From The Final Call Newspape

2017 - A year of assaults, distractions and reaping the fruits of Black struggle

BY CHARLENE MUHAMMAD -NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT- | LAST UPDATED: DEC 25, 2017 - 11:00:05 AM

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In many parts of the country this year, activists and organizers mobilized efforts to fight for equality and social justice. Blacks suffered a year of attacks and distractions but persevered in 2017, according to economists, legal analysts, political scientists, and spiritual leaders. “By and large, it was a discouraging year,” said Dr. Julianne Malveaux, economist, author, and president emerita of Bennett College. Some attacks on Blacks were obvious, and others were more subtle and barely noticed, depending on how closely people followed the news, she said. “Frontally, we had the leader of our country, actually in the wake of Charlottesville, say that there were good racists out there. There were good people among the racists that killed a woman at a rally, and he backtracked and fore-tracked and backtracked and fore-tracked, but we can read between the lines,” Dr. Malveaux told The Final Call. “I watched those very closely, much more closely than you people watched it. And you have you had, a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now. You had a group, you had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit, and they were very, very violent,” said President Trump after a weekend “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August. James Alex Fields, Jr., an alleged White supremacist charged with driving his car into anti-racism demonstrators, faces 20 years to life in prison in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Judge Robert Downer increased his charge from first to second-degree murder during a Dec. 14 hearing. The 40 year old faces 20 years to life in prison. President Trump declared, “Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were White supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.”

Charlottesville represented one of the central attacks from the highest office in the country on Blacks protesting racism, so that might have been the lowest point, in Dr. Malveaux’s view.

Another assault came with revelations about a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) report that labeled groups and activists Black Identity Extremists who posed a violent threat to police.

The Congressional Black Caucus met with FBI Director Christopher Wray and expressed concerns about the Aug. 3 report. Given the FBI’s “troubling history” of targeting Black leaders and movements, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders, the Black political leaders said there was reason for concern.

“As you are no doubt aware, the FBI has a troubling history of utilizing its broad investigatory powers to target Black citizens. During the 1960s, Director J. Edgar Hoover used the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) to surveil and discredit civil rights activists and members of the Black Panther Party. For example, the FBI falsified letters in an effort to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr., into silence,” said Black Caucus members.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam addressed the plan head-on during a major message to President Donald Trump and the U.S. government Nov. 16 from the historic Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.

“To the government: You’re not coming into the Black community looking for ‘Black Identity Extremists,’ and not looking for me. You’re not coming looking for ‘separatists,’ and saying you’re not looking for me and the Nation of Islam. Muslims, do you know that we are the only thing that stands in between their wicked plan of the demasculinization of The Black Man?,” Min. Farrakhan stated.

Another attack from the White House via President Trump was his calling Black National Football League players a derogatory name for protesting the National Anthem by taking a knee.

Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began protesting racial injustices and the unjust police killings of Blacks by not standing for the national anthem last year.


“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son-of-a-bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired!,’ ” Mr. Trump said during a reelection rally in the Alabama senate race.

“We have an elected official of our nation who is hostile to Black people, and that is the overarching challenge that we have,” Dr. Malveaux stated.

The biggest triumph for Blacks in 2017 has been the awakening, the sprouting of the seeds that Min. Farrakhan has been planting in his 40 years of labor in the absence of his teacher, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, said Dr. Ava Muhammad, national spokesperson for Min. Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

The attorney, author, and radio personality said people are witnessing globally Black people’s awakening and their desire to be free, justified, equal, and to go for self.

“We are witnessing in every arena, from agriculture to entertainment, young, Black people are making it clear that they no longer desire to be in servitude to the children of their slave masters. They desire that which Allah has intended for them. I think that is the greatest victory that we’re witnessing, finally, the fruits of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s labor,” said Dr. Muhammad.

In the movement for economic justice, hip hop artists and activists, like rapper Killer Mike (Michael Render) who spearheaded the #BankBlack movement, have echoed Min. Farrakhan’s call to boycott holiday spending given the false worship of Jesus and oppression of Blacks and to unite and pool resources for progress.

“I think everybody in America should read Message to the Black Man,” Killer Mike told The Final Call. He saluted popular radio talk show host Charlemagne “Tha God” for pushing the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s revelatory book and Min. Farrakhan on his national platform.

“I’d just like to say that I really appreciate sitting in a room with Min. Farrakhan and folks in Atlanta, from Young Thug, to 2Chainz, Rick Ross and other brothers, and us being educated and updated. He’s loved amongst us. I’m glad that we’ve never turned our back on him, and I’m proud and I hope that he remains engaging us for as long as Allah allows him to be here, and I hope that his message continues to seep into our lyrics, because whether it was 2Chainz saying he had a meeting with Farrakhan or Young Thug mentioning the same thing in his raps, as long as he is always engaging us, his message will always be spread on this side of the fence, as it should be.”

Killer Mike wants the Black community to be “financially nationalistic.” If Blacks owned from a nationalistic standpoint things the Honorable Marcus Garvey and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad prescribed, like businesses and institutions, their communities would be better, he explained.

“What I mean is, we can’t be defeated if we’re thinking and we remain pliable with our tactic in beating the system. If charter schools are about to be the new way of the system, then we need to start to figure out pooling our resources and starting more Clara Muhammad’s (schools), versus complaining about charter schools or public schools are underserving our children,” he stated.

According to Killer Mike, hip-hop has been the only consistently fearless voice in arts and music. Whether the topics were the dangers of drugs, warnings about gang violence, or impact of poverty in the 1990s, the genre has always been informative of where the people are, he argued.

“I’ve always been proud of hip-hop, but I think this year, it’s been ramped up, because artists actually hit the streets, and not just big artists,” he said.

Dr. Boyce Watkins labeled the year 2017 as a year of distraction for Blacks. He feels Blacks spent a lot of time talking about President Trump, and many spent little time working on things to build their families and communities.

“Complaining about which White man is doing what in the White House is not what’s going to build the future of Black America. If we lived every year, moving forward, the way we live this one, I don’t think that we’d make a whole lot of progress,” Dr. Watkins told The Final Call.

At the same time, there are many beacons of hope, such as Black wealth building through investments in things such as bitcoin, a new type of cryptocurrency, or electronic cash system.

“Cryptocurrency represents both a huge economic opportunity, as well as an opportunity for political liberation, in addition to an opportunity to understand how technology and the understanding of technology is going to drive the future,” said Dr. Watkins.

He feels the low point for Blacks came with their filthy use of the internet in spreading sexually derogatory challenges.

“You had millions of children watching adults that they respect saying things that were degrading about themselves and about each other, and just sort of being proud of that, and it was really an embarrassment to the whole community, when your most respected and esteemed celebrities are the ones who are leading the charge,” Dr. Watkins stated.

(Final Call staffers contributed to this report.)

From The Final Call Newspaper

Playing with numbers and racial profiling?

By Bryan Crawford -Contributing Writer- | Last updated: Dec 12, 2017 - 10:52:46 AM

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Gang database in Chicago gets low marks from researchers and activists

Gun violence is the top crime problem associated with Chicago, particularly in neighborhoods and communities occupied primarily by Black and Latino people. The issue has long been on the radar of politicians at every level, and the Chicago Police Department has employed a number of strategies to get a better handle on the daily shootings that happen on the South and West Sides.


One of these is the Strategic Subjects List (SSL), also referred to as the Chicago Gang Database. The purpose of the SSL, according to police, is to identify those individuals who are most likely to either be a perpetrator or victim of gun violence.

This is commonly referred to as predictive policing. However, a recent study of the SSL conducted by the University of Illinois-Chicago Policing in Chicago Research Group, found that the Chicago Police department is actually using the database as a profiling mechanism specifically targeting Blacks and Latinos.

Chicago Police Officer Tony Washington watches surveillance videos at the 18th District Chicago Police Station March 19, 2010. Thousands of surveillance cameras keep Chicago under closer watch than any other U.S. city. Photo: AP/Wide World photos

“Predictive policing is kind of a mathematical, algorithm-based method of trying to essentially predict where crime will happen and who is most likely to engage in criminal activity,” Janae Bonsu, organizer with the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) and one of the principal researchers on this UIC study, told The Final Call. “The Chicago Police Department isn’t alone in using predictive policing, but the SSL is an example of predictive policing in practice by using data points such as being arrested for certain offenses, being in a particular age group, gang affiliation, or even being a victim of gun violence. However, there are many false positives in this technological, algorithm based policing method, and it just goes to show how unreliable predictive policing is.”


According to the research conducted by UIC, there are more than 400,000 people in the gang database of that 76 percent are male, 45 percent are under 30 years of age, 52 percent are Black and 25 percent Latino. The Chicago Police Department assigns a score of 1 to 500 to each person in the database, based on arrest and victimization records, as well as any known associations with anyone suspected of having a gang affiliation. In addition, any person having been arrested for narcotics possession or a violent offense—such as unlawful use of a weapon or domestic violence—are automatically added to the list.

It also appears that people who have had interactions with police based on the neighborhood they live in have also been added to the database.

Currently, there are approximately 13,500 people in the gang database who have never been arrested or charged for any of the activities that police consider to be gang related.

However, after parsing the numbers and analyzing the data, Black people, especially males, represent the largest group among any identified in the database.

“The list is overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly Black and Brown, but overwhelmingly Black, for real,” added Ms. Bonsu who explained the challenges a Black person may face by being identified on the SSL. “If they’re on the SSL and they’re arrested, no matter what the offense, they’re not eligible for an I-bond, which is being released on their own recognizance. Sentencing enhancements for any type of crime also goes into effect for someone on the SSL. People can be denied employment, be barred from getting certain professional licenses requiring a background check. There are serious consequences for any Black person labeled as a gang member by being on this list.”

Not only does this list add fuel to the fire of racial profiling by police and mass incarceration of Black people, but it also opens the door to possible deportation for many Latino men and women in Chicago who also find themselves in the database, in what is supposed to be a sanctuary city.
                    

“The gang database is a way in which police profile and target Black youth, but it also becomes a pipeline for deportation of undocumented immigrants,” UIC professor Andy Clarno, who led the direction of the Policing in Chicago Research group on this study, told The Final Call. “The findings we released were based on a statistical analysis of data released in May by the Chicago Police Department of the Strategic Subjects List. We’ve been trying to learn as much as we can about the database, the way it’s built, the way it gets used, and what happens to the data once it’s in there. But what we do know for sure is that you don’t have to be arrested to end up in the gang database.”

“When the Chicago Police Department conducts what they call investigatory stops, which is essentially stop and frisk, every time they do that, they’re supposed to write up an investigatory stop report,” Prof. Clarno explained. “Someone can be identified in the report as gang affiliated or a gang member, and they can end up in the database.”

Added Ms. Bonsu, “Police act as an entry point, both to incarceration but also deportation of immigrants, both Black and non-Black.”

Wilmer Catalan-Ramirez, a member of Organized Communities Against Deportation, worked as a mechanic and lived in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the city’s South Side. With no gang affiliations and no arrests, he was added to the Chicago gang database without his knowledge sometime in 2014 or 2015. Because of his undocumented status, Mr. Ramirez now faces deportation as a result of this interaction. People living in neighborhoods deemed to be high-crime and known for gang activity, can easily be placed on this list even with no known affiliation to gangs, drugs or violence. In March, Mr. Ramirez’ home was raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials as part of President Donald Trump’s promise to crackdown on undocumented immigrants living in sanctuary cities.

“We are going to get the bad ones out,” Mr. Trump said during a rally earlier this year. “The criminals and the drug leaders and gangs and gang leaders.”

In sanctuary cities like Chicago, police aren’t required to cooperate with federal agencies like ICE. However, they are permitted to share information—such as the SSL—between agencies at all levels. This is made easier through the Crime Prevention and Information Center, which is housed at the Chicago Police headquarters. Known as a “fusion center,” it is one of 75 that exist across the United States. This means that federal agencies such as ICE, have unimpeded access to databases such as the SSL that they can utilize in their own investigations.

“On 35th and Michigan (CPD headquarters), there’s someone from Homeland Security in the Fusion Center, someone from the FBI, Illinois State Police, ICE, they all have staff working there. So, data sharing is another huge issue with this kind of policing,” explained Ms. Bonsu.

Chicago police officers on the street. Photo: MGN Online

In the case of Wilmer Catalan-Ramirez, the Chicago Police Department admitted fault in erroneously putting him in the gang database. However, he is still being detained by ICE and facing deportation.


“There’s fear, not just about being put on the gang list, but really, with all interactions with police officers,” Tania Unzueta, policy director for Mijente, a grassroots organizing movement centered on issues affecting Latinos in Chicago. “Latinos don’t have the same experience as Black folks in Chicago, and I think sometimes the non-Black Latinos have this hope that they’ll be treated like White people and be treated fairly by the system. Latinos live in a contradiction where we expect to be treated right, but our experience is oftentimes that we’re not. I can definitely say that the number of 911 calls has gone down under the Trump administration. That’s definitely a sign that people are more leery of police and law enforcement.”

Mr. Ramirez, with the help of OCAD, was able to get the police to admit that he should never have been in the database. It is unclear if there is a formal process to get out of the database or if there is a transparent appeals process.

No White gangs or gangsters in Chicago?

“The data shows that the Chicago Gang Database is a target list of Black and Brown people who will be the victims of immigration raids, of incarceration and criminalization, and further policing,” argued Ms. Bonsu.

The findings also bear witness to words spoken by Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, warning that President Trump and the U.S. government, have planned a war against Black and Brown people and are currently in the process of executing it.

Interestingly enough, the Chicago Gang Database has identified no White person as being affiliated with gangs or drugs, nor does it identify one White street gang organization with members who would be potentially involved in illegal activities.

“White people put this database together. They’re not going to tell on their loved ones,” Wallace “Gator” Bradley, former gang member and who now serves as an urban translator and political consultant and president of the United In Peace anti-violence organization. “This is the same issue with the FBI targeting what they call ‘Black Identity Extremists.’ You mean to tell me there aren’t any White identity extremists? Steve Bannon isn’t one? You’re saying there’s no White gangs? Does the KKK not exist? The people who put the database together definitely aren’t going to tell on themselves. I’m probably in the database and I’m 65 years old.”

In a department that has continued to stress more transparency and accountability, it would be hard to reconcile the findings of this particular study. However, many activists and those involved in this study agree that simply creating a list that ultimately profiles people and adding more police on the streets is an ineffective deterrent to ending gang, gun and drug violence. They would like to see it done away with because of how harmful it is to individual lives and communities.

“Under the Trump administration, anyone suspected of anything wrong, is a target. And it’s really astonishing that people don’t find out they’re even on this list until it’s too late,” said Ms. Unzueta, who also explained that any Latino who finds themselves on this list are no longer protected under Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance which offers a sort of safety net from ICE, meaning local police can’t turn someone over to immigration authorities without due process. “We’ve had some attorneys explain how this list violates people’s constitutional rights, we’re also meeting with city councilmen to talk through the different policy options that exist that get us closer to getting rid of the database. But one thing we do know is that people want safety in their community, but a bigger gang database and more police won’t make anyone safe.”

“The police know who’s doing wrong. They know who the players are,” said Mr. Bradley. “The police also know there’s a structure out here where people who used to be gang members are doing work in the community and trying to steer kids right because they’re now parents. But they don’t want to showcase that. We’ve got to deal with the truth as it is. They’ve always been racially profiling us. The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad told us that a long time ago. Parents need to tell their children that all Black folks are targeted. They need to tell their loved ones if they’re out there and around [criminal activity] they’re watching you and they know who you are. We can’t complain about this database they’ve got on us. They’ve always had it.”

FROM THE FINAL CALL NEWSPAPER

Can You Survive? - Judgement, Disasters and America's Future

BY CHARLENE MUHAMMAD -NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT- | LAST UPDATED: DEC 5, 2017 - 2:08:02 PM

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(Editor’s note: This week The Final Call Newspaper devotes substantive space and places a major focus on the Divine Chastisement on America, disasters that are plaguing the country amid warnings contained in the Teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the words and witness-bearing of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. We pray that the spiritual truths, fact-based reporting, disaster preparation and survival tips will help us survive in this dark hour.)

A hard truth is sweeping America: God’s “Four Great Judgments” of rain, hail, snow and earthquake are being visited on this country.

“Let me tell you something: If you don’t give justice to us, you will lose everything you’ve got, including your life, because God, now, said He is ready to fight you for our deliverance. And he told me to tell you: You don’t have no fight against the forces of nature,” Min. Farrakhan cautioned President Trump during a mid- November press conference at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. The Minister has consistently warned disasters striking America are not happenstance, but the divine Supreme Being’s direct intervention and chastisement.

“The God is after America for her evils done to His people: You have a chance to relieve yourself of some of the heaviness of the judgment that’s against you by letting my people go,” said the Minister in an address earlier this year from Mosque Maryam in Chicago. He also said natural disasters and extreme weather would continue to plague America as punishment for her domestic evils.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan (R) NOAA satellite image of the Atlantic shows 3 major hurricanes on Sept 17. The Minister’s warning fits a prophetic pattern and assertions from the Nation of Islam since the 1930s. The basic tenet of the teaching is that God Himself has visited North America, chosen Black people to usher in a new society and is judging America today for her evil done to Blacks and the indigenous people of this nation. Nation of Islam patriarch Elijah Muhammad unapologetically taught that prophecy was being fulfilled in this modern time and that the man who taught him, Master Fard Muhammad, was the long awaited Messiah of the Christians and Madhi, or self-guided one, expected by Muslims.

In his speeches and writings, he warned America was doomed and the divine Supreme Being would use the forces of nature to bring the country to its knees. Min. Farrakhan has repeated Elijah Muhammad’s teachings and divine warnings.

Calamities thrashing America in 2017 alone signal God is angry with America, said Christian religious leaders, Muslim student ministers and others.

For the last 40 years, Min. Farrakhan has taught, guided, warned, and repeated assertions that America is under judgment, stated Student Minister Ishmael Muhammad, Min. Farrakhan’s national assistant, in a lecture entitled, “Who is Farrakhan.”

“This man is not before us of himself. He’s not self-made. He has been fashioned and made and anointed by the God of this time,” Min. Ishmael Muhammad said.

“Watch how the God will give a punctuation to what I said to you from him (Elijah Muhammad) today. So, if you keep going the way you’re going, it’s over,” stated Min. Farrakhan in Washington, D.C. That same day, a storm system pounded the West Coast with gusty winds up to 70 m.p.h., carrying more than three inches of rain and heavy snow that was set to disrupt the Midwest and East Coast, reported ABC News. Ten western states were on storm alert for damaging winds, heavy snow, and flooding rains.

In 2017, several back-to-back natural disasters of “biblical proportions” have hit America. Early costs for damages were estimated at $125 billion.

Hurricane Irma, with 185 m.p.h. winds, hit Florida and other southern states in September. She left more than seven million people without electricity, starting in the Caribbean.

Damage and debris left from Hurricane Irma in St. Johns County, Florida, Sept. 17. Photo: MGN Online Just before that, Hurricane Harvey, which moved far slower, did as much damage when it pummeled the entire state of Texas, hitting the city of Houston hardest. Reports put Harvey’s death toll at 82. Unprecedented torrential rains also caused massive flooding and damage. Northern and Southern California are still cleaning after nearly two dozen wildfires dubbed the “October Wildfire Siege” that started on Oct. 8 and scorched football field-sized swaths of land.

The fires, such as the Atlas Fire in Napa and Sonoma Counties in “Wine Country,” claimed thousands of acres of land.

“The forces of nature are great weapons as we see them in play upon America. Storms after storms of snow and ice are rolling in from the North and are pushing great drifts that are just covering up everything. What can you do with a God like that,” wrote the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in his prophetic 1973 book, “The Fall of America.”

Min. Farrakhan reiterated such warnings during his message at the Family Summit Conference, “Strong Families: The Foundation of a Great Nation,” in Atlanta in August.

“Mr. Trump, no bombs from a foreign government are going to fall here, according to what the Messenger (Elijah Muhammad) taught me. But this area is preserved for God,” Min. Farrakhan stated.

Confusion in government, politics

Part of God’s judgment is confusion inside governments, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches. Today near implosion threatens the Republican Party, with President Trump at war every day with members of his own party, Democrats, right wing conservatives, and some known as the Alt-Right.

The battles over repealing President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act and providing health care for all, tax reform, immigration, and military operations are troubling the country. As Elijah Muhammad wrote in “The Fall of America,” “The heads of the governments of the Christian world are confused, and they do not know that they are confused. Why? Because their greatest desire was to confuse us. Now Allah (God) has taken the confusion out of us and put it into them. Eat, America. Help yourself to the dessert that you have prepared for us. You eat it. All praises are due to Allah (God) Who came in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad.”

Witness bearers

“What I am seeing is that it is a blessing in that more and more people, I’m talking about online, and more and more people that I encounter, when the Minister would say ‘watch the weather,’ that now, they’re coming back and saying the Minister is right. The Minister has been on it. Every time he’s predicted these things, it has happened,” said Jesse Muhammad of the Farrakhan Twitter Army. He is Min. Farrakhan’s social media director and a student in the Nation of Islam ministry.

“Now, Allah is touching the hearts of the people to connect what they’re seeing on the Weather Channel and other news stations and on social media, and connecting it back to God’s warning,” Jesse Muhammad said.

People struggle against blizzard conditions. Photo: MGN Online

Rev. Willie Wilson of Union Temple Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., noted calamities are found from the Book of Genesis, through Exodus and Revelation in the Bible. Genesis has 49 chapters, so why is that so early God destroyed the earth? he asked.

It’s because America’s rulers have not been a reflection of God, he told The Final Call.

“I think that we have—not withstanding the many years that Brother Minister as well as the Teachings of Honorable Elijah Muhammad has put forth what would occur and what would happen—many who will not listen,” Rev. Wilson said.

“It is coming to pass. You see it all over, the floods, the hurricanes, the rain, all the devastation, the fires burning in California, everywhere. It’s clear indication that prophetic words have been spoken and they are now manifesting as reality,” said the longtime friend of Min. Farrakhan.

“As I look at the way it continued to perform from the very founding of this nation, it has sought to exploit and dominate and control the masses of the people of this earth,” Rev. Wilson added.

President Trump and Congress have ignored environmentalists’ pleas to pay attention to current calamities and climate change, he noted.

“They refuse to listen, because the greed for money and wealth and power supersedes any reality in terms of what’s happening all around.”

Abdul Arif Muhammad, Nation of Islam general counsel, said it’s time to keep up prayer, reflect and to try to walk in righteousness that God may provide mercy.

Avoid the enemy’s attempt to deceive the world about the origins of unprecedented destructive and deadly weather, he warned. “If you are taught and deceived into thinking it’s just happenstance, it’s Mother Nature, it’s climate change, and people are messing with the weather, though all of that could be some aspect of it, but that’s not, as we are taught, the real reason or motivation behind what’s taking place, because Allah (God) is controller of the forces of nature itself.”

As much as Blacks want to think about God’s judgment in the abstract, they actually have control, because God gives them the power to be in control and to follow Him, stated Rev. Mark Thompson of Washington, D.C.

“If we would but humble ourselves to God, and it really ain’t rocket science! We are burning ourselves up,” said Rev. Thompson, through a mild chuckle.

The Sirius XM Satellite radio host of “Make it Plain” painted a vivid picture of Blacks, whom he likened to crabs in a pot unaware of the danger because of water heating up but not yet boiling.

“The Bible shows over and over again, especially in the Old Testament, how the Israelites would love God. God would love them. Then, the Israelites would do something crazy, and disrespect God, and God would punish them. And then they’d make up again. So I think some folks think, ‘We’re just going to keep going with that. We mess up. God gets mad at us, and then we’re just going to make up.’ Well guess what, when this pot really starts boiling, ain’t gone be nobody left for God to make up with. It’s gone be a wrap,” he said.

Min. Farrakhan has been vindicated of any charges that he is crazy, or doesn’t know what he’s talking about because of his constant warnings, Rev. Thompson said.

When White folks hear Min. Farrakhan on his radio show and say, “Mark, we’ve never thought about him that way before. We’ve never heard him that way. We can’t be so angry anymore. That’s the day I think we need to recognize that everything around us is changing and we had better listen to him, listen to ourselves, listen to God, and get right with God,” Rev. Thompson said.

Pastor Thembekila Smart of Christ Liberation Ministries in Los Angeles said scriptures and Min. Farrakhan’s prophetic warnings are clearly playing out.

“I think we’re in that time,” she said. “The time promises that everything will shut down, and then there will be a time of peace.”

From the Bible, to the Qur’an, to the Torah, all speak of a prophetic time, which is taking place right now, stated Pastor Smart. “Time has run out,” she said. “It’s so deep right now … time is up!”

Sacrifices have to be made for survival, to hold the water, the destruction back, and Blacks are not in sacrifice mode right now, she argued.

“This is something that you hear Min. Farrakhan talking about all the time. You hear Harriett Tubman talking about it, Frederick Douglas, Marcus Garvey. There’s going to have to be some type of gnashing of self,” she stated.

Instead, Pastor Smart continued, everyone wants their desires immediately, but as Min. Farrakhan has been pushing for years: “Separate! Separate! Separate! We’ll never get that message until the weather gets bad enough and there’s danger to humanity.”

(Darrielle Muhammad contributed to this report.)

From The Final Call Newspaper

Slave markets in Libya - Who is to blame?

By Richard B. Muhammad and Raychelle Muhammad, Final Call Staffers | Last updated: Nov 29, 2017 - 11:59:59 AM

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Libya’s suffering and slavery didn’t just happen

Demonstrators hold signs during a demonstration against slavery in Libya on November 24, 2017,outside the Libyan embassy in the French capital Paris.

When CNN released video footage of a live slave auction in Libya, captured by journalist Nima Elbagir, shockwaves were sent around the world.


Starting the bidding at $400 each, buyers purchased 12 African migrants at an undisclosed location outside the capital city of Tripoli in a matter of minutes.
How is it possible for open slave market to exist in the year 2017?

At the end of the day, several hundred people gathered in front of the Libyan Embassy in Paris to demand the end of slavery practices in the country updated following a report by CNN. Paris, France, November 24.

The roots of the slavery, suffering and misery in Libya goes back to the purposeful, targeted destruction of the government of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi.


While President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, declared their assault on the North Africa leader was about protecting the Libyan people and standing for what is right, Libya has gone all-wrong with no solution in sight.

Raymond A. Winbush, a professor and director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University, noted that by President Barack Obama’s own admission, the worst mistake of his presidency was how he handled Libya.

With three different feuding governments, Libya has never been more unstable. This instability left the door wide open for today’s widespread corruption, human rights abuses, and the slave trade, said Dr. Winbush.

Dr. Winbush told The Final Call that Libya once boasted the highest standard of living in Africa as Col. Gadhafi redistributed oil revenues back to his people. Libya is now in utter chaos. Racism and slavery are running rampant and these are crimes Col. Gadhafi would have never permitted, he said.
Dr. Winbush also noted that the end of Col. Gadhafi’s reign was accompanied by the birth of the international terrorist organization ISIS.

Gerald Perreira, the chairperson of the Black Consciousness Movement Guyana and Organization for the Victory of the People, drew attention to CNN and its role in offering an “expose:” “The world we find ourselves in is complex and full of contradictions. It is easy to fall for rudimentary textbook propaganda based on simplistic dichotomies, such as ‘the good guys versus the bad guys.’ If we are not aware of the complexities and nuances facing us, we can fall for this type of propaganda, whose sole aim is to keep us apart and destroy any type of unity that could strengthen our ability to defeat the enemy,” he wrote in a piece titled “Deceptive Intelligence: CNN breaks story on Slave Trade in Libya; French Government Voices Concern for African Migrants.”

“When examining and assessing the latest information fed us by one of imperialism’s mouthpieces, CNN, there are important things for us, as revolutionary Pan-Africanists, to keep in mind. The first thing to note is the clear hypocrisy and insincerity which is nowhere more stark than CNN’s recent expose of ‘Libyan crimes against humanity’ and French President, Emmanuel Macron’s call for a special meeting of the UN Security Council to demand immediate action against this heinous ‘Libyan’ crime,” he wrote.

Mr. Perreira warned against giving too much credence to CNN and Western media without a critical analysis of their roles and their corporate, imperialist agendas. Lies “can come in the guise of the imperialists and White Supremacists themselves, or their mouthpieces such as CNN, BBC, Fox News or any of the mainstream corporate media outlets. We should never forget their role as cheerleaders and purveyors of the fake news that laid the groundwork for the invasion and destruction of the Libyan Jamahiriya. Therefore, let us ask ourselves the burning question, why are they providing us with this information, and why now? Why are the imperialists suddenly feigning concern for the plight of Africans?” he asks.

“Muammar Qaddafi and the Revolutionary Committees Movement of the Al Fateh Revolution had a monumental task on their hands: to conscientize and reposition the Libyan people for a significant role in the revolutionary Pan-African project for a United States of Africa. This is a battle for all African revolutionaries. In Sub-Saharan African countries, where almost the entire population comprises Black Africans, we face the same battle. Here in the Caribbean, it is no different. So, when Qaddafi urged his people to look towards a United States of Africa and a revolutionary Pan-African perspective, he had to face Libyans who rejected this program in favor of Libya and the entire North African region joining the Barcelona Project, a Mediterranean-European alliance, whose aim is to take North Africa out of Africa,” Mr. Perreira continued.

“Prejudice against dark-skinned Africans exists all over planet earth. Even in countries where the population is almost 100 percent Black African, we have to contend with ‘shadism,’ a hangover from colonialism and plantation culture, where Africans with lighter skin shades are held in higher esteem than Africans with darker skin shades. However, to say that ‘Arab Libyans’ are selling ‘Africans’ is overly simplistic and deliberately misleading. There is a hidden agenda here—beware. The objective is to ignite hostilities between so-called Arab-Africans and so-called Sub-Saharan-Africans. There is a debate amongst Africans about who is an African. On the one hand, there are those who limit the definition of African to Black Africans in the Sub-Saharan region of the continent. On the other hand, there are those of us who believe that Africa is one, and we will resist any attempt by the imperialists to redefine and further balkanize Africa,” he continued. “Rather than becoming part of the European Community, North Africans promoting the Barcelona Project would be better off seeking out their African roots. This is what Muammar Qaddafi told all Libyans.”
                     

Col. Muammar Gadhafi

The writer lived in Libya and is a Gadhafi loyalist. Mr. Perreira pointed out how the forces of U.S.-European Union imperialism had fought to take down Col. Gadhafi and his government since its establishment in 1969. In 2011, Col Gadhafi was on the brink of unifying the African continent and was poised to receive the UN Human Rights Award, he wrote in an article published on Modern Ghana online.

But the Obama administration, on the advice and counsel of Secretary Clinton and others, along with British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Saudi Arabia King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, and Qatar Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani launched an all-out assault against Col. Gadhafi which ended in his execution on Oct. 20, 2011.

President Obama’s ‘regret’

In an interview with The Atlantic published in April 2016, President Obama discussed the U.S. “intervention” in Libya which he said was carefully planned to stop Col. Gadhafi from invading Benghazi, where there was an uprising. President Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden and then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, initially wanted no part in the conflict, according to the article. It was Secretary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, and others who won Mr. Obama over. But he expressed remorse for how Libya was handled and turned out—but not that Col. Gadhafi was killed.

The effort, which cost the U.S. $1 billion, was an epic failure. Publicly, Mr. Obama said, “Libya is a mess.” Privately, the article said, he called Libya a “sh*t show.”

“When I go back and I ask myself what went wrong, there’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up,” President Obama said to The Atlantic. “If we’re going to do something, obviously we’ve got to be up front, and nobody else is sharing in the spotlight.”

The former president’s admission of error does nothing to solve the problem. Complicating matters, Italy’s government has made deals with Libya’s coast guard, tribes, and warlords to prevent refugees from entering Libya and continuing their journeys into Europe.

And while Western nations were able to collude on how to deal with Libya and Col. Gadhafi, they have not come together to deal with the horrors of Libya today. Did the Western nations fear what was happening in Libya and an awakening of a broader African identity and possible political and economic reality?

Mr. Perreira offers a compelling answer: “The North Atlantic Tribes Organization (NATO) deeply fear this type of awakening and the unity of purpose and action it could lead to in this oil rich and wealthiest region of the world. Minister Farrakhan said many years ago, reflecting on periods of unity in our history, ‘we did it before and we can do it again.’ Muammar Qaddafi’s persistent struggle to forge a United States of Africa was starting to pay off. He was on the verge of creating an African currency that would have shifted the global economic imbalance, preparing the way for Africa to take its rightful place in the world. … Fear of this emerging African unity, especially between countries in the north and south of the continent, prompted France to orchestrate (Cote D’Ivoire leader Laurent Gbagbo’s)  removal from power at the same time as the NATO led invasion of Libya. Genuine African unity, resulting in anything more than talk, will always be opposed, no matter what the cost, by the forces of White Supremacy.”

Chaos breeds refugee crisis

Since 2014, over 600,000 people have migrated to Italy including an all-time high of 180,000 refugees in 2016 alone. Although this action has left migrants vulnerable to being sold into slavery, Italy’s interior minister Marco Minniti stands behind their policy.

The International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency, has been reporting the rape, violence, extortion, and enslavement of refugees for months.

The IOM exposed the problem and yet no one was apparently listening. Migrants were being swindled by human traffickers they had paid to transport them off the African continent. Survivors said instead they were enslaved, starved, and abused by their captors.

“The latest reports of ‘slave markets’ for migrants can be added to a long list of outrages [in Libya],” said Mohammed Abdiker, IOM’s head of operation and emergencies. “The situation is dire. The more IOM engages inside Libya, the more we learn that it is a vale of tears for all too many migrants.”

All Africa reported that many families of migrants captured by militia and smugglers have been extorted. If they can’t pay the ransoms, then the prisoners are sold. Often the new owners will try to extort the families as well. If at some point the captors can neither collect on nor sell a prisoner, or if the prisoner falls ill, the prisoner is killed.

The CNN footage has garnered much attention and condemnation from the UN, African leadership, and people around the globe. Shortly after the story aired, a massive, and at times violent protest in Paris outside the Libyan embassy ensued. Similar demonstrations were held at Libyan embassies in several African capitol cities including Bamako, Mali and Conakry, Guinea.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate investigation into the matter and prosecution of all guilty parties.


France called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the problem. President Emmanuel Macron condemned human trafficking as a “crime against humanity” via Twitter on Nov. 22. He has since met with head of the African Union, Alpha Conde.

But are France’s hands clean? “The destruction of this most prosperous and just African country was led by France, who now dares to call for a special meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the crimes committed against African migrants ‘by Libyans.’ This is devil-speak,” said writer Perreira.

“The same devil who, in the words of the Honorable Minister Farrakhan, ‘unleashed the demons’ that are now committing these and other heinous crimes, is trying to sow more discord by talking about ‘Libyan crimes.’ Where was CNN and the French government when these same gangs of demons were committing the atrocities described above?”

Libyans have vowed to cooperate with the UN probe while also conducting investigations of their own. But West African political leaders have heavily criticized the Libyan slave trade and are taking action on behalf of exploited migrants from the region. Both President of Niger Mahamadou Issoufou and the foreign minister of Burkina Faso, Alpha Berry, summoned the Libyan ambassador to meet to address the issue.

President Issoufou has demanded that the International Court of Justice investigate Libya. The matter of the slave trade in Libya has been added to the agenda of the next African Union meeting in Ivory Coast on Nov. 29 and Nov. 30.

Looking to the future

Where do we go from here? The answer to that question is multi-layered with many moving parts. Minister Abdul Akbar Muhammad, the international representative of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam told The Final Call that those who have bought and sold slaves must be held accountable.

All authorities, who include the AU, the UN, the U.S., international human rights organizations, and all three divisions of the Libyan government, must step in to chastise and isolate the offenders, he said.

Mr. Muhammad also observed that the fractured Libyan government model is nothing shy of a “basket case.” And with the government being a product of a military coup, Libya should be kicked out of the UN as well as the AU, he argued.

The United States must now be involved in the solution as both the creator of the problem as well as the home of the media outlet that filmed and aired the footage of the inhumane practice, Min. Akbar Muhammad said. CNN’s reporting has culpability in the world’s perception of this crisis and their investigative team is a witness against the perpetrators, he continued.

Mr. Muhammad also said Blacks in the U.S. and other members of the African Diaspora must become voices for the victims by petitioning their governments and human rights organizations to act swiftly against slave trafficking.

Perhaps the most important action that the 54 members of the African Union must take, Mr. Muhammad said, is to immediately begin to invest in building their economies, creating business and employment opportunities, and improving the quality of and access to education so that young people will no longer have to risk their lives migrating to Europe.