I found the following video posted on the Facebook page of the Brussels Tribunal. According to their website, this organization is based on the Bertrand Russell Tribunal in both its name and objective. (Read here.) Where the original organization was set up to look into U.S. war crimes in Vietnam, this successor group's original focus was on the crimes of the "Project for the New American Century". As the video below indicates, it's area of inquiry has expanded to include other matters.
In this talk to his followers, Farrakhan states that the United States government, Jews and unnamed financial interests carried out the 9/11 attacks and framed Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Needless to say, his evidence is false, his reasoning deliberately deceptive and his conclusions completely absurd -- even insane. The fact that he delivers all this with great conviction and that it is met with the thunderous approval of his audience may be troubling, but Farrakhan's history and know what to expect of him: anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories and hate speech disguised as human rights advocacy. Now I know what to expect of the Brussels Tribunal as well.
The Brussels Tribunal's participating membership is listed here. It includes Gilad Atzmon, Cyntia McKinney, Noam Chomsky, Francis A. Boyle, Ramsey Clark, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, John Pilger, James Petras, Michel Chossudovsky, Jeffrey Blankfort and Stephen Lendman, among many others. (Read here.)
You may think that Farrakhan is all washed up and so wonder why I devote my time to this. But this isn't true. He's still being promoted by people with great influence who describe him as a "religious leader, opinion-maker and visionary"! Take a look at the following video of a public forum ("We Count: The Black Agenda is America's Agenda") hosted by Tavis Smiley of NPR and PBS in March of this year. Watch it to experience the palpable anti-Semitism of the man and judge the motives of those responsible for continuing to promote him in spite of his well-established record of promoting hate. Audio of this event was broadcast on NPR. Other participants included Professor Cornel West of Princeton who expressed his support -- in fact, his love -- for Farrakhan.
Farrakhan's obvious paranoia does not represent the "black agenda" or "America's agenda" except to the lunatic few who accept his belief in conspiracies and to those like Smiley and West who get a kick out of associating themselves with the extreme while maintaining more moderate positions.
If you think that this was a momentary error in judgement on their part, you're wrong. Farrakhan has occupied a position of honor in each of these annual forums since they started in 2005. (Read here.) Here's the 2005 video:
In 2006, Smiley and West hosted a similar Farrakhan love-fest. That's West's voice in the background during Farrakhan's speech, saying "yes, yes, yes, yes, yes..."
Here is Farrakhan's report back to his flock concerning his participation in Smiley's 2006 forum.
Stanley Crouch had a bit to say about Smiley's poor judgement in promoting Farrakhan in the Daily Beast in April. (Read here.) He reminds us that Farrakhan seemed to take credit for "dealing with" Malcolm X "as a nation deals with a traitor". My humble suggestion to Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and everyone else is that they deal with Farrakhan as a nation deals with a hate-filled lunatic. Stop promoting him as a leader.
Just to lighten the load of thinking about the hate promoted by Farrakhan being promoted by NPR and PBS, I leave you with some comic relief. Check out this video of Farrakhan describing his visit with space aliens on their space ship.
UPDATE (MAY 15, 2010): It seems that Cornel West and Tavis Smiley share their love of Farrakhan with Holocaust denier and hate-monger Fredrick Toben, founder of the Adelaide Institute. Toben has posted the following video of a hateful Farrakhan rant, entitled "Architects of the Synagogue of Satan", to YouTube.
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