“Day-o, Day-ay-ay-o
BBC come and me wan’ go home….”
Harry Belafonte is the sort of guy guaranteed a warm welcome from the BBC and so it proved this morning on Today at 8.20am. Sarah Montague fawned over Belafonte, the “activist and singer” as the BBC so carefully describe him. Treating him as a latter day combination of Martin Luther King meets Ghandi, Sarah seemed strangely disinterested in exploring some of his more colourful thoughts. Here are some pickings…
” Three years ago, he disparaged Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice as “house slaves” toiling on the Bush plantation. Miss Rice he compared to a “Jew” who was “doing things that were anti-Semitic and against the best interests of her people.”
He’s helped raise money for the Rosenberg Fund for Children, an organization whose stated mission is to provide “for the educational and emotional needs of children of targeted progressive activists, and youth who are targeted activists themselves.”
The fund is named for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Such progressive activists were they that they betrayed atomic bomb secrets to Russia. And were justly executed for their treason.
In 2000, Belafonte visited Cuba and spoke at a rally honoring the Rosenbergs. His pal Castro, another progressive activist, was hailed by Harry for his role in keeping Cuba “an example of keeping the principles the Rosenbergs fought and died for alive.”
In the early 1980s Belafonte journeyed to Europe to participate in pro-Communist “peace” rallies that demanded unilateral disarmament by the U.S. and its allies. When American Indian Movement radical Dennis Banks was sentenced to three years in jail for rioting with a dangerous weapon and assault, the always helpful Harry sent a statement to the court on his behalf.
More recently, Harry identified the real culprit of September 11th. Speaking at St. Sabina’s Church in Chicago in early 2003, Belafonte was quoted by the Chicago Sun-Times:
“We move about the world arrogantly, calling wars when we want, overthrowing governments when we want. There is a price to be paid for it — look at 9/11.”
Is it any wonder Sarah hung on his every word?