History and the Truth in October

Political news is coming about all of the time. Both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are debating each other on their recent debate. The polls present a close election in America. They are going and speaking to crowds on how their positions are better for American society. The character of the campaign is highly charged or emotional. This campaign right now is one of the most contentious campaigns in recent American history. Mitt Romney’s aggressiveness and disrespect to the moderators and the President in those debates represent the nature of the Presidential campaign. One reason why this race is so close is because of one reason. There are a significant number of people in America that are center right on economics. It’s apparent among folks in every background (not just in the Wall Street crowd). Just because a significant amount of people in the USA accept laissez faire economics doesn’t mean I will. Massive tax cuts to the super rich will not cause a massive decrease of poverty. You need a redistribution of economic and political power including other steps in building up economic power for human beings. I don’t support a situation where bankers, hedge fund managers, etc. are withheld from being made accountable for the global economic crisis or the Wall Street crash. Poverty must be solved greatly in this country beyond mainstream, pragmatic moderation. It is not right to negotiate trillions of dollars of cuts in social programs. It is not just for those to worship oil when we have experienced the 2010 BP oil rig explosion. That explosion killed 11 workers and injured another 18 to be the worst environmental disaster in American history. Some people in the USA accept the fiction that tax cuts alone can grow the economy and grow jobs. That’s fantasy since you a comprehensive economic policy in order for jobs to be formed (including spending money). I will never follow an economic system that put my ancestors in chains & grew economic inequality for world society. Of course, I am more progressive on economic issues. There are many issues that aren’t being discussed by the two major Presidential candidates. Some people adhere to the wrong policy of assassinating U.S. citizens without judicial process. There are not debates on the war mongering threats by the neo-conservatives against Iran. There will be no exposure on how the sanctions against Iran harmed civilian human beings in Iran. We must reject hypocrisy. You can’t say that you hate al-Qaeda (whose fathers were aided by the CIA to disrupt Afghanistan in the late 1970’s), but you support Islamic jihadists killing people in Libya and Syria. You can’t say that the CIA wants freedom when they sponsored theocratic regimes (inside of the Gulf States) and other radicals in trying to ruin national sovereignties of nations. There are some things in the world worth more than the worship of the current unregulated capitalist system. That is why we must have a voice and defend the rights of the poor including of the workers. Freedom is not made by capitulation to the status quo, but the determined activism of groups of people. Also, we have to defend women here. Too many women have been hurt form the young women being assaulted by a Cleveland bus driver to another Sister being beaten by a police officer in Orlando, Florida. We should keep our eyes open and the enemy regularly tries to bash black women as a means to harm the black community. Always, real black women are Queens and real black men are Kings. No matter of our ethnic background or ideological views, we can’t promote the hatred of males or females.

The Pakistan Interior Minister said that 80 percent of the people killed by drones are innocent people. The Interior Minister’s name is Rehman Malik. Innocent civilians are regularly killed by drone attacks. He made a plea to the U.S. to allow Pakistani authorities to oversee drone activities, because only 20 percent of those killed in drone attacks were militants. “2,300 people were killed in 336 strikes carried out by United States in Waziristan,” Malik claimed, citing Pakistani estimated figures. He added that 96 of the drone strikes were cross border attacks were launched by the US from Afghanistan. Experts have mentioned that hundreds of children have been murdered via drone attacks. There has been a major study released last month. It was released by Stanford and New York University and it was entitled, “Living Under Drones.” It found that just two percent of those killed in drone attacks in Pakistan were high ranking militants. The study conclusively proved that the current administration used a drone policy that terrorizes men, women, and children in Pakistan. These acts only promote more hatred between America and Pakistani people. It can increase chances of terror attacks in America. The administration according to the study issued misleading public statements about the drone attacks. “Far more civilians have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas than U.S. counter-terrorism officials have acknowledged.” researchers noted, adding that the mainstream media should cease referring to “militant” deaths when covering drones strikes, because the Obama administration counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants. The research team and the Pakistani human rights group called Foundation for Fundamental Rights worked almost in a year by interviewing over 130 survivors and witnesses of drone attacks. The White House is wrong to block the release of information that related to the overseas drone assassination program. There has been a found official kill list. These drone attacks spread all across Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Counter terrorism adviser John Brennan has admitted to the existence of the program. The New York Times shown an article that said that the White House believed in the right to carry out state sponsored assassination anywhere in the world (without due process or concretely sufficient evidence). An American citizen has been killed without due process by the name of Anwar al-Awlaki and his son. The Most High sees this stuff. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta admitted to CBS 60 Minutes in January of 2012 that the White House believed in killing American citizens suspected of terrorism without trial on a case by case basis. Propublica reported that the drone program is bigger than previously thought. More civilian deaths could be a reality since the contradictions and discrepancies existing in the war on terror. UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Christof Heynes and Pakistan’s UN ambassador in Geneva, Zamir Akram have called the drone assassination program as a violation of the international legal system. Drone attacks killed more than 1,000 civilians in Pakistan. They violate Pakistan sovereignty and to some, they constitute an act of war.  In 2010, a report by Washington think tank The New America Foundation found that 32% of the more than 1,200 people killed since 2004 in Pakistan, or around 1 in 3, were innocent bystanders rather than dangerous terrorists. The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee states that the government of Pakistan facilitates the attacks. Yet, Pakistani authorities oppose cross border missile strikes (53 under President Barack Obama, which is more than the entirety of Bush’s 2 four year terms in office), which have gone on for years.  The ACLU opposes these drone strikes. The ACLU documented how as many as 4,000 people in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia have died from them since 2002 (many of them are civilians). From 2009 reported that 700 civilians died and 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders were murdered in the attacks according to Pakistani authorities. It’s obvious that we need a peace economy not a war economy (which is damaging our domestic infrastructure too).

 

It’s a historical fact that the middle class grew in power not by free market fundamentalism, but by a social contract among human beings and governmental action. The middle class and the poor ought to be respected in the Universe. There were many legitimate parts of the New Deal and the Great Society like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Our economic problems existed long years before President Barack Obama or even before Bush Jr. were in office. For example, our huge economic inequality and other serious problems have been growing since the late 1970’s. It’s just been festering overtly in time. A radical GOP with their Blue Dog Democratic allies has supported either compromise or straight up austerity in society. You can’t take from the poor and send that money to the rich as a legitimate policy. Now, our economy still has a long way to go in order for it to be better. Our GDP rate is only growing in about 1.3 percent in the second quarters. Job growth has been very slow, because when you have centrist financial policies, you will have moderate (even gradual) results. If you include people looking for full time jobs and unable to get them, then the true unemployment rate is close to 17 percent. Even the Pew Research Center said that since 2000, the middle class has shrunk in size (and income and wealth has been lowered among the middle class). The Hoover/Ayn Rand policies among some Republicans have fought against radical solutions. Even the early 2009 stimulus was too small (which the GOP wanted if not no stimulus). The stimulus kept us from experiencing worse economic issues and the GOP still opposes some stimulus. The GOP controlled the House mostly after the 2010 midterm elections. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman said that the stimulus was inadequate and the government efforts were inadequacy in handling financial complications. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (or ARRA) helped to end the depression from being a total disaster (made up of 787 billion dollars and increased to 840 billion dollars in the 2012 federal budget). Many Republican Presidents from Hoover and George W. Bush exposed how Republican slash and burn, austerity philosophies don’t work. Our median income is going down. We have high poverty rates. Now, the reason isn’t because economic recovery isn’t happening. The reason is much of the new jobs being formed are low wage wages from retailing, food preparation, etc. There is nothing wrong with these jobs, but they don’t pay much. That is why populists want a higher minimum wage, new stimulus, and public investment. Market fundamentalism doesn’t work and we need to ban Citizens United and have other policies to help society.

Bill O’Reilly made a new book using deception about the Kennedy assassination. The co-author of the book is named Martin Dugard. Their book is entitled, “Killing Kennedy.” The book is a desperate attempt to promote the Warren Commission’s findings on the Kennedy assassination. It tries to distort the real history of Kennedy and even takes shots as Dr. Martin Luther King. O’Reilly was once a high school history teacher. Today, he promotes propaganda in FOX News in the O’Reilly Factor. Dugard has written other books on Christopher Columbus, Stanley, and Livingstone. They worked together also to write a book about President Abraham Lincoln called “Killing Lincoln.” There are new information coming out about JFK recently like tapes showing that there was a query of the location of Air Force General Curtis LeMay (as President Kennedy’s body was being returned from Dallas). There are tapes recently shown about Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs. It’s a known historical fact that General LeMay and President John F. Kennedy didn’t like each other over the Bay of Pigs issues. General LeMay wanted to bomb Cuba militarily and President Kennedy refused to do that heinous action. “Killing Kennedy” relies on the Warren Commission’s report, because O’Reilly and Dugard wanted to justify the official story of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The book omits New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald’s actions in New Orleans (during the summer of 1963). Oswald had pamphlets with the address of 544 Camp Street. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee according to the declassified files of the ARRB was infiltrated by the CIA via their counter intelligence program (in spying on liberals, progressives, communists, etc.). Also, there are different stories about Oswald purported trip to Mexico City, because people like Eusebio Azcue didn’t see the person claimed to be Oswald in Mexico City as the same person being murdered by Jack Ruby. Sylia Duran was the Cuban receptionist in Mexico and she said that the man claimed to be Oswald was about 5 feet 4 and had blond hair. This isn’t an accurate description of Oswald at all. The book claims that Oswald was a crack shot in the military when even the Warren Report and other sources prove that Oswald was a mediocre shot at best. Also, even the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that there likely was a 2^nd gunman in the murder of JFK. The book fully blamed JFK for the Bay of Pigs disaster when that is false. It definitely ignored how President Kennedy was planning to withdraw troops from Vietnam. President Johnson reversed JFK’s decision via the writing of NSAM 288 (which wanted massive air, land, and sea against Vietnam. It included the use of atomic weapons just in case China would intervene in Vietnam). The book tries to talk about extramarital affairs. This is interesting because reactionaries like O’Reilly would talk about JFK and MLK, but they ignore the large flaws of J. Edgar Hoover, Director Allen Dulles, and President Johnson. There are tons of misdeeds done by the CIA and the FBI in the lives of the activists during the 1960’s from spying, illegal warrantless searches, and to murder plus assassinations. O’Reilly blamed the Malmedy Massacre collectively on American soldiers, which is false. John F. Kennedy’s assassination should be investigated, but the lie that JFK was some war mongering neo-conservative must end.

In the struggle for black liberation and human rights, a lot of people omit the era from the 1970’s to the present in 2012. Now, it’s time to show some of the major events of black people’s struggle for true liberation in the world. By the 1970’s, the U.S. government unjustly tortured, imprisoned, and even murdered Black Panther members. Still, many Black Panther brothers and sisters remained and fought for justice and peace. The 1970’s was a beautiful era for black people and black consciousness. It was a time when my parents dated and became married. For better or for worst, Blaxploitation films were popularized. The black middle class grew into higher levels. Black Enterprise Magazine was established in 1970, which represented the growing black middle class in the 1970’s. Shirley Chisholm became the first major party African American candidate for President of the United States. Ralph Albernathy and Jesse Jackson continued to fight for African American economic advancement and education in the 1970's. Corretta Scott King was a great champion of human rights as well. Filmmaker Gordon Parks shown artwork and worked with great champions of the struggle. In 1971, 15 black America members of Congress created the Congressional Black Caucus, which was formed in order for an unifed African American voice to exist in Congress. Barbara Jordan from Texas became the first African American woman from a Southern state to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972. She served three terms in Congress. Stories and literature of black people started to increase from Roots, the poetry of Maya Angelou, to other stories about Reconstruction. Black feminism increased into another level of political influence. Black culture was highly visible in the mainstream of society. The 1970’s was different from the 1960’s indeed. We know about the 1980’s and the Drug War. The era of Reagan in the black community was harsh in many sectors. There was poverty, scapegoating of human beings, and an increase of poverty. Some of the positive times of this era were that black culture grew worldwide. Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday became a national holiday by 1986. Harold Washington became the first black mayor Chicago.. The 1980's also marked a huge level of creativity in art, music, intellectual endeavors, exploring space, etc. Michael Jackson created Thriller, Astronaut Guion S. Bluford Jr. was the first African American in space. He flown abroad the space shuttle Challenger. There was a cultural significane of the Cosby Show. People from across every background loved the show. Many of us were raised by it. Many culturally famous people rose into prominent during the 1980's like NY mayor David Dinkins, talk show host Oprah Winfrey, Ron Brown, Magic Johnson, General Colin Powell, and so many other human beings. By the late 1980’s and the early 1990’s, there was a resurgence or renaissance of Afrocentric culture in America. The record number of police brutality against black people caused the legitimate backlash of the growth of Afrocentric culture. The 1990’s exploded the influence of black culture globally. It was the beginning of the information age and the modern Internet. The harsh reality of police brutality and other issues related to the 1992 LA Riots and debates on race throughout the 1990’s. The cultural strength of black people continued like Carol Mosely-Braun being the first female African American U.S. Senator. The Million Man March, the Million Woman March, intellectual growth, and the building of black culture came about. From the 1980’s to the present, crime and economic issues still persist in the black community. The 21^st century and black life is more complex. There are issues of race, culture, gender, sexuality, technology, economics, fashion, bioethics, the environment, education, and a wide spectrum of issues in the black culture. Black culture is very eclectic in the 21^st century. Also, the threats to voting rights still remain. There is still much more fighting that we must do against poverty (many black people move from urban areas to the suburbs. Some mostly African American affluent communities exist now in Baldwin Hills, Ladera Heights, Redan, Cascade Heights, Quinby, Forest Park, etc. all over the USA). There is the harm of gentrification to numerous black communities), unemployment, health issues, and other situations plaguing our people. Crime is a problem in black communities from Chicago to areas nationwide. The solution involves radicalism. Radicalism caused many of the gains from the civil rights movement. Marching, protesting, and boycotts involve radical actions. If these acts worked decades ago, some of these actions (mixed with a modern day flavor or spin) can work to solve many of our problems today near the 22^nd century. Still, black people are unified in our cultural tradition, our love of black people, and a driving goal of the improvement of the community in general (not just improvement of the individual). In the 21^st century, there is more appreciation of the unity of black people in the world from Africa to the Caribbean. Fundamentally, we are Africans and Africa is our home. So, we should collaborate psychologically, emotionally, economically, and politically with real black Africans.

 

By Timothy