Monday, September 30, 2013

Monday News




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.

The city of Detroit is still suffering. Wall Street has harmed Detroit too. There have been corporate interests that have caused the dissolution of Detroit. Also, there have been black bourgeoisie scapegoats following orders as well like Kevyn Orr. Detroit has been disenfranchised, because they power is heavily controlled by managers. There has been a recent unannounced cut off of electricity. This was done by Chief Compliance Officer Gary Brown. This happened in September 11th where many frightened human beings were stuck in elevators in 90 degree plus heat. One has been injured after the horrendous incident. He tried to justify the sick action via his sick words: "...We did start calling our customers prior to taking them down and asking them to turn off air conditioners, but they weren't responding as fast as we would like them to so we had to send them a strong message by turning the power off..." The oligarchy has arbitrary power in Detroit. We know that Judge Rhodes will decide if the imposition of an unelected dictatorship in Detroit represents a constitutional crisis or not. Brown follows the orders from EFM Kevyn Orr, who follows orders from Wall Street interests. Orr was a bankruptcy lawyer. Now, he is trying to strip Detroit of its assets and privatize its services for the benefit of Wall Street banks. The blackout in Detroit exposes it faulty infrastructure and it was an exercise of arbitrary power that allowed human rights to be further violated. The Judge will decide on whether Detroit should handle its own affairs. The threat of privatization is ever real in the world. We are still fighting for self-determination and real Power in the world. Brown resigned from his $75,000 a year City Council position to sign on as Orr’s lieutenant for $225,000 – and, of course, an inside track in the corporate looting that will accompany Detroit’s fiscal dissolution. Wall Street wants Detroit to suffer austerity and mega thefts of its resources. The establishment hates Detroit as evident on the sick comment made by five time mayor Tom Menino saying that he will blow up Detroit and start over. If a person other him say similar comments in public about a mostly white city or mostly white area in America, he would be criticized by the media and even investigated by the DHS for possible terrorism charges. Yet, saying that garbage to Detroit (which is 85 percent black) is fair game to these elitist racists. Even the White House insults black Americans with the bootstraps line all of the time. Detroit needs democratic freedom from unelected bureaucrats. The confiscation of property is real there. “This [Emergency Financial Manager] law has been applied in cities and school districts where the majority population is African American, and I find this to be racist in both its aims, and its application,” Bill Hickey, a 50-year resident of the city, told the judge. Indeed, more than half of Michigan’s Black population has been disenfranchised, a shocking state of affairs that is generally treated as a non-event – or, maybe, in the popular consciousness, it is the world as it should be. It is a matter of the human rights of folks living in Detroit. Last November, a large majority of Detroiters and 53 percent of Michigan voters rejected the Emergency Manager legislation, but Republican governor Rick Snyder rammed it through the legislature, anyway. We know that a new survey says that 75 percent of Detroit residents do not want any cuts in public employee's pensions and 78 percent oppose selling any precious works at the Detroit Institute of Art. The bankruptcy was imposed on them by the powers that be. The reality is that we should be political independents. Republicans and Democrats have advanced austerity, imperialism, bigotry, anti-poor moves, and other moves against self-determination for over 100 years. We need to support the interests of the poor and all oppressed human beings of the world. The reactionary elitism among both parties has been wrong and immoral. Even the current White House executes some of the same policies as the Bush/Cheney regime from the war on terror to the Wall Street bailouts. The Bush tax cuts are extended. There was a shutdown of Senator Leahy's "Truth Finding Commission" that was designed to investigate Bush Cheney crimes. So, we know the truth. The truth is that political independence is what we need. We need to fight this class struggle, we need racial justice, we need economic justice, and we need social justice as well. We need to be comprehensive in our outlook and actions indeed.

The deadly assault in Nairobi, Kenya was tragic. The upscale mall in Kenya was harmed by terrorists. The media portrayed the violence as being a product of mindless fanatics. The terrorist act was evil and unjustified. The roots of the situation deal with Western intervention in Somalia to a great degree. The Kenyan government carried out a military intervention in Somalia with the blessing of the USA. This is the same war on terror action that may have escalated the mall attack. Kenyan troops with help from Israeli commandos recaptured the Westgate mall on Tuesday four days after an assault by 10 to 15 heavily armed Islamist militants. The Somali based Al Shabab militia took responsibility for the attack. It killed more than 60 human beings and injured more than 170. Some believe that British and American Al Shabab members have participate in the attack. Since English is heavily spoken in Kenya as Kenya was once ruled by England, some of the attackers spoke English. Al Shabab claimed that it wanted to punish Kenya for its 2011 invasion and continued occupation of southern Somalia. The nature of Al Shabab's target, a shopping center frequented by foreign tourists, attests to the narrowness of Shabab's aims--the tourism industry is Kenya's largest source of foreign exchange. Some want Kenya to work closer with America in anti-terrorism policies. The U.S. military and its spy agencies work closely in the region. They work in nations like Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda. These nations sent troops to occupy Somalia after the U.S. backed Ethiopian invasion of 2006. As the New York Times noted during the siege at the mall, "Kenya is a crucial American partner, whose security forces work closely with their Western counterparts to contain Islamist militants in the region." Even the current Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta is indicted now by the International Criminal Court for financing and directing death squads during the violence that killed more than 1,200 human beings (and uprooted hundreds of thousands after the disputed 2007 election. He is the son of Kenya's prominent founder Jomo Kenyatta). Uhuru is one of the richest men in Africa. President Barack Obama skipped a trip to Kenya, because of Kenyatta. After the attack, he telephoned Kenyatta to reaffirm the strong partnership between America and Kenya. For years, U.S. operatives have been used in Somalia. Once, Americans supported the Somali dictator Barre. Later, when the Cold War was over, clans overthrew Said Barre. Somalia is ruled by private fiefdoms. Once America supported warlord Mohammaeed Farah Aidid, but he desired independence. This influenced the famous Battle of Mogadishu, in which 18 U.S. Special Forces troops died. Black Hawk Down was a film that talked about this battle in harsh detail. According to Somali specialist Stig Hansen, who wrote Al-Shabaab in Somalia, some of the Somali fighters were veterans of the U.S. proxy war in the 1980s against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The United States and Saudi Arabia had financed and coordinated this first major venture into "international jihad," drawing Muslim militants from around the world, which gained fighting experience and brought an international outlook back to their home countries when they returned. Some of these Somali veterans of the Afghan war were later founders of Al Shabab. Militias rule Somalia now. There is harsh poverty, lack of health care, etc. inside of Somalia. Al Shabab developed in ca. 2005. So, now we see that Al Shabab wants more recruits. The whole situation is all in the war on terror era with AFRICOM involved in fighting in Africa too. AFRICOM is an imperialist operation that seeks to grow Western hegemony inside of the Motherland.

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 will be interesting and dynamic. We know about the federal judge ruling that NYPD's stop and frisk being racially biased and unconstitutional. De Blasio is battling 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.

 

 

 

We know about Brother George Jackson. He was a member of the prison rights movement. He even created a Black Panther Party in San Quentin prison. There has been over 42 years since his death in August 27, 1971. We still have some of the same issues in prison today as they were back then. Now, the prison population has radically increased and America imprisons more humans than any nation in the world. George Jackson wanted human rights to be real for all prisoners of the world. He was born in Chicago and grew up mostly in California to black working class parents. In 1961, he was accused of sticking up a gas station for $70. He was represented by a public defender and he pled guilty. He began serving a sentence of one year to life. He was in prison, but he was very intelligent. He studied there and wrote information eloquently. We wanted to politically organize in America's prisons and jail as a means to create revolutionary solutions to societal ills. He made two bestselling compilations of his letters. They are called Soledad Brother and Blood in My Eye. His words were felt across class and racial lines in California including all over the Earth. In January 1970, George Jackson was accused of the murder of a prison guard. On August 7 of the same year, his younger brother Jonathan Jackson staged a doomed rescue attempt at Marin County courthouse. This was when four people died and several were wounded. Angela Davis was prosecuted for murder and conspiracy. George Jackson's life ended on August 21, 1971 in a hail of gunfire. These circumstances were strongly suggest to be a setup and assassination staged by California prison officials. More than 20,000 human beings showed up for his Oakland, California funeral. His influence was great. He inspired the organization of prisoner rights movements globally. Many then and now confront the prison state. We have threats today. We have many Congressmen and women, mayors, state legislators, judges, and sheriffs involved in the growth of the prison population. We have seen the U.S. prison population grow five and six fold all over the seventies, eighties, nineties, and in the new century.  Even some of the black bourgeoisie have no intention of empowering, educating, and helping the black working class. Today, we see folks having hunger strikes in California and prison organizations in Ohio, Georgia, New York, Virginia, etc. Both Democrats and Republicans have been complicit in mass incarceration and other evils in the prison state. Justice ought to continue in the world. Voting fraud in North Carolina is very small. The North Carolina law is highly immoral since the purpose of voting is to get as many citizens to vote not to restrict the days on when you can vote. When you restrict those days (and not allow citizens of the state to vote in whatever precinct that they want), there will be some who will lack their opportunity to vote. Human rights are superior to states rights. The North Carolina voting ID law is the worst voting related law currently. It restricts many forms of human voting and advances a limited voter ID requirement (when expansive requirements will do as a means to allow human beings to vote). What these new strident voter ID requirements do is that it disproportionately disenfranchise many low-income voters, student voters and voters of color. Similarly, cuts to early voting limit longstanding get out the vote efforts in African American communities, in addition to preventing lower income voters who tend to have less job flexibility on election day from voting. You have recent immoral voter purges in Florida before, so this is not some fantasy. The DOJ has every legal right to sue in this situation. It is part of the federal jurisdiction to protect citizen voting rights nationwide, which is just beyond states' rights. Using that states rights logic, if states voted to have unjust laws, then states have the right to do it without any recourse from the citizenry (that is silly since any unjust law made by any state have the right to be legally opposed by any citizen).

By Timothy

 

 

More Links

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/07/23/2340941/nc-voter-suppression/

http://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/

http://truthseeker24info.blogspot.com/2012/01/power-and-liberty.html

Saturday, September 28, 2013

NSA’s Spying On Metadata Violates Our Freedom of Association

http://www.globalresearch.ca/nsas-spying-on-metadata-violates-our-freedom-of-association/5351947

UNSC Resolution 2118 on Syria: In Response to False Flag Chemical Weapons Attack. US Backed Terrorists “Get Away with Mass Killing”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/unsc-resolution-2118-on-syria-in-response-to-false-flag-chemical-weapons-attack-us-backed-terrorists-get-away-with-mass-killing/5351979

The Threat of a Government Shutdown




The U.S. Congress sees the risk of a government shutdown. It could come next week. The Democratic controlled Senate voted on Wednesday to take up debate on a bill. That bill would fund the government through November 15 of this year. The Republican controlled House of Representatives have tied any funding of the federal government for the new fiscal year. That new fiscal year will begin in October 1 to the defunding of the Obama administration's health care overhaul. That was a condition the Democrats' say they will not accept. There is a version of the funding bill that has languages which removes funding from the Affordable Care Act or the ACA. It was passed last week in the House of Representatives. The Senate is expected to strip out that language before sending the bill back to the House. If funding for the start of the next fiscal year is no approved by Monday night, portions of the federal government are expected to shut down Tuesday. The House Republican leaders are threatening to tie any increase in the federal government's debt limit to a provision that would delay implementation of the ACA for one year. That is why Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sent a letter to members of Congress Wednesday informing them that the government would lose its ability to raise additional funds, no later than October 17” if Congress did not act to raise the government’s borrowing limit. “If we have insufficient cash on hand,” Lew wrote, “it would be impossible for the United States of America to meet all of its obligations for the first time in our history.” The Wednesday's Senate vote followed a 21 hour speech by Republican Senator Ted Cruz denouncing the ACA. Cruz's political stunt served only to delay Senate action on the funding bill. His action caused public opposition from a section of Senate Republicans who oppose the tactic of shutting down government operations as likely to backfire on the Republican Party. Still, many Republican lawmakers (like those in the House linked to the Tea Party) will use this gesture as a means to cause the Republican Party to capitalize anger against the ACA (and against the policies of the White House). They want anger to be used to express their reactionary agenda. As the Affordable Care Act moves closer to implementation, it is clear that the law can increase the risk of reduction in health care benefits for millions of working people including the poor. For example, there is a growing list of major companies like the grocery chain Trader Joe's wanting to end health care coverage for coverage. That company will dump them into health care exchanges, including those set up under the ACA. The city of Detroit, which is seeking bankruptcy protection, is proposing to do the same to its active employees. That means that workers would be forced to buy insurance on an individual basis from private companies. They use cash payments from their employers or government subsidies under the ACA for low income individuals. The net effect will be a voucher system as advanced by Republican opponents of health insurance for working human beings. That is why some want to cut resources from the federal health insurance for retirees called Medicare, which has been very successful for decades since the 1960's. The ACA still requires the uninsured to purchase coverage on the insurance company dominated exchanges, imposed fines on those who fail to do so. This creates a massive new market and source of revenue for the insurance and health industry corporations. Critics of the ACA believe that the plan will cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare funding. The GOP is showing criticism from their point of view, but the end result of this is broadly unpopular spending cuts. This happened in the previous manufactured crisis like the  2011 debt ceiling crisis that led to over $2 trillion in spending cuts and the 2012 “fiscal cliff” that preceded the imposition of “sequester” across-the board budget cuts beginning last March. The sequester cuts total over $85 billion this year and $1.1 trillion over the next eight years. So, the political establishment used a crisis as a means to cut social services. These cuts from sequester continue to harm the economy. They are slashing extended unemployment benefits, housing assistance, education funding, the preschool Head Start program, public defenders and other vital services. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been forced to take unpaid furloughs, in some cases cutting their income by 15 percent. The White House originally proposed it back in 2011. The White House wants more cuts in Social Security and Medicare, or the 2 bedrock programs still remaining from the New Deal and the Great Society. On economic and some social policy, the GOP and the Democrats are in ideological unison. Some Republicans and even some Democrats in the Senate voted to cut food stamps. The difference is that the Senate wants 4.5 billion dollars in cuts over 10 years while the House wants nearly 40 billion in cuts. This is extremism since we have an economic recession now. We have high poverty and hunger. 47 million Americans rely on food stamps for survival basically. Folks will starve and die if these benefits are cut. The 2009 stimulus act will expire in November. The Republicans advance extremism and the Democrats just compromise as a means to suit the status quo. The Federal Reserve continues to pump $85 billion a month into the financial markets, fueling the stock market boom that is adding to the fortunes of the American financial elite. So, these attacks on health care, pensions, and other social needs are calculated by the political establishment. We need revolutionary solutions to benefit all of the people indeed.



One interesting point in the world is that we should not turn schools into prisons. We have seen the evils of school shootings over the course of a few years. Sandy Hook Elementary School killings and other massacres are evil. They may spurn more solutions, but we do not need schools to be transformed into prisons though. It is wrong for any seriously mentally ill human being to purchase an AR-15 that can cause massacres. We do not need seven year olds being handcuffed and sent to local police precincts. Ironically, the National Rifle Association or the NRA and establishment Democrats like Senator Barbara Boxer believe that we need more law enforcement inside our schools. Some police use handcuffs on students and sent them to the precinct. When three nine year old girls and an eight year old boy got into a fight at a Baltimore elementary school, they got arrested by the real police. Salecia Johnson, age six, cuffed and arrested for throwing a tantrum at her elementary school in  Milledgeville, Georgia.  Or Wilson Reyes, a seven-year-old at a Bronx,  New York, elementary school who last December 4th was cuffed, hauled  away, and interrogated under suspicion of taking $5 from a classmate.  (Another kid later confessed). So, this is a police state and this is fascism point blank period including exclamation point. The deal is that simple young misbehavior like a 12 year old doodling on a desk is treated increasingly as a serious crime. This has resulted in arrest. In December of 2012, the CEO and executive vice president of the NRA, called for armed guards in all schools. This was strange to say the least. Weeks later, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) proposed $50 million in federal grants to install more metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and National Guard troops in schools, but made her pitch in the caring cadences of a Marin County Democrat.  And when President Obama ordered more police in schools (point 18 in his 23-point Executive Order responding to the Sandy Hook tragedy), it was all over. When more police are in schools, more students get arrested even for minor infractions. We do not need a school to prison pipeline. Even Annette Fuentes' book called, "Lockdown High" exposes this sick culture of the militarization of schools. We even have metal detectors in schools nationwide. Even in some parts of Mississippi, felony assault charges came against those throwing peanuts on a school bus. Zero tolerance has failed our students and our morality. We know that over policing has not worked. That is why schools need order and students learning self-discipline including adults. There are plenty of high schools that do fine without police or scanners. There is one report that was created with advocates from the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform found that schools without police or metal detectors actually get significantly better educational results (higher graduation rates, lower truancy) than their heavily policed counterparts. There is a steady 15 year nationwide drop of crime. When the state cracks down on working class Black and Latino youth, then it only grows not decreases the prison industrial complex. Judge Steve Teske used common sense as a means to bring down referrals to juvenile court by 70% in Clayton County, Georgia. He forced schools to handle minor disciplinary infractions without handcuffs or police arrests.  (In the same period in that county, serious weapons charges, like bringing guns and knives to school, have fallen by 80% — further evidence that restraining a police presence actually makes schools safer). That is why even Columbine High school did not use a phalanx of armed guards. They did improve communications with the student body as a means to grow mutual trust and respect. We do not need a militarization of schools as the NRA advocates. In real life, after 9/11, we see the growth of the militarization of society. The only way to solve violence in schools and in real life deals with goodwill, tolerance, growing communities, fighting poverty, and assisting those that need help at the end of the day.



Some believe that U.S. health exchanges will impose high out of pocket costs and limit choices. The unveiled premiums and plan choices for health insurance markets in 36 states is where the federal government will run the exchange. They are set under the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Many state governments will administer exchanges in the remaining states. The President attempted to justify the new health care law by saying that the plans on exchanges will cost much less than they do now. The reason is that insurance companies will be competing for business. The reality is that many uninsured human begin to shop for health care coverage on the exchanges will be for a rude shock. So, much of the coverage will be made of cut rate plans that leave the insured responsible for a considerable proportion of the costs. Premiums will vary from state to state. Some states will have lower premiums, but it can limit the choice of doctors and hospitals. There are some exceptions, but individuals including families that do not receive insurance via an employer or a government program like Medicare or Medicaid will be required to get insurance or pay a fine. There are a group of confusing plans included in the exchanges. Profit interests are part of the private insurance companies' M.O. So, these exchanges want a high number of young, healthy human beings to join these exchanges as a means to offset costs associated with requirements that sicker human beings (or those with pre-existing conditions not be charged higher premiums or turned away. If adequate numbers of young and relatively healthy people do not sign up, premiums are sure to rise). According to figures provided by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), premiums for a mid-range “silver” plan will average $328 a month nationally, before any tax credit subsidies are applied. But silver plan costs will vary greatly, ranging from a low of $172 in Minnesota to a high of $516 in Wyoming. The same plan will cost $373 in California, $328 in Florida, and $305 in Texas.
HHS officials point out that subsidies will bring these costs down, and that a 27-year-old making $25,000 a year will see premiums for the silver plan drop to $145 a month in nearly every state. Monthly premium costs will be reduced if this same young adult purchases the lowest-tier “bronze” plan—dropping to $74 in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; $102 in Orlando, Florida; and $119 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Yet, the bronze plans will have the highest out of pocket costs via annual deductibles and cost sharing. The bronze plans cover only 60 of the costs, mid-range plans cover 70 percent of the costs, and 90 percent of the costs are covered by the platinum plans. While the Obama administration has made much of the ACA’s cap on annual out-of-pocket expenses, they are actually set quite high—$6,350 for individuals, $12,700 for families. For the hypothetical 27-year-old earning $25,000 annually, the maximum out-of-pocket costs would be more than a quarter of his or her income. Similarly, a family of four making $50,000 a year could be hit with $12,700 in out-of-pocket costs. Many select insurance companies will be involved in exchanges. Narrow networks can lead into higher out of pocket expenses.


When human beings wake up, then views will make more sense. Now, we know that 1 Corinthians 22 refer to Paul's well known disagreement of Gnostic cults and other fertility cults in that time period (not to place females as inferior inheritably to males at all).  Careful exegetes also claim that the word for “head” (kephale) is better interpreted as “source”, rather than leader. And there is NO Old Testament law that prohibits a woman from speaking, leading, or teaching—otherwise Deborah, Miriam, Huldah and many others would be in big trouble. Paul is not allowing a woman to teach others to dominate men, to teach the domination of men, nor to dominate a man themselves, but to be peaceable (heshucias). This verse has nothing to do at all with mature, trained Christian women exercising their spiritual gifts and serving the body through teaching, preaching, or leading. Some the women according to Paul were led astray by false teaching, whom Paul is correcting in these verses and who must start at the beginning with full submission to the gospel and sound teaching. It becomes overwhelming clear from the  well-documented culture of Ephesus coupled with the original word meanings used in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 (which was about correcting church error not banning women from teaching at all circumstances), that this mandate is not a prohibition against all women teaching/preaching/leading in the church. It’s simply absurd to keep gifted and qualified women from teaching the truth of the gospel, leading church bodies in the ways of Jesus, or simply contributing their gifts by vocally participating in the gatherings of the entire body because of a verse that was originally a disciplinary action against some women at Ephesus, who were lead astray by false teaching. We know that the apostle Paul called Junia an apostle in Romans 16:7. Junia therefore was a female apostle. The Latin/Roman-female-name “Junia” is found in ancient literature of Paul’s time and found nearly 250 times in ancient Roman inscriptions. The fact that Junia was imprisoned with Paul should tell us that this woman was a public figure who was considered a leader in the church.  There is not a single scripture in the NT that forbids a woman from being an apostle at all. So, women have every right to teach, to preach, and to be a living witness of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Males and females have many differences, but differences doesn't negate the fact of gender equality among both genders. So, as males and females, we need to embrace and appreciate our God ordained sex, but we should not believe in stereotypes about males or females that place them into one box or category. Males are diverse and females are diverse too. We have to reject gender stereotypes and see each other as equal members of the entire human race. For faith and life in general are communal and social not just individual. Learning this aspect of humanity can empower young human beings and others to appreciate their total being and their humanity in general. There is mutuality between males and females in the Universe. We should have discussions and learn about each other, so equality can flourish more readily in the world.



The prison industrial complex has been a disgrace. The corporate exploitation in the prison system has been disgraceful as well. We imprison more humans than any other nation in the Earth when we are not the most populous nation in the world. Tons of the innocent are in prison and prisoners' rights have been violated as documented by numerous organizations and activists. This doesn't mean that real criminals ought not to be punished or evil ought to be condoned. It does mean that those who paid their debt to society should have true human rights and the right to vote. It does mean that we should address unfair sentencing practices and the racist nature of the criminal justice system (that conservatives, liberals, libertarians, independents, etc. are talking about now. We are in the majority on this issue).It does mean that men and women in prisons nationwide ought to be treated succinctly as men and women not less than human. We should address minimum sentences and target the school to prison pipeline that has ravished our communities. We have a responsibility too to help our communities, to educate the young, to continue to love our BLACKNESS, to inspire minds, and to live out the truth that almsgiving not bigotry is the way to go. We also have the right to address our grievances publicly and to stand up for righteousness. When we have police brutality, we have to condemn that. When we have human suffering and those being mistreated, we have to oppose that. That is why we have our duty to defend the oppressed and to defend males including females (since both males and females have excellent value in the Universe. Black Women are always glorious). Also, we should not hate another human being because of their color, background, or gender. We should fight for moral improvement and human justice. Altruism, justice, and truth are all legitimate themes to live by. We are in the right side of this issue. Like always, we should always put ourselves in the shoes of the poor and the underprivileged and figure out about some of the plight that they go through. We have to empathize with their pain and devise solutions. All of us know that the prison industrial complex targets young black males. Many young black males in the system ruin their lives forever without a means to return to live a normal life in society. Nonviolent drug offenders are never equivalent to murderers or rapists at all, but many of them serve longer sentences than murderers and rapists for real. So, that is patently unjust by any stretch of the imagination. The reality of mass incarceration is definitely an institutional evil that harms black progress as numerous human beings have eloquently mentioned. The truth is readily known about this issue. As Dr. King said, silence is betrayal. We can't be silent. We are not talking about that folks should be acting as fools (or humans should eliminate individual responsibility from the equation), but we are just saying that much of the system is indeed filled with foolishness, it is corrupt, and it is unjust. We have the right to speak up and advocate changes as a means to build up our community.

By Timothy

Thursday, September 26, 2013

What We Could Do with a Postal Savings Bank: Infrastructure that Doesn’t Cost Taxpayers a Dime

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/09/what-we-could-do-with-a-postal-savings-bank-infrastructure-that-doesnt-cost-taxpayers-a-dime.html

The Stunning Truth About Inequality In America

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-stunning-truth-about-inequality-in-america/5351656

Trojan Pam showing Advice



TrojanPam says:
@ TTNYCRN
I appreciate your thought processes. You didn’t just take my word for it, you THOUGHT about what YOU had observed and drew your OWN LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS.
that’s what counter-racism is all about — in my opinion. It’s not about trading “white think” tyranny for “black think” tyranny,
it’s about presenting the LOGIC and encouraging other victims to THINK about what they are seeing.
Once a person does that they might be surprised by how MUCH they already know,
Because if you look around the world, throughout history over the last 600 or so years, you will see that white supremacy works the SAME WAY, no matter where you go in the world, no matter how handsome, or pretty, or smart, or talented, or nice, or rich you are
If you are NOT WHITE, you will at some point be mistreated simply BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT WHITE.
That is a huge hurdle for a lot of non-whites to accept, that racism/white supremacy is a SYSTEM and that ALL white people KNOW they are white and ALL white people know what it means – and they also know what it means when you are NOT WHITE
That transfer of understanding doesn’t happen by accident, that doesn’t happen OUT OF IGNORANCE,
It is SYSTEMATIC, DELIBERATE THINK, SPEAK AND ACTIONS by those people classified as white that create the same injustices wherever they go.
The problem with creating any “solutions” to dismantling white supremacy is most VICTIMS want to solve the problem without giving up anything OR changing what we do.
I had a person leave a comment on Amazon for my book, “The Interracial Con Game” and this is what he said:
“My main criticism of this book is it doesn’t offer an rational and logical solutions to this issue. It asks basically all blacks turn into automatons and distance ourselves from all white people and in this heavily assimilated culture it’s impossible to do that. Human beings have different personalities, different dreams, desires and life goals and this book posits that all blacks should abandon our personal interests for the good of us all and it’s easy for the author to tell other people what they should do with their lives.”
think about his comment for a second.
“…all blacks should abandon our personal interests for the good of us all and it’s easy for the author to tell other people what they should do with their lives.”
Nowhere in the book does it tell anyone they have to do anything or everything. Nor does the book claim to have the answer to solving the problem of racism/white supremacy.
It gives SUGGESTIONS on SOME things we can all do — without breaking the law, losing our jobs, or putting ourselves in danger. Yet this reader interpreted it as “abandoning (all) his personal interests…” by making some or a few change.
Have you ever had a friend ask you for advice and then get irritated by the advice you give? What does that really mean?
That they never wanted your advice in the first place, they just want the “problem” to magically correct itself or disappear without them having to change anything they’re doing.
We want racism to “go away” without us giving up anything, including our comfort level or our “right” to sex and socialize with white people.
AIN’T HAPPENING.
So, I plant seeds when I can and KEEP IT MOVING.
RE my economic solutions, I don’t have a plan, I have some suggestions, one of them is to STOP SUPPORTING BUSINESSES THAT DISRESPECT US
I’m not familiar enough to make a blanket comparison with the NOI’s program but I’m sure I would agree with many of their points,
one of them being we have to CIRCULATE OUR DOLLARS in our own black communities, which means we have to start more businesses which will provide more jobs for black people
that requires black people being willing to support other black people, and as I mentioned earlier, that is a VERY DIFFICULT thing for us to do due to the brain-trashing we have experienced for such a long time.
Which is why I stress the importance of understanding racism/white supremacy and how it works so we will understand how we were damaged and can work to reduce our own anti-blackness.

The World Needs Peace – But Not a Pax Americana



http://blackagendareport.com/content/world-needs-peace-%E2%80%93-not-pax-Americana


Marissa Alexander

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/17/1224283/-Deposition-Excerpts-From-Marissa-Alexander-s-Abusive-Husband#

http://justiceformarissa.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-08-22T22:53:00-07:00&max-results=7


http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/09/26/2685251/florida-court-grants-new-trial-to-woman-serving-20-years-for-firing-warning-shot/

http://www.bleausa.org/Florida.pdf



Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Reality




 

Everyone is talking about the Ted Cruz situation. The truth is apparent about this situation. The Good cop and bad cop routine in Washington relates to Cruz indeed. The Republican bad cops are angry that the ACA will not end, but they are certainly pushing along with their anti-worker, pro-Big Business measures. This latest Congressional showdown dealt with federal spending. Many Republicans threaten a shutdown. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas doesn't like the Affordable Care Act. He wants it defunded. The good cops are the White House and the Democrats. The White House insisted that they will never give up on health care reform or let the government close because they say that they care about working people--while quietly agreeing to many of the cuts and concessions that the Republicans want (and claiming they're being "responsible" for doing so). This is the Left/Right paradigm at work. While in the outward surface, the Republicans and Democrats may hate each other, but in their leadership they want to target the wealth of the working class and the poor to get their agenda achieved. Both parties want to cut much of the social safety net as a means to cover their own agendas. While the reactionaries want to eliminate all of the social safety net, some Democrats want to cut much of it. The Democrats advanced the grand bargain to reduce the social safety net as a means to raise the debt ceiling back in the summer of 2011. Even Corporate America warned against the Republicans' game of chicken with the world economy. But it was the Democrats who capitulated, agreeing to even deeper spending cuts. There were more showdowns at the start of 2013, in the wake of an election that Obama won easily. The outcome: Obama agreed to $85 billion in federal spending cuts, including furloughs of thousands of federal workers and cuts to supplement jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. We know that the Affordable Care Act will have the insurance exchanges come more about in October 1. In this system, if individuals don't have health insurance, they risk paying penalties with their taxes. The individual mandate will force millions of new customers into the arms of private insurers--and leave billions and billions of dollars in their bank accounts. The insurance giants knew there were windfall profits to be made from a new health care law, which is why their lobbyists were in place to help shape the legislation--to make sure, for example, that there was no "public option" for mandated insurance that would compete with private companies. We know that many of the Republicans fight real change, so that the Democrats can compromise as a means to get the status quo going. We know that the ACA has some good parts in it, but it is far from providing all Americans with affordable, accessible health care in America. Boehner and Cruz oppose it not because of progressive reasons, but they want the status quo of health care to exist or total privatization to come about. Cruz is funded by the Koch Brothers. The Koch Brothers wants radical deregulation. They oppose the ACA. The Republicans won't get away with defunding the health care law as long as the Democrats control the Senate. But in the meanwhile, they're loading up spending legislation with all their favorite anti-worker, pro-big business measures: means-testing for Medicare, medical liability "reform," shredding the federal employee retirement system, eliminating the Dodd-Frank financial regulations passed in 2010, weakening the Environmental Protection Agency, restricting other federal regulators, and expanding offshore energy production. We still have about 48 million human beings in America or about 15 percent of the population that lack health insurance. A quarter of people who earn less than $25,000 annually don't have health insurance. The weakness of the ACA is that it is filled with loopholes, compromises, and watered down provisions that will not fix the gap totally. High health care costs and the inefficient for profit health care are still here. So, the truth is that the Affordable Care Act has many legitimate parts to it. That is true, but a single payer universal health care system is better and more efficient.

The President Barack Obama gave a speech at the United Nations. He gave his fifth address to an opening of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. He talked about democracy and humanitarianism, but those two legitimate concepts can never be ideologically or morally be reconciled with militarism or threats of military aggression. It doesn't work like that regardless if Republicans or Democrats try to justify immoral imperialism. The media talked about the possibility of President Barack Obama shaking the hand of Iran President Hassan Rouhani. The Iranians rejected it. The real content of Obama's 50 minute address is heavily known. It is the codification of the foreign policy agenda of the White House. The speech tries to justify the right of Washington to militarily intervene in the Middle East under its own core "interests." We see that the diplomacy toward Syria never negates the evils in the war on terror. The West uses that action as a means to use a tactical maneuver as a means for it to try to justify Western imperialism in the region. There is still hostility in the Middle East. We do not need another aggressive war in the Middle East since our domestic economy is very fragile as it is. The President talked about him withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq (this was forced upon Washington by Iraq's refusal to sign an agreement granting U.S. forces immunity for war crimes and the impending end of the war in Afghanistan). The Pentagon is planning to leave up to 20,000 troops and maintain permanent bases. The President tries to justify murderous drones by saying that they are utilized in a limited capacity. He said that they are used to target those who pose a continuing imminent threat (there is a near certainly of no civilian causalities in his mind). This is an error. The reason is that in Pakistan alone, it is estimated that more than 2,500 human beings have been killed in drone strikes. Most of them are civilians and the vast majority of them died under Obama. Remote control murders in the manifestation of U.S. imperialism and global, slick criminality. Even Guantanamo Bay is still open after five years as the White House claims to want to close it. The detainees there are subjected to the torture of forced feeding and the men that the CIA tortured are placed in trail for their lives before military tribunals. These actions are conquests not victories. The White House admits that dangers remain like Al-Qaeda attacks when the establishment is funding Al-Qaeda related groups in Syria. We know that Al-Qaeda proxies were used by NATO in the regime change of Libya. The reactionary states of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are allied with America in seeking to use proxy wars as a means to have a regime change in Syria. The White House continues to reiterate the unsubstantiated claims that the regime of Bashar Al-Assad was responsible for the August 21 chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus. A strike against Syria will cause more harm in Syria. While claiming that evidence of the regime’s guilt in the August 21 incident was “overwhelming,” Obama offered no explanation of why Washington has refused to present its proof to the United Nations. Both the Syrian regime and Russia have charged that US-backed “rebels” staged the attack in order to blame it on the regime and provoke a US military intervention. Chiding Russia for its opposition to a unilateral and illegal US war on Syria, Obama stated: “We’re no longer in a cold war. There’s no great game to be won, nor does America have any interest in Syria beyond the well-being of its people.” We know that the U.S. bombed human beings for a long time for the reasons of slick reasons. The Syrian war is about the West trying to create a puppet regime, so the West can gain energy rich resources from the Persian Gulf to Central Asia. The U.S. and Moscow deal will end if Syria fails to meet the timetable set for destroying the weapons. The neocons want an unilateral U.S. military attack. The speech from Obama dealt with Iran when Iran has no nuclear weapons at all. The many sanctions against Iran have harmed the country. Even Rouhani admitted at his own speech at the General Assembly that the sanctions are hurting their nation. There is no humanitarianism in bombing nations in an evil fashion. There is no humanitarianism in allowing murderous sanctions and growing military bases worldwide. Militarism and to control oil resources in the Middle East for selfish reasons are highly immoral. The concept of American exceptionalism is about a faux superiority complex that seeks to justify making America the policeman of the whole world. We need egalitarianism not oligarchy. This exceptionalism tries to justify American militarism along with worshipping wealth and exploiting democratic institutions. We have seen economic decline when this imperialism grew for the past decades. We see record social and economic inequality in America. The economic system rewards heavily the top 1 percent. The top 1 percent, which according to a recent report, accounted for 95 percent of all increases in income between 2009 and 2012. At the same time, the latest Census survey shows average household incomes falling to the lowest level in a quarter of a century. Fully one-third of the American population fell into poverty at some point during the same period.

 

The Ghouta chemical attacks are evil. Some have tried to use these attacks that killed Syrian children as a means to justify a military intervention under the guise of "humanitarianism." They took place on August 21, 2013. There is available evidence that numerous children were most probably killed by opposition rebels. Some believe that some rebels exploit this tragedy as a means to blame the Syrian government for the attack. Even the United Nations report refuses to identity the authors of the attack. It admitted that it was a use of chemical weapons against civilians. We do know that Washington is the major supplier of nerve gas precursors, formulations, delivery technology, and storage systems to the Middle East including Israel, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and very possibly Syria (during the Clinton era). Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya who examined the report writes: "...The independent ISTEAMS study contradicts the assertions of the Obama Administration and the entire US Intelligence Community […] through simple observations of the video material that has been put forward as evidence by the United States. The ISTEAMS report does not deny that chemical weapons were used or that innocent Syrians have been killed. What the study does is logically point out through its observations that there is empirical evidence that the sample of videos that the US Intelligence Community has analyzed and nominated as authentic footage has been stage-managed.  This is an important finding, because it refutes the assertions of the representatives of the US Intelligence agencies who testified that the videos they authenticated provide evidence that a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government took place in East Ghouda..." (Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Look With Your Own Eyes: The Videos of the Chemical Attacks in Syria Show Tampered Scenes). Among a series of important findings, the ISTEAMS report notes that even though the attacks are said to have killed up to 1400 people, mostly children appear in the videos and several corpses are shown in different videos said to have been shot in various locations. The Western media did not cover this story since it will contradict the imperial line and against the Washington claims. The information according to which Saudi intelligence was allegedly implicated in the Ghouta chemical attacks was mentioned by a UN official who wished to remain anonymous: "...A senior United Nations official who deals directly with Syrian affairs has told Al-Akhbar that the Syrian government had no involvement in the alleged Ghouta chemical weapons attack: “Of course not, he (President Bashar al-Assad) would be committing suicide.” When asked who he believed was responsible for the use of chemical munitions in Ghouta, the UN official, who would not permit disclosure of his identity, said: “Saudi intelligence was behind the attacks and unfortunately nobody will dare say that.” The official claims that this information was provided by rebels in Ghouta…The UN official’s accusations mirror statements made earlier this year by another senior UN figure Carla del Ponte, who last May told Swiss TV in the aftermath of alleged CW attacks in Khan al-Asal, Sheik Maqsood and Saraqeb that there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels had carried out the attack. Del Ponte also observed that UN inspectors had seen no evidence of the Syrian army using chemical weapons, but added that further investigation was necessary..." (Sharmine Narwani and Radwan Mortada, Questions Plague UN Syria Report. Who was behind the East Ghouta Chemical Weapons Attack?). We can all agree that the chemical attack was a very horrific, unjustified attack. It killed small children. The war criminals who were involved in the attacks ought to face justice.

 

There is the Yemeni human rights activist who was detained at the UK Border under the Terrorism law. Such laws violate blatantly human civil liberties. He was detained and questioned on his work including his political views. Baraa Shiban is a member of Yemen's National Dialogue. That body is tasked with mapping out the country's democratic future. He had been invited to speak at a seminar at the respected international think-tank Chatham House (or known as the Royal Institution of International Affairs. The RIIA was the precursor of the CFR for real). He was detained under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act. That section was recently used to the controversial detention of David Miranda. He or Baraa Shiban was detained on September 23, 2013. He was questioned about his views on human rights abuses in Yemen. When he was informed by the border agent that he did not think his views on the issue were relevant to security, Mr. Shibaan was threatened with being detained for the full nine hours available under the law. He works also for the legal charity named Reprieve as a project coordinator in Yemen. He visited the UK without being detained earlier this summer. In May of this year, he gave a testimony to a U.S. Congressional hearing on the impact of the covert drone program in Yemen. During his questioning, Mr. Shibaan was also told that “Your organization has obviously been causing a lot of problems to your country. The relations between your government and the UK are vital for us.”  Reprieve works to support the relatives of civilian victims of drone strikes who are seeking legal redress.  The organization has recently found evidence showing that the UK supports the US’ programme of covert drone strikes through the provision of communications infrastructure and intelligence. Mr. Shibaan was asked why he was working for a human rights organization. He was told: "What if your organization did something bad to your government, and you are here because of the bad things your organization has done to your government…I want to know, because the relations between Yemen and the UK are important. I want to know that your organization is not disrupting that.” Commenting after his release, Baraa Shiban said: “I was stunned when the border agent said I was being held simply because I came from Yemen. It was even more shocking when he spent the entire time asking me about my human rights work and Reprieve, the charity I work for. Is the UK the kind of place that human rights activists are fair game for detention, intimidation, and interrogation?’ Cori Crider, Strategic Director at Reprieve, said: “This is part of a worsening campaign of intimidation of human rights workers going on at the UK border – especially if they are critical of the so-called ‘war on terror’.  If there were any doubt the UK were abusing its counter-terrorism powers to silence critics, this ends it.” So, the struggle for human civil liberties being really found in the UK continues. We have civil liberty issues in America as well, so do not get it twisted. As the Great Sister Cynthia McKinney has written, the world needs peace not a Pax Americana. We realize that the instruments of war from NATO and the Western elites are suddenly a threat to peace, because they throw international law under the window when they advance war mongering. They hypocritically want nations to embrace freedom when they do not accept freedom and self-determination among human beings with whom that they ideologically disagree with. So, we should be courageous. We should be strong and advance justice in the world.

 

Ida B. Wells was one of the most heroic black human beings in world history. She is a hero for women and all of humanity. She was a Strong Black Woman indeed. She fought for gender equality when that fight was heavily opposed in her lifetime. She fought for the dignity of black females in general when our Sisters back then were unfairly demonized and our Brothers have been restricted too from the full benefits of mainstream society. Even today, our Brothers and Sisters are still oppressed under the same oppressor that enslaved our ancestors from the Motherland of Africa. Ida B. Wells fought against the evil of lynching in America. She wanted equality for all humans in the world. She was a great media literacy educator. Her leadership and great, intellectual insight should inspire all of us to be better and to fight for real, revolutionary change in the world. She was a writer, an activist, an orator, and a great mother. She constantly defended Brothers and Sisters who were the victims of lynching. Wells publicly wrote, as a journalist, about the evils of racism and lynching. Her life in the struggle for black liberation is just as valuable as the lives of Frederick Douglas, WEB DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and others. She lived from July 16, 1862 to March 25, 1931. She was not only an American journalist. She was a newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, and a leader of the civil rights movement. Ida B. Wells was an excellent orator. She was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her father was James Wells and her mother was Elizabeth Warrenton Wells. Their parents were enslaved until freed under the Proclamation. James Wells fought for the advancement of black Americans. Elizabeth was a religious woman and was strict with her children. She lost both of her parents and her 10 month brother because of the 1878 epidemic of yellow fever that killed many in the South. Ida B. Wells worked as a teacher in a black elementary school. Ida B. Wells refused to give up her seat in a train passenger seat which was 71 years before Rosa Parks showed similar resistance on a bus. The conductor and two men dragged Wells out of the car. When she returned to Memphis, she hired an African-American attorney to sue the railroad. She also became a public figure in Memphis when she wrote a newspaper article for The Living Way, a black church weekly, about her treatment on the train. When her lawyer was paid off by the railroad, she hired a white attorney. She at first won a settlement, but lost to the Supreme Court. She wrote under the pen name Iola as a means to oppose segregation and write in favor of racial justice. Ida B. Wells defended black women and black men (who at that time were slandered as collective rapists of white women). Together with Frederick Douglass and other black leaders, she organized a black boycott of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, for its failure to collaborate with the black community on exhibits representing African-American life. Wells, Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn and Ferdinand L. Barnett wrote sections of a pamphlet to be distributed there: "Reasons Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition" detailed the progress of blacks since their arrival in America and the workings of Southern lynchings. Wells later reported to Albion W. Tourgée that copies of the pamphlet had been distributed to more than 20,000 people at the fair. She married Barnett in 1895. She set an early precedent as being one of the first married American women to keep her own last name along with her husband's. The couple had four children: Charles, Herman, Ida, and Alfreda. She founded the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, the first black suffrage organization in 1913, and from l913-1916 worked as a probation officer in Chicago. The poet Langston Hughes said her activities in the field of social work laid the groundwork for the Urban League. When she was sixty-eight, she ran for the Illinois legislature, one of the first black women in the nation to run for public office. Ida B. Wells continue to write literature to defend black men. She also wanted gender equality and fought for the right of women to vote. She passed away in Chicago on March 25, 1931. Schools are named after her. She was honored by America with the Ida B. Wells Commemorative Stamp in 1990. She fought against educational inequalities and wanted human rights. Therefore, Ida B. Wells was a hero and an icon of our community. We should continue to fight for democracy, self-determination, and popular liberation.  Black Pan-African liberation is always a great goal to embrace for all of us.

 

By Timothy

Dr. King's Great Speech

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Questions Plague UN Syria Report. Who was behind the East Ghouta Chemical Weapons Attack?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/questions-plague-un-syria-report-who-was-behind-the-east-ghouta-chemical-weapons-attack/5351337

Seventh Graders Suspended For Nine Months For Playing With Toy Gun… AT HOME

http://www.infowars.com/seventh-graders-suspended-for-nine-months-for-playing-with-toy-gun-at-home/

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 9/23/13

http://blackagendareport.com/content/listen-black-agenda-radio-progressive-radio-network-glen-ford-and-nellie-bailey-%E2%80%93-week-92313

Great Discussions with the Great Black Sister Courtney :)

On the Death of Brother Jonathan A. Ferrell

Me: Hitting him 10 times. This was as an evil, unjustified execution. These recent revelations confirm my view about this case. It has always been evil murder done against unarmed black males, but the brazenness of it now by crooked officers is truly disturbing to say the least. A black man's life ought to valued, but a lot of ignorant folks hate black men and black women all of the time. This man was trying to receive assistance and he was treated as less than a man by corrupt officers. Justice should be done, but the crooked boys (not men) in blue will try to make excuses. Kudos to Newsone for showing this story here, because our people should be reminded of the injustices confronting our community.

Courtney: Hello truthseeker2436577 Last week, around 9pm here, a man of latin origin, knocked on my door and rang the doorbell.I went to the door, never opening it, asking him what he wanted. It was hard to understand him a bit because of his accent but finally figured out that he was asking me about the house for sale across from me. Now, I'm looking at this tall man, asking about some darn building supplies at 9 pm, pitch black out. He wanted to know if I saw some outside the house. In my mind, he was not making sense to me. Could he have been totally legit? Of course but I don't open the door for people at night and not really during the day, when I am home. State your business through the door where I can see you. Anyway, I was like "I don't know what you are talking about.I told him to call the police if someone pulled a fast one on him. I ended up calling for a patrol car to patrol the area anyway. What I said to them was, someone knocked on the door asking about building supplies. That is was probably nothing but found it kind of strange that someone would be asking at 9 at night. I did not panick and tell the police that someone was trying to kick my door in. smh. I am confused as to why this female thought that this man ,who was knocking on the door, was trying to rob and harm her and her child.


Me: Hello Sister Courtney.
Thank God you are Okay. You being Okay is great first and foremost.
You did the right thing since you can just crack the door a little to allow someone to state their business and so forth. I never had an incident like that before. I do have Jehovah Witnesses religious missionaries knock on my door and talking to me about their religious view before on Saturday mornings though. JWs target homes all of the time, but this act to the young man was totally unjustified without question. The women talking to the operator could have had a preconceived notion (we know the notion) about a black male knocking on her door. He obviously was unarmed and ran away from the house meaning that he was no long term threat to the female. The female acted hysterically. The man was involved in an accident. This incident requires little investigation. It is a clear cut case of excessive force. The officer is lucky that he is charged manslaughter since he should be charged with 1st degree murder as you have mentioned before.

Courtney: Thanks but i'm never worried but cautious. I got stuff for that. :)Anyway, The reason why I told it is because, their is a clear line between being hysterical and being rational,calm,and collected. Their would of been no reason for me to ASSUME THAT this latin, mexican, or other man, was going to do me harm right off the back because the door was closed.If the scenario by him changed in some sort of way that was threatening, then I would of went to plan b and called 911 describing what was unfolding. This woman opened the door at 2 in the morning for someone who she thought was her husband? REALLY? Usually, a responsible husband will tell his wife, about what time he is going to be home. And a husband will always say outside the door, "ITS ME" IDENTIFYING himself to his woman in some way with visual conformation because that would be apart of that MANHOOD PROTECTION THING for his woman and family.I'm not buying this scenario. This sounds like a case of the BIG BLACK SCARY MAN SYNDROME. When in fact, it should be the other way around.

Me: We know the stuff that you got. :) There is nothing wrong with self defense indeed Sister. :)
The rest of your points are very interesting. The "big black brute" sick stereotype is still among us as evident with this incident. Many of the racists have embraced this lying stereotype as an excuse to try to repel legitimate, aggressive black masculine power in the world (and to scapegoat black men for all ills of America). That is an excellent point that you have made. That is why black men have every God given right to be aggressive against oppression, to be aggressive against injustice, to be aggressive as a means to build in society (and achieve their real, total potential as black men), and to be sensitive to the needs of the community, the poor, and the oppressed in society. Black women being strong too is no detriment to her femininity either since as Malcolm X said, when the women is progressive, then the whole of society is progressive. Also, there are always signals that a wife and a husband know when a husband comes home. It can be a specific door ring, or a key opening a door (because if you own a home, you have a key or multiple ones. It is strange for her to not realize that the murdered man was not her husband). The other way around is also correct by you since many black human beings (including strong, black grown men) fear losing their jobs, losing their income, etc. from the current white power structure (as Dr. King said). So, we should use strength not fear as a motivating factor in fighting for our liberation as black human beings.

Courtney: You Said- The "big black brute" sick stereotype is still among us as evident with this incident. Many of the racists have this as an excuse to try to repel legitimate, aggressive black masculine power in the world (and to scapegoat black men for all ills of America).
Exactly Truthseeker. When in fact , it was the black mans Masculinity and strength that built America. The stereotypes about the Masculinity of black men are beyond ignorant and it comes from others who fear and lack and have absolutely no confidence of their own masculinity. As a woman, the black man and his masculinity,manhood is something that women should never fear when it's balanced and controlled. That is something that black women need and look for because it's his manhood and masculinity that protects us and gets things done as well as understanding that his power is colossal in nature but never misusing it against his women and children. When WE see a strong,masculine black man, We don't fear it, We smile at it. Their is nothing wrong with BLACK MANHOOD,MASCULINITY. He is not made to be soft but we as women ,tap into his compassionate side for us. The black mans masculinity should not be watered down.

Me: Co-Sign 100 percent Sista Courtney :)
Once again, you are a great defender of us black men and us Brothers appreciate you for it. Yes, when racists demonize black masculinity, the express their own inadequacies and inferiority complexities. For some, they falsely assume that strength, power, and legitimate aggressiveness are negatives in the world. These folks confuse these items with real evil negatives in the world like mistreatment, abuse, and unjust evil. See, I can be aggressive legitimately or show my strength as a man, but I should not mistreat or abuse a fellow human being. That is the point that you and others have made. We as men and women have differences and similarities. When we appreciate our differences and similarities in a mutually beneficial fashion, then Unity can grow, love can grow, and Life will be more fulfilling. I will continue to defend black men and black women forever like always. Have a Blessed Day Sista Courtney. :) I love you as a great, inspirational human being. :) I love you.

Courtney: You said- For some, they falsely assume that strength, power, and legitimate aggressiveness are negatives in the world.
As you stated, they are not. Anyone with commonsense, can understand this.I have a brother, have great masculine black men in my family so I will always defend the truth and what I recognize as positives, masculine manhood in black men period.No one can convince me of anything other than that. You have blessed day too Truthseeker2436577 :)


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Me: I heard of the popularity of the show Castle before. I like to look at political shows around this time and then look at other shows later on like comedies or movies on various channels. I am doing fine. Also, I like Soul Story on VH1Soul too (which shows videos about one artist's musical evolution throughout their career). In the final analysis, the grind can never be stopped, the drum still beats, and the soul continues to fly in the Universe.

Courtney: I usually do but sometimes, I get sick of all the talking points on certain news channels.. I use to like to watch the Keith Olbermann show until they canned him.I will tune into Melissa Perry, Rachel Meadow wasn't to bad, Chris Mathews. Sharpton. To keep us with all the lies being told. :)
CAstle is great! well written show plus sister Tamala Jones plays the medical examiner. Just wish she had more face time but hopefully the new season she will. Love movies. didn't see World War Z yet so hopefully it will be in red box this weekend. :)

Me: I know what you mean. I remember watching the Phil Donahue show back in 2003 during the run up to the Iraq War. It was cut soon after the Iraq War began. I look at many political shows to get how folks think on issues and look at the Internet, books, etc. as a means to get the fuller picture on political matters. I do love Angela Rye's tribute to her unborn son. I think she spoke from her heart on that matter. I almost shed tears when I heard her tribute to black males from her heart. Tamron Hall is another strong, qualified, and determined woman too, regardless of how you think of her politics. Balance is what we need as you have mentioned. There is time for joy and a time for seriousness. There is a time to work and a time for play. As long as we fight for truth and improve ourselves including our communities, then that is all that matters at the end of the day. :)

Courtney: Yup. Tamron Hall has her own show on Investigative I.D and yes I will watch her on msnbc when I can catch it as well. She is extremely strong ,intelligent. I have even more respect for her, learning about the murder of her sister and how she channeled that into her new show.
Thank you for putting me on to Angela Rye. I just watched Letter to my unborn Son. She spoke 100 percent TRUTH and walks with truth to put it out there like that.YOU CAN'T CENSOR THE TRUTH AND IT SHOULD NOT BE. She is right and what she said should be heard and internalized by every black woman with a son and those of us who have non as of yet.. Thank you for this vital information. :)

Me: You're Welcome Sista. Approaching 2020, the struggle continues, but our faith is strong and our cause is just. There is nothing like the truth and true love also. I am human so I will love. I will continue to keep the faith and believe in the honorable adherence to black liberation. Thank you for your insightful Wisdom. :)

Courtney: Yes it does. Different Generation,same nonsense.So we have to be careful and not get to comfortable because sometimes things appear as if they have changed, and some things have ,but these institutions of racism that edud01, you,broshabbazz,blackheywood,and even the real smitty in his own way, speak about, are still very much alive. Thank you and thanks to them as well.


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Monday, September 23, 2013

More Links


http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/articles_papers_reports/4960.html

http://www.hermes-press.com/index1.html

http://www.hermes-press.com/tea_party_fascism.htm

http://www.kiilunyasha.blogspot.com/

http://truthseeker24s3rdmillenniumtidbits.blogspot.com/

Monday News in Late September 2013




One of the greatest signs of the counterfeit progressives is their agreement with imperialism. They are called by some as "the cruise missile left." They use humanitarian issues as an excuse to promote militarism when that can complicate matters. The truth is that true humanitarianism is trying to resolve conflicts peaceful not advancing the whirlwinds of war. We know that genocide has been used to describe crimes made by countries who are the victims rather than perpetrators of war. Also, the establishment omits the crimes committed by the United States and Israel. We know that the new Secretary of State is John Kerry and the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. Both have pushed for a military intervention in Syria on humanitarian grounds before the deal came about between the West, Russia, and Syria. The West will support genocide that is bounded under their interest. One example is how the U.S. sponsored genocide in Vietnam via Operation Phoenix and other covert programs. The Vietnam War caused millions to be directly killed by U.S. forces. The U.S. government installed and supported a reactionary government in Guatemala back in the 1980's (when this Guatemalan government caused the mass killing of as many as 100,000 Mayan Indians between 1978 and 1985, in what Amnesty International called “A Government Program of Political Murder.”). Not a word from these counterfeit progressives about the CIA’s role in facilitating the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians deemed Communists in 1965-66. Power talks about Iraq, but refuses to recognize the U.S. role in the genocide in Iraq. Saddam Hussein used chemical warfare and killing of Kurds at Halabja and elsewhere. Yet, there was the diplomatic rapprochement with Saddam in the midst of his war with Iran in 1983, the active U.S. logistical support of Saddam during that war, and the U.S. approval of sales and transfers of chemical and biological weapons during the period in which he was using chemical weapons against the Kurds. Also, there were active efforts by the U.S. and the UK to block UN actions that might have obstructed Saddam's killings. The sanctions organized by the West murdered over 1 million Iraqis. That was one of the worse post WWII genocides in the post WWII era. The USA supported it with Madeleine Albright saying that the murderous sanctions were worth it against Iraqi children (which is sick to say the least). There is the genocide against the Palestinians and then apartheid South Africa once being allied with Israel during the 1980's. So, imperialism and militarism by the West is just as evil as any form of genocide. Many other so-called progressives have been caught up in  advancing imperialism. Bill Clinton led militarism globally. Now, this doesn't mean that we should be isolationists. We ought to believe in fair trade, diplomacy, negotiations, and peaceful talks. This doesn't mean that we should organize wars of aggression or commit war crimes though. The establishment has agreed with dropping drones in villages in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. No major human-rights NGO opposed the invasion of Iraq. Even some in the Nation magazine agree with the wars in Central Asia. The West wants to assert global hegemony in the world. Predatory capitalists use the mainstream media and other cabal approved analysts to support imperialism and token measures not real revolutionary changes in society. We know that mainstream capitalism is a totally failed system and it must be replaced to benefit all of the people not the select few. We should reject fake revolutions. There is the NSA collecting American phone records. There are the TSA agents harassing human beings in airports via in the most grotesque fashion, Gitmo, and other injustices in the world. It is very immature to believe in the notion that the U.S. is just some passive benign giant that must vanquish evil as its destiny in foreign lands. The liberal hawks are just as wrong as the conservative hawks at the end of the day.

We know that there was a stand down during the shooting in D.C. There are many questions about the stand down order given to the Capitol police during the Navy Yard mass casualty event. This stand down is not readily reported by the mainstream media at all. Even the BBC has reported on this story. The Capitol police themselves are preparing an official investigation into what happened and it is due to be released no later than October 21st. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) is meeting with them to find out what happened, why they stood down, and if lives could have been realistically saved had they not been ordered out of the area while the shooter was still active. The U.S. Capitol police have a large jurisdiction in working with the US Park police including the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. Officers from the Capitol police also have jurisdiction throughout the District of Columbia to take enforcement action when they observe or are made aware of crimes of violence while on official duties. So, the Capitol police aren't just limited to the capitol. The Navy Yard is within the jurisdiction where the U.S. Capitol police can be active indeed. The government contractor that screened Edward Snowden also was responsible for a background check that granted “secret” security clearance to Aaron Alexis, the alleged Navy Yard shooter. USIS, a private company based in Falls Church, Va., said on Thursday that it had vetted Alexis in 2007.The security clearance he subsequently received in 2008 was good for ten years, until 2018. Did you know it was the same FBI tactical team that “found” Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that was on the scene in the Navy Yard and “found” Aaron Alexis? Did you know it was the FBI who eventually dismissed the stories about the other two shooters? ABC News has reported from “sources” that the shotgun supposedly used by Aaron Alexis had two little phrases carved into its stock: “better off this way” and “My E-L-F Weapon.” In a report that has gone virtually unnoticed in the mainstream press, D.C. police and firefighters who first arrived to assist at the Washington Navy Yard earlier this week say they were frustrated when their radios failed during inspection of the building, adding yet another strange development to the already questionable set of circumstances that took place that day. An union representative for the first responders said, “Initially, officers found that their radios were working. But as they ventured deeper into the building where the shooting took place, their equipment stopped functioning,” according to a report from The Hill. This story gets stranger and stranger. We will wait and see more information about this event. Some are exploiting this event as an excuse to advance the growth of the military intelligence apparatus. As for the gun rights issues, there should be a balance. We should not allow criminals and those with serious mental health issues own guns (in other words, we should try out best to prevent dangerous individuals from owning firearms in the first place), but we should allow innocent law abiding citizens the right to bear arms in a free and open society. Also, we need to accept history. Reactionaries forget that many of the Founders never wanted blacks to bear arms back in the day. As a slaveholder and a pseudo-scientific racist, Jefferson surely did not envision blacks as having any individual right to own guns themselves or to fight for their own liberty. Reflecting on blacks who fought bravely in the Revolution, Jefferson concluded that their courage was an illusion resulting from their intellectual inability to recognize danger. So, Thomas Jefferson was a racist, cowardly piece of work. Many Founding fathers were terrified of a slave rebellion and wanted the colonists to all have an armed militia in case there was a slave uprising. So, some of them used the Second Amendment as a means to advance their own interests not to grant freedom or justice to black human beings. This doesn't mean that self-defense is immoral. One thing that rings true is that we should give condolences and prayers to the victims and their families of this evil D.C. Navy Shipyard Shooting.

The New York mayor race is still continuing. 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 as the Democratic nominee for mayor of NY battling against the Republican candidate Joe Lhota. Bill 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. He led the polls in the mayoral race so far. 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 will not be a cake watch 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.

We know more information about the Austrian School as time goes on. Many of those in this school are conservatives or libertarians. Many of them are hostile towards women, minorities, workers, and the environment. They claim to advance family values, but some of them are ignorant of the value of single families, blended families, etc. not just glorious nuclear families. One simple example is how Austrian School follower Rockwell (or the President of the Mises Institute) admitted that he hates environmental regulation even the highly successful Clean Air Act. Rockwell omits that a hundred years before the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the environment grew increasingly polluted. Since those Acts have existed, the country is cleaner than that time period. Rockwell said that civil rights legislation is the worst regulatory intervention in labor markets. He omits that free markets are never perfect or omnipotent. The Civil Rights Act and other legislation overtly ended Jim Crow laws. Ron Paul (a famous Austrian economist advocate) received campaign money from the white supremacist Don Black and Ron refused to send the money back. Lew Rockwell, head of the Mises Society, is on record as having wrote the infamous Ron Paul newsletters. Indeed, Murray Rothbard joined the paleoconservative movement and once wrote a spirited defense of David Duke. Even Austrian activist Murray Rothbard defended Rockwell's views that the beating of Rodney King was justified. The reality is that the beating of Rodney King was completely evil and unjustified point blank period, and exclamation point. Austrian von Mises did not want women the right to vote as late as 1925. He also saw no need to give women equal rights, since "a woman… is simply the lover and mother who serves the sexual drive." Mises believed in the racist view that different races have different levels of cognitive abilities naturally, which is racist. Rothbard does not attribute the problems of blacks or other minorities to racism and prejudice, but to "those very parasitic values of idleness and irresponsibility" found in those communities. The reality is that many poor human beings are poor now by no fault of their own (either by sequester, layoffs, firings, catastrophic natural disaster, or for other reasons). Austrian economist Friedrich Von Hayek, a group that included Ludwig Von Mises and Milton Friedman, who had been arguing since the 1940s against state intervention in the economy, against unions, and against the welfare state. Between the end of World War II and the early 70s, the U.S. standard of living (adjusted for inflation) doubled -- the fastest rate of prolonged growth in U.S. history. The U.S. became a middle class nation for the first time, with the share of families owning their own homes climbing from 44 to 63 percent. Families owning their own cars rose even more dramatically, from 54 to almost 100 percent. Poverty, which had been 56 percent in 1900, fell to an all-time low of 11 percent in 1973. There has not been a wide spread event of a massive Depression in America between 1945 and 1973. The global economy form the late 1940's to the early 1970's expanded at a rate of 4 percent per year. This was not caused by Austrian Economics, but by progressive economic policies. However, by the 1970s, the long boom was coming to an end. In 1965, persistent inflation set in among the advanced capitalist nations. At the same time, U.S. profit rates began to fall precipitously as the U.S.—burdened by high military spending and aging capital stock—became less competitive on the world market against the freshly rebuilt and retooled economic powers in Europe and Japan. This produced a period of low growth and high inflation—dubbed “stagflation.” We know that Milton Friedman and the University of Chicago School have ideologically attacked working class wages and want to dismantle the social safety net including privatizing public enterprises.

We need to know more of the truth as well. So, we should do our best to overcome ignorance and believe in the truth including justice. Some folks even want their capitalist rulers to harm them. We have to see things as they are if we want the future to be better indeed. When we see war crimes in Iraq and other nations of the world via Western war crimes, then we have to know that. We can never be brainwashed by violence and ignorance. For example, we should reject shows that glamorize violence and degenerate language that harms social harmony and harms real morality. We have to reject the militarism as found in American foreign policy. We have to stop supporting a regressive U.S. economic policy too. We know that human beings in Wall Street love the record bailouts sent to them and the neoliberal economic agenda. We have to think critically in the world. It is really the truth that the mainstream media is dominated by a handful of vast conglomerates including the leading newspapers and television networks. We should deal with social reality. We have to increase understanding of the world and eliminate our personal illusions. We have to continue to enact critical thinking of the world. We need self-awareness. That means that we need our autonomous self (and to think and act on its own initiative). Also, we should go out have concern for the human welfare of humanity in general. So, we should learn about social, political, and economic injustices as a means to take positive, constructive action against the oppressive elements of reality. We should use action as a means to build a real community in the world. We have to inform ourselves about the truth. We can never believe in the old lies that my country right or wrong, I am only following orders, and I carry out even unjust laws. Those sayings relate to totalitarianism. We have every right to execute independent thinking. That means that we should fight against police brutality as a means to disagree with the police state. That means that we confront evil. That is why many human beings now are creating free breakfast clinics, housing cooperatives, and political education. For education is superior to the lies shown by the establishment all of the time (from the lies about Iraqi WMDs years ago to the lie that Syria is some immediate threat to American soil).The global recession and the 12 million hungry American children is proof positive of how well capitalism works. One strong reason why poverty exist is that much of it is a product of the exploitative and now disintegrating corporate capitalist system. That is why it was the reactionary capitalist Krupp who once aided the reactionary Adolf Hitler. Also, institutional racism relates to black poverty as well. Institutional racism under capitalist conditions means superexploitation and economic dislocation. So, we should establish bonds with our families, friends, and loved ones. We should improve our health and wellbeing. We should never embrace pettiness and arrogance, but tolerance and truth telling. We ought to have love for our humanity and help out our fellow man.

 

By Timothy