The 68 Olympics: remembering Peter Norman

LtoR Norman, Smith, Carlos

 I am so lucky to have grown up during the 60’s.  What an incredible decade. The colonial revolutions were driving out direct occupation anyway.  Ten million French workers struck and occupied factories.  The music and art scene was flourishing. The Women’s rights movement was in full swing as was the civil rights movement and the Black Panthers in the US, influencing the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland.

I wouldn’t say I was consciously political but even the blues that I listened to was political as while Big Bill Broonzy or T Bone Walker weren’t known as political figures, if you were black and from the US and sang about life, you sang about politics, racism, injustice, lynchings (Strange Fruit).  On of my favorite singers, Nina Simone, didn’t pull too many punches. I was just a bit juvenile that’s all, but it did sink in.

Like many young working class guys at the time though, I was a bit afraid of the likes of Malcolm X and some aspects of the Panthers, mostly because the media demonized them but I also didn’t understand the whole situation and hadn’t yet been introduced to the political ideas that would have helped me understand more.  Malcolm X didn’t help with some of his comments about white people, putting us all in the same boat. And we should not fail to recognize that Malcolm X was killed when he was moving towards working class unity and socialist ideas, not when he was attacking white people as whites---all the same.

In 1968 at the Mexico Olympics, the two hundred meters gold medal was won by the American Tommie Smith and another American John Carlos won the bronze.  Smith and Carlos were both black.  On the podium with them was the silver medal winner, the Australian Peter Norman.  Smith and Carlos had decided to make a statement at the medal ceremony.  They raised their fists in the air, wore no shoes to protest poverty and beads to protest lynchings. Smith and Carlos paid for their actions with a suspension and removal from the Olympic village. They were vilified by many who said that their actions brought disgrace on the US and they received death threats as well. 

I came to recognize them for the heroic figures they were.  But I remember back then seeing the white guy Norman standing there and I wondered what it must be like for him.  After all, wasn’t this black power salute an attack on all white people? I was sure that the black guys would never have included him in their plans. But they did. It was only recently I found out that Smith and Carlos had discussed their plan with Norman after the race. Norman suggested they wear the black gloves which is why Smith is raising his right fist and Carlos his left.

They asked Norman if he believed in human rights and if he believed in god.  He told them he would stand with them and wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge on his chest in solidarity. It is one of the most powerful scenes of the 20^thcentury, these two guys standing there, fists in the air, heads down and Norman with them. Norman said afterwards, "I believe every man is born equal." 

Smith and Carlos were demonized in the media and suffered racial abuse and name calling on top of their suspension for what they did. Norman’s solidarity cost him his athletic career. He was excluded from the Australian team at the 1972 Olympics despite running qualifying times. The Australian media airbrushed him from history despite being one of 

Smith and Carlos lead pallbearers at Norman's funeral

that country’s greatest athletes. This is how they react to a young man who said afterwards,

“I couldn’t see why a black man wasn’t allowed to drink out of the same water fountain or sit in the same bus or go to the same schools as a white guy. That was just social injustice that I couldn’t do anything about from where I was, but I certainly abhorred it.

Avery Brundage, the IOC chairman attacked these men because he didn’t agree that political statements belonged in the Olympics.  This is the man who was at the 1936 Olympics as the president of the US Olympic Committee and raised no objection to the Nazi salute.

Peter Norman died in 2006 from a heart attack.  He had suffered with depression and alcoholism. Tommie Smith and John Carlos were pallbearers and spoke at the funeral, Carlos told Australian television:

"Peter Norman let me know that regardless of what your ethnic background is it has nothing to do with your principles".

And on his treatment he said:

"I think the pressures that the nation put on him and the disrespect that they showed him, I think it wounded him. "I think he was hurting and I don't think he ever recovered from the hurt that they put upon him. Unnecessarily hurt."

In August 2012, the Australian government which had racial exclusionary laws similar to South Africa’s at the time of the famous salute, finally issued an official apology to Norman and his family who were harassed and persecuted for his actions.

I am sure there are many people that know this already but I didn’t so I felt a need to comment on it.  I have to say as I write about this I feel very emotional about these three people.  What courage they had to do what they did. The civil rights movement and actions like the protest in Mexico halted the most openly brutal racist practices in the US including blatantly racist laws, but the institutionalized racism of the system is still very much with us.

For Norman, it would have been easy to step aside, to avoid the confrontation but he didn't, and there’s no way any of them would not have understood the response that would follow the protest.

As I think about it, all those who are not directly victims of the cause they stand up to defend but know it has to be done no matter the cost, are heroic figures.  The state and its minions have dragged an apology from Manning after years of physical and mental torture, maybe his lawyer said it might knock a few years from his sentence, I don’t know.  But he has nothing to apologize for; neither do Smith, Carlos and Norman.

There’s some good people out there.

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Huge protests in Brazil as the workers of the world refuse to cower to capital.

Here is a short glimpse of the protests that have broken out in Brazil, spurred by price increases particularly in transportation. The world is erupting with protests from below from China to Brazil, Greece to South Africa, in Russia, India and throughout the planet. Workers of the world cry out for an international working class organization and leadership that can draw together all these struggles against capital and hasten the transformation of global society away from capitalism and the rapacious struggle for profits toward the production of human needs in harmony with the nature.  

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Senator Julian Assange?

From The Sydney Morning Herald

Assange electoral boost
February 25, 2013 - 2:58PM

Julian Assange.Julian Assange’s plans to run as a Senate candidate have taken a step forward with his successful enrolment on the federal and state electoral rolls in Victoria.

Contrary to the expectations of a number of political commentators, the Australian Electoral Commission has accepted Mr Assange’s enrollment as an eligible overseas elector in the Victorian federal seat of Isaacs, the seat of Labor Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.

The WikiLeaks publisher plans to run for the Senate in Victoria as the lead candidate of a newly formed WikiLeaks Party at the September 14 federal election.

The new party, which is not yet registered with the Australian Electoral Commission, has an initial ten member national council comprised of close associates of Mr Assange and pro-WikiLeaks activists.

In addition to Mr Assange, the party’s national council compises Mr Assange’s father, Sydney architect John Shipton; one of the original founders of WikiLeaks, Melbourne mathematician Daniel Mathews; Australian National University physicist Niraj Lal; Maitland lawyer, political activist and former independent candidate Kellie Tranter;

Sydney based digital archivist and freedom of information activist Cassie Findlay; Gold Coast based information technology blogger Gary Lord; Dandenong women’s refuge manager and WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance co-convener Kaz Cochrane; indigenous education consultant and activist Luke Pearson; and Oman Todd, cyber security and social media consultant with the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group.

It is understood Ms Tranter is likely to be the WikiLeaks Party’s Senate candidate in NSW.

Mr Assange currently resides in the Embassy of Ecuador in London where he has been granted political asylum on the grounds he is at risk of extradition to the United States to face conspiracy or other charges arising from WikiLeaks obtaining thousands of secret US military and diplomatic reports leaked by US Army soldier Bradley Manning.

Swedish prosecutors wish to extradite Mr Assange to have him questioned in Stockholm in relation to sexual assault allegations by two women.  Mr Assange claims that extradition to Sweden would facilitate his eventual extradition  to the United States.

Mr Assange has indicated that if elected and unable to return to Australia to take up a seat in the Senate, a WikiLeaks Party nominee would fill the vacancy.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/assange-electoral-boost-20130225-2f1dw.html#ixzz2LsmpAgKM

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Australian Jews shaken by the Ben Zygier affair.

Writing in the Israeli paper, Haaretz, Chemi Salev states:

"Australian Jews love Israel. Many of them commit significant amounts of time, energy and wealth to promoting, assisting and defending Israel. They visit Israel frequently and they send their children for extended stays, usually temporarily, often permanently. On a per capita basis, they are the most generous Jewish community in the world, and they may very well be the most Israel-devoted Jewish community in the world."

"Most Australian Jews love Israel without any conditions, qualifications or reservations. They don’t think it is their business to censure Israel from such a great distance in public, even when they disagree with its policies in private. They tend to criticize and often ostracize anyone who thinks or behaves otherwise. In many ways, they are what many Israelis think a model Diaspora community should look like."

I've been on the receiving end of this pro-Zionist ostracism and criticism in the past.  I've had arguments with some American Jews who equate Muslim or Palestinian anger and at times hatred of Israel and Jews with the traditional anti-Semitism of the European variety.  In fact, it is more common than not that if a Gentile criticizes Israel they'll be accused of anti-Semitism and if Jews do it they are "Self hating Jews."

I am sure that if Australian Jews were targeted by some Palestinian faction or simply as an act of vengeance by a lone Palestinian who might have had their home bulldozed and land taken to make way for immigrants from South Africa, Europe, or perhaps some retired US businessman who believes this land was given to him by god, they would claim the motive was anti-Semitism.

The reason the issue of Australian Jews comes up is the death of a Jewish Australian, Ben Zygier who died while under arrest in Israel.  Zygier was recruited by Mossad in 2000 according to reports and he was an ardent Zionist like many Australian Jews.

The controversy deepens given that an Australian passport was used when the Mossad murdered Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai on 19 January 2010.  This caused considerable concern and Israel faced some open criticism for it.  There is speculation that Zygier, also known as Ben Alon knew too much about September 11th or the assassination of Al-Mabhouh but either way the affair has gotten Australian Jews real edgy as there is some anti-Israeli sentiment being expressed in Australia about the death of an Australian citizen in Israeli custody.  The other aspect of this is which country Australian Jews are loyal to.

Ben Saul, the director of the Sydney Center for International Law at Sydney Law School, accused Israelis of being "masters of all the dark arts: assassination, abduction, torture, violent interception of civilians at sea and colonizing foreign territory." but in the main Australian Jewish leaders have been fairly quiet about it all according to the press.

But when Haaretz writes that Australian Jews don't, "think it is their business to censure Israel from such a great distance in public, even when they disagree with its policies in private." It makes me wonder what the writer would be saying were someone to utter those same words about a country they didn't live in but that that they may have originated from or, as Zionists argue, was given to them by god, and that country was persecuting Jews, treating them the way the Zionist regime treats Palestinians.  What if we said the same about Apartheid South Africa?  And what if we said the same about the Taliban's treatment of women?  "It's not my business to tell them what to do."

If that is how Australian Jews think, and in my experience it's how a lot of Jews in the Diaspora think, criticism of Israel is off limits, then they must expect that anger or hatred of Israeli policies can be felt toward Jews outside of that country who say nothing.  To criticize Israel is not anti-Semitic.  I am not saying that anger at Israel doesn't spill over in to a general anger at or hatred of Jews, this happens in all such instances and would be anti-Semitism I suppose but not the same as that which occurred in Europe.   

Many Jews are involved in the struggle for Palestinian rights and have died for their beliefs, I think Rachel Corrie, the young American run over by a bulldozer as she defended a Palestinian family's home from being demolished was Jewish. By tying themselves to Israel especially being uncritical of the regime and its brutal treatment of Palestinians, Jews around the world set themselves up for criticism.  Norman Finkelstein is a frequent critic of Israeli policies and a heroic figure in my opinion.  He has been savaged by Zionists for his views. There is an excellent interview with him here: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/2011/04/2011412103819678591.html

While one can understand the popularity that Zionism gained among Europe's Jews after the experience of Stalinist persecution and then the Nazi extermination camps, the Zionist regime is anything but a nation offering a secure future for the world's Jews, it is an apartheid state that continues to be the major destabilizing factor in the Middle East and harmful to the security of Jews throughout the world.

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