Heavyweight
Champion Muhammad Ali was our hero, not only for his performance in the
ring and his infectiously happy and charming wit, but for his clear,
upright, honest, compassionate and unequivocal condemnation of his
nation's racist invasion, bombing and genocidal occupation war in
Vietnam.
Just before his indictment for refusing the draft in March of 1967, Ali stated publicly,
"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from
home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while
so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied
simple human rights? No I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help
murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of
white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the
day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take
such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once
and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will
not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to
enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and
equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality
to 22 million of my people they wouldn't have to draft me, I'd join
tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll
go to jail, so what? We've been in jail for 400 years."
Only
weeks after Ali's blistering statement, Rev. Martin Luther King from
the pulpit of New York's Riverside Church called his government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world," and held all Americans (including himself) responsible for "atrocity wars and covert violence on three continents since 1945, for refusing to give up the privileges
and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas
investments these atrocity wars are meant to maintain." King
vilified in media owned by investors in wars and deserted by friends
and fellow civil rights leaders, received his bullet to the head a year
to the day after that sermon King had titled "Beyond Vietnam - a Time to Break Silence."
For
being indicted for refusal of the draft, Ali was unlicensed to box from
1967 until 1971, when the US Supreme Court found in Ali's favor after
years of appeals during which former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark
assisted and became a life time admirer and friend of Ali.
We
know from listening to his wife being interviewed on television,
that Ali was a devout Muslim. One cannot avoid wondering if
Ali ever spoke or wrote about his feelings and thoughts during all these
years of patently illegal murderous use of US Armed Forces and CIA in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and Syria.
- Afghanistan: Apropos Ali's "
murder and burn another
poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of
the darker people the world over," every single nation of Caucasian
population, even tiny Andorra, Lichtenstein and Monaco, have taken part
in an international coalition that is now in its sixteenth year of
killing Afghanistan's defenders against foreign invaders and the
Quisling drug lord government the USA has imposed. [see
No Afghani Ever Attacked the US, UK, EU, Australia or Anywhere Else Synopis:
In
1979, President Carter criminally ordered an attack upon a friendly and
popular women's liberating socialist Kabul government by CIA covert
funding, arming and training fundamentalist hill tribe war lords,
who did not want their daughters in school. Brzezinski correctly
advised it would scare the USSR into coming to the Kabul government's
defense and into a trap.]
- Iraq: A non UN authorized 2003 American invasion and occupation of
Iraq is awaiting eventual Nuremberg International Law prosecution not
only for crimes against humanity, but genocide, by of way over a million
and a half murdered Iraqis and the destruction of what was a prosperous
nation. No official US source even attempts to justify the invasion
now. Previous to this genocide by the US, was the period of severe
sanctions that were credited with costing the lives of a half million young Iraqi children, which US Secretary of State
Madeline Albright later, with Clockwork Orange horrific callousness,
estimated as "worth the price" of keeping sanctions on Iraq.
- Somalia: US attack and funding of war lords friendly to US interests
in military attack on a overwhelmingly popular Islamic Courts
government, including using Ethiopian and Kenyan and UN proxy armed
forces, have brought death through US NATO UN war and resultant
starvation situations to a million and a half to two million Somalis and
brought terrorist involvement to justify more war. [
see Jay Janson: Merciless US NATO UN Genocide In Somalia ]
-
Libya: US NATO destruction of a wealthy socialist democratic
independent Libya, at the time, the 53rd highest UN Quality of Life
indexed nation, higher than nine European countries including Russia,
afterwards proven with watertight documentation to have been initiated
by CNN, Aljazeera and CIA assets Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International falsifying Libyan government attacks on a non existent
uprising of Libyans, in reality a CIA and its overseas branches
organized well armed army of terrorists.
[seeRussians Calling Medvedev a "Traitor" for Not Vetoing UN NATO War on Libya in Larger Context
Article's
larger theme is the willingness of humanity to accept white
world profitable investments in genocide until world economic power
shifts from Europeans and their descendant nations overseas to the six
sevenths of humanity they plunder. Article chronicles in detail the
immediate before, during and after of a preposterous destruction of
Libya.]
And years before all the above mentioned taking of many millions of Muslin lives, Ali, who said in 1967 that "such evils must come to an end," would
have had to have known of General Westley Clark's exposing in
March of 2007 of the Pentagon being informed by the Secretary of Defense
of a plan to take out seven nations, Iraq, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan and Iran, in five years. Ali would have watched the US
support its client the Shah as some twenty or more thousand Iranians
were mowed down in the street. Ali would have eventually heard
all about Reagan giving Saddam Hussein's Iraq 'most favorite nation
status' in order to go all out to assist Saddam's eight years long bloody
invasion of Revolutionary Iran at a human cost of a million Muslim
lives - US spy satellites giving Saddam coordinates of Iranian
positions,
saving Saddam from defeat.
So
what was Ali thinking and feeling about all this decades long American
slaughter of millions of innocent Muslim men, women and children in
their very own beloved countries, as often as not in their own homes?
Your author as an archival research peoples historian encouraged by
Ramsey Clark to seed a world public outcry for justice for the surviving
victims of US NATO wars, wrote to Ali a few times at his published
correspondence address, but received no answer. I learned that Ali's
mail was understandably being handled by Ali's wife, and out of respect
for Ali's illness made no further inquiries. Perhaps at some time in the
future, when things within the US open up, we might learn of Ali's
feelings through private papers made public.
Of
major interest would be whether Ali believed that the law would
eventually come down on Americans, who would then be forced to
compensate and indemnify financially at the super mega vast amount that
would make all investments in enslaving "those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality" not only to have been unprofitable but punitive to an nth degree.
Being
that the civil rights movement in America has been for such a long time
now a war supporting movement in spite of the greatest civil rights
leader Martin Luther King having warned in 1967 that "there
will be no progress on issues of justice at home as long as we are
killing the poor overseas at such an enormous expense in human and
financial resources as to make such progress at home impossible," perhaps Ali's most telling quote for our time might be,
"I
have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people
is here - white slave masters of the darker people the world over."
Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, in Germany & Sweden Einartysken,and in the US by Dissident (more...)