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Speak Truth To Power Now
lacks have been able to
come up with some use- ful and manful phrases that be- come popular sayings all over the nation. You can recall “I am Black and I am proud” or “now is the time.”
How about “spare the rod and spoil the child.” Then, there are two good ones that are used quite frequently, “Speak Truth To Power,” and the all important “Black Life Matters.”
Today, I want to spend some time discussing the last two.
Let’s look at the one that says “Black Life Matters.” I spoke with a number of people who join me in asking the ques- tion Black life matters to whom? There are a lot of peo- ple who believe this, but I still
must ask again it matters to whom?
It doesn’t mean much to Black People and it certainly doesn’t mean anything to the police. You should know that Black life does not matter to the police the way they are murder- ing Black men, young or old.
All the police have to do to go free is to say that he feared for his life. It makes no differ- ence what witnesses say or what the camera may show, legally, that’s all there is to that. You can say a guilty cop just went free.
The second of these two wise sayings is Blacks must have the ability to “SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER.”
I first heard those words of wisdom three years ago. I ask what made the statement im-
portant and what did it mean. Power meant law makers on every level of government. It means the Supreme Court and all the lower courts under its ju- risdiction.
Finally, it was talking about boards, committees or authori- ties that had legitimate powers that had to recognize, respect and obey.
We as a race of people need to be able to speak the truth, as it occurs on our minds. It should not matter what branch of power it is, we must stand tall and speak the truth whether the power wants to hear it or not. The word is we’ve got to stand tall and speak the truth.
So many of us only speak the truth when there is benefit to the truth holder. The beauty in speaking truth to power is that we are speaking directly to the people who can help us.
When we do speak to power our thoughts should be clear, should be unshakeable and most important we must be speaking the truth.
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C. Blythe Andrews 1901-1977 (1945)
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His Name Was Doris
ut to his friends and foes alike he was “Dorie” for
short. That’s Messman Third Class Dorie Miller, sta- tioned on the battleship West Virginia at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. As Messman, he spent most of his time in the mighty ship’s laundry. For, he gathered up his white shipmates dirty shirts, socks, and underwear, keeping them clean for “First Call” and other formalities.
But in his spare time, this young Black man, built like a brawny Joe Frazier before Frazier’s time, practiced the manly art of boxing and became a champion not only on the S.S. West Virginia, but throughout the American fleet moored at Pearl Harbor.
Then came December 7, 1941... a Sunday when all was serene both on deck as well as on shore. Messman Miller was finishing his shipmates’ laundry and reliving his Sunday knockout punch when suddenly his world shook around him as Japanese Zeros took their toll on a dozing Pacific Fleet. And it was then Dorie became a household word throughout what was still a racist America.
What did he do? He ran topside, saw what was happening and like the mythical John Henry grabbed up an anti-air- craft machine gun and started blasting Zeros out of the blue. And when he ran out of bullets and his gun began to melt, he heard a scream and a moan from the bridge; it was his captain whom he later rescued then went back to fighting bombers before he himself was wounded and was forced to abandon ship.
Readers, gather ’round and let us tell you the story of a real-life, sable-skinned hero who lived, fought, and died dur- ing World War II’s Pacific Theatre. Doris Miller was his name... “Dorie,” for short. He stood single-handed against a Japanese air armada and for his efforts was the first Black American to receive the coveted Navy Cross.
The Fruit Of Knowledge
wenty-four years ago a
man named William "Bill" Cooper, a retired Navy Intelligence officer, presented a book entitled Behold A Pale Horse. In it, Cooper revealed a plethora of the alleged, top se- cret information that he was al- lowed access to while working in concert with the Central Intelli- gence Agency (C.I.A), a covert department of the government that, at the time, was under the direction of a man who would go on to become president of the United States. George H. W. Bush.
Some of the topics Cooper covered in his book centered around such controversial ideas as President John F. Kennedy being assassinated because he threatened to expose the super secretive Illuminati, the supposed existence of a pres- idential executive order that calls for the imprisonment of U. S. citizens in concentration camps during certain times of crisis, the alleged real reason why F.E.M.A. (Federal Emer- gency Management Agency) was formed, how H.I.V. was created in an effort to decrease the pop- ulations of Blacks, Hispanics and homosexuals and, my per- sonal favorite, Cooper's asser- tion that all of the world's leaders answer to the authority of a clandestine group of extra- terrestrial beings who dictate the path of humanity.... Feel free to laugh at that last one because it had me chuckling the first time I read it also.
Since its release the book, which has been hailed as one of the most prolific pieces of con- spiratorial literature of our era, has been criticized and de- scribed as a work of "fantasy" written by a person whose cred- ibility and motives for compiling
such explosive material are curi- ous at best. But, even with all of the question marks surrounding the validity of Cooper's manu- script, there were still certain nuggets of information that he presented that are hard to ig- nore.
For starters, Cooper's de- scriptions of computer technol- ogy, including the existence of microchips, during a time when the extent of the average per- son's knowledge of computers was a Pac-Man video game lends credence to the idea that he was at least privy to some informa- tion that wasn't available to the general public during the mid 1980s (Pale Horse was pub- lished in 1991).
Before there was any such thing as an internet and long be- fore navigational and global po- sitioning systems (GPS) were common in every vehicle Cooper acknowledged that these were things that the U. S. government was creating as part of a strategy to have full access to the movements of all of its cit- izens.
According to Cooper, a plan existed to insert all of us with microchips that he believed would be small enough to be in- jected by a needle. The chips would, not only, allow the gov- ernment to track us but, they would store all of our personal information and would usher in a cashless society where all transactions would take place via the scanning of our hands.
Cooper, a self-proclaimed born again Christian, compared the chip to the mark of the beast mentioned in the Book of Rev- elations Ch 13: 16-17 where it reads: "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond to receive the mark in their
right hand, or in their fore- heads. And that no man buy or sell unless he has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name."
For years, people who are fa- miliar with this Biblical passage and who are aware of the myste- rious plot to lo-jack an entire na- tion have been preparing for the day when the government would call on everyone to sign-up for their chip imbedding. But, what a lot of these people haven't re- alized yet is that, if this plan ac- tually existed, it's probably already too late.
The microchip that Cooper believed would be planted un- derneath a person's skin has been replaced by one that every- one has adjusted to simply hold- ing in their hands... It is commonly referred to as a smart phone.
If there was a conspiracy, what better way for them to make sure that every person in every household was tagged other than placing the chip in- side of a device that no one seems capable of living without? And the irony is that they didn't have to force anyone to get the mark. All they had to do was give it cool features and make it available for purchase.
Of course, this is all conjecture and Bill Cooper really may have been as crazy as his con- temporaries believed. But, when you look at a company like Apple Technologies, arguably the biggest manufacturer of smart phones, and realize that its half bitten apple logo is symbolic of the fruit given to man by a ser- pent in the Garden of Eden be- fore his downfall, it's hard not to wonder if there is indeed more to going on behind the scenes of the world around us than we ever imagined?
Reality On Ice is © by the Florida Sentinel Bul- letin Publishing Company. Anyone wishing to contact Clarence Barr can email him at: realityonice@yahoo.com.
Trump Versus Muslims: A Deadly Poem Replayed
onald Trump, the seeming canker sore of the Republi-
can Party, recently proposed a ban that would keep all Muslims from entering America, an idea that was quickly hooted down by most Republicans. But it wasn’t hooted down by everybody. At a Mount Pleasant, South Carolina campaign rally, Trump unleashed his so-called “final solu- tion,” where he called for “drastic action” while his support- ers cheered and stomped their approval.
Meanwhile, his campaign manager bluntly reiterated his hero’s proposal, which included Muslim tourists as well as Muslim immigrants. In disgust, a representative from CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) accused Trump of sounding like a leader of a lynch mob. But in our opinion, this most recent Trump sounded more like an Adolph Hitler on his way to a Nazi take-over.
As such, we are reminded of a poem penned by Martin Niemoller who later spent 7 years in a Nazi concentration camp. He wrote, “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out/ Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out/ Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out/ Because I was not a Jew./ Then they came for me, and there was no one to speak out for me.” But Black America, let’s add to this poem so it reads, “Then they came for Muslims, and I did not speak out/ Because I was not a Muslim. Then, Black America, they came for you and me, and there was no one left to speak out for us.”
We can remember when Jews and Japanese Americans were the targets of mass hate. Now it seems Mexicans and Muslims are in the bull’s eye. How long will it be before it’s our turn once again? Must History repeat Niemoller’s poem, or will we speak out in time?
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