Fall 2013 Part 5






Conclusion

We now witness shock and awe economics. That means that the political elite have used financial warfare against the American people. We live in the aftermath of the U.S. government shutdown. It is easy to see that groups campaigning against the fallible Affordable Care Act are funded by multibillionaires Charles and David Koch. They oppose it not because they want single payer universal health care. They oppose it since they abhor anything that is even related to public health care sent to the masses of the people (when many Congressmen and Congresswomen receive government health care. Those Congressional leaders are hypocrites if they receive government health care, but reject a single payer system). The austerity deal has been struck among both parties. The Koch brothers via an open letter to Congress want to distance themselves from accusations of a shutdown blackmail conspiracy. The Koch Brothers have their say in U.S. Congress. Yet, the shutdown and the debt ceiling issues has to do with long, complex structural and historical causes. We see threats of a fiscal collapse and uncertainty of the future of the Federal Government itself. The federal government has an unprecedented debt crisis. The debt is gone up 70% since the 2008 financial meltdown and at the same time they are implementing what I would describe as “shock and awe economics” which essentially consists in cutting virtually everything, all the society safety net programs of the US administration. This is what happened in Europe. It is destructive. This policy of austerity caused more impoverished people. The elite wants to cuts food stamps, Social Security, and of course, Medicare and Medicaid are the programs which are affected. Meanwhile, of course, Defense and the financing of the war economy remains with a very large military budget. When you look at the big picture, you see that the Republicans and the Democrats share the same economic policy agenda. Each party wants austerity measures since both parties are ruled by the same lobby groups. Wall Street, JP Morgan Chase, and the Federal Reserve Bank (or a private institution that hold a large part of the U.S public debt) influence politics heavily. The elite want to have a massive privatization of the federal system. Even the IMF did something similar when they came into to have the privatization of state assets in favor of private corporations.

We know about the Bloomberg legacy and the backlash against much of his policies. We have Bill de Blasio winning the Democratic mayoral primary. The political race for the new mayor of NYC was interesting and dynamic. We know about the federal judge ruling that NYPD's stop and frisk being racially biased and unconstitutional. De Blasio won against the Republican candidate Joe Lhota for mayor of New York City. Bloomberg is a lame duck now. Bloomberg also was silly to accuse de Blasio of racism for featuring his interracial family in a campaign ad. Bloomberg claimed that the low-income New Yorkers aren't really poor because the subways have air conditioning, and said he wanted "all the Russian billionaires to move here." Bloomberg did not want even Christine Quinn to be the new mayor, but folks like Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and even fellow billionaire Mort Zuckerman. Quinn was compelled to disobey the mayor and stop obstructing a bill granting workers the right to a handful of sick days each year, which Bloomberg considered a governmental intrusion on the freedom of business owners to work their employees into the hospital. The fact that Quinn managed to significantly water down the bill wasn't enough to keep Bloomberg from issuing a veto. The City Council then overturned led by a reluctant Quinn. Now, we realize that enriching the rich at the expense of the poor is immoral. Stop and frisk has nothing to do with the massive decrease in crime inside of NYC. De Blasio has got the support of some unions. He said that he wants to reduce economic inequality; he wants universal pre-Kindergarten (with a modest tax increase on the wealth residents), etc. So, grassroots activism should continue in NYC. NYC citizens deserve a living wage, great unions, they deserve health care, and true civil liberties. We do hope for the best in New York City.

The New York mayor race is over The Democratic primary is over. The Democratic candidates of Anthony Wiener, Christine Quinn, John Liu, and others lost the primary. So, now we have Bill de Blasio won the whole election. Thompson lost the Democratic primary too. He is an African American. He tried his best, but he talked about cautioning against over reacting to stop and frisk, which is an injustice committed against the Black and Brown communities of NYC all of the time. I do not agree with Brother Thompson on all issues, but we wish him well (and continue to grow). William Thompson was the former comptroller. He finished second in the Democratic mayoral primary. Thompson was defeated by a mere 5% margin when he ran against Michael Bloomberg in 2009. The billionaire Bloomberg spent $70 million of his own money in the campaign. Thompson could have run if he further fought Bloomberg if circumstances were different. Bloomberg had a narrow victory because the voters disagreed with much of his policies. Thompson could have executed a stronger campaign and made a stronger appeal for support. In 2013, he received support from labor unions like the United Federation of Teachers and current including former elected officials like Charles Rangel and David Dinkins. Many establishment figures raised money for him. Ironically, former Republican Senator Alphonse D'Amato was a top Thompson fundraiser. Thompson promised D'Amato that he will not frighten the powerful real estate developers and others in the 1%. D’Amato affirmed that Thompson is someone who reassured the high and mighty. “They don’t have fear of Bill Thompson, that he’s going to do some radical proposal that’s going to hurt their business. He’s not as give-away-everything-there-is.” He or Bill Thompson told folks to not overreact to stop and frisk, which is a slap in the face of the victims of it. Stop and frisk was a very important issue for black voters in 2013. It is still a vital issue for humanity now. Since 2002, New Yorkers have been stopped by the police more than 4 million times and most of these incidents relate to unconstitutional searchers of black human beings.

These stops increase the risk of overt police brutality, arrest, and humiliation. Some victims were stopped on numerous occasions and even received summonses for loitering at their own homes. Most cities have police quotas for parking tickets, but Bloomberg and police commissioner Ray Kelly had quotas for arrests and stops. It is little wonder that this policy became an enormous issue for black voters as the Bloomberg era ended. That is why the city had no choice but to create a police director inspector and a new process for filing discrimination lawsuits. The Bloomberg era is ending. A federal judge found stop and frisk unconstitutional. Even Cornel West and Carl Dix fought against stop and frisk harshly & legitimately in public. Ironically, de Blasio has talked about the “two cities” of the 1% and the 99% during a time of growing income disparity and hyper gentrification. While he said only that he would “reform” stop and frisk he did support the city council bills and he didn’t insult black people by telling them they shouldn’t over react to what was a deal breaker for them. The next day federal judge Shira Scheindlin denied Bloomberg’s request to stay her order against stop and frisk. Poetic justice came about indeed. The lesson of the Brother Bill Thompson is that we should fight oppression overtly and speak truth to power regardless of corporate interests. De Blasio should have legitimate scrutiny as any other candidate should have. 20 years of Republican rule in NYC has been harmful of the working people of New York City. The city's Public Advocate Bill de Blasio realizes that it was not be a cake walk running against Lhota. There is the Tax Wall Street Party as well that deals with economic populism too. We should reject the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex indeed.

New York City is experiencing a new era. The Democratic new mayor Bill de Blasio has his time. He defeated the Republican Joe Lhota. Bill de Blasio is the first Democratic mayor in nearly a quarter of a century. He comes after the two term Republican reactionary mayor Rudy Giuliani and the three term rule of billionaire Michael Bloomberg. New York citizens are tired of the growth of social inequality in their city. So, they mostly voted against Joe Lhota. The city boasts the largest concentration of billionaires on the planet. One fifth of the population barely survives on $9.000 or less a year. Only 24 percent of registered voters cast their ballots in the election. Just 16 percent of those registered voted for de Blasio. Some of the poor and the working people of New York City are disillusioned and they are hostile to both major political parties. We live in a new era. We have seen the multi-trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street that has done nothing to massively address the unemployment and austerity for the working class (and all of the people). The 93 percent of the income growth came to the top one percent. Most folks are suffering a decline in living standards.

We have domestic and worldwide spying by the Western intelligence agencies (not just by the NSA). The West has conducted criminal operations overseas from drone assassinations to wars of aggression in Libya including Syria. We shall see what de Blasio will do after his tale of two cities speech. De Blasio is a Democratic Party operative. He was a functionary in the Clinton administration. He managed the successful campaign of Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Senate in New York. De Blasio even in September of 2013 tries to talk with the financial predators of Wall Street as a means to gain political votes. He received more than 3 times as much in campaign cash and enjoyed considerably more support from the big banks than even Lhota. Lhota was a former investment banker who does not even want an insignificant rise in city taxes on New York's richest (as de Blasio wants). The executives form Goldman Sachs and top hedge funds funded the De Blasio campaign. There is a threat of a 2 billion budget deficit and union issues in NYC. De Blasio has to deal with stop and frisk and with the NYPD issues. The NYPD ought to be ashamed of itself for not only police brutality, but for their role in harming the human rights of the Black Panthers in the past too. We should continue to disagree with the domination of society and the monopolization of wealthy by a tiny oligarchy that precludes any genuine democracy. So, we shall see what De Blasio will do as the new Mayor of New York City. It will be fair to see what will happen. Likewise, regardless of who is mayor of NYC, we should continue to fight for justice.





The agents of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are using the same trick in trying to cause another Spring in the Sudan. There have been protests being used as a smokescreen for unfolding U.S.-Saudi-Qatari backed violence seeking regime change in Sudan. The Associated Press outlined a Spring in Sudan (which was inhabited by blacks for thousands of years and today in 2013) having an ongoing Spring like unrest. It has transpired in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. It is led by Sudan's Western backed opposition called the National Umma Party and various faux NGOs and "independent media" organizations (that have been created by the West to prop it up). Research confirms that Western entities influence this uprising since some in the West want Western friendly client regimes. Sudanese protesters want the regime to end. The activists claim to not be unified in their leadership or have support from political parties. Yet, even the AP had to admit the following:

"...One of Sudan’s most prominent opposition leaders, Sadiq al-Mahdi of the National Umma Party, told worshippers at a mosque in the district of Omdurman that al-Bashir has been spending the state’s budget on “consolidating power” and failed “to lift the agony off the citizens’ shoulders.”

After the sermon, protesters marched through the district, a longtime opposition stronghold, chanting “the people want the downfall of the regime,” the slogan heard in Arab Spring uprisings that began in late 2010 and have led to the ouster of the leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen..." These activists have a leader in the name of Sadiq al-Mahdi of the National Umma Party,  who was literally leading the protesters out into the streets. Some of these protesters are turning into violence. There have been angry protesters torching police and dozens of gas stations including government buildings. This is when the students are chanting for al-Bashir's ouster. Sudan's 500 Words Magazine has its columnist Reem Shawka writing about this issue. Their website is advancing the U.S. Institute for Peace “Sudanese and South Sudanese Youth Leaders Program.” Like Thailand’s deceitful US-funded propaganda front Prachatai, 500 Words could be funded by the U.S. government. The U.S. State Department has an agenda for Sudan indeed. The U.S. State Department and its National Endowment for Democracy wants to have malleable pro-Western states in the Middle East including Africa. The 500 Words' editor in chief Moez Ali has his own page on Open Democracy and it is funded by the Open Society Institute, the Oak Foundation, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, TIDES, and many others. Also, the U.S. Institute of Peace has advertised for an ad on 500 Words. The U.S. Institute of Peace have played an instrumental role in the Western engineered Arab Spring (which has been exploited by the West to use proxies as a means to overthrow targeted nations). We have more information on opposition leader Sadiq al-Mahdi. This man is a member of the EU-US-Saudi-Qatari run Arab Democracy and the Club de Madrid (that has former President Bill Clinton as full members among others).

The Club de Madrid is backed by Wall Street and London’s myriad of “international institutions” and foundations including the World Bank, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, Walmart, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Microsoft, and others. Al-Mahdi was Oxford educated according to his official Club de Madrid biography, so he is a blatant agent of our oppressors. His direct association with the Muslim Brotherhood is important, as this is the organization that as far back as 2007, under then US President George Bush, began receiving US-Saudi-Israeli support to prepare the violent overthrow of several nations, including in particular, Syria. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker article, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” would reveal US-Saudi-Israeli support behind funding and arming the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. The Muslim Brotherhood has been used as a means to undermine Assad. Even al-Turabi is linked to al-Qaeda and he claims to want reform in Sudan. Sudan shares borders with NATO overthrown destabilized Egypt and Ethiopia. Libya and Egypt has many U.S.-Saudi-Israel-Qatari backed terrorist organizations including the Muslim Brotherhood (although, the new regime in Egypt has harmed liberties in some cases worst than the previous regime). There was a recent attack in Nairobi, Kenya by al-Qaeda backed terrorists. We see the growth of AFRICOM incursions in Somalia possibly. Wesley Clark admitted that the U.S. government wanted to overthrow Sudan as a means to advance geopolitical interests of America (from oil to other resources). We see the opposition being portrayed as pro-democracy when many of those factions are not. There has been an unprecedented amount of resources to be used as a means to reorder North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, the rest of Africa, etc. Sudan should improve itself, but imperialism is evil as well.

By Timothy