by Radio Raheem
G21 Staff Writer

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kabuki theatre of the mind

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OAKLAND, CA, USA - I know a lot of folks around this country was listenin' to CNN, Fox News channel, NBC, CBS, and all their local newspapers. Not me. I was listening to what we Brothers used to jokingly call, "The Head Niggah in Charge"(HNIC.) That phrase could be taken as an insult or a compliment, depending on the circumstances. What my choice for HNIC said was that we would have to live through four more years of W.

In this here circumstance, I am referring to our Esteemed Editor. He has a history of both being in and reporting about politics over the last thirty years. So I figured, considering that he is also one of my Respected Elders, he might know what was really going down.

Well, we now all know that Rod was right. He called Kerry as the Loser two months before the election. Kerry lost.

What surprised me was that as things started to go down, he came forth strongly -- as the days to Black Tuesday counted down -- to say that this was awful news not only for the country and the world in general but also and specifically for Black folks. The HNIC usually shies away from pointing up the ethnic implications of issues here in the Snakes.

So now it is left to me to pick up the torch I let fall and talk about what we, as a people, must expect and why we should be more concerned than all the rest of y'all. Much more concerned and afraid.

I want to start with what other HNICs, all over this country, were saying right before the election, because I think it demonstrates that though our people's opinions weren't considered in this election, our opinions are a lot more hard-headed than you might believe.

Here's what a brother named Bud Johnson was saying at Houston, TX, based Black News Online:

... I must seize the opportunity to say that, if Pres. Bush believes Iraq will embrace democracy; if Black America believes "We Shall Over Come" and/or get reparations; if American's think the economy is improving (or things aren't going to get worse, before they get better no matter who we vote for on Nov. 2, 2004), or Kerry has the slight chance of actually beating Bush, they have the same problem as the pop singer Ruth Etting, who crooned the era's biggest hits, "With my eyes wide Open I'm dreaming," in Jack Okie's 1934 movie, "Shoot the Works." I wonder if anybody knows where I'm coming from?

In San Francisco's Bay View, which serves the Bay View/Hunter's Point area of that city across the Bay from where I live -- an area that has one of the highest percentages of Black home ownership in California -- there was featured an OpEd from a young sister named Apollonia Jordan at the end of October, that said this:

... This war that is going on between us is going to get even worse, especially if the U.S. continues going around the world fighting battles that are not ours. What are you going to do if you don't get out here and vote on the next president and then five months from now the U.S. government knocks on your door and tells you that you've been drafted into a war and country that you know nothing about?

Where do you think they are going to go first? What neighborhoods do you think they are going to target? Do you think they are going to draft the older crowd to fight a war? No, they are going to come right to the young people, knocking on mothers' doors in Hunters Point and other Black neighborhoods, taking their sons and daughters away.

This is why voting is so important. Just because these people already control the government, are you willing to let them control your destiny? You better believe that it won't be no young rich Asian or White person on the frontline; they're saving that space for us so that we can die first - just like they set the Black community up for destruction when they brought drugs and guns into our neighborhoods.

Featured with this article was a picture of a couple of young brothers wearing t-shirts that said, "Vote or Die."

You can't get more real about the issue of war and peace for Black folk.

And over on the third coast of this country -- also known as the Right Coast, Out East, and the East Coast -- if you were concerned with what my people were thinking, you could have gone to the BlackPressUSA and read this from James Clingman:

... What have we been doing to avoid a repeat of the same thing we so vehemently complained about four years ago? Most would say in answer to that question: "We have been registering new voters." Well, here is what the other folks have been doing. They have been building voting machines to sell to various states for billions of dollars.

Private companies have used the past four years to figure out how to make more money from t he political chicanery that takes place in this country. Private companies have been wooing our secretaries of state, hawking their wares across this nation, and licking their greedy chops at the thought of raking even more filthy lucre into their coffers.

A couple of companies, the main ones now receiving the contracts to install computerized voting machines, have even offered to open new offices in counties where their systems are purchased and have offered backroom deals such as discounts on software upgrades and who knows what else to the purchasing agents and decision-makers. Lawsuits have already been filed against some of these folks and their e-voting machines.

What has been the response from Black political leaders, other than hand wringing and catchy voting slogans, regarding the irregularities that have cropped up thus far? Have any of them endorsed and pushed for Brother Athan Gibbs' TruVote System, which has real built-in protection against voter fraud and tampering, and provides a paper receipt for auditing purposes?

Before his untimely death, Athan traipsed across this country trying to get his system endorsed and ultimately utilized in the national election; his system was successfully tested by organizations and other verifiable sources, but we did not hear our Black political leaders cry out in support a Black man's invention that would prevent the disenfranchisement of Black and other voters.

As I recall, registering and voting were not the biggest problems the last time; it was votes not being counted, votes being thrown out, and eligible voters being denied the right to vote.

What I'm saying is that, Black Tuesday was not a surprise at all if you were a Black American. We knew what to expect from our fellow countrymen and -women and they delivered -- ahem! -- in spades.

As far as most of us were concerned, only a very sheltered, very liberal, very young and very naive White person could possibly believe that we are living in a non-racist country that wouldn't be itching to bomb a bunch of sand-niggers back to the Stone Age and control one of the biggest oil fields in the world as a by-product of that nation-decimation. How many Iraqi civilians have already died -- by conservative estimates -- in this exercise in Empire-building? Over 10,000? Is there an end of the killing in sight?

As the young sister quoted above says, where is America, already whining that its military is "over-stretched" going to go next year, when the military draft is re-authorized, to get its new cannon fodder?

All I have to do is look out my window into my neighborhood here in Oakland and see where the next patriotic troops are coming from. Drive into downtown Detroit if you live in that part of the country; you are looking at the future of the American army of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Newark, say good-bye to your young men. Harlem, start feeding them young'uns good right now.

As the campaign to overturn the Three Strikes incarceration laws here in bankrupt California advanced the argument, the American people are getting too financially stretched to afford a program of "Lock 'em and throw away the key!" anymore. That solution worked during the 1980s and 1990s when the White, SUV-drivers in the suburbs didn't simply want to move away from people of color, they wanted to send them away. Now that the cost of the new gulags is getting prohibitive, they need a better way of getting rid of us. It's called the military solution. Send us to die killing the "terrorists" and "insurgents."

It's known, in political circles, as "killing two birds with one stone."

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