mohammadalisalih.com Blog

BLACKS INFERIORITY COMPLEX:
MARION BARRY OF WASHINGTON

Former Washington, DC, mayor, Marion Barry, is an example of a Black man who, not only suffers from “BIC” (Blacks Inferiority Complex), but also exploited, profited from and deepened it among his Black supporters. Notwithstanding his early Civil Rights activities, somehow and somewhere after that, he strayed morally, more and more, until now, about half-a-century later, he became the joke of the city he was a mayor of.
Mostly, it has been womanizing and other corruptions that it involved caused or encouraged.
In 1991, he told a local Black magazine, “Sister 2 Sister”: “Womanizing has become an integral part of my life.” He added that he had rarely been without a woman, any woman, by his side, and that he, many times, brazenly flirted with other women in front of his wife (should have said “wives”). In the same year, he said on Sally Jessy Raphael Show: “It got to be more than casual. It got to be excessive.”
Worst, most of his women seemed to be his type:
1.Wife Mary went to jail for 15 months.
2. Wife Effi said he had a drinking problem.
3. Wife Cora is getting a divorce.
4. Friend Karen went to jail rather than testify about his drug use.
5. Friend Rasheeda conspired with the FBI to have him arrested while smoking crack and asking for sex.
6. Friend Kim donated a kidney.
7. Friend Donna got a contract from the city and was struggling between him and her ex-husband.
COMMENTS:
1.This immigrant from Africa, after few years trying to identify himself with Black Americans, found them too much preoccupied with their color, slavery and discrimination. Not to minimize the psychological effects of these factors, I believe there will be no way out for someone whose identity is his color.
2. It took me many years to liberate myself from this inclination and to realize that the core of my identity is my faith. Lest no one says I am talking about Islam, I believe faith could be any thing: God, a cow, a statue, a tree, ancestors, and even ones oneself.
3. I feel sad and angry that generations of Washington’s Black children have been growing up, looking for role models and finding a mayor, or a former mayor, like Barry.

While in Rome for the G8 summit, President Obama was pictured checking out a woman who was passing by, as the leaders, in their dark and almost identical business suits, were gathering. However, video shots showed there were many other women and Obama seemed to want to help this woman to find a spot.
Some conservatives, who don’t miss a chance not to criticized Obama, even personally, still picked up on the photo, and at least one of them in his radio show compared this behavior by Obama to that of former President Clinton who, obviously, didn’t stop at checking out Monica Lewinsky.
In a Muslim context, Prophet Mohammad was reported to have been asked about this check out and replied: “The first look is for you, but the second is against you,’ i.e. there is a difference between a quick look and a long and lustful look.
This old man, for 35 years happily and faithfully married, is still attracted to beautiful women. Actually, something about blondes – and my wife is one – that attracts me; in real life, in a photo, on TV, somehow, blondes with golden hair, bright white cleavage and thighs, stand out.
Recently, I read somewhere that a scientific research found that newly-borne male babies were more attracted to light, i.e. had strong vision sense, while similar female’s babies were more attracted to noise, i.e. had strong hearing sense. The research added that that was probably a scientific explanation of why men tended to first judge woman by their appearances, and why women tended to be more social, more “talkative.”
Also recently, I read somewhere that woman in Rome used to buy wigs made from hairs of blonde Scandinavian women to more attract their men.

THREE CHEERS FOR THE POPE:
1.”Today’s international economic scene, marked by grave deviations and failures, requires a profoundly new way of understanding human enterprise … Without doubt, one of the greatest risks for business is that they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors, thereby limited in their social value … It is the fault of badly managed and largely speculative financial dealings …The primary capital to be safeguarded is people … Economic systems need to be guided by charity and truth.”
THE KORAN GOES TO THE CORE OF THE PROBLEM:
“Those who charge usury are in the same as those controlled by the devil’s influence. This is because they claim that usury is the same as commerce. However, God permit commerce, and prohibit usury. Thus, whoever heeds this commandment from his Lord, and refrains from usury, he may keep his past earnings, and his judgment rests with God. As for those who persist in usury, they incur Hell, wherein they abide forever.”

George Will, columnist, “The Wash Post”:
On the death of McNamara, Secretary of Defense during Vietnam War:
1.McNamara was “confident that managing the competition of nations could be as orderly as managing competition among the three members of Detroit’s oligopoly.”
2. Today, “something similar to McNamara’s eerie assuredness pervades in Washington: Have confidence, everybody, because we have, or soon will have, everything — really everything — under control.”
3. McNamara coincided with the belief that “behavioralism had become a science of politics, that social and natural sciences are not different, both devoted to law-like regularities that govern the behavior of atoms, hamsters and humans …”
4. Behavioralism: “Things that can be quantified can be controlled … Military insurgency in Indochina? The answer is counterinsurgency. Then, body counts, to measure success, control, solution and closure.”
5. “But the behavior of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong did not respond as expected to America’s calculations …Such as bombing this but not that, and bombing pauses.”
6. Social science is “Not to tell us what to do, but to tell us what does not work.”
7. Karl Marx said that “the coming of modernity — the rise of science and market rationality, and the retreat of religion — would mean that pre-industrial factors such as religion and ethnicity would lose their importance.”
8. But “The 21st century is vexed by nothing so much as those supposed residues of humanity’s infancy, i.e. religion and ethnicity …McNamara died o a day of an ethnic riot in China.”
9. “Now we read about attempts to modify Iran’s behavior. Since incentives didn’t work, perhaps “surgical strikes,” — a phrase from McNamara — are contemplated … Present day neoconservatives seem to resemble McNamara’s neo-conservatism was born to counter.”
COMMENTS:
1. Is George Will crazy? What happened to him? Is this another hypocrisy, or early signs of a change of heart? Criticized NeoCons on Iran? Criticized Behvaviorism, Social Sciences, Political Science and Secularism?
2. I believe it is not a sign of change of heart; it is hypocrisy. He strongly allied with the NeoCons (Isn’t he one of them anyway?) and supported war on terrorism, the invasion of Afghanistan and of Iraq, the bombardment of Pakistan and of Muslims all over the world, in the name of fighting terrorism — what I have come to believe is a subtle war against Muslims.
3. Why he said the riots in China were “ethnic,” not religion, not MUSLIMS fighting another suppression by non-Muslims, whether Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians?
4. I have come to believe that, with all due respect to Secularism, Behaviorism, Social Sciences and Political Sciences (I have M.Sc. in Pol. Sc.), Spiritualism is the major guidance – directly or indirectly – of human behavior. It doesn’t have to be a religion, but it is a faith in anything – God, a cow, a statue, a tree, and even one’s own self.

Brigid Schulte, “The Washington Post”:

1.”I stand, topless and self-consciously hunched over in the dressing room, avoiding any eye contact with either of the two full-length mirrors … I feel exposed and a little silly and ready to just leave.“

2. “Maggie Nicoletti, manager of Full Cup lingerie boutique in Alexandria, VA: ‘Put your girls in.” With her index fingers, she performs the ‘windshield wiper’ move across the top. ‘The girls need to be talking over the fence.’”

3. Franchesca Carrasquillo, the owner’s daughter, lifts up her shirt to show her bra, saying:” It should fit like this, see?’”

4. “We women come in dissatisfied: We’re too short. Too tall. Too fat. Too skinny. Our breasts are too big, too saggy, too small. Ours is a society so titillated with a woman’s breasts. What women need is a refuge, a place where breasts can just be breasts.”

5.“Full Cup owner Frances Crespo: ’I want women to accept themselves. To be happy with whom they are, exactly where they are.’”

COMMENTS:

1, So, this is what happens behind curtains in the bra sections in stores.

2. I believe in Natural Law, the perfect law: Women are born to attract men. This shouldn’t be an inferiority complex; it should make women feel superior. I recently read somewhere a debate about whether a man marries a woman, or is it actually the woman who marries the man.

3. This old man, still attracted to blondes, tries to peek at beyond a smooth white cleavage. For some reason, a hanging cross adds to the beauty.

History is repeating itself, as if it is Vietnam and Iraq again. American top officials are arguing over limits on the number of troops to be sent to Afghanistan.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in charge in Afghanistan, is conducting an assessment and had been advised to tell Mullen, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and President Obama.

McChrystal’s predecessor, Gen. David McKiernan, had an unmet request for an additional 10,000 U.S. troops. But McChrystal is not bound by that or any prior assessment, Mullen said.

At the same time, White House National Security Adviser James Jones told U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan to hold troop levels steady and shift the focus to the country’s economic development and governance.

McChrystal had ordered troops to diminish civilian casualties — breaking away from fighting in villages and risking civilian casualties only where necessary to save the lives of U.S. troops. Asked whether such restrictions could increase the danger for American forces or offer an advantage to insurgents who take shelter with civilians, Mullen said that was not the intention.

But, Mullen said: “I expect it to be a pretty tough fight in Helmand this year. . . . We haven’t had significant numbers of forces there in the past, but on the upside of that, we have enough forces now to hold, not just to win, the fight.”

Mullen said that he, Gates and McChrystal thought that military force alone cannot win the war in Afghanistan and that if the foreign troop contingent in the country grows too big, it could create the impression that it is an occupation force.

However, Mullen emphasized that he did not know where that threshold lies and that the level of forces in Afghanistan has long been too low to secure the population — the main thrust of the counterinsurgency campaign.

COMMENTS:

1. “It could create the impression that it is an occupation force”? It HAS BEEN an occupation force since right after 9/11 attacks when the US invaded Afghanistan.

2. I said it before, and I say it again: the Americans have been in denial on two things: the so called “war on terrorism” is but an indirect war on Muslims, and that the so called “missions” in Iraq and Afghanistan are but simple and pure occupation of two sovereign countries.

Rachel Swarns of “The New York Times,” Robin Givhan of “The Washington Post,” Newsweek’s Allison Samuels, Darlene Superville of the Associated Press and Politico’s Nia-Malika Henderson found themselves, one recent day, covering Michelle Obama, realizing or not that they were all black.

Howard Kurtz, a White, of “The Washington Post,” had the courage to talk about the 200-ton gorilla in the room.

Henderson had written: “African American women say Michelle will upend age-old stereotypes of the angry black woman who can’t find a good man, or keep him when she does.”

Givhan had said her beat was “really rich because there is that element of race that has not been there before … No one noted all the white chicks covering Laura Bush.”

Henderson had noted that her degrees include a bachelor in African American studies and a master in American studies, and added: “I’m sure I bring that knowledge just from my education.”

Swarns said: “There are types of experiences as an African American woman that we may have shared.”

Callie Crossley, an African American commentator based at Harvard University, said: “There’s a great amount of pride at seeing a professional black woman in the spotlight.”

Samuels said the first lady, unlike such celebrities as Beyoncé and Halle Berry, was “a very dark brown” whose beauty should be “celebrated.”

Kurtz, the White journalist, said: “It is hard to imagine a White journalist making that observation.”

COMMENTS;

1. This immigrant journalist from Africa, in Washington for 30 years as a foreign correspondent for Arabic newspapers and magazines in the Middle East, was, from the beginning, surprised because of the pre-occupation of Black Americans with their color. At first, I was surprised, then saddened, then angry. That was why I started this series on BIC (Blacks Inferiority Complex).

2. That apparently cosmopolitan, urbane and sophisticated Black journalists were so pre-occupied with theirs and Michelle Obama’s color makes me more angry, maybe hopeless.

3. Because I have come to believe that my Black color doesn’t have anything to do with my identity, and that the core of my identity is my faith (whatever faith), I feel I have climbed to a higher moral ground.

IRANIAN-AMERICAN, FELLOW AT NEW AMERICAN FOUNDATION:

1.”People began to argue: What should Obama do? I’d like them to ask another question: What should ordinary Americans do? … One Iranian demonstrator asked: ‘Where are the American actors, the writers, the university professors, the intellectuals?’ I would add to this patriot’s list: Where are the labor unions, teachers unions, science academies, university students and ordinary Americans?”

2. “We may split on what Obama should say or do, fearing the effects for the protesters or our nation, but that should not stop Americans from demonstrating solidarity.”

3.”Last month I attended a candlelight vigil to honor those who died fighting for freedom. The gathering was somber yet hopeful, but it was still too narrowly Iranian. We need more Americans — African Americans, Asian Americans, conservative Americans, liberal Americans, red-state Americans, blue-state Americans. If there is one issue that politically polarized America ought to be able to rally around, it is the gallant struggle of Iranians. “

COMMENTS:

1.Mr.Molavi, other Iranian-Americans, Sudanese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, etc. should differentiate themselves form nationalist Iranians, nationalist Sudanese, nationalist Mexicans, etc. I believe a nationalist is the one who LIVES in one’s country and SACRIFICES there, not only against injustice, but, just by living in a Third World country where live is, obviously, not as free and comfortable as in the US.

2. The Americans say: You can’t have it both ways. I believe a person can’t be there and here at the same time. Also, I am not comfortable with the idea that a person can have more than one allegiance, nationality, and passport. It is like having more than one spouse, more than one marriage and more than one contract under the eyes of God.

3. Of course, the American people should be asked to support struggles against injustice anywhere in the World. But, not by interfering in internal affairs of other countries. It is just that I am afraid that Mr. Molavi’s call for “demonstrating solidarity” will one day be an American direct intervention or, God forbid, a military invasion. During 1990’s, I was here in Washington when Mr. Chalabi, of Iraq, came to ask the Americans for support.