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From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
July
10, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions
July
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Is the Media Finally Turning on
Bush?
David
Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons
Mickey
Z.
Why Speak Out?
Lee Sustar
The Great Medicare Fraud
John
Chuckman
The Worst Kind of Lie
Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq
Website
of the Day
Hail to the Thief:
Songs for the Bush Years
July
8, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological
Dissents of Scalia
Alan
Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor
Chris
Floyd
Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Brian
Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders
Charles
Sullivan
Bush the Christian?
Saul
Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
Website
of the Day
Occupation Watch
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
July
3, 2003
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Thomas
W. Croft
There Was a Reason They Called It the Casino Economy
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis
to Attack US Troops
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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July
10, 2003
Hand-Holding in the
Slave Markets
Who
Outted Bush in Afrika?
By YEMI TOURE
The moment was just too powerful to contemplate
fully.
Recently, U.S. President George Bush
was seen holding hands with a man. In the public. With cameras
from all over the world recording it. And it was a Black man
at that.
Who outed George Bush?
I'm just kidding, of course. Well, sorta
kidding.
Anyway, picture this:
On July 8, 2003, Bush was in Senegal,
West Afrika. On Senegal's Goree Island is a large stone fortress
that was once used for the beating and starving of enslaved Afrikans
about to be put on slave ships. It is a horrible place, full
of chains and fear, and the wailing of the captives can still
be heard, if you listen.
Untold millions of us came through there.
Your DNA may have come through there.
Part of the stone building is called
"The Door of No Return". It is an opening in a stone
wall next to the sea, and it was the last land that our ancestors
set foot on, before the white slave ships swallowed us up.
And so in the media recently there has
been this image of George Bush at this massive stone structure,
standing in that passageway that still holds the cries of millions,
in his photo-op light blue shirt, open collar, no tie and no
jacket, looking out to that sea, holding the hand of Senegal's
President, Abdoulaye Wade, brown as a kola nut and sharp to the
nines in his white on white.
All kinds of energy and ideas radiate
off that one picture in all different directions--
Is this George Bush, seen visiting a
slave dungeon, the same George Bush you and I know so well? George
Bush, the unelected president of the United States who got into
office partly because his supporters kept Black folx from the
polls?
George Bush, who is so ignorant that
he once asked the president of Brazil if there were any Black
people in his country? George Bush, who loves Aunt Jemimas like
Condoleezza Rice, who immediately jumped in to make excuses for
Bush making that ignorant statement rather than distancing herself
from it?
George Bush, who, as the governor of
Texas, was responsible for the execution of so many Blacks of
clear innocence and so many other Blacks of doubtful guilt?
George Bush, who is about to cut the
legs out from under the Head Start program, one of the most successful
federal programs affecting Black folx?
George Bush, who is leaving so many Black
children behind with his "Leave No Child Behind" bill?
George Bush, who talks out the side of
his mouth about creating jobs while about 3 million jobs have
been lost since he took office? George Bush, who opposed the
mild affirmative action program at the University of Michigan?
George Bush, who would privatize his
own mama if he could make a dollar off the deal?
-- That George Bush? Who did not even
have the decency and respect of that moment in Senegal to wear
a tie as he stood in that awful passageway next to the President
of another nation?
George Bush's words in Senegal
about the "horrors of slavery" were high-sounding,
but looking at the picture, it was impossible to read his face.
Bush condemned slavery. He reminded me
of Ronald Reagan, who as president said that South Afrikan apartheid
was "abhorrent". Notice that Reagan didn't say he didn't
like apartheid; in fact, his policies in support
of apartheid show he did like it -- he just said
it was abhorrent.
Bush was holding the hand of a man because
in Afrika, thoroughly heterosexual men hold hands. It is a sign
of friendship. I have done it myself when I was in West Afrika.
But I can just imagine what that macho Bush whispered to his
macho staffers afterward.
You can bet that Bush did not volunteer
to hold no man's hand. But I predict that such acts by heterosexual
men will spread from Afrika to the U.S. It is already spreading
in Europe. And once again I thank God for Afrika's deep and abiding
cultural strength, growing still despite the Continent's continual
debasement in the media and elsewhere.
Remember the June 26 U.S. Supreme Court
case that finally and rightly legalized the private sexual activity
of homosexuals? If Bush, the macho, gonzo, "all-man"
president, who just got a nut from seeing his soldiers kick butt
in Iraq, can hold another man's hand less than two weeks after
that case, can same-sex marriages be far behind?
One of the gay male plaintiffs in that
Supreme Court case was Black, one was white. One of the men holding
hands in that Senegal passageway was Black, one was white. Hmmmm.
In Senegal Bush said: "For 250 years
the captives endured an assault on their culture and their dignity.
The spirit of Africans in America did not break".
Now wait just a m-f minute. Did I just
hear Bush call us over here "Afrikans"? Not African-Americans
but "Afrikans"??
U.S. President Lyndon Johnson surprised
folx when he used the civil rights slogan "We shall overcome".
Richard Nixon knocked folx to the floor when he spoke of Black
capitalism and called it "Black power".
Now we got Bush, about the worst president
in recent memory, calling us not African-Americans but "Africans
in America"? We give them hand-holding and they co-opt our
most progressive name. Something ain't right about that deal.
As I said, all kinds of energy and ideas
radiate off that one picture in all different directions.
So much so that it will take some time
to fully contemplate it all. In the meantime, I can't wait to
see what Huey Freeman has to say. You know Huey Freeman. The
bad little guy in "The Boondocks" comic strip. You
know he's gonna have to add his 2 cents in.
Because as our great psychiatrist Frances
Cress Welsing would say, all this does not compute.
Yemi Toure
writes a syndicated column called "The Remix--Comment on
Media, Culture and Politics" and is a free-lance writer.
His web site is www.urbanrainbow.org/hype.
He can be reached at: mediablacks@hotmail.com
Weekend
Edition Features
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
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