BOBBEE BEE: BASKETBALL, BIGOTRY AND A BILLION-DOLLAR BLOW-JOB PT.4

By Eric Graham 

NORTH CAROLINA-(BASN)-Despite the NBA banning Donald Sterling for life and fining him $2.5 million, the 80-year former owner isn’t going out without a fight, despite the $2 billion sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

And to be honest, I don’t blame him.


Why? Because, Sterling knows the “Goys” or Gentiles are relatively stupid people, according to their holy book, who are so in love with their sports, religion, talk shows and filthy movies, that they will forget all about his comments over time, especially as he hires four private investigation firms to look for dirt on the NBA’s other 29 owners  as well as on Commissioner Adam Silver and former commissioner David Stern.


For instance, despite ESPN’s columnist Bomani Jones exposing him back in 2006 in an article on Espn.com entitled Sterling’s racism should be news, shockingly, nobody seemed to care or even read it. Not even then- NBA Commissioner, David Stern, for that matter.


Jones, in fact, revealed in his writings that: Sterling was sued by the Department of Justice on Monday for housing discrimination. Though Sterling has no problem paying black people millions of dollars to play basketball, the feds allege that he refused to rent apartments in Beverly Hills and Koreatown to black people and people with children.


What’s even more disturbing? Sterling was sued for housing discrimination by 19 plaintiffs in 2003, according to The Associated Press.


In this case, Sterling was accused of trying to drive blacks and Latinos out of buildings he owned in Koreatown. In November, Sterling was ordered to pay a massive settlement in that case. Terms were not disclosed, but the presiding judge said this was “one of the largest” settlements ever in this sort of matter. The tip of the iceberg: Sterling had to play $5 million just for the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.


And the coup de grace? Neither that case, nor the more recent one, has qualified as big news.

Despite these revelations revealed by Jones, Sterling continued his racists ways and was exposed again in a recording leaked to TMZ, as he argued with his “personal assistant” V.Stiviano about her posting photos of herself with Black people on Instragram.

“In your lousy f**ing Instagrams, you don’t have to have yourself with — walking with black people,” Sterling says.

“If it’s white people, it’s OK?” the woman responds. “If it was Larry Bird, would it make a difference?”

“Admire him, bring him here, feed him, f**k him, but don’t put (Magic) on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me,” he said.

With such hatred spewing out of the mouth of Sterling toward his “alleged” mistress V. Stiviano, whom  claims that their relationship was one of a father and daughter, the 80-year billionaire’s jealousy of seeing her photographed with Black men, especially Magic Johnson, whom he bashed on CNN during the interview with Anderson Cooper, was steamed in what Dr. Francis Cress Welsing, the author of the Isis Papers, refers to as the fear of being genetically annihilated by people of color.

The fear of genetic annihilation, in fact, is the main reason; Zionists were ethnically slaughtering the Palestinians in 1948, which is still being practiced currently today.

From a sexual standpoint, this is what I call the Jack Johnson effect, the Tiger Wood syndrome, the Kobe Bryant backdrop, the Obama-Drama, where the fear of “the Big Black Buck’s” penis having the power to change the landscape of the global as well as the power dynamic in America and throughout the world.

Deepest and darkest thoughts

Why? Because, this fear of a Black planet continues to haunt and slowly creep into the consciousness of Caucasians as they blurt out their deepest and darkest thoughts from their sub-conscious mind.

The battle between the old and the new has, in fact, left many old white men and women being shamed and embarrassed by their words and ideas that are dancing in their demented minds, whether their coming from former Food Network’s cooking star Paula Deen, Don Imus, Pat Buchanan or Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher, who was captured on camera recently expressing his opinion that Black people were better off in slavery than we are today.

Why? Because, many of them feel they are losing their world to the false premise of “multi-culturalism,” which they believes erodes their European Identity, false Christian cultural and Zionist supremacist beliefs.

This “browning” of America, in fact, was made evident as Sterling slipped up, or got caught up, or set up, by speaking his mind, while chastising V.Stiviano, who seemed to be egging him on.

V: It’s like saying, “Let’s just persecute and kill all of the Jews.”

DS: Oh, it’s the same thing, right?

V: Isn’t it wrong? Wasn’t it wrong then? With the Holocaust? And you’re Jewish, you understand discrimination.

DS: You’re a mental case, you’re really a mental case. The Holocaust, we’re comparing with—
V: Racism! Discrimination.

DS: There’s no racism here. If you don’t want to be… walking… into a basketball game with a certain… person, is that racism?

After reading this part of the transcript of Sterling’s conversation with V.Stiviano, most people, who are ignorant to the game being played, fail miserably to hear the jewels being dropped by the Clippers’ owner.

The Holocaust Card

Let me explain; notice how Sterling tries to use the Holocaust Card to neutralize his racist views.

This is a standard procedure or tactic by most Zionist, who feel they have a monopoly on the word (Holocaust), while arrogantly overlooking other ethnic groups’ pain and suffering.

In effect, most people forget that over 20 million Chinese died in World War II.

Plus, students of history seemingly have lost respect for the African Holocaust or the Native American Holocaust in their quest to “shed tears” for the Jewish Holocaust only, even though it took place on foreign soil.

This, however is coming straight out of the play book of their founding father Theodore Herzl, a known atheist, who back in the 19th century, thought that “so-called” European Jews  could not assimilate into society. So, he reached out to create a place where they could be on their own.

Shockingly, that place was originally not Israel, it was Argentina.  Then Uganda, before he decided to use the Biblical claims of Moses to justify their thievery with the help of the Christian Right, who have faith in their fraudulent claims of them being the “chosen people of God,” when, in fact, they are actually Khazars or Ashkenazi, who descendants are from Germany.

Not surprisingly, as Christian Hitchens, the New York Times Bestseller author, who wrote God is not Great – How Religion Poisons Everything, brilliantly stated: “…… the Holocaust has become a secular religion….”

To pig back off of that point, no puns intend, the author of the book The Wandering, Who?, Gilad Atzmo, who many would probably call a self-hating Jew stated, ““Thus the Holocaust religion is protected by laws, while every other historical narrative is debated openly by historians, intellectuals and ordinary people.


The Holocaust sets itself as an eternal truth that transcends critical discourse…

“As we can see, the Holocaust functions as an ideological interface. it provides its follower with a logos….To a certain extent, we are all subject to this religion; some of us are worshippers, others are just subject to its power. “Those who attempt to revise Holocaust history are subject to abuse by the high priests of this religion. The Holocaust religion constitutes the Western ‘real.’ We are neither allowed to touch it, nor are we permitted to look into it. Very much like the ancient Israelites who were to obey their God but never question Him, we are marching into the void.

This, however, is not some hidden conspiracy theory.


Why? Because, it is directly in our face now to be analyzed on all the mainstream news programs thanks to Donald Sterling and TMZ.


But due to our fear of being labeled  “anti-Semitic,” which is an oxymoron, it is not being discussed.
Yes, people are “scared to death” to discuss the “Jewish Power Dynamic,” whether it’s in sports, entertainment or politics.

Why? Because, in the USA today, speaking out against the evils of Zionism is career suicide. Just ask former White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who despite covering the White House for more than five decades, was forced to retire after being approached by Rabbi David Nesenoff, who approached her with a camcorder outside the White House and asked her opinion on Israel, in which she stated:

“I think they should get the hell out of Palestine….Remember these people are occupied and it’s their land,” Thomas said. “It’s not German and it’s not Polish.”

Politics of Fear.

That, however, was in 2010.
But, we saw evidence of this again, when Secretary of State John Kerry was shunned as if he was former President Jimmy Carter after he published his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid when he warned that Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state” in the absence of a peace deal during a meeting with the Trilateral Commission.

Why? Because, before Kerry could walk away from the microphone, Eric Cantor (R-Va.) demanded that he apologize to Israel, saying that the use of the word apartheid “has routinely been dismissed as offensive and inaccurate.”

Plus, by using the word (apartheid) made peace even harder to achieve in that region. Along with Cantor’s criticism of Kerry’s word choice, while describing Israel,  Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called for him to step down as well by saying: “It is my belief that Secretary Kerry has thus proven himself unsuitable for his position and that before any further harm is done to our alliance with Israel, he should offer President Obama his resignation and the president should accept it.”

Despite Washington’s politicians fearing Israel more than their fabricated God, Israeli academics such as Neve Gordon, who served as a member of the Israel peace camp for almost thirty years, referred to the Israel as “an apartheid state,” along with Jewish scholar Richard Falk, formerly of Princeton,  who came to the same conclusion, when he said that Israel carried out “systematic and continued effort to change the ethnic composition of East Jerusalem…[Israel’s policies are] unacceptable characteristics of colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

“What is called occupation is now more widely understood to be a form of annexation, the embodiment of apartheid in the sense that there’s a discriminatory dual system of law, giving legal protection to the Israeli settlers and subjecting the Palestinian population under occupation to a continuing existence without rights.


“Every increment of enlarging the settlements or every incident of house demolition is a way of worsening the situation confronting the Palestinian people and reducing what prospects they might have as the outcome of supposed peace negotiations.”

So, in retrospect, I guess it is safe to say, that Sterling was practicing a form of apartheid with his housing discrimination case against blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles in 2003.

With that said, maybe this is the culture which Donald Sterling was referring to when talking with V.Stiviano, which he said  was too BIG to CHANGE.

Breaking Down Donald Sterling: Bigotry, Basketball, and a Billion-Dollar Blow-Job pt.5 continues.

Eric D.Graham, a graduate of Winston-Salem State University, where he received a B.A. in Mass Communication with a concentration in Radio and Television, with a minor in History, with an emphasis in African-American Studies, is currently the Managing Editor of Black Athlete Sports Network, where his articles appear daily along with his controversial cartoon character Bobbee Bee “The Hater.” Graham can be reached at lbiass34@yahoo.com or go to www.bobbeethehater.blogspot.com 

BOBBEE BEE: COMBING TO A CITY NEAR YOU, SO HAIRY UP AND GET YOUR TICKET

BOBBEE BEE THE HATER THE MOVIE will be shown on September 13, 2014 at 6PM at Johnston Community College in Smithfield, NC. PLEASE COME OUT AND SUPPORT OUR YOUNG PEOPLE and their hard work putting this film together!!!!

BOBBEE BEE: THIS IS CREW LOVE

Bobbee Bee "The Hater" a.k.a The Bad Boy of "B-Movies" is back!!
After having his first independent film rejected by several movie festivals this spring and losing the Oscar for Best Picture to 12 Years a Slave, which was directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who won the Oscar for best director, as well as losing to Matthew McConaughey , who won the Oscar for best actor for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club at the 86th Academy Awards, the Ghetto "SuperStar" along with his crew is coming to Johnson Community College in Smithfield, N.C. on September 13, 2014 at 6PM in order to show his film to a new audience of moviegoers.


So, make sure you bring your entire family out to see what the film festivals missed.


Besides, if you don't laugh and learn something in the process, you're nothing but a Hater!!

BOBBEE BEE: CREATIVITY TECHNIQUES

 BY JEFF DAVIDSON (with additional information from Eric Graham)

1. Adopting the Mindset of an Innovator

In today's business world, if you want to progress in your career you must be an innovator; someone who can approach problems creatively, devise solutions to recurring time and resource issues, and figure better ways to get things done.

2. EUREAKA MOMENTS AND THE SLOW GRIND

Have you ever been standing in the shower, sitting in a steam room, or maybe lying in bed when, bingo, a tremendous idea beans you on the noggin? We've likely all had great notions come to us when we weren't thinking about anything in particular. Then "Eureka Effect."

3. All in a Day's Work

Remember, if innovating were easy, everyone would be good at it. Sometimes you have to step out of your own arena, abandon your comfort zone, and blaze new paths in order to get beyond the obvious

4. Brainstorming for Fun and Profit

Brainstorming is a wonderful technique to generate ideas, especially when you want to bust out of a rut or devise a new way of looking at things.  Usually conducted with several people, the goal of a brainstorming session is to encourage participants to speak freely.

A leader or moderator possess a question such as, "How can we accomplish XYZ?" Participants then speak up with their ideas.

Whenever you engage others in the problem or challenge you face, you increase the chances of deriving an innovative solution to a challenge.

So, go ahead and create you own Dream Team!

5. Getting Past the Haters

In the workplace, new perspectives, ideas, and innovations, even in cultures that seek to welcome them, may be greeted by some on your team or within your department with folded arms.

Haters, people who want to be totally convinced before they're willing to support you, may come in the form of bosses, coworkers, or staff.

I say don't let Haters dampen your enthusiasm or diminish your energy. Whether or not your idea is warmly receive the first time you introduce it, proceed as if the new idea will generate little interest. By anticipating potential naysaying in advance, you can present your case in a manner that will generate higher receptivity.

6. Confronting Old Power Structures

ACCORDING TO cartoonist Eric Graham, ...THE MY-WAY OR THE HIGHWAY THEORY GOES OUT THE WINDOW.

ESPECIALLY, IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING NEW AND FRESH TO ADD TO THE WORLD. IF YOU PERSITANT, YOU CAN CHIP AWAY AT THE OLD POWER STRUCTURE, WHO POSE AS THE GATEKEEPERS OF CHANGE.

7. Mastering the Art of Paying Attention

They say the devil went down to Georgia, but then the devil also is in the details. Either way, paying attention to the right minutiae can increase your ability to craft innovative solutions to on-the-job challenges.

8. A Little Planning, Please

It's useless to have a great idea, mount your horse, and ride-off in all directions. Like James Bond, you need to stay cool, calm, and collected to navigate the trickiest of situations-shaken but not stirred. It's prudent when you have a great idea to devise a plan for introducing it, stay focused, and win by acclamation.
 

9. Lessons from Worst-Case Scenario Thinking

You know what they say; an average man learns from his own mistakes, the wise men learns from the mistakes of others, and the fool never learns. You're no fool, right?

10. Staying Alert During Mundane Times

Captain Edward J. Smith, of the RMS Titantic in 1908 was quoted as saying,"When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly forty years at sea I merely say 'unevenful.".....I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck. I never have been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort."

This quote, ironically, occurred four years before Smith perished, along with more than 1,500 passengers and crew on the Titantic.

11. Work Diligently at Your Craft

Here are a few Questions, you need to ask youself as you work on your craft:
What is my product missing?
What can be done to create a better verison of the product I have produced?
Are my ideas really new?

12. Listening to That Little Voice

Everyone has a little voice inside of them. You know, the one that says, "Be on time," and "Don't litter," and "Call your mother." Listening to that little voice gets tougher as we're bombarded with more and more external messages. When we slow down, sit still, and silently reflect, the voice gets the speak. It tells us to go this way or that way, and whether to proceed at all.

13. Developing Concentration

Concentration skills are on the wane. Cell-phones, e-mail, and instant messenger capabilities haven't helped. When you're bombarded by multiple information streams, it's hard to sustain focus. Innovation and creativity suffer-as does decision making.

14. Find Some Breathing Space

Taking a breather is easier than taking time for reflection! While breathing is as vital to life as food and water, who thinks about the way they breathe? Breathing is essential on a physiological level as well as on a mental, spiritual, and emotional level. Proper breathing can be a means of achieving relaxation, balance, and peace in an increasingly hectic, overanxious world.

15. Changing Your Perspective

If you wear contact lenses this is familiar. Your standing by a sink or elsewhere trying to change your contact lenses. Just your luck, a lens slips out of your fingers. Your look down to retrieve the tiny little membrane, but you don't see it.

You look some more. You look sideways. You lean over for a closer look. You map out a perimeter of the area. You don't see the lens. Minutes pass and you're perturbed. Normally, taking out a lens requires only a few moments. You hadn't bargained on standing around for six or eight minutes in total frustration.

JEFF DAVIDSON IS THE AUTHOR OF NUMEROUS BOOKS INCLUDING THE 60 SECOND ORGANIZER, 2ND EDITION AND THE 60 SECOND SELF-STARTER AS WELL AS THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO MANAGING YOUR TIME. DAVIDSON, A RESIDENT OF CHAPHEL HILL, NC, IS ALSO A NOTED PROFESSIONAL SPEAKER.

BOBBEE BEE: I HAVE THE POWER!!!

In order to obtain a "little" power, Bobbee Bee "The Hater" has been reading 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers.

Here are a couple of things that he has learned so far..


 
1. Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated like one

The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated; In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

2. Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards you Deal

The best description are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: Your victims feel they are in control, but are actually your puppets.

Give people options that come out in your favor whichever one they choose. Force them to make choices between the lesser of two evils, both of which serve your purpose. Put them on the horns of a dilemma: They are gored wherever they turn.

3. Re-create Yourself

Do not accept the role that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience.

Be the master of your own image rather than letting other define it for you.

Incorporated dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions-your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life-

4. Stir up Waters to Catch Fish

Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive.

You must always stay calm and objective.

But if you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage.

Put your enemies off-balance.

Find the chink in their vanity through which you can rattle them and you hold the strings.

5. Make your Accomplishments Seem Effortless

Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease.

All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed.

When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more.

Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work-it only raises questions.

Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.-


6. Enter Action with Boldness

If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it.


Your doubts and hesistation will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness.

Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity.

Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid. -

 7. Play on People's Need to Believe to Create a Cultlike Folllowing

People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow.

Keep your words vague but of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking.

Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organized religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.


8. Plan All the Way to the End

The ending is everything. Plan all the way to it, taking all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hand work and give the glory to others.


By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.

 9. Play the Perfect Courtier

The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yield to superiors, and asserts power over others in the mot oblique and graceful manner.

 Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.-

10. Master the Art of Timing

Never seem to be in a hurry-hurrying betrays a lack of control over yourself, and over time.

Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually.

Become a detective of the right moment; sniff out the spirit of the times, the trends that will carry you to power.

Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached  fruition.

If you like what you are learning contact Eric Graham at lbiass34@yahoo.com

“The More Effective Evil” Curtain Call and the Prospect of Hilary 2016

by Danny Haiphong

“Obama’s exit will conclude a period of history where the even harsher tasting ‘Satan Sandwich’ of austerity, imperialist adventure, and state repression was swallowed with little resistance by the most progressive forces residing in the American empire.”

 

The corporate media has been preparing the Obama Administration’s curtain call for the 2016 election cycle. Obama’s diligent service for corporate empire stabilized the political rule of imperialism at a high cost for oppressed people everywhere.

Now, with the Obama Administration’s popularity at an all time low from the US to South Africa to the Asia Pacific, corporate media syndicates have set their sights on Hilary Clinton’s possible 2016 candidacy. During her tenure as Obama’s first Secretary of State (2009-2013), Hillary performed the role of top lapdog for the Obama Administration’s imperialist ventures. It is important for the radical left to begin preparing for what’s to come while continuing to struggle against prevailing conditions, as the Obama Administration is far from finished with its task of managing the affairs of corporate empire at the people’s expense.

The few of us who have spent nearly six years fighting Obama-mania are glad to see him go.

The Obama Administration consolidated the rule of corporate imperialism far more effectively than the Bush Jr. Administration.

This is why Black Agenda Report has called Barack Obama “the more effective evil” from the minute he began making policy decisions.

Obama’s mere presence in the White House built a dangerous white liberal and Black American consensus that terribly confused the actions and positions of the US left. While the Obama Administration was busy militarizing Africa, propping up the prison state, privatizing education, slashing entitlements, waging NATO-led wars all over Eurasia, dropping drones, eroding civil liberties, and bailing out Wall Street, white liberals and Black misleaders spent much of their time defending Obama’s actions and seeking Democratic Party approval.

This balance of forces stifled radical political resistance, as best evidenced by the deterioration of the US anti-imperialist movement and the rapid dissolution of Occupy Wall Street.

“The left will need to carry out an offensive against materialized fascism or decide, as it has for the last six years, to continue attaching itself to the interests of the corporate ruling class.”

 

The end of the Obama era and the prospect of Hillary present an interesting challenge to grassroots left forces in the years to come. The Obama presidency’s affect on the consciousness of exploited and oppressed people allowed the ruling circle to institutionalize police-state laws like the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and imperialist projects such as “humanitarian intervention” with little organized resistance.


Race to the Top and the Affordable Care Act institutionalized privatization at the national level. Thus, state repression, capitalist austerity, and imperialist intervention will find strong consensus within both parties of the US establishment come 2016.

Starting from this point, the left will need to carry out an offensive against materialized fascism or decide, as it has for the last six years, to continue attaching itself to the interests of the corporate ruling class. Hillary Clinton appears ready to carry on what Obama has wrought.

Her prospects for success are bright if the US left decides to deem her the “lesser-evil” like it did with Obama.

Hillary Clinton is a rabid Democratic Party imperialist whose record as Secretary of State makes her a welcome addition to the Oval Office of capitalist-imperialist treachery.

In 2011, following the extrajudicial murder of Muammar Gaddafi by US-NATO bandits, Clinton reported to the media “We came, we saw, he died.”

This demonstration of Western imperial arrogance capped off the successful US-NATO overthrow of independent Libya by way of “humanitarian intervention.”


During this same period, Clinton staunchly advocated for the escalation of US-NATO involvement in Syria and continued pressuring Iran to open its economy to Western capitalist ruin with starvation sanctions and military threats. These moves made Obama’s first Secretary of State a darling to US imperialism despite the loss of political points suffered from the embarrassing “blowback” experienced in Benghazi on Sept. 11^th 2012.

“Hilary’s imperialist policy positions represent a further move to the right for the Democratic Party in its attempt to escape accountability for the disasters of Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine.”

 

Since being relieved of her duties as Secretary of State, Hillary has been setting her still unofficial campaign trail ablaze with foreign policy positions that veer to the right of Obama.

Last March, the Wall Street Journal covered Hilary’s speech at the American Jewish Congress in New York.

In it, she stated bluntly that a military option was “on the table” for Iran if the nation didn’t capitulate to US demands of halting uranium development. Earlier in the same month, Hillary spoke to a crowd in California comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler for his responses to the US engineered illegal coup in Ukraine that put US-NATO supported fascists in power.


As the Wall Street Journal article reports, Hilary’s imperialist policy positions represent a further move to the right for the Democratic Party in its attempt to escape accountability for the disasters of Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine.

For these positions, Hillary is guaranteed plenty of support from the Zionist Israeli settler state and imperialists all over if and when she announces Presidential candidacy. However, imperialism according to Hillary Clinton brings the world closer to a World War III scenario and further exposes the collaboration between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to economic and foreign policy endeavors.

Many people in the US were shocked when the Obama Administration abandoned each and every progressive campaign promise made in 2008.

In denial, the white liberal and Black misleadership opportunists cried out Republican “obstructionism” and “lesser evil” dogmas to avoid the fact that the Obama Administration was a natural outgrowth of US imperialism. It should not be forgotten that the last Democratic Party President and Hilary’s husband, Bill Clinton, worked hard to collaborate with the much-vaunted right-wing of imperialism. Clinton eliminated welfare, passed the “three strikes” Omnibus Crime Bill that greatly expanded the prison-state, bombed a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant, instituted NAFTA’s job killing proposals, and provided financial and logistical support for the Rwanda and Congolese genocides.

Obama’s exit will conclude a period of history where the even harsher tasting “Satan Sandwich” of austerity, imperialist adventure, and state repression was swallowed with little resistance by the most progressive forces residing in the American empire. It remains to be seen whether working class Black America will break with neo-colonialism or whether working class leadership will break with their masters in Washington. Our task, no matter who takes the reigns from the “More Effective Evil,” is do everything we can to facilitate both.

Danny Haiphong is an activist and case manager in the Greater Boston area. You can contact Danny at: wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com.

BOBBEE BEE: I, TOO, SING AMERICA.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.                             

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

by Frederick Douglas

Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”


But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary!

Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.

The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.

You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.

Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation (Babylon) whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.

Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!”

To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.

My subject, then, fellow citizens, is “American Slavery.” I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view.

Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of

humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate – I will not excuse.” I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave.

There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.

What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write.

When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!



For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having

among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men — digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave — we are called upon to prove that we are men?
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty?

That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery?

Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No – I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may – I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.

We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Frederick Douglass – July 4, 1852