Volume 5 Issue 40…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…October 18, 2002

A fiery voice thundered

An angry God spoke, "Wake up my son!

Edifying thoughts are being delivered

on the wings of fate."

Desperados wearing faces of angels speak

with tongues that beguile the faithful.

Besieged by fear and guilt,

the intellect builds its prison.

No innocent child alone crying in the night,

only a stealthily thief hiding in the mind.

A well-protected bushwhacker lies in wait

to kill today's dream and steal tomorrow's promise.

Whose face does this hobbyist wear but my own,

disguising deception with good intentions,

turning golden dreams into ash gray nightmares?

Taught by circumstances the purity of the spirit,

while underlying greed paints the real picture of life.

Given a saint's zeal for righteousness,

the desperate nature of man

impales on a crucifix of deception.

Although wise beyond his years,

self-indulgence deludes heavenly schemes

consumed by pride's adulation.

In the end undone by self betrayal,

man's real desire is a dark den of everyday reality.

Convinced of the good in what he does,

he does not recognize the evil that he chooses.

Championing honorable causes is the claim

to justify the means employed and victims uncounted.

Drawn to these depths not by an invisible hand,

but by slavish devotion to demons within each man.

Maybe not as profound for the world as it is for me,

a prisoner in a mental dungeon of greed,

do humans learn lessons from the toil of living?

Intuit's Homepage Return to Essays by John Burl Smith

DeKalb County, Georgia voters filled a lawsuit in federal court alleging Republican crossovers in the August 20 Democratic Party Primary assured U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney's defeat. The suit seeks to set aside Denise Majette's victory because black voters of the 4^th Congressional District were denied the right to elect their representative in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

Georgia law does not require voters to register with political parties. Voters cast ballots in the primary of their choice. Republicans urged their members to vote in the Democratic primary to unseat McKinney. The American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) poured money into the race to support McKinney's opponent. Controversial for her views on issues from George W. Bush's fraudulent election and the war on terrorism to the plight of Palestinians and other human rights issues, McKinney angered whites, including GOP-Demo Zell Miller when she correctly claimed the Bush administration had advanced warnings about the 9-11 terror attacks. She was plummeted with negative press.

In an obvious effort to discredit the lawsuit, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (10/15/02), source of most of the negative McKinney press, published its analysis of the election results. Claiming GOP crossovers did not affect McKinney's loss, the AJC "analysis suggests that most of the people in the 4th Congressional District who cast ballots in the Democratic primary either had histories of not voting often enough or of switching parties so often that they could not be classified as either Democrats or Republicans." While blacks are by no means a monolith, they generally vote Democratic, which suggests those crossing over were mainly whites. DeKalb's 4^th Congressional District is majority black. Politics Y2K2

Cynthia McKinney: Co-InTel-Pro-ed

From a recent conversation with US Rep. Cynthia McKinney about America's secret war conducted by the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (Co-InTel-Pro) on civil rights and black power groups and her efforts to expose it emerged a new perspective on her congressional primary defeat. McKinney's plan to introduce a bill in the new Congress to open files from hearings into the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. held in 1979 made the massive sums of Jewish money and Republican crossover votes to defeat her seem more conspiratorial than first believed.

In 1996, when Chinese and Indonesians made political contributions to Democrats, Republicans cried foul and held hearings. Had Muslims poured millions of dollars into U.S. Congressional campaigns to defeat pro-Israeli candidates, the George W. Bush administration would have called it "electoral terrorism."

Under federal court order in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the FBI admitted J. Edgar Hoover ordered agents to infiltrate civil rights and black power groups, identify leaders, discredit them, if possible, and target those who could not be discredited or bought for prison or death (The DISH Vol. 4 No 21). A startling admission, however, not one agent has been charged in connection with crimes committed under Co-InTel-Pro. Moreover, many citizens were jailed on trumped-up charges, and although they were known to be innocent, they remained in prison to protect the identities of FBI informants. Adding insult to injury, many FBI informants who were protected actually committed the crimes for which innocent victims were imprisoned.

In May 2002, I wrote a letter to Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Chairman of the US House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee, requesting an investigation of Co-InTel-Pro (The DISH Vol 5 No 22). A Co-InTel-Pro victim, I asked that all information contained in those files be released to victims, so that Americans would know their government falsely imprisoned and murdered large numbers of U.S. citizens. The dead cannot be resurrected, but those still falsely imprisoned should be released immediately. No action has been taken on either request.

For Co-InTel-Pro victims, McKinney's defeat was a Co-InTel-Pro operation just as the assassination of Malcolm X, Dr. King and others. Documents show the US government used the media to discredit black leaders during the 1960s and 70s. It planted false or misleading accounts in the press about Dr. King and other black leaders. Government money was used to promote unknown blacks as legitimate leaders. DeKalb County voters witnessed similar activities in McKinney's defeat and other black congressional candidates in the last election. The names of those paid by the government to pose as black leaders are among the information that is being withheld from the public. No doubt McKinney was targeted for defeat with Jewish money and discredited with false and misleading news reports. The only question that remains is, did the US government play a role in orchestrating it?

As long as the government can hide what it did and continues to do under Co-InTel-Pro from public view, no black leader is safe. Moreover, given the pattern of black political defeats - the Jewish money pumped into some congressional races, Republican crossover votes and large number of votes not counted, especially in the South, it is clear blacks did not have a choice in these races. Reminiscent of Reconstruction following the fraudulent election of 1876, the Election 2000 debacle in Florida and the targeting of McKinney and other blacks by Jews destroyed the pretense of democracy for black Americans. Black elected officials are the hostages of powerful unknown outside groups financed with government money. The black community has been Co-InTel-Pro-ed again. Other Essays by John Burl Smith

Disgruntled says: The hallmark of a democratic society is a free and critical press. In the US, as the dogs of war scheme to get rich, it is Iraq around the clock. State-sponsored propaganda and big business interests control the media. Thus, democracy is not really a national characteristic. Instead, a trilogy of fear, fraud and fuel fanaticism grips the country. Resigned to this trilogy, which is reminiscent of the rise and reign of Adolf Hitler, US citizens act like robots goose-stepping.

Disgruntled feels: Terrorized! People in the metro Washington, DC area are afraid to venture outside. After the Beltway sniper killed black entrepreneur Ken Bridges and Linda Franklin of the FBI, conspiracy buffs started speculating about deeper motives. Convinced nothing is random about the sniper's actions, they are certain his victims are selected to maximize terror.

Disgruntled wants to know: At the height of the Japanese economic boom, the FTSE approached 20,000. On Tuesday, it closed barely above 4,000. Similar paper fortunes have been won and lost in the US stock market. For a dossier on risks associated with equity investing, ask the former employees of ENRON, WorldCom and Global Crossing. Given equity investing volatility, why do Republicans advance privatizing Social Security? Disgruntled

Bit of History

Born in New York City, Oct. 17, 1915, Arthur Miller is one of the leading playwrights of the twentieth century. His plays have enriched stages worldwide for decades. During the economic collapse of the 1930s, Miller's father, a ladies-wear manufacturer, was ruined. Miller came of age during the Great Depression. He worked in a warehouse to earn money to attend college.

Miller began writing plays while attending the University of Michigan. In his senior year (1937), the Federal Theatre Project in Detroit presented one of his plays. Miller's The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944) won a New York City's Theatre Guild prize. His first public success was Focus (1945), a novel about anti-Semitism. Strongly influenced by Henrik Ibsen's unapologetic examination of human failures and foibles, All My Sons (1947; film, 1948), won the Drama Critics Circle Award. It was followed by Death of a Salesman (1949; film, 1952), which won a Tony Award, the Drama Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize.

In his Tony Award-winning play The Crucible (1953), Miller wrote of the witch-hunts in colonial Salem, Massachusetts; it contains obvious parallels to the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings. A Memory of Two Mondays and A View from the Bridge, which questions U.S. immigration laws, were staged in 1955. Called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956, Miller was convicted of contempt for refusing to provide the names of those he allegedly saw at a Communist writers' meeting a decade earlier. Miller married actress Marilyn Monroe that year; they divorced in 1961, the year she died. Her last film, The Misfits, is based on a Miller screenplay. After divorcing Monroe, Miller married photographer Ingeborg Morath.

After the Fall (1964), a candid consideration of the congressional investigations also includes a thinly veiled portrayal of Miller's unhappy marriage to Monroe. Two one-act plays, Incident at Vichy (1964) and The Price (1967), deal with the universality of human responsibility and the guilt that often accompanies survival and success. In 1969 he wrote In Russia, a travel piece with illustrations by his wife, Inge

Miller also wrote The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977), Chinese Encounters (1979), another traveler's tale, The American Clock (1980), and Salesman in Beijing (1984), an account of the production of his play in Chinese. The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller were collected in 1978. In 1987, he published Timebends: A Life, an autobiography. His most recent works include the plays The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993) and Broken Glass (1993), which won the Olivier Award. (Sources: www.levity.com/; www.imagi-nation.com/and www.gradesaver.com)

More Bits of History

Reminiscent of Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen's morality play about the burdens of a father's sins, which are born by his son, Arthur Miller's All My Sons highlights a man's bid for success and the unintended consequences of his actions. Set somewhere in post-WWII USA, Joe Keller, the main character, is a hardworking family man; he wants to leave his sons with more than he had.

When the play opens, Joe's son Larry is still missing in action. Kate, Keller's wife, insists he is alive, though she has no evidence to support her conviction. Their son, Chris, returns home. It is his proposal of marriage to Larry's old girlfriend, Ann, which creates the tension that leads to the discovery of Keller's secret.

Ann is the daughter of Keller's business partner. Keller's company, which barely survived the Great Depression, obtained lucrative Army contracts to build fighter plane engines during the war. Pressured by the Army to deliver parts, Keller ships a defective batch to save the business he hopes to leave his sons. Twenty-one planes malfunctioned, killing the pilots. Blaming his partner, who goes to prison, Joe is exonerated.

As the play unfolds, we learn Larry committed suicide on hearing about his father's treachery. When Chris rejects Joe's morally bankrupt excuses for his decision, Joe is forced to look beyond his narrow self-interest to the larger societal impact of his action. He finally understands that the young men who died because of his defective engine parts were all his sons. Hoodnotes Homepage

News You Use

A tentative agreement between mortgage lender Household Finance and the National Association of Attorneys General could mean more than $9 million for Georgia borrowers. Accused of predatory lending, Household has agreed to pay $484 million in a nationwide settlement for misrepresenting the terms of loans and not disclosing information to borrowers.

One of the nation's largest lenders, Household engaged in a pattern of predatory practices that cost consumers billions of dollars and in many cases their homes. Foreclosure rates are especially high among black Americans across the country. Many were victimized by Household Finance, which includes Household Realty Corp. and Beneficial Finance Corp.

According to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, anyone who closed a loan with Household Finance between Jan. 1, 1999, and Sept. 30, 2002 are eligible for restitution. Written notice will be sent to all those affect between March and April 2003. If you are a current or former Household customer and meet the eligibility requirements, contact the Attorney General's Office at 404-656-3300 to make sure you are on the list.

Predatory lenders, like Household Finance and Associates First Capital Corp, a subsidiary of Citigroup, Inc., operate in the sub-prime market, where consumers have less than stellar credit. Predatory lending includes making loans to borrowers with inadequate income, who will then default and lose their homes, implying credit life insurance is necessary to secure a loan, charging unnecessarily high fees and pre-payment penalties. When Citigroup acquired Associates First Capital Corp, the former consumer finance arm of Ford Motor Company, it became the largest sub-prime lender in the USA.

A respected global banking entity that sells brokerage, banking and insurance services in more than 100 countries, Citicorp is the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It is accused of engaging in predatory lending practices, such as targeting low-income, uneducated borrowers for loans and insurance they do not need or understand. Its subsidiary CitiFinancial engaged in such practices before Citigroup's acquisition of Associates First Capital Corp. Stay tuned! If the FTC case is not thrown out of court, the biggest predatory lender may be forced to compensate its victims in the not too distance future. Back to News Homepage

Email: icedT@yahoo.com Three white students painted a doll black and hanged it from a schoolyard tree. Lowndes High School officials suspended them for five days, calling the incident a stupid and embarrassing prank. The student council president, who is white, said the mock lynching and accompanying graffiti were "just plain childish. It's not what represents us." This response is classic stuff, yet worse keeps happening.

Email: www.zmag.org Global Rogue State by Edward S. Herman, "The difference between the two countries in respect to roguery is that the US is a superpower with global reach, whereas Iraq is a relatively weak regional power. The US, we might say, engages in wholesale roguery, whereas Iraq is a retail rogue. But nobody in the mainstream calls the wholesale rogue by such a name, any more than they would label it a terrorist state or sponsor of terror, no matter how close the fit...As LaFontaine pointed out in his fable "The Wolf and the Sheep," "The opinion of the Biggest is always best." Under the rule of the Biggest, the law and rules of morality only apply to others, not to the ruler himself."

Email tvismale26@attbi.com During the conference Lynching and Racial Violence in America: Histories and Legacies held at Emory University on October 3-6, 2002, an emergency meeting was called. This meeting resulted from a report given as part of Panel 17: Lynching and Community Activism. Rosemary Stewart-Stafford, from Springfield, MO, described an event that took place in Springfield on Wednesday Oct. 2, just before she left for Atlanta. A 27-year old black man (Leonard Gakinya) was found hanging dead from a city tower. While the police determined this to be a suicide, some issues remained unresolved. This information and the photographs she showed during that panel session led to a call from the room for action from the conference. An open letter was written to John Ashcroft. More than 90 people signed this document which was mailed to Mr. Ashcroft earlier this week.

Email jjstilson@hotmail.com Mark Shields wrote an insightful editorial that outlined the pedigrees of those most likely to face the enemy should the USA go to war in the Middle East. According to Shields, and I agree, those who make the decision about engaging the country in armed conflict will not be called to duty, neither will their children face the enemy. It is the poor of every race that will face the foe and bear the burden of dying for oil. Back to the Mailbox

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