Farrakhan

REPUBLICANS quietly contemplating a world after Bob Dole must be rolling their eyes over the antics of Jack Kemp. His exuberance, his heterodoxy, his sheer delight in new approaches have been winning him admirers and getting him in trouble for years. Now the latest escapade -- his description of some of Louis Farrakhan's ideas as "wonderful" -- raises a key question: If Mr. Kemp can't rein himself in as a vice-presidential candidate, can he be seriously considered as a presidential contender in 2000?

NEW YORK -- Trying to squelch a growing protest over his admiring comments about Louis Farrakhan, Jack Kemp called last night on the Nation of Islam leader to "renounce anti-Semitism.""Racism, bigotry, scapegoating and anti-Semitism are evil and must be eradicated at every turn if we are to move forward as a society," the Republican vice- presidential nominee told an influential Jewish audience at a dinner here."Tonight it is in that spirit that I call on Louis Farrakhan and his followers to renounce anti-Semitism for once and for all."

WASHINGTON -- Pressing his message of inclusion to black voters, Jack Kemp has praised Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, for emphasizing black self-reliance and family values.Kemp, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, said he wished he had been invited to speak at the "Million Man March," which Farrakhan and other black leaders organized last fall in Washington."I'm going to set off rockets if this is taken out of context," Kemp said in an interview published on Sunday in the Boston Globe, "but I think it's interesting that in America today, in the black community, more and more black church leaders are telling men to be responsible fathers and to be respectful of their wives and women."

Those big brains in the State and Treasury departments had Louis Farrakhan right where they wanted him. True to form, they let him off the hook.These geniuses should have let Libyan leader Col. Muammar el Kadafi give that $1 billion to Farrakhan. It would have been fascinating to see what the Nation of Islam leader would have done with it. The bottom line is he would have had to produce. The job of redeeming America's inner cities -- improving the schools, upgrading the housing, starting businesses to employ the jobless -- would have been Farrakhan's.

MUAMMAR EL KADAFI'S offer of a $1 billion investment to American minority communities through the agency of the Nation of Islam was brilliant for its likelihood of making the most possible mischief at the least possible cost.It was a dramatic gesture, just talk, totally cheap. Libya's dictator could count on the U.S. forbidding it under economic sanctions. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan owes Mr. Kadafi $5 million from an interest-free loan made to an NOI business venture in 1985. His effort to repay was blocked by the U.S. Treasury.

Oh, dear, happy days are here again. Again.Before they were done, Hillary & Co. had Bob Dole sounding like the Village idiot.If Louis Farrakhan thinks that Libya was ever going to fork over a real $1 billion, there's a bridge in Brooklyn, N.Y., that someone might try to sell him.The Raven turns out to be a species of vulture that will pick your pocket clean.Pub Date: 8/30/96

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- I think I have how this questioning thing works now.Last Wednesday Louis Farrakhan did what he does best. He huffed, he puffed, scolded and intimidated a group of black journalists into not asking him the hard questions that needed to be asked. He charged black journalists with being cowards afraid to defend him to their white bosses when he's attacked for anti-Semitism. He had the coward part right. If anyone heard the faint sound of clucking anywhere in the United States around 5 p.m.on Aug. 21, that would have been the noise of journalists at this convention turning chicken.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- This will be the column in which I do not bash, criticize or diss Louis Farrakhan, who gave the opening address at the National Association of Black Journalists convention here three days ago.Mind you, my good buddy Farrakhan said much that I could bash, criticize and diss him for. His minions subjected NABJ members to a body search before they entered the exhibit hall where the Nation of Islam leader gave his speech."

NASHVILLE, Tenn.-- Giving black journalists a severe tongue-lashing yesterday at their convention, Louis Farrakhan defended his controversial trip to pariah states in Africa and the Middle East earlier this year and said he had asked the U.S. government for permission to accept money from Libya.The Nation of Islam leader told members of the National Association of Black Journalists that, because they worked for white-owned media, they were not free to tell what they knew to be the truth. He indirectly criticized The Sun's recent series on slavery in Sudan, whose Islamic fundamentalist regime he supports.

IT IS TIME for the world to notice the war of oppression and extinction that the government of Sudan is waging against the peoples of the south of Sudan.This is not just to crush a rebellion that resists the clamping of sharia, or a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law, on people who are Christian or animist as well as darker-hued than the rulers in Khartoum. The enslavement and trade in human beings, as a form of payment to militia to raid the south, is one tactic in this war.The Sun's reporter Gilbert Lewthwaite and columnist Gregory Kane wrote vividly in June on purchasing freedom for two boys who had been kidnapped and enslaved for six years.