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<DIV>----- Original Message ----- 
<DIV>From: "Thomas Mountain" &lt;<A 
href="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>&gt;</DIV>
<DIV>To: &lt;<A 
href="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>&gt;</DIV></DIV>
<DIV>&gt;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The strength of Whiteout by Alex Cockburn is in the 
analysis of the role<BR>of the press. Many, including members of this list, have 
made major<BR>contributions toward documenting the role of the US government in 
the drug<BR>trade. Whiteout is the first work I have seen taking an in depth 
look at the<BR>role of the press in covering up the crimes of the US 
government.<BR>Particularly around Gary Webb's Dark Alliance series.<BR>&nbsp; 
Who else "white" has written on "black paranoia"?<BR>The most organized and 
effective part of this society is amongst African<BR>&gt; Americans and the 
Nation of Islam, which is not mainly a political<BR>&gt; resistance movement. 
The nature of the attacks on "black paranoia" following<BR>&gt; Gary Webbs 
series demonstrates the leading role black folk play in the<BR>&gt; resistance 
movement. It also explains why black folk were consciously<BR>&gt; targeted for 
the crack pandemic by CIA.</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Palatino size=3><FONT face=Palatino size=3>
<P align=justify>Cockburn is pharmacophobic - knows virtually no pharmacology - 
and very little anthropology - and has absolutely none of either in 
Whiteout.&nbsp; His discussion of CIA-Drugs is all CIA - and Press - about which 
he is sophisticated - and nothing whatever about Drugs - about which he is 
utterly pharmacophobic.&nbsp; Webb is equally one-sided, but more 
pharmacologically sophisticated - for my money a better reporter.&nbsp; </P>
<P align=justify>And the conformist Black leaders, often spearheaded by the 
Nation of Islam, "role models" who stupidly blame the symptoms for the disease, 
just like they&#8217;re supposed to, support the massive arrest and imprisonment of 
their own people. They buy into the fascist line that "values" have to be 
enforced by law. Whose values? General Dynamics&#8217;? </P>
<P align=justify>Jesse Jackson commiserated with General McCaffrey on CNN, 
1/25/98: "Somehow it seems that our own appetite, maybe our society is so 
wealthy or so egregious, some kind of values crisis here is driving the demand. 
But what about the supply? It seems that in a couple of countries that there is 
some slowing down of the drug supply. But Mexico, it seems to be 70 percent of 
the drug flow. How can we stop it coming from the greatest source?" This was 
McCaffrey&#8217;s cue to explain that victory is just around the corner if we&#8217;ll 
just 
keep beefing up the Mexican army and expanding the police function of the 
military.</P>
<P>Charming Charlie Rangel, the D.A., made a career of throwing <FONT 
face=Palatino size=3>"my people" into prison before he became the Black Richmond 
P. Hobson. Jackson, at least, consistently uses the word "fascist" to describe 
the dope dealers, but, since he is an unempirical theocrat, has absolutely 
nothing original to offer in the way of policy. He quite rightly calls for "an 
urban policy" while, at the same time, in the same sentence, calling for "a real 
War on Drugs."</FONT><FONT face=Palatino size=1>26</FONT><FONT face=Palatino 
size=3>&nbsp; If he were a baseball player, his nickname would be "Clueless." Is 
this not also the Nation of Islam's position?<FONT face=Palatino size=3></P>
<P>Jackson, and for that matter the Nation of Islam, consistently portray 
African-American culture as if it were composed entirely of middle-class 
Baptists, or Moslems. I never hear the Rastafarians I smoked with in the back of 
so many subway cars mentioned. The largest mass-movement in African -American 
history was overtly shamanic, overtly tribal African. Marcus Garvey&#8217;s Universal 
<FONT face=Palatino size=3>Negro Improvement Association was an awesome force 
throughout the Caribbean, North and South America in the 1920&#8217;s. Those Africans 
revered their ancient tribal sacramentalism. </P>
<P align=justify>The criminalization of African sacraments was a basic part of 
the of the cultural genocide necessary for enslavement. The Rastafarian memory 
of history is simply photographic. This memory is very much alive on the Mau Mau 
streets. Thanks to the ruthless cultural genocide directed at them, many young 
African-American shamans would rather go down fighting with their local posse. 
</P>
<P>But, since Jackson and Rangel - and the Nation of Islam - are adamantly 
amnesiac about their own tribal roots, they can only peck around the edges of 
policy. By not fighting the militarization of American culture, the conformist 
Black politicos collaborate in the diversion of billions that should be going 
into structural sweat-equity antipoverty programs, to which they pay only lip 
service. Instead, they help the fascists demonize their own young. This has not 
only confused the Black community, but split it right down the middle, 
completely destroying the unity that made it such a formidable force during the 
days of the civil rights struggle. </P></FONT></FONT></FONT>
<P align=justify></FONT>One of the obvious things Catherine 
Fitts'&nbsp;&#8216;geo-coded&#8217; data base was able to demonstrate was that 
defaulted HUD 
mortgages were concentrated in areas of structural poverty, and that those were 
precisely the "drug areas" the Prohibitionists were most up in arms about. 
"Freeway" Ricky Ross&#8217; Harbor Freeway, running right through the center of South 
Central L.A., was a concentrated mass of defaulted HUD/FHA single family loans. 
Fitts&#8217; map of defaults looks quite like a pollution-induced disease cluster 
centered around the Harbor Freeway. </P>
<P align=justify>Failure to address neighborhood structural poverty results in a 
pain-filled neighborhood dependent on the default painkiller economy. The 
resultant anarchic poverty and violence collapses neighborhood property values. 
Why pay off an apparently worthless mortgage when it makes more sense to move? 
Prime urban real estate can then be bought for pennies on the dollar. </P>
<P>And who was buying this prime real estate? The HUD contractors 
-indistinguishable from the intelligence community and the Republican 
establishment. The same "liquidators" that had made the neighborhood ripe for a 
"drug epidemic" in the first place, the same military intelligence operatives 
dealing the drugs, were using their drug money to buy the now devalued 
neighborhoods for a pittance - <FONT face=Palatino size=3>for cheap conversion 
into condos, malls and industrial parks. These were the very same radical 
Prohibitionists demonizing those using the pain killers and then vying for the 
resultant prison contracts.</P></FONT><FONT face=Palatino size=3>
<P align=justify>Sure, the drug profiteering is there, but "Crack" is a fascist 
red herring, a way of demonizing the symptom rather than the disease. The 
problem is structural poverty, not too few incarcerated poor. Crack is nothing 
but a symptom of massive systemic pain. Given the criminalization of the safe 
herbal painkillers and euphoriants, and the Prohibition-created default economy, 
crack may have become the euphoriant/painkiller of choice, but the problem is 
the pain, not the painkiller. </P>
<P align=justify>"Crack pandemic" is an updated George Creel concept ("The 
Cocaine Nigger of Asheville").&nbsp; Let's throw them all in jail, for their own 
good.&nbsp; The Bloods, the Crips, the Cobra Stones, and especially the Gangster 
Disciples, repeatedly stress that they have the inalienable right to participate 
in the only economy open to them, rather than rotting in abject poverty in the 
concrete jungle. The Disciples call themselves "Brothers of the Struggle," but 
their political message is uniformly ignored, even by those supposedly 
sympathetic to their plight. They&#8217;re just "drug dealers." These African 
pistoleros are perfectly well aware that "drug dealer" is just another word for 
"nigger," just as the assassinated Fred Hampton said, and just as it was 
in&nbsp;George Creel's old yellow press. The most important point about the Drug 
War, for me, is the point that never gets mentioned - it is an <I>armed 
rebellion</I>. Most prisoners of the Drug War are <I>political</I> prisoners. 
<FONT face=Palatino size=3></P>
<P>The racist hammering young Black men take behind the drug laws is intense and 
constant, driving many of them nuts with hostility. The schizophrenic Nation of 
Islam, of course, out-platitudes the platitudinous - and calls it prophesy. It 
supports escalation of the Drug <FONT face=Palatino size=3>War, consistent with 
Islam&#8217;s imperial hostility to tribal culture, while at the same time decrying 
the obviously racist enforcement. If the enforcement is incurably racist, as the 
Nation of Islam has always accurately insisted, why support escalation of the 
Drug War? Because racists, Black or White, thrive on hostility. </FONT></P><FONT 
face=Palatino size=3><FONT face=Palatino size=3>
<P align=justify>In Africa the European and American slavers had to deal through 
their military equals, the Moslem conquerors of North and Central Africa. The 
great Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene&#8217;s film <I>The Cedo</I> is a good look 
at invading Islam from an African perspective. As Kenya&#8217;s Gikuyu shaman Ngugi wa 
Thiong&#8217;o points out (<I>Decolonising the Mind</I>), Islam is no more a Native 
African religion than Christianity is a Native American religion. Nigeria&#8217;s 
great Yoruba shaman Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, 
makes the same point. In Zimbabwe, Islam is virtually unknown; the predominant 
religions are those of the native Shona, Ndebele, and Tonga.<FONT face=Palatino 
size=3></P>
<P align=justify>And the Sufis of Islam, who preached against slavery and social 
injustice, often achieved their mystical communion, their detachment from the 
hypnosis of the official symbolism, through shamanism. They are remembered as 
the greatest poets Islam ever produced. <FONT face=Palatino size=3>In Mecca, in 
1511, all the Sufi coffee houses were closed. Istanbul&#8217;s Murad IV, in 1625, 
put&nbsp;Sufis to death, as did the Ottoman Grand Vizir Koprili in the 
1650's.</P></FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Dan Russell<BR></FONT><A 
href="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]"><FONT face=Arial>[EMAIL PROTECTED]</FONT></A><BR><A 
href="http://www.kalyx.com"><FONT 
face=Arial>www.kalyx.com</FONT></A></P></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
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