AfroerotiK

Erotic provocateur, racially-influenced humanist, relentless champion for the oppressed, and facilitator for social change, Scottie Lowe is the brain child, creative genius and the blood, sweat, and tears behind AfroerotiK. Intended to be part academic, part educational, and part sensual, she, yes SHE gave birth to the website to provide people of African descent a place to escape the narrow-mined, stereotypical, limiting and oft-times degrading beliefs that abound about our sexuality. No, not all Black men are driven by lust by white flesh or to create babies and walk away. No, not all Black women are promiscuous welfare queens. And as hard as it may be to believe, no, not all gay Black men are feminine, down low, or HIV positive. Scottie is putting everything on the table to discuss, debate, and dismantle stereotypes in a healthy exchange of ideas. She hopes to provide a more holistic, informed, and enlightened discussion of Black sexuality and dreams of helping couples be more open, honest, and adventurous in their relationships.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Home of the Brave


War is an evil mechanism of the political elite. Its intent is to create money for the connected few at the expense of the masses. In this “great” country, we repeat what we hear on talk radio and consider it the gospel truth. There is a sick belief in this country that our air is somehow more sacred, our lives are somehow more valuable than any other people in the universe. “Oh Dear God, they attacked us on OUR soil . . .” we cry, not realizing that we have no special immunity that makes us above anyone else. Our blood is not more red; our lives are no more valuable than anyone else’s. We have no red, white, and blue blanket of protection that makes it a sin against God for us to suffer the ravages of war and a patriotic duty for others to suffer and die needlessly to stroke our inflated egos. No, the lives of Iraqi people are just as valuable; the dreams of the Afghani are the same as ours, their blood is the exact same color, they bleed and die in the same horrible way we do.

I remember when the war on terror began. I was all over the internet, asking people to think for themselves. I was screaming that there should be an investigation into the real perpetrators of 9/11 because things didn’t make sense. People accused me of being a terrorist and anti-American because I was bringing up very logical questions about the circumstances around the attacks. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that amidst all that destruction, all that rubble, all that that horror, rescue workers could find a paper passport of one of the terrorists on the day the towers collapsed. There is fire, death, destruction, and chaos all around, the likes of which have no equal, and the rescue workers find a paper passport belonging to one of the terrorists on one of the planes. I’m supposed to believe that they found a paper passport when they couldn’t find the indestructible black box from the cockpit, they couldn’t find one body of any of the passengers, but they found a paper passport that flew out from the luggage of a terrorist on a domestic flight.

By noon that same day, a bag was found in Boston with a Koran, a passport, a suicide note and a video on how to fly a plane, proving. The media said, without a doubt that Al-Qaeda was responsible. I have to wonder why suicide bombers that flew planes expertly into the WTC needed a video on how to fly a plane on their way to executing the most precise act of terrorism ever committed? Were they going to get some last minute flying pointers before they took over the cockpit? Maybe they were going to show it to the passengers as the plane was crashing. They were so stealth in their planning that no one knew what they were going to do but they were so stupid as to leave a trail that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they did it? If they wanted to brag that they were responsible, why not take credit for the event AFTER they pulled it off? No one has taken responsibility for the attacks and the only evidence we have of who did it is what the US government says. Which begs one to wonder why the US is sooooo invested in proving to the American people that they have the true perpetrators of a crime based on such OBVIOUSLY manufactured proof.

I bring up all of this conspiracy speculation to make the point that if there is even a tiny iota of room for doubt that 9/11 had suspicious beginnings, then we have to question how we could be at war within a month of that day and of how we have justified that the war in Iraq because of links to 9/11 as well. The entire house of cards falls if September 11th wasn’t really an act of terrorism. The American public doesn’t care. They want to blow the towelheads off the face of the planet. We want to fight for freedom. People who have no idea how many US senators there are or who can’t tell you how many Supreme Court Justices there are were waving flags in their yards and saying God Bless America.

I had a conversation with a white woman just after the war in Afghanistan started. (Did that war ever end by the way? Aren’t we really in two wars?) She said she was having the worst day of her life because her roof had leaked because of some recent rain and the contractor that was scheduled to fix it was late. I asked her if she meant to say that it was the worst day in her life and she told me without a doubt, it was the WORST day of her life. I told her that there were Afghani mothers that were dodging bullets and bombs, who had lost their homes and husbands, who were trying to protect their children and find food and shelter to stay alive that could hardly compare to her leaky roof. Why did I say that? She was HAPPY the people in Afghanistan were suffering. If she could have dropped the bombs herself she would have. “God Bless America,” she kept saying, “Remember 9/11.” When I reminded her that there wasn’t one single supposed terrorist that was from Afghanistan, she didn’t give a fuck. She told me that she wished that they were all dead. I wept for her soul.

The sin of this war in Iraq, is that the US has sent children over there and made them into murderers and torturers and it’s justified as fighting for freedom. We mourn for the 2000 American lives lost but we don’t mention the 200,000 Iraqi lives lost. The children, mothers, the brothers and sons, the people that had nothing to do with 9/11 and the people that had nothing to do with the WMD, had they been real in the first place. We call them insurgents and we cheer for the American soldiers every time they kill an uprising, never realizing that insurgents are really people that are saying, “GET OUT OF OUR COUNTRY and take your death and destruction with you.” We are heroes of democracy and fighting for the concept of “freedom” when we kill them but they are cells of terrorists when they fight for their homeland. Soulless Americans don’t see the inherent evil in that because American air is sacred, American soil is holy, American lives have more value.

The young men that are over there, fighting for oil for Bush’s elite friends, will never be the same when they return and I mourn for the loss of their innocence. They will come back and they will be killers. Your UPS driver and your car mechanic will have killed other human beings and be walking around thinking it was justified because they were fighting for the flag. They will have been exposed to chemicals that will fuck with their health for the rest of their lives, and their children’s lives. Don’t kid yourself. The acts of torture at Abu Ghraib were not isolated. Men and women who have never voted a day in their lives will have committed acts of torture that the white male power structure justified to line their pockets.

I support the individual soldiers in this illegal war because I know that their lives will never be the same. Those with a conscious will have nightmares about the death and destruction for years and years to come. Those too naïve and damaged to understand that killing is not a sport or recreation will think nothing of snapping their spouses necks when they get into an argument. They will never consider that human beings, with dreams and desires parallel to their own, were killed for profit.

When it’s all said and done, Osama Been Forgotten will remain elusive, Bush will not be held accountable for the lies he told about weapons of mass destruction and he’ll find a way to justify another war in Iran. The American people will not care, because those sand niggers don’t deserve life in the first place. It’s only the good old US of A that has any value and only our lives that have any worth.

Copyright 2005 Scottie Lowe

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