Forgotten History

For the first time, an exhibition in Cologne attempts to piece together the story of the Nazi persecution of blacks living in Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933.

The Nazis’ objects of scorn and persecution are well-known and well-documented. The lot of black people under the Nazis, however, has received little attention in the past.

Now the Nazi Documentation Center in Cologne is showing the first exhibition on the subject. Called "Distinguishing Feature: Negro" – Blacks in National Socialist Times’.

The Nazi’s 1933 racial law, which applied to blacks as well as Jews, institutionalized racism and made it impossible for them to lead normal lives. Propaganda on the streets and in the media labeled blacks as a "dangerous plague" and "bastards". Black men were said to be a danger for German women.

The article reminded me of the story of Jesse Owens, star athlete of the 1936 Olympics.

Owens won 4 gold medals at the 1936 Olympics single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy. This victory, made a statement that transcended athletics, and spilled over into the world of global politics. Berlin, on the verge of World War II, was bristling with Nazism, red-and-black swastikas flying everywhere. Brown-shirted Storm Troopers goose-stepped while Adolf Hitler postured.

Owens said later:

"I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."

Owens wasn't complaining. That wasn't his style. He believed it was his job "to try to make things better." And, that he did.

I suppose that we all owe it to ourselves and all those that came before us, to try at least to make things better as well.

Even Saddam Gets Spam

Free-lance writer Brian McWilliams hacked his way into the official Iraqi government e-mail system only to find an inbox filled to capacity with unchecked messages. Of those messages, McWilliams said he read business proposals from American companies addressed to Saddam Hussein, even though the United States has prohibited such transactions. McWilliams also scrolled through interview requests from journalists and hate mail from angry Americans. The inbox also contained some e-mails written in admiration and support of Hussein and his actions against America. Some people simply asked for signed photographs of their favorite dictator. [more] (Via CNN.com)

A lesson from Condoleezza Rice

The Boston Globe has this Article

Condoleeza Rice was reminded of her decision to become a Republican after the 1984 Democratic National Convention. She said the Democratic Party's speeches to ''women, minorities, and the poor'' really meant ''helpless people and the poor.'' In a profile in The Washington Post, Rice said, ''I decided I'd rather be ignored than patronized.''

The national security adviser to President Bush was asked if she thinks the Democratic Party still patronizes ''women, minorities, and the poor.'' Laughing, she declined to answer the specific question last week before the Trotter Group, an organization of African-American columnists. But her answer was as riveting as if she had actually gone on to trash the Democrats.

''The fact of the matter is, race matters in America,'' Rice said. ''It has, it always has ... It is not that I mind being associated with the group. I am African-American and proud of it. I wouldn't have it any other way. And it has shaped who I am and it will continue to shape who am.

''I do not believe it has limited who I am or what I can become. And that's because I had parents who, while telling me what it meant to be African-American and exposing me to that, also allowed me to develop as an individual to be who I wanted to be.''

Now Compare and contrast the article above with the following article from Newsday's Sheryl McCarthy in which she says:

I'm a fairly liberal newspaper columnist, and Condoleezza Rice is national security adviser to a president who seems determined to lead this country into war. Rice's role in George W. Bush's administration has celebrities like Harry Belafonte foaming at the mouth that she's an Uncle Tom while other blacks are wishing out loud that Condoleezza Rice was, well, different.

What do I think? I think she's a smart cookie. That's not a term I normally use. But, when a colleague used it to describe Rice the other day, I thought it fit her perfectly.

...That doesn't make her a race traitor, a bad person or someone who's forgotten the lessons we learned as children in Birmingham. In part, that's what the struggle was about - the right to think and act as individuals, her in her way, me in mine.

The man behind the keyboard

Posting will be light during the next few days as I celebrate my birthday. In The picture above, I'm standing on the south shore of Long Island NY, about 40 miles east of NYC. The weather was a breezy 45 F, ... brrr, that's brisk baby!

Black America's Political Action Commitee (BAMPAC)

BAMPAC is a registered unaffiliated non-partisan Political Action Committee. They provide much needed financial and strategic assistance to candidates running for political office on all levels of government. BAMPAC candidates are committed to supporting our common sense approach to public policy and politics: promoting Social Security reform, improving public education, expanding economic opportunities to historically disadvantaged sectors in America, vigorously promoting equality for all Americans, and restoring moral values and the importance of family in our communities. [more]

Earlier this year (June 2002), BAMPAC published an interesting poll which touched on the political pulse of African Americans.

Post-Saddam Iraq

In this article, Stan Crock takes a look into the future challenges the U.S. may face after Saddam is deposed.

Flash forward to 2003. Saddam Hussein, the despised Iraqi despot, is now in exile on the isle of Elba, once Napoleon's haunt. A new coalition government in Baghdad friendly to the U.S. is getting organized. But Iran is making ominous noises about border issues, raising fears it might exploit its neighbor's weakness. A decade of economic sanctions has seriously eroded the Iraqi military's conventional capability, and now the country is sorely in need of weapons to defend itself. So the U.S., which just finished disarming Iraq by rooting out weapons of mass destruction, now is considering how to rearm Baghdad. ...Sound farfetched? Hardly. Indeed, some U.S. Iraqi watchers already are mulling how to fortify a friendly post-Saddam regime.

Selling weapons to Iraq poses a bit of a conundrum, however. "An Iraqi force big enough to deal with Iran is big enough to overwhelm Gulf States," notes Ken Pollack, a former National Security Council and CIA Middle East expert and author of a new book on Iraq, The Threatening Storm. The solution? One piece is to sell arms that are primarily defensive. Another is to stitch together a kind of NATO for the Middle East, which might include Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, and the U.S. Such an alliance would reduce Baghdad's need for its own big arsenal.

Survey: Blacks Less Interested in Iraq,
More Concerned with Jobs, Economy

BlackPressUSA.com has this story.

“African-Americans are rarely polled on foreign affairs issues unrelated to Africa and we felt it was important to get their views,” said David A. Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center, who supervised the survey. “To a large degree, they expressed similar sentiments as the general population.”

... Terrorism topped African-Americans’ list as the most important problem facing the country today. Whites and the general population listed world affairs (foreign policy, terrorism, world economy, lack of leadership, war) as the main problem facing America, with employment and economy a distant second.

"...We care when it comes to us about going to war, about African-Americans actively participating in war and being shot, but other than that, there is no particular interest in these things,” said Lackey.

"If Blacks are generally more concerned with “day-to-day living and less about the big picture,” Lackey said, it’s because Blacks are still struggling in a lot of other areas. “The engine of history is a struggle between the haves and the have nots."

“If the haves are looking elsewhere, it only means that they are satisfied. But Martin Luther King said if there was not the struggle for civil rights, he could’ve been doing something else,” said Lackey. “So if black folk weren’t struggling for economic betterment and employment, maybe they could concentrate on something else. Maybe they could parade down in front of abortion clinics or have a walk for diabetes. Maybe it’s peculiar to the have nots to not have a worldview. If you have the bare necessities, then you could have the luxury of worrying about folks on the other side of the world.”

Only 1,647 adults around the country (850 of which were African-Americans) were polled and the demographics weren't made clear, but it's an interesting analysis that is worthy of further inquiry.

King of Rap

CBS News 60 Minutes II featured an interview with Jay-Z . Jay-Z talked to Bob Simon about his growing empire, his latest album, and growing up in the projects of Brooklyn.

Rap isn’t just about the mean streets, anymore. The message is more about the bottom line than the racial line and the audience is overwhemingly white. Rap has now surpassed country music as the nation’s second-most popular genre after rock and roll.

Jay-Z is clearly the reigning king of rap. He owns his own record label, clothing line and movie production company, generating almost half a billion dollars a year in sales. It’s no coincidence that he named his record label Rocafella. It’s an amazing achievement for a man who grew up in one of New York’s toughest housing projects. He’s living the 21st Century version of the American dream, straight out of the 'hood.

Fifteen years ago, Jay-Z says, he had no idea that he would be a wealthy superstar. He was just surviving. “I had no aspirations, no plans, no goals, no back-up goals. Now, at 33, Jay-Z has already sold over 15 million albums and his personal fortune is above $50 million. He’s making much of that money by bringing hip hop to the heartland.

...According to Lyor Cohen, who distributes Jay-Z’s CDs, more than 80 percent of those sales were to suburban white kids. As the chairman of Island Def Jam records, Cohen has made hundreds of millions of dollars selling rap music to suburbia. “Sixty-five percent, maybe 70 percent of all of rap music sales are purchased by white people,” says Cohen.

Pentagon Plans A Redirection In Afghanistan

Troops to Be Shifted Into Rebuilding Country reports the Washington post.

In a major restructuring of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the Pentagon plans to disperse teams of combat soldiers, civil affairs specialists and Afghan troops around the nation to help secure the countryside and boost reconstruction efforts, defense officials said yesterday.

The initiative marks an expanded U.S. military commitment to assisting in the rebuilding of Afghanistan. It also represents a tacit admission that concerns about security continue to inhibit reconstruction efforts and will require the United States to do more apart from trying to hunt down remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

For an administration that came into office deriding the use of U.S. military forces for "nation-building," the new emphasis on reconstruction in Afghanistan constitutes a significant shift.

I'm not surprised at all by this shift. I touched on this a few days ago while pointing to David Corn's article: Bush's Afghanistan disgrace which discusses a report released by Human Rights Watch, in early November. This report points out the torture and repression still going on in Afghanistan and the lack of control the U.S. has over the situation. The recent shift in plan by the Pentagon seems quite necessary and timely.

Chris has a different perspective on the matter, I'm willing to meet him half way while considering both sides. Certainly it's a difficult situation for the United States, and Steve's point that they are at it alone is well taken, but it has been a year now since the conflict began and our military planners could have exercised more foresight in assessing the situation.

The Return of Bill Maher

Now that Dennis Miller's outta there, HBO's plugged in Bill Maher. Maher, whose long-running and fatally controversial Politically Incorrect was offed in June by ABC, has taken over Miller's 11:30 p.m. Friday time slot on the cable network. [more]

This is very good news.