Slave
Driver
By Bob Marley
Ooh-ooh-oo-ooh. Oo-oo-ooh! Oo-oo-ooh.
Slave driver, the table is turn; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire, so you can get burn, now. (catch a fire)
Slave driver, the table is turn; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire: gonna get burn. (catch a fire) Wo, now!
Ev'rytime I hear the crack of a whip,
My blood runs cold.
I remember on the slave ship,
How they brutalize the very souls.
Today they say that we are free,
Only to be chained in poverty.
Good God, I think it's illiteracy;
It's only a machine that makes money.
Slave driver, the table is turn, y'all.
Ooh-ooh-oo-ooh.
Slave driver, uh! The table is turn, baby, now; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire, so you can get burn, baby, now. (catch a fire)
Slave driver, the table is turn, y'all; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire: so you can get burn, now. (catch a fire)
Ev'rytime I hear the crack of a whip,
My blood runs cold.
I remember on the slave ship,
How they brutalize the very soul.
O God, have mercy on our souls!
Oh, slave driver, the table is turn, y'all; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire, so you can get burn. (catch a fire)
Slave driver, the table is turn, y'all; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire ...
Venus
and Serena
Much has been written about Richard Williams' prediction that his daughters,
Venus and Serena, would one day be ranked the world's best in women's tennis.
Sports commentators and writers dismissed his grand pronouncements. In 2002,
his prediction came true. And, his daughters continue to make tennis history.
While Venus' ranking has slipped from number two to four, the sisters remain
the players to beat on the WTA tour. On Saturday, July 5, 2003, Venus and
Serena met for the fifth time in a slam final. This time the sisters squared
off to determine which would lift the coveted Wimbledon Venus Rosewater Dish
and get the more than three-quarters of a million dollar check.
Serena won on Saturday in a tough three-setter over Venus. Each has two
Wimbledon and US Open titles. Serena won the French Open in 2002 and is the
current Australian Open champion. The Williams sisters have won a grand total
of ten major titles. Kudos to Venus and Serena for making dreams come true!
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In The DISH Spotlight
The DISH spotlight continues to shine on three Decatur, GA record shops for
pushing the "early bird special" breakout CD
The Cosmic Possibilities of Father Time by Yohannes
Sharriff. Get one and help elevate the hottest conscious hip-hop joint
on the street.
(1) Third World Enterprises
2091Candler Road @ 404-284-6155
(2) Vibe Music & More...
145 B Sycamore/Decatur Sq. @ 404-373-5099
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120 W. Ponce de Leon Ave. @ 404-373-0524
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Marley's Legacy
By John Burl Smith
Caught in the whirlwind of change that swept the world during the 1960s and
'70s, Jamaica was near the edge but felt the front side of its winds. A young
artist singing "Redemption Song" caused the CIA to become interested
in his message. Growing up in Trench Town, a notorious Kingston ghetto, Bob
Marley created music that reflected the pain and depravation of the people
around him. With Castro's Cuba only a stone's throw away, the CIA saw Michael
Manley's meager social reforms and the poverty of his people as an open door to
communism. Reminiscent of Salvador Allende in Chile, the CIA financed
right-wing parties that destabilized Manley's government and Jamaica's economy,
just as the US is currently doing to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Orchestrating poor peoples' desperation, Bob Marley's lyrics painted vivid
realities of the dispossessed, not only in Jamaica but around the world. Marley
recognized that most African slave descendants are so poorly educated that they
do not comprehend the subtle ways the colonial system has remained intact.
Cleverly, Marley used music as a cipher to reveal what was hidden right before
their eyes in words that they could neither read nor fully understand. Standing
in the breach between the people's needs and demands for change and the
CIA-backed right-wing opposition, Bob was pulled deeper into the CIA's plot to
murder him.
A true Rastaman, Bob Marley's legacy is one of personal commitment to
educating people and using one's resources to build up the community from which
one came. Through his life and music, we know the story of the CIA's Jamaica
plan. Moreover, we can see the US continues to implement it in poor Third World
countries, like Brazil, Argentina, Peru and AIDS-plagued nations across the
African continent. Bob's story is Jamaica's story, which is Africa's story
today.
When the US (CIA, World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary
Fund (IMF), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and
World Bank) enter a country, turmoil follows and poverty increases. As these
organizations stormed in following independence, Jamaica was blown off course.
Marley's fight to rid his island home of foreign domination leaves the legacy
of "Redemption Song."
On The DISH!
By
Dot
The DISH is an on-line newsletter dedicated to the dialogue on race. Race or
color, since scientists pretty much agree there is only one human race, is a
controversial subject. Those who enjoy white privilege would rather not discuss
the socioeconomic and political divide that separate humans into distinct color
groups.
Since its inception, The DISH has had to contend with vicious efforts to
destroy the publication. Those desperate to silence it are quick to scream
"spam!" The DISH editorial staff rejects attempts to apply this
derogatory term to what we do. While it is neither a commercial enterprise
peddling senseless consumer goods nor a vehicle trafficking in pornography, it
has nonetheless been victimized by baseless spam complaints. On the heels of
some of its hard-hitting issues, former ISPs, AT&T, Bellsouth and Joi, a
division of Hawk Communications, used even anonymous spam complaints to justify
terminating our Internet service.
The DISH has weathered the ups and downs and grown over the more than five years of its existence. We make every effort to abide by the rules and respect individual privacy. We invite readers to join our weekly distribution list. Sometimes new readers are recommended by friends and relatives, who believe they will benefit from the news and information delivered from The DISH's unique perspective. Every effort is made to promptly remove anyone inadvertently added to our list without an invitation or their permission.
For more than two years, The DISH domain name has been www.thedish.ws. In two installments, we paid for
three years at the time of our registration. Unfortunately, Register.com now
claims not to have received the payment submitted more than two years ago. We
are tracing the payment. In the meantime, Website.ws, an affiliate of
Register.com, is advertising domain name registrations with the .ws extension
under our former domain name. While the site indicates the domain name is
available, we could not register it with another company. We are boycotting
Register.com.
Again, we have moved on. The DISH is on the web at www.thedish.org
We hope you will visit us. We plan to redo the site to make it an even better
tool in the dialogue on race. Suggestions and comments to make that happen are
always welcomed.
Liberia:
US Colonization in Africa
Black American Paul Cuffee's successful voyage to Sierra Leone (1815) to
repatriate a small group of free blacks encouraged white proponents of
colonization to form an organization to return blacks to Africa. Dominated by
Southern slaveholders, the American Colonization Society (ACS), which excluded
blacks from its membership, delivered its first setters to the swampy island of
Sherbro in Sierra Leone (1820). A high death rate among blacks and ACS
representatives, due to the unhealthy conditions, forced ACS to settle
elsewhere.
For trade goods, supplies, weapons and rum worth approximately $300, ACS acquired
a 36 mile long and 3 mile wide strip of coastal west Africa from its native
inhabitants Assisted by a United States naval officer, by some accounts, the
ACS land acquisition was made at gunpoint.
Apropos, the ACS settlement adopted the name "Liberia" (the free
land) in 1824, and renamed its main settlement, Christopolis, Monrovia in honor
of US president James Monroe. ACS-appointed agents and later governors ruled
Liberia. In 1838, it became the "Commonwealth of Liberia." When Britain
refused to recognize the ACS' power to institute duties and port dues, the
colony on July 26, 1847 declared its independence and adopted a constitution.
The first elections were held in 1848 and Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the first
non-white governor of the colony, was elected Liberia's first President. Great
Britain was among the first to recognize the new nation (1848), followed by
France (1852). The US did not recognize Liberia's independence until 1862.
After WWI, Liberia signed the League of Nations covenant (1919). In the late
1920s, it was charged with slavery and forced labor. While an investigative
inquiry cleared Liberia of the charges, the commission concluded that contract
laborers shipped from southern Liberia had been recruited under conditions akin
to slave raiding and slave trading. Moreover, Liberian officials profited from
the indigenous people's forced labor.
Often likened to that of guardian and ward, the US-Liberian relationship
became more intertwined with Liberia's 1,000,000-acre, 99-year lease to
Firestone. The 1926 rubber plantation concession was viewed as a signal that
the US regarded Liberia as within its economic sphere of influence. Rubber
become Liberia's leading commercial crop, followed by iron ore, which was mined
by the Liberian Mining Company, whose principal shareholder was the Republic
Steel Corporation. Liberia's open-door economic policy attracted many foreign
enterprises, mainly American companies that so dominated the nation's economy,
the American dollar replaced the British pound.
US troops were admitted to Liberia during WWII. US Army instructors trained
Liberian forces and constructed roads for military and economic purposes. A
1943 lend-lease agreement for the construction of a port and port works in
Monrovia gave the US "the right to establish, use, maintain, improve,
supplement, guard and control, in part or their entirety, such naval, air, and
military facilities and installations at the site of the port, and in the
general vicinity thereof, as the United States may desire for the protection of
its strategic interests in the South Atlantic." Valuable for the
development of mining and industrial enterprises, the harbor was also of
strategic importance to the US in the event of future global military and naval
operations.
Less than three percent of the country's population, Americo-Liberians or
descendants of black American slaves dominated Liberia's national politics, if
not its economy, until a 1980 bloody coup led by Samuel Doe, who became the
first indigenous leader of Liberia. In 1990, Doe was killed by forces of the
current president, Charles Taylor.
Disgruntled says: On the richest continent in the
world, people are starving and dying from disease. As the industrialized West
exploit their natural resources, their leaders beg for handouts and accept
loans that keep Africans impoverished. Exemplifying this dearth of leadership,
some 20,000 victims of apartheid received the paltry sum of $3,800. South
Africa's President Thabo Mbeki embraced the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
compensation. He has declared his opposition to the class action lawsuit filed
against multi-nationals that supported apartheid South Africa, showing the
world that African leadership is an oxymoron!
Disgruntled wants to know: Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with the
way people get it on! What goes on in the bedroom between consenting adults is
their business. However, since there is no perpetuation of the species in gay
sex, how does heritage fit within the gay pride context?
Disgruntled feels: Heat! The Bush administration lied about Iraq. Stuck in a
quagmire with a rising US death toll, George W. Bush and Company are getting
testy. In response to a pesky quagmire question, Bush macho response -
"Bring 'em on!" - had soldiers patrolling hostile Baghdad streets
ducking and Bush backers cringing. Unable to clean it up, Karl Rove quickly got
him out of the country. When you cannot stand the heat, a safari to hunt oil in
Africa makes a nice respite.
By
John Burl Smith
Poets for Peace address these comments to the African Diaspora. "Those
who do not know their history are doomed to relive it." This
ancient wisdom is truer today than at any other time. Africans and their slave
descendants are boarding another slave ship and George Bush is its captain. It
was in the late 1950s when men like Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Jomo
Kenyatta and Julius Nyerere began leading Africa out from under colonial
domination and toward Pan-Africanism. This treacherous period of revolution and
counter-revolution soaked the motherland in the blood of her children.
CIA-financed petty dictators toppled legitimate governments and propped up
shaky regimes that helped the US control Africa politics. Mobutu Sese Seko of
the Congo was but one of America's lackeys.
Implementing a long-range plan to kill African revolutionary fervor and
replace it with European dominance, the CIA assassinated Lumumba and deposed
Nkrumah. Since the Christian Church blessed slavery, whites have robbed black
Africa of manpower and natural resources. The US and Europe fermented wars,
introduced HIV/AIDS and manipulated food shortages. Currently, US planners are
offering GM crops to Africa. If accepted, in the future, African farmers may
find these crops in the wild, undermining natural African vegetation. Once
dependent on GM's, the yearly price of replacement seeds could be more than the
market value of the corps produced.
Intelligent Africans, who know their history, understand that Bush's trip is
a photo opportunity. They know his visit will not help Africans. Refusing to
discuss reparations, institutionalized racism, lynchings and ongoing
discrimination endured by US blacks, coupled with his Goree speech, Bush
commands this slave ship.
Blacks on both sides of the "Middle Passage" are being enslaved by
the same "bait and switch" flimflam. Every US president since Jimmy
Carter has promised to help Africa. US presidents have never kept promises to
Native people, whose lands they continue to occupy. Therefore, why would they
keep promises to people an ocean away? Charting freedom for blacks is like the
road map for Palestinian statehood -- impossible to follow, because it leads
nowhere. This is history.
So-called African leaders are like bad scientists, who continue conducting
the same failed experiment, expecting a different result. Every time there is a
crisis on the continent, they go hat-in-hand, begging whites to solve the
problem. These are the same kinds of leaders, who for centuries, sold our
ancestors into slavery. That was Bush's point at Goree Island. Inviting whites
back in, after kicking them out less than fifty years ago, reduces the efforts
and sacrifices of Nkrumah, Lumumba, Kenyatta, Nyerere and millions of others to
naught. They would provide solutions from within Africa. They would show
Africans can solve their own problems. A leader's job is to lead!
Seasick, this ride is a haunting refrain from Bob Marley's "Redemption
Songs." Looking closely at the roadblocks to peace in Africa, the stumps
in the road have their roots in colonialism, like slavery in the US. From
Zimbabwe to Somalia, Uganda to Côte d'Ivoire, Africans are killing Africans.
Poets for Peace ask, if Africans do not care about one another enough to stop
killing their brothers and sisters, what can a white man do that will make them
stop? A slave driver, Bush's plan is for us to continue reliving our history!
Recall
Bush: Join the Impeachment Movement
At http://www.votetoimpeach.org/eachone.htm, votes to impeach George W. Bush are being collected. When the total reaches a million, they will be delivered to the House Judiciary Committee. Bush administration officials have systematically lied to the people of the United States, Congress and the United Nations. Thousands of Iraqis and US GI's have been killed and maimed. Iraq society has been plunged into chaos and misery. Its sovereignty shredded by an illegal occupation. While waging an illegal war against the people of Iraq, the administration has carried out a war home -- an attack on the civil rights and liberties of the people of the United States and on the Bill of Rights itself. It is time to end the terror; send Bush home to Crawford, Texas.