Mohammed Ali, Michael Jackson, Louie Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Ray Charles, Michael Jordan, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Will Smith, Mahila Jackson, Marian Anderson, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Ross, Steve Harvey, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Eartha Kitt, Paul Robeson, Whoopi Goldberg, Toni Morrison, Alex Haley, Eddie Murphy, Joe Lewis, Sugar Ray Leonard, Magic Johnson, Serena and Venus Williams, Althea Gibson, Marvin Gaye, Arthur Ash, Aretha Franklin, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Prince, Sarah Vaughn, Whitney Houston, Joe Williams, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Charles Mingus, Art Blakey, Josephine Baker, Sonny Rollins, Maya Angelou, Willie Mays, Chandra Wilson, BB King, Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Jay-Z, Snoop-Dog, Usher, Travis Smily, Arsenio Hall, Diahann Carrol,, NFL's OJ Simpson, Walter Payton, Jerry Rice, Spike Lee, James Earl Jones, dancer Gregory Hines, Thelonius Monk, Clark Terry, Charles Mingus, Joe Wilder, Max Roach, Quincy Jones, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughn, Earl Hines, Grover Washington Jr. Chuck Berry, Bill Cosby, 50 Cents, Sean John Combs, Rihanna, Dulé Hill, Jay-Z, Alvin Ailey, James Brown, Oprah Winfrey, Vanessa Williams, Ethel Waters, Ralph Bunche, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory, Arsenio Hall, Jesse Owens, Danny Glover, Katherine Dunham, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Reggie Jackson, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Tommie Smith and John Carlos (Olympics Medal Winers Black Power Salute); Civil rights leaders: A. Philip Randolph, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Ralph Abernathy, Jessie Jackson, Julian Bond, Joseph Lowery, Stokely Carmichael, Cornel West, Amiri Baraka, Louis Farrakhan, James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, Benjamin Hooks, Roy Innis, Vernon Jordan, James Meredith, Odetta, Perry Sutton, Fred Shuttlesworth, Al Sharpton, NAACP officials - and surely an equal number of names are missing from this incomplete roster of publicly well known personalities.
The public silence of the above noted gifted African American celebrities and influential personalities regarding King's condemnation of US atrocity wars and covert genocide has given crucial assistance to an evil wars-promoting criminal media "gentleman's agreement' history blackout, so that extremely few young people today, including black youths, will have ever heard of King's devastating and bitter condemnation of US wars and demand for America and Americans to take responsibility for them, make reparations, and make them impossible in the future.
Your author needs some help here. Our African American roll-model celebrities are really the sharpest of people. Most of them have supported progressive organizations and some have been seen leading protest demonstrations against an American war. But strangely none are fighting the taping of King's mouth shut. None are following in King's last footsteps so critical for mankind's survival. None are heard condemning of both the plundering capitalist investments and the wars and covert violence to maintain them. [2]
Year after year, on King's birthday and the anniversary of "I have a Dream" speech, corporate mainstream media programs week long newsreels and commemorative discussions in great praise of civil-rights King from people betraying condemner-of-US-wars King at the same time, helping to throw a beautiful "I have a Dream" blanket over King's 'we have a nightmare' rage "Beyond Vietnam" sermon given four years later, in which King shouted why that dream hadn't happened and wasn't going to happen until the slaughtering overseas stopped!
Dream Anniversary Celebration Shrouds King's "Beyond Vietnam' Nightmare Sermon, His Martyrdom, Syrians
click here
Where is the African American anger over the continuous killing of non-whites that King condemned and surely cost him his life, for King was too intolerable an enemy for the investors in war who rule us to let a charismatic figure like him go on exposing the truth of wars to maintain trillions of dollars of predatory investments in former colonies.
Where was the anger of Black Americans when their government was leading the bombing of a prosperous African nation with a higher quality of life index ranking than nine European countries under a blatant lie of CNN-CIA telecast phony revolution with hired gunman in heavily armed pickup trucks supported by the air forces of white colonial powers!?
Where was black anger when British, French and other Europeans, who were enslaving their African ancestors centuries before white Americans began to, joined the bombing?
Where was the anger of black America's intelligent celebrities when nearly one million Libyans (out of a total population of six million), were wildly demonstrating against the former colonial masters of Libya bombing their government's army and militias and destroying Tripoli and hunting down their revolutionary leader? The videos of this demonstration (that spokesperson Saif Gadaffi naively thought would shame Europeans into desisting), were, and still, are on the Internet.
The Internet is free for the interested, the concerned, the ashamed, the angry. Where was the interest, anger and shame of black Americans, as they watched CNN feature for nine months, obvious hired guns in heavily weaponized pick-up trucks hailed by commentators as freedom-fighters, while these 'freedom fighters' were cruelly executing black Libyans?
Most celebrities are Internet savvy, they must know the truth. Are these African American idols biting their lip, afraid to risk any part of their careers by speaking out? We enjoy seeing them on TV, charming, noble, projecting confidence, living it up, on the same day the evening news gives news of the wars and shows photos of young men in dress uniform (most of them Black or Latino) for having heroically died "for us' (killed while killing, mostly). They everyone forget or pretend to forget what King had anguished over, namely, poor and innocent fellow human beings slaughtered by his own countrymen. ("we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.")
Where is the anger of black American heavy roll models with fans the world over for their achievements and media promotion? They're not just roll models for black people and black kids. They are influential role models for perhaps a majority of Americans now. Where is their anger and sympathy for the slaughtering of non-white poor in dozens of former colonies up to genocide level. Mohammed Ali, a hero King had praised and looked up for refusing to go to Vietnam, like a hundred other black personalities listed above, have given themselves over to pleasant visits to the White House making presidents look good, while as Commander-in-Chief wontedly ordering military acts that bring death and destruction to innocent black and brown complexioned citizens overseas.
How many of the six billion non-white people of Majority Mankind have not seen police dogs, police billy clubs and water cannons used against African Americans at least twice a year? How many African American role models celebrities have not seen the piles of dead dark skinned Vietnamese, Afghani, Iraqi, Afghani, Pakistani, Syrian men women and children killed by Americans including by African Americans on TV continually?
Via satellite transmission, the world sees African America soldiers within the overwhelmingly white armed forces of every white populated nation in the world killing the dark skinned enemy in Afghanistan.
The only Black American anger seen is over lack of jobs, housing and health care for the many African American veterans of the twelve years of occupation war in Afghanistan.
But not only concerned Blacks, but all activists insisting in pursuing social issues on the same level as peace, should be aware that Rev. Dr. King cried out that this anger over racial and social progress United States of America is useless "I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube." [2] Besides useless, King reminded that it was immoral to put our well being as more important than the poor we were slaying.
The world gets to watch movies and sports with jovial black super stars and oddly(?) at the same time watch lots of black soldiers of all ranks fighting for a corrupt Quisling Afghan government while kids outside Kabul freeze to death or starve to death for twelve f**king years. see:
2002 Dec 13, Afghan Refugees Freeze to Death AP,
http://www.rawa.org/refugee-cool.htm
2005 Feb. 19, CBS News "Cold, Disease Kills 120 Children; Opium Given In Lieu Of Health Care"
click here
2008 01.02., Afghanistan: Freezing to death in Kabul
Astrid Sehl, Norwegian Refugee Council
http://www.nrc.no/?did=9230332
2009 Nov., IRIN Asia KABUL, - "The onset of winter means freezing nights, cold-related diseases and more problems for the children"
2009 Dec. Kids Freezing To Death In Kabul. A U.S. Christian President Ignores Them, and
2012 Feb. Cold Weather Kills Children in Afghan Refugee Camps - NYTimes
click here
2012 Afghani Kids Still Freeze to Death Die in Air Strikes! Retribution? click here
Man, all these years Amers, including Black Americans are having a ball watching Black football and basketball stars, funny and exiting movies, Black comedians, singers, ministers, commentators, talk shows, war establishment Black politicians and their brother president as if insane genocide was not being perpetrated in the same moments against Black people overseas. "God damn America for her crimes against humanity!" Rev. Jeremiah Wright got to hear and see himself sound-bit on prime time in 2008, as a target of derision as Obama's embarrassing family pastor.
To see King betrayed by the absolute silence of even and especially African American celebrities is more than disconcerting. It's a lousy puzzle for those of us long disaffected and alienated from white Anglo-saxon and northern European American culture and mores. By the time many of us were thirty years old, all our heroes save Latino Che Guevara were black. As my own pantheon in time was added to, it lengthened to were it stands today: Paul Robeson, Joe Lewis, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Francis Fannon, Cheddi Jagan, Mohammed Ali, Fred Hampton, Malcolm, Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, and rather recently, Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan. The ones that impacted me most, Hampton, Malcolm and King were filled with lead, Robeson and Carmichael escaped such a fate abroad.
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