- Some called him Cassius, refusing to call him, Muhammad;
while others demonstrated their liberalism by refusing to use what Muhammad
Ali said was his slave name Cassius Clay.
-
- In any case, at breakfast, at the ATO fraternity house,
the Gainesville Sun, of February 26th 1964, told us that the boxing world
had a new champion.
-
- It was hard to believe that the Louisville Mouth that
Roared Muhammad Ali - could have so easily defeated the indomitable,
Sonny Liston; but there it was, right in our daily paper.
-
- Some things are hard to believe even when there's proof
of them.
-
- That summer I graduated, after a make-up test in Tax
Law, and moved to Chicago. There, I hoped to become such a success, I'd
have real income tax problems the kind of problems that are much
preferable to little or no income without tax consequences.
-
- I went to work selling advertising space for Michigan
Out Of Doors a publication that billed itself as a unification of
the conservation clubs in Michigan. But alas, I developed no income tax
problems; in fact, I made so little money, I never had enough for living.
This was mainly due to the fact, I spent most of my week's pay check wooing
some of the young ladies, who rushed to the night spots on Chicago's Rush
Street every Friday night.
-
- As usual, I had no more luck with the ladies than I had
in creating tax problems for myself.
-
- So what was a broke, loveless, young man, such as myself,
to do on late Friday evenings? I'd make my routine phone booth call to
a suite of rooms at South Chicago's mammoth 50th On The Lake Motel.
-
- The call was to a suite, to which I had no number, but
I didn't need one. I'd simply tell the motel operator to "Please connect
me with the Champ's room."
-
- And, I'd be connected to the Champ's room. Some things
are hard to believe, even when there's proof of them. But remember, this
was back in 1964, when our country was not so up-tight with all this so-called
"national security" stuff.
-
- And as was usual, Mr. Thomas would answer "Hello?"
in his low, slightly bored voice.
-
- "Mr. Thomas," I'd say, trying to be heard over
the noise outside the booth and attempting to cover up my drunkenness,
"This is Mr. Speer-Williams, the businessman calling, again."
-
- The Champ is still too busy to talk," would always
be Mr. Thomas' next words.
-
- "That's OK. Don't bother him. But, tell him I still
want to see him before, I head back to Florida."
-
- "Sure, sure," Mr. Thomas would always say,
anxious to get off the phone.
-
- Then it happened on a cold winter's night. I fell asleep
(passed out) in the back seat of my old Chevrolet Impala, in the outside
parking lot of the hotel on North Sheridan Road, where I lived.
-
- I was wearing old dirty corduroy-pants, Bass Weejuns
(no socks), a white T-shirt, with a dark green car-coat. After coming to
in the morning, I staggered up to my room. There, I packed a small bag
and headed back to my car.
-
- "I gotta get outta Chicago before it kills me,"
I thought. But wait, what about Bob, Bob Larson, the 45 year old Big Swede,
who also hated Chicago, where he was born?"
-
- I stopped at Bob's door. "Bob, I'm getting out
Going to Washington, DC. You wanna come?"
-
- "When?" was Bob's delayed question.
-
- "Right now. Either pack a bag and leave now or I'm
going without you."
-
- Within about two hours, Bob and I were traveling south
on the Outer Drive into South Chicago.
-
- And then, it happened. "Bob look look! It's the
50th On The Lake Motel."
-
- "Yeah?" said Bob.
-
- "That's where he is. That's were the Champ is staying."
-
- "So," ventured Bob.
-
- "I've got to meet him."
-
- "What?" screamed Bob. "Do you realized
we're both white boys in South Chicago? You're crazy. How could you ever
even find his room?"
-
- "Cadillacs! I'll bet he has a bunch of new Cadillacs
parked close to his room."
-
- "Don't give me that stereotypical racial stuff you
Southerners are always coming up with," said the irritated Big Swede,
my friend Bob.
-
- "Bob, what are you talking about? Owning a Cadillac
is part of the American dream for Blacks and Whites," I said. It
was the best defense I could muster on short notice. But, I had had lots
of practice defending my Southern heritage, with so many Yankees attacking
me because of my Southern accent.
-
- After some circling around in the motel's rear parking
lot, I did spot three new Cadillacs, all parked close together, in front
of a stairwell that went up to two rooms at the top.
-
- "You coming, Bob?"
-
- "Leave me outta this," was Bob's disgusted
answer.
-
- At the top of the stairway were some painters on ladders,
who apparently didn't speak English, or were so drugged-up they couldn't.
-
- "Which room is the Champ in?" I kept yelling,
each time louder than the last, as I stood about half way up the stairs.
But all I could get out of the painters were some indistinct grunts of
annoyance.
-
- Then it happened. The top door on the right was violently
flung open. "What's going on out here?" yelled a small, angry,
black man.
-
- "You be Mr. Thomas?" I shouted.
-
- "Who you?" he asked.
-
- "I'm the guy who's been calling you every Friday
night."
-
- "YOU SAID YOU WAS A BUSINESS MAN," yelled the
incredulous Mr. Thomas.
-
- "These are my traveling clothes and I never shave
when I'm traveling " I said, stalling for time.
-
- "Where did you say you was from?" interrupted
Mr. Thomas. "Alabama?"
-
- "No no I'm from Florida. But don't bother the
Champ," I said backing down the stairs. "I know he's busy."
-
- "Hold on!" commanded Mr. Thomas, as he disappeared
back into his room.
-
- Is he calling security? The police? The Black Muslems?
I was wondering when Mr. Thomas reappeared.
-
- "The Champ will see you for a minute," said
Mr. Thomas.
-
- Up the stairs I flew, so fast I startled Mr. Thomas.
Then thankfully, I slowed to a walk and allowed Mr. Thomas to usher me
in.
-
- "He's in there," said Mr. Thomas pointing to
the bathroom.
-
- And there stood The Greatest, in the nude, with only
a towel wrapped around his waist. He was a large, bronze, animated statue
brushing his teeth in front of a mirror.
-
- Call the Champ "Cassius Clay" or "Muhammad
Ali," but always call him a gentleman. The Champ could not have been
more polite or patient with me, if a little bored.
-
- And after about five minutes or so of asking inane questions,
I told the World's Champion, who was still brushing his teeth, "Well,
I better go, I know you're busy."
-
- "Thank you very much, Mr. Thomas. These have been
moments I'll never forget," I said walking toward the door.
-
- "Yeah, yeah," replied Mr. Thomas.
-
- Then it happened. Halfway down the stairs, the Champ's
door flew open; and, out stepped Mr. Thomas, yet again.
-
- "Hold up," yelled Mr. Thomas. "The Champ
wants to give you a picture."
-
- What luck, I thought running up the steps. Now, I'll
have proof for Bob that I really did meet the Champ.
-
- "Here," said Mr. Thomas, giving me a pen and
an 3" by 5" photo of the Champ in a classic boxing pose.
-
- "What did you say your name was?" asked the
Champ, who was still brushing his teeth.
-
- I still have the photo. It's inscribed, "To Jack
From Muhammad Ali."
-
- Once inside my old Impala, I said, "Bob, Bob here's
his picture. I actually met him."
-
- Bob took the photo, examined it over and over, front
and back. Then only said, "Sure."
-
- Bob didn't believe me. Some things are hard to believe
even when there's proof of them. Even I had a hard time believing it, and
I had the best proof of all.
-
- There are other things which are very difficult to believe.
Such is the case with the massive release of the chemical dispersant, Corexit,
into our Gulf waters, which will poison life near and far.
-
- Disregarding the very real possibility of the Gulf well
blowout being an act of corporate sabotage, for whatever insane reasons,
the subsequent crimes committed by federal regulators and BP (British Petroleum)
executives, immediately following the oil rig's explosion, are utterly
provable, even if unbelievable.
-
- Hundreds of thousands of gallons of the deadly neuro-toxic
pesticide Corexit 9500 (and other variants) were immediately dumped at
the subsea well head and in surface waters, above. This act of environmental
sabotage was approved by federal government officials, who are very well
paid to protect our environment and human life, rather than destroy them
both.
-
- In a New York Times article it states, " Corexit
9500 and 9527 more than 1.1 million gallons of which has been sprayed
in [to the] Gulf since the disaster began."
-
- So quick to dump over a million gallons of Corexit, BP
must have expected a blow-out. Otherwise, how did over a million gallons
of Corexit just happen to be available for the Gulf of Mexico?
-
- Can we even visualize a million gallons of anything?
Think about how many months it would take anyone to manufacture a million
gallons of chemical dispersants, especially something as lethal as Corexit
9500 or 9527.
-
- Corexit kills all life from the bottom of life's chain
to the top; it kills everything from microorganisms and algae to human
beings.
-
- Years ago, even Exxon put out a report outlining the
lethal dangers of Corexit entitled, "Acute Aquatic Toxicity of Three
Corexit Products: An Overview."
-
- Moreover, Corexit creates monstrous undersea plumes,
that are hundreds of square miles large that go unseen by the naked eyes
of the world.
-
- This is death to the fragile Gulf Coast ecosystems of
plant, animal, and marine life, both in the ocean and in saltwater marshes,
as Corexit plumes slip under and over protective booms.
-
- Some studies indicate that Corexit is four times
more toxic than crude oil, as Corexit contains cyanide, arsenic, mercury,
cadmium, chromium, and other toxic chemicals.
-
- But when Corexit is combined with crude oil its toxicity
shoots through the roof. Quoting Pulitzer-prize winning science writer
Dehorah Blum, "BP's chosen dispersant, Corexit, rather alarmingly
increases the toxicity of crude oil. For instance, Corexit alone has a
LC 50 for silver fish of 25.2 parts-per-million. But the EPA's dispersant
data shows that Corexit plus fuel oil has an LC50 of 2.61 ppm, almost ten
times as toxic."
-
- The dark Monetary Cartel that owns British Petroleum,
with their treacherous perversions, has truly and utterly poisoned
our punch bowl, with a chemical dispersant (that's illegal to use in Great
Britain), while claiming they are making the bowl more nutritious and tasty.
-
- Governmental regulators and BP executives had to have
known just how lethal Corexit becomes when mixed with crude oil. Yet US
government officials claimed they did not have any predictive data in order
to assess the loss of life Corexit might cause, in spite of all the disastrous
results engendered by the neurotoxin after the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill
in Alaska.
-
- If the BP executives were ignorant of what they were
doing, they should have been stopped by officials of our federal government.
-
- Even if our government officials were ignorant of how
lethal Corexit really was, they should still be held accountable for all
the death and destruction they have allowed, by not stopping BP's use of
Corexit.
-
- This is death that can never be cleaned up from beneath
the sea or from shorelines, without creating greater disasters.
-
- What kind of psychopaths would even think of manufacturing
something like Corexit, much less put over a million gallons of it into
our pristine coastal waters?
-
- These sub-humans, who have ascended to such power, are
obviously well behind the human race in the spiritual aspects of their
evolutionary development.
-
- Hopefully, the toxicity of the crude oil and Corexit
mixture will dissipate, as these deadly plumes travel up our Atlantic seaboard
toward the metro-plex of Norfolk, Richmond, Washington, DC, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Montreal.
-
- If, however, the heated vapors from this lethal mixture
get into the Jet Stream, in the upper reaches of our troposphere, and then
fall as rain or snow, the dire results on all life in the entire United
States, east of the Rockies, is almost impossible to calculate. Such toxic
precipitation could destroy every living plant it touches, not to mention
the human lives it could take.
-
- Raw crude oil, without the addition of Corexit, is dangerous
enough, as it is loaded with the toxic petrochemicals of hydrogen sulfide
and benzene.
-
- Benzene, a confirmed human carcinogen, has no safe minimum
exposure limits. Independent reports of petrochemical exposures along
the Gulf Coast are at great variance with government pronouncements. But
needless to say, if you can smell gasoline, or feel oily rain or snow,
you've exceeded the safe limits of exposure to hydrogen sulfide and VOCs
(Volatile Organic Compounds), such as benzene.
-
- These poisonous injections of so much Corexit into our
Gulf waters should put a final end to the bogus governmental environmental
"concerns," like "peak oil" and anthropogenic (man-made)
global warming, but it will not. Instead our own government will begin
hitting us with carbon taxes for the expulsion of harmless CO2 gases
gases the plant kingdom needs to survive using the Gulf oil disaster
as reasons to further tax us.
-
- Moreover, we'll be made to endure the costs associated
with helping our Gulf Coast recover from this BP made disaster.
-
- While Mr. Obama has made a big show of how he will be
raising corporate liabilities to $10 billion, for things like BP has caused
in the Gulf, he doesn't tell us that the ultimate losses in the Gulf states
will be closer to 1,000 to 2,000 billion dollars, all costs that will be
borne by innocent Americans, but caused by governmental malfeasors in league
with criminal corporate executives.
-
- You might be interested in knowing that Congress has
refused to raise corporate liability to $10 billion. Instead, according
to CNN, some senators are asking BP to put $20 billion into a fund to pay
for the damages BP has caused to our nation and its people. Twenty billion
dollars is a figure, BP will snap up in a "Wall Street second."
-
- Once again, our national leaders prove how they work
for the foreign and private International Monetary/Banking Cartel, and
not for us - the American people.
-
- In summation, Corporatism has unleashed upon America
the greatest disaster in human history, with the blow-out of their Gulf
oil well, then made that unparalleled catastrophe ten times worse with
their Corexit, then are billing the rest of us for the damages they caused.
-
- This is international fascism at work. And at work it
will stay, until many more of us awaken to the proof at hand and believe
it.
-
- And, I really did meet the Champ, whether it is believed
or not.
-
- J. Speer-Williams
-
- <mailto:jsw4@mac.com>jsw4@mac.com
|
