How Malcolm X Helped Me Go Vegan

I was a lean, fit child in the Dominican. It could be fair to say that I was addicted to my bicycle, often riding around town for up to twelve hours a day. When I got to NY, I was 60 pounds, and pretty much on the bone. Things, however, changed pretty quickly.

 

CES 64 in the Bronx was not the most well-equipped elementary school. We barely even had something that resembled a science class, much less a gym. There was a massive space in the lobby, where we would sometimes play kickball all the while trying to avoid the cement columns and marble floor. So, no gym in school, no capacity to do much outside because of the crime rate, no more traditional Latin cuisine, and you end up with a fat Jose. By age 15, my weight had already ballooned to 240 pounds. I went from 60 to 240 pounds in just a few years of misery in the Bronx.

 

I guess I was a typical male in many ways. I never really questioned what was on the plate; I simply ate it. I never thought about where the ice cream came from, or what was in it; I simply liked the look and taste, and for me that was enough. It was not until age 15 that tragedy and destiny would force me to start asking questions.

 

It was September 15th, 2002 and my father and I were watching the Vargas Vs. De la Hoya fight. I wasn't paying much attention to the fight, in reality I was on the phone with my buddy Jan. After babbling for about 10 minutes on the phone, my father turned to me and said in a tired, calm voice: "don't talk on the phone so much." He said it in Spanish and instead of saying, "no hables mucho por el telefono," he said, "no me hables mucho por el telefono." The use of the pronoun me before a verb is used in Spanish to indicate something that affects the speaker negatively or is a disadvantage to him. In essence, his last words on this earth were, "don't talk on the phone, I can't afford it."

 

Before I even finished talking with Jan, my father fell off his chair and started convulsing on the floor. We rushed him to the hospital; he'd suffered a debilitating stroke. On October 6, after almost three weeks in the hospital, I got a phone call informing me that he was never going to wake up. He was 46, like his father who was also 46 when a stroke took him from this earth.

 

Soon after, I started wearing black and my mind was filled with obsessive thoughts of my own mortality. I wasn't sure whether I'd make it past 46, and thought it best to embrace a culture of death, so that I could be more prepared for it. I would have gone down a very, very dark path had it not been from Ms. Gross' Malcolm X class that same semester.

 

Had I simply watched the movie or swallowed the book in a single week, my life probably wouldn't have been impacted the way it was. Though The Autobiography of Malcolm X has a largely conciliatory tone near the end, it was the black, militant philosophy throughout the book that helped me cope. For most of October, November, and December, we read Malcolm X at a very slow pace, and the anger that he felt before his trip to Mecca, I also felt. I channeled the pain from my loss and my fear of death into intellectual anger at America's history of racial injustice. You don't have to be a psychologist to recognize that intellectual anger is much more useful than despair.

 

But I also picked up some things from my surrogate father for those three very difficult months: dietary considerations. Malcolm X described pork in a way that simply convinced me it was too dirty and risky to eat. For the first time in my life, I began to wonder what exactly was on my plate and where it came from. I started asking myself: "What's in this meat?"

 

The recent horse meat scandal by no means shocks me. The fact that I was 15 and the adults who were giving me food couldn't tell me precisely what it was, taught me that most people simply consumed blindly. I decided to open my eyes; I went to the small local library behind Bronx Lebanon and withdrew all of its 12 books on nutrition. I became familiar with everything about nutrition, and after reading Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution, I understood that the American diet I'd adopted was not only destructive to me, but also to the environment -- not to even mention the animals themselves.

 

By January 2003, I was already solidly vegan, and had new determination in life: I was ready to join the track team. I had never before in my life eaten green, so it took two solid months of forcing myself to eat broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, cauliflower, and tofu. I threw up on a near daily basis. Something similar happened each time I went out running, but by the fall of 2003, I had already lost 80 pounds. In less than a year, I had gone from 240 pound couch potato to commanding the wrestling team in the 160-170 pound weight class. Malcolm X didn't direct me towards veganism, but he helped me open my eyes.

 

 

The Night of the Long Knives

Hitler was democratically elected as chancellor of Germany in 1932, and began serving in 1933. At the time, most of the power lay with the president, Hindenburg, and Hitler was seen as just another post-WWI chancellor, and not particularly special.

 

In 1933, the Reichstag, the German parliament, burned to the ground and a Dutch communist was blamed. History cannot say for certain whether the Reichstag fire was started by SS troops or by communist elements, but the next morning, Hitler had ready an impassioned plea to president Hindenburg asking for emergency powers, for the power to declare martial law, in order to save Germany from a communist takeover. Hindenburg gave him those powers, and Hitler began his first purge, eliminating many who opposed him.

 

Fast forward to June 30th, 1934, and Hitler is now ready for his second round of mass, premeditated murder: The Night of the Long Knives. Hitler, fearing that the leadership of the SA -- the street brigade he'd used to terrorize the opposition during his rise to power --was threatening his legitimacy with its homosexuality and street behavior ant thus decided to eliminate them all in the cover of night. Primarily, he suspected that the leader of the SA, Rohm, was planning a coup against him.

 

On the night of June 30th, Hitler personally oversaw the arrest of the SA leadership, while also simultaneously ordering the extrajudicial assassination of as many as 1,000 individuals who had opposed him or that he suspected could oppose him in the future.

 

One month after Hitler's second purge, president Hindenburg conveniently died, and Hitler merged the chancellery with the presidency, becoming absolute, unopposed ruler of Germany. Indeed, the formula for fascism has always been the same; it has almost always employed a Hegelian dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis (problem, reaction, solution.) Hitler created a problem, awaited the expected response, and then swept in to emerge as savior.

 

Since the Benghazi attacks of 9/11, many prominent military servicemen have been forced to resign in disgrace or have been removed from their posts. Petraeus, John Allen, William Ward, Carter Ham, Charles Gaouette, Jeffery Sinclair, Joseph Darlak, and James Mattis have been removed from their high level positions over flimsy allegations.

 

The questions becomes: Does Obama expect a coup against him during his second term? Or are our top military brass all degenerates?

Operation Gladio, or How to Run a Secret Paramilitary Force

A stay-behind operation is essentially the last line of defense against an occupying power. During the Cold War, the CIA and NATO feared that many countries in Europe could fall to communism, be it democratically or with Soviet "assistance." Stay-behind networks were covert groups tasked with destabilizing any future government deemed communistic by either the CIA or NATO.

 

Stay-behind groups were trained in disinformation, political assassinations, and false-flag attacks -- false-flag attacks are violent acts attributed to an uninvolved party. If a country became socialist through democratic channels was of no concern to stay-behind groups. Their job was to terrorize by any means, and as a result the CIA and NATO often recruited from the far-right of society, from its fascist elements.

 

These paramilitary groups were based all throughout Europe, had underground arms-caches, trained with US Green Berets and the SAS, and answered to the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SAUCER.) As per tradition, the SAUCER is a US general that answers to the Pentagon. The Pentagon exercised very effective control over many Gladio operations.

 

It was not until 1990 that the first of these secret paramilitary armies was revealed to the public, and later proved to have existed in nearly every country in Europe, with the Dutch stay-behind group being the only one independent of NATO. A 1990 European resolution condemned Gladio as being a parallel clandestine service escaping all democratic scrutiny.

 

In Italy and in Turkey, where communism had the potential to become a majority democratic movement, Gladio operatives carried out terrorist attacks which were meant to convince the population of the need for a dictatorial, pro-Washington regime. According to the Guardian, "US intelligence agents were informed in advanced about several right-wing terrorist bombings, including the Dec. 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, and the Piazza della Loggia bombing in Drescia five years later, but did nothing to alert the authorities or prevent the attacks."

 

The number of attacks carried out by Gladio operatives is too long to list, but it proves how false-flag attacks have been used by the CIA to further Washington's international agenda.

 

Given history, and the increasing powers that have been given to the CIA since the start of The War Against Terror (TWAT,) it stands to reason that there are stay-behind groups in countries where the CIA fears an Islamist takeover. The files from Operation Gladio, fortunately for the CIA, can neither be confirmed nor denied.

Who is Cutting Off the Audio to the 9/11 Trials?

In a democracy, isn't a judge suppose to be in control of his court? During the Moscow Trials, when Stalin worked to eliminate his competition, he would sit in a secret cabin and observe the trial. Eventually, some of the most prominent men in the founding of the USSR were eliminated. Imagine if all the founding fathers of the United States had been executed 20 years after the war of independence for conspiring to return America to the king of Britain.

The similarities between the Moscow Trials and the current Guantanamo trials are too long to list, but the most damning one of them is the use of torture. At the mere mention of the CIA torture sites -- or "Black Sites" as they are more happily called -- the audio feed to the trial was cut off. Judge Pohl was slightly displeased at the mysterious, unnanounced interruption of the audio feed. A court officer is the one who is supposed to be in control of the audio feed, but he was not the one who turned off the audio.

Judge Pohl promised that he would have a talk with whatever powers-that-be had hijacked his court without his knowledge. However, I'm sure that censored trials will be the new main course of action in the Land of the Free. Afterall, how can we remain free if the world learns of our Black Sites? Freedom means we have to sacrifice, and in this case we're sacrificing merely minutes from a trial.

The Dominican/Jewish Atonement

The Dominican Republic, though a Spanish colony for most of its Eurocentric history, did not actually gain independence from Spain itself. The era of "España Boba" (Foolish Spain) from 1809-1821, saw Spain heavily taxed by a war on its imperial peninsula, as well as independence movements in wealthier colonies.

 

The Dominican Republic -- neglected by Spain -- became independent in 1821, but was quickly invaded by Haiti, its neighbor to the west. From 1822 until 1844, what is now the Dominican Republic was part of Haiti. Eventually, Spanish customs, lighter skin, and Catholicism clashed with French customs, darker skin, and voodoo. In 1844, the Eastern side of the island proclaimed independence, expelled their French/Creole-speaking neighbor, and established the Dominican Republic.

 

In elementary school, we were taught that out liberation from Haiti was cosmically righteous, that we were chosen by God to free ourselves from the forces of voodoo and Africanism. After independence there were several more invasions, and indeed we were taught to always be on the lookout for a potential Haitian invasion.

 

In 1937, the then-dictator of the Dominican Republic, Generalissimo Trujillo, decided that he needed to solidify his rule. Since nothing centralizes power more than war, he ordered a Shibboleth, for his forces to massacre all black individuals near the border who couldn't pronounce the word "perejil" (parsley) -- French speakers can't roll the R, and can't aspirate the strong Spanish "J."

 

Over 20,000 Haitians were hacked to death with machetes for failing to pronounce the word "parsley," without consideration for how long they had lived near the border, or how many generations their families had been there. The dictator failed to get the expected response -- war -- and was instead condemned by the international community, and forced to atone by paying $ 525,000. Each survivor only got a few cents due to corruption, but I digress.

 

Trujillo, whose rule can be seen as a totalitarian pigmentocracy, decided to not only import European whites, but also further atone for the Parsley Massacre. The next year, at the Evian Conference, when the fate of European Jewry was being decided, the Dominican Republic was the only country that offered visas to European Jews.

"100,000 visas and a city!" shouted Trujillo's brother while stealing the show at the Evian conference. The country at the time had less than 2 million people, so it was a very generous offer.

 

The city of Sosua was founded, and arriving Jews were greeted by a friendly, welcoming people who even gave each new refugee 80 acres of land, 10 cows, a mule, and a horse. To this day, Sosua maintains a synagogue and prominent Jewish families.

 

In elementary school, I never learned about the Parsley Massacre or the Evian Conference. Balaguer -- Trujillo's vice-president -- was in power and he knew how to stoke fear of a Haitian invasion, rallying the population behind him as protector of the country's Hispanic traditions. I grew up fearing Haitians. I was told that they kidnapped children and practiced voodoo, a satanic art which made them enemies of God.

 

One of my earliest memories was of my sitting in my town's main square and seeing two soldiers with shotguns jump off a cattle truck and grab a very black man who couldn't produce identification. He was forced to board the truck along with 30 or 35 other individuals. They were squeezed together and only processed after the truck finished its route, with them paraded for everyone to see as proof of a hard-working government that kept its population safe from evil.

 

I felt no sympathy when I looked into the teary eyes of those dark-skinned man on that cattle truck -- even though many would no longer be able to provide for their families. I was taught that it was right because they practiced evil and were the enemy. To me they were not human, and indeed I saw no problem with them being paraded in a cattle truck.

 

Dominican atonement at the Evian Conference was not enough; it did not wash the hate away. Today I am very familiar with that hate. I recognize very well the eyes of a man who does not see humanity in another man's eyes.

 

Leonel Fernandez, the Dominican president until last year, was criticized for saying, "Dominicans of darker-skin are discriminated against in school." He was brave and took political risk in publicly speaking the truth, but he was not up for re-election. Fernandez also spoke openly against attempts by a strong political movement to build a wall to keep out the Haitians. Fernandez didn't use the term "security barrier." He didn't sugarcoat reality.

 

However, when I hear Netanyahu speak, when I look into his eyes, I see a familiar face. I see a man who does not recognize the humanity of his neighbor. I see a man who sugarcoats and uses terms like "security barrier." I see a population that turns a blind eye to the parsley and the machete, to the Shibboleth.

 

Like the Jews, the Dominicans have too suffered greatly. During the Taino holocaust in the 16th century, Spanish occupying forces annihilated the island's entire native population. Today, no Tainos survive. Like the Jews, we were oppressed, and it is true that people who are oppressed also learn to oppress back. Nations are like individuals; a child who was abused and learned that it was right and good, will likely also do it to his children, to the weakest.