Now, I disagree with a Western military strike in Syria or any U.S. military intervention in Syria. In the final analysis, we need to have a political solution to the Syrian civil war. The President of the United States and Secretary of State John Kerry want military action in Syria in the form of missile strikes against infrastructure of the Syrian government. This action can cause World War III. I find myself in agreement with Rand Paul and others on this issue. In a Joint US-UK leaked intelligence document back in 1957, the CIA and the SIS wanted to stage disturbances in Syria as a means to control the region more. Syria is a strategic area of the Middle East and that is why the Western elite want to control it (and place a puppet regime there in replace of Al-Assad). We know about the boarder US-NATO-Israeli military agenda in the region. They want to act as a bulwark against Iran, Russia, and China. There is a fight for the Middle Eastern and Central Asian oil reserves including strategic oil and gas pipelines. The neo-cons and the Western elite have been involved in a regional political destabilization process (via the rebels and token political organizations) all over the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and Central Asia. There has been failures made by the U.S. sponsored Al Qaeda insurgency in Syria that was launched back in March 2011. They have worked with mercenary forces as well. This insurgency has been funded and supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel. Now, the stage is set for a conventional theater war involving the deployment of air force too. The U.S. and its allies never had conclusive evidence of claiming that the Assad regime used Sarin gas against its own population. Yet, we do have conclusive evidence that the rebels have not only killed Christians, Shias, Sunnis, etc. We have total conclusive evidence that the rebels have used chemical weapons against civilians in Syria and the rebels have done war crimes before. Some view this situation as similar to the Kosovo model (where NATO used organized crime groups and terrorists with links to Al-Qaeda as a means to break up Yugoslavia. The Kosovo Liberation Army was used it was a terrorist group). There has been no conclusive evidence that the attack was carried out on Assad's order even admitted by the AP: "...An intercept of Syrian military officials discussing the strike was among low-level staff, with no direct evidence tying the attack back to an Assad insider or even a senior Syrian commander, the officials said...So while Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that links between the attack and the Assad government are “undeniable,” U.S. intelligence officials are not so certain that the suspected chemical attack was carried out on Assad’s orders, or even completely sure it was carried out by government forces, the officials said..." (AP, August 29, 2013). The war on terror carried out by the US/NATO military arm extends into Africa, Central Asia, and throughout the Earth. If the strikes occur in Syria, it could expand the Syrian conflict into a regional war. Remember, America, Turkey, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc. are allied in their agenda of trying to get regime change in Syria. Russia and Iran are military allies of Syria. Recent reports suggest that a cyber-warfare operation has been launched. Allied Special Forces are reported to have entered Syrian territory from Jordan and Turkey. British Special Forces are reported to be searching for Syrian air defense systems “in readiness for Allied strikes." Many Israelis are having gas masks, because of fears of a Syrian reprisal to a Western attack. We are in a crossroads since we have complex war theaters of Afghanistan/Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Libya. There are other wars as well. Such a strike can start the beginnings of WWIII. The civilian deaths made by the rebels are ignored by the mainstream media and the Western elite as an excuse to justify imperialism on the faux guise of "humanitarian" grounds. We know that the MI6, the CIA, and Mossad including Western Special Forces have integrated with the rebel forces from the start. An air campaign including a “no fly zone” directed against Syria has been envisaged since late 2011, largely in view of the failures underlying the US-NATO covert war in support of opposition rebels, integrated by trained mercenaries. So, NATO had secret plans for a no fly zone in Syria since 2011. Syria has an advance Russian S-300 air defense system. Russian technical advisers have been in Syria since November 2011 to assist Syrians to set up an array of S-300 missiles. The weapons attack issue has come in the midst of the defeat of the U.S. sponsored Al Nusrah terrorist brigades by government forces. While there is absolutely no evidence of the Syrian government having used chemical weapons against its population, there is evidence that the CIA sponsored Al Qaeda affiliated rebels have chemical weapons in their possession and that they are being trained by Western Special Forces in the use of chemical weapons by Western Special Forces. The United Nations Independent Mission confirms that Rebel Forces Are in Possession of Sarin Nerve Gas. The UN confirmed that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin according to one of its lead investigators. The mainstream media has been used in a propaganda campaign to claim that Syria is using chemical weapons attacks against civilians. Many Western establishment liberals have supported the NATO sponsored intervention. Some are the same ones who agreed with the wicked NATO intervention in Libya. They casually describe the US sponsored Al Qaeda affiliated rebels (which are on the State Department list of terrorist organizations) as “revolutionaries” comparable to the landless movement in Brazil and the Zapatistas in the Chiapas region of Mexico. The reality is that US/NATO death squads (who were trained and recruited in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey) are harming Syrian human beings. The ironic thing is that faux progressives advocating imperialism are similar to a Neocon Open Letter to President Barack Obama published in the Weekly Standard signed by Elliott Abrams, Paul Berman, Eliot A. Cohen, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Bernard-Henri Levy, Karl Rove, among others (that called for a military intervention against Syria). Many human beings are opposed to a military strike. Not to mention that the rebels are beheading civilians. These rebels are not freedom fighters. They are terrorists plain and simple. There should be a peaceful settlement to end the Syrian civil war.
As time goes on in our lives, we know what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. truly felt on issues. We know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not a Republican regardless of what some Republicans say. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a Democrat or a Republican. He was not a partisan human being. In a 1958 interview, King said “I don’t think the Republican Party is a party full of the Almighty God nor is the Democratic Party. They both have weaknesses … And I’m not inextricably bound to either party.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. criticized the Republican Party during his life time though. He wrote the following information about them as it relates to the 1964 Republican National Convention: "...The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right. The “best man” at this ceremony was a senator whose voting record, philosophy, and program were anathema to all the hard-won achievements of the past decade. Senator Goldwater had neither the concern nor the comprehension necessary to grapple with this problem of poverty in the fashion that the historical moment dictated. On the urgent issue of civil rights, Senator Goldwater represented a philosophy that was morally indefensible and socially suicidal. While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulated a philosophy which gave aid and comfort to the racist. His candidacy and philosophy would serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand. In the light of these facts and because of my love for America, I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy..." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. voted for Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964, because Barry Goldwater was going too far on some various issues. He spoke of Ronald Reagan in these terms (or a hero of modern Republicans): "...When a Hollywood performer, lacking distinction even as an actor can become a leading war hawk candidate for the Presidency, only the irrationalities induced by a war psychosis can explain such a melancholy turn of events..." In 2008, King’s son Martin Luther King III said “It is disingenuous to imply that my father was a Republican. He never endorsed any presidential candidate, and there is certainly no evidence that he ever even voted for a Republican.” The Tea Party Republicans today advance austerity, attacks on labor rights, the extremist bootstrap rhetoric, and believe in the harsh xenophobic version of nationalism. Dr. Martin Luther King would oppose that agenda. That wicked agenda of the Tea Party wants socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. Many activists wanted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to run for President in 1968, but he did not. The real Dr. King wanted to fight economic injustice, and he wanted to fight poverty via his Poor People's Campaign. Power must be transferred from the 1% to the people living from the ghettoes to the suburbs in leading their own destinies in life.
Steve Biko is one of the greatest heroes of South Africa. I have known about him for years. Steve Biko worked to fight for liberation in South Africa in the 1960's and the 1970's especially. He worked with the famous human rights lawyer named Barney Pityana. Steve Biko modernized the BCM movement or the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. This movie rejected apartheid and the view of white domination of South Africa. The BCM movement believed in black consciousness. The racist Afrikaner, apartheid government hated Biko and his BCM movement. Steve Biko was banned in 1973 from participating in the political matters of the state. He was banned from talking to more than one person at a time or speaking at public. Under South African law, Biko was deemed a terrorist. Biko was arrested in August of 1977 at a police roadblock and then he was taken into custody. Steve Biko was interrogated and tortured for 22 hours for unjust reasons. It is a shame that a man has to suffer like that just because he wanted legitimate freedom and justice for his people. Biko suffered more unjust, inhumane treatment for the following month. The criminals from the apartheid state strapped him naked and injured him to the back of a jeep and drove nearly 700 miles to the city of Pretoria in order to gain access to a prison with a hospital. Near death during the journey, Biko would succumb to his injuries on September 12 at the age of 30. Steve Biko always believed in Black Unity and the Black Consciousness Movement. Police initially said the activist’s death was because of a hunger strike protest, but an autopsy revealed the cause of death to be a brain hemorrhage due to blows to the head. Many of Biko’s supporters — as well as external media – suspected foul play in Biko’s untimely death. After his death, international protests came about. There has been an U.N. imposed embargo on arms. As many as 10,000 human beings attended his funeral including world leaders. His friend, the white journalist Donald Biko, took pictures of him. He wanted to expose the case as murder. Woods was targeted by the apartheid government and he fled to England. He later penned the book “Biko,” which formed the basis for the 1987 film “Cry Freedom” starring Denzel Washington and Kevin Kline as Biko and Woods, respectively. The government did not prosecute the murdering officers. They just gave the Biko family $78,000 as compensation for his death. In 1995, after majority rule passed to Black South Africans, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created to investigate apartheid-related abuses over the duration of the racist regime. In a clever but underhanded strategy, outgoing White government members asked the Commission grant them amnesty for those who confess their past crimes as a condition of the power transfer. Police Colonel Gideon Nieuwoudt and four other officers confessed to their crimes in front of the Commission on this day in 1997, promptly applying for amnesty. Although a New York Times piece wrote that Biko’s widow, Ntsiki Mashalaba, had finally gotten some closure on the death of her husband, she was fearful that justice would not be served. The officers were denied amnesty later in 1999. We know that Steve Biko had a great legacy for South Africa and humans globally. He taught us that there is nothing wrong with Black solidarity and pride in the face of oppression. Steve Biko was buried in King William Town or the place where he was banished to by the government as a means to silence him. Steve Biko believed in the legitimate principle that “Black Is Beautiful." That principle has resonance in my heart as a black man. So, we will continue to fight for human liberation and Black Solidarity including Black Unity in the world. So, Africa is our homeland. Hopefully, I can come into Africa before I pass away.
What we see is that the ACA's architects that reap windfall as Washington lobbyists. The Obamacare law has been big business for an elite network of Washington lobbyist and consultants who helped shape the law from the inside. There have been more than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers, and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law that they have set up on K Street since 2010. The major lobbying firms of Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, The Glover Park Group, Alston & Bird, BGR Group and Akin Gump can all boast an Affordable Care Act insider on their lobbying roster — putting them in a prime position to land coveted clients. Ivan Adler, a headhunter at the McCormick Group said that Vice President Joe Biden was right when the told President Barack Obama that the ACA is a big deal (during the signing of the healthcare law). Some of the veterans of the healthcare push are now lobbying for corporate giants like Delta Air Lines, UPS, BP America, and Coca-Cola, including healthcare companies including GlaxoSmithKline, UnitedHealth Group and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. These clients want to deal with the most sweeping overhaul of the country' healthcare system in decades. “Healthcare lobbying on K Street is as strong as it ever was, and it’s due to the fact that the Affordable Care Act seems to be ever-changing,” Adler said. “What’s at stake is huge. … Whenever there’s a lot of money at stake, there’s a lot of lobbying going on.” The huge lobbying in the ACA has created a price premium for lobbyists who had firsthand experience in crafting or debating the law. Many experts say that those able to get the highest salaries have come from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or committees with oversight power over healthcare. There is more demand for Obamacare since major pieces of the law (including the healthcare exchanges and individual mandate) are being set up via a slew of complicated federal regulations. “Congress is easy to watch,” said Tim LaPira, a politics professor at James Madison University who researches the government affairs industry, “but agencies are harder to watch because their actions are often opaque. This leads to a greater demand on K Street” for people who understand the fine print, he said. “K Street’s agenda follows the government’s agenda. It’s not typically the other way around,” he said. That is why watchdogs believe that Obamacare lobbyists can create a revolving door that turns public service into private enrichment. “After passage of major legislation, those who have networks on Capitol Hill take exceedingly lucrative jobs with the same industries subject to the legislation,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen. “It raises questions about the [bill's] integrity.” Steady work has been generated among K Street via healthcare lobbying. The law total rules and requirements will come by at least 2020 since the ACA has a long timeline. The lobbyists need that as a means to sign up more clients. The windfall from the healthcare overhaul is being reaped at firms large and small. Some veterans of the legislative push have landed at boutique firms that are increasingly specializing in lobbying niches. There is the firm Avenue Solutions. It recently hired Yvette Fontenot. She was a former staffer for both the Senate Finance Committee (which wrote the ACA tax related provisions) and HHS's Office of Health Reform, which is assisting the implementation. The Democratic firm banks about $3 million in revenue per year records show. It is one pace for growth in 2013 earning $1.8 million via the first half of the year. It is just not just ex-staffers who are becoming trusted Obamacare guides, but former members of Congress are lobbying on the law as well. Former Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) joined Alston & Bird in 2011 after dealing with healthcare and tax issues as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. Now Pomeroy and his one-time chief of staff, Bob Siggins, are lobbying on ObamaCare for clients such as clients such as Vision Service Plan, the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans and Medicare — a health insurance provider. Consulting is another way for former staffers and officials can take to work for outside interests while they look to comply with and shape the impending regulations. “This is not a do-it-yourself project; it’s complicated,” said Adler. “They need help from insiders to help navigate this thing correctly.” Last year, former senior counsel to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Dora Hughes became a senior policy adviser at the law firm Sidley Austin. Hughes is not a registered lobbyist. She told the Hill that she mainly provides “strategic policy advice” while abiding by the ethics pledge not to lobby the administration. She has no congressional contacts in her sights, either. We see that the White House is using Clinton administration veteran and former lobbyist Chris Jennings last month to help navigate the implementation of the law (now Chris is a lobbyist for the ACA). Jennings was seat next to President Obama during a call with several directors of the state healthcare exchanges on Wednesday. Now, we realize that a single payer, universal health care plan is better than the ACA indeed.
In our generation, we know about reactionaries and wicked Republicans. I have exposed these reactionaries for years. They include human beings like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity Glen Beck, Laura Ingraham, Ted Nugent, Bill O'Reilly, etc. Now, it is clear that we should also expose counterfeit progressives as well. These are also called Left Gatekeepers. They are used by the establishment as a means to try to gear folks into the Democratic Party establishment (and they believe that the system needs reform to change without revolutionary, outright changes to the system in general. Structural and institutional changes must occur in order for us to be really free indeed). In history, we know of the genuine progressives or independent freedom lovers then and now. They include the names of Fred Hampton, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Betty Shabazz, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (before he died), Malcolm X, Gloria Richardson, Betty Shabbaz, Kwame Ture, Paul Robeson, Henry Wallace (for a time), John Henrik Clarke, and others. The counterfeit progressives are those who consciously or unconsciously assist cartel-capitalists as a means to harm workers worldwide. It is mainstream capitalism (in its various forms) that is responsible for the Maafa, the extermination of Native Americans, ecological terrorism, and the harm done to humans worldwide. They or the counterfeit progressives are readily accepted on reactionary new agencies. Mainstream capitalism uses a feudal base and exploits the resources of humanity globally. It readily harms the economic rights and achievements that the common people made over the course of human history. The Sister Michelle Alexander documents in her "The New Jim Crow" book that the new Jim Crow prison industrial complex harms the black community. The private prison system uses capital exploitation all of the time against exploited humanity. The prison industrial complex, as both Michelle Alexander and Angela Y. Davis notes, are also part of the process for re-establishing racial caste in new forms. For if you are praised and supported by the world (in a sick fashion), then you are of the world. Even some in MSNBC nearly worship the current Presidency of Barack Obama even on austerity issues (since nearly every single major host on that show has agreed with Obama and Boehner compromising as a means to agree with budget cuts in the social safety net) and most of these hosts agree with the war mongering on Syria. Still, I do believe that MSNBC is better than FOX since at least MSNBC discusses about some real issues that deals with economic justice and other things while FOX is reactionary central. Many of the Left Gatekeepers are funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation (whose history is filled with counterrevolutionary actions. The Rockefeller family has been linked to a one world agenda, eugenics, unjust monopolies, and other reactionary actions for decades). We can never support imperialism regardless if a Republican is President or a Democrat is President. Now, the counterfeit progressives back then oppose Bush's imperialism and now they want modern American imperialism and even NSA warrantless spying to occur. This is outstanding hypocrisy on the part of these counterfeit progressives. The mainstream media outlets (ruled by corporate power and have links to the CFR including other slick think tanks globally), TV news media, and other instruments of deception express approval of Wall Street actions and they love mainstream predatory capitalism. America is being transformed into a placed where tyranny is justified in a smiling face, but the face of the machine is filled with lies including deception. You cannot have a jobs plan that loot funds from Social Security and other social service programs that will have trouble creating jobs. We live presently in a fascistic and predatory economic system now (for it was a capitalist junta was responsible for the war on terror after 9/11, the 2008 terrorist attack on the American economy, the brutal deaths of workers recently in Bangladesh, etc.). We know that imperialism, bankster bailouts, regime change wars, and austerity measures are harming the nations of the world including the peoples of the world. Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street based banking institutions fund the mainstream political establishment in America. That is why the real populists want to replace the evil system with a cooperative, commonwealth system (including other alternatives) where all of the people benefit in society. Community based democratic cooperatives are things that I have no issue with. We need to continue to fight for economic justice. We ought to continue to advocate for racial justice including Justice in general for all of the human race. We should continue to oppose war and advocate peace.
By Timothy
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