Something momentous & historical is emerging in Ferguson, Missouri: the rebirth of Black power after two unarmed Black teens were gunned down by police. There are hundreds of Black kids across this country murdered by police in a governmental war on Black youth which includes massive incarceration for minor offenses. But media ignores all this & masks racism with pity in stories about “Black on Black violence”, teen pregnancy, drug gangs, & fatherless families–adding up to an image of lawless dysfunction in the Black community.

Prominent Black civil rights organizations like the NAACP, Rainbow/PUSH (Jesse Jackson’s group) & Urban League sold their political souls a long time ago when they began accepting & soliciting financial support from Wall Street. They now rely heavily on donations from Microsoft, Exxon, Kodak, Wachovia, PepsiCo, Comcast-NBC, AT&T, Verizon, Time-Warner, ABC-Disney, Sprint, T-Mobile. Corporate & foundation funding is the main way civil rights (& immigrant rights) organizations become tamed & no longer responsive to violence against & vilification of the Black community.

Black “leaders” like (Reverends, my ass!) Al Sharpton & Jesse Jackson rush to outbursts in the Black community not to lead opposition to systemic racism but to peddle voting as an alternative to independent Black political action that would drive these assaults back. Black power is what is needed, not another wimpy-assed, mealy-mouthed Democrat in Congress, like the kind that make up the Black Congressional Caucus.

What makes the Black community of Ferguson so momentous & historic is that despite the intervention of Sharpton & Jackson to rein in militance, they are forging a Black power movement & turning their backs on compromise & those who counsel it. Not only do they continue protests & legal challenges to the cops, but at a meeting last weekend, 3,000 people gathered in a St. Louis arena to hear the NAACP & other Black mis-leaders speak. A section of that crowd, described as the youth, stood up & turned their backs on the president of the NAACP & started chanting opposition. Some commentators have called this an “intergenerational” conflict & it may well be lead by youth. But these establishment civil rights organizations have been dormant for a few interminable decades & there are plenty of older people just itching to engage in struggle against the violent assaults on their kids.

Media reporting of the emerging movement in Ferguson has been grotesque, as usual when reporting on the Black community. They claim protests become violent “when demonstrators & police clash.” That’s like saying cops murder unarmed Black teens when they put their heads up against the barrel of their guns. Protestors are unarmed & demanding their rights under the US Bill of Rights to protest on-going police brutality. The caption to this photo read: “The St. Louis area has been struggling to heal since riots erupted in suburban Ferguson following Brown’s death.” Riots!? That’s what they call exercising your rights in the Black community to justify police assault. “Struggling to heal?” You send phalanxes of riot cops to a healing!? Is that like Obama sending marines to address the Ebola epidemic?

Missouri officials & media are extremely concerned about those “outside agitators” converging on Ferguson. They damn well better get used to it. St. Louis is the epicenter of an emerging Black power movement. Political resistance in the Black community has always been countered with extreme police violence, as we witnessed in the Civil Rights & Black power movements. This emerging social movement is of the greatest consequence to overcoming violent systemic racism in the US & like the Civil Rights movement, it is a call to arms demanding active solidarity across this country. Those who can, should hot foot it to Ferguson to stand with the Black community; those who can’t, should help organize rallies, speak-outs, protests in their own cities.

There will be no social transformation in the US without the leadership of Black activists, including Black women, steeled in uncompromising struggle against racism & every form of social hatred. To be part of that momentous cause requires standing with the Bill of Rights & with the Black community in Ferguson, Missouri.

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Homeless in Gaza City: this little girl is looking through the sheet that now serves as a door in her families bombed-out home. Delegates from 50 countries & 20 NGOs attended a donor conference in Cairo on Sunday to raise contributions to rebuild Gaza, which would include thousands of destroyed homes. Just removing the mountains of cement rubble will require millions in heavy equipment like bull dozers & back hoes.

Billions were pledged at the donor conference but no one should hold out high hopes all (or even most) of the money will actually be dispersed. Although it’s reported, no media has thought to investigate why billions are pledged for catastrophe & war zones like Haiti & Afghanistan & either it never gets dispersed or it’s used for other purposes like bribery & outright theft.

The media caption to this photo said the destruction is from “the war between Israel & Gaza’s militant Islamic group Hamas.” They’ll need a few extra back hoes just to take out the mountain of lies. This wasn’t a war; it was a genocide. And Hamas may be militant but they’re not psychopathic like the Israeli leadership.

This is where the massive international solidarity movement comes in. We need to evangelize the hell out of the economic & cultural boycott of Israel (BDS). If you want to make politicians in any country listen you have to squeeze their little pea brains until it hurts. BDS is already having a powerful affect on the Israeli economy & it’s international reputation. If Palestinians are to stand a chance of justice, intifada has to go international & exert massive economic & political pressure on Israel. That’s what solidarity is all about.

(Photo by Adel Hana/AP)

Last May, when Pope Francis stopped his entourage to pray briefly at the apartheid wall separating the West Bank from Israel, many heralded that as a symbolic, even unprecedented, gesture. He made another symbolic unprecedented gesture a couple days later when he stopped to pay tribute at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. The question arises: which symbolic unprecedented gesture carries more weight? Or it might be better to ask: which one is more useless? Judging from his silence during Israel’s Operation Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza, it could be argued the pope threw a couple good prayers away at that wall because symbolic doesn’t cut it when there’s a genocide involved. Neither does silence.

This symbolic gesture thing is getting carried way too far. Now we’re supposed to get all excited that Sweden & the British parliament have “recognized the state of Palestine”. Which state is that? Or more aptly, which bantustate is that? Gaza? Which Israel just spent seven weeks bombing to smithereens; which Israel holds in the grip of a murderous blockade; where Israel just maneuvered a leadership change as a condition to stop it’s genocidal rampage? Or is it the West Bank, while Israel continues expropriating Palestinian lands & moving in thousands of Zionist settlers from all over kingdom come to take over those expropriated lands?

Are Palestinians expected to be satisfied, even jubilant, over that kind of recognition & just symbolic kinds of victories? What about justice? What about self-determination? These phony-assed recognitions are a political scam. Sweden & Britain didn’t utter a peep of objection against Operation Ethnic Cleansing; in 66 years, neither has rendered even a modicum of meaningful support to Palestinians. What about the several million Palestinians still living in refugee camps? What about the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails for resisting land expropriations? What about standing up against Israel for war crimes in Gaza & for reconstruction of Gaza? What about using the immense resources of Sweden & Britain to stay the hand of Israeli genocide & mobilize international support for Palestinians? What about doing something real & not just symbolic?

The two-state solution is dead as a door nail & has been for a very long time. It is definitively buried in mountains of cement rubble that now cover the landscape of Gaza. In order to survive, Palestinians have to compromise & make temporary concessions in negotiations with Israel. But solidarity activists around the world do not have a gun to their heads. Every time one of these nations throw up another symbolic gesture–even of the unprecedented kind–we should stand steadfast for Palestinian justice–which is not a bombed out bantustate or an outpost in the West Bank. It is not the 1967 borders either. It is all of Palestine & a democratic secular state where Jews & Palestinians can live in peace. Some call that a pipe dream. It is more aptly called justice. And it is possible.

This photo is Gaza City which Sweden & Britain so proudly recognized as a Palestinian state. The pipe dream is thinking a bantustate could ever be a worthy alternative to justice.

(Photo by Adel Hana/AP)

From the annals of the US Civil Rights Movement: a 1963 protest by Black Muslims against police brutality. The viral spread of Islamophobia in the US within the context of the war on Black youth raises questions about the history & political role of the Black Muslim movement here. Not all of that history is inspiring. Louis Farrakhan, the leading Black Muslim today, represents the right-wing trend within that movement. Malcolm X, who was murdered by government agents in 1965, represents the best of that tradition. His powerful speeches lacerating the racist power structure in this country remain the most incisive & uncompromising political critique of systemic racism. He spoke for Black working people & would not bend an inch in his mission. Nor did he ever fawn before power. That’s why they murdered him.

A new civil rights movement is forging in Ferguson, Missouri, where police gunned down another unarmed Black teen after Michael Brown. Protests have not ceased nor fearless challenges by activists to the racist power structure. It’s certain many of those activists are inspired by Malcolm X’s words which still resonate powerfully nearly 50 years after his murder & will continue to resonate until racism is destroyed–however long that takes & by whatever means are necessary.

It’s certain his words are educating the new generation of Black freedom fighters who will take the fearless, uncompromising political path he forged & reject the sniveling mis-leadership of people like Al Sharpton & Jesse Jackson shilling for the racist power structure. Like Che Guevara, Malcolm X will always be on the front lines of the struggle against racist violence & tyranny.

So while Islamophobes vituperate & denounce Islam as a religion of hate, Muslims can point to Malcolm X who was a fearless apostle of justice. Anger & hatred against injustice can never be maligned; they are the very soul of social transformation.

(Photo by Gordon Parks)

Most Christians are hard-pressed to explain much of their own theology let alone that of other Christian sects & denominations. There are hundreds (thousands?) of sects that parse the Bible into infinity & then there are the Catholics who never even read the book. Some groups have supplementary theological texts (like the Mormons); some wear uniforms (like the Salvation Army); some spend all the Sabbath in church & some hot foot it out after a half hour mass. Some of those sects are just plain wacky. The exact same thing is true of Judaism. Or what’s a Talmudic scholar for?

So when media goes hog wild with the accusations about Islam, you have to know they’re talking through their asses. They don’t have a clue if the Qu’ran is even published in English. Or is it in Arabic? Or Swahili? Or Polish? Are there different versions of it as there are of the Bible? They don’t know the difference between a Sunni & a Shia. They still can’t believe there are white Muslims or African ones; they thought it was just an Arab thing. And what the hell are Black Muslims in the US all about? They don’t know so they just make things up. Because the campaign is not about Islamic theology; it’s about vilifying a religion & fostering social hatred to justify military occupations, drone bombings, neoliberal colonialism & barbarism. And political repression.

It’s one thing to deal with the low-level crap of Islamophobia. We’ve heard it all before a thousand times because racism, prejudice, & stereotype all have a certain monotonous & moronic pattern. Every time they (& we should not have to identify who “they” are) want us to hate on another group, the chorus of media & academia start droning scary tales chalk full of boogie men. A lot of people still can’t see through that stuff. It usually can’t be reasoned with but there’s no need to get on a high horse about it because the learning curve to overcome social hatred is a tough one to navigate. And what isn’t responsive to reason folds like a paper tiger before the power of a massive social movement. The US Civil Rights Movement is only one case in point.

The good news is there is no high-level to this stuff. Even when it’s published in places like the NY Times or Washington Post or debated at Harvard or Oxford, it’s the cacophony of fools. Ignorant, stupid fools. The Washington Post published an article on October 6th titled “Ben Affleck & Bill Maher are both wrong about Islamic fundamentalism” which discusses a 2013 Pew Research Center poll of 38,000 Muslims about Sharia law, honor killings, stoning of adulterers, “death for apostates”, the role of women in society. The poll concludes, contrary to the title, that Bill Maher is in fact absolutely correct & Muslims are a dangerous homicidal lot. All 1.6 billion of them. If reports coming out of Israel about the massive support for Operation Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza are at all accurate, that means Muslims have a lot in common with Zionists.

You can parse that damn Pew poll as scrupulously as some evangelicals do the Bible but what’s the point!? It’s horse manure masking itself as social science. They have a section describing a methodology so paltry it would get flunked in a middle school social studies class. No distinctions are made between social classes, Muslim denominations, rural/urban differences, whether or not the country is currently under occupation or bombing, if there have been persecutions or pogroms against them, or if they live in a country like Egypt which had a revolution pulled out from underneath them by the Egyptian military & US Pentagon. We’re supposed to believe Islamic theology not politics produces terrorists because by nature it is hateful & bellicose when in fact it’s the producers of this crap who are hateful & bellicose–& stupid. Supremely stupid.

Read the damn thing if you like; do it on an empty stomach so there are no regrettable mishaps as a result. And be aware the Washington Post article represents Muslims much more unfavorably & succinctly than the report itself–even though it’s hard to be succinct about what 1.6 billion people think & feel.

http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-full-report.pdf

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/06/ben-affleck-and-bill-maher-are-both-wrong-about-islamic-fundamentalism/

But then watch this video of Mehdi Hasan, a British Muslim & political journalist taking out some academic Islamophobes at Oxford University student union. When he’s finished with them, they’re drooling spittle into their crotches & their disgrace alone is worth the viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahPQSsvqbyY

(Photo is still shot from video of Mehdi Hasan at Oxford debate)