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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bald Eagle who wrote (429018)	7/18/2003 12:30:35 PM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 769670

Kweisi Mfume’s Moral Apartheid by Myles Kantor Gail Jarvis recently discussed the Directors Guild of America’s re-naming of its D.W. Griffith Award after a complaint by NAACP President Kweisi Mfume. This is classic Kweisi. Mr. Mfume (whose homepage boasts of his belligerent name) and his organization have exerted for some time against things Confederate and Confederate-related. For instance, the NAACP announced "economic sanctions" and organized marches against South Carolina for not banishing the Confederate Battle Flag from public locations. At its 2001 convention after Mississippi voters chose to preserve a Confederate presence on their state flag, the NAACP passed a resolution "to continue supporting efforts to change the current Mississippi state flag." The NAACP wages these campaigns because it professes concern for people of color and what it perceives as their historical dehumanization represented by Confederate symbols. This sensitivity is a charade. Why? Because the NAACP ignores the present dehumanization of its brethren in our own hemisphere. While Cuba is often thought to be mostly white given the racial composition of Miami’s exile community, people of color are a majority in Cuba. Blacks and mulattoes constitute over sixty percent of Cuba’s population, and they are not exempt from its totalitarianism. The black abolitionist Frederick Douglass observed that "Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist." If an Afro-Cuban wishes to start his own newspaper as Douglass started The North Star, he cannot do so; if an Afro-Cuban criticizes Fidel Castro or his one-party regime, he can be ripped from his loved ones on charges of "disrespect" or "enemy propaganda"; if a group of Afro-Cubans discusses their race’s repression by this white autocrat, they can be charged with "illicit association." Not content to muzzle Afro-Cubans, the regime also enslaves them; an Afro-Cuban cannot leave Cuba without permission and payment of exit fees. Douglass affirmed, "It is a fundamental truth that every man is the rightful owner of his own body." Castro instead emulates the 1852 Alabama slave code: "No slave must go beyond the limits of the plantation on which he resides, without a pass." Afro-Cubans who assert their human rights suffer severely. To name just two of Castro’s Afro-Cuban victims, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and Vladimiro Roca are Amnesty International prisoners of conscience. Given Castro’s systematic violation of Afro-Cubans’ human rights, one would expect stentorian words from Kweisi Mfume and the NAACP demanding the liberation of Dr. Biscet, Roca, and their Afro-Cuban countrymen. Yet the supposed guardian of black people’s rights has not issued so much as a press release in this vein. The reason for this silence can’t be that the NAACP is dedicated exclusively to domestic matters. Its timeline reads under 1985, "The NAACP leads a massive anti-apartheid rally in New York." Apparently Cuba’s subjugated people of color are negligible. G.K. Chesterton notes in What’s Wrong with the World: We often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some rebel attacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition. There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. Kweisi Mfume and his peers have all the energy in the world when it comes to denouncing the defunct Confederacy. When it comes to the captivity of nearly seven million Afro-Cubans in 2002, their consciences go on holiday. Mfume’s desertion of Afro-Cubans is moral apartheid, and he should be called to task for it.

To: Bald Eagle who wrote (429018)	7/18/2003 9:19:39 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Hey, guy, that must be right wing propaganda. We all know Communists love every human. Probably that Vast Right Wing Conspiracy again.

To: Bald Eagle who wrote (429018)	7/18/2003 10:18:44 PM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Respond to of 769670

Julian Bond: Johnny Bravo of the NAACP Posted: July 18, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com "An interesting thing is happening," said Kevin Pritchett of the Center for New Leadership, an African American political think tank, on "Hannity and Colmes." "Blacks are becoming more conservative." Wait a second. Can a black man say that on national television? And is he talking about the same group of people that listen to the propped-up chairman of the NAACP – Julian Bond? Maybe you missed the comments by the chairman of the NAACP: Republicans appeal to the dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality. They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division ... their idea of reparations is to give war criminal Jefferson Davis a pardon. Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side. It should be noted that these were merely some of the introductory comments. He went on to speak for another estimated 25 minutes after this. Liberals have noted that Bond's statements were not acceptable: "He should not have said it." – Ron Daniels, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights Even the president of Bond's own group criticized the statements: "He has to explain why he did that. I don't do that and I don't believe that." – Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP. As Pritchett went on to explain: The NAACP continues to point out how irrelevant they are to the needs of black persons today. In 2002, Republicans for the first time outspent Democrats in campaign dollars on black-owned radio. And with Generation X and younger, black voters are three times more likely to be conservative than their parents. Black people are realizing they do not need the hand of the NAACP demagogues to move forward. Blacks are becoming more conservative. While this news can't be good for people like Julian Bond, I think it raises a tremendous question of credibility. What happens to the power of the NAACP and other traditionally liberal civil-rights groups when their base of support no longer needs them? As blacks are lifting themselves out of poverty, horrible educational systems and becoming congressmen, senators and CEOs of larger and larger enterprises the question becomes all that more painful. Julian Bond's greatest fear is not that a black would ever be prevented from being elected president due to racism. His greatest fear is that the first black president might end up being J.C. Watts or Condoleezza Rice. Julian Bond refuses to recognize that hard work and achievement brilliance are the things that got Rod Paige selected as education secretary or Colin Powell as secretary of state. No, to Julian Bond they are sell-outs, Uncle Toms or members of the Taliban. And to call someone as accomplished as National Security Adviser Rice the equivalent of a Nazi, in essence spews ignorance that lacks facts or logic. But it matters not to the Julian Bonds, Jesse Jacksons or Al Sharptons of this world. Their goal is not to see the success of blacks. Theirs is to see themselves become empowered as well as enriching elite liberal-interest groups that benefit homosexuals and women. This is why activist Lawrence Guyout goes on cable television and discounts President Bush's trip to Africa as less than sincere – simply because he did not return and make reparations the No. 1 issue of the day. This is why the Rev. Jesse Jackson criticizes the Bush African initiatives – regardless of the fact that he is committing $15 billion to help stop the deadliest disease outbreak ever seen on the African continent. But I think Kevin Pritchett was right. As I read Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell three times a week, I see a competent and fiercely independent black female voice – who gives credit to the president when he gets it right. Mary often comments in the column about the "scorn she will face" from traditional "black leaders" for her opinions. My former co-host in Chicago – Deborah Rowe, in her new position with WLS radio – has become one of the most articulate conservative apologists in media anywhere. And she is a black woman. (A black woman, I might add, who hated to be thought of as conservative only two years ago.) So, you see, the times are a changing. And let's be thankful they are. I remember Johnny Bravo. The character that the oldest Brady son became when he got his recording contract. He was bold, obnoxious and his family hated it. Thankfully, his costumes, music and personality were never revived on the "Brady Bunch" show. Now if only the NAACP could do the same with their "JB." But, I am not worried. The more Bond calls Republicans "Nazis," the more serious-minded people will dismiss his marginalized voice for the shrill absurdity that it i