Obama, the African Colonial

American Thinker ^ | June 25, 2009 | L.E. Ikenga

[neverdem]

Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa.

Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign "isms", instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.

The tropes of America's racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial.

Before I continue, I need to say this: I am a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970's from the country now called Nigeria. I travel to Nigeria frequently. I see myself as both a proud American and as a proud Igbo (the tribe that we come from -- also sometimes spelled Ibo). Politically, I have always been conservative (though it took this past election for me to commit to this once and for all!); my conservative values come from my Igbo heritage and my place of birth. Of course, none of this qualifies me to say what I am about to -- but at the same time it does.

My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself -- those of us who know our history -- have seen this movie before. Here are two main reasons why many Americans allowed Obama to slip through the cracks despite all of his glaring inconsistencies:

First, Obama has been living on American soil for most of his adult life. Therefore, he has been able to masquerade as one who understands and believes in American democratic ideals. But he does not. Barack Obama is intrinsically undemocratic and as his presidency plays out, this will become more obvious. Second, and most importantly, too many Americans know very little about Africa. The one-size-fits-all understanding that many Americans (both black and white) continue to have of Africa might end up bringing dire consequences for this country.

Contrary to the way it continues to be portrayed in mainstream Western culture, Africa is not a continent that can be solely defined by AIDS, ethnic rivalries, poverty and safaris. Africa, like any other continent, has an immense history defined by much diversity and complexity. Africa's long-standing relationship with Europe speaks especially to some of these complexities -- particularly the relationship that has existed between the two continents over the past two centuries. Europe's complete colonization of Africa during the nineteenth century, also known as the Scramble for Africa, produced many unfortunate consequences, the African colonial being one of them.

The African colonial (AC) is a person who by means of their birth or lineage has a direct connection with Africa. However, unlike Africans like me, their worldviews have been largely shaped not by the indigenous beliefs of a specific African tribe but by the ideals of the European imperialism that overwhelmed and dominated Africa during the colonial period. AC's have no real regard for their specific African traditions or histories.  AC's use aspects of their African culture as one would use pieces of costume jewelry: things of little or no value that can be thoughtlessly discarded when they become a negative distraction, or used on a whim to decorate oneself in order to seem exotic. (Hint: Obama's Muslim heritage).

On the other hand, AC's strive to be the best at the culture that they inherited from Europe. Throughout the West, they are tops in their professions as lawyers, doctors, engineers, Ivy League professors and business moguls; this is all well and good. It's when they decide to engage us as politicians that things become messy and convoluted.

The African colonial politician (ACP) feigns repulsion towards the hegemonic paradigms of Western civilization. But at the same time, he is completely enamored of the trappings of its aristocracy or elite culture. The ACP blames and caricatures whitey to no end for all that has gone wrong in the world. He convinces the masses that various forms of African socialism are the best way for redressing the problems that European colonialism motivated in Africa. However, as opposed to really being a hard-core African Leftist who actually believes in something, the ACP uses socialist themes as a way to disguise his true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the "will of the people" becomes completely irrelevant.

Barack Obama is all of the above. The only difference is that he is here playing (colonial) African politics as usual.  

In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father -- an eloquent piece of political propaganda -- Obama styles himself as a misunderstood intellectual who is deeply affected by the sufferings of black people, especially in America and Africa. In the book, Obama clearly sees himself as an African, not as a black American. And to prove this, he goes on a quest to understand his Kenyan roots. He is extremely thoughtful of his deceased father's legacy; this provides the main clue for understanding Barack Obama.

Barack Obama Sr. was an African colonial to the core; in his case, the apple did not fall far from the tree. All of the telltale signs of Obama's African colonialist attitudes are on full display in the book -- from his feigned antipathy towards Europeans to his view of African tribal associations as distracting elements that get in the way of "progress".  (On p. 308 of Dreams From My Father, Obama says that African tribes should be viewed as an "ancient loyalties".)

Like imperialists of Old World Europe, the ACP sees their constituents not as free thinking individuals who best know how to go about achieving and creating their own means for success. Instead, the ACP sees his constituents as a flock of ignorant sheep that need to be led -- oftentimes to their own slaughter.

Like the European imperialist who spawned him, the ACP is a destroyer of all forms of democracy.

Here are a few examples of what the British did in order to create (in 1914) what is now called Nigeria and what Obama is doing to you: 

1. Convince the people that "clinging" to any aspect of their cultural (tribal) identity or history is bad and regresses the process of "unity". British Imperialists deeply feared people who were loyal to anything other than the state. "Tribalism" made the imperialists have to work harder to get people to just fall in line. Imperialists pitted tribes against each other in order to create chaos that they then blamed on ethnic rivalry. Today many "educated" Nigerians, having believed that their traditions were irrelevant, remain completely ignorant of their ancestry and the history of their own tribes.
2. Confiscate the wealth and resources of the area that you govern by any means necessary in order to redistribute wealth. The British used this tactic to present themselves as empathetic and benevolent leaders who wanted everyone to have a "fair shake". Imperialists are not interested in equality for all. They are interested in controlling all.  
3. Convince the masses that your upper-crust university education naturally puts you on an intellectual plane from which to understand everything even when you understand nothing. Imperialists were able to convince the people that their elite university educations allowed them to understand what Africa needed. Many of today's Nigerians-having followed that lead-hold all sorts of degrees and certificates-but what good are they if you can't find a job?   
4. Lie to the people and tell them that progress is being made even though things are clearly becoming worse.  One thing that the British forgot to mention to their Nigerian constituents was that one day, the resources that were being used to engineer "progress" (which the British had confiscated from the Africans to begin with!) would eventually run out. After WWII, Western Europe could no longer afford to hold on to their African colonies. So all of the counterfeit countries that the Europeans created were then left high-and-dry to fend for themselves. This was the main reason behind the African independence movements of the1950 and 60's. What will a post-Obama America look like?
5. Use every available media outlet to perpetuate the belief that you and your followers are the enlightened ones-and that those who refuse to support you are just barbaric, uncivilized, ignorant curmudgeons.  This speaks for itself.

America, don't be fooled. The Igbos were once made up of a confederacy of clans that ascribed to various forms of democratic government. They took their eyes off the ball and before they knew it, the British were upon them. Also, understand this: the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot.

L.E. Ikenga can be reached at leikenga@gmail.com.

[Fred Nerks]

What Barack Obama (and the Democratic Party) Can Learn About Religion from W. E. B. Du Bois
By Edward J. Blum
Mr. Blum teaches history at San Diego State University. He is the author of W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

Barack Obama and W. E. B. Du Bois have a lot in common. Both had absent fathers whom they likened to dreamers; both relied on their mothers; both earned advanced degrees from Harvard University; both traveled extensively throughout the world; both ran for United States Senate (Du Bois lost his bid as a labor candidate from New York in 1950); both elicited questions of racial authenticity, of whether they could represent African Americans since they had mixed-ancestries and were highly educated; and both shared a desire to wrestle religious ideas and language away from conservatives. Perhaps, as Barack Obama and more broadly the Democratic Party attempt to engage religious issues, it will behoove them not only to look back to what Du Bois had to say about faith, but also to create a pantheon of spiritual liberals to revere as part of the quest to demonstrate historical and religious legitimacy.

Currently, Senator Obama has acknowledged that the Democratic Party is struggling to engage religious believers. “Democrats … are scrambling to ‘get religion,’ ” he writes in The Audacity of Hope. Obama, Hilary Clinton, John Edwards, and other leading Democrats are seeking every possible avenue to speak to the religiously minded without offending those in their camps who fear religion in the public sphere. The dilemma, as Obama sees it, involves embracing the faith-based and the “core segment of our constituency” who remain “secular in orientation” and fear “that the agenda of an assertively Christian nation may not make room for them or their life choices.”

Obama and Du Bois share a great deal in the realm of religion. Both primarily affiliate with Christianity but embrace pluralism. Senator Obama recalls that as a child, “On Easter and Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites.” Du Bois was reared in a Christian household and attended church services throughout college, but as an adult read widely in Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and a host of other faiths. Both Obama and Du Bois bristled at being labeled unreligious. In the Illinois Senate race of 2004, Obama found his opponent Alan Keyes irritating him to no end with claims that “Christ would not vote for Barack Obama.”

Similarly, Du Bois encountered questions of faith throughout his career. He almost lost his first professorship for refusing to pray at a student meeting. Several years later, when he applied for a position at Atlanta University, he imagined that professors there thought, “he’s studied in Germany – perhaps if you scratch him, you’ll find an agnostic.” Both Senator Obama and Dr. Du Bois agreed that religious ideas, enterprises, organizations, and issues should not be avoided in the public sector. Obama claims, “over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people, and so avoid joining a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.” In 1945, Du Bois complained of the “dichotomy between religion and social uplift, the Church and sociology.” This division only “leads to deplorable loss of effort and division of thinking.”

Senator Obama and Du Bois have been committed to using religious language to counter its appropriation by conservatives. Senator Obama asserts, “Scrub language of all religious content and we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and their social justice.” Then he assures his reader that “When I read the Bible, I do so with the belief that it is not a static text but the Living Word and that I must be continually open to new revelations – whether they come from a lesbian friend or a doctor opposed to abortion.”

In 1950, as American leaders claimed religious legitimacy for their military, political, and cultural opposition to the Soviet Union, Du Bois used explicitly religious idioms to denounce the conflation of the United States with God’s kingdom. “Be not deceived,” Du Bois declared, “God is not mocked.” “No camouflage of prayer or vigil, no rite of bell, book and candle can or will replace that one supreme word: Peace on Earth, Good will Toward Men; and recogntion of the vast truth that among men are 200 million Russians and 300 million Chinese and 100 million Communists and socialists all over the world, whom no atom bomb nor hydrogen horror can drive out of the kingdoms of the Almighty God.”

Historians, especially those familiar with David Levering Lewis’s portrayals of Du Bois, may be surprised to hear Du Bois speaking in such religious terms. Surprisingly, while Lewis and other scholars on Du Bois debate nearly every facet of his career, they sound univocal in their appraisals of his religion: that he had none. Lewis writes that “Neither the god of Moses nor the redeeming Christ appears to have spoken deeply” to Du Bois. Arnold Rampersad claims that Du Bois’s “belief in science came … at the expense of religious faith.” Literary critic Shamoon Zamir needed only one word to describe Du Bois’s position on matters of faith: “unreligious.” Most recently, Susan Jacoby, in her Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism asserted that Du Bois held “antireligious views” and that he had “little regard … for Christianity.”

But anyone who begins to read in Du Bois’s canon will find significant spiritual reflection. He wrote prayers for his students; he taught Sunday School classes; he attended church in the 1950s; he populated his novels with prophets and priests, messiahs and martyrs; he wrote poems about black Christs and white devils; and hell, his most famous book is about the souls of black folk. Senator Obama, writing on another issue, may well explain why the religious vitality of Du Bois has been misunderstood and negated by most academics: “Ensconced in universities and large urban centers, academics, journalists, and purveyors of popular culture simply failed to appreciate the continuing role that all manner of religious expression played in communities across the country.” What was obvious to so many during Du Bois’s lifetime and has been missed entirely by academics – that Du Bois sought to speak to the spiritual conditions of the world – may be imperative to the contemporary political atmosphere.

Secularizing Du Bois, as scholars have, only hurts progressive political efforts to engage religious issues. Du Bois had much to say about the relationships between faith, religious organizations, poverty, civil rights, international affairs, and world peace. For contemporary progressives, liberals, and Democrats like Barack Obama, they may want to consider W. E. B. Du Bois for the ways he mixed liberal politics with spiritual strivings.

One place to start would be in the prayers that he wrote for his students at Atlanta University. They have been collected and published as Prayers for Dark People. They call with clarion simplicity for a joining of liberal hopes and religious dreams. “Mighty causes are calling us,” he told his young scholars, “the freeing of women, the training of children, the putting down of hate and murder and poverty – all these and more.” For those distressed by war and imperialism, Du Bois prayed, “May we strive to replace force with justice and armies of murder with armies of relief. May we believe in Peace among all nations as a present practical creed and count love for our country as love and not hate for our fellow men.” And for those who have lost heart in our contemporary politics and world, Du Bois offered courage: “It is never to late to mend … Nothing is so bad that good may not be put into it and make it better and save it from utter loss.”

If Democrats and Barack Obama want to “get religion” and if historians want to witness a deep commitment to leftist politics and spirituality, they should get to know the spiritual side of W. E. B. Du Bois.

[Fred Nerks]

Du Bois Centre to mark President Obama’s visit

The W. E. B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan African Culture on Thursday outlined activities to mark President Barack Obama’s visit to Ghana next month.

The activities include screening of two African centered films on June 28. The first film focuses on ancient Egypt and the second film on West African empires after the fall of Ancient Egypt, the Sahara and Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.

The climax of activities is slated for July 10th with a public discussion on the theme: “The Historic visit to Ghana, Benefits to Ghanaians, Continental Africans and Africans in the Diaspora.”

In a statement to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, the Du Bois Memorial Centre urged Ghanaians and Africans to take advantage of the historic visit, which has caused the global world community to see the African Continent in a much more positive light.

The statement said dignitaries expected to participate in the public discussion include Ministers of State, Members of Parliament, Africans in the Diaspora, media practitioners and a cross section of the public.

The centre called on the public to participate in the activities to ensure that Ghanaians share rich experiences on the development of the country as well as establishing mutual relationship with the rest of the world.

The Centre is a national monument to the memory of the “Father of Pan-Africanism,” Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.

source

[Fred Nerks]

Obama’s Church: It’s Hidden Ties to Black Extremism and Communism

Excerpt:

...In his July 30, 2008 article “Hawaii Braces as Obama Talks Apologies for Natives”, there is a reference to a leftist attempt to create a “Hawaiian tribal government” where none ever existed. It would be created in the form of a congressional bill known as “the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act” sponsored by old leftist Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hi) and a House version sponsored by another very far leftist from Hawaii, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hi).

It turns out that Abercrombie was “a close college friend of Barack Obama’s biological father” when they attended the University of Hawaii back in the 50’s. It must be remembered that the Communist Party once had a firm grip on much of pre-statehood Hawaii in the 1940’s until congressional and territorial investigations exposed them, leading to their virtual, but not total, destruction.

Frank Marshall Davis

Among the CPUSA operatives in Hawaii were Frank Marshal Davis, who was sent there by the Party’s top covert CPUSA leaders, and Soviet agents-of-influence, Paul Robeson and Harry Bridges (ILWU), Jack Hall, the secret CP member who became the mayor of Honolulu, and Ewart & Eugenie Guinier (later Prof. Guinier of Harvard, whose daughter Lani Guinier was denied a hearing before Congress regarding her nomination by the Clintons to be a leader of the Civil Rights Division at the already politicized Department of Justice under Attorney General Janet Reno and Assistant AG Jamie Gorelick).

Key sources about Communism in Hawaii include:

*House Committee on Un-American Activities publications “Report on Hawaii Civil Liberties Committee, A Communist Front”, June 23, 1950 and the “Report on the Honolulu Record,” October 1, 1950

*”Hearings Regarding Communist Activities in the Territory of Hawaii,”
(1950-51) especially Part 4 - Testimony of Jack H. Kawano”, July 6, 1951

* Senate Internal Security Subcommittee series of hearing “Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States,” Parts 40-41A (including Appendix Parts I-III), December, 1956.

For a coverup history of the extent of communist penetration of Hawaiian politics and industry, see T. Michael Holmes, “The Specter of Communism in Hawaii”, 1994, Un. of Hawaii Press. This book however, has a good, but incomplete bibliography for those interested in the subject of communism in Hawaii.

Interestingly, Sen. Dan Inouye (D-Hi) was very helpful in throwing the communists out of the Hawaiian government and some of the labor unions, which is why I previously mentioned that Representatives Patsy Mink (D-Hi) and Norman Mineta (D-Hi) had supported “reparations” for the Japanese-Americans who were interned in relocation camps in the US during World War 2, as did Inouye.

While the Japanese-American reparations were justified because of their unjust treatment, this new movement for “Hawaiian reparations” is nothing but a leftist/nativist attempt to rip-off the U.S. taxpayer by the creation of a non-existent “Hawaiian government.”

[For one very early sympathetic article on the fate of “pure Hawaiians”, see the Washington Post, Dec. 30, 1972, “Native Hawaiians in Identity Crisis” by Leroy F. Aarons].

So where does this leave us concerning Sen. Barack Obama and the subject of “reparations” for any particular group?

It leaves us now knowing that while he was a member of the Rev. Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago from about 1988 to 2007, his church was deeply involved in the black extremist reparations movement, especially in N’COBRA. They weren’t just spectators, but full fledged, deeply involved activists, and they associated with some of the most extreme black communists and separatists in American history.

We also now know the extent of most of Rev. Wright’s ties to both white and black extremist groups from the Cuban communists, American communists, black American extremists ranging from Maoists to separatists, to the Nation of Islam of Louis Farrakhan and all their connections to the Libyan dictator and terrorism sponsor Muammar Qaddafi. Other suspected ties yet to be explored include contacts with the Syrian dictatorships, the Palestinian terrorist groups, and other overseas countries/organizations that Wright may have met during his trips abroad...

http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2008/11/obamas-church-its-hidden-ties-to-black_04.html

[Albion Wilde]

bump for later

[Albion Wilde]

bttt

[thouworm]

The following page is no longer on their web site (that I could find).

http://web.archive.org/web/20070705131350/http://www.tucc.org/black_value_system.html

THE BLACK VALUE SYSTEM

Trinity United Church of Christ adopted the Black Value System, written by the Manford Byrd Recognition Committee, chaired by the late Vallmer Jordan in 1981....

Beginning in 1982, an annual Black Value System – Educational Scholarship in the name of Dr. Byrd was instituted. The first recipient of the Dr. Manford Byrd Award, which is given annually to the man or woman who best exemplifies the Black Value System, was our brother, Dr. Manford Byrd.

These Black Ethics must be taught and exemplified in homes, churches, nurseries and schools, wherever Blacks are gathered. They consist of the following concepts:

[Black Ethic Concept #8]:

Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness.” Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.

Those so identified are separated from the rest of the people by:

1. Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another.
2. Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.
3. Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which, while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us.”
4. So, while it is permissible to chase “middleclassness” with all our might, we must avoid the third separation method – the psychological entrapment of Black “middleclassness.” If we avoid this snare, we will also diminish our “voluntary” contributions to methods A and B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be deprived of their birthright: the leadership, resourcefulness and example of their own talented persons.

[Fred Nerks]

TUCC LINK

9.Pledge to Make the Fruits of All Developing and Acquired Skills Available to the Black Community.

10.Pledge to Allocate Regularly, a Portion of Personal Resources for Strengthening and Supporting Black Institutions.

11.Pledge Allegiance to All Black Leadership Who Espouse and Embrace the Black Value System.

12.Personal Commitment to Embracement of the Black Value System. To measure the worth and validity of all activity in terms of positive contributions to the general welfare of the Black Community and the Advancement of Black People towards freedom.

-------------

Sounds like scare the h*ll out of them so they'll give money to the 'cause' so that the leaders can live in luxury and build mansions.

Construction continues on the $1 million Tinley Park home Rev. Jeremiah Wright will move into after having it purchased by Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

[thouworm]

Imagine teaching children and teens that garbage.

I also just discovered that it was still there & was going to post back to you. I was in process of looking for this (although vague). Came upon these these by accident digging in archives.

http://www.trinitychicago.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=114
About Us

We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian... Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain “true to our native land,” the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.

The Pastor as well as the membership of Trinity United Church of Christ is committed to a 10-point Vision:

1. A congregation committed to ADORATION.
2. A congregation preaching SALVATION.
3. A congregation actively seeking RECONCILIATION.
4. A congregation with a non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AFRICA.
5. A congregation committed to BIBLICAL EDUCATION.
6. A congregation committed to CULTURAL EDUCATION.
7. A congregation committed to the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA.
8. A congregation committed to LIBERATION.
9. A congregation committed to RESTORATION.
10. A congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY.

Click here to read about Dr. Wright’s talking points for Trinity United Church of Christ its Web site and the Black Value System.

I have 120+ tabs open browser!

Was also going to mention that most churches with website post doctrinal statements -— usually called their “Statement of Faith.”
Could not find for Trinity, unless it is the above.

[Fred Nerks]

The Marxist Roots of Black Liberation Theology

excerpt:

Perhaps it is the Marxism imbedded in Obama’s attendance at Trinity Church that should raise red flags. “Economic parity” and “distribution” language implies things like government-coerced wealth redistribution, perpetual minimum wage increases, government subsidized health care for all, and the like. One of the priorities listed on Obama’s campaign website reads, “Obama will protect tax cuts for poor and middle class families, but he will reverse most of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers.”

Black Liberation Theology, originally intended to help the black community, may have actually hurt many blacks by promoting racial tension, victimology, and Marxism which ultimately leads to more oppression. As the failed “War on Poverty” has exposed, the best way to keep the blacks perpetually enslaved to government as “daddy” is to preach victimology, Marxism, and to seduce blacks into thinking that upward mobility is someone else’s responsibility in a free society.

http://www.acton.org/commentary/443_marxist_roots_of_black_liberation_theology.php

[Fred Nerks]

[Fred Nerks]

FOIA WEB DU BOIS:
http://foia.fbi.gov/dubois/dubois4.pdf

FOIA MALCOLM X;

http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/malcolmx.htm

THE FRANK MARSHALL DAVIS FILES:

http://www.usasurvival.org/marshall.fbi.files.html

[Velveeta]

FOIA Robeson:
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/robeson.htm

[thouworm]

BLT in its original intent (some link to a man named Allen in 1700’s-—I think, have not researched) may have been biblically based (if so, I doubt he would have called it BLT); but certainly not Dubois or anyone else since. It really is a secular religion (which is why it adapts so well to Marxism).

http://web.archive.org/web/20070706020307/www.tucc.org/talking_points.htm

Talking Points

Dr. Wright’s talking points (3.1.7) for Trinity United Church of Christ its Web site and the Black Value System (in response to Erik Rush’s comments (2.28.07) on the Hannity and Colmes show):

• One of the biggest gaps in knowledge that causes the kind of ignorance that you hear spouted by this man [Erik Rush] and those like him, has to do with the fact that these persons are completely ignorant when it comes to the Black religious tradition. The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone’s book, Black Power and Black Theology.

• Black theology is one of the many theologies in the Americas that became popular during the liberation theology movement. They include Hispanic theology, Native American theology, Asian theology and Womanist theology.

• I use the word “systematized” because Black liberation theology was in existence long before Dr. Cone’s book. It originates in the days of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. It was systematized and published by theologians, Old Testament scholars, New Testament scholars, ethicists, church historians, and historians of religion such as Dr. James Cone, Dr. Cain Hope Felder, Dr. Gayraud Wilmore, Dr. Jacqueline Grant, Dr. Kelley Brown Douglas, Dr. Renita Weems, Dr. Katie Cannon, Dr. Dwight Hopkins, Dr. Linda Thomas, and Dr. Randall Bailey.

• These scholars, who write in various disciplines, also include seminary presidents like Dr. John Kinney and professors of Hebrew Bible, like Dr. Jerome Ross. Black liberation theology defines Africans and African Americans as subjects – not the objects which colonizers and oppressors have consistently defined “others” as.

• We [African Americans] were always seen as objects. When we started defining ourselves, it scared those who try to control others by naming them and defining them for them; Oppressors do not like “others” defining themselves.

• To have a church whose theological perspective starts from the vantage point of Black liberation theology being its center, is not to say that African or African American people are superior to any one else.

• African-centered thought, unlike Eurocentrism, does not assume superiority and look at everyone else as being inferior.

• There is more than one center from which to view the world. In the words of Dr. Janice Hale, “Difference does not mean deficience.” It is from this vantage point that Black liberation theology speaks.

• Systematized Black liberation theology is 40 years old. Scholars of African and African American religious history show that Black liberation theology, however, has been in existence for 400 years. It is found in the songs, the sermons, the testimonies and the oral literature of Africans throughout the Diaspora.

[Fred Nerks]

Obama, Black Liberation Theology, and Karl Marx
By Kyle-Anne Shiver

excerpt:

Jeremiah Wright is the tiny tip of Obama’s spiritual iceberg

The phenomenon that raised so many questions for me in January, when I visited Trinity United Church of Christ, was not Jeremiah Wright’s sermon, which turned out to be just a call for all good congregants to support Barack Obama for President. It wasn’t the sermon that caught me off guard; I was prepared for that. I had watched video of Wright, giving five of his fiery sermons.

The thing that really got me to thinking, reading and searching for answers was the church bookstore.

Having been a practicing Christian for more than 40 years now, and a practicing Catholic for 26 of those years, I have visited perhaps 100 various Christian bookstores, both Protestant and Catholic. In all of those places, one thing tied together the books for sale: Christianity.

Not so in Obama’s church bookstore.

I spent more than an hour perusing available books, and found as many claiming to represent Muslim thought as those representing Christian thought. Black Muslim thought, to be specific.

And the books claiming to support Christianity were surprisingly of a more political than religious nature. The books by James H. Cone, Wright’s own mentor, were prominent and numerous.

Now that I have read a number of the books that presumably Wright’s congregants (including Barack Obama) have also read, I can only conclude that the thing tying these volumes together is not Christianity, nor any real religion, but the political philosophy of Karl Marx.

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” (emphasis mine)
- Marx and Engels; The Communist Manifesto; 1848

If Marxism can be summed up in only a couple of phrases, now familiar to nearly every modern person, they would be “class struggle” and “oppressed vs. oppressors.”

James H. Cone, the unquestioned modern-day mentor of all the black power preachers, claims to have created a new theology, uniting the Muslim black power tenets of Malcolm X and the Christian foundations of Martin Luther King, Jr.

All he has really done, in my opinion, is take original liberation theology from Latin America, developed in the early 1960s by Catholic priests, and painted it black.

Liberation Theology vs. Traditional Christianity

The teaching authorities of the Catholic Church, have for more than 20 years now, been attempting to stamp out these heretical liberation theologies, denouncing them as vehemently antithetical to the Catholic Christian faith, and have been strenuously combating this Marxist counterfeit Christianity on many fronts within the Church herself.

Of course, the Medieval, iron-fisted clamp of the Catholic Church’s authority, even within the Church herself, is routinely overstated, and there are renegade priests all over the place (more on another of Obama’s spiritual mentors, a liberation theology Catholic priest in Chicago, in Part Two next week).

Not to mention the fact that the Catholic Church has no authority whatsoever over those claiming to represent protestant interpretations of the Christian faith, such as Cone and Wright.

But it is important to note here that liberation theology, including black liberation theology, has not gone unnoticed by the learned biblical scholars within the Vatican, and liberation theology has been roundly denounced as both heretical and dangerous, not only to the authentic Christian faith, but even more so to the societies which come to embrace it.

Just one nugget from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’:

“...it would be illusory and dangerous to ignore the intimate bond which radically unites them (liberation theologies), and to accept elements of the marxist analysis without recognizing its connections with the (Marxist) ideology, or to enter into the practice of the class-struggle and of its marxist interpretation while failing to see the kind of totalitarian society to which this process slowly leads.”
- (Author: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect, now Pope Benedict XVI; written in 1984)

Understanding that black liberation theology is Marxism dressed up to look like Christianity helps explain why there is no conflict between Cone’s “Christianity” and Farrakhan’s “Nation of Islam.” They are two prophets in the same philosophical (Marxist) pod, merely using different religions as backdrops for their black-power aims.

As Cone himself writes in his 1997 preface to a new edition of his 1969 book, Black Theology and Black Power:

“As in 1969, I still regard Jesus Christ today as the chief focus of my perspective on God but not to the exclusion of other religious perspectives. God’s reality is not bound by one manifestation of the divine in Jesus but can be found wherever people are being empowered to fight for freedom. Life-giving power for the poor and the oppressed is the primary criterion that we must use to judge the adequacy of our theology, not abstract concepts. As Malcolm X put it: ‘I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won’t let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion’.” (p. xii; emphases mine)

And, to drive his Marxist emphasis even further, Cone again quotes Malcolm X:

“The point that I would like to impress upon every Afro-American leader is that there is no kind of action in this country ever going to bear fruit unless that action is tied in with the overall international (class) struggle.” (p. xiii)

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/obama_black_liberation_theolog.html

[Fred Nerks]

[Fred Nerks]

Anti-Semitism in America.

The American Jewish community dedicated enormous effort to supporting the civil-rights movement, motivated both by the enlightened selfinterest of one minority in helping another fight bigotry, and by a desire to see the United States meet its ideals and provide justice to all its citizens. There was a moment of wonderful, close cooperation, but it was with leaders such as Martin Luther King and Roy Wilkins Noun 1. Roy Wilkins - United States civil rights leader (1901-1981)

Wilkins rather than with the American black population as a whole. By the late 1960s tension had already begun rising.

Still, today's outbreak of anti-Semitism among blacks is something new. It is evident not only in polling data that show blacks twice as likely to be anti-Semitic as whites, but also in the popularity on black campuses of exceptionally vicious peddlers of hate. To say that all of this merely reflects that old-time religion, American Protestantism--as do both Jaher and Dinnerstein--will not wash. Both authors, curiously, seem to suspend the desire for deeper analysis on this point. Is it not odd that the anti-Semitic orators in question are self-described Muslims, competitors rather than partners of the black churches? Is there not an obvious link here to the anti-Semitism that has so long existed in the Arab world and was spread during the Cold War by the Soviet Union and its allies? It is more logical to call today's virulent strain of black anti-Semitism a product of the Left and of Islam, than of the black churches?

SOURCE

Malcolm X on Zionist Logic

The Israeli zionists are convinced they have successfully camouflaged their new kind of colonialism. Their colonialism appears to be more "benevolent", more 11 philanthropic," a system with which they rule simply by getting their potential victims to accept their friendly offers of economic "aid," and other tempting gifts, that they dangle in front of the newly-independent African nations, whose economics are experiencing great difficulties. During the 19th century when the masses here in Africa were largely illiterate it was easy for European imperialists to rule them with "force and fear" but in this present era of enlightenment the A! frican masses are awakening, and it is impossible to hold them in check now with the antiquated methods of the 19th century.

SOURCE

TEI Director Ashahed M. Muhammad with Malik Zulu Shabazz and members of the New Black Panther Party at Saviours' Day 2007 in Detroit, MI. Ashahed moderated youth forums and Malik sat on a panel at a youth town hall meeting during this year's activities. It was a time of meeting greeting, organizing and strategizing.

source

[RowdyFFC]

His mother also abandoned him several times to go do her own ‘thing.’ Then his rich white grandparents planted him conveniently away in the exclusive Panahou boarding school after she left for good.

He never knew his father so can’t you imagine this child having dreams that his father would come take him into loving arms? It’s very typical in broken homes. It’s why he vested himself with his father’s ideals and he calls his grandmother a ‘typical white woman’.

Some really deep insecurities and mental health issues in this young man.

[thouworm]

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_23-2009_08_29.shtml#1251004569 "Today is the 70th anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the infamous agreement in which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union tried to carve up Eastern Europe between them. Historian Orlando Figes has a good summary of its significance here. History is full of cynical international agreements, many of which led to terrible results. But I doubt anyone can point to a worse treaty than this one." ....................... from a reader: Also, the actions, explanations, and spinning the CPUSA did over the pact resembled a round of "Twister" where all the participants wet themselves as they had to, of a sudden, defend fascism.

[thouworm]

Sorry about format; no matter what I did, I could not avoid a wall of type; wanted to add more of the post, but... However, I do know how to bold now.

[thouworm]

good start.

“To say that all of this merely reflects that old-time religion, American Protestantism” -— is ludicrous. As you point out, ML King and the black and white Christian supporters of Civil Rights never harbored such hatred. Today:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1207649974559

More than 80 percent of American Christians say they have a “moral and biblical obligation” to support the State of Israel, and half say Jerusalem should remain its undivided capital, according to a survey released on Thursday.

While evangelical Christians are the strongest supporters of the Jewish state, strong pro-Israel convictions cut across all key Christian denominations in the US, according to the poll carried out on behalf of the Washington-based Joshua Fund, an evangelical organization.

Eight-two percent of respondents said they had a “moral and biblical obligation” to love and support Israel and pray for the peace of Jerusalem,” 10% disagreed and 8% did not know.

Eighty-four percent of Protestants agreed with the statement (including 89% of Evangelicals), compared to 76% of Catholics.