Monday News

The Ukraine Special Forces refuse to attack the demonstrators in Donetsk. The Kiev fascist state is losing control of their own military forces. The Ukraine’s elite Alpha elite Alpha unit refused to obey an order to besiege protester held buildings. This comes days after the siege by the police of a protesters’ seized buildings in Kharko, which ended with dozens of activists being arrested. Last Thursday, a local police lieutenant colonel spoke to the media. He claimed that he and his other officers had been deceived by Kiev authorities. He claimed that they were sent to take over the building under the pretext that it was held by dangerous armed bandits. In fact the protesters had only improvised clubs and offered no resistance to the storming troops. The officer, Andrey Chuikov, said he would no longer take “criminal” orders and announced his resignation from the police, adding that he would be sacked anyway by his superiors for speaking to the press. The protesters of the Kiev government had started to take over government buildings. Other protests have took place in the cities of Donetsk, Kharkov, and Lugansk. There have been smaller protest actions and some clashes were reported in Odessa and Nikolayev. There are anti-Maidan activists who reject the authority of the current government of Kiev. Speaking in Donetsk, one of the regions engulfed by the anti-Kiev protests, Yatsenyuk said his government wants greater autonomy for Ukrainian regions, including the abolition of the offices of capital-appointed governors. Just after the deadline expired, the pro-US regime’s interim prime minister, Arseny Yatsenyuk, attempted to undercut the protests by pledging to push through a constitutional change allowing referenda for regional autonomy in the country. By threatening a bloodbath, the far-right regime in Kiev revealed the blatant hypocrisy and double standards in the US- and European Union-orchestrated regime-change operation in Ukraine. Just weeks after using neo-fascist forces as shock troops in overthrowing the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych—claiming Yanukovych had lost his legitimacy by deploying security forces to attack anti-government demonstrators—the unelected, Western-installed regime declared its intent to massacre people opposing the coup. The fraud of the Western powers’ claims to be championing democracy has not been lost on people in eastern Ukraine. Interviewed by Russian Television, Aleksey, a Kharkiv student, commented: “In Crimea, people voted, overwhelmingly, to return to Russia … But the West calls it unconstitutional and undemocratic. In Ukraine itself, the democratically-elected government has been overthrown and policies that nobody really wants are being pushed down our throats. And … this is called democracy!” Many of the protesters against the current Kiev regime are fighting against the austerity measures in the Ukraine. These measures are being dictated by the EU and the IMF. The protests abhor the agenda of the fascists in the Ukraine. There is the opposition to the suppression of the Russian language and access to the Russian media across the region (where the vast majority of the population speaks Russian). Yesterday, it was confirmed that four-way talks on the crisis between the US, EU, Russia and the Ukrainian regime will be held in Geneva on April 17. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov phoned US Secretary of State John Kerry to encourage the Kiev regime “to have a dialogue with representatives of the (Ukrainian) regions to create conditions allowing for comprehensive constitutional reform.” Also yesterday, Putin said Russia would fulfill its obligations to European gas clients and had no plans to halt deliveries to Ukraine—a day after warning that supplies to Europe could be disrupted by Ukraine’s failure to pay its $2.2 billion debt for Russian gas. Still, the Obama administration continues its bellicose rhetoric against the Ukraine. Assistant Secretary Nuland played down, in advance, any prospect of ending the confrontation. “I have to say that we don’t have high expectations for these talks,” she stated. The talks about about the talks in Geneva coming up. So, we should wish that the Ukrainians should rule Ukraine not the EU, the IMF, the USA, or Russia. Ukraine should be independent and Crimea has every right to assert its self determination too.






I did not initially respond to this story since I wanted to meditate on this issue. I wanted to look at all sides and make up my own mind. Now, here are my views. I admire Michael Eric Dyson standing up for himself as a black man. When someone is making strong allegations about you, then you have every right to stand up for your dignity as a human being in general. Tavis Smiley and Cornell West are right on many issues pertaining to poverty, imperialism, and other matters. The problem is that they sometimes use immature, personal rhetoric against those that disagree with them. Cornell West especially uses code words in calling some black people sellouts basically (which West would never do against whites, Hispanics, and other minorities). I know coded language when I see it. Humility and humbleness can go a long way in getting folks to understand your point of view. We should fairly critique any administration. I don’t agree with the current administration on many issues. Yet, critique alone is not a total solution. We have the responsibility to work in our communities, to demand the state to promote justice, and to fight for liberation in our own lives. The President will not be the President in a few years. Regardless of who is President, we should focus on exposing the nefarious system that exists across the timeframe of Presidencies. Also, we need to embrace political independence. We should never let any Republican or any Democrat to dictate to us on how we conduct our lives or the affairs of our community. We have the right to embrace self determination. We should never be afraid to fairly critique any administration that is doing errors. WE SHOULD ALWAYS SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER. This means that we have to condemn NSA warrantless wiretapping, the Western militarization of Africa, the proposal new NAFTA-like trade deals, and the austerity agenda advanced by both major parties. WE HAVE TO THINK FOR OURSELVES AND reject neoliberalism including any form of oppression. We should focus on the real issues of helping our families, advancing workers' rights, and advancing our civil liberties (that our people bled and died for). Malcolm X gave great advice on this precise issue. Before he passed, he wanted disagreements to be heavily handled in private, so in public, there can be a more united front to battle complications. We should never degrade unfairly black people too. We can agree to disagree without degrading someone in a vicious way. Excessive, offensive public bickering have caused less progress than more progress for our people. Dyson, Smiley, and West should go in private and hammer out their issues. They don’t have to agree with everything, but they should focus more on the prize (which is human liberation and promoting justice for our people). That is the point.



Black people should be politically independent period. We all know about the Republican agenda. It has been abhorrent and disgraceful. They supported voter ID laws that have nothing to do with expanding voting rights. Such laws restrict the days when human beings can vote. That alone should allow any free thinking person to oppose such laws. Real voter fraud is very small. There is nothing wrong with voting (as I never want folks to be deprived of their right to vote. Brothers and Sisters bled and even died for that right), but voting alone never saved us. We should do a diversity of actions as a means to improve our community. The President is accurate to mention the GOP errors involving voter ID laws, but on foreign policy matters, I do have disagreements with him. Unemployment is extremely high and the 2 party system has contributed to the complications of our current situation. The petrodollar situation is serious news. Folks should investigate the petrodollar situation and how it relates to the Ukraine conflict. I just read about the recent Russia and China energy deal (that will weaken the petrodollar since it can bypass dollar transactions. We all know that the value of the dollar have decreased massively in the past years). QE, wealth inequality, and the imperialism going on in Africa are taboo subjects that the political elites refuse to talk about in strong terms in public. We should mobilize and organize. The question is to organize into what? We should organize not into some appendage of the political establishment. We should organize into independent organizations. Brothers and Sisters (from across the political spectrum) are accurate to advocate economic empowerment and self-determination. Also, we should not be controlled by the corporate elitist establishment since such entities have stifled progress in the black community. Independent power is definitely necessary to improve our lives. Also, we have to demand things. Just because we demand better jobs and better opportunities does not mean that we are begging someone. If there is an injustice, people have the right to demand justice in the world. I have been researching democratic cooperatives and that is one solution out of many that we can create which deals with the transcendence of crony capitalism. I believe in self-determination, but workers have to have some rights too. We can’t exploit our race under the guise of “black capitalism.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was right to advocate both support for black enterprises and the formation of cooperatives among the poor including working class black human beings. We need economic justice and use our Power in the right fashion. There is nothing wrong with Power if it is used correctly. Any solution must have critical involvement of the Black Community. Folks are exactly right on that point. Our ancestors focused on community development in Africa and we must do the same in the 21st century.


Muhammad Ali deserves dignity and respect. I respect his call for black people to respect their own self-image and promoting the truism that Black is Beautiful. He experienced his Hajj and he has renounced racism. The reality is that he later embraced Sunni Islam and he has denounced unfair bigotry. For example, he said the following words: “Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.” Muhammad Ali worked in charities, anti-illiteracy efforts, and other actions to help humanity. That means something. Therefore, human beings can have ideological enlightenment. We have to look at the totality of someone’s life and not focus solely on a certain segment of a person’s life. Muhammad Ali was courageous in the Vietnam War situation, because he never tried to draft the dodge. He was willing to take his punishment like a man for refusal to go into that war. A coward would just leave the nation without explanation or dodge the draft for ill motives. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had it right in saying that folks should be a conscientious objector if they dissented with the Vietnam War back then. Muhammad Ali's Parkinson’s disease is a tragedy and he deserves sympathy for that. If he did not have that disease, he can still change since humanity can be more enlightened as time goes on. I don’t feel that he should have been in prison, because he had the right to dissent. The Supreme Court validated his right to dissent based upon religious and moral grounds. That is the end of the story.  The reality is that people from across the political spectrum have excellent discernment on issues. I disagree with reactionary propaganda. Muhammad Ali understood a lot of the Vietnam war. Muhammad Ali understood that it was hypocrisy to claim to support democracy in Vietnam while the government rejected true economic justice in America. He knew that the Vietnam War involved massive war crimes on both sides and that the war has been destructive. Muhammad Ali possessed a great deal of intellect. He filed his taxes, he gave speeches, he dealt with business arrangements, and he worked with many civil rights leaders. So, his intellect is on full display on those incidents. I will defend his dignity here. He certainly knew what immoral mean since immoral is a simple word to comprehend. Immoral means the antithesis of morality. The Vietnam War was blatantly immoral by any stretch of the imagination. The North Vietnamese Army was not a threat to American soil. They were supported by the Soviet Union or China. Yet, the Vietnamese were not always in good terms in China. The Vietnamese were once dominated by China for centuries. Both North and South Vietnam experienced a civil war. Each nation had a chance at peace during the 1950’s. The Geneva Accords divided Vietnam War up into Northern and Southern parts on the 17th parallel. Elections were called for a positive unification of both sections, but this never took place. These legal elections were subverted by the dictator Diem. Diem violated the Geneva agreement by canceling the elections. Diem was backed by America and he persecuted the Buddhists in violation of their human rights. The Vietnamese were attacked by French and British imperialists and America did come to the aid of those imperialists. Diem was a puppet leader and not a true populist leader at all. He was assassinated too. We can’t speculate on possibilities of how Vietnam turned out if Nixon won back in 1960. Dwight D. Eisenhower was a military genius, but even he would admit that he was not perfect. He was humble enough to condemn the military industrial complex back in 1960. The Vietnam War was a unique war. The Vietnamese used guerrilla warfare and any U.S. response would have difficult. America won all major battles in Vietnam, but still lost since the Vietnamese’s nationalism and dedicated guerrilla warfare continued. More bombs dropped in Vietnam than in some battles of WW2. We dropped napalm and attacked tons of cities and villages. We bombed the mess out of Vietnam. The events of Mai Lai, Operation Phoenix, etc. were not about handicapping troops. We still lost. The French lost.


In 1968, a peace deal was about to occur in Paris among both sides. That was sabotaged by Nixon and his agents. That was admitted by a recently released tape from Lyndon Johnson which he called it treason. JFK was an unique President President John F. Kennedy was never a socialist. He did become more progressive by 1963. Not to mention that he called himself a liberal. He wanted tax cuts and expenditure spending, so he was not a socialist. He by 1963 agreed with civil rights legislation, he wanted government health care to be sent to the elderly, he wanted food stamps, and he wanted to end the Cold War. He wanted world peace and he rejected a Pax Americana. JFK followed his advisors to prevent WW3. He saved humanity during the Cuban Missile Crisis and he refused to send a massive invasion force of Vietnam. Most Americans back then harbor dissent with the actions of Dr. King and Malcolm X. They did not agree with revolutionary solutions. I am independent politically. Both Republicans and Democrats have done wrong. Later on, Muhammad Ali recognizes the great value of humanity of all shades. A man can wake up and improve his life. He stood up for justice for all people; even after 9/11 (he called for peace and reconciliation among all of humanity by his own words). Obviously,  Muhammad Ali was right on saying that Black is Beautiful. The Bush administration will never be supported by me at all. The Bush administration planned to go into Iraq before 9/11. The Intel was faulty and the neo cons exploited that as a means to justify their plans (while shutting out dissenting points of view). A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence. They had an agenda as a means to reshape the Middle East as outlined in the PNAC document. Views of credible researchers, PhDs, and other experts mean something if their words are proven accurate and documented. The Bush administration also ramped up the War on Drugs and did much reactionary policies. In 2006, a National Intelligence Estimate (a consensus report of the heads of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies) asserted that the Iraq war had increased Islamic radicalism and had worsened the terror threat. The Bush administration invaded a sovereign nation that posed no direct threat to American soil. Congress gave no declaration of war. Congress gave the President a blank to invade Iraq. International law does apply since America is a signatory to international agreements (as agreed upon by the Senate and other entities). The Bush administration used blatant torture techniques that harmed human dignity. Many scholars have proven the abhorrent CIA memos. There is no conclusive evidence that all torture techniques saved all human life. The Bush administration allowed the war crimes of Abu Ghraib. The Bush administration’s war mongering increased the debt and debilitated our international reputation. Yes, the Obama administration is wrong for its embrace of torture techniques, and for its other reactionary foreign policy measures too. That truth can't be denied. I am an independent politically. As obvious, there is no need to withdrawal from the Geneva Convention since Iraq and other nations are not a direct threat to American soil anyway.


By Timothy