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I think about 9/11 every single day of my life. I remember it just like it is was yesterday. I was freshmen in College when it happened. It was on a Tuesday and I just left Math class. I was 17 years old (I was about to be 18 later on in December of 2001). 12 years have passed, but it felt like yesterday. I saw the second Twin Tower collapsed on national television. It was an emotional day and it was a shocking tragedy. Folks, in the aftermath of the attacks, had shocked dazed looks on their faces for weeks after 9/11. Some mosques were vandalized in the aftermath, which was wrong because religious freedom is one cornerstone of a real civilization. Regardless if you think it was an inside job or not, we owe to the victims to be inspired in our daily lives to fight injustice, to have hope, and to build up our communities constructively indeed. Now, we witness the war on terror for over 12 years now. This war on terror has been evil and it has cost us Americans about $6 trillion. That money is enough to keep Social Security and Medicare sound for decades. The war on terror has destroyed countries and dislocated human beings that never lifted a hand against the United States. This has harmed veterans as well. Secretary of Veteran Affairs Erik Shinseki reported in November 2009 that “more veterans have committed suicide since 2001 than we have lost on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.”  Many thousands of our troops have suffered amputations and traumatic brain injuries. At the Marine Corps War College Jim Lacey calculated that the annual cost of the Afghan war was $1.5 billion for each al-Qaeda member in Afghanistan.  Many US and coalition troops paid with their lives for every one al-Qaeda member killed. On no basis has the war ever made sense. These wars that we have seen harmed America's reputation. The reactionary neoconservatives blatantly advocated American hegemony globally with their call for "a new Pearl Harbor" via their Project for a New American Century document. This agenda has been advanced by Bill Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and other neocons. The sick neocon way of life is to advocate the military industrial complex as a means to force the American way globally. Even many of the new laws created after 9/11 violate constitutional liberties. We witness unjust spying and illegal monitoring of even peaceful protesters by the federal government. I am in full support of the 9/11 Truth Movement in calling for an independent investigation of 9/11. The 9/11 Commission have heavily made up of establishment figures. NIST’s account of the structural failure of the twin towers is a computer simulation based on assumptions chosen to produce the result. NIST refuses to release its make-believe explanation for expert scrutiny. The reason is obvious.  NIST’s explanation of the structural failure of the towers cannot survive scrutiny. Many 9/11 Truth scholars are high-rise architects,  structural engineers, physicists, chemists and nano-chemists, military and civilian airline pilots, firemen and first responders, former prominent government officials, and 9/11 families.  The evidence they have amassed overwhelms the feeble official account. These folks are experts and scholars. We know for certain that the federal government had foreknowledge of similar attacks and they had a relationship with many of the hijackers. We know that NORAD acted strange that day as well. Not even national security agents have been made for incompetence in dealing with 9/11 at all. So, I will continue to fight imperialism and militarism. I will continue to believe in economic and social tolerance. I will continue to believe in equality for all and religious liberty. I will always believe in human compassion and human strength as a means to do constructive action to benefit all humankind.

President Barack Obama gave a historic speech on Syria. He said  hat the military strikes are possible if demands are not met. Many extremists still want to have war with Syria. Even the President had to rightly admit that America can't militarily intervene in every conflict in the world as a means to solve problems. It is better to solve international problems with diplomacy and other peaceful methods not full scale aggressive warfare. He spoke about Syria and foreign policy in general for 15 minutes. He wanted to form UN negotiations emerging from a Russian-Syrian offer to destroy Syria's chemical weapons as a political framework for launching a war. This has been in defiance of international law and the mass popular opposition in the United States. He repeated the claim that the Syrian government of Bashar Al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack on August 21. There is no conclusive evidence for that assumption. The assertion is unsubstantiated. The lurid images of the victims are tragic and should be sympathized though. A military strike in Syria will cause disastrous consequences for the human beings in the Middle East not just in Syria. Obama claimed that the strikes will be limited, but harming Assad's capabilities is beyond limited, especially if large sections of the Syrian military including other institutions are harmed. “The United States military doesn’t do pin pricks,” he added. The resolution authorizing force in Syria via the U.S. Congress will be difficult to pass. The President wanted negotiations over the Syrian and Russian offer to turn over Syria's chemical weapons to international monitors and then destroy them. Obama said he had asked Congress to “postpone a vote to authorize the use of force, while we pursue the diplomatic path.” He explained, “I’ve spoken to the leaders of two of our closest allies—France and the United Kingdom—and we will work together in consultation with Russia and China to put forward a resolution at the UN Security Council requiring Assad to give up his chemical weapons and to ultimately destroy them under international control … Meanwhile, I’ve ordered our military to maintain their current posture to keep the pressure on Assad and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails.” The French governments want to have an UN resolution to allow military action against Syria as an enforcement mechanism. Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted that an UN resolution should not authorize military action against Syria. Russia later cancelled an UN Security Council meeting it had called for Tuesday. He said that the U.S. military was standing by to launch air strikes at a moment's notice. The warships in the Mediterranean would maintain their current posture to keep the pressure on Assad. If diplomacy fails, the White House is prepared to strike Syria. If Washington wants to stop Syria from using chemical weapons, why it is continuing to press for strikes after the Syrian government has pledged to give them up. America ironically is supporting opposition militias whom some have ties to Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda linked forced led the U.S. backed opposition militias. They are fighting the Syrian army and these forces are facing defeat. They will profit from an U.S. attack aimed at disabling and destroying the Syrian military. So, this relates to the fact that Washington claiming to be fighting a global war on terror against Al Qaeda is politically fraudulent. If such a strike comes about, it can cause a regional confrontation in the Middle East (with Assad being allied with Iran and Russia). The militias are funded by U.S., European, and Middle Eastern allies. In 2003, we were told lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Even the President had to admit the following: “The Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military … Neither Assad nor his allies have any interest in escalation that would lead to his demise.” Yet this demonstrates precisely that Syria poses no danger to US security, and that Obama’s pretext for war is a fraud and the planned war is illegal. The military industrial complex has lied before and they continue to lie now. The political establishment, some in the mainstream media, etc. is wrong to advance the agenda of possible military strikes in Syria. There is the discussion about an UN resolution to handle the Syrian crisis as it deals with chemical weapons. We will see what the future holds.

The Treason Trial of 1956 was another historic event in South Africa. It was a trial in South Africa where 156 human beings (including Nelson Mandela) was arrested in a raid and accused of treason. The main trial lasted until 1961 when all of the defendants were found not guilty. Oliver Tambo left the country and was exiled. He started to create an organization that would bring publicity to the African National Congress's cause in South Africa while he was in other European including African countries. Chief Luthuli said the following of the Treason Trial: "...The treason trial must occupy a special place in South African history. That grim pre-dawn raid, deliberately calculated to strike terror into hesitant minds and impress upon the entire nation the determination of the governing clique to stifle all opposition, made one hundred and fifty-six of us, belonging to all the races of our land, into a group of accused facing one of the most serious charges in any legal system..." On December of 1956, many key members of the Congress Alliance were arrested and charged with treason including almost the entire executive committee of ANC (including the SACP, SAIC, and the COD). 105 Africans, 21 Indians, 23 whites, and 7 coloured leaders were arrested. 10 of the arrestees were women. Many arrestees, including Nelson Mandela, were detained in communal cells in Johannesburg Prison, known as the Fort, resulting in what Mandela described as "the largest and longest unbanned meeting of the Congress Alliance in years. Yet, white men, white women, and black human beings were all held in separate parts of the jail. At first 156 defendants were charged with high treason and it was reduced to 92. In November 1957, the prosecution reworded the indictment and proceeded with a separate trial against 30 accused. Their trial commenced in August 1959. The remaining 61 accused were tried separately before the case against them was dismissed in mid-1960. Many of the defendants included Ahmed Kathrada, Lilian Ngoyi, Leon Levy, Helen Joseph (a trade unionist and women's leader), etc. British Canon set up the Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa to pay all legal expenses and look after the families of those on trial. This was one of the first examples of foreign intervention against apartheid in South Africa and proved very successful with over £75,000 being raised towards defending those accused. The trial strengthened the multi-racial Congress Alliance.


We heard the story of how immigrants are taking jobs from Americans. Is this true? The answer is not totally and we have tons of evidence to prove the fact that immigrants are not massively taking jobs from Americans. Folks from across the political spectrum have talked about this issue. That immigrants take the jobs of American-born citizens is “something that virtually no learned person believes in,” Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, said at a Thursday panel. “It’s sort of a silly thing. “Most economists don’t find immigrants driving down wages or jobs, the Brookings Institution's Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney wrote in May. In fact, “on average, immigrant workers increase the opportunities and incomes of Americans,” they write. Foreign-born workers don’t affect the employment rate positively or negatively, according to a 2011 analysis from the conservative American Enterprise Institute. And a study released Wednesday by the liberal Center for American Progress suggests that granting legal status to undocumented workers might even create jobs. More immigrants can grow the economy, but that must be compounded with fair wages. Corporations must be put on notice that they should not treat workers immorally at all. We know that many anti-immigrant groups have ties to white supremacists, eugenicists, and other extremists. So, it is a great myth that immigrants collectively steal jobs from African Americans. Reactionaries use that lie as an excuse to divide and conquer various ethnic groups in American society. Also, we know that illegal immigration has declined in the past 10 years. We know that corporate corruption (i.e. sophisticated, multinational corporations thrive on low wages & other forms of economic exploitation that harms blacks and Latinos alike) and divide and conquer strategies from the elite try to foment tensions in this country. I will never ally with white supremacist nativists at all. I believe in black Power not a xenophobic version of perverted nationalism at all. As the Immigration Policy Center concluded following a comprehensive study of immigration's impact on minority workers, "there is no correlation between the size of the foreign-born population and the African American unemployment rate in U.S. metropolitan areas." Economist Daniel Griswold with the Cato Institute has called the claim that low-skilled immigrants harm the employment prospects of African-Americans a "pernicious myth." In congressional testimony, he explained that as "with most other Americans, few African Americans compete directly with immigrant workers," and added: "...My own research at the Cato Institute shows that the growth of Hispanic immigration has not had a negative effect on lower-income African Americans. In fact, the evidence from the past 20 years shows that as immigrants have moved in, native-born Americans, including African Americans, have generally moved up...." Numerous other studies over the years have confirmed these findings. In a report on the Senate immigration bill, the Congressional Budget Office found that slight reductions in average wages for much of the next two decades caused by the bill's passage would mostly be felt by newly legalized immigrants earning lower wages, and would likely not impact current U.S. residents. The Senate bill would also cut close to $1 trillion from the federal deficit over the next two decades while increasing economic output by 5.4 percent over the same time period, CBO said.  Immigrant rights are human rights. Now, any immigration policy should be fair to all black Americans, so I want to make that clear.  Unemployment is high among many African Americans not because of immigration. It is because of racism, discrimination, socioeconomic issues, lax job opportunities, and other reasons. Countless research studies and the numerous discrimination complaints reviewed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the past decade reveal that employers have devised endless dodges to evade anti-discrimination laws. That includes rejecting applicants by their names or areas of the city they live in. Black applicants may be incorrectly told that jobs advertised were filled already. We need a higher minimum wage. We need a national jobs plan that calls for universal employment, which can cause blacks and others to benefit. We need to end the war on terror and use resources to rebuild our domestic resources here at home. We need our civil liberties protected. Unfortunately, even the White House refuses to push any unique, specially initiatives or funding for unemployed black Americans specifically, which is one major error of this current administration. So, the bigots and the reactionaries need to get their facts straight.



The reactionaries lie all of the time about Black Americans. In this generation, we have the truth on our side. We have more and more human beings refuting their lies and slander against the black community. It is ironic that the reactionaries now want to love Dr. King, but over 50 years ago, their ideological forebears condemned the civil rights movement. One of the country's leading conservative journal back then even speculated that blacks may have bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham themselves (killing four girls in the process) just to set back what the conservatives considered by the then was the cause of Southern whites. That is a slick and sick slander since white racists bombed the church alone. So, we should fight against inequality and discrimination. Many of these reactionaries deny racism occurring happening now. Even now, black unemployment is twice as high for whites, even when only comparing human beings with college degrees. Even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that there should be affirmative action like policies in America. He wrote the following in his classic book entitled, "Why We Can't Wait,": "...Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up...." So, Dr. Martin Luther King wanted Jim Crow segregation and racial discrimination ended. He also wanted economic justice and full remunerative employment for all Americans. He wanted a higher minimum wage, full equality in society, an end to poverty, full access to equal and affordable housing, etc. We still face discrimination in jobs, housing, in the justice system, and in the War on Drugs. We know the reality. When racist reactionaries slander us black human beings about morality, we should fight back with facts. The fact is the black crime rates are down, the rates of birth of unmarried black women are down, and so is dependence on government assistance. Black educational accomplishment is up and black youth highly value education like anyone else. The violent crime rate in America was three times higher in 1973 than it is today. In 1978, there were 8.9 million black males, age 12 and older, whose violent victimization rate was 53.6 per 1000 such black males, meaning there were roughly 480,000 black males violently victimized that year. By 2008, despite roughly 5 million additional black males that age in the population, the numbers of black males victimized by violent crime fell to 410,000. Comparing these totals to 1978 we discover that despite an increase in the black population of about 11 million people over the thirty year period, there were roughly 200,000 fewer violent crimes committed by blacks in 2008 than there were in 1978: a drop of about 14 percent, numerically, and a massive drop in the violent crime offending rate, from 75.3 violent offenses per 1000 black people in 1978 to 41.7 per 1000 by 2008: a decline of 45 percent in the rate at which blacks commit violent crimes (so, black crime is down almost half since the late 1970's). The out of wedlock birthrates have decreased in decades. Among black teenagers, 15-19 (almost all of whom are unmarried), birth rates have plummeted since 1991, from 118.2 births for every 1000 such women to only 51.5 births per 1000 women in 2010. And even with the weak economy, black folks are almost 40 percent less likely to be dependent on government benefits now than they were in 1993. Currently, only 1 in 9 African Americans are dependent on various forms of cash or SNAP benefits throughout the course of a given year, down from about 1 in 6 in the early 90s. As for SNAP, 64 percent of black recipients who come on to the program, move off the program rolls within a year, suggesting that benefit receipt is, for most, a short-term and transitional reality, rather than a long-term condition. For cash assistance, about half of blacks who enter the program will be off the rolls within 4 months, and 7 in 10 will be off within a year. In terms of achievement itself, while white reading scores for 9-year olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have increased about 6 percent since 1971, black scores have risen by 20 percent; among 13-year olds, reading scores barely budged for whites from 1971 to 2008, while rising 12 percent for blacks; and for 17-year olds, white scores remained flat while black scores rose by 11 percent. Likewise, math achievement scores for black 9, 13 and 17-year olds have risen faster since 1971 than scores for whites, thereby closing racial achievement gaps on the NAEP. So, we have a long way to go, but we have made some progress as a people. The bashing of black communities is sick. Black Culture is beautiful indeed. Blacks collectively have a strong work ethic, we are honest, and we have a strong will point blank period including the exclamation point.

 

By Timothy