Malcolm X – Shahidul News

By rahnuma ahmed

iqras — 'Ikhras', inspired by Muntadhar al-Zaidi, Malcolm X?? Carlos Latuff (Brazilian cartoonist)?

Ikhras, the Arabic word for “shut up”, is the name of a website http://ikhras.com/ which nominates a House Arab or a House Muslim every month, for having earned the glory of receiving the hurled at shoe, so that he does… well, precisely that. Shuts up.
Exactly what Muntadhar al-Zaidi had done to former US president George W. Bush Jr to get him to Ikhras!
Bush, while on his fourth visit to Iraq as the sitting president, was addressing a press conference at the prime minister’s palace in Baghdad (December 14, 2008). He spoke of having built “a freer, safer, and more hopeful world.” Of having shown the people in the Middle East that “America stands firmly for liberty and justice and peace.” Of having ensured that the next US president would inherit a “stable foundation for the future.”?Whoosh. “This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog,” al-Zaidi yelled, as he flung the first shoe.
The second followed, within split seconds. “This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq.”
But Ikhras’ monthly shoe awards, as its mission statement pronounces,? is not for white oppressors but for House Arabs and House Muslims. Its editors draw on Malcolm X, Black American revolutionary leader, who, in these memorable words had distinguished between Field Negroes and House Negroes in a powerful speech in 1964 (the video has been uploaded on Ikhras’ website):
“Back during slavery, when Black people like me talked to the slaves, they didn’t kill ’em, they sent some old house Negro along behind him to undo what he said. You have to read the history of slavery to understand this. There were two kinds of Negroes. There was that old house Negro and the field Negro.? The house Negro always looked out for his master. When the field Negroes got too much out of line, he held them back in check. He put them back on the plantation. The house Negro lived better than the field Negro. He ate better, he dressed better, and he lived in a better house. He ate the same food as his master and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like his master — good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself. If the master got hurt, he’d say: “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” When the master’s house caught afire, he’d try and put out the fire. He didn’t want his master’s house burnt. He never wanted his master’s property threatened. And he was more defensive of it than his master was. That was the house Negro. Continue reading

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By Arjun Janah

By Any Means Necessary?
By any means necessary!
That was a phrase used by Malcolm X, I believe, for which he was reviled.
But we see it in action here, as police check microphones to follow orders.
Ultimately, their orders are coming, not from their superiors in the police hierarchy,
but from those higher up in the feeding chain on which our society is based.
Free speech, demonstrations, including sit-downs and sit-ins, are fine, if in other countries
— or even here as long as they do not challenge the premises, authority and operation of
the feeding chain and its associated hierarchies.
By any means necessary? Those giving the cops their orders appear to believe in Malcolm
X’s dictum.
Note that guns were drawn and pointed by the police at regular intervals during the retreat.
After witnessing what they had just seen, many in the crowd were incensed. The police
saw that. This was a remarkably docile and disciplined crowd — of university students in
an almost rural campus (U.C. Davis, where the agriculture school used to be a major draw)
far from the turmoil of the big cities. But the situation could have deteriorated further, quickly.
I know that if I were there and seen sitting students sprayed at close quarters with burning
chemicals on their faces and then set upon and handcuffed with arms twisted behind their
backs, I might probably not have shown the restraint (or caution or wisdom) exhibited by
the onlooking students. There are such things as gut reactions beyond one’s control, at
least in my and I would hazard in many others’ cases. Guns can’t stop such things.

APTOPIX Occupy Portland — Photo by Oregonian staff photographer Randy L. Rasmussen

Guns have and will again be used — and people will die and be blamed for provoking their own
deaths — as the killings are justified and even celebrated by the brain-washed segments of our
population — brainwashed, by the way, by many decades of what amounts to censorship and
propaganda by the media to divide workers from workers.
Just yesterday afternoon, right after school ended and I stepped out to get a cup of coffee before
returning to the building to do the endless prep and other work there, I was harangued by an older
gentleman at a store right by the school. He insisted that a young person bloodied in a picture (on
the Daily News cover) of the OWS protest Thursday here in NY City — in reaction to their eviction
was being paid by Obama, the unions and the public workers, including teachers like me, all of whom
were socialists and parasites, with Obama being, in his words, one of those “nigger rich”. I told him
that though I was no supporter of Obama or of Clinton before him (whom he also reviled), who I thought
the real parasites were and who the true creators of wealth.
He was incensed and cursed me out as f****ing communist. This was a man who watched the TV news and
perhaps read newspapers. He quoted articles from the NY Times and the NY Post and recommended Fox
News to me. I suspect he might have heard about the newspaper articles on that channel. I had told him
that both papers were anti-union and anti-worker, with the Post only being more rabidly so.
This is what we are up against in this country — and, I suspect, in many others. Politicians — both
Tories and Labor, and no doubt the Liberals (who are not liberal in the sense used in this country)
used to bow down to Rupert Murdoch — until recently, when his spying obsession began
to interfere with, instead of support, his wheeling, dealing, blackmailing king-making one.
So now we have the systematic War on Workers, supported by other workers — as well as these
violent actions on protestors — even non-violent students staging a sit-down protest on their own
university campus.
Shades of Kent State or of Tien An Men Square?
This is America — or many another country, for that matter.
Arjun