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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (10855)	4/9/2001 4:15:38 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

To think that I would ever applaud anything Sharpton did. Full disclosure: I was living in Poughkeepsie at the time of the Twana Brawley (sp) incident, and used to shop in Wappinger Falls, where the incident she charged was supposed to have taken place. IMO, Sharpton was an absoute disgrace, and a vile racist to boot, in that incident.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (10855)	4/9/2001 4:26:32 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Al Sharpton sees the bandwagon loading up. And the reparations fight suggests it might behoove its champions, late-arriving as they are, to jump on. Actually, human rights groups and some Christian, mainly Catholic, groups have been trying to draw attention to the slavery in Africa question for a long time. Wasn't this an interesting and revealing sentence of Sharpton's: Some of my associates have said to me that I may find blacks and/or Arabs involved in the slavery. (For "said to me," read "warned me.") And the generally defensive positioning, indicating that a slave, when abducted during war conditions, is somehow less a slave, is also revealing. As is "in some form" and "built on religious discrimination." A slave whose master has the right to have sex with her, kill him, torture them both, forbid them to practice their religion, change their names, sell their children, starve them, and beat or work them to death, doesn't sweat the details. I have no respect for Al Sharpton at all. But I have heard him speak, and understand his power! I saw a notice that he was speaking one evening at a black church in a nearby town, so a couple of girlfriends and I went to hear him. (We were the only whites at the event.) He is a very, very smart guy, and an absolutely skilled, in fact mesmerizing, speaker. Eloquent, moving, persuasive. It really surprised me a lot, because the media Sharpton has always been transparently a demagogue, is my feeling. I'm glad he's going. The result will be more media attention on the situation. But his comments revealed more than he intended them to, imo. And we haven't yet heard his report. It's my belief that he will report what he thinks it will benefit him to report.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (10855)	4/9/2001 5:02:08 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Good for Hentoff, Sharpton, and " a couple of Catholic papers", but they're hardly alone. No Greater Tragedy nytimes.com Abuk Macam is a fragile-looking young woman from southern Sudan, tall and thin and black, as are her people, the Dinka. Her calm seemed almost eerie as she told me her story. "In 1987, when I was 10 years old, the Arab militia from the north came to our village," she said. "They killed the men — my grandfather was shot in front of my eyes — and took the children and women. We were taken to a northern town, Daien, and put in a big stockade. It was a slave market. "A man named Ahmed Adam bought me. He made me herd his goats and do domestic work all day. If I wanted to rest, he threatened to kill me. I was there for 10 years. . . . Slavery is just one aspect of the terror of life in southern Sudan. For 18 years now the south has been ravaged by a civil war: the north, largely Arab and Muslim, against the south, black African, Christian and animist. About two million people have been killed, four million forced from their homes. The Sudanese government in Khartoum bombs southern villages and blocks food relief flights to areas where it wants the population to starve. Now oil has been found in the south, and the government is destroying villages in oil areas to clear the way for prospectors. "There is perhaps no greater tragedy on the face of the earth today" than Sudan, Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Congressional testimony on March 7. It was an admirably strong statement after years of American reticence, giving hope of leadership toward ending the slavery and the slaughter. Once again, the dates are interesting. I don't recall Reagan being greatly concerned about Sudan, either.