Thursday, July 31, 2008

In July W.E. A.L.L.B.E. News & Radio Witnessed The Birth Of Something "Nu" To The Masses...

July 31, 2008,


Tha Artivist Writes:
W.E. A.L.L. B.E News & Radio has been blessed abundantly with a loyal fan base, great as well at times controversial subjects/topics of discussion and a long and varied list of gifted, knowledgeable and passionate guests...These elements are what great news programming is made of...Who knew when this thing of ours started that the growth and success of this platform would have such a rewarding payoff and immediate impact...Please continue to grow with us here at W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio...There is alot more great programming and original analysis coming soon!!!

Please feel free to participate in helping raise this truly precocious child of ours... Bro. Frederick Douglass once said that "it is easier to raise strong children than is to repair broken men"...This radiant child is not yet 2 years old and yet this child's positivity and potential is reflected in all the beautifully selfless and talented people this attention driven wonder has attracted since Day One...

In the coming days and months W.E. A.L.L. B.E New & Radio will be making a very important call to the community to help us support our baby...All help spiritually, fiscally (financially), mentally and physically is welcomed...I hope our community is receptive to this call for help and solidarity as we all have been in receiving the inspiring jewels of wisdom and thought provoking analysis which has been a cornerstone of this thriving network since day one...

Remember it takes a village to raise a child...

Yours in creativity and solidarity,
Bro. R2C2H2 Tha Artivist
Founder, Editor, & Host of W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio
http://www.weallbe.blogspot.com
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe


July 2008's Theme Was "Nu Birth...Harvest Time"
Check Out The Show Lineup For July 2008:

July 27, 2008~N-Word Madness



******

July 20, 2008~Let's Get Free!!!


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July 13, 2008~"WHY I DEFACED THE STATUE OF TUPAC SHAKUR!!!" Deconstructing The Hip Hop Generation



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July 6, 2008~" If Memphis Could Talk"



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Get Involved

As Always You Can Catch Tha Artivist Presents…W.E. A.L.L. B.E. Radio Live Every Sunday By Clicking On The Following Link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe

Please Be Our Invited Guest By Calling Us Live @ 646-652-4593 Or E-mailing Us Your Questions And Comments @ r2c2h2@gmail.com



As Always Please Spread The Good News!!!

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W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Reps Black History 365 Days A Year!!!
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/02/we-all-be-news-radio-reps-black-history_29.html



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Celebrate Black History And Love All Day Every Day With Works By Tha Artivist:
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/02/celebrate-black-history-and-love-all.html



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Buy The Award Winning James Reese Europe: Jazz Lieutenant



*Named To The Smithsonian Institute's Jazz Books For Kids And Young Adults List*



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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Green Party McKinney/Clemente “Power to the People” Presidential Campaign Appoints Campaign Manager




*July 27, 2008 *

*Green Party McKinney/Clemente “Power to the People” Presidential Campaign Appoints Campaign Manager*

/[Washington] /Former six-term Congress Member from Georgia, Cynthia McKinney and running mate Rosa Clemente were nominated by the Green Party at the Green National Convention in Chicago on July 12, 2008. The newly nominated Green Party candidates Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente have chosen Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowaifza-Curry (SKCM Curry) as the national campaign manager for their 2008 “Power to the People” presidential campaign, the first all-female and African and Latino heritage ticket for the White House.

Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney noted "Our candidacy marks several nationally significant historic events, especially the 160th anniversary of the Equal Rights Party nomination of the first female American presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull, which was also the first party to nominate a Black man, Frederick Douglass, for Vice President. I stand proudly as the 45th female American to also seek the presidency.”

Ms. Curry brings a lifetime of political skills to the Green Party's all-woman presidential ticket. She is a social justice historian and activist from South Central Los Angeles, where she grew up in the Pueblo Dio Rio Housing Projects, in a family dedicated to peace and justice. A 46-year-old woman of African descent, Ms. Curry calls herself a "product of the battles won during the 1960 Civil Rights Movement,” including the Voting Rights Act, Head Start, and expansion of public higher education.

Ms. Curry has years of experience training others in “popular education”, a program for social change pioneered by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, author of /Education as the Practice of Freedom/ and /Pedagogy of the Oppressed/. SKCM Curry has had a long involvement in civil rights struggles, including voter registration and ballot access drives, as well as organizing around the need for universal health care, an end to current wars, environmental issues. and other campaign priorities.

She has been involved with the Green Party for six years at local, state, national, and international levels. "Party affiliation is like a vote, only more powerful and cumulative, as it doesn't begin and end with an election. I joined the Green political party because it stands for my values -- I'm no longer willing to settle for something less. The McKinney-Clemente 2008 Green Party Campaign will promote a national long-term Green vision with policies and programs, and new visionary female leadership that will serve the interests of all Americans and members of the human family," Curry said.

Curry thinks that “We Greens must combine our energy on all levels to create winning strategies that synergistic promote a national long term Green vision supported by measurable policies, programs and laws appealing to the varied interests of all Americans and members of the human family.” Her objective in joining the Green Party was and is about building a permanent non-corporate funded political party here in the United States of America.

*MORE INFORMATION*

Cynthia McKinney 'Power to the People' Campaign for President

http://www.runcynthiarun.org

http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com

http://www.mckinney2008.com


Rosa Clemente, candidate for Vice President

http://www.rosaclemente.com

Green Party of the United States

http://www.gp.org


--
John Judge
Press Secretary
McKinney for President 2008
202-584-1021
240-491-3311 fax
press-secretary@runcynthiarun.org
www.runcynthiarun.org (Media Contacts)



Please Support Sis. Cynthia McKinney's Run For The Whitehouse By Visiting Her Official Campaign Website http://www.runcynthiarun.org

*W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special~Listen To Sis. Cynthia McKinney Give A Full Report On What's Happening In Mexico & The World On W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: The State Of Black America 2008 Part 2 (Her Interview Is In The First 53 Minutes Of The Show):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/04/20/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-Radio

*Listen To U.S. Presidential Hopeful Cynthia McKinney's Interview On W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio~1-13-08

Show (Her Interview Is In The 2nd Full Hour Of Show Segment):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/01/13/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-Radio

Summary




Abolish The CBC...Part One...

"At every critical moment of our struggle in America we have had to press relentlessly against the limits of the 'realistic' to create new realities for the life of our people. This is our challenge at Gary and beyond, for a new Black politics demands new vision, new hope and new definitions of the possible. Our time has come. These things are necessary. All things are possible."
---The 1972 Black Political Convention Agenda in Gary, Indiana

ABOLISH

Why??? For Destroying Black Males!!!

For all the faults and shortcomings that the CNN Black in America series possessed, one thing they did right will be overlooked for whatever reasons…They called out Black political leadership’s accountability in the plight of Black males!!! That’s right!!! Soledad O’ Brien and company actually stated several times in the Black Men segment that many Black men in prison are in prison for non-violent drug offenses…

The reason??? Because Black faced leaders in Congress a.k.a. The Congressional Black Caucus pushed ‘the first Black President’ Bill Clinton to sign a tougher crack/coke jail sentencing policy into law…


However, the legislation created a huge disparity in drug sentencing…For example, people received more time for selling crack than cocaine or rather coke…Most poorer neighborhoods of color pushed crack while the affluent white folks and suburbs used cocaine…The CBC in their ignorance and self hate helped to nationalize the infamous Rockefeller Laws of New York on steroids…

They felt naively that they could stop violence in inner city neighborhoods by locking up more Black people…Not creating more job opportunities/training, not creating better educational opportunities or environmental conditions, that would be too humane and empathetic…Rather the CBC felt that feeding young Blacks into the prison industry complex was the best idea to invest in...Can you say Middle Passage Complex???

The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world…25% of the world’s prisoners our locked down in the land of the free…1 out of 100 Adult Americans are incarcerated…There are two million folks in American prisons and there are 4 million Americans on parole/probation…Almost half the folks locked down are people of color…African Americans only represent 13% of the general U.S. population…

CBC’s short term solution to a long term problem has actually cost the Black community lost future generations of Black men…Black men who should be going to college, marrying, raising families, and being productive members of society now find themselves being claimed once again like their ancestors as state property…

Black political leadership courage or lack thereof is the reason…It took a courageous white man and innovative journalist, Gary Webb, to expose the myth that these Black faced leaders couldn’t face …He wrote extensively about ‘The Dark Alliance’, Iran-Contra fiasco, where the CIA a.k.a. the government was caught red handed in flooding the U.S. inner cities with high tech military weaponry and illegal drugs during the 80s…

The reason??? To make money to fund the CIA’s covert wars in Central & South America…Black & Brown communities were seen as nothing but collateral damage in this ‘war on communism’ (just like now people of color globally are seen as collateral damage in the ‘war on terror’)…’The war on drugs’ in reality is also a war on the poor, dispossessed and colored…

Webb’s price for seeking truth and keeping his journalistic integrity cost him his career (the corporate media refused to hire him and they character assassinated him in all their major outlets including The NY Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post) and his life (he finally committed ‘suicide’ in 2004)…But he was right, Black males should not be punished for greater crimes against humanity committed by the state…

But the CBC did not care, all they cared about were the crumbs their status afforded them and their loyalists…They sold out a whole generation of potential Malcolm Xs, Martin Luther Kings, Medgar Evers’, Muhammad Alis, Huey Newtons, Fred Hamptons, & Paul Robesons for fool’s gold…And in the words of Dr. King, “we can live together as brothers or perish together as fools”…

Look like we all ain’t too much longed for this world…

Read Gary Webb’s Brilliant & Controversial ‘Dark Alliance’ Series For Yourself:
http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/start.htm


See Also..."Why A Race First Party Isn't A Bad Idea" By R2C2H2 Tha Artivist:
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/07/why-race-first-party-isnt-bad-idea-by.html


Yours truly even if you always think any Black Faces in High Places means Celebration & Liberation…


The Outraged Negro
copyright by r2c2h2

*Important: The views of the The Outraged Negro doesn't represent the views of all those affiliated with W.E. A.L.L. B.E.*

*To reach The Outraged Negro please e-mail him at outragedandnegro@gmail.com or leave a comment on this post…Thanks*


Lil Wayne Getting Sued By Rich Grumpy Old White Men...The Outraged Negro E-Hollas Back...

The Outraged Negro In Response To...

Lil Wayne Sued Over Stones Song:


When I read that the self-proclaimed "Greatest Rapper Alive" was being sued by "The Greatest Rock-N-Roll Copycats Alive" it made me cackle and reflect in amusement...

How can grave robbers sue the rightful next of kin for reclaiming the body of their stolen loved one???

America has a problem with reality, more specifically White Amerikkka has a problem with reality...B.B. King was once asked what he thought of the "British Invasion" (the influx of British Rockers to America in the mid-1960s) in general and the Beatles in particular and he replied that all they did was "re-import the blues"...

Many folks don't realize that the rock and roll group The Rolling Stones got their name from the Muddy Waters song, "Rollin' Stone"...By the way the popular pop-culture magazine "Rolling Stone" got their name from the same song...As a matter of fact the first place the Rolling Stones wanted to go in America was the southside of Chicago to find Blues Gurus Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf...

It is a fact that many Black Blues and Rock-n-Roll Greats used to travel to London, England to perform their craft...After performing in concert halls and clubs, many of these under appreciated and invisible American Music Giants like Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, and B.B. King could be found on Piccadilly Square sharing their trade secrets with eager and ambitious yet broke white boys such as Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Keith Richards, Pete Townsend and Eric Clapton, folks who would soon eclipse their idols in fame and commercial success if not actual mastery of the music art form...To these appreciative young white turks these Black men, seen by Amerikkkan Jim Crow Apartheid as 3/5ths human, were Gods with unlimited genius...

Even the Rock-n-Roll God Little Richard on his legendary England Tours in the early 1960s
allowed both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones to open for his shows when these bands were literally living in vans without any prospects and sharing baskets of fish and chips between them...

So fast forward now to the present some 40 plus years later...It can be reasoned that The Rolling Stones are basically trying to defame the rightful heir to the throne of the 'true' Kings Of Rock-N-Roll...

This is truly sad indeed...How much money do these Rich Grumpy Old White Men need???

I am not by any means defending the music and persona of Lil Wayne, but the fact remains that we as a people still can't recognize when we have been bamboozled and had by a system that is ridiculous and absurd if not out right disturbing...The history of exploited black musicians in the music industry is as long as a DVD uncut version of a Michael Mann movie...

We as Black folks or Negroes or whatever don't support our cultural heroes/icons...When our icons reach 40, they are deemed irrelevant, obsolete, out of mind and out of sight...Thank God for VH 1 with their 'celebreality t.v. shows', otherwise Flavor Flav would be homeless and toothless...Meanwhile The Rolling Stones are still rolling in the dough nearing 70 performing to sold out arenas worldwide...

The questions remains...How much blood do these cultural vampires/vultures need to live forever???

Your truly even you think musical genius is measured by record sales, radio play and awards,

The Outraged Negro
copyright by r2c2h2

*Important: The views of the The Outraged Negro doesn't represent the views of all those affiliated with W.E. A.L.L. B.E.*

*To reach The Outraged Negro please e-mail him at outragedandnegro@gmail.com or leave a comment on this post…Thanks*

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Is Marriage Only For White People???

Tha Artivist Writes:

Interesting article...Many of the comments posted by readers made the article worth the read...This supports my theory that the true mainstream news is the talk of everyday people and not corporate media outlets like CNN...Those people were addressing everyday reality rather than perfectly framed propaganda...However, I know many educated and accomplished folks who have fell into the trap of finding someone who "completes them"...I am a complete human being, I rather finds somebody who "complements me" and vice versa...I know too many people who have been divorced before the age of 30...One is too many, lol...

I think people for the most part rush into too many important decisions without weighing the pros and cons...

Focus on self and what you need is the key...If you figure that out then you know what you will need from a significant other...Soul mate is an overused term...I don't believe in soul mates more than I believe in compatibility...Communication is the key to understanding any and everything...Know Thy Self!!!
Bro. Ron

By The Way Read The Article...

Black And Single: Is Marriage Really For White People???

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/07/22/single.black.women/

Hollywood Shuffle: Glover's New Film 'Too Black' For Hollywood...



Danny Glover's Slavery Film Lacked "White Heroes", Producers Said


US actor Danny Glover, who plans an epic next year on Haitian independence hero Toussaint-Louverture, said he slaved to raise funds for the movie because financiers complained there were no white heroes.


"Producers said 'It's a nice project, a great project... where are the white heroes?'" he told AFP during a stay in Paris this month for a seminar on film.


"I couldn't get the money here, I couldn't get the money in Britain. I went to everybody. You wouldn't believe the number of producers based in Europe, and in the States, that I went to," he said.


"The first question you get, is 'Is it a black film?' All of them agree, it's not going to do good in Europe, it's not going to do good in Japan.


"Somebody has to prove that to be a lie!", he said. "Maybe I'll have the chance to prove it.
"

"Toussaint," Glover's first project as film director, is about Francois Dominique Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803), a former slave and one of the fathers of Haiti's independence from France in 1804, making it the first black nation to throw off imperial rule and become a republic.


The uprising he led was bloodily put down in 1802 by 20,000 soldiers dispatched to the Caribbean by Napoleon Bonaparte, who then re-established slavery after its ban by the leaders of the French Revolution.


Due to be shot in Venezuela early next year, the film will star Don Cheadle, Mos Def, Wesley Snipes and Angela Bassett.

"I wasn't the first one who had this idea," he said. "Sergey Eisenstein had the same idea, Anthony Quinn had this idea, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and this goes on."

The "Lethal Weapon" co-star, just turned 62, finally raised 18 of the 30 million dollars needed from a Venezuelan cultural body set up in 2006 by his friend President Hugo Chavez to counter what he termed "the Hollywood film dictatorship". Venezuelan filmmakers last year slammed the investment.


"It is Mr Glover who should be bringing dollars to Venezuela," the National Association of Film Makers and the Venezuelan Chamber of Film Producers said in an open letter.


Glover, a longtime activist, has supported Chavez's political revolution since he was first elected in 1998.


After making his debut with a bit role in 1979 movie starring Clint Eastwood, "Escape From Alcatraz", Glover played in films such as "Silverado" and "Witness" but grabbed wide attention after Steven Spielberg's 1985 movie "The Color Purple". He is probably most widely known as "Lethal Weapon" co-star with Mel Gibson.


Born in San Francisco, he enrolled at the Black Actors Workshop there and is known for his stand against discrimination as well as for his activism against the Iraqi war and anti-personnel mines.


An admirer of the Senegalese writer-filmmaker known as the father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene, Glover has helped produce African films, including the recently-acclaimed arthouse movie "Bamako" by Abderrahmane Sissako.


"The first African films that I saw were films that portrayed Africans as savages, ignorant and uncivilized, and I wanted to know something else," he said. "I was very fortunate, I had the chance to read writers like Mariama Ba, Aime Cesaire ... and Leopold Sedar Senghor. I read him when I was 20."

"When I saw Sidney Poitier on screen, I was probably 10 or 11," he added. "That was a different image, an image I had never seen before, on screen.


"The African-Americans I saw, they danced, they were buffoons, that was the image. So Sidney brought another image." History, Glover said, had enabled him to play a wide range of roles because of the changes taking place in society. "I think cinema has played a great role in our re-imagining ourselves," he said.

Jena 6 Mychal Bell's Cousin Tasered By Police...Ruled Homicide...




Louisiana, US: Death of Man Tased Nine Times by Police Ruled Homicide

by Hiram Lee
July 27, 2008


A Louisiana coroner has ruled the January 2008 death of 21-year-old Baron Pikes at the hands of police was a homicide. Pikes, a sawmill worker from Winnfield, Louisiana, was killed while in police custody on January 17 after being shot nine times with a Taser gun.

Wanted on charges of drug possession, Pikes was approached by police, including Officer Scott Nugent, near a Winnfield grocery store on January 17. Police claim Pikes did not stop for them and a brief chase on foot ensued. Phillip Terry, an attorney representing Officer Nugent, has said his client caught up with Pikes and fought with him on the ground without help from his partner who “had just come back to the police department from triple bypass surgery and could not assist Officer Nugent.” Terrell says Nugent only resorted to firing his Taser when he had already exhausted “every means possible” to take Pikes into custody.

Dr. Randolph Williams, coroner for Winn Parish, has challenged the official story saying Pikes was already handcuffed when Nugent fired the first shot with his Taser. Additionally, Williams’s findings reveal that Pikes was struck with six 50,000-volt shocks at the arrest site within a period of three minutes. Following this rapid succession of electroshocks, Pikes was placed in a patrol car and driven to the police station. Once there, Pikes was tased again while seated in the back of the patrol car, taking the seventh shot directly to his chest.

Dr. Williams told CNN in a recent interview that following the seventh shock, “[Pikes] was pulled out of the car onto the concrete. He was electroshocked two more times, which two officers noted that he had no neuromuscular response to those last two 50,000-volt electroshocks.” Williams says Pikes may already have been dead when the last two shots were fired. Police carried Pikes’ body into the station before calling an ambulance.

Dr. Williams, who has been extremely vocal in his criticism of the police, found that the use of Tasers in the incident that led to Pikes’ death “violated every aspect—every single aspect—of the department’s policy about its use.”

While no decision has yet been made as to whether Officer Nugent will face criminal charges for his actions, the officer has been fired by the City Council since the January incident. While Nugent apparently had a clean record, it has been revealed that of the 14 times Tasers have been used by Winnfield police since officers received them last year, 10 involved Nugent. A testament to racial tensions in the small town, no less than 12 of those 14 incidents involved black suspects.

The death of Baron Pikes, who was black, at the hands of Officer Nugent, who is white, has ignited the already tense racial situation in Winnfield, leading to angry protests. In a strange and tragic coincidence, Baron Pikes was the first cousin of Mychal Bell, one of the defendants in the infamous “Jena Six” case, which saw six black high school students from Jena, Louisiana fall victim to a racist prosecution for the schoolyard confrontation with a white classmate. Winnfield is just 40 miles northwest of Jena.

An earlier victim of Nugent’s tasing was a black teenager who had snuck out of his house to meet a girl. “I asked the police to bring him home,” the boy’s father is quoted as saying in the Chicago Tribune, “and they did, but in pieces—he was all scraped up and bruised. They told me the next time he runs, ‘You know we’re going to shoot him.’”

The immediate context in which Nugent was allowed to work and ultimately to kill Baron Pikes is one of severe corruption. Officer Nugent’s own father was Gleason Nugent, the former chief of police in Winnfield who killed himself in 2005 after charges of voter fraud were made in connection with his run for election to that office. Officer Nugent has also been described as a protégé of the current chief of police, Johnny Ray Carpenter, who was a convicted drug offender who had the privilege of being pardoned by former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. Edwards is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for racketeering.

A picture emerges of a town with a small, criminal elite resorting to brutal violence to intimidate an increasingly resentful and resistant population. It is a sharp expression of broader tensions throughout the country.

The use of tasers, in particular, has begun to play an important role in police intimidation. Incidents similar to those that have taken place in Winnfield, Louisiana have become all too common. Perhaps gaining the most attention was the September 2007 tasing of Andrew Meyer, a journalism student at the University of Florida who was tased after he attempted to ask questions critical of Democratic Senator John Kerry during a public forum. Senator Kerry did nothing to stop the assault on the student.

While that incident did not lead to the death of the tasing victim, there are more than enough examples of the deadliness of this supposedly non-lethal device. In March 2008, Walter E. Haake Jr., a 59-year-old worker at a Topeka, Kansas Goodyear plant, died after being tased by police in the plant’s parking lot when he refused to leave his car. The police had been called when fellow Goodyear workers became concerned over Haake’s welfare due to a fall which may have left him with a head injury causing him to become disoriented.

Forty-seven-year-old Russell Walker died after being tased by police in Las Vegas. Arrested for creating a disturbance at a hotel, Walker was tased first when he struggled with officers and again after being handcuffed. Placed on a gurney, Walker was tased a third time, after which he stopped breathing. A grand jury found the actions of police officers in this case justified.

Patrick Lee of Nashville, Tennessee, under the influence of marijuana and LSD, was tased 19 times by police after he was thrown out of a local nightclub. He died two days later. Ronald Hasse, 54, of Chicago, was fighting with police when he was tased two times. One of the electric shocks is reported to have lasted 57 seconds. He died as a result of the electrocution, according to medical examiner reports.

The list of taser-related deaths is a long one, containing more than its share of brutal detail. A 2006 report by Amnesty International found 152 deaths in all since 2001 involving the use of tasers. The United Nations has also condemned the use of tasers, classifying them as “a form of torture that can kill.” They are used in roughly 7,000 police departments in the United States.


*Listen To Bro. Marcus Jones (The Father of Jena 6's Mychal Bell) give an update on this case on the W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special N-Word Madness!!! Town Hall Discussion:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/07/28/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-A-LL-BE-News-Radio

(7/29/2008) Soldier Boy Comic & Commentary Of The Week...


(c) R2C2H2 Tha Artivist/ Ronald Herd II From The Arthur 'Soldier Boy Grip' Taylor Chronicles

Bush: Former Army Cook's Crimes Warrant Execution

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press

President Bush could have commuted the death sentence of Ronald A. Gray, a former Army cook convicted of multiple rapes and murders.

But Bush decided Monday that Gray's crimes were so repugnant that execution was the only just punishment.

Bush's decision marked the first time in 51 years that a president has affirmed a death sentence for a member of the U.S. military. It was the first time in 46 years that such a decision has even been weighed in the Oval Office.

Gray, 42, was convicted in connection with a spree of four murders and eight rapes in the Fayetteville, N.C., area between April 1986 and January 1987 while he was stationed at Fort Bragg. He has been on death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since April 1988.

"While approving a sentence of death for a member of our armed services is a serious and difficult decision for a commander in chief, the president believes the facts of this case leave no doubt that the sentence is just and warranted," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

"The president's thoughts and prayers are with the victims of these heinous crimes and their families and all others affected," she said.


This April 1988 picture shows Ronald A. Gray in handcuffs and chains, escorted by military police leaving a Fort Bragg, N.C. courtroom. President Bush on Monday, July 28, 2008 approved the execution of the Army private, the first time in over a half-century that a president has affirmed a death sentence for a member of the U.S. military. Gray was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg.
(AP Photo/The Fayetteville Observer, Marcus Castro)


Bush's decision, however, is not likely the end of Gray's legal battle. Further litigation is expected and these types of death sentence appeals often take years to resolve. It also remains unclear where Gray would be executed. Military executions are handled by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Members of the U.S. military have been executed throughout history, but just 10 have been executed by presidential approval since 1951, when the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military's modern-day legal system, was enacted into law.

President Kennedy was the last president to stare down this life-or-death decision. On Feb. 12, 1962, Kennedy commuted the death sentence of Jimmie Henderson, a Navy seaman, to confinement for life.

President Eisenhower was the last president to approve a military execution. In 1957, he approved the execution of John Bennett, an Army private convicted of raping and attempting to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl. He was hanged in 1961.

Gray was held responsible for the crimes he committed in both the civilian and military justice systems.

Silas DeRoma, who left active duty in 1999, was one of several military attorneys who represented Gray on appeal.

"It's disappointing news, as you can imagine," said DeRoma, who now works as a regulatory attorney in Honolulu for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He said the basis for some of Gray's appeals focused on the prisoner's mental competency and his representation at trial.

In civilian courts in North Carolina, Gray pleaded guilty to two murders and five rapes and was sentenced to three consecutive and five concurrent life terms. He then was tried by general court-martial at the Army's Fort Bragg. There he was convicted in April 1988 and unanimously sentenced to death.

The court-martial panel convicted Gray of:

_Raping and killing Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay of Fayetteville on Dec. 15, 1986. She was shot four times with a .22-caliber pistol that Gray confessed to stealing. She suffered blunt force trauma over much of her body.

_Raping and killing Kimberly Ann Ruggles, a civilian cab driver in Fayetteville. She was bound, gagged and stabbed repeatedly, and had bruises and lacerations on her face. Her body was found on the base.

_Raping, robbing and attempting to kill Army Pvt. Mary Ann Lang Nameth in her barracks at Fort Bragg on Jan. 3, 1987. She testified against Gray during the court-martial and identified him as her assailant. Gray raped her and stabbed her several times in the neck and side. Nameth suffered a laceration of the trachea and a collapsed or punctured lung.

Gray has appealed his case through the Army Court of Criminal Appeals (then known as the U.S. Army Court of Military Review) and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Services. In 2001, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

___

Associated Press writer Martha Waggoner in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.

(R2C2H2 Tha Artivist is host and editor of Tha Artivist Presents…W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe & http://www.weallbe.blogspot.com... He is also the author of James Reese Europe: Jazz Lieutenant http://www.jazzlieutenant.blogspot.com…He can be reached by e-mail r2c2h2@gmail.com)


For More On The Adventures Of Arthur 'Soldier Boy Grip' Taylor Please Visit http://www.soldierboygrip.blogspot.com/





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Monday, July 28, 2008

Why A Race First Party Isn’t A Bad Idea By R2C2H2 Tha Artivist...

By R2C2H2 Tha Artivist

"At every critical moment of our struggle in America we have had to press relentlessly against the limits of the 'realistic' to create new realities for the life of our people. This is our challenge at Gary and beyond, for a new Black politics demands new vision, new hope and new definitions of the possible. Our time has come. These things are necessary. All things are possible."
---The 1972 Black Political Convention Agenda in Gary, Indiana

It is very frustrating as a conscious person of color to tell people that I am a registered Democrat…Obama mania aside, the question still remains, what was the last significant thing that Democrats done for the empowerment of people of color in this country???

Not individual gains and empowerment, but collective gains and empowerment…

How is it that Bill Clinton can be called the Black President, supposedly possessing the ability to empathize with the plight and struggle of Black people and yet cut the welfare rolls without any jobs and at the same time approve the proliferation of both private and federal prisons??? He sent more Black folks to jail than any president in history and yet he wonders why his wife lost the Black vote??? His administration helped to disenfranchise a generation of young Black voters all in the name of law and order and political expediency…

And people say well this is not about race it’s about class…Well I beg to differ in this respect…Although Blacks voted in droves for FDR, his New Deal actually represented a Raw Deal for African Americans who migrated from the rural south to the urban north…Sure his New Deal empowered poor working class and rural Whites, but it also left behind a generation of Black folks mired in the inhumane conditions of the cold hearted inner city without a radiator of hope to heat their dreams and ambitions…Sure he started social programs such as social security and welfare, but these programs were really started to aid White people (there are more Whites on welfare than Blacks, although the media at times does a poor job of pointing that out)…FDR was in essence forced through the political pressure brought by civil rights and labor activists such as A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin into signing the Executive Order 8802 or the Fair Employment Act which stopped the discrimination in the hiring of Blacks in the military industry complex during World War 2…

In 1912, Pres. Woodrow Wilson manipulated the Black leaders and churches to gain the Black vote only to bring back Jim Crow and usher in the resurrection of the KKK…

Many people in our society complain about the affirmative action programs and quotas which found their roots in The Great Society Program of Democratic Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson…However, what the media fails in pointing out that the main beneficiaries of this program supposedly enacted to right the wrongs of slavery and Jim Crow were and are White women…

There are many examples of other injustices initiated by the Demo- or Dixie- crats, but my point is this…The Democrat Party has not done enough to warrant the seemingly blind allegiance of Black voters to their causes…They have actually crippled the progress of the Black community by not taking Black community issues serious enough to readdress through legislative, judicial, educational, and economic efforts…

In 1972 Black America had a great opportunity at the Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana to form a viable ‘Third Party’ to address the needs of a Black constituency...This was during the heyday of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements where anything was possible and the times were ripe for change…However, they failed in their stated mission because many individual Black political personalities did not want to give up the pet benefits they possessed from being a part of a party that stressed tokenism more so than collectivism…

They also had a fear that the more "militant" Black Nationalist strain in forming a Race First Party would scare off their White liberal and sympathetic friends...In other words they still wanted White folks' acceptance and crumbs instead of liberty and justice for all...Now is the time to implement “change” as we speak...Specificity Begets Universality...We must remember that the Civil Rights Movement was a movement initiated by and for Black folks...

For all folks who will call this article a racist one please read the 10 point program articulated by The Black Panther Party For Self Defense http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm…The things they were demanding are essential for all of humanity: decent jobs, food, clothing shelter, healthcare and education…Although their purpose was to empower the Black masses, the message they presented had broader and positive implications for all of society...If America take the time to diagnose and solve the ills of Black America, than all of America can be healed…

Also a bought person is never a respected person...People who are of independent mind, spirit and will are more respected than folks who go along just to get along even when it is to the detriment of their own people’s survival…Why should any political party pacify or answer to the demands of their maligned constituents if they know that the same maligned constituents are going to vote their way anyway??? Why should they make special concessions when you already sold your soul and vote to them???

Hypothetically speaking, one Black elected independent official has more power than 50 Black Democratic Congress people combined...Why??? Because that one independent Black vote is a swing vote…And this being a significant election year, people know that an extra effort must be made in catering to swing votes because they can go any direction…So in other words people will have to make compromises and promises that would be beneficial to that independently elected officials’ constituency...When it comes to the Democratic Party there are no strength in numbers when it concerns the souls and plight of Black Folks…

We must put collective success above individual achievement…If that means all Blacks have access to universal healthcare and a quality public school education instead of a Black President then so be it…The way our communities are going we can’t continue selling generation after generation down the river for 30 pieces of silver…Now’s the time to seize the moment to create not just a change but a positive change…Don’t let this opportunity pass us by once more… Yes We Shall!!!


(R2C2H2 Tha Artivist is host and editor of Tha Artivist Presents…W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe & http://www.weallbe.blogspot.com... He is also the author of James Reese Europe: Jazz Lieutenant…He can be reached by e-mail r2c2h2@gmail.com)

Friday, July 25, 2008

Is Barack Obama The Next Napoleon?

The Outsider's Road Within
[col. writ. 7/12/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal


It should surprise no one that the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama (D.IL), has evoked such fascination; not least because of his presumed outsider status as a man of (at least partial) African descent.

It is this racial inheritance that accounts, to a considerable degree, for the fascination among both Blacks and whites posed by his candidacy.

But, as ever in America, race often hides as much as it reveals. For, if Barack is an outsider to the American body politic because of his blackness, he is too an outsider to much of Black America precisely because of his direct East African heritage, one unleavened and unmitigated by the 500 years of Black bondage, resistance, repression and rebellion that is at the very heart of African-American experience and identity.

Indeed, it is this very outsider stance that allows so many of us, Black and white, to project upon him so much of what has been encapsulated in his ubiquitous campaign of 'hope' and 'change.'

In this sense, Obama is a double-talker, and as such he has had to work out his own way into what being Black in America really means.

His somewhat unique outsider status reminds us of the uniqueness of another great outsider who became the consummate insider -- Napoleon Bonaparte. Consider this; imagine a man born on the Italian-speaking island of Corsica in 1789; by the time he was 30 he was named First Consul (or dictator) of France. In 5 years he was emperor of a vast French empire.

My point isn't to malign Obama as a dictator- in-waiting. It's to show an example of how an outsider (with incredible ambition) becomes the ultimate insider.

When Napoleon was a boy in military school in France, his fellow students ridiculed him and made fun of him - not because of height (as might be expected) -- but because of his Corsican accent, which marked him as an outsider. Napoleon eventually became more French than the French, and today, by virtue of his brilliance, his French nationalism and military exploits in the field during the erection of the empire, he is regarded as one of the greatest Frenchmen who've ever lived.

Obama as a boy in Indonesia was made fun of because of his kinky hair (not to mention his slightly darker complexion) which marked him as an outsider. What does that mean in his formation of a sense of self?

We don't really know, but as Sigmund Freud reminds us, 'the child is father to the man.'

When Obama speaks (especially in his post-primary incarnation) one hears a profound nationalism. He has spoken in the past of an American history that many of us know has never actually existed. It has forced him to denounce a man he once knew, admired and respected (here I speak, of course, of the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright) for making whites uncomfortable by speaking ugly truths about American history, at home and abroad.

Is this but the necessary shifts occasioned by the nasty game of politics?

Or is it the road occasioned by one being an outsider, making that transition to the consummate insider?

Time will tell.

--(c) '8 maj


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For Comparisons Of Barack To Historical Black Figures Check Out The Following On W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio:

Acceptable Blackness Vs. Unforgivable Blackness...

http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/06/acceptable-blackness-vs-unforgivable.html


Barack Hussein Obama Ain't No Adam Clayton Powell Jr.!!!
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2007/05/barack-hussein-obama-aint-no-adam.html

Tha Artstorian Ponders:Is Barack Obama The Sam Cooke of American Politics???
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/02/tha-artstorian-pondersis-barack-obama.html


More Related Coverage On W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio:

If Fox News Gave Cindy McCain The Michelle Obama Treatment…Thoughts Of An Outraged Negro…
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/07/if-fox-news-gave-cindy-mccain-michelle.html


Why Obama Did The Wright Thing And How Rev. Wright’s Selfless Sacrifice Saved The Obama Presidency…


The Hypocrisy Of The Media…Min. Farrakhan Was A Guest Of Honor For Key Pa. Hillary Supporter!!!



W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: Black Liberation Theology 101:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/03/23/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-Radio


The Rev. Wright Controversy Told Through Video Media:
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/03/rev-wright-controversy-told-through.html


W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: Barack Obama & The Hip Hop Effect On American Politics:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/02/10/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-Radio


W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special~Eyewitness To The Crucifixion: The Last Days Of MLK:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/04/07/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio-1


~~~~~~

Get Your Barack
Obama "A Legacy Of Hope" T-Shirt Today!!!



http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/04/barack-obama-legacy-of-hope-t-shirts.htm

Why Jesse Jackson Hates Obama...

By SHELBY STEELE
July 22, 2008; Page A19

A few weeks ago, the Rev. Jesse Jackson made something of a fool of himself. There he was -- a historical figure in his own right -- threatening the castration of Barack Obama. It was sad to see.

If I have often criticized Mr. Jackson, I have also, reservedly, admired him. He is a late 20th century outcropping of a profoundly American archetype: the self-invented man who comes from nothing and, out of sheer force of personality, imposes himself on the American consciousness. If he never reached the greatness to which he aspired, he nevertheless did honor to the enduring American tradition of bold and unapologetic opportunism.

[Why Jesse Jackson Hates Obama]
Martin Kozlowski

But now -- not looking old so much as a bit lost within the new Obama aura -- it is clear that Jesse Jackson has come to a kind of dénouement. Some force that once buoyed him up now seems spent.

Mr. Jackson was always a challenger. He confronted American institutions (especially wealthy corporations) with the shame of America's racist past and demanded redress. He could have taken up the mantle of the early Martin Luther King (he famously smeared himself with the great man's blood after King was shot), and argued for equality out of a faith in the imagination and drive of his own people. Instead -- and tragically -- he and the entire civil rights establishment pursued equality through the manipulation of white guilt.

Their faith was in the easy moral leverage over white America that the civil rights victories of the 1960s had suddenly bestowed on them. So Mr. Jackson and his generation of black leaders made keeping whites "on the hook" the most sacred article of the post-'60s black identity.

They ushered in an extortionist era of civil rights, in which they said to American institutions: Your shame must now become our advantage. To argue differently -- that black development, for example, might be a more enduring road to black equality -- took whites "off the hook" and was therefore an unpardonable heresy. For this generation, an Uncle Tom was not a black who betrayed his race; it was a black who betrayed the group's bounty of moral leverage over whites. And now comes Mr. Obama, who became the first viable black presidential candidate precisely by giving up his moral leverage over whites.

Mr. Obama's great political ingenuity was very simple: to trade moral leverage for gratitude. Give up moral leverage over whites, refuse to shame them with America's racist past, and the gratitude they show you will constitute a new form of black power. They will love you for the faith you show in them.

So it is not hard to see why Mr. Jackson might have experienced Mr. Obama's emergence as something of a stiletto in the heart. Mr. Obama is a white "race card" -- moral leverage that whites can use against the moral leverage black leaders have wielded against them for decades. He is the nullification of Jesse Jackson -- the anti-Jackson.

And Mr. Obama is so successful at winning gratitude from whites precisely because Mr. Jackson was so successful at inflaming and exploiting white guilt. Mr. Jackson must now see his own oblivion in the very features of Mr. Obama's face. Thus the on-camera threat of castration, followed by the little jab of his fist as if to deliver a stiletto of his own.

And then Mr. Obama took it further by going to the NAACP with a message of black responsibility -- this after his speech on the need for black fathers to take responsibility for the children they sire. "Talking down to black people," Mr. Jackson mumbled.

Normally, "black responsibility" is a forbidden phrase for a black leader -- not because blacks reject responsibility, but because even the idea of black responsibility weakens moral leverage over whites. When Mr. Obama uses this language, whites of course are thankful. Black leaders seethe.

Nevertheless, Mr. Obama's sacrifice of black leverage has given him a chance to actually become the president. He has captured the devotion of millions of whites in ways that black leveragers never could. And the great masses of blacks -- blacks outside today's sclerotic black leadership -- see this very clearly. Until Mr. Obama, any black with a message of black responsibility would be called a "black conservative" and thereby marginalized. After Obama's NAACP speech, blacks flooded into the hotel lobby thanking him for "reminding" them of their responsibility.

Thomas Sowell, among many others, has articulated the power of individual responsibility as an antidote to black poverty for over 40 years. Black thinkers as far back as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington have done the same. Why then, all of a sudden, are blacks willing to openly embrace this truth -- and in the full knowledge that it will weaken their leverage with whites?

I think the answer is that Mr. Obama potentially offers them something far more profound than mere moral leverage. If only symbolically, he offers nothing less than an end to black inferiority. This has been an insidious spiritual torment for blacks because reality itself keeps mockingly proving the original lie. Barack Obama in the Oval Office -- a black man governing a largely white nation -- would offer blacks an undreamed-of spiritual solace far more meaningful than the petty self-importance to be gained from moral leverage.

But white Americans have also been tormented by their stigmatization as moral inferiors, as racists. An Obama presidency would give them considerable moral leverage against this stigma.

So it has to be acknowledged that, on the level of cultural and historical symbolism, an Obama presidency might nudge the culture forward a bit -- presuming of course that he would be at least a competent president. (A less-than-competent black president would likely be a step backwards.) It would be a good thing were blacks to be more open to the power of individual responsibility. And it would surely help us all if whites were less cowed by the political correctness on black issues that protects their racial innocence at the expense of the very principles that made America great. We Americans are hungry for such a cultural shift.

This, no doubt, is what Barack Obama means by "change." He promises to reconfigure our exhausted cultural arrangement.

But here lies his essential contradiction: His campaign is more cultural than political. He sells himself more as a cultural breakthrough than as a candidate for office. To be a projection screen for the cultural aspirations of both blacks and whites one must be an invisible man politically. Real world politics, in their mundanity, interrupt cultural projections. And so Mr. Obama's political invisibility -- a charm that can only derive from a lack of deep political convictions -- may well serve his cultural appeal, but it also makes him something of a political mess.

Already he has flip-flopped on campaign financing, wire-tapping, gun control, faith-based initiatives, and the terms of withdrawal from Iraq. Those enamored of his cultural potential may say these reversals are an indication of thoughtfulness, or even open-mindedness. But could it be that this is a man who trusted so much in his cultural appeal that the struggles of principle and conscience never seemed quite real to him? His flip-flops belie an almost existential callowness toward principle, as if the very idea of permanent truth is passé, a form of bad taste.

John McCain is simply a man of considerable character, poor guy. He is utterly bereft of cultural cachet. Against an animating message of cultural "change," he is retrogression itself. Worse, Mr. Obama's trick is to take politics off the table by moving so politically close to his opponent that only culture is left to separate them. And, unencumbered as he is by deep attachment to principle, he can be both far-left and center-right. He can steal much of Mr. McCain's territory.

Mr. Obama has already won a cultural mandate to the American presidency. And politically, he is now essentially in a contest with himself. His challenge is not Mr. McCain; it is the establishment of his own patriotism, trustworthiness and gravitas. He has to channel a little Colin Powell, and he no doubt hopes his trip to the Middle East and Europe will reflect him back to America with something of Mr. Powell's stature. He wants even Middle America to feel comfortable as the mantle they bestow on him settles upon his shoulders.

Mr. Steele is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win" (Free Press, 2007).

For Comparisons Of Barack To Historical Black Figures Check Out The Following On W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio:

Acceptable Blackness Vs. Unforgivable Blackness...

http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/06/acceptable-blackness-vs-unforgivable.html


Barack Hussein Obama Ain't No Adam Clayton Powell Jr.!!!
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2007/05/barack-hussein-obama-aint-no-adam.html

Tha Artstorian Ponders:Is Barack Obama The Sam Cooke of American Politics???
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/02/tha-artstorian-pondersis-barack-obama.html


More Related Coverage On W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio:

If Fox News Gave Cindy McCain The Michelle Obama Treatment…Thoughts Of An Outraged Negro…
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/07/if-fox-news-gave-cindy-mccain-michelle.html


Why Obama Did The Wright Thing And How Rev. Wright’s Selfless Sacrifice Saved The Obama Presidency…
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-obama-did-wright-thing-and-how-rev.html


The Hypocrisy Of The Media…Min. Farrakhan Was A Guest Of Honor For Key Pa. Hillary Supporter!!!
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/05/hypocrisy-of-mediamin-farrakhan-was.html



W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: Black Liberation Theology 101:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/03/23/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-Radio


The Rev. Wright Controversy Told Through Video Media:
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/03/rev-wright-controversy-told-through.html


W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: Barack Obama & The Hip Hop Effect On American Politics:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/02/10/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-Radio


W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special~Eyewitness To The Crucifixion: The Last Days Of MLK:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/04/07/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio-1


~~~~~~

Get Your Barack
Obama "A Legacy Of Hope" T-Shirt Today!!!



http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/04/barack-obama-legacy-of-hope-t-shirts.htm