Gonna pick up posting again soon – just a bit busy right now. But here’s some extremely skillful but rather rather melancholic and soulful sand anime from the Ukraine (looks like it’s related to WWII in the Ukraine, then a part of the USSR). Thanks Inga.

Was Dr. David Kelly a target of Dick Cheney’s “Executive Assassination Ring”?

Revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency launched a world-wide assassination program, and then concealed its existence from the U.S. Congress and the American people for eight years, carries an implication that death squads may have been employed against political opponents.

The Wall Street Journal reported July 13 that “A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.”

Investigative journalist Siobhan Gorman writes, “The precise nature of the highly classified effort isn’t clear, and the CIA won’t comment on its substance.”

The Washington Post however, revealed July 16 that the assassination plan was sanctioned by President Bush. Unnamed “intelligence officials” told the newspaper that “a secret document known as a ‘presidential finding’ was signed by President George W. Bush that same month, granting the agency broad authority to use deadly force against bin Laden as well as other senior members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.”

According to Post reporter Joby Warrick, Bush’s finding “imposed no geographical limitations on the agency’s actions” and that the CIA was “not obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the directive.” This implies that targets could be hit anywhere, including on the soil of a NATO ally or inside the United States itself.

According to the Los Angeles Times the program “was kept secret from lawmakers for nearly eight years at the direction of former Vice President Dick Cheney.”

Despite these reports and hand-wringing amongst congressional Democrats, there’s something fishy here. After all, isn’t the whole point of America’s “global war on terror” to “capture or kill” al-Qaeda suspects? What’s so secretive or controversial about that?

The descriptions of the operation that have so far emerged however, bear a striking resemblance to charges laid earlier this year when investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that the Bush administration stood-up an “executive assassination ring.”

During a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota in March the veteran journalist told the audience: “After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.”

The program was allegedly shut down by Panetta on June 23, a day after leaning of the agency’s clandestine initiative. What make these revelations all the more significant is that the CIA Director only learned of the program fully four months after assuming office.

“The implications,” socialist analyst Bill Van Auken writes, “are clear. The CIA maintained the secrecy ordered by Cheney even after the latter had left office, and continued to conceal the existence and nature of the covert operation not only from Congress, but from the Obama administration itself.”

But was the program shut down? The Washington Post further revealed that the plan, allegedly “on the agency’s back burner for much of the past eight years, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight because of proposals to initiate what one intelligence official called a ’somewhat more operational phase’.”

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell hints that the program was in a “somewhat more operational phase” years earlier, despite repeated denials by CIA officials and congressional staffers.

Wilkerson told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show July 14, “What I suspect has happened is what began to happen while I was still in the government, and that was we’re killing the wrong people. And we’re killing the wrong people in the wrong countries. And the countries are finding out about it, or at least there was a suspicion that the countries might find out about it, and so it was shut down. That’s my strong suspicion.”

According to Wilkerson, the teams may have been dispatched under deep cover, using Joint Special Operations Command as a cut-out, a confirmation of charges made by Seymour Hersh in March. When U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was queried by the State Department, “after some hemming and hawing, which was Rumsfeld’s forte, he finally admitted that he had dispatched some of these teams,” Wilkerson explained.

Powell’s former aide told Maddow, “It’s laughable that the CIA has never lied to Congress. “They lie to Congress on a routine basis.” Much the same can be said of General Powell who lied to the entire world “on a routine basis” during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

It must also be said there is precedence for the CIA’s alleged death squad activities during the Bush era. In Vietnam for example, the CIA and U.S. Special Forces jointly ran a secret assassination program that targeted Vietnamese dissidents. As author Douglas Valentine revealed in his definitive study, The Phoenix Program, Operation Phoenix “was a computer-driven program aimed at ‘neutralizing’, through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture, the civilian infrastructure that supported the insurgency in South Vietnam.”

Those programs never died and have since morphed into above top secret “Special Access Programs” used with deadly effect in Central- and South America during the 1980s and across the Middle East today.

One Scandal Leads to Another

The latest scandal comes on the heels of revelations that the Bush administration’s massive secret surveillance programs targeting the American people went far beyond well-publicized warrantless wiretapping.

A new 38-page declassified report issued July 10 by inspectors general of the CIA, National Security Agency, Department of Justice, Department of Defense and the Office of National Intelligence, collectively called the acknowledged “Terrorist Surveillance Program” and cross-agency top secret “Other Intelligence Activities” the “President’s Surveillance Program.”

The IG’s report failed to disclose what these programs actually did, and probably still do today under the Obama administration. Shrouded beneath impenetrable layers of secrecy and deceit, these undisclosed programs lie at the dark heart of the state’s war against the American people and perhaps, other regime opponents.

The CIA’s Office of Inspector General said that “the program was an additional resource to enhance the CIA’s understanding of terrorist networks and to help identify potential threats to the U.S. homeland,” and that the “PSP was one of many tools available to them, and that the tools were often used in combination.” However, “some officers told the CIA OIG that there was insufficient legal guidance on the use of PSP-derived information.” (pp. 33-34)

But with a thin reed provided by President Bush’s executive orders, presidential findings and 2001 congressional authorization for war against al-Qaeda, why would there be “insufficient legal guidance”? If “PSP-derived information” was used to target alleged al-Qaeda operatives there wouldn’t be need for additional legal guidance. If however, the CIA “was very deeply involved in domestic activities” as Seymour Hersh averred, and used NSA information for political dirty tricks it would be a violation of the CIA’s charter, one that comes with serious consequences including jail time.

Investigative journalists James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, who broke the NSA spy story in The New York Times in 2005, reported July 11 that intelligence officials “‘had difficulty citing specific instances’ when the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program contributed to successes against terrorists.”

True enough as far as it goes, but perhaps these programs were highly efficacious in silencing those who were deemed politically suspect, even within the defense and security apparatus itself.

Wired Science published an article a couple of days ago on PBDE, a neurotoxin that also found its way into found in our food.

PBDE (PolyBrominated Diphenyl Ethers) are compounds that are used as flame retardants and therefore can be found in a wide array of products, including building materials, electronics, furnishings, motor vehicles, airplanes, plastics, polyurethane foams, and textiles.

Since the 1990s scientists have questioned their safety. People are exposed to low-levels of PBDEs through ingestion of food and by inhalation. PBDEs bioaccumulate in blood, breast milk, and fat tissues. Personnel associated with the manufacture of PBDE-containing products are exposed to highest levels of PBDEs. Bioaccumulation is of particular concern in such instances, especially for personnel in recycling and repair plants of PBDE-containing products.

People are also exposed to these chemicals in their domestic environment because of their prevalence in common household items. Studies in Canada have found significant concentrations of PBDEs in common foods such as salmon, ground beef, butter, and cheese. PBDEs have also been found at high levels in indoor dust, sewage sludge, and effluents from wastewater treatment plants. Increasing PBDE levels have been detected in the blood of marine mammals such as harbor seals.

Click on the link below to read the Wired Science article.

Long after a potentially neurotoxic flame retardant is off the market, it could linger in our food chain.

By Brandon Keim
Wired Science

One of the most comprehensive analyses yet of human exposure to PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, shows that the chemical — long used in everything from computers to sleeping bags — enters humans through their diets, not just their household.

“The more you eat, the more PBDEs you have in your serum,” said Alicia Fraser, an environmental health researcher at Boston University’s School of Public Health who headed the new study, published this month in Environmental Health Perspectives.

PBDEs are chemical cousins of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which are known to cause birth defects and neurological impairments. PCBs were banned throughout the world by the mid-1970s, when PBDEs were gaining popularity as flame retardants. PBDEs were soon found in most plastic-containing household products.

By the late 1990s, trace amounts of PBDEs had been found in people all over the world, with the highest exposures measured in the United States. Researchers became nervous: Low doses caused neurological damage in laboratory animals, and the highest human PBDE levels were found in breast milk.

Whether PBDEs posed an immediate threat to humans was uncertain. Direct testing is unethical, and population-wide epidemiological studies are difficult to run. But there’s enough reason for concern that the European Union banned two of the three most common PBDE formulations in 2004.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which in January admitted that it lacked the ability to establish basic standards of chemical safety, has not followed suit, but three states — California, Washington and Maine — have banned PBDEs since 2007. Many manufacturers have either stopped or plan on stopping their use.

“They are persistent in the environment. They don’t get broken down. Therefore, it takes a really long time for the contamination to leave our environment and our bodies,” said Fraser. “Even though we don’t know the health effects at this point, most people would want policies that would stop us from being exposed to them.”

But though well-advised, these bans won’t eliminate the threat. Most PBDE exposure research has focused on how people can absorb it from dust and other indoor sources that would ostensibly be eliminated once PBDE-containing products were discarded. Much less attention has been paid to PBDEs in food.

Fraser’s team analyzed biological samples from 2,000 people, provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The same data was used in 2004 to establish baseline estimates of PBDE exposure in Americans, but that study didn’t look for patterns in food consumption. Fraser’s team found that PBDE levels were 25 percent higher in meat-eaters than vegetarians.

Though the channels of food contamination by PBDEs haven’t been conclusively established, it’s possible that “the old products are being moved to landfills, and PBDEs could enter the environment that way,” said Fraser. Earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that PBDEs were present in all U.S. coastal waters and the Great Lakes, with the highest levels found near urban and industrial areas.

That PBDEs would be highest in meat products makes sense, as the chemicals accumulate in fat, and it wouldn’t be hard for PBDEs to enter their feed and water.

Fraser suggested that the United States adopt chemical regulations similar to those in the European Union, which in 2007 mandated that chemicals be thoroughly tested and proven safe before used. That’s the opposite of the U.S. system, where chemicals are assumed to be safe until it’s proved otherwise.

“The industry is finding new products to use as flame retardants, and we don’t know the health and safety implications of those products either,” said Fraser. “We need to test the health and safety implications of products before they go into use, not after.”

See Also:

• That (Toxic) New Car Smell
• California Takes on PC Waste
• Breast Cancer, Common Chemicals and Cause: Better Safe Than Sorry
• Scientists Stop EPA From Pushing Toxic Pesticide

Citation: “Diet Contributes Significantly to the Body Burden of PBDEs in the General U.S. Population.” By Alicia J. Fraser, Thomas F. Webster, Michael D. McClean. Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 117, No. 7. July, 2009.

Image: Curtis Palmer/Flickr

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes, Wired Science on Twitter.

Related articles by Zemanta

• SUPPORT A BAN ON TOXIC PBDEs (thepetitionsite.com)
• Are household items are poisoning us? (thestar.com)

Soldiers in a single Army unit killed as many as 11 people after returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the military said last week. One contributing factor? The psychological trauma of war.

NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling talks to Guy Raz about the military’s efforts to deal with soldier trauma and ease their re-entry into civilian life. Go to NPR to listen to the 4 min interview.

Lia Tarachansky speaks to Nancy Youssef, Pentagon Correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers currently based in Kabul, Afghanistan. Youssef speaks about a list recently released by Pentagon, identifying that 14% or 74 former detainees of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base detention center are “confirmed or suspected of reengaging in terrorist activities.” Following to story of former inmate #798, Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil who after imprisonment for 6 years in the Bagram Airbase and Guantanamo Bay was found back on the list in spite of the allegation, Youssef says, being baseless. She says that, “It’s not really clear who compiles that list and how they determine who’s a suspected terrorist and who’s a confirmed one. As I mentioned earlier, this is the fourth list that they’ve released, and there are a lot of inconsistencies. The list is not complete. They say that there are 74 people suspected or confirmed as returned to terrorism, but the names listed is only partial ones.”

Bio

Nancy Youssef is McClatchy Newspapers’ chief Pentagon correspondent. She spent the past four years covering the Iraq war, most recently as Baghdad bureau chief. Her pieces focused on the everyday Iraqi experience, civilian causalities and how the US’ military strategy was reshaping Iraq’s social and political dynamics. While at the Free Press, she traveled throughout Jordan and Iraq for Knight Ridder, covering the Iraq war from the time leading up to it through the post-war period.

Transcript

TARACHANSKY, LIA, JOURNALIST: Since 2002 the list of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base has shrunk from 775 to 229. Many have been released without charge or for lack of evidence. Last week the Pentagon alleged that 14% detaines or 744 detainees have been “confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terrorist activities.” At least one case does not seem to match the allegation, says Nancy Youssef, in her latest article as McClatchy Newspapers’ Pentagon correspondent currently based in Kabul, where she reported on the story of Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil, who was imprisoned for six years.

NANCY YOUSSEF, PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT, MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS: He was a tribal leader in Kunar province, which is in eastern Afghanistan, where there’s a large US military presence. And he’s just continuing to travel all over as someone [inaudible]. Shortly after the Americans arrived in Kunar province, there had been a shooting. Three residents of his district had been shot by the American forces. And he says that he asked the American commander to meet with him, and he went with the message, look, please don’t engage in our populations unless you check with us first, and we can tell you who’s good, who’s bad. And we don’t want to have these misunderstandings. We understand that you’re here to liberate us from the Taliban, and we appreciate that. We really want to work together with you. And he went with a military commander and with several bodyguards. And they met for about an hour, he says. And on the way out, literally as he was walking out of the base, he was arrested and told that he was a terrorist and that he was an al-Qaeda operative. He was taken to Bagram Air Base, where he was held for seven months and where he alleged some of the worst abuses happened against him. And from there he was transported to Guantanamo Bay. He says that he was questioned about 60 times during his detention. There were two hearings in which he asked for his appeal, and they were first denied. On the third he was released, in 2008, and went back to the community. He came back to Afghanistan and [inaudible] work towards helping the Afghan people, toward supporting the government, which he contends that he has, and there’s nobody here to say that he hasn’t. And while he was detained, the members in Kunar province, politicians, and other influential members of Afghanistan were sending letter after letter to the Americans, asking for his release. And then last spring the Pentagon released a list of 74 people they suspect or confirmed—former Guantanamo detainees who they say are suspected or confirmed to have returned to terrorism. He was looked at as someone who was suspected. The problem is their sources for “suspected to have returned to terrorism” is very thin; it’s single-sourced. And there’s speculation here in Afghanistan that a rival tribal leader who was working closely with the Americans at that time—I frankly don’t know if he is, still, or not—that he had made these allegations against Haji Rohullah. And he says when he returned, Hamid Karzai, the US-backed president of Afghanistan, apologized for his detention, told him that he was sorry that Haji Rohullah was arrested, and that his detention was beyond the president’s control. And since then, he’s been working regularly with members of government on behalf of his province, essentially advocating for the issues that they face in their community. And they’ve released several of these lists over the years. And sometimes someone who is listed as a confirmed/suspected terrorist on the previous list is [inaudible] listed as a suspected one. And I think there are real questions about how the Pentagon goes about labeling someone as a suspected or a confirmed terrorist and how much information they have, not only about the people that they’re holding in Guantanamo but about what happens to them after their release. It’s not really clear who compiles that list and how they determine who’s a suspected terrorist and who’s a confirmed one. As I mentioned earlier, this is the fourth list that they’ve released, and there are a lot of inconsistencies. The list is not complete. They say that there are 74 people suspected or confirmed as returned to terrorism, but the names listed is only partial ones. So one of the ways you’re able to find Haji Rohullah is because he just happened to be on that partial list. So we don’t even really know who all 74 people are on this latest list. At what point is someone a terrorist if they’ve never been convicted? That was certainly Haji Rohullah’s point, that he never got the trial to sort of clear his name. And there is an implication in that, in that if someone is held in Guantanamo, like, that they were a terrorist and possibly linked to it. The other thing is the list doesn’t deal with the possibility, which I think is a very real one, that people who weren’t involved in terrorism before certainly got indoctrinated while they were at Guantanamo, getting involved in terrorist activities only after they were held at Guantanamo. But, again, the list is so vague that it really doesn’t deal with any of those issues. It’s just a list of names, when they were released, and a few words about why they’re suspected or confirmed at release of being involved in terrorist activities. So it doesn’t—you have to go through and look at every individual file to figure out how strong of a case there was, why they were released, and what possibilities are there that they were in fact involved in terrorism activities before. It’s just—it’s very unclear. I think sometimes that list was used for political reasons as part of this debate about the future of Guantanamo Bay and its prisoners, but, you know, here in Afghanistan it has real implications, not only on one person’s life, but also on this fragile and nascent political system that the United States is holding up.

DISCLAIMER:

Please note that TRNN transcripts are typed from a recording of the program; The Real News Network cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

the REAL new network

Israeli soldiers involved in the attacks on Gaza at the start of this year claim that they were ordered to fire, regardless of the risk to civilians. Israel banned journalists from its invasion of Gaza in December and January, making it hard to verify allegations of indiscriminate firing, the use of phosphorous bombs, and forcing Palestinians to be human shields. Now an Israeli human rights group has produced a disturbing account of what it says happened in Gaza, as told by soldiers.

This Channel 4 clip is already a few days old but it’s good to get a reminder of how the anti-Semitic Nazi State of Israel operates (even though I find it hard to cope with having to listen to Mark Regev).

A very thoughtful article by Robert Jensen on his personal process of political radicalisation. Rather than two pathways that readily come to mind, the one of hands-on activism and that of intellectual endeavour, he talks about a profound sense of grief for the pain in the world without whom joy cannot exist.

Getting radicalized, slow and painful

By Robert Jensen
Robert Jensen’s ZSpace Page /ZSpace

My transition to political radicalism — going to the root of problems, recognizing that dramatic and fundamental change in the way society is organized is necessary if there is to be a decent human future — involved a lot of pain, in two different ways.

The first concerned the process of coming to know about the pain of the world. I had never been a na? person who thought the world was a happy place, but like many people who have privilege (in my case, being white, male, a U.S. citizen, and economically secure, though never wealthy) I was able to remain ignorant of the depth of the routine suffering in the world. I was able to ignore how white supremacy, patriarchy, U.S. imperialism, and a predatory capitalist economic system routinely destroy the bodies and spirits of millions of people around the world. When I made a conscious choice to stop ignoring those realities — in my case, when I returned to a university for graduate education with the time to read and study — the process of coming to know about that pain was wrenching. But I found myself wanting to know more.

Why would someone with privilege press to know more about the pain of the world when that knowledge creates tension and emotional turmoil? In my case, coming to understand that the world’s pain is the product of profoundly unjust social systems helped me understand a different kind of personal pain I had been struggling with. Most of my life I had felt like a bit of a freak, like someone out of step with the culture around him. There’s nothing dramatically wrong with me physically or psychologically, but I always struggled to fit in. I had always had a lingering sense that I didn’t want what others around me seemed to want. Because of my privilege, the world offered me a lot, and I am grateful for much of what I have — work I have usually enjoyed, an adequate income, relative safety. But I could never figure out how to be normal — how to kick back with the guys; how to get excited about sports, television, or the latest hit music; how to care about what kind of car I drove. In many ways I had it made, on the surface, but that sense of being out of step always dragged me down.

The best way to deal with our individual struggles is to put them in a larger context. That means both understanding the forces that shape our world as well as placing our problems in perspective. Becoming radicalized politically allowed me to see that I was suffering because I didn’t want to fit into a world shaped by unjust systems; the problem wasn’t my values and desires but the pathology of those systems. That didn’t solve all my personal problems, but it sure helped. Radical politics also helped me understand more clearly how others were suffering much more than I; it shook me out of my self-absorption. Both realizations led me to want to continue the search for more knowledge and understanding about how this all worked, and to commit as much time and energy as I had to movements for social justice.

The paradox is that since I have immersed myself in the pain of the world, I have been able to find new joy. I still understand that the world is not a happy place, and to be truly alive we must face what my friend Jim Koplin calls the “sense of profound grief” that comes with looking honestly at the world. As the writer Wendell Berry has put it, we live on “the human estate of grief and joy” [The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996), p. 106]. Grief is inevitable, and it is only through an honest embrace of the grief that real joy is possible. The conventional world tries to sell us many pleasures, but it offers us little joy. That’s because the conventional world is also trying to sell us many ways to numb our pain, which keeps us from that grief. So long as we are out of touch with the grief, we are unable to feel the joy. We are left only with the desperate search for pleasure and a panicked scramble to avoid pain.

This process has, for me, been slow and gradual — there have been no epiphanies. I don’t believe in epiphanies, and I don’t trust people who claim to have epiphanies. I don’t think the deep understanding of the world that we strive for can come in a single moment. It comes from the long and painful struggle, with the world and with ourselves. Insight doesn’t magically descend upon us. We have to work for it, and that always takes time.

As the singer/songwriter Eliza Gilkyson (who also happens to be my partner) has put it, “Those are lost who/try to cross through/the sorrow fields too easily” ["He Waits for Me," from the CD "Beautiful World," Red House Records, 2008]. To expand on her metaphor, we cross those fields not in search of a utopia somewhere ahead. Our life is that journey across those fields, facing the grief and celebrating the joy along the way.

———————-

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book is All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Soft Skull Press, 2009). He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html

.

By Saul Landau
Saul Landau’s ZSpace Page /ZSpace

Amidst interminable “reporting” on the “poor” victims of Ponzi maven Bernie Madoff – would anyone care if people had blown $65 billion trying to get richer in Las Vegas? – an alarming July 5 NY Times headline informs: “Safety Net Is Fraying for the Very Poor.”

In the story, by Erik Eckholm, we learn Obama’s stimulus package has softened the impact of recession on many of the working poor; but the neediest have become more destitute. Estimates of those lacking homes, jobs, and all basic support range as high as 3.5 million.

As dupes of Madoff like Elie Wiesel kvetch about his and his charity’s lost millions, the LA Times reported that “officials at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles and Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center had discharged patients, put them in cabs and dumped them on skid row.” The hospital officials pleaded that only the most destitute area in Southern California has “a concentration of social services for the patients, including homeless shelters and drug and alcohol programs.” (April 7, 2009)

ABC News showed video of Carol Ann Reyes, 63, being “loaded into a cab by Kaiser Permanente hospital staff and dumped on Skid Row, wearing nothing more than a hospital gown and socks.” Regina Chambers, who works at the Union Rescue Mission, said Reyes “was very disoriented. She didn’t know where she was or what she was doing.”

Marveil Williams, another dumping victim, informed ABC: “They told me I needed to get out that hospital bed and go find somewhere to stay.” The reporter concluded: “His head and eyes still swollen, Williams was dumped on the doorstep of Skid Row’s Union Rescue Mission.” Other area hospitals also far from downtown practiced similar policies. Police officials complained that “the practice worsens the already grim conditions on skid row. They also disputed the hospitals’ contention that the patients taken to skid row are always ready for release.” (March 24, 2006)

Hospital managers insisted “dumping” indigent people assures “the best interests of the patients because skid row offers their best chance of receiving the follow-up services — as well as shelter — that they need once they are discharged.” Mehera Christian, director of public affairs for Kaiser Permanente Metro Los Angeles, whose hospital is eight miles west of downtown, said: “There are just a scarce number of places in the community to assist our homeless.” (LA Times, April 7, 2009)

Since last November, homelessness has increased in California while the state continued to reduce benefits and services to the poor. In May, A., a sixty year old African American woman, complained to her health care worker that she received $154 less on her monthly disability check – leaving her $436 a month. Her rent is $300. She began “working the streets” at age 12. Her godmother eventually took her in and she finished high school, married, had children and worked at a series of unskilled jobs. Then, eight years ago, her boy friend set her on fire in a fit of pique, leaving her unable to work.

“What was I supposed to do when a woman calls me at home and says she’s his wife? He admits it and I tell him to leave and he gets mad, you know, and he drugged me and while I was passed out he poured lighter fluid on me and lit me. Now that shit will wake you up.”

A. earns “bus money” by recycling. The burn scars show vividly on her arms and cover her torso. She spends her days going to crowded soup kitchens to scrounge enough food, and visits her new “boy friend” at a state supported rehab home where he is recovering from a stroke. “You can’t have too much of a social life on $136 a month,” she chuckles.

J., white and 36, begins the day by injecting herself with 2 grams of heroin “just to get well.” She says she wants to go on methadone and stop using, but it never works out. It began 20 years ago, she recalls, when a pimp pretending to love her got her hooked and turned her out. Once on the habit she had to work to meet the cost of her daily intake, now $200. She earns this by giving blow jobs and shoplifting. “You steal a box of detergent, find a receipt on the sidewalk or in the trash to match the purchase price and the store refunds the money,” she explains. “After several hours of this and a couple of blow jobs she makes enough to score,” says a person who treats her at a free clinic.

Recently, J. met a bus driver who promised to pay her $12 a day in methadone fees. “He really likes me. He says he wants to go into business with me. You know, I could do graphic art.” She repeats this pipe dream of a man who will “save me, take care of me, get me off dope.”

The abscesses from 20 years of daily injecting have left her arms and legs a mass of cavernous scar tissue. She clings to the dream that someone will come along and save her. But she lacks the will to go to the methadone clinic by herself and rescue herself.

Nan, a former high school teacher, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. A female student assaulted her with a knife, but didn’t actually cut her. The incident and subsequent mental and emotional problems caused her to quit teaching. She got disability payments and then got a job in a bakery. But she had problems relating to her boss and had to leave that position as well. Back on disability, she could not afford to pay the rent on her apartment. Last November, she became homeless and now lives in a secluded spot in the Oakland hills with her dog. She still has access to a social worker and some psychological help, but the budgets for these programs are being cut. She has no hope of getting a roof over her head, especially with her only friend, the dog. From teacher to homeless woman without a viable agenda!

The people who lost millions or hundreds of thousands speculating with Madoff have generated media attention, which they would not have done if they had lost their money in a Vegas casino. The truly poor remain marginal in all arenas of consciousness. We see them on downtown streets, begging, talking to themselves, sleeping, or just staring into space.

In 1997, my wife and I stopped our car on Nebraska Avenue in Northwest Washington DC. We were on our way out of town. A man in his thirties lay on the curb, moaning. “I fell. I couldn’t walk any more,” he told my wife, a nurse. We helped him sit up. He had just been discharged from DC General Hospital despite the fact that he suffered from acute pancreatitis. “I was a practicing lawyer and let the bottle get the better of me,” he explained in the next few minutes. “So now I’m jobless, homeless, without my family and hospitals don’t keep people for more than a day.” We gave him $20 and hailed a cab and told the driver to take him to the homeless shelter.

Most of us do not want to admit the obvious: there but for the grace of God — or State legislatures – go I. Responding to recession, people who feel absolutely assured by God’s Grace, Members of State legislatures in almost half of the states have dramatically cut programs for the disabled and elderly and reduced public schools budgets as well. The states remain in the red to the tune of tens of billions.

In the 1960s, California built public colleges and universities, expanded state parks and made libraries more accessible.  But the wealthy don’t use public education, health or transportation and own parks on their estates.

Tax cuts – the mantra of the right wing – means less money for public services. It also means more homeless, jobless, and hopeless people.

Funny, how few Members of Congress even hesitate before voting $800 billion for a war system – excuse me, defense, that doesn’t defend us – and hopeless far away wars. The wretched of our country, however, don’t merit even much newspaper sympathy – compared to those swindled by the iniquitous Madoff.

Landau won Chile’s Bernardo O’Higgins award for human rights. Counterpunch published his A BUS AND BOTOX WORLD. He is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow whose films on DVD are available. (roundworldproductions@gmail.com)

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The WHO and the US administration in alliance with Big Pharma are involved in a major propaganda campaign to implement compulsory vaccination. There is no more “honest reporting” by mainstream TV as in this 1979 CBS TV program. Today, with some exceptions, network TV in America and in other Western countries such as Australia is complicit with the government’s disinformation campaign.

This is how The 1979 CBS program begins: “”The flu season is upon us. Which type will we worry about this year, and what kind of shots will we be told to take? Remember the swine flu scare of 1976? That was the year the U.S. government told us all that swine flu could turn out to be a killer that could spread across the nation, and Washington decided that every man, woman and child in the nation should get a shot to prevent a nation-wide outbreak, a pandemic.

Well 46 million of us obediently took the shot, and now 4,000 Americans are claiming damages from Uncle Sam amounting to three and a half billion dollars because of what happened when they took that shot. By far the greatest number of the claims – two thirds of them are for neurological damage, or even death, allegedly triggered by the flu shot”. (CBS, 60 MINUTES, 1979)

Source: Global Research, which also has the full transcript of the 60 Minutes show.

Excellent interview with Chuck D and his wife Gaye Theresa Johnson. It raises to our awareness the importance of black radical politics and black activism for a history that is not America’s as white liberals claim, but that is that of the black people in that country. Obama might be a symbol of that struggle, but neither does he acknowledge the roots of the wave that swept him to the presidency nor is he part of that tradition. He might still be subject to racism, but being the product of Ivy League education and identifying himself with the conservative Democratic political structure, he never was or will be part of that political struggle that Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Malcom X and many others represented.

Transcript

CHUCK D, RAPTAVIST, MEMBER OF PUBLIC ENEMY: I’m Chuck D, along with my wife, Dr. Gaye Theresa Johnson. And this is the house I grew up in, but, you know, now it’s been transformed many times over. It’s, like, a sound compound, studios. And posters of musicians on the wall, such as Bob Marley. He set the precedent. You know, I mean, you name Bob Marley, just the meaning in music, and being able to make reggae just a strong message to the people, and him being impressed by Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, amongst other musicians in soul, and rock ‘n roll as well.

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: How old were you when this became meaningful to you?

CHUCK D: Bob Marley? Around 11, 12 years old, when he becomes a mainstream artist—”I shot the sheriff, but I didn’t shoot the deputy.” That was before Clapton.

DR. GAYE THERESA JOHNSON, BLACK STUDIES DEPT., UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA: I think nobody brought colonialism to the people like Bob Marley did. There was an incredible line that he has in a song called “Wake Up And Live,” and he talks about rise, you mighty people, from your sleepless slumber. I think that he understood and tried to bring to the people this notion that, you know, we’ve all been asleep, and we still are, but that this sleep is sleepless in many ways, because many of us are nagged by the feeling of being colonized, whether it’s physically or psychologically.

JAY: What’s this on the wall? “Stolen from Africa”.

CHUCK D: This is actually the oldest hanging poster in this room. But you’re only talking about, like, maybe ten years old, but it says it all: “African Holocaust”, “Stolen from Africa”, “100 million people”. It’s great to be black on the high points, as in the post-Obama days, but when you really want to think about being black, you know, being black was no benefit at this particular time. We’re talking about what is still owed just because we were judged by the color of our skin.

JOHNSON: What is most important for people to understand is that, you know, payback is not something that is about just some event that happened, some historical event like slavery. I mean, we’re talking about people who are still living off of the legacy of white entitlement and empowerment. And so what we’re talking about now is not, I think, what media tries to cast as, you know, monetary reparations or some kind of guilt trip on white society, but instead, you know, understanding that people still live at a disadvantage and that that needs to be corrected. So it absolutely has everything to do with Chuck’s music.

JAY: Does the new political climate with Obama as president do anything towards that end?

JOHNSON: I think symbolically it does some things towards that end, but I think that, unfortunately, folks allow symbolism to substitute for material realities that need to be introduced for people to feel equal in society and not just have the appearance of equality.

CHUCK D: Artist by the name of Paul Stone put together a poster. You know, he’s a fantastic caricature/portrait artist. And I kind of got yours truly as one of the hip-hop greats. This is, you know, Mix Magazine, the artwork reminiscent of Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, you know, that whole—. [snip] Oh, this is, you know, touring in Newcastle, UK. The interesting significance of this is that Newcastle has that same bridge as the bridge in Sydney, and also the bridge, the railroad bridge over here in New York that actually ties Queens to Manhattan.

JAY: You grew up in a little house in Roosevelt, Long Island, and you became a world star with very political poetry.

CHUCK D: We learned from the best. I mean, back when I was growing up, there was really no allegiance to just one type of music and one type of radio station. At that particular time, coming up out of the ’60s, you had a lot of people that had something to say with their music. They had great skill and a great way, a great penchant for putting words together.

JOHNSON: Consciousness is not something we can leave at the door. I mean, the Love part of the ’60s and the ’70s is very important, but there was also a love for the people who have been through brutality and struggle and, you know, that that’s a part of the love: to love your people is to also express the hate that they have endured and to be real and true to the kinds of politics and realities that they continue to endure, and yet, despite all of that, also continue to express, you know, these very humanistic qualities of the black community.

JAY: How much does your dialog—. You guys are talking all the time with each other. How much does your dialog with Gaye affect your work?

CHUCK D: Oh, my dialogue with Dr. Gaye Theresa Johnson affects my work every day now, since we’ve been together. So, I mean, I mean, I’m getting ready to go into my 20th year of lecturing at colleges, but I have to kind of ask her, kind of like, you know, “Are things right?” You know, what do we see today? You know? What do we see today that’s different from three years ago, and what do we kind of, like, see that will kind of, like, set precedent three years from now? So, I mean, she’s the total three-quarters of my whole brain, mindset, which is a great thing right now, ’cause a couple of years ago I was, like, you know, reaching a point of saying, okay, you know, I need to sharpen my point of view, and I could be getting burned out. But what is kind of cool being burnt out, when you’re a lecturer, because you can always dip back into the music. Gaye and I really found ourselves. And that was a good thing.

JOHNSON: Louis Armstrong is somebody who I think a lot of people misunderstand, because so much of what was presented to the world about Louis Armstrong was in caricatures of black people and black life. But, meanwhile, Louis Armstrong was always quietly making an incredible impact. And there’s this great story about how, two weeks after the Little Rock, Arkansas, incident in 1957, Louis Armstrong was on a stopover on a tour of his in Grand Forks, North Dakota. And as usual—I mean, this was not some kind of random or—you know, this was not some kind of a random choice or an anomaly—as usual, he’s quietly making history. He was the first person to stay in the hotel, the first black person to stay in the hotel that he was staying in, and quite purposefully. Grand Forks, North Dakota, known to Louis Armstrong as well but not advertised until he was asked by a journalist, was also the home to the judge who had desegregated Little Rock, Arkansas, school contrary to Orval Faubus’s desires. And so Louis Armstrong was interviewed by a journalist two weeks after, exactly 2 weeks after the Little Rock, Arkansas, incident, in Grand Forks, and [Armstrong] had a lot of things to say about Eisenhower, about whether or not he was going to go to Israel to perform as part of the goodwill mission to sort of advertise the kind of goodwill, Cold War moment between the United States, the Middle East, and Russia. And he was so critical that, when this article came out, there were many radio stations that promptly threw away all of his albums. But this was something that was normal for him.

JAY: What exactly did he say about about [inaudible]?

JOHNSON: Well, he had agreed to do the trip, and it wasn’t just Armstrong, but there were a lot of jazz, black jazz musicians who traveled to Israel as part of State Department tours. But he had agreed to make the trip and hadn’t made it yet, and he said at that point that he had rethought it, because, he said—and a lot of it was, as journalists later put, expletives that he expressed with regard to Eisenhower, saying that, you know, “This country’s full of shit, and they have no regard for us.” And he said, “You know, when I see what they’re doing to my people in the South, I don’t want to go anywhere and say anything good about the United States to anyone.” And the next day, when the journalist came back with a copy of—because by the time he got back to the press room, it was too late to release the story. So the next morning he came back and he showed the article to Louis Armstrong, and Armstrong wrote “solid” at the bottom of the article and signed it and said, “This is exactly what I said. Publish it this way.”

CHUCK D: And also, musically speaking, I mean, his phrasing is the way we still sing the music today—or rap it. You know, his phrasing, you know, when you phrase and sing lyrics, rapping is derived from singing phrasing. And as far as the solos, you know, that shaped music as well from the musical standpoint. So his lyrics and his music just is the foundation of the music today.

JAY: Make the leap from Louis Armstrong to Malcolm X.

CHUCK D: The stare in the faces of intimidating circumstances in America at that time was just rattling. And Malcolm X, Gabe Pressman, who’s a—

JOHNSON: Journalist.

CHUCK D: —journalist in the New York area for a very long time, Minister Farrakhan, and just the Nation of Islam, up in Harlem, being asked about, you know, what are you guys talking about and why are you guys so angry? And, you know, if you relate this poster for that poster, then this poster in 1963 makes sense.

JOHNSON: We’ve always been taught in such a linear way about not just black history but history in general. And so if stories don’t fit together very well, then sometimes we don’t want to hear them, because we think they’re not consistent enough to get across the kind of sentiment that might prove that we’re more human, that we have integrity, etcetera. So people often shy away from the kinds of stories that are about dissension and conflict within a community that you hope will always be presented as cohesive, because it’s vital that we be presented as cohesive. But, I mean, Louis Farrakhan and—at that time, Lewis X—and Malcolm X, I mean, this is a perfect story of dissension in the black community and even violence in the black community in a time when we needed peace and cooperation. But if it wasn’t for that kind of conflict, some of those kinds of politics that have come to mark the biggest successes of Malcolm X in the remaining three years of his life after this, and Louis Farrakhan in his long career of activism and preaching and all of the things, the various things that he has done—. You know. And there’s a story, too, that illustrates this, I think, this conflict in the ways that we’re taught history and the way that we perceive history, and that is, in 1960, you know, that Malcolm X was the one who really saved Fidel Castro at the UN meeting in 1960 from being out on the street, because he came to New York just a year after the revolution in 1959, and he wasn’t allowed, he and his delegation were not allowed to stay at the hotel that they had reservations in. And so what does Fidel Castro say at midnight? He says, “Call Malcolm X. I know he’ll help us.” And so Malcolm X brings Fidel Castro to Harlem to the Hotel Theresa and all his delegation. And Harlem welcomes them. And this is another page in history that, you know, folks—black people have always been so careful about their affiliations with communism, because they’ve been at once trying to enter society, and then also rage against it. And so their relationship to socialism has always been very ambiguous. But here was a moment in 1960, just two years before this photo was taken, when it came together, and only just for a moment. Fidel Castro and Malcolm X had never met before, and they never met again in person. But their stories and the constellation of what they each brought to the table that night made sense to the Cubans that were there and to the people of Harlem. And so these apparent conflicts, even if they are actual conflicts, are often rehearsal for future successes.

JAY: One of the things that’s been said about Malcolm X near the end of his life is that he started thinking and talking more about class, not only about race. How does that impact both of your thinking?

CHUCK D: None of these men are begging and looking for love. They ain’t looking for—like, hoping that people like them. It’s like, no, we demand respect. And that was kind of jarring. And I think that Malcolm built that conversation into, like, okay, look, we demand some respect for all of us as a people who have been squashed underneath the thumb of the oppressor. But also at the same time they’re saying, okay, you know, build a constituency with the embracing of love. And I know I might be jumping the gun here, but this means as much to me as a black man in America leading into the prideful moment I felt with Barack Obama. And I’m not saying—to me it’s personal, as a black man in America who’s been here nearly 50 years. I mean, that’s personal. So I went to the Million Man March, which is somewhere in the middle of here, in 1995. And that Million Man March signified to look inside myself to be accountable and responsible to my surroundings and my family and what have not. And Barack Obama in 2009, you see the black family as a symbol. You sees he resonates in the way that he talks. You know. So someone that knows, that knows what these things are about, automatically hear him whether he says it or not. He doesn’t have to be asked, like, “So, well, were you at the Million Man March? And what do you think about, you know, Farrakhan?” And, you know, it’s ridiculous for somebody even to ask him that unless they want to just sort of try to create some kind of issue or some kind of problem. So I just think, as far as I’m concerned, he ain’t got to say anything. He ain’t got to say that he kind of liked Public Enemy back in the day. He doesn’t have to say that. He doesn’t have to. You know, those that know and those that hear it hear it.

JOHNSON: I think what’s so incredible about that is that when I watched especially the early speeches of Obama, I thought that he must have modeled them off of the speeches of Malcolm X, because there are so many times when their whole sensibility, the embodiment of power and empowerment and poise, was something to me that looked like a duplicate of Malcolm X. I can’t imagine that Obama and his campaign managers did not study the speeches of Malcolm X, which is very ironic, because absolutely their politics appear to be diametrically opposed. But if it wasn’t for Malcolm X, we can bet Obama would not be here today. Also, I was going to say that I find it—I’m always struck by how rap music is presented to the world as a creation of black men who are very loose, who don’t know the English language very well, or who have somehow bastardized it, who represent a sort of thuggery or a sort of, you know, closeness to the ground and the streets. But what is rap music if not a mastery of English language? And that is something that Malcolm X, I think, gave us probably more than anybody else. I mean, I think a lot of people can speak to Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois being giant black men in their time who rhetorically were, you know, unmatched. But Malcolm X was someone who learned how to speak by reading the dictionary and prison. And so, you know, there was a kind of organic development of his mastery that I think speaks to his legacy in rap music. But also, you know, Barack Obama cannot claim the rhetorical triumphs that he has had without a model like Malcolm X.

JAY: What do you make of the political difference? You gave the example of Castro in Harlem, and it wasn’t very long ago Obama talked about Cuba and Castro and Venezuela much the same way all US presidents have or US political leaders have, and on a whole range of issues Malcolm X would’ve disagreed with a lot of the policy positions—and so, of course, do many African Americans and others today. But what you make of that? ‘Cause there is both things happening at the same time, this sense of legitimate pride, but political disagreement, but serious disagreement.

JOHNSON: Malcolm X had this wonderful speech about the tree and its roots. And he was saying, you know, you can’t love the tree and hate the roots. You know. He was talking to black people and say, “How can you, you know, say that you love yourselves and hate everything that you came from?” And I think that, you know, this is still an apt metaphor for the way that Obama has treated Venezuela and Cuba and, you know, so many of these other places that are in the news in particular kinds of ways in this very moment. I think that, you know, Obama’s someone who believes deeply in our system, and I don’t think that he’s ever said he doesn’t. I think he’s said from the beginning that he’s a conservative Democrat, and at best. And I think that Malcolm X never believed in the system, and the legacy of his speeches, of his scholarship, of his activism are the people who know that this system cannot work because of its roots and because of the way that it’s carried out. Obama believes in it. I don’t think we do.

CHUCK D: The reason that there’s a glimmering of an opportunity and a chance here, because although the distance between 1963 and ‘64 and 2009 seems like a long period of time, it’s really not, but at the same time, that this is an opportunity to not just make changes in the system but make changes in the world which would force changes in the system. In the 40th year of this photo, taken place in October 1968—I was eight years old at the time, which was about six months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, which I was seven at that particular time. And these two footnotes, with the significance of last year and the 40th commemoration of the assassination of Dr. King and John Carlos and Tommie Smith throwing their fists in the air at the ‘68 Olympics were kind of, like, I wouldn’t say, like, underplayed, but I think it’s something, as far as those that know, should actually bring it out front. And that’s what I tried to last year. So as much as I, you know, praise this accomplishment, I also talked about the importance of these things being a precedent to what happened last year with Barack Obama being elected president. Barack Obama’s presidency has stood on the efforts of many before him. You can’t remove Reverend Al Sharpton and what he did in 2004 and how he spoke, and you can’t remove Jesse Jackson, how he spoke and ‘84 and ‘88.

JAY: Or maybe Reverend Wright.

CHUCK D: Yeah, or Reverend Wright. I mean, you can’t diminish a lot of the things that have been done in the past by the contributors to build to this point where Barack Obama is at. And you just want to be able to believe, if it does bear fruit, that the fruit is for everybody and all the people instead of just a select few. And so far the system has always been worried about the status quo and the select few. If the select few have a problem, then all of a sudden there’s a problem. If the select few don’t have a problem, then it’s the running of the bulls ’80s. You know. I look at the R&B period of 1980s—and that was Reagan and Bush—it was a terrible period. But to people that, you know, were in the stock market, they made a lot of money, they talk about all those glorious times, and I’m like, well, who the hell were they talking to? And it wasn’t talking to me. You know. I made my music in the ’80s to, number one, rage against the machine. So I had reasons to make what I made at that particular time. I wasn’t going to jump—I’d just jumped on the thing because this was the hot thing to do.

JOHNSON: There’s a lot about this poster that I love, and there’s a lot about it that I just hope people don’t go to sleep on. First of all, Rosa Parks did way more than just sit. I mean, this is a woman who, 11 years before, was thrown off the bus by the same bus driver for doing the exact same thing. And she has a legacy of organizing that starts way before this. And, of course, we know that black women were the ones that were behind the bus boycott in Montgomery, but she was trained by Septima Poinsette Clark, who was a teacher and a social worker and who was at the Highlander School in Tennessee. And Rosa Parks learned from her. And it’s not, you know, but a few months after Emmett Till is lynched that the Montgomery bus boycott becomes the most eloquent articulation of the lynching of a teenager, of a child. So there’s much more going on than Rosa Parks sitting. And the reason I mention that is because Martin Luther King knew that when he became the appointed spokesperson, appointed not just by men, clergymen, but women as well who had been involved in this movement way before he came on the scene. And how young he was—this is another thing that I think a lot of people miss. He and Malcolm X were both only 39 when they died. And Martin Luther King was in his late 20s when he began this organizing with the Montgomery bus boycott. The point I’m trying to make here is that, in this constellation, that we have a force of history, a long, long history that all of these people acknowledge that they both come from and stand upon. Women, men, children, and in all of their various ways, even when they disagreed, all of these things came together to form what we now very loosely call the “movement”. I don’t know that I agree with the backdrop of the entire poster, which is the American flag. I mean, in many ways, you know, this was something that of course came out of racism that was uniquely American, and these are Americans here, but it’s not something that I think at this moment America can claim as their legacy—I mean as their history, which is, I think, what they’re trying to do with Obama is to say, “Look what what we have accomplished. We’ve grown up.” Even in Obama’s words, too, you know, we—.

CHUCK D: Well, they’d need to get a rolled up poster of that one over there if they’re going to claim—.

JOHNSON: Yeah, maybe the backdrop needs to be the slave ships with everybody packed in tightly. The point I’m trying to make is that, you know, all of this is true. All of these things happened. And what I love about this poster is that Barack Obama is, in many ways, yes, the culmination of all of these things. But will he and the people that are around him acknowledge it in the ways that are true and meaningful and that give dignity to black people, not just white liberals who want to claim this history as their own now, even though they are pro-, you know, policing their—at this very moment, you know, enacting all kinds of policies against fair housing and fair hiring? These are the people we call “liberals”. We hope that the legacy of radicalism that is inherent in the politics of Rosa Parks, King, Malcom X, can also find a home in Obama’s America as well.

CHUCK D: “We fought,” Malcolm X; “We spoke,” Martin Luther King. But you can actually, you know, switch these. You know, Martin Luther King fought. He fought like hell against hell. And Malcolm X spoke. He wasn’t actually going out there and using guns and, you know, using a bat. You know. So, I mean, these could be actually reciprocated.

JOHNSON: I’m watchful of the Obama moment, but there are a lot of indignities, some small, some not, that he’s endured already has a black man in Washington. And no matter what his politics are, he is not immune from racism, and neither is his wife or his children. And, you know, just because he hasn’t mentioned it, I think, you know, it’s the cool points that everybody’s giving him. I think radicals and conservatives and people in between are giving Obama the cool points for allowing us to forget that that history is still present moment. But there are many, many indignities that he has endured, and nobody, I think, can chalk them up to anything else but racism.

CHUCK D: And, you know, just, like, going back to a interview a couple of weeks ago, Larry King is talking on his TV show to a young black man who wants to be a journalist. Matter of fact, he’s 10, 11 years old and actually won a contest to actually, you know, interview people at the inauguration, one of the inaugural balls. And, you know, Larry King tells him, he said, “Well, you know, my youngest kid wants to be black.” And we think that this is a notion that has two sides to it. You know. But when you—it’s cool wanting to be black for all the good things and all the hip things, but, you know, there’s more than just a trend here, it’s more than just this cultural, you know, upshot of, like, wow, now everything is cool. You know. No, there’s another side to that.

JOHNSON: It’s a different sacrifice, I think. I mean, we can list the numerous sacrifices that Obama has and will make, and they will be many, and more than many of us will know, I think. But it’s not the same, in the sense that, you know, Obama is the product of Ivy League education, he’s the product of a particular kind of class sensibility. He’s probably actually more elite than the Clintons in many ways. And what I think has been smart is that he hasn’t tried to claim a background that’s been about poverty, although I think he has tried to claim a grass-roots background that some people who’ve really been there on the ground, who have worked with Valerie Jarrett in Chicago, and who know the kind of sacrifices of grassroots politics that people like her and other folks have made in order to put themselves in a position to run a black man for president, I think a lot of those folks would be very critical of putting Barack Obama visually in that kind of legacy. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks got bricks thrown at their heads successfully. You know. Their children were beat up and persecuted all their lives. Their families paid prices, whether it was, you know, suicide or murder or, you know, mental illness. This is probably not the kind of price that Obama is going to have to pay. Does that make him a more authentic politician or a more—does that make his struggle or their struggle more authentic because they’ve paid a sort of price of brutality? I mean, you know, I think we have to be careful about romanticizing their struggles, but at the same time, I think that in this moment people have to be very careful about equating Obama’s sacrifice with that of King and X and Parks and Evers and Till and all those folks.