The Issues of the 2010's.

Donald’s Trump’s speech to the United Nations is bombastic, imperialistic, provocative, extremist, and not surprising. The people, who voted for Trump, should feel shame. Now, the United Nations is located in New York City. It was created after World War II in order to solve global disputes among the nations of the world. Trump openly threatened North Korea with destruction if it doesn’t submit to his demands. That is blatantly wrong. North Korea has 25 million people. North Korea shouldn’t be completely destroyed of its population period. People in the UN refused to massively criticize him while he was speaking or try him for war crimes. “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” Trump told the meeting. “Rocket Man [Trump’s imbecilic nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un] is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing and able…” He fakes a populist image, but he supports Wall Street and the passage of a $700 billion military budget. He promotes the “America First” view. He wants nationalism to solve every international problem. “The nation-state remains the best vehicle for elevating the human condition,” he proclaimed in a speech in which the words “sovereign” or “sovereignty” were repeated 21 times. He hypocritically claims to be in favor of sovereignty, but he is preparing war against any nation that refuses to support his will. He not only threatened to incinerate North Korea (for testing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons). He threatened to end the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. He opposes the deal when that deal is moderate and Iran has no nuclear weapons at all. He also singled out Venezuela, declaring that its internal situation “is completely unacceptable, and we cannot stand by and watch.”

He added: “The United States has taken important steps to hold the regime accountable. We are prepared to take further action if the government of Venezuela persists on its path to impose authoritarian rule on the Venezuelan people.” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded in a tweet, saying that “Trump’s ignorant hate speech belongs in medieval times—not the 21st century UN—unworthy of a reply.” The foreign minister of Venezuela, Jorge Arreaza, charged Trump with seeking “regime change by force,” adding that he “wants to rule the world when he can’t even rule his own country.” Trump can’t promote national sovereignty on one hand and then promote U.S. imperialism’s “right” to bomb, invade, and carry out regime against any nation that he disagrees with. There is no ambiguity about his speech. It is about advancing fascism period. Hitler back during the 1930’s threatened the annihilation of Europe’s Jewish population. Trump is not equivalent to Hitler, but Trump’s words of threats of genocide are blatantly evil. Scholars have documented how extreme nationalism and fascism have similarities. The absence from the UN’s opening session of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was significant.  French President Emmanuel Marcon supports the war on terrorism, opposed military escalation to North Korea. He didn’t want to end the Iranian nuclear treaty. The speech included a passage warning the world that the American military is no longer subordinate to civilian control. “From now on,” Trump declared, “our security interests will dictate the length and scope of military operations, not arbitrary benchmarks and timetables set up by politicians.” It is obvious that these wars are used to prop up American capitalism not to maintain harmony in the world. Trump criticized socialism and capitalism, but socialists have been involved in labor rights, workers’ rights, and other social movements that have improved America for decades from the policies of the New Deal to the Great Society. Communists and socialists are not monolithic. It is a slanderous lie to equate every socialist to the authoritarian tyrant Stalin. Trump’s extremism represents the ideological bankruptcy of laissez faire capitalism and the extremism of the far right.


Yesterday was the Birthday of Sister Sanaa Lathan. For many years, she has inspired people, and her acting is a representation of the glory of Black Excellence. She has been involved in a diversity of films from comedy to action. She is now 46 years old. She was born in New York City and her father is a famous producer, named Stan Lathan, who has involved in producing shows like Sanford and Sons. Also, her mother was an actress and dancer named Eleanor McCoy. Sanaa Lathan attended the Manhattan School of Science and Mathematics. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in English. Lathan then attended Yale University and earned a master's degree in drama. She has performed in Broadway and diverse theatrical plays. She was on many TV shows like Moesha and In the House during the 1990's. She has also been apart of movies like Brown Sugar, Love and Basketball, The Wood, etc. She has spoken out in favor of equality. She is certainly driven to express herself and to advance the cause of freedom. She is a beautiful black woman inside and out. Her talent, her genius, and her creative spirit are all appreciated by us. Sanaa Lathan recently shaved her head for a role and this showed the diversity of beauty and the right of anyone to wear hair in what they desire. She is almost 50 and she has a lot of wisdom. She lives her life in her own terms. I wish Sister Sanaa Lathan more blessings.

Also, it is important to show what is going on in St. Louis. St. Louis is a Midwestern city in Missouri. Missouri has been cited as a warning from the NAACP because of incidents of racial oppression against black America. St. Louis was originally inhabited by Native Americans. French explorers lived there and it is now a multicultural city. Today, the problems of economic oppression, police brutality, and racial oppression (i.e. redlining, etc.) continue to exist in the city. The protesters are continuing, because a black man was shot and killed by a cop named Jason Stockley. The black man, who was killed, was Anthony Lamar Smith. Before the shooting, Stockley bragged in profane terms about wanting to kill the man. After the murder, video recordings show Stockley going into his police car to get a gun, which he then planted in the car of the dead victim. Only Stockley’s DNA was found on the gun. Like usual, the cop was acquitted in a disgraceful fashion.  This time is less than 5 years after the Ferguson movement. We have video footage of cops using tear gas against mostly peaceful protesters and some cops running over an elderly woman. Many cops are given total immunity in dealing with prosecution. Groups of police officers in riot gear were heard early Monday morning marching through areas forcibly cleared of demonstrators chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!” mocking protesters with a slogan commonly used at rallies. The cops, who did that chant, totally disrespected the aspirations of those who desire justice. Protesters criticized the police department for keeping many in jail for over 24 hours, despite them having only been charged with misdemeanor crimes, mainly “failure to disperse.” Undeterred by intermittent rain and a heavy police presence, hundreds gathered outside the St. Louis city jail Monday night to show solidarity with those who remained behind bars. They chanted, “Free our people!” outside the jail. Dozens of social media videos have emerged throughout the week showing police dressed in riot gear attacking crowds of unarmed protesters of all ages, races and ethnicities, with mace, pepper spray balls, and tear gas. In the three years since the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, more than 3,000 people across the United States have lost their lives to police violence. Not a single officer, including the one who killed Brown, was held accountable by the Obama administration for the thousands of police murders carried out during his presidency, a trend that will continue under Trump. Police officers have been given blanket immunity by the highest levels of the political establishment to terrorize poor and working-class communities for decades. Trump signed an order re-instituting the federal program that supplies military weapons and equipment to local and state police forces. We know that Sessions is pro- so-called "law and order," which is code for mass incarceration and further militarization of the local police which has been going on for over four decades in America. Therefore, the struggle for justice continues and we are apt to defend honor and truth.

The Graham-Cassidy Bill is one of the worst bills in history. It's that bad. First, it cuts Medicaid expansion and promotes block grants to states, which harms especially rural states. It is draconian to restrict pre-existing conditions funding. This will cause older Americans more difficulty in paying insurance since younger, more healthy people can easily buy any health care that they want without much financial burdens. It will cause many people to be uninsured in the millions. Many seniors, the poor, and some with disabilities will be lacking in health insurance. Many blue states will lose their Medicaid expansion funding. Rural hospitals will be hit hard since many of them are remote and need federal funding to survive. The bill is much more reactionary than the American Health Care Act (AHCA). Even Jimmy Kimmel said that the Graham-Cassidy bill is wrong and the bill doesn't protect pre-existing condition. Kimmel said that Cassidy (an U.S. Senator) lied to his face. Kimmel is right to criticize the bill. The truth is that the bill is truly abhorrent.  Under the arcane rules of “budget reconciliation,” the bill needs only a simple majority instead of the usual 60 required for most legislation. It also must be passed by September 30, the end of the fiscal year. Graham is a notorious extremist by supporting the 1996 welfare reform act. According to the CBPP, the cuts would grow dramatically in 2027, when the bill’s temporary block grants (which would replace the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and marketplace subsidies) would expire and its Medicaid per capita cap cuts would become even more severe. CBPP estimates that “in 2027 alone, the bill would cut federal health care funding by $299 billion relative to current law,” with cuts affecting all 50 states. There is no solution without input from the workers and an expansion of health care insurance to people, especially the poor, the working class, and the middle class. Health care is a human right and this is serious. Hopefully, this bill be defeated in Congress.



By Timothy