Lone Leftist Kills Oklahoma Patriotism Bill

“America must finally acknowledge the horrors that slavery wrought,” we keep hearing as the latest variation on professional victimhood from groups now agitating for reparations for slavery. Never mind that library shelves groan under the weight of books, journals, and articles on slavery, that African-American museums dot the American landscape, and that the horrors of slavery are grist for the mill of countless university courses and movies.

You’d think from listening to these people that after the Civil Rights Act the American government just left black people to sink or swim. Somehow, these victimologists consider it irrelevant that the 1960s witnessed a battery of “reparations” for blacks that continues in full force today—the expansion of welfare, affirmative action, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, and so on. Sure, these policies have had mixed legacies (at best), but the fact remains that the nation instituted them in full awareness of the effects of slavery, segregation, and residual racism upon a group with a tragic history.

Yet the prime movers behind a recent suit brought against three corporations whose earlier incarnations may have benefited from slavery a century or more ago defend their initiative as a way of gaining the first “restitution” for blacks’ pain. Going beyond previous efforts to elicit reparations from government, this lawsuit takes its cue from Jesse Jackson’s strategy of shaking down private corporations. The assumption, based on Jackson’s successful racket, is that the companies will pusillanimously settle out of court rather than risk getting tarred as “racists” in a trial.

This effort makes little sense as history or policy. After all, no one today had anything to do with slavery, either as victim or perpetrator. Moreover, it’s all but certain that, even if the firms give out these new “reparations,” 20 years later a new contingent would be agitating for more money, believing that crying victim is the essence of authentic “black leadership.”

Real civil rights will mean standing down this misguided manipulation and devoting our efforts to the less glamorous efforts of fostering concrete change for people who need help. If the firms do try to settle out of court, shareholders should fight fire with fire by filing suit on the grounds that the companies are wasting corporate assets needlessly. Then perhaps companies might to the right thing instead of the easy thing.

To be sure, the reparations crowd seeks to put the money in an unspecified fund that would support housing, education, and health care for blacks. But more money would solve none of these problems, and if the past is any indication, any funds given to the usual suspects in municipal and social service bureaucracies would rarely reach the people they were intended for, and would just perpetuate the same old problems. What ails the black community today is the very illusion that holds the reparations gang in thrall—that serious black achievement is impossible except under ideal conditions, that white neglect must be at the root of any black-white disparity, and that only the actions of whites can significantly improve the conditions of blacks.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has increased payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers from $10,000 to $25,000, in a bid to gain more clout in the Arab world.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday revealed the macabre pay increase, and singled out Saddam for promoting a "culture of political murder."

Rumsfeld said Saddam has "proudly, publicly made a decision to go out and actively promote and finance human sacrifice for families that will have the youngsters kill innocent men, women and children."

Iraq now has a two-tier pay scale, providing suicide bombers' families with $25,000, and offering $10,000 to relatives of gunmen killed fighting Israeli soldiers.

Since Saddam's financing plan was put in place, 12 suicide bombers have blown themselves up within Israel, and their families have reported receiving checks from the Butcher of Baghdad.

Saddam is counting on opposition from Arab leaders to stop U.S. plans to target him in the next phase of the war on terrorism.

He recently announced on Iraqi TV that he would continue supporting the Palestinian attacks, "even if it means selling my own clothes."

The money is distributed by Mahmoud Safi, head of a pro-Iraqi Palestinian group, the Arab Liberation Front.

"We go to every family and give them a check. We tell them this is a gift from President Saddam and Iraq," Safi said.

Iraq is not the only source of income for the families of the "martyrs." Charities from Saudi Arabia and Qatar are also donating thousands of dollars in cash to funds that go to the bombers' families.

Until it was shut down by President Bush after Sept. 11, the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation was also raising funds for the families of suicide bombers.

Islamic scholars say it is not just money that motivates young Palestinian men - and women - to become suicide bombers.

They are flocking to Wahabbism, an extreme form of Islam that preaches the need for the Muslim community to embrace jihad, or holy war, as one its main pillars.

"They are disenfranchised people who see Wahabbism as their only hope," said Hedieh Mirahmadi of the Islamic Supreme Council, a religious organization devoted to teaching classical Islam in the United States.

"It unites people in Egypt, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Yemen - and it empowers them."

But it's clear that the payments are playing an important role in convincing young Palestinians to become suicide bombers, and are being welcomed by their families.

The mother of Jamal Nasser, a 23-year-old engineering student who died trying to ram a bomb-laden car into a Jewish settlement, said she received checks from Iraq and a Saudi charity that will help her move out of the small apartment the family has been renting in Nablus.

SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL SUMMED IT UP when he said, “Let’s be clear what brought it all to a halt: terrorism.” He was talking about the March peace initiative, but it is the cause of death and destruction in Israel. Yet, he stopped short of naming the biggest terrorist in Israel: Yasser Arafat.

The Israeli attack on Arafat’s Palestinian Headquarters compound clearly demonstrates that without Arafat the suicide bombers would have no support. According to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz Daily, “a great deal of the material found in the Arafat compound, the Muqata'a, includes weapons banned by the Oslo Accords, such as anti-armor weapons. The compound also yielded a large collection of documents that links the PA (Palestinian Authority) leadership with the terrorist attacks inside Israel.” The Associated Press reported that “the Israeli military on Saturday displayed dozens of automatic rifles, handguns and more than 30 rocket-propelled grenades that it said were seized from Arafat's compound.”

With each new headline screaming of death and injury to innocent civilians Yasser Arafat’s terrorism continues. The Associated Press (AP) story “Bombing Injures 32 in Tel Aviv Café” clearly reveals the linkage to Arafat in its lead paragraph. “The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement that identified the bomber as 22-year-old Mohannad Salahat from the village near the West Bank town of Jenin. The Al Aqsa militia is linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.”

Each additional atrocity makes it obvious that Arafat is masterminding the violence. Palestinian terrorists including the murderers of former Israeli Minister Rehavam Ze'evi are guests in his beseiged PA headquarters in Ramallah.

Unfortunately the United States still fails to acknowledge that Arafat is as much a terrorist as Osama bin Laden. What Arafat and his Al-Aqsa Brigades, Hamas, Hezbollah, and all the other Palestinian terrorist gangs have been doing in Israel is the equivalent of what bin Laden and al Qaeda did here on September 11. They don’t want peace they want to annihilate Israelis and push them into the Mediterranean Sea. Yet, the myth that the Palestinians truly want only to live in peace side by side with Israelis has been fostered by Palestinian sympathizers such as Bill Clinton, Arafat’s financial backers - the Arab states, and the United Nations.

Bill Clinton’s first international “success” was brokering the Oslo Peace Agreements between Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Yassar Arafat. These agreements made it possible for the PLO to transform itself in the eyes of the world from a terrorist gang to a recognized “national authority.” The Israelis came away with a promise of peace in our time and its Labor Party leaders brought home a shared Nobel Peace Prize. (The reality of the bad deal that Rabin and Peres brokered for their country is summarized in this web article on freeman.org written in 1996 three years after the accords were signed.)

For the entire eight years of the Clinton administration our foreign policy took a huge tilt in favor of Arafat. He was the foreign leader who visited the Clinton White House more times than any other. It’s hard to forget how Clinton snubbed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited the U.S., while welcoming Arafat with open arms.

It was only after Ehud Barak under the tutelage of James Carville, President Clinton’s aggressive political consultant, defeated Netanyahu that our administration again welcomed an Israeli Prime Minister properly. Yet, Clinton wasn’t finished with meddling in the Middle East. Seeking his own Nobel Peace Prize, he strong-armed Barak into concession after concession at the Camp David Peace talks. Unfortunately for Clinton his “friend” Arafat was not satisfied with achieving 95% of his goals and turned down every offer. Thus Clinton lost his Nobel Prize opportunity, while the Middle East has sunk into an ever-increasing spiral of violence - violence choreographed by Arafat and his terrorist thugs.

Yet, Barak is not alone in his willingness to put Israel in peril for “peace now.” When I was in Israel in 1982, I was amazed at the number of intellectuals who were eager to return land won in the Six Day War for a promise of peace. University professors, government officials, and the media were ecstatic that Israel was returning the Sinai back to Egypt and giving the Gaza strip over to the Palestinians. “Land for Peace” was a slogan then as now.

The U.S. must not undermine Israel’s sovereign right of self-defense. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on February 25, 2002, “The only way to defend yourself (against terrorists) is by going after them where they are. Because otherwise, you change your whole way of life, you're no longer a free person. You're living in a cave and hiding, behind barricades…and not being able to go out in the morning.” Without the right to safeguard its country against Arafat and his terrorists, Israel will cease to exist. And that’s just what Arafat wants!

ONCE AGAIN, THE REVEREND JESSE JACKSON has been caught worrying less about the empowerment of mainstream black Americans and much more about the enrichment of himself and the well-heeled financiers and attorneys who support him.

Jackson recently wrote General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt. The letter was dated March 14, the day after GE floated a hefty $11 billion in bonds.

“What concerns me is the dearth of minority banks involved in any aspect of this deal,” Jackson wrote, as CNSnews.com first reported. He continued, “it is disappointing to think that GE, one of America's most innovative and respected companies, doesn't feel that any minority-owned firms have the capability to be part of what will probably be one of the largest bond offerings in 2002.” Jackson then suggests that GE hire minority-owned investment banks that happen to be “members of our Wall Street Project Trade Bureau.” These companies, conveniently enough, contribute to Rainbow/PUSH and Jackson's other non-profits.

”This is all about hiring Jesse Jackson's friends,” says Kenneth Timmerman, author of Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson, now fifth on the New York Times' bestseller list. “This is a typical Jackson approach where he gives companies a list of his best supporters and basically asks them to hire one of his friends, and then he'll go away.”

Timmerman, who quotes me in his book, points to Jackson's initial opposition to AT&T's 1999 merger with TCI. Jackson complained to the FCC that AT&T had a “questionable employment record” and a “poor level of customer service.” AT&T CEO C. Michael Armstrong got the hint. AT&T donated $425,000 to Jackson's Citizenship Education Fund, prompting the Windy City preacher, for once, to clam up. AT&T also included Blaylock & Partners in an $8 billion bond deal. CEO Ron Blaylock, a Jackson associate, promptly gave CEF a $30,000 donation, making the circle of extortion complete.

Last May, Jackson attacked a Toyota ad that showed a black face with a small, gold SUV etched onto the model's tooth. “The only thing missing is the watermelon,” Jackson snarled. He threatened a boycott, but reversed himself after Toyota agreed to a “diversity” plan to increase its minority-owned dealerships. One week later, Timmerman reports, Toyota told Goldman Sachs to include Blaylock and Williams Capital Group in a $300 million equity offering. Williams also has sponsored Jackson's non-profit activities.

“In exchange for steering that business to his friends, Jesse wants 10 percent off the top,” stock broker and former Jackson ally Harold Doley, Jr. said. “He has become a Civil Rights Entrepreneur.”

For his next trick, Jackson is encouraging O.J. Simpson's savior, Johnnie Cochran, and other lawyers to sue corporations that benefited from slavery. As Cochran previously has said of this approach: “We've got to be ready to boycott these companies, hit 'em in the pocketbook, whatever we got to do.” Patting down U.S. corporations for reparations will mean hefty attorneys fees for those who get in on the action. One suit, filed March 26, already seeks damages against Aetna, CSX railroad and Fleet Boston for slave-related profits generated by their corporate predecessors or subsidiaries they purchased long after Emancipation.

These lawsuits, like reparations in general, stare into the rear-view mirror of 19th Century black agony rather than through the 21st Century windshield of black achievement. Colin, Condoleezza, Denzel, Halle and the 39 percent of blacks who now populate the suburbs, according to the 2000 Census, must not have heard Harvard professor Charles Ogletree say that “the legacy of slavery is alive and well.”

However, this litigation is as clever as it is wicked. While a federally-financed reparations scheme only could become law after skirting hostile public opinion, an unfriendly Congress and a skeptical White House, these suits could be settled out of court by companies that do not want to fight them and thus appear “racist.”

All these commercial and legal maneuvers require considerable energy and brainpower. Imagine if half of that could be channeled into helping small black businesses thrive or little black kids read. Alas, regular black folks will have to wait while well-connected black financiers and attorneys continue to hustle Big Business. Their greed recalls rap singer Puff Daddy's reference to $100 bills. For Jesse Jackson and his cronies, “It's all about the Benjamins.”

New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a Senior Fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Fairfax, Virginia.

these delightful articles have been linked in accordance with provisional corporate spam policies.

I don't know where I'd be without the Collective to screen out Incorrect thoughts.

if you really cared you'd
A) write your own article
B) not post a dozen stolen, crusty old articles all at the same time (or at least, as fast as you can)
C) get a clue

Built by slaves on stolen land.

Don't get your righteous snot in the way of my america , Penny dear. My blood soiled flag, desicrated by your snot for patriotism. you don't like a secular country? You leave!

Don't tread on me