Volume 5 Issue 17…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…May 3, 2002

by Yohannes Sharriff Smith

We strolled through the park.

The sun sank into the horizon.

Multicolored leaves, like children,

danced in the warm autumn breeze.

You turned and asked,

"Do you still love me?"

Before I answered, I gazed upon your face,

perfectly framed by the golden sunset.

During all my victories, you always supported me.

In my darkest hours,

when the world pinned me to the floor,

you gave me the strength to stand once more.

My greatest love and best friend,

Words could never convey

the wealth of incredible emotion you stir within.

With the touch of your cool,

caring palm upon my face, my heart knew.

Staring deeply into your eyes,

I answered, "Still."

With perfect understanding,

you placed my hand over your heart

and knew my tears of joy.

Responding appropriately to stress is the nature of existence. An organism's repertoire of responses determines its level of intelligence. Reaction time indicates its probability of survival. Survival rate is related to the quality of information received and the level of processing available to that organism.

Crises define the need for immediate responses. By definition, they produce their own solutions, if one desires the truth. The Christian Church is at such a juncture. American Catholics are confronted by the crisis of faith to which they have always turned blind eyes and deaf ears - hypocrisy.

Blessing slavery and colonialism, the Christian Church profited from the misery of those Jesus Christ proclaimed his fruit. Honoring America's founding fathers' compact with the devil-- the Great or 3/5 Compromise -- spoiled the tree of life by enforcing segregation in its own house. Catholics in America have never embraced the equality of humanity, hence they have not faced the origin of their racism. Cloaked in their "Jensonian" piety, Catholics nourish superiority complexes, while discounting Christ's command to "Suffer little children, come unto me."

Although the Church's hands are bloody with slavery, segregation and lynching, American Catholics refuse to even discuss reparations for slave descendants. Winking and nodding, while looking the other way, everyone has a "little sin" is the Bishop's rule. Viewing pedophilia among priests and nuns as homosexuality, not only ducks the issue, it eludes the fact American Catholics see blacks, women and children from the same perspective as slavery. "We are saving souls."

Until the pope, cardinals, priests and nuns make the connection between Christ's life and accepting slavery, the death penalty, America's massacre of blacks and Native Americans and killing people simply because they are called "terrorists," contrition covers up the fact this has nothing to do with saving souls. In the words of Huckleberry Finn, "All right, then I'll go to hell." Loving one's neighbors and raising children are like cutting precious stones. Each stroke and buff must magnify reflections; one mistake can ruin a perfect gem. American Catholics support war and the death penalty. Are these intelligent responses to crises of faith? John 2002

The 1980s and 1990s British outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease struck down 160,000 cows. Circumstantial evidence linked the disease to the practice of mixing sheep remains - including bones and brains - into cows' feed.

Collusion between the meat industry and the British government denied any possible threat to humans. Official denials persisted long after researchers knew the potential danger to humans from eating infected animals.

The practice of forcing herbivores to cannibalize other animals unleashed human BSE or Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD). Neuro-degenerative, BSE/CJD victims lose motor functions and eventually die. The culprits are proteins called prions that are 100 times smaller than viruses. The likely toll of CJD is unknown, since prion-based diseases have incubation periods as long as two decades or more. (www.britishmeat.com)

While mad cow has not posed a problem for the US beef industry, a similar prion-based disease called chronic wasting disease (CWD) is infecting US deer and elk populations. Agricultural and wildlife officials have killed more than 10,000 animals in western states. The disease has been killing wildlife for at least 35 years, and still scientists do not know how it spreads, but spread it has to cover a widening expanse of western US territory and southern Canada. According to Phil Berardelli's report (UPI, 4/6/02), "Most wildlife managers believe the rise of commercial game farms -- ranches that raise elk and other formerly wild animals to serve the growing demand for exotic meats -have served as incubators for CWD's spread." The origin of CWD is still unknown.

Michael Pollan's "Power Steer" (www.nytimes.com/2002/03/31/magazine/31BEEF.html) looks at beef production from insemination to slaughter. Pollan purchased a calf that weighed 80 pounds at birth. Fourteen months later, his steer tilted the scales at more than 1,200 pounds, having gorged itself on corn, mainstay of a feedlot diet, protein supplements and drugs, including growth hormones.

Feedlot cows rarely live longer than six months. Serious health risks include feedlot bloat and acidosis. Cows have rumen that converts grass into protein and acids. Corn produces excess gas, causing the rumen to inflate. If not relieved, cows suffocate. To inhibit gas production, cows are given the drug Rumensin. Acidosis or bovine heartburn can lead to a number of illnesses; the drug tylosin is used to prevent liver infection. Feedlots use most of the antibiotics sold in America, giving rise to concern about antibiotic-resistant "super-bugs," such as E-coli 0157, an intestinal bacteria found in feedlot cattle.

Until 1997, when the FDA mostly banned the practice, bovine meat and bone meal provided the protein in the feedlot cattle diet. Scientists now know the practice spreads mad-cow. FDA rules still allow feedlots to use beef fat, pig and fish protein and chicken manure. Because bovine meat and bone meal are fed to chickens, pigs and fish, some scientist fear infectious prions could find their way back into cattle when they eat the protein of the animals that have been eating them.

Feedlot cows receive Revlar, a growth hormone. Widely used in the US, it is banned in Europe. While no risk to humans has been proven, growth hormone residue is in the meat, which contributes to the estrogen buildup in the environment. Some scientists believe this may explain falling sperm counts and premature maturation in girls. Though treated like factories that change raw material into a finished product, cows are part of our ecosystem. The rich diet that fattens cows may compromise human health. We share the same biosphere, so whatever happens to them happens to us.

Corn-fed beef requires vast amounts of oil; corn uses more herbicide and fertilizer than any other crop. The oil needed to make the fertilizer used in growing corn comes from the Persian Gulf. Cattle start as a part of the food chain deriving its energy from the sun. With corn the major component of its diet, the cow is now a product of an industrial system powered by fossil fuel and defended by the military, which is an uncounted for cost of "cheap" fast food. Another cost of cheap food is environmental damage. Nitrogen runoff from corn crops flows down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico where it has created a large "dead zone."

Comments from the Bat Cave

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro wanted to excel on field day. He boasted about winning a medal in every event. The day came and went. When asked for a comment, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro simply said, "I won a ribbon for sportsmanship."

After the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces withdrew from the Middle East (1967), violence resumed. 'Anticipating an attack', Israel launched its Six-Day War, defeating Egypt, Jordan and Syria and occupying parts of their territories. The 1967 UN Resolution called on Israel to withdraw. Israel refused. With US aid, Israel rearmed. Intermittent shelling and border raids continued between Israel and her neighbors.

The Nixon Administration's (1969) Middle East policy resulted in a brief truce. Palestinian refugees in Jordan revolted against King Hussein, who tried to remain on good terms with Israel and the US. In 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and USSR's Leonid Brezhnev agreed to and the UN adopted resolutions calling for a cease-fire and peace negotiations. For guarantees of her continued existence, Israel would return to its pre-1967 borders. As UN peacekeepers began to arrive, Egypt and Israel continued to dispute details of the cease-fire.

To pressure Israel's allies into supporting a settlement that forced Israel from Arab territories, Arab countries reduced oil output and embargoed the US. Japan and western Europe received 82% and 72%, respectively, of their oil from Arab sources. Only 11% of US oil came from Arab countries. Japan and western Europe were careful not to offend the Arabs. Crude oil prices increased during the winter of 1973-74; the US seemed poised to be more careful as American purse strings were stretched by the oil embargo. (American History: A Survey, Current, Williams & Freidel, 4^th Ed.)

Disgruntled feels: A profound crisis! In the wake of Election 2000 and the Enron debacle, a crisis of confidence exists in government and business. With pedophilia revelations in the church, the crisis deepens. Government soaks taxpayers and disenfranchises voters. Business cheats workers, consumers and stockholders. The church screws everybody, especially children!

Disgruntled wants to know: Bush jettisoned Karen Hughes to the hinterlands of Texas. Predictably, her departure is scripted as an unquenchable thirst for home and hearth. We are told she vetted Bush's speeches. Were Bush's linguistic guffaws Hughes' flashes of brilliance or Bush's failure to learn elementary English?

Disgruntled says: Justifiably, Jews make a point of remembering the holocaust and insist the world never forgets. Thus, it strains the imagination to think Israeli leaders are either the people who experienced such atrocities or their descendants. Germans treated Jews like animals fit only for extermination. This is how the Israeli army treated Palestinians in Jenin, and it is why Israel refuses to allow an independent investigation.

Politics Y2K2

As the US Justice Department 'prosecutes' Arthur Andersen, it ignores their client Enron. US President-select George Bush, who received thousands in Enron campaign contributions, is trying to get fast track trade authority. Enron's Indian-Dabhol Power Plant provides plenty of reasons not to grant the current White House resident or future presidents such power.

Enron Corporation (1992) entered an agreement with India to build the Dabhol Power Plant for about $3 billion. It argued the investment would help develop the local economy and improve human rights. Enron's investment in India, a democratic country, increased human rights abuses much like Royal Dutch/Shell's operation in Nigeria, British Petroleum's Cusiana-Cupiagua oil project in Colombia and Unocal's construction of the Yadana gas pipeline in Burma.

A joint venture of three U.S. companies, Enron Corporation, General Electric, and Bechtel Corporation, the Dabhol Power Plant agreement was fast-tracked. Indian environmental activists and others opposed the project. Police assaulted peaceful protesters. Dabhol Power Corporation and its parent company Enron were complicit in the human rights abuses. Dabhol directly benefited from an official policy of suppressing dissent. Enron did not speak out about human rights violations and, when questioned chose to dismiss them altogether.

Others that bear responsibility for the human rights violations include the project's financiers and U.S. government agencies that lobbied for the project. In particular, the United States government bears special responsibility. It aggressively lobbied on behalf of the three U.S.-based companies developing the project, and it extended hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds for the project while seemingly indifferent to the human rights-related conditions that apply to such transactions. Thus, no fast tracks! (www.hrw.org/worldreport99)

Celestial events, such as planetary alignments, are cosmic wonders. Quivering tectonic plates or environmental degradations underwrite humanity's fate with an unsteady hand. Tumultuous times like none other, today's Homo sapiens are in REM sleep amidst a rapidly changing biosphere, where human actions loom larger than nature itself. Research suggests humanity's advances to date were unplanned or chance occurrences. Serendipitously, like descending from trees, some lower order organism gave a different physiological response to some stressor. Successful, the response was repeated as part of the organism's survival strategy, exploding new and wondrous evolutionary possibilities.

Charles Darwin believed such haphazard accidental events fulfilled life's basic requirements and were the difference between extinction and survival. Religious or so-called "faith-based" organizations call this the hand of God. Following their flat earth-- "chicken or egg-- " faith-based Adam and Eve explanation, "God's will" is responsible for men tampering with life and the environment. This "will of God" mentality was used by the Christian Church to justify slavery and colonialism. It fed the stereotypical "blacks are inferior and cursed" hokum, i.e., "Black is the mark of Kane -- God's punishment."

The Eurocentric obsession that humanity began with white people presupposes Homo sapiens evolved from Neanderthals. This liner secularism (LS) and conditioned subordinate psychological (CSP) view of human development is diametrically opposed to Darwin's evolution. Logically, Homo sapiens could not have evolved from Neanderthals, because one cannot get black from white. If one accepted such reasoning, one would not question authority. For instance, most Americans do not question the affects of eating beef that takes only 14 months from birth to the dinner table.

An ominous specter for humanity, men have taken God's hand and given the earth an enema, flushing away the accidental nuances of life. Biotechnology or genetic engineering is not only changing what is consumed; it is changing the consumer. Couched in life improvement rhetoric, food production, reproduction, public education, etc., every aspect of life has become a eugenics effort to maximize some short-term desire or profit motive. Disguising eugenics as education, American textbooks force students to accept and regurgitate obvious historical lies to pass tests.

Through bioengineering, the time line from egg to chicken to table is a mere 90 days. Growth hormones, antibiotics and other drugs, which are needed to change cows so their digestive systems can process corn rather than grass, continue to work after human consumption. The more hormone-treated meat children consume the faster they grow. Old before their time, their skins seem too small. Boys have oversized breasts, teenagers die of heart disease and babies are born with asthma; these are just a few of the warning signs. History will show that biologically during the later part of the 21^st century meat-eating Americans became docile "beef on the hoof." John 2002

Email: Maxima1757@aol.com Classic European thinking and tactics refuse to examine the cause behind a problem, especially when they created it. As long as it suits their purposes, Europeans pretend the cause does not matter, so the problem persists.

The real reason they want Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe) or any other leader who does not agree with them out of power is the reason Venezuela is a hot spot. Using the CIA, oil and greed, they planned a coup, blaming Chavez. The real issue was his efforts to right the wrongs they wrought for decades on the people.

Oil-rich countries not controlled by them are poor. Mismanagement is a part of it. But, if they tried to manage well, their governments will be overthrown. Good management means conserving and using resources to benefit their country. Europeans cannot have access to it, if the home country uses it. We need to determine, establish and maintain a secure system (like an immune system) to remove and keep parasites out.

Email www.nytimes.com Eighteen of the energy industry's top 25 financial contributors to the Republican Party advised VP Dick Cheney's national energy task force. An email from an oil-industry lobbyist was used to create an energy-related executive order issued by President Bush. Clearly, the energy industry played a major role in constructing Bush energy policy.

Email alarkam@webtv.net On Monday, the US government regained a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission. It does not deserve a seat on the body that investigates human rights violations. Since the UN's inception, the USA has violated UN covenants against racism, ethnocide and forced assimilation.

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