Times are New.

U.S. House and Senate Republican including Democratic negotiators reached an agreement on the austerity budget. There are over 1 million U.S. unemployed set to lose benefits after Christmas. The agreement was reached in Tuesday. The deal will leave in place over a trillion dollars in sequester spending cuts over 10 years. It will slash the retirement benefits of federal workers and military retirees. It will continue to impose regressive consumption taxes. The bipartisan agreement definitely will not extend the federal extended jobless benefits. This can threaten over a million unemployed people with the loss of their only cash income the week after Christmas. According to a Washington Post report published Tuesday, “[S]enior Democrats acknowledged that checks are likely to be cut off at the end of the month for more than a million people who are out of work.” The White House's own figures said that the failure to extend the unemployment benefits will end cash assistance for 1.3 million people immediately after the holidays and impact an additional 3.6 million people in the first half of 2014. President Barack Obama endorsed the deal. He said that the deal is a good first step and he wants Congress from both parties to pass a budget based on the agreement. Obama added that “this agreement replaces a portion of the across-the-board spending cuts known as ‘the sequester’ that have harmed students, seniors, and middle class families.” The reality is that the proposed two year budget restores only a small fraction of the more than 1 trillion in cuts scheduled over the next 10 years. The reduced level of cuts is more than offset by the regressive consumption taxes in the form of user fees. That will increase the pension costs for federal civilian workers, cuts in retirement benefits for military employees, and further reductions in Medicare spending. The sequestration caused more than 85 billion dollars in cuts. It made unpaid furloughs and affected hundreds of federal workers. Sequester has harmed our economy from domestic to military affairs. Discretionary social spending as a percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product is at its lowest level since the 1950's. As financier Steven Rattner, the Obama administration’s lead adviser in the restructuring of the auto industry, boasted in the New York Times Tuesday: “Over the past two years, outlays on domestic programs have fallen from $514 billion to $469 billion, a hefty 8.8 percent reduction—and that’s before adjusting for inflation.” The deal wants to reduce the sequester cuts in 2014 and in 2015. 63 billion dollars in government cuts will be restored or one third of the total in sequester cuts. Many of these funds will go back into the Pentagon. This modest rollback in sequester cuts will be more than offset by an additional $85 billion in deficit reduction over the next ten years. One of the largest cuts, amounting to $12 billion over a decade, will be to retirement benefits for federal civilian workers and military employees. Military retirees between the ages of 40 and 62 will see their cost of living adjustments slashed. That adds another 6 billion in deficit reduction. The budget proposal also adds another $22 billion to the existing sequester cuts by extending cuts to Medicare providers through 2022 and 2023. The budget will raise $12.6 billion by increasing security fees for airline passengers and another $8 billion by charging higher fees for insuring private-sector pensions. The budget agreement attacks the working class.  Republican co-chair Paul Ryan or the House Budget Committee chairman supports the budget agreement. The deal was a compromise no doubt. It will sacrifice not only workers, but the poor for corporate interests. Democratic Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray, who co-chaired the budget conference committee agreed with the deal too. 

Nelson Mandela has an interesting life and an interesting legacy. He was influential in the ANC and other movements. His consciousness evolved. From 1918 to 1943, Nelson Mandela was in his early life. He was born in 1918 to an aristocratic Xhosa family. Back then South Africa was colonized heavily by English and Dutch settlers. He finished his university education by 1943. He would soon follow the revolutionary path for his people and all people in the world. He fought to liberate black South Africans and Africans in general. He accepted revolutionary consciousness from 1943 to 1960. He organized with the ANC. He allied with the South African Communist Party as a means to fight apartheid. He was not a strong supporter of Communism since he opposes their strikes and he never overtly condemned capitalism in his statements at all. He allied with them as a means to fight the fascism of the apartheid regime. Nelson Mandela was nonviolent and changed course since he believed that it was impossible to do so under a totalitarian regime in then apartheid South Africa. The ANC's military wing was called Umkonto we Sizwe or The Spear of the Nation. This armed struggled lasted for 30 years. From 1960 to 1990, Nelson Mandela was in the most revolutionary stage of his life. Mandela and 19 of his comrades were captured on July 11, 1963 in a farmhouse in a small town named Rivonia, outside of Johannesburg. He and nine of those captured were put on trial and convicted of high treason and sentenced to life in prison on Robben Island. Nelson Mandela served 18 years in Robben Island. He served a while in Pollsmoor Prison. He was in house arrest in a villa outside of Capetown. While on Robben Island Mandela Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmad Kathrada, and others would constitute a high command of the revolution. Driven underground, the ANC established an external wing headed by Oliver Tambo. The anti-apartheid movement gained much international support. Back then, many corporations from the Western aided the apartheid regime under the guise of expressing "anti-Communism." They include the World Bank, Britain, the U.S., the Netherlands, Belgium, and others. Even Israel aided South African apartheid too. Winnie Mandela worked for liberation too. In 1987/1988 the South African army invaded southern Angola and was defeated at the great battle of Cuito Cuanavale. A combined force of the Angolan army, Cuban volunteers, and MK fighters emerged victorious. From 1990 to 2013 was very problematic and contradictory in his life. Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990. That was a good thing. He called himself a disciplined and committed member of the ANC. He expresses solidarity with the ANC, Fidel Castro, Yasser Arafat, and Muammar Gaddafi. Mandela allowed the Freedom Charter to be weakened. The Western elites exploited Mandela as a means to promote their agenda of neoliberalism not the radical redistribution of wealth and income. South Africa soon embraced a program of neoliberal capitalism, corporate exploitation, and white South African interests being advanced. Black people received the right to vote, a vague commitment to affirmative action, and modest improvements to the poor. Yet, the exploitation of black labor continued without true economic justice. Economic inequalities have increased since 1994. That is why the reactionaries love neoliberalism. We should hate Western imperialism and neo-colonialism. The leadership of the ANC transformed from being revolutionary to being in favor of a neo-liberal capitalist program. There are still sincere human beings in the ANC, SACP, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions though. The ANC accepted too many concessions from the white supremacist regime of South Africa (like assuming responsibility for the debt accumulated by the white racist regime. The loan is estimated have been 25 billion dollars. South Africa retained its apartheid regime's Finance Minister and its Federal Bank governor. This undermined the strong effort to solve poverty, joblessness, hunger, homelessness, and AIDS). South Africa has much of it financial, trade, and monetary policies under the control of whites and foreign capitalist interests. South Africa is in the WTO now. Agents of apartheid killed Chris Hani or the head of the Umkonto we Sizwe and chairman of the Communist Party in 1993. In August 16, 2012, we know of the Markiana Massacre where the South African army killed 34 workers in South Africa, which was similar to the evil 1960 Sharpeville Massacre. Neither the ANC, the South African Communist Party nor COSATU have condemned the killing. These counterrevolutionary events have nothing to do with all with Mandela totally. Yet, Mandela made a strategic error in trying to sign off the wicked neoliberal economic policies that caused the West to further economic rule South Africa. Nelson Mandela was a great man, a very intelligent man, and a courageous man. No question about it. Yet, we have to be reminded to fight for black liberation and oppose neoliberal propaganda. We must not turn our backs from the Freedom Charter. It was important to note that Nelson Mandela was a very courageous and heroic man. The revolutionary change that we all seek for South Africa and the entire world is not over. We should continue to fight. It takes a courageous man to stand up against oppression and willing to die for freedom. 

The funeral of Nelson Mandela was held in his homeland. Many of those in attendance were globalist puppets. The puppets of Western imperialism were there like Bill Clinton, Cameron, Blair, and others. Their tributes dealt with shameless hypocrisy. Even the current White House made the errors of global assassinations via drone and other things. Mandela forgave his jailors. We still have prisoners suffering in Guantanamo Bay after President Barack Obama said that he wants to close down Guantanamo Bay. We witnessed the decimation of Libya by NATO forces with no congressional approval. Bombs have been dropped in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Extremists want to attack Iran and Syrah is harmed by a civil war where al-Qaeda related terrorists killed innocent men, women, and children in Syria. Iraq has the largest Embassy in the world. This is not the long walk to freedom. It is a long walk to imperialism continually. Bill Clinton illegally along with the UK bombed Iraq and endorsed an Iraqi embargo. This embargo killed over 1 million Iraqis. He is a hypocrite to say the following about Mandela as “a champion for human dignity and freedom, for peace and reconciliation … a man of uncommon grace and compassion, for whom abandoning bitterness and embracing adversaries was … a way of life. All of us are living in a better world because of the life that Madiba lived.” He didn't leave what Mandela said. Cameron endorses Western status quo policies as well. In 2009, when Cameron was pitching to become Prime Minister, it came to light that in 1989, when Mandela was still in prison, David Cameron, then a: “rising star of the Conservative Research Department …  accepted an all expenses paid trip to apartheid South Africa … funded by a firm that lobbied against the imposition of sanctions on the apartheid regime.” Asked if Cameron: “wrote a memo or had to report back to the office about his trip, Alistair Cooke (his then boss at Conservative Central Office)  said it was ‘simply a jolly’, adding: ‘It was all terribly relaxed, just a little treat, a perk of the job … ‘ “ That is hypocrisy. Conservative Party member the late Margaret Thatcher described Mandela a terrorists when she supported terrorism in Argentina. Tony Blair led efforts to send aid for the destruction of the illegal invasion of Iraq. Even Nelson Mandela rightfully opposed the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. Blair turns a blind eye to the discriminatory and apartheid policies in Israel that has harmed Palestinians and black people in Israel too. As the avalanche of hypocrisy cascades across the globe from shameless Western politicians, Archbishop Desmond Tutu reflected in two lines the thoughts in the hearts of the true mourners: “We are relieved that his suffering is over, but our relief is drowned by our grief. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.”

Males and females are oppressed in mainstream Western society. Black women are readily scapegoated in the world. The invention of the black matriarchy scapegoating existed heavily since the 1960's. The enemy tried to promote the false narrative that blacks must be liberated by making all black households to be some homemaking situation alone. This token model is accepted by reactionaries. Black mothers have traditionally worked outside of the home in much larger numbers than white females in that 1960's. So, many evil folks blamed black mothers for a range of social ills. In other words, economic independence is no crime among men or women. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan should be ashamed of himself by trying to blame black matriarchy at the center of pathology plaguing black families. The Kerner Commission in 1968 released their report and it understood the following fact that institutions of oppression not black women has harmed the black community: "...What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it..." The Kerner Commission emphasized that much of the problem was rooted in “[p]ervasive discrimination and segregation in employment, education and housing, which have resulted in the continuing exclusion of great numbers of Negroes from the benefits of economic progress.” That is why black men and black women organized organizations as a means to stand up against oppression. Reactionaries are not the only folks that can express bigotry or racism. Susan Brownmiller (an establishment liberal person) compared Emmett Till's death to a male raping a woman, which is slanderous in her Against Our Will book form 1975.So, we have to oppose racial, gender, class, and any form of oppression against any human being period. We have to learn about race and class to see the truth. We have to address issues of the working class and the poor not just issues of the middle class. 

We are still fighting poverty. The workers fighting for a higher minimum wage are heroic in the sense that we should do something about the appalling low wages that many workers are paid. Many workers in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and nationwide are fighting for fair wages and economic justice. Low wage workers are demanding their human rights. Many of these workers demand a 15 dollar an hour wage and an union for retail and fast food workers. The Fight for 15 Campaign is a continuation of the workers' movement. We know that in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared in his State of the Union address that we have a war on poverty. Johnson's war on poverty dealt with many social programs, which is similar to the New Deal. The War on Poverty started to end by 1968 when Richard Nixon was President and the costly Vietnam War continued. The old War on poverty was not a total failure, because many social programs assisted humanity like Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and the Food Stamp Act. We are still fighting a war on poverty. Many folks need food stamps and Medicaid to literally survive. The movement for a living wage includes the poor, adjunct college professors, car wash workers, port truck drivers, janitors, farmworkers, etc. Many folks are protesting near Wal Mart, near McDonalds, and near other locations.  Jessica Davis, who is a single mom with two children said, "It's embarrassing to go home to your family with how little [money] you have to bring to the table...I'm six credits away from a Bachelors degree in sociology, but I can't finish because I can't pay for it." In Chicago, 87 percent of public school students qualify for free or reduced lunch. That is a third in Chicago live under the federal poverty line. This situation exists nationwide with foreclosures and homelessness. We know about malnutrition common in America that can destabilize families and entire communities. We need to fight poverty, so crime can go down, and we should continue to fight against racism including discrimination. Increasing the minimum wage can assist families suffering and it is part of the overall economic justice solution. 

By Timothy