Volume 4 Issue 52…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…January 4, 2002

by Yohannes Sharriff Smith

...Have I seen you before?

You seem so familiar.

Yet, you feel so foreign.

Maybe I knew you long ago?

Perhaps in another life,

Uhhu no....another time and place?

Was it as a child, when I saw you last?

Could I have under-stood you so perfectly?

Trusted you totally,

And loved without question?

Can we regain our bond?

No, in retrospect, I do not recollect how...

Or why we parted.

Could I have lost you, as we played wild in a world of dark woods?

And, could that missing time have changed you so much?

I wonder how much of me

still remains of you,

my stranger in the mirror?

(Reprinted from THINC 1997)

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is something of a horror movie buff. For eight, he hangs tough on the scary stuff. When asked for his comments, while he watched "Scary Movie 2," the Dark One/Ninja Zorro declared, "It's kind of funny, but not really scary."

On December 10, 1948, the United Nations (UN) adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN called upon member states to "publicize the text of the Declaration and to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories."

Visit the UN web site at http://www.un.org for the complete Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, poverty, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6: Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.

News You Use

United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights Mary Robinson delivered the keynote address at the Celebration of International Human Rights Day, which commemorates December 10, 1948, the day the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Robinson's address - Poverty and Racism: Challenges for Human Rights and Development in Africa - is noteworthy for three reasons.

First, it provides an operational definition of poverty. Second, it quotes the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, documents not posted on the UN and Human Rights Commission's websites. Finally, it does not mention reparations, which is strange since it referenced WCAR's strong condemnation of slavery. Generally, condemnation implies reparations. If victim compensation is a tool in the Programme of Action, Robinson did not mention reparations for slavery.

According to Robinson's address (http://www.unchcr.ch/), "Poverty and racism correlate and reinforce one another. Groups most marginalized by discrimination are those trapped in poverty. In the past, poverty meant insufficient income to buy a minimum of goods and services. A more comprehensive definition has now emerged. The Committee defines poverty as the sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. This conveys much more effectively the powerlessness which lies at the heart of poverty."

On September 25, 2001, the US Public Information Office released the Nation's Household Income and Poverty Report for 2000. While more than 1 in 5 blacks live in poverty, for the first time, black poverty fell to a low of 22.1 percent.

The 2000 black median household income of $30,439 is also a new all-time high. Historically, the median black to white family income ratio fluctuated along the narrow interval of .50 to .65. White is no longer a racial category used by the Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The category used to represent whites is Non-Hispanic Whites. The 2000 median household income for this group was $45,904 for a ratio of black to white median family income of 66.3, which is a record. While records were broken, we are far from parity or income equality.

Our research reveals the reason blacks have not closed the gap or chasm of inequality is the law strictly controls black income inequality. America is a nation of laws, and the society adheres to the rule of law. White supremacy and black inequality were embraced by America's founding fathers and codified in its first law.

While some argue subsequent laws overturned the first law, we have shown there was never a specific repeal of Article 1 Section 2 of the US Constitution, merely clarification of the conditions for physical bondage - leaving the rest open to strict interpretation. Our chasm analysis of recessions and unemployment shows that outcomes in America's marketplace for goods and services, especially labor, mimic the 3/5 rule.

Thus, any gain blacks made in closing the gap in 2000 will be blown away in the current recession's cold snap. The black inequality rule of last hired first fired is already affecting the black labor market, exerting upward pressure on the black unemployment rate, which is traditionally twice the white unemployment rate.

Disgruntled says: Humor is when the audience laughs with you. Comedy is when they laugh at you, and intelligence is the ability to distinguish between the two.

Disgruntled feels: Convinced! The 11 September attacks were fund-raisers and opinion-poll makers. President-selected Bush and Israel needed some strong medicine to change public opinions. Post 9-11, Bush has phenomenal poll numbers and terrorists are Palestinians.

Disgruntled wants to know: Owning only labor devalued by law, slave descendants exist in the hostile condition of perpetual poverty. Ignorant of their history, blacks in the media give weak responses when asked questions about compensation. They talk about our ancestors' suffering, but when will they address current human rights violations that demand reparations?

Documented and Proven

by John Burl Smith

Following an extensive retrospective analysis of America's socioeconomic and political performance, in terms of human welfare, and field trials to test the conclusions drawn, in 1997 we began presenting our case for reparations to global organizations with a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Accompanying our scientific evidence and anecdotal information, the letter dated November 7, 1997, asked Annan's assistance in altering a dire situation for young people, especially black youths. See Annan letter at http://www.thedish.ws, click on Genocide Chronicles

The Annan letter expressed our intention to bring America before the International Court of Justice at The Hague to answer charges of violating the human rights of slave descendants. On the 53^rd anniversary of the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, descendants of African slaves in America ask, what do we have to celebrate, when the U N refuses to apply the Declaration's articles to the United States?

Contrary to O. J. Simpson, the gloves do fit. America stands before the world the culprit covered in the blood and stench of its black victims, while claiming it is making the world safe for freedom and democracy. Documented in Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America author James Allen provides the smoking gun. Close-up pictures of white America's psychotic murderous binge, Allen's collection reflects the fate of G. P. Johnson, James Byrd, and Amadou Diallo. Dr. E. M. Beck's A Festival Of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930 produces the corpus delicti. Representing a very conservative body count, it conclusively confirms that lynchings were political and economic tools of terror employed to control black development. Proven: America stands the perpetrator charged with genocide and all the horrible deaths gruesomely detailed above.

America's greatest crime against slave descendants is its first act as a civil nation of laws in adopting the United States Constitution. Documented: Article 1 Section 2 compromised freedom, justice and equality by establishing the value of slave descendants as 3/5 white. It relegated blacks to a second class status, and legalized discrimination against them.

Dred Scott slavery case affirmed white supremacy as the intention of the founding fathers and Plessy v. Ferguson became the legal scaffold upon which blacks were hanged, burned and dismembered to preserve white family values. Proven: segregation was a system of local, state and federally enforced extra-legal physical and psychological terror designed to maintain blacks as economic slaves in perpetuity by preventing self-determination, which is a human rights violation.

Documented and proven, based on direct and the preponderance of evidence, the history of slave descendants leads to the inescapable conclusion America is guilty of "mob rule terrorism." We do not contend every black that died did so as a result of lynching. Our charge is that of those who were lynched, America refuses to acknowledge and address their genocide.

Documented and proven, these four years hence, slave descendants ask, what evidence did UN Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize winner Annan rely upon to deny our repeated requests for an international forum on reparations for American slave descendants and to kill efforts at WCAR to raise reparations as a long overdue American obligation? A stranger to peace, Annan must know truth is the scale upon which justice is balanced, bent to the ground, its irony rises in vengeance. John 2001

Genocide Chronicles

Excerpt from November 7, 1997 letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan: "Deeply concerned about the increasingly vulnerable economic position of poor Americans, the Richard L. Kirksey, Jr. Memorial Foundation commissioned a study to delineate the issues defining the American human condition, in order to assess the needs of poor youth. The Foundation dedicated to issues concerning America's young people, commissioned the study on recognizing a growing threat to fulfilling young peoples' most basic needs for survival.

The report found that disproportionate to their numbers, black youth endures the highest unemployment, poverty level, number of incarcerations, police brutality, hate crimes, criminal injustices in sentencing, and much more. This amalgamation of conditions in any other country would be quickly labeled apartheid. In general, blacks are perpetually regulated to the bottom of the economic ladder, victim of racial inequalities in the market for human capital. These imbalances unduly victimize black youth and present a textbook case of genocide that cry for global justice."

On 10 September, "If it bleeds, it leads" was mainstream media's credo. After America dropped seven-ton bombs on Afghanistan, few casualties were shown and those were mainly Taliban. Is this reality? Not likely! Ironically, this kind of propaganda defined mainstream press coverage of the UN World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa.

The UN's post 11 September look back at WCAR media coverage at an international press panel discussion - "News vs. Propaganda: The Gatekeeper's Dilemma-" shows mainstream media deserve blahs! See http://www.unhchr.ch/html/racism for the High Commission's press release on the panel discussion.

One thing to be culled from the 10-page release is gaping holes exist between events on the ground and mainstream media telecasts. CNN's VP and New York Bureau Chief Karen Curry's remarks reflect media hypocrisy. "On certain occasions, it was perhaps true that charges of bias could be leveled against the news media. That could have been particularly true of the Durban Conference. For CNN's part, planning had begun for the coverage of the conference in the spring and taped segments highlighting viewpoints from all over the world had been prepared. The network had made great efforts to cover the conference in its breadth. That breadth, however, included coverage of a very legitimate news story, the walkout of the United States and Israeli delegation and the issue of Zionism."

In reality, only the walkout warranted coverage, and it was mostly hot air from Rep. Tom Lantos trying to justify the US pulling its low-level delegation out of a conference it had originally planned to boycott, as it did the previous two racism conferences. Blah! Blah! Gatekeepers keep the public largely ignorant.

Email: mmbrown@patriot.net It is official! America never left the business of trading in humans. Its judicial system is the largest, most profitable and stable segment of the industrialized world. Research confirms that black youth are the largest and most sought-after commodity for fueling this economic engine. Target of corporate profiteering, trading and back room political deals, black youths are literally traded like pork bellies.

The US judicial system generates more economic activity and wealth than any other global industry. It includes jails, prisons, courts, administrative facilities, entrepreneurial investments, court personnel salaries, judges, clerks, etc., lawyers, and their support infrastructure, probation administration, and so on. This system itself is a heinous crime against humanity.

Email: ebontek@earthlink.net Sistas + Brothas! As we enter a new year of state repression and mounting racism, we need tools to combat this inhumane madness. Blacks are the central force in the US for positive revolutionary change that can bring "power to the People," which is why there is a Colin Powell, Condaleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas and empty-headed blacks in sports, music, etc., wrapped in red-white-blue and projected all over 'God blessing America.' At www.cointelpro.org one New Year's Resolutions is to be on the serious study-struggle track in 2002.

DISHing It Up Hot!

by Dot

The black African American quandary, whether young or old, is much like the dilemma confronting the orca - killer whale - and other creatures inhabiting oceans polluted with chemicals. Man's pollution, PCBs and other carcinogens, make the natural habitat of sea creatures hostile environments. Whale researchers, puzzled by recent declines in orca populations, describe the findings that suggest whales are disappearing as troubling and scary. Toxic chemicals are killing ocean inhabitants; this is a wake-up call. With the orca dying people may finally get it. For more on the killer whale, see http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/whal25.shtml.

Like the whale going to extinction in a hostile environment, so are African Americans, particularly slave descendants. Over the past four (4) years, The DISH has provided bits and pieces of information depicting their situation. By now, the jigsaw is complete. There is no escaping the picture we paint. Thus, like the urgent need to save the orca, we again implore Kofi Annan and the UN to honor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as they relate to the plight of African Americans.

To do so means, the UN must speak to genocide in America. Until Annan and the UN act, there will continue to be a gap or chasm between the ideals of the human rights declaration and "the situation on the ground." Strangers to the Nobel Peace Prize, to earn its prestige and recognition, Annan and the UN must save lives not marginalize them by supporting the status quo.

THINC  || 2001 Issues || The DISH