Altruistic World Online Library

New Black Panther Party: The New Black Panther Party is a virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers.
by Southern Poverty Law Center
Accessed April 7, 2006

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

The New Black Panther Party is a virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers. Founded in Dallas, the group today is especially active on the East Coast, from Boston to Jacksonville, Fla. The group portrays itself as a militant, modern-day expression of the black power movement (it frequently engages in armed protests of alleged police brutality and the like), but principals of the original Black Panther Party of the 1960s and 1970s— a militant, but non-racist, left-wing organization — have rejected the new Panthers as a "black racist hate group" and contested their hijacking of the Panther name and symbol.

In Its Own Words

"Our lessons talk about the bloodsuckers of the poor… . It's that old no-good Jew, that old imposter Jew, that old hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating, Johnny-come-lately, perpetrating-a-fraud, just-crawled-out-of-the-caves-and-hills-of-Europe, so-called damn Jew … and I feel everything I'm saying up here is kosher."
— Khalid Abdul Muhammad, one of the party's future leaders, Baltimore, Md., Feb. 19, 1994

"Kill every goddamn Zionist in Israel! Goddamn little babies, goddamn old ladies! Blow up Zionist supermarkets!"
—Malik Zulu Shabazz, the party's national chairman, protesting at B'nai B'rith International headquarters in Washington, D.C., April 20, 2002

"I hate white people. All of them. Every last iota of a cracker, I hate it. We didn't come out here to play today. There's too much serious business going on in the black community to be out here sliding through South Street with white, dirty, cracker whore bitches on our arms, and we call ourselves black men. … What the hell is wrong with you black man? You at a doomsday with a white girl on your damn arm. We keep begging white people for freedom! No wonder we not free! Your enemy cannot make you free, fool! You want freedom? You going to have to kill some crackers! You going to have to kill some of their babies!"
— King Samir Shabazz, head of the party's Philadelphia chapter, in a National Geographic documentary, January 2009

Background

The New Black Panther Party (NBPP) is a black separatist group that believes black Americans should have their own nation. In the NBPP's "10 Point Platform," which is a takeoff on the 10-point platform of the original Black Panther Party, the NBPP demands that blacks be given a country or state of their own, within which they can make their own laws. They demand that all black prisoners in the United States be released to "the lawful authorities of the Black Nation." They claim to be entitled to reparations for slavery from the United States, all European countries and "the Jews."

The NBPP is notable for its anti-white and anti-Semitic hatred. Its leaders have blamed Jews for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and for the slave trade. The late former party chairman Khalid Abdul Muhammad has said, "There are no good crackers, and if you find one, kill him before he changes." A document on the NBPP website entitled "The Nationalist Manifesto" claims that white men have a secret plan to commit genocide against the non-white races. It also refers to black people who condone mixed-race relationships as the "modern day Custodians [sic] of Uncle Tom's Cabin."

NBPP members also hold black-supremacist religious beliefs. Some think that blacks are God's true "chosen people" and that the people normally called "Jews" actually are impostors (this ideology is remarkably similar to the white racist theology of Christian Identity, which says whites are God's real chosen people). They believe that blacks are naturally superior to people of other races. In September 1997, Khalid Muhammad said that he could not be anti-Semitic because Jews had no claim to the term "Semite."

Members of the original Black Panther Party, which has no connection to the NBPP, have heavily criticized the New Black Panther Party. An open letter from the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, which is run by members of the original Black Panther Party, decries the NBPP for being a hateful and unconstructive group. Bobby Seale, a famous founding member of the original Panthers, calls the organization "a black racist hate group."

By injecting themselves into racially charged and other high-profile events, the NBPP has won considerable press attention. When members march, they often wear coordinated, military-style uniforms — black boots, black pants, a black shirt with NBPP patches on it, and black berets.

The NBPP claims to have been founded in 1989, although the group was not active until 1990. That year, Aaron Michaels, a Dallas radio personality, assembled a group of black citizens to engage in community activism. He called the group the New Black Panther Party. One of its main goals was to increase black representation on the Dallas school board. The group also attempted to reduce drug dealing in certain black neighborhoods. In 1993, the group organized an event called the National Black Power Summit and Youth Rally, which had around 200 attendees. White supremacist Tom Metzger spoke at the event as a special guest. Although Metzger is no friend of blacks, both he and NBPP members believe that whites and blacks should live in their own separate countries. At that 1993 meeting, Michaels made the likely exaggerated claim that the NBPP had formed 20 chapters.

One aspect of the [Nuremberg] laws, now long forgotten but which attracted considerable attention at the time, was the fact that from then on only two flags were to be permitted in the Third Reich, the swastika and the blue-and-white Zionist banner. This, of course, greatly excited the ZVfD, who hoped that this was a sign that Hitler was moving closer to an accommodation with them. But for many foreign Zionists this was a searing humiliation, well-expressed in the anguish of Stephen Wise's own organ, the Congress Bulletin:

Hitlerism is Satan's nationalism. The determination to rid the German national body of the Jewish element, however, led Hitlerism to discover its 'kinship' with Zionism, the Jewish nationalism of liberation. Therefore Zionism became the only other party legalized in the Reich, the Zionist flag the only other flag permitted to fly in Nazi-land. It was a painful distinction for Zionism to be singled out for favors and privileges by its Satanic counterpart.

-- Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, by Lenni Brenner

But let us first recall the sorry chapter of Labor Zionism-Nazi ties predating the Holocaust, as recounted by Makow:

In 1935 the steamer "Tel Aviv" made its maiden voyage from Nazi Germany to Haifa with Hebrew letters on its bow and a Nazi flag fluttering from its mast. The Captain of the Zionist-owned ship was a member of the Nazi Party. A passenger described the spectacle as a "metaphysical absurdity."

-- Shab Tai Tzvi, Labor Zionism and the Holocaust, by Barry Chamish

Indeed, the conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism is yet another irony, as historically, it was non-Jewish support of Zionism that was seen by Jews as anti-Semitic. What anti-Semites and leading Zionists said about Jews were almost indistinguishable. As A.B. Yehoshua, one of Israel’s foremost novelists, stated in a lecture to the Union of Jewish Students: “Even today, in a perverse way, a real anti-Semite must be a Zionist.” And from Pinhas Felix Rosenbluth, a leading German Zionist, to Arthur Ruppin, head of the Jewish Agency, Zionists have not hesitated to employ anti-Semitic rhetoric to further their cause.

This is not so strange, because what one is talking about are in reality two entirely different forms of political philosophy with the same name — anti-Semitism. Contrary to received opinion, there is nothing in common between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Certainly the Zionist movement has deliberately confused the two, but the former is a form of anti-racism whereas the latter is a form of racism. There can be no blurring at the edges or overlap. One is either an anti-Semite or an anti-Zionist. One cannot be both.

Therefore, it is not surprising that today, with the growth of far right and neo-fascist parties in Europe, that almost without exception they are pro-Israel. Thus, the very people who criticize anti-Zionists and Palestinian supporters as anti-Semitic are rushing to hold the hands of Zionism’s far-right supporters.

For example Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom Ron Prossor was more than happy to share a platform at the Conservative Friends of Israel with Michal Kaminski of the Polish Justice and Freedom Party. Kaminski is notorious in Poland for openly opposing the call for an official apology for the 1941 massacre of hundreds of Jews in the Polish village of Jedwabne.

Last month, Israel’s Ambassador to the European Union, Ran Curiel, paid the first visit by an ambassador to the Kaminski-chaired European Conservatives & Reform (ECR) Group in the European Parliament. As quoted in a 13 October news post on ECR’s website, Curiel told the assembled audience that “ ‘After years of “megaphone diplomacy” between Israel and Europe, an open dialogue is the best thing we can do now.’” Furthermore, “He highly appreciated the support of the ECR Group for the two-state solution to the ‘peace process’ which would fully ensure the security of the State of Israel and respect the border of national states.”

Curiel’s visit followed an earlier visit by Kaminski to Israel with the European Friends of Israel organization. It was Kaminski’s first visit to a non-EU country as Chairman of the ECR. According to a 25 September post on the Conservative Friends of Israel’s website, at a dinner held by the organization Kaminski explained that Israel was deliberately chosen as his first trip so that he could “ ‘deliver the message that there is a group in the European Parliament that will be a true friend of Israel.’”

Similarly in the UK, Kaminski’s Zionist allies rushed to his defense last month. As the Jewish Chronicle reported on 15 October, several members of the Jewish Leadership Council were outraged when Board of Deputies President Vivian Wineman wrote a letter to David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, questioning the Tory alliance with Kaminski and his far-right Justice and Freedom Party in the European Parliament. Andrew Gilbert, one of a number of deputies who believe the letter to Cameron ill-judged, stated that “ ‘Nobody in the Jewish or political community did enough research either to say that Michal Kaminski or Roberts Zile have suspect views, which means we should shun them, or to clear them.’”

Nor is the Conservative party alone in embracing Israel’s fascist allies. The British National Party is a growing party, with more than 50 local councilors and two members of the European Parliament. On 22 October 2009, its leader, Nick Griffin, appeared on the BBC’s premier program Question Time, to a wave of protests. How did he explain away his anti-Semitism and support for holocaust denial? By explaining that though he might not be too fond of Jews, he was a strong supporter of Israel, stating that “there are Nazis in Britain and they loathe me because I have brought the BNP from being frankly an anti-Semitic and racist organization into being the only political party which in the clashes between Israel and Gaza stood full-square behind Israel’s right to deal with Hamas terrorists.”

As the Guardian reported in April 2008, Board of Deputies spokesperson Ruth Smeed let readers know that “The BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web — it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel.”

But Kaminski and Roberts Zile, of the Waffen-SS supporting Latvian Freedom and Fatherland Party, are not the exceptions. Dutch far-right anti-Islam politician and Member of Parliament Geert Wilders is another figure who combines virulent racism with Zionism. As reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz on 18 June, Wilders claimed that “Israel is only the first line of defense for the West. Now it’s Israel but we are next. That’s why beyond solidarity, it is in Europe’s interest to stand by Israel.”

Wilders is facing criminal charges for inciting hate by comparing the Quran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. After winning five seats in June parliamentary elections, Wilders’s Party of Freedom is now the second largest political party in the country. Wilders has also found common cause with the right-wing openly racist political party of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Of Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, Wilders explained that “‘Our parties may not be identical, but there are certainly more similarities than dissimilarities, and I am proud of that,’” (Haaretz, 18 June 2009). He added that “‘Lieberman’s an intelligent, strong and clever politician and I understand why his party grew in popularity.’”

Indeed, the only far-right party that I could find whose anti-Semitism is disguised as anti-Zionism is Jobbik, the Movement for a Better Hungary, a descendant of the pro-Nazi Nyilas. During World War II, Nyilas was responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 mainly Budapest Jews. Leaders of the party were executed by the Hungarian state after liberation. This is the party that the BNP, which “opposes anti-Semitism,” is joined with in the European Parliament.

Therefore, when Israel’s Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz claims that Judge Richard Goldstone is an “anti-Semite” and that it is possible for a Jew to be an anti-Semite, he is right: the history of Zionism is indeed full of such examples!

-- Israel's Anti-Semitic Friends, by Tony Greenstein

In 1994, Khalid Abdul Muhammad became actively involved with the NBPP. Muhammad was formerly the personal assistant to Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as a black hate group since 1998. In November 1993, while still associated with the Nation of Islam, he gave a notorious speech at Kean College in New Jersey. He accused Jews of being responsible for the slave trade, called Jews "bloodsuckers," and asserted that white South Africans should be killed if they refuse to leave South Africa. The speech caused a controversy, leading Farrakhan to demote Muhammad from his position as national spokesman in February 1994. In May 1994, Muhammad was shot and injured by James Bess, a former Nation of Islam member.

A Dallas school board meeting was canceled in May 1996 after the Panthers threatened to come with loaded weapons. NBPP founder Aaron Michaels and Khalid Muhammad worked together closely during this time, appearing together at a press conference regarding the school board incident.

In 1997, Fahim Minkah and Marvin Crenshaw, two original Panthers from Dallas, won an injunction against Aaron Michaels disallowing him from using either the old Panther name or its logo. The injunction was never enforced and the NBPP continued to use the Panther name and the Panther logo to this day.

On June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr., was murdered in Jasper, Texas, by three white men who chained the black man to the back of a truck and dragged him to death. In the wake of the horrific murder, Khalid Muhammad led a group of armed NBPP members to Jasper where members confronted a group of Klansmen who rallied in the town. About 50 Panthers, a dozen of whom carried rifles and shotguns, faced off against about 20 Klan members. Police officers erected a barricade to separate the two groups. NBPP members twice tried to break through and confront the KKK protesters, but failed to do so. Frustrated, Muhammad called for his followers to attack the police, shouting: "Black people, we can take these bastards. We can run over the damn police and take their ass. Who's with me?" Police officers attempted to evacuate the Klan members, but a small group of Panthers surrounded one of their vehicles and started rocking it back and forth. As a result, one NBPP member was arrested. No further violence occurred.

In September 1998, Khalid Muhammad organized the Million Youth March in New York City. Then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attempted to prevent the group from holding the event, denying them a permit and referring to the rally as a "hate march." But the NBPP won a court battle, forcing the city to allow the event. Malik Zulu Shabazz, the future leader of party, played a prominent role in organizing the event. On Sept. 5, about 6,000 people attended the march while 3,000 police officers oversaw the event. A few minutes after the rally was scheduled to end, police began to disperse the crowd, resulting in a scuffle that left 16 police officers and 12 attendees injured. Muhammad reportedly encouraged the crowd to attack police officers with chairs and bottles and even to take the officers' guns if attacked. Shortly after this event, Muhammad became the national chairman of the NBPP, making him the leader of the organization.

Muhammad served as chairman until Feb. 17, 2001, when he died of a brain aneurysm. That year, Malik Zulu Shabazz, a Washington, D.C., attorney who had run unsuccessfully for the City Council in 1995, took over leadership of the group. He co-sponsored an Oct. 31, 2001 conference in which he and a handful of Muslim clerics blamed the Jews for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Said Shabazz: "Zionism is racism, Zionism is terrorism, Zionism is colonialism, Zionism is imperialism, and support for Zionism is the root of why so many were killed on September 11." He also referred to Israel and the United States as "terrorists." Shabazz would later claim that Jews had received advance warning of the attacks, a false conspiracy theory that is also highly popular in white supremacist and neo-Nazi circles.

THE MEACHER CRITIQUE

A decisive turn in the transatlantic 9/11 debate came in the late summer of 2003, when the dimensions of the Anglo-American fiasco in Iraq were becoming evident. Michael Meacher had been a close associate of Tony Blair and one of the most prominent leaders of New Labour. He was a member of Parliament, and from May 1997 to June 2003, he had been the Environment Minister of Britain. Other members of the Blair cabinet, such as the former Overseas Development Minister, Claire Short, had quit over the Iraq adventure. Meacher was more courageous and more radical: he called into question the heart of the myth which the Bush administration wanted to foist off on the world. Meacher wrote:

First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16, 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that “al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House.”

Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6, 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15, 2001).

Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3, 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20, 2002).

All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at no later than 8.20 AM, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06 AM. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from US Andrews Air Force base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 AM. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13, 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.

Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: “The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence.”

Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that “casting our objectives too narrowly” risked “a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr. Bin Laden was captured.” The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that “the goal has never been to get Bin Laden” (AP, April 5, 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19, 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13, 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism. (Michael Meacher, “This war on terrorism is bogus.” The Guardian, September 6, 2003)

This is by all odds the most powerful critique of the 9/11 myth to come from an elected official in Britain. One senses the spirit of Tony Benn, the indomitable leader of the Labour left, who gave Meacher moral support. As for Claire Short, when asked in an interview if there was any common ground between Meacher’s critique of Blair and her own, she nervously replied that Meacher had taken himself completely “out of the mainstream.” ...

Appendix: The London Explosions, The Rogue Network, Bush, and Iran
By Webster G. Tarpley
Washington DC
July 11, 2005

Last week's London explosions carry the characteristic features of a state-sponsored, false flag, synthetic terror provocation by networks within the British intelligence services MI-5, MI-6, the Home Office, and the Metropolitan Police Special Branch who are favorable to a wider Anglo-American aggressive war in the Middle East, featuring especially an early pre-emptive attack on Iran, with a separate option on North Korea also included. With the London attacks, the Anglo-American invisible government adds another horrendous crime to its own dossier. But this time, their operations appear imperfect, especially in regard to the lack (so far) of a credible patsy group which, by virtue of its ethnicity, could direct popular anger against one of the invisible government's targets. So far, the entire attribution of the London crimes depends on what amounts to an anonymous posting in an obscure, hitherto unknown, secular Arabic-language chatroom in the state of Maryland, USA. But, based on this wretched shred of pseudo-evidence, British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- who has surely heard of a group called the Irish Republican Army, which bombed London for more than a decade -- has not hesitated to ascribe the murders to "Islam," and seems to be flirting with total martial law under the Civil Contingencies Act. We are reminded once again of how he earned his nickname of Tony Blair.

SCOTLAND YARD KNEW IN ADVANCE

That the British Government knew in advance that blasts would occur is not open to rational doubt. Within hours of the explosions, Israeli Army Radio was reporting that "Scotland Yard [London police headquarters] had intelligence warnings of the attacks a short time before they occurred." This report, repeated by IsraelNN.com, added that "the Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion, a Liverpool Street train station, where he was to address an economic summit." This report is attributed to "unconfirmed reliable sources." At around the same time, the Associated Press issued a wire asserting that "British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city," according to "a senior Israeli official." This wire specifies that "just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say that they had received warnings of possible attacks."

According to eyewitness reports from London, BBC claimed between 8:45 and some minutes after 10 AM that the incidents in the Underground were the result of an electrical power surge, or alternatively of a collision. Foreign bigwigs, presumably not just Netanyahu, were warned, while London working people continued to stream into the subway. These reports have been denied, repudiated, sanitized, and expunged from news media websites by the modern Orwellian Thought Police, but they have been archived by analysts who learned on 9/11 and other occasions that key evidence in state-sponsored terror crimes tends to filter out during the first minutes and hours, during the critical interval when the controlled media are assimilating the cover story peddled by complicit moles within the ministries. These reports are not at all damaging to Israel, but are devastating for British domestic security organs. An alternative version peddled by Stratfor.com, namely that the Israelis warned Scotland Yard, is most probably spurious but still leaves the British authorities on the hook. Which Scotland Yard official made the calls? Identify that official, and you have bagged a real live rogue network mole.

Another more general element of foreknowledge can be seen in the fact reported by Isikoff and Hosenball of Newsweek that, since about November 2004, the US FBI, but not other US agencies, has been refusing to use the London Underground.

Operations like these are generally conduited through the government bureaucracies under the cover of a drill or exercise which closely resembles the terror operation itself. So it was with Amalgam Virgo and the multiple exercises held on 9/11, as I show in my 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA (Joshua Tree CA: Progressive Press, 2005). So it was with the Hinckley attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan, when a presidential succession exercise was scheduled for the next day, as I showed in my George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (1992; reprint by Progressive Press, 2004). An uncannily similar maneuver allows the necessary work to be done on official computers and on company time, while warding off the inquisitive glances and questions of curious co-workers at adjoining computer consoles.

THE COVER STORY TERROR DRILL

Such a parallel drill was not lacking in the London case. On the evening of July 7, BBC Five, a news and sports radio program, carried an interview with a certain former Scotland Yard official named Peter Power who related that his firm, Visor Consulting, had been doing an anti-terror-bombing drill in precisely the Underground stations and at the precise times when the real explosions went off. Peter Power and Visor had been subcontractors for the drill; Power declined to name the prime contractors. Small wonder that Blair, in his first official report to the Commons on July 11, went out of his way to rule out a board of inquiry to probe these tragic events.

Tony Blair may be eyeing the advantages of emergency rule for a discredited lame duck like himself, but the British people may have a different view. The alternative is clear: on the one hand is the American response after 9/11, marked by submissive and credulous gullibility in regard to the fantastic official story of what had happened. On the other hand is the militant and intelligent Spanish response after March 11, 2004, marked by powerful mass mobilization and righteous anger against politicians who sought to manipulate the people and sell a distorted account of events. Which way will the British people go? Straws in the wind suggest that the British response may be closer to the Spanish, although it may develop more slowly because of the lack of mass organization and related factors. If this is the case, Tony Blair, Jack Straw, and the rest of the malodorous "New Labor" crypto-Thatcherites will be out the window.

My thesis is that the London explosions represent a form of communication on the part of the transatlantic Anglo-American financier faction with Bush, Blair, and the heads of state and government assembled at Gleneagles, Scotland for the G-8 meeting on the day of the blast. The London deaths were designed to deliver an ultimatum in favor of early war with Iran. Here a word of clarification may be necessary. The demonization of Bush by his many enemies, while understandable, risks blurring the basic realities of power in the US and UK. Since the Bay of Pigs and the Kennedy assassination (to go back no further than that), we have been aware of a secret team. During the Iran-contra era, the same phenomenon was referred to as an invisible, secret or parallel government. This is still the matrix of most large-scale terrorism. The question arises for some: do Bush and Cheney tell the invisible government what to do, or does the invisible government treat the visible office holders as puppets and expendable assets? To ask the question is to answer it: Bush, Cheney & Co. are the expendable puppets. The explanation of terror is not Bush "makes it happen on purpose," or "MIHOP," as some seem to argue, but rather invisible government MIHOP, an altogether more dire proposition.

How then does the invisible faction communicate with the public mouthpieces? Given the violence of the power relations involved, we can be sure that it is not a matter of sending out engraved invitations announcing that the honor of Bush's presence is requested at the launching of an attack on Iran. Rather, the invisible and violent rogue network communicates with Bush, Blair, and others by means coherent with their aggressive nature -- as they did on 9/11. Bush, of course, is a weak and passive tenant of the White House whose instinct is to do virtually nothing beyond the day-to-day routine.

We therefore need to note that the London blasts come after two months of vigorous and impatient prodding of Bush by the invisible government. On May 11, a small plane almost reached the White House before it was turned away, while the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House (but not the Pentagon, the Treasury, etc.) were evacuated amid scenes of panic. The White House went to red alert, but Bush was not informed until it was all over, and was riding his bicycle in the woods near Greenbelt, Maryland. Flares were dropped over the Brookland district and Takoma Park, MD. The resemblance of all this to a classic coup scenario was evident. On May 18, a live hand grenade, which turned out to be a dud, landed near Bush as he spoke at a rally in Tbilisi, Georgia.

On June 29, the approach of another small plane led to an evacuation of the Congress and the Capitol, again with scenes of panic. On the afternoon of July 2, no fewer than three small planes came close to Bush's Camp David retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland; this story was suspiciously relegated to the local news page of the Washington Post. The details of these incidents are of little interest; what counts is the objective reality of a pattern. These incidents also provide background for Bush's unbalanced behavior on July 5 at Gleneagles, when he crashed into a policeman while riding on his bicycle. Then came the London blasts on July 7.

What is it that the invisible government wants Bush and Blair to do? Scott Ritter announced last January that Bush had issued an order to prepare an attack on Iran for the month of June. According to a well-informed retired CIA analyst I spoke with on July 3, this order actually told US commanders to be ready to attack Iran by the end of June. This project of war with Iran is coherent with most of what we know about the intentions of the US-UK rogue faction, and thus provides the immediate background for the London explosions. The Bush administration and the Blair cabinet have failed to deliver decisive military action, and the invisible government is exceedingly impatient.

One way to increase the pressure on Iran would be to implicate a group of Iranian fanatic patsies in the London bombings. This would not be difficult; in fact, as I show in 9/11 Synthetic Terror, the British capital, referred to during the 1990s as Londonistan, is home to the largest concentration of Arab and Islamic patsy groups in the entire world, in such infamous locations as Finsbury mosque and Brixton mosque; these groups are known to have enjoyed de facto recruiting privileges in Her Majesty's Prisons. But perhaps an Iranian patsy group would be too obvious at this time. More likely may be the sinking of a US warship in the Gulf by a third country, duly attributed to Iran.

In a recent speech, Dr. Ephraim Asculai of Tel Aviv University made two main points: first, that there is no military solution to the Iranian nuclear issue, and second, that there is no such thing as a point of no return in nuclear weapons development. Dr. Asculai showed that South Africa, Sweden, and other nations had turned away from deploying A-bombs well after having acquired the ability to produce them. Dr. Asculai is evidently arguing against widespread tendencies in the US-UK-Israeli strategic community who are whipping up hysteria around the notion that Iran is now indeed approaching exactly such a point of no return.

For her part, Miss Rice of the State Department has now declared that it will no longer be sufficient for Iran to turn away from nuclear weapons production; the entire Iranian program for nuclear energy production will also have to be dismantled, in her view. Such maximalism makes a negotiated solution impossible as long as the current Washington group holds power.

-- 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley

Shabazz worked to improve relations between the NBPP and the Nation of Islam, where many NBPP members had their roots, including former leader Khalid Muhammad. In 2005, Louis Farrakhan invited Shabazz to be the co-convener of the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March. The groups also appeared together at events calling for reparations for black slavery. (That friendly relationship has continued. As late as January 2010, Shabazz was expressing his approval of the Nation of Islam and reiterating his commitment to support its efforts.)

In May 2006, Shabazz led a group of New Black Panthers in a protest on Duke University's campus in North Carolina. A few months earlier, members of Duke's lacrosse team had been accused of raping a black exotic dancer who they had hired to work a private party — charges that were ultimately shown to be false.

Crystal Mangum

Crystal Mangum—a black stripper enrolled in classes at North Carolina Central University at the time—alleged that she had been raped by members of the Duke men’s lacrosse team at a party held in a house near East Campus March 13, 2006. She reported being sexually assaulted for 30 minutes by three men in a bathroom and that party-goers yelled racial slurs at her.

The three accused players were eventually found innocent, and Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred for perjury and violating professional conduct.

After a lengthy media silence, Mangum released a memoir called “The Last Dance for Grace: The Crystal Mangum Story” in October 2008 and maintained that she was assaulted at the party in March 2006.

In November 2013, she was convicted of second-degree murder for stabbing her boyfriend Reginald Daye. Mangum stabbed Daye in April 2011 in a fight at Daye's home, 10 days after which he died at Duke University Medical Center.

She was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway to a minimum of 14 years in prison after about six hours of deliberation by a 13-person jury.

Mangum claimed she was acting in self-defense at the time. She said Daye knocked her to the floor, threatening and choking her. She testified that she did not intend to kill him.

She is currently serving her sentence at the North Carolina Correctional Institute for Women in Raleigh.

-- Where are they now? A look at the main characters involved in the lacrosse case, by Claire Ballentine and Samantha Neal

The NBPP demanded that the accused players be found guilty and that all the students who were at the party be expelled. Several of the NBPP members came to the protest armed. Two brought knives, some wore bulletproof vests, and one brought a gun, which a police officer insisted that he leave in his car.

In August 2006, several members of the NBPP served as security personnel for former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney's primary campaign, which she lost. After McKinney lost the primary, a journalist asked her what she attributed her loss to. Hashim Nzinga, the NBPP National Chief of Staff, interrupted: "Why do you think she lost? You wanna know what led to the loss? Israel. The Zionists. You. Put on your yarmulke and celebrate." (The former Georgia Democrat and the NBPP's connection continues today. In May 2010, McKinney spoke at the NBPP Black Power Convention.)

In September 2007, three white men and three white women in West Virginia were arrested for kidnapping, torturing, and sexually assaulting Megan Williams, a 20-year-old mentally disabled black woman. In October 2007, Shabazz seized on Williams' case, demanding that all six of the defendants be charged with hate crimes — this despite Williams' previous romantic involvement with one of her assailants, which prosecutors said underlined how the crimes were not legally hate crimes. But Shabazz ignored the prosecutors, reaching out to Megan's mother, Carmen Williams, and giving her legal advice and supposedly working to raise money for her daughter.

On Nov. 3, 2007, Shabazz held a rally in front of the federal courthouse in Charleston, W.Va., where he demanded that all the defendants be charged with hate crimes. The rally drew about 1,000 people. The NAACP refused to endorse the event, presumably because of Shabazz and the NBPP's racist views. But Shabazz was supported by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who reportedly attended and later had Shabazz on his radio program, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which also reportedly endorsed the rally. After the event, Shabazz announced that he had collected at least $5,000 on Williams' behalf, and pledged to continue to raise money. Two weeks later, Logan County prosecutor Brian Abraham petitioned the court to appoint a legal guardian for Williams. He was worried that Williams' mother and Shabazz were not acting in Megan's best interests, and that the publicity was not good for Megan or her case. Shabazz challenged the guardian petition and it was denied. But many of those close to the case remained concerned about Shabazz's advocacy. In October 2009, Megan's attorney, Byron Potts, said, "I know for a fact she [Megan] has been manipulated. … People raised money for her, she never received that money."

On Nov. 4, 2008, two NBPP members showed up, wearing military-style fatigues and berets, at a Philadelphia polling station, supposedly to protect black voters from having their rights violated. King Samir Shabazz, the local NBPP chapter leader, brandished a nightstick and made threatening remarks to voters (much of this was captured on a videotape reportedly made by GOP poll watchers). An eyewitness claimed that Samir Shabazz said, "Cracker, you are about to be ruled by a black man." Jerry Jackson, a certified Democratic poll watcher who also wore NBPP garb, accompanied him. Police officers arrived at the scene and forced Samir Shabazz to leave, though they allowed Jackson to stay. After the incident, the NBPP distanced itself from Samir Shabazz's actions and suspended the Philadelphia chapter.

The Justice Department filed civil charges of voter intimidation in January 2009 under the Voting Rights Act (the Bush Administration, which filed the charges in its last hours, chose not to pursue a criminal case) against King Samir Shabazz, Jerry Jackson, the New Black Panther Party and Malik Zulu Shabazz. They won the case by default in April 2009 when the defendants did not appear in court. But DOJ officials under the Obama Administration decided to drop most of the charges, saying the evidence did not substantiate the allegations that votes were suppressed or that the party or its leader were culpable. They did, however, get an injunction against Samir Shabazz that forbade him to bring a weapon to any Philadelphia polling place until 2012.

In January 2010, Samir Shabazz was reinstalled as head of the newly reactivated Philadelphia chapter. On April 23, 2010, he wrote in a reference to the prosecutors who investigated the case against him, "You are nothing more than a modern day lynch mob." In May 2010, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez defended the Department of Justice's decision to drop the charges. He cited local officers' decision to allow Jackson to remain when they removed Samir Shabazz (suggesting that Jackson was not intimidating voters) and the fact that there were no similar incidents at other polling stations. These facts, Perez argued, exonerated Jackson, Malik Shabazz, and the NBPP from charges of voter intimidation. Nevertheless, a wide array of right-wing and conservative individuals and groups attacked the DOJ's decision as supposedly revealing the Obama Administration's refusal to pursue cases against black racists.

The group made headlines across the country in March 2012 when Mikhail Muhammad, a New Black Panther leader in Florida, said the NBPP was placing a $10,000 “bounty” on a neighborhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, an African American, in Sanford, Fla. When asked whether he was inciting violence, Muhammad said, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” The group also called for the mobilization of 10,000 black men to capture the Hispanic man who shot the unarmed teen as he was walking through a gated community wearing a hooded sweatshirt and carrying only some candy and iced tea. The lack of charges against the gunman, who claimed he was attacked by Martin, sparked nationwide outrage.

The New Black Panther Party is Unlike Its Namesake of the 1960s
by Southern Poverty Law Center
December 6, 2000

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Trading on the name of a group of black militants famous in the 1960s and 1970s, the "new" Panthers portrayed themselves as the only men bold enough to take on the violent racism of the Klan and other white supremacists.

Brandishing assault rifles and shotguns, 50 black men clad in fatigues and berets appeared two years ago on the troubled streets of Jasper, Texas. They were there, they announced, to protect fellow blacks against attacks following the truck-dragging murder of James Byrd Jr. and to face down the Ku Klux Klan.

Twice, a large contingent of police and Texas Rangers turned back the black-clad militants attempting to confront the hooded marchers who had come to Jasper to "defend" local whites in the aftermath of the Byrd killing.

At one point, police had to intervene to prevent opponents from overturning a van full of Klansmen. But the police, sensing the supercharged nature of this very public confrontation, avoided - probably wisely - trying to disarm the black men from Dallas.

That tense day in June 1998 introduced the nation to a group that few Americans had heard of: the New Black Panther Party.

Trading on the name of a group of black militants famous in the 1960s and 1970s, the "new" Panthers portrayed themselves as the only men bold enough to take on the violent racism of the Klan and other white supremacists.

Eschewing the health clinics and free breakfast programs of the original Panthers, the new group's leaders have seemed to focus almost exclusively on hate rhetoric about Jews and whites.

"We will never bow down to the white, Jewish, Zionist onslaught," is the way Washington, D.C., attorney Malik Zulu Shabazz put it not long before becoming the chief spokesman for the New Black Panther Party.

Panther leader Khalid Abdul Muhammad, Shabazz added, is the man "who gives the white man nightmares ... who makes the Jews pee in their pants at night."

Whites as the Enemy

Lacking a national office, a publication or even a web site, the New Black Panther Party may seem somewhat disorganized. But despite that, the new Panthers have managed to sustain themselves through several incarnations since their beginnings about 10 years ago.

Today, the party appears to be a federation of as many as 35 chapters in at least 13 cities with informal but important links to certain black Muslims and other small black groups. In the last year, the Panthers have appeared publicly in Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, New York, Norfolk, Va., and Washington, D.C.

Dallas leader Robert Williams says there are chapters scattered throughout the East and Midwest, and adds that new chapters are being organized in Gulfport, Miss., and New Orleans. He said he could offer no estimates as to the national group's size, but added that in Dallas there are "just over 100 members."

The party's overall ideology -- and the uniformity of that ideology within the party -- is difficult to assess. Some local leaders seem far less radical -- and less given to anti-Semitism and hatred of white people -- than their national spokesmen.

Williams says the chapter heads meet annually, but adds that communication among the party's leaders is usually quite informal -- he himself says he knows little more than the phone numbers of the other chapters.

Even the party's official platform is unclear. Members variously have claimed to have 10-, 12- and 14-point platforms, each adapted from the original Panthers' 10 points.

Shabazz, the party's national spokesman, refused to describe his organization to the Intelligence Report. "I've discussed it with my national committee," he said, "and I've been instructed not to answer any of your questions."

But certain things are obvious. One version of the new Panthers' platform, drawn from a 1997 web site, is very similar to the original Panthers' -- with a key difference.

Where the original Panthers demanded "an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black and oppressed communities" the new party calls for something quite different -- "an end to robbery by the white man."

'Who's Pimping the World?'

And then there is Khalid Muhammad.

Muhammad, who first appeared publicly as the new Panthers' leader at the Jasper demonstration in 1998, had long been known as the leading spokesman for the black separatist Nation of Islam. He lost that post after Nation leader Louis Farrakhan was widely criticized for Muhammad's violently hateful speeches.

With a fondness for speeches with titles like "Who's Pimping the World?" (answer: "the Jews"), Muhammad has rarely minced words.

He has blamed slavery and even the Holocaust on the "hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating, perpetrating-a-fraud, so-called Jew."

He has called for building a Student Violent Coordinating Committee -- a takeoff on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that was a key player in the civil rights struggle.

He has launched repeated diatribes against his enemies: "white devil crackers," "bloodsucking Jews" and "faggots."

Some of his most famous comments, regarding politics in post-apartheid South Africa, came in a notorious 1993 speech at Kean College in New Jersey.

Muhammad had clear ideas for dealing with whites who did not leave immediately: "We kill the women. We kill the babies. We kill the blind. We kill the cripples. We kill them all. We kill the faggot. We kill the lesbian. ... When you get through killing them all, go to the goddamn graveyard and dig up the grave and kill them a-goddamn-gain, because they didn't die hard enough" the first time.

Just this fall, Muhammad made similar comments in a Detroit speech. "There's only two kinds of white folks, there's only two kinds, " he said, "bad white folks and worse white folks. ... [Malcolm X] said if you find one good, kill him first, before he turns bad. Because he's only faking."

Old Panthers vs. New

Williams, the Dallas chapter head, told the Intelligence Report that the Panthers aren't racist -- "because to be racist you have to have power" -- although he backs segregated education until high school. Jeremiah Ward, the Panther leader in Gulfport, Miss., insists the group is "about uplifting our own people."

But key opponents disagree. Bobby Seale, a founding member of the original Panthers, calls Muhammad's organization "a black racist hate group." In 1997, two original Panthers from Dallas -- Fahim Minkah and Marvin Crenshaw -- won an injunction against then-Dallas leader Aaron Michaels preventing him from using the old Panther name or logo. The injunction was never enforced.

"We worked with all different ethnic groups, especially the white left, to build a coalition," says David Hilliard, an early member of the original Panthers and now director of the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, in Oakland, Calif., that bears the name of a deceased Panther leader.

The new Panthers' "whole philosophy is 'Black Power, Black Power,' to the point of being separatist," he says.

"We were never separatist."

Although its beginnings are somewhat murky, the New Black Panther Party apparently began around 1990 in Milwaukee, where a city alderman organized what he called the Black Panther Militia.

If black urban poverty was not alleviated with a massive infusion of government funds, Alderman Michael McGee angrily threatened, white America would face "urban guerilla warfare" from blacks who would cut phone lines and burn tires on highways to snarl commuter traffic.

Black men, McGee declared, needed to "stop being sissies."

Nazis and Panthers

Although it's unclear at what point the Milwaukee group changed its name, McGee soon managed to organize chapters in Indianapolis and Dallas and to become the new group's "national commander" in the process.

In Indianapolis, Mmoja Ajabu -- a man who would soon acquire a significant criminal record -- was the leader. In Dallas, it was Aaron Michaels, who for years had produced the controversial radio show hosted by John Wiley Price, a relatively militant black county commissioner who some whites have accused of racism.

Indications of the new party's radical direction came early on. In May 1993, McGee and Michaels organized a demonstration reportedly calling for separation of the races and the overthrow of the U.S. government.

It was attended by 200 blacks and one specially invited white guest -- Tom Metzger, the white supremacist ideologue who has a fondness for publishing grotesque caricatures of black people. It was one of a number of meetings of black and white separatists over the last 15 years joining in a common cause.

In 1983, London's Croom Helm Ltd. published my first book, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators.

A London Times review declared that "Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler's." The book attracted similar favorable scholarly comments, worldwide. Naturally specialist interest moved on in the subsequent decades, but today, thanks to the internet, unique visual confirmation of that collaboration has come to my attention and it is presented now to the public.

I related how Kurt Tuchler, a member of the German Zionist Federation Executive,

"persuaded Baron Leopold Itz Edler von Mildenstein of the SS to write a pro-Zionist piece for the Nazi press. The Baron agreed on the condition that he visited Palestine first, and two months after Hitler came to power the two men and their wives went to Palestine; von Mildenstein stayed there for six months before he returned. ...

Von Mildenstein wrote favorably about what he saw in the Zionist colonies in Palestine; he also persuaded Goebbels to run the report as a massive twelve-part series in his own Der Angriff (The Assault), the leading Nazi propaganda organ (9/26-10/9/34).... To commemorate the Baron's expedition, Goebbels had a medal struck: on one side the swastika, on the other the Zionist star."

I never located the medal. But in 2003 John Sigler, like myself an anti-Zionist Jew, found an image and description in a closed mail-bid coin sale. He bought a bronze version. A silvered token appeared in 2005. Silvering is often done to medals. It is about 1.5" in diameter and is thicker than a coin. There is no doubt re authenticity. John bought his bronze from the same respected coin dealer.

Recently John sent me a photo of the silvered bronze, for which I am very grateful. The Star of David side reads:


EIN NAZI FÄHRT NACH PALÄSTINA -- A Nazi Travels to Palestine.

The Swastika side reads


UND ERZÄHLT DAVON IM Angriff -- And tells about it in Angriff [Attack]

I happily forward it to the internet world, with documentation re von Mildenstein's visit and Zionist collaboration, and the first of the Baron's articles for Goebbel's journal.

Readers will doubtlessly have questions. Queries about the medal should go to John via http://www.onestate.org. Many questions about Zionist collaboration can be answered by going to Zionism in the Age of the Dictators.

-- -- Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, by Lenni Brenner

Despite the meeting, McGee was no lover of neo-Nazis. Not long after, appearing on the trash-talking "Jerry Springer Show," McGee punched Arthur Jones, a long-time leader of the National Socialist White People's Party.

Muhammad's first contact with the Panthers may have been in Indianapolis in 1993, when he joined Ajabu, the local leader, in organizing a protest of a planned Klan demonstration. Both Ajabu and Williams, the current Dallas leader, say that it was during this period -- when Khalid Muhammad was being widely attacked for his violent New Jersey speech -- that the Nation leader got involved.

Muhammad, Williams says, "formally entered the organization in 1997, but has been involved since 1994." Muhammad became national commander in 1997 or 1998.

"Khalid took it on because he was disenchanted with the Nation of Islam," Ajabu told the Intelligence Report. "He did not leave because he was mad. He left because he thought the Black Panther Party was better adapted to our struggle. ... There was a meeting of all the chapters in Texas and he was voted in."

(Still, Muhammad is critical of the Nation. This fall, he called Farrakhan a "hypocrite" for allowing whites to attend the Nation's "Million Family March.")

But Muhammad was already deeply involved. In June 1996, he and Michaels held a news conference in Dallas that was attended by a group of new Panthers, members of the Nation of Islam, and a bevy of reporters. "We must understand the nature of the white man," Muhammad said. "The white man is the devil."

Two Arsons and a Trial

Beginning in 1993, Ajabu organized protests in Indianapolis against the Klan, against the harassment of a black family living in a white neighborhood, and for a black boycott -- which proved unsuccessful -- of the school system.

But at the same time, controversy dogged the Indiana leader. In May 1994, Ajabu's house burned down in what was ruled an arson. No charges were ever brought in the case, but Ajabu's insurance company refused to pay his claim. Ajabu sued the company as a result, but lost after attorneys presented evidence that he had a financial motive to start the fire. No money was ever paid.

Three months later, Ajabu appeared in Wedowee, Ala., after a principal there sparked nationwide outrage by threatening to cancel the high school prom if interracial couples attended and by demeaning one biracial girl. Hours after Ajabu gave a speech touting the New Black Panthers, the school was burned to the ground.

Christopher Johnson, son of the local Panther leader, was tried. But jurors apparently did not believe testimony that Johnson had boasted of starting the fire, and Johnson was acquitted. Ajabu will not discuss his speech of that night.

In January 1996, Ajabu was convicted of intimidation because of threats he made against a prosecutor who was seeking the death penalty against Ajabu's son in a murder trial. In the end, Ajabu served a year in prison -- but only after failing in a bid to become a congressman during appeals. After a June 1996 protest against the death penalty, Ajabu was convicted of resisting arrest, a misdemeanor.

Guns and the Press

Of the new Panthers' original leaders -- McGee, Michaels and Ajabu -- only Michaels apparently remains involved. Ajabu left around the time of his prison term, and is now studying to become a Christian minister. There is no record of McGee's involvement in the New Black Panthers after the mid-1990s.

Since the mid-1990s and right up to the present, the new Panthers have specialized in confrontational, armed demonstrations -- protests guaranteed to win attention from the media.

A Dallas school board meeting was canceled in May 1996 after Panthers threatened to come with loaded weapons. In June of that year, the Panthers went to Greenville, Texas, in a bid to demonstrate black solidarity against the presumably racist arsonists of two black churches. (In the end, a black man confessed.)

In 1997, Panthers showed up again in Dallas in an unsuccessful bid for a separate school district for blacks. In 1998, they made two very public trips to Jasper in the wake of James Byrd's murder.

And, inspired by key Houston member Quanell X, Panthers protested this year at the Texas Republican convention and at the execution of a black man, Gary Graham, in Huntsville, Texas.

'Praying for Rain'

The most public activities of the Panthers have been seen in Muhammad's organization of Million Youth Marches, held in Harlem, N.Y., in each of the last three years.

The idea for the marches grew out of Louis Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March, held in Washington, D.C., and the 1997 Million Woman March, held in Philadelphia. Muhammad had no role in the two earlier events.

But the constantly declining attendance at Muhammad's New York City marches has not helped the Panther image as a powerhouse organization. Shortly before the first of Muhammad's Million Youth Marches, there were predictions of 1 million or even 2 million participants.

In the event, 10,000 actually showed up. In 1999, attendance was down to just 2,000. And this year, a hardy 200 came to hear Muhammad, who blamed the turnout on "the white devil media."

The fact is, the New Black Panther Party, despite some similarities to the vastly more successful Nation of Islam, has not picked up the support of millions of black people. It has angered whites, Jews and most blacks, who see it as fundamentally racist. And it has left a bitter taste in the mouths of at least some of the communities that its members, guns in hand, purport to be helping.

The residents of Jasper, Texas -- including many of the ostensible victims who the new Panthers said they sought to protect from the white man -- may have said it best.

Looking at the confrontation between Panthers and Klansmen, one woman said "it would be God's own miracle" if the outsiders left town. Another woman from Jasper seemed to sum up the attitude of many in the East Texas community.

"We're praying," she said, "for rain."