpreparedness. This is not just a Clinton thing, the Republicans are in on it too. Karl Rove and other Republican strategists, have joined the fray ganging up on Obama in a tag team approach. Rove the Doctor of spin and master of deceit for the Bu$h propaganda machine wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal’s Thursday’s edition where he implied Obama wasn’t tough enough and questioned if Obama was ready for what Rove called “Prime Time”. What these folks are saying not so subtlety is Obama, a half-Black man, is not “good enough”, not strong enough not one of them enough to lead white folks or be in charge of the Euro-AmeriKKKan financial neo-colonial empire.
What Judge Cooperman said by his decision today is, Black life isn’t worth spittle even when it is snuffed out by non-white police officers. In 2008 are we still surprised and shocked by a verdict like this? We would not be if we fully comprehended the reality human beings are creatures of habit. Our individual behavioral patterns and proclivities are called habits, the long term repetitive patterns of our family members and neighbors are called folkways, the habits of the larger society are called mores, customs, traditions and culture. The history and culture of AmeriKKKa is one of unrepentant violence towards people of color, virulent racism and state sanctioned oppression. This state sanctioned oppression was succinctly articulated in 1856 by Roger Taney the US Supreme Court Justice who in his infamous opinion in the Dred Scott case wrote “a black man has no rights (obviously not even the right to life) a white person is bound to respect.” This long held belief and value is the obvious thrust behind the Clinton’s campaign strategy against Barack Obama and the underlying attitude behind Judge Cooperman’s verdict today.
Our esteemed ancestor Dr Bobby Wright the brilliant psychiatrist who helped us fathom the depths of white pathology in his classic work /*The Psychopathic Racial Personality*/ said, “This presentation is based upon a very simple premise; namely, that in their relationship with the Black
race, Europeans (Whites) are psychopaths and their behavior reflects an underlying biologically transmitted proclivity with roots deep in their evolutionary history. The psychopath is an individual who is constantly in conflict with other persons and groups. He is unable to experience guilt, is completely selfish and callous and has a total disregard for the rights of others. This premise is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence ... One of he best methods that can be used to measure the psychopathic traits of the White race is by observing and analyzing their universal overt behaviors and attitudes toward Blacks.” The Psychopathic Racial Personality and Other Essays Third World Press page 2.
We are witnessing first hand, in real time the very examples Dr Wright articulated in his essay. We’re observing the painful dynamics in the relationship between whites and Blacks in AmeriKKKa as exemplified by the treatment of Barack Obama and adding insult to injury the verdict in the Sean Bell killing. I could add: the Bu$h administration’s callous treatment of the Blacks in New Orleans, the rising prison industrial complex, deliberate high unemployment and other relevant socio-economic indicators but by now you get my drift. The question is, given this
clear indication how the white power structure really feels about us, what are we going to do to strengthen, protect and save ourselves?
THE NEW YORK TIMES ABUSED AN INTERVIEW WITH REV.JEREMIAH WRIGHT
March 11, 2007
Jodi Kantor
The New York Times
9 West 43rd Street
New York,
New York 10036-3959
Dear Jodi:
Thank you for engaging in one of the
biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen
in sixty-five years. You sat and shared with
me for two hours. You told me you were doing a
“Spiritual Biography” of Senator Barack Obama.
For two hours, I shared with you how I thought he was the
most principled individual in public service that I have
ever met.
For two hours, I talked with you about how idealistic he
was. For two hours I shared with you what a genuine human
being he was. I told you how incredible he was as a man
who was an African American in public service, and as a
man who refused to announce his candidacy for President
until Carol Moseley Braun indicated one way or the other
whether or not she was going to run.
I told you what a dreamer he was. I told you how
idealistic he was. We talked about how refreshing it
would be for someone who knew about Islam to be in the
Oval Office. Your own question to me was, Didn’t I
think it would be incredible to have somebody in the Oval
Office who not only knew about Muslims, but had living
and breathing Muslims in his own family? I told you how
important it would be to have a man who not only knew the
difference between Shiites and Sunnis prior to 9/11/01 in
the Oval Office, but also how important it would be to
have a man who knew what Sufism was; a man who understood
that there were different branches of Judaism; a man who
knew the difference between Hasidic Jews, Orthodox Jews,
Conservative Jews and Reformed Jews; and a man who was a
devout Christian, but who did not prejudge others because
they believed something other than what he believed.
I talked about how rare it was to meet a man whose
Christianity was not just “in word only.”
I talked about Barack being a person who lived his faith
and did not argue his faith. I talked about Barack as a
person who did not draw doctrinal lines in the sand nor
consign other people to hell if they did not believe what
he believed.
Out of a two-hour conversation with you about
Barack’s spiritual journey and my protesting to you
that I had not shaped him nor formed him, that I had not
mentored him or made him the man he was, even though I
would love to take that credit, you did not print any of
that. When I told you, using one of your own Jewish
stories from the Hebrew Bible as to how God asked Moses,
“What is that in your hand?,” that Barack was
like that when I met him. Barack had it “in his
hand.” Barack had in his grasp a uniqueness in terms
of his spiritual development that one is hard put to find
in the 21st century, and you did not print that.
As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of
two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to
seven minutes on Barack’s taking advice from one of
his trusted campaign people and deeming it unwise to make
me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his
candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print? You
and your editor proceeded to present to the general
public a snippet, a printed “sound byte” and a
titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting
me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his
candidacy.
I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous
behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let
you know that I do not approve of it and will not be
party to any further smearing of the name, the
reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps
this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest
candidate offering himself for public service as the
person to occupy the Oval Office.
Your editor is a sensationalist. For you to even mention
that makes me doubt your credibility, and I am looking
forward to see how you are going to butcher what else I
had to say concerning Senator Obama’s
“Spiritual Biography.” Our Conference Minister,
the Reverend Jane Fisler Hoffman, a white woman who
belongs to a Black church that Hannity of “Hannity
and Colmes” is trying to trash, set the record
straight for you in terms of who I am and in terms of who
we are as the church to which Barack has belonged for
over twenty years.
The president of our denomination, the Reverend John
Thomas, has offered to try to help you clarify in your
confused head what Trinity Church is even though you
spent the entire weekend with us setting me up to
interview me for what turned out to be a smear of the
Senator; and yet The New York Times continues to roll on
making the truth what it wants to be the truth. I do not
remember reading in your article that Barack had
apologized for listening to that bad information and bad
advice. Did I miss it? Or did your editor cut it out?
Either way, you do not have to worry about hearing
anything else from me for you to edit or “spin”
because you are more interested in journalism than in
truth.
Forgive me for having a momentary lapse. I forgot that
The New York Times was leading the bandwagon in
trumpeting why it is we should have gone into an illegal
war. The New York Times became George Bush and the
Republican Party’s national “blog.”
The New York Times played a role in the outing of Valerie
Plame. I do not know why I thought The New York Times had
actually repented and was going to exhibit a different
kind of behavior.
Maybe it was my faith in the Jewish Holy Day of
Roshashana. Maybe it was my being caught up in the
euphoria of the Season of Lent; but whatever it is or
was, I was sadly mistaken. There is no repentance on the
part of The New York Times. There is no integrity when it
comes to The Times. You should do well with that paper,
Jodi. You looked me straight in my face and told me a
lie!
Sincerely and respectfully yours,
Reverend Jeremiah A.
Wright, Jr. ,
Senior Pastor
Trinity United Church of Christ
THE NEW YORK TIMES ORIGINAL ARTICLE PLUMBS AN ALL TIME
LOW-DOWN PROPAGANDA TEXT:
— The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., senior pastor of the popular Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and spiritual mentor to Senator Barack Obama, thought he knew what he would be doing on Feb. 10, the day of Senator Obama’s presidential announcement.
After all, back in January, Mr. Obama had asked Mr. Wright if he would begin the event by delivering a public invocation.
But Mr. Wright said Mr. Obama called him the night before the Feb. 10 announcement and rescinded the invitation to give the invocation.
“Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on Monday, recalling that he was at an interfaith conference at the time. “One of his members had talked him into uninviting me,” Mr. Wright said, referring to Mr. Obama’s campaign advisers.
Some black leaders are questioning Mr. Obama’s decision to distance his campaign from Mr. Wright because of the campaign’s apparent fear of criticism over Mr. Wright’s teachings, which some say are overly Afrocentric to the point of excluding whites.
Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the campaign disinvited Mr. Wright because it did not want the church to face negative attention. Mr. Wright did however, attend the announcement and prayed with Mr. Obama beforehand.
“Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church, but because of the type of attention it was receiving on blogs and conservative talk shows, he decided to avoid having statements and beliefs being used out of context and forcing the entire church to defend itself,” Mr. Burton said.
Instead, Mr. Obama asked Mr. Wright’s successor as pastor at Trinity, the Rev. Otis Moss III, to speak. Mr. Moss declined.
In recent weeks, word of Mr. Obama’s treatment of Mr. Wright has reached black leaders like the Rev. Al Sharpton and given them pause.
“I have not discussed this with Senator Obama in detail, but I can see why callers of mine and other clergymen would be concerned, because the issue is standing by your own pastor,” Mr. Sharpton said.
Mr. Wright’s church, the 8,000-member Trinity United Church of Christ, is considered mainstream — Oprah Winfrey has attended services, and many members are prominent black professionals. But the church is also more Afrocentric and politically active than standard black congregations.
Mr. Wright helped organize the 1995 Million Man March on Washington and along with other United Church of Christ ministers was one of the first black religious leaders to protest apartheid and welcome gay and lesbian worshippers.
Since Mr. Obama made his presidential ambitions clear, conservatives have drawn attention to his close relationship to Mr. Wright and to the church’s emphasis on black empowerment. Tucker Carlson of MSNBC called the precepts “racially exclusive” and “wrong.” Last week, on the Fox News program “Hannity & Colmes,” Erik Rush, a conservative columnist, called the church “quite cultish, quite separatist.”