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Volume 3 Issue 42… Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race… October 27, 2000

Note: The DISH is based on themes from T.H.I.N.C. (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution. According to the President's Initiative on Race, "The issues that this book brings to the forefront are important in our efforts to achieve the goals set forth by the President for the Initiative. This work will serve as a solid resource for us as we begin to examine these critical issues." For your copy of T.H.I.N.C., The DISH or to submit comments, contact ICIM, Inc. at (404) 244-6023 or email us at icim@bellsouth.net. The DISH © 2000

It was decision time for Republicans in 1862. Its two factions - Radicals led by Sen. Charles Summers and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens and Conservatives - led by Abraham Lincoln had been split by the Compromise of 1850, and Civil War raged. Several big victories early in the war brought a reluctant Lincoln to the conclusion conscription would not field the Union Army and his commander lacked the will to win.

Following the Battle at Antietam September 22, 1862, Lincoln accepted the Radicals' strategy outlined in the Confiscation Acts 1861 & 1862. These Acts declared "the property of persons supporting the 'rebellion' subject to forfeiture to the US government; freed slaves of persons aiding and supporting the insurrection; and authorized the president to employ Negroes, including freed slaves, as soldiers." Faced with defeat, Lincoln surrendered his effort to prevent the quick destruction of slavery to save the Union. Emancipation not only produced over 190,000 black soldiers, sailors and laborers, it also forced the Confederacy to use battle harden troops to guard against insurrection.

Lincoln's command structure had generals in charge who knew how to fight wars but very few knew how to win one. Beginning the war with General Winfield Scott, Lincoln moved to the inexperienced George B. McClellan in November 1861. Following McClellan's disastrous tour, General Henry W. Halleck could not close the deal. It was not until 1864, Lincoln realized his best General, Ulysses S. Grant was carrying water in the West for officers who should have been running dispatches. Lincoln did not hire Grant for his snazzy dress. A drunkard, Grant's reputation was richly deserved, but he knew how to win a war.

Mike Luchovich is political cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. There have been other occasions when his sense of humor and ability to address a topic succinctly moved me to unstoppable laughter, but his recent look at George W. Bush, Jr.'s (Dubya) lack of gravitas is priceless. Kudos to Mike on Thursday (10/19/00)'s screamer in which Dubya is drawn as a schoolboy. Ad nauseam, he is reciting his campaign theme sound bytes in response to his very frustrated teacher's question, "what is three plus three?" This jewel is priceless!

On Wednesday, October 11, 2000, Luchovich has Dubya making a funny about being a dummy. If you have not seen these pieces of political satire, check them out. Kudos to Mike for giving us something to THINC about with art that raises serious questions about us.

Disgruntled wants to know: What does it say about the state of the American political system that some are seriously considering letting a dummy run the country?

Disgruntled feels: The one-mind media pushed the bar so low for Dubya that even Ty at two can climb over it. Ty can put a few words together to form a sentence, but do not ask follow-up questions. It can get confusing.

Disgruntled says: Alas, the alliance between blacks and Democrats is peculiar. Allow me to explain. Forced by circumstances not of their choosing, blacks vote for the lesser of the two evils.

by John Burl Smith

Withering under a sustained media attack by political pundits, Vice President Al Gore has been declared toast. Reminiscent of the unrelenting assault to impeach Bill Clinton, these same forces are trying to convince the American people that when it comes to selecting the President knowledge, competence, articulation and command of facts are far less important qualities than being "liked." During negotiations with foreign leaders, they pretend that having a President who merely follows his advisors' script and does not make any major blunders, as he "holds his own," will safeguard Americans in a nuclear world.

Presently, Gore is in the same position as Pres. Abraham Lincoln in 1862, with the Civil War going badly and a party going in one direction and he in the other. Losing battle after battle, because his Generals were satisfied controlling territory, rather than defeating the Confederate Army, it was decision time for Lincoln. Although he did not want to free slaves, Lincoln's need for troops forced him to grant total emancipation and put Ulysses S. Grant in charge of the war.

Vice President Gore, like Lincoln, needs a General who knows how to win not just fight a war. Furthermore, his potential army needs the kind of commitment emancipation offered slaves. Gore's reluctance to address the race issue in America will cost him the Presidency, just as surely as it would have cost Lincoln the war and the Union. The gentlemen's agreement established in the 3/5ths Compromise of Article I Section 2 of the United States Constitution is the source of the unequal value represented by the gap between blacks and whites in America. Like nails staked Jesus to the cross, the last vestige of slavery ties everyone to institutionalized racism. Al Gore must commit to leading the charge to stamp out racism in our lifetime! John 2000

For an insightful look at the "honest broker" role of America in the Middle East without getting into all that historical stuff, check out Dune - the movie, which is based on the novel by Frank Herbert. As the "honest broker," America is like the gilled-navigators in Dune. The gilled-navigators require spice (oil) to function; their business is transportation - movement. Spice allows them to "fold space," i.e., travel without moving.

Dune, a desert planet, is the only place in the known universe where the spice exists. Only concerned with the flow of spice, the gilled-navigators plot with the Emperor to kill the one person who can free Dune's enslaved people. Sounds familiar? Compare the political dynamics of controlling spice with the politics of oil. As America plays "honest broker" and supports the killing of Palestinian children, Americans are gilled navigators. Watch Dune and see these "honest brokers" in action.

All across the country, groups of Turnout 75% participants watched all three presidential debates. Minus any third party candidate, Turnout 75% participants decided Vice President Al Gore came out on top. Following the third debate, CNN polled its group of undecided voters, and they overwhelmingly chose Gore as the debate winner. Yet, the media downplayed Gore's victory, making a concerted effort to paint the outcome in George W. Bush, Jr.'s favor. Some pundits and talking heads kept saying people do not like Al Gore. Given such obvious bias, one is forced to ask, whatever happened to "fair and balanced," or "this is CNN," the source from which the world receives its "impartial" news coverage?

The DISH Turnout 75% poll of likely African American voters found more than half, 51% do not like Al Gore, about the same number that did not personally like Clinton at the height of the sex scandal. A whopping 79% did not like the debate format or the presidential politics media coverage. Moreover, a staggering 88% of those polled do not like George W. Bush, Jr. When asked who they would likely vote for Tuesday, November 7^th, 94% said Al Gore, 2% Ralph Nader, 1% Bush and 3% remained undecided.

In discussing these results with Turnout 75% voters, a common concern centered on the presidential campaign media coverage. Some likened it to what they call "Clinton lynching." For them, how the media handled coverage of the impeachment scandal in many ways resemble its presidential election coverage, and Turnout 75% likely voters do not like it, which works in Al Gore's favor.

Blah!

The day for declaring their homeland to end Israeli occupation came and went. Expressing their frustration with this turn of events, Palestinian demonstrators took to the streets to hurl rocks at armed Israeli soldiers. Against a new millennium backdrop, the Holy Land fight is reminiscent of the biblical David versus Goliath battle. Again, rocks and slingshots are pitted against the superior power of a giant.

Armed with sophisticated automatic weapons, Israeli soldiers take aim and fire, killing Palestinians at will; it is like shooting crabs in a bucket. Documenting this human drama is the one-mind controlling the media. The death toll grows; "most are Palestinians." No percentages are given in this embarrassingly one-sided slaughter. Ashamed, the international community has condemned Israel. Many Americans are also troubled; our country pays for the bullets used to kill these children. Blah on the one mind controlling the media. While you may not call the Palestinian deaths lynching, among their people, they are martyrs; their deaths are crucifixions. America is creating future enemies with its lack of balance and impartiality as an "honest broker!"

The Presidential Debate Commission selected Jim Lehrer of PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer to moderate all three debates. Lehrer had carte blanche on selecting questions. Republican Vice Presidential candidate Dick Cheney has a dismal voting record, but he has voted more over the last two decades than Lehrer. According to Lehrer's biographical sketch, he does not vote. This fact is pointed to with pride. A man of principle, he is so non-political as to be completely impartial.

Impartiality is a desirable trait for mediators and facilitators. However, Lehrer's selection as moderator for the most watched political events for voters in the nation is ironic. Voter participation is at an all-time low. Too few exercise the most fundamental right of citizens in a democracy, the right to vote. Lehrer's selection as moderator sends the wrong message to the young.

With no third party representation, rigid formats and a moderator that does not vote, the Presidential Debate Committee succeeded in looking like hypocrites. True to his impartial billing, Lehrer did not ask one question about race, the most important problem facing the country. When he had the opportunity to make Bush explain "strict construction," he did not ask a follow-up uestion.

by John Burl Smith

The Holistic Student in T.H.I.N.C. (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution by Yohannes Sharriff Smith is the ideal mindset to elevate one's consciousness. An idea is the most powerful force in the universe. Once some thoughts are expressed, no force or power can resist their impact. Freedom is such an idea. Never achieved by humanity, freedom remains a goal toward which tyrants give ground grudgingly.

The force of freedom's power was captured epically by Charles Dickens' epic A Tale of Two Cities and Victor Hugo's Les Misérable. Set in Paris, both portray audacious stands for freedom against backdrops of merciless oppression. Slavery's descendants know desperate struggles against incredible odds fired by a yearning for the sweet breath of freedom. Even after leading young radicals during the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike, freedom's power has not lifted black people out of the chasm of inequality. Consequently, I remained mystified by scenes of young Parisians fighting behind barricades getting blown away by cannon fire.

Daily, television and newspapers bring Dickens and Hugo's visions alive in new millennium living rooms. Watching Palestinian children brave guns and rockets hiding behind makeshift barricade with only rocks to throw at heavily armed Israeli soldiers curdles the blood. Two maddening questions return daily with all their horrible implications: "How can a civilized world stand idly by and allow such inhumanity, and what conditions make people willingly face death in such situations?"

As A Tale of Two Cities and Les Misérable dramatized, only ideas have the power to inspire personal disregard for disaster. The force of faith in ideas can break down walls, remove mountains and open blind eyes. Homo sapiens have only an idea about what humanity is. There are no absolute models. Like freedom, humanity is a thought held close to the heart; each one must fight even hopeless battles to bring closer its realization. T.H.I.N.C. about it!

John 2000

Email: goodwork@igc.org "Thanks for presenting J. Smith's historical review of Zionism. I've followed this subject for a long time. In fact, most of my living relatives whom I have ever met are Israeli Jews, escapees/survivors of the European Holocaust and their descendants. So, it was particularly good to see included what I often talk about -- the parallel between the settler state expansion of the U.S. and that of Jewish political domination in Israel/Palestine. Sure, the factors of oil domination ambitions of U.S. corporate interests and simplistic misunderstanding of the U.S. population about oil and energy always have a lot to do with policy. But also impacting this is the fact that the U.S., as political entity and culture, has never come clean or spoken at all about penitence and amends for its cruel and murderous theft of a continent. The defensiveness about that unresolved guilt (and about its perpetuation and repetition IN THE POLITICS of corporate globalism) could be one driving factor in this determined preference for Israeli expansion over equality, freedom, and peacemaking.

Facing the meaning of the policies for me in no way a loss of respect for the tragedies suffered by members of my family, or the heroism in their search for and establishment of a secure life for themselves and their descendants. It does, however, mean an obligation on my part to see with care and determination that my connection to the matter (as U.S. citizen/resident, tax resistor, activist, etc.) be as carefully directed as I can make it -- in much the way that my connection to other U.S. corporate, racial, economic policies be examined and conducted with wise resistance.

Email: BonnettWT@state.gov You can say what you will, but Israel has all rights to live in the land of Israel. There is no such thing as a "Palestinian" people. They're arabs. Until Israel became a nation, no one ever heard of Palestinian people. No petition was EVER made to create a homeland until Israel was in the planning stages. If you even care to recall that the Jews were forced out of Israel in 70 AD by the Romans and the Romans renamed it Palestine (a Latin word of Philistines). Over 2000 years Bedouins have lived there in the desert. The Turks moved in, then the British. During all this time no one called for a "Palestinian" state UNTIL Israel as a nation plans started. Besides, the original 1948 U.N. resolution calls for "Palestine" to be Jordan and Israel to the Jews. Now, here we are and everyone is saying that Israel should go back to the pre-1967 boundaries when they were attacked by arabs on 3 fronts, and won.

by Dot

Few African Americans in the Turnout 75% poll say they plan to vote for Bush. His "strict construction" litmus test for Supreme Court judges makes voting for the Texas governor out of the question. Then, there is the death penalty and the question of criminal justice.

Dubya talks about personal responsibility. As a young man he committed numerous indiscretions, but no one sent him to prison for either smoking pot or snorting cocaine. In Texas and across America, those youthful indiscretions are criminal activities for which many are locked up in prisons. Bush claims to have a changed heart. Some wonder how dark the organ must have been to still be the color of soot.

Pro-life, Bush believes killing people saves lives. Texas leads the nation in executions. Utterly convoluted, when expressed in the thirty-second sound bytes of campaign slogans, his philosophy makes the man an oxymoron. A walking contradiction, Bush is a compassionate conservative, a hypocrite. Some call him a dummy. Those who know better call him sonny, a dangerous man with powerful sponsors.

His sponsors make a Dubya presidency scary. The forces behind him are international players. Their interest is making money; their loyalty to any country is questionable. Internationalists, they are not concerned about what is in the best interest of Americans or the country, nor are they concerned if America looks like a hypocrite in international circles. Under Dubya, the government will function more than ever as an arm of some oil-based conglomerate. Like former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Bush, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director; Dubya is sponsored by big oil interests.

The Dark Knight - Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is an avid Cartoon Network fan. When told he would lose the privilege if he did not do better in school, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro exclaimed, "Man! The school business is becoming a real pain.

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