Monday, May 21, 2007

HOLOCAUST REDUX. THE NEW YORK TIMES COVERS UP GENOCIDE – AGAIN.

UP FRONT News May 21, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/
HOLOCAUST REDUX. THE NEW YORK TIMES COVERS UP GENOCIDE – AGAIN.
THE CASE OF TIBET. A TALE OF RUBIN.

Several decades too late The New York Times a few years ago apologized for having in the 1930’s and 1940’s suppressed stories about the Nazi Genocide against the Jews. When it comes to the suppression of news about a Genocide, The Times is doing it again.

While The Times, like many other papers, reports on the Genocide in Darfur (China gets a lot of oil from the Sudan), the Grey Lady is almost completely silent about the “Quiet Genocide” being perpetrated by Communist China in Occupied Tibet.

The New York Times cannot plead ignorance. The paper, like many others in the main-
stream media, especially China-profiteering Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, is guilty of censorship and news management.

Getting the attention of The New York Times on a political story is not easy. The Times is, before anything else, a profit-motivated corporation. Despite that fact, I have myself been covered in The Times on a couple of occasions. On May 6, 1990 I was the subject of a very god story in the Sunday Times by veteran reporter Ron Alexander (who used to do the Metropolitan Diary) about “Up Front Muse” performing arts events in my loft home at the time (a story also covered in the Daily News, the Post, and other media). On August 28, 2005 political reporter Jonathan Hicks reported my rebuttal to NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum defamatory reference to me as a “stalker.” He also followed up on the story, first reported in UP FRONT News, of Gotbaum’s links to the CIA. On June 28, 2006 Times political reporter Patrick Healy very briefly reported my candidacy for the U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton.

While campaigning for the Senate, one of my issues was the continuing cover-up of the now over ½ century old Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet and Bill and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in that cover-up. At a meting of the Clearwater environmental group one evening, activist Jonathan Rubin read some of my campaign literature about Tibet and offered to be of help with The Times. He volunteered the fact that Elizabeth Rubin, a high level writer for the New York Times Magazine, is his sister. I gave him a pile of UP FRONT News and other material about Tibet and all my contact information to give to Ms. Rubin. I told him about my past coverage in The Times and about my other contacts with that paper. (Times columnist, Bob Herbert, whom I have met on a few occasions and to whom I sometimes send e-mails, once covered a big story I broke about budget cut-caused patient deaths at City-operated Queens Hospital Center in 1978 when he was a reporter for the Daily News. I’m also somewhat acquainted wit another Times editor whom I met some years ago at an East Village trivia bar contest, who tried to interest some of the bigger shots at the paper in the Tibet Genocide story.) Mr. Rubin told me that, as far as he is aware, his sister’s area of coverage was not Tibet but more toward the Middle East. I said that I certainly wasn’t necessarily expecting her to do a story but that I hoped that at her rather high level at The Times she could help me with access.
As it turns out, despite Jonathan Rubin’s repeated and apparently sincere efforts with his sister, her response has been “That’s not my department” and to refuse to disclose her e-mail address or any other contact information to me (despite my explicit assurances of confidentiality). That is how cover-ups operate. As far as I as concerned, regardless of what happens at The New York Times or any other media (who, presumably in consider-ation of economic interests in China, suppress the Genocide in Tibet story). Elizabeth Rubin, presumably motivated by nothing more than self-interest, is guilty of unethical conduct.
The New York Times never learns.
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Friday, May 18, 2007

UNYTE: A NEW VOICE FOR ALL TENANTS THE UNION OF NEW YORK TENANTS DECLARES “WE SHALL NOT BE REMOVED!”

UP FRONT News May 17, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com

UNYTE: A NEW VOICE FOR ALL TENANTS THE UNION OF NEW YORK TENANTS DECLARES “WE SHALL NOT BE REMOVED!”

“New York is under assault from developers and landlords. Our legal rights have been eroded, loopholes have been exploited and there is little or no regulatory oversight. Af- fordable housing that sustains communities is rapidly disappearing. We are in crisis We are losing our rights and protections. Landlords and developers have organized; so must we.”

The above constitutes, in summarized form, the raison d’etre of the Union of New York Tenants, or UNYTE, a New York City-based grassroots organization open to all tenants and supporters in New York State. While there is hardly a shortage of tenant advocacy organizations in New York, the fact is that landlords and developers, who contribute heavily to the campaign coffers of politicians of most political parties, are on the offensive. Gentrification and over-development are rampant. While there are occasional victories, such as the demise of the West Side Stadium venture, major giveaways to the rich, such as the new Yankee Stadium gift to George Steinbrenner, which has meant the deaths of two City parks, not to speak of many other ills to be visited upon the South Bronx, persist. Once working class neighborhoods such as what is now called Tribeca are now playgrounds for the rich. The Lower East Side of Manhattan is being transformed from a multiethnic melting pot into a seething cauldron of resistance to the tsunami of luxury development there. There are similar situations in all the boroughs and in
various communities outside New York City. We are ruled by a billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg and a development-friendly City Council Speaker, Christine Quinn who are diligent about fining parking violators but allow developers to plunder the treasury via tax abatements and other favors.

And, while there are many dedicated tenants rights activists, we have been victimized for decades by so called, essentially self-appointed “leaders” like the reportedly right wing-linked Mike McKee and his pal in the lofts Chuck Delaney. It is Mike McKee who, aside from his other duplicities, is to an important degree responsible for the continuing existence of the biggest loophole of all, the loophole that allows landlords to obtain rent increases without “opening their books.” As first reported in UP FRONT News, it was Mike McKee – along with Delaney and a few others – who collaborated with the real estate lobby in repeated killing the oft-introduced in the past Flynn-Dearie Rent Protection Act, which, had it been enacted (a real possibility since its State Senate sponsor, John Flynn, was a Republican) would have required landlords to open their books to justify rent increase demands, aside from providing other protections to residential tenants. McKee, who has made a career out of denouncing Republicans en masse and cozying up to real estate-compliant Democrats (rendering himself almost hopelessly compromised when it comes to effective pro-tenant lobbying) spouts a slick pseudo-left populist line before tenant audiences. When asked about his reported links to the right wing think tank,

the Manhattan Institute, McKee is as silent as Dick Cheney when questioned about his hunting accuracy. Any collaboration with McKee, who controls Tenants & Neighbors and has major influence in Julie Miles’ Housing Here and Now, is bad for tenants.

For a number of months a number of independent minded and concerned tenant activists, including Rob Hollander of the Lower East Side Residents for Responsible Development, and Monte Schapiro, a tenant in an East 5th Street building being beleaguered by a loophole-hungry landlord, have been cobbling together a true grass roots tenants union. Out of a series of meetings in recent weeks, UNYTE has been born.

UNYTE’s literature focuses on all sorts of realities: loopholes, double-talking poli-
ticians, statistics showing how New York City is becoming a playground for the rich and a network of ghettoes for everyone else, incompetent and corrupt government agencies,
avaricious loophole-exploiting lawyers, etc., etc., etc. – and the need to organize.
UNYTE’s slogan should resound. “We shall not be removed!”
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GEOFFREY BLANK, JAMES D. GIBBONS, EDWIN CLASS, AND WINSTON CHURCHILL.

UP FRONT News May 2, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/
GEOFFREY BLANK, JAMES D. GIBBONS, EDWIN CLASS, AND WINSTON CHURCHILL.
FASCISM IN COURT AND THE STREET

Aside from the neo-fascist Geoffrey Blank, one of the more hypocritical, and possibly racist, individuals I’ve encountered in my many hours in Union Square is “artist” Edwin Class. Mr. Class seems to make a living by offering little bits of writing space on his can- vases, for a fee. Indeed, I once paid him $1.00 and placed my opinion of the fraud and criminal Blank on the artwork, while Class joined me in my very negative charactariza- tions of Blank, an incorrigible liar, in court and on the streets and one of the few anti-Se mitic Jews I know. When Blank is around, however, Class loses class and becomes a Blankie. Class, when I encountered him at a table at the recent immigrant rights rally in Union Square, apparently sort of celebrating what Blank sees as some kind of victory At his Criminal Court sentencing, treated me very disrespectfully. A personal hygiene comment coming from someone whose appearance would be appropriate in a police lineup is racist.

Geoffrey Blank is the fellow very well known to the increasing number of readers of this newspaper as the violence-prone and terrorism-linked pseudo-left demagogue who tried to hijack speakouts of the No Police State Coalition and convert those speakouts into his personal Hitler-style Nuremberg rallies. Blank has allowed his already out of control ego to expand to the bursting point by being coddled by his cult of followers and evidently by a Criminal Court Judge named James D. Gibbons, who will be the subject of coverage for apparent judicial misconduct with regard to his reported behavior at the “sentencing” of the convicted repeat offender Blank on April 30. I’m told that Gibbons, aside from in open court subjecting critics such as myself and No Police State Coalition list-serve co-manager Roman Shusterman to Blank’s intimidations, compared Blank to Winston Churchill and to civil rights leaders. The comparison to Churchill - who, aside from being a valuable ally in World War II, was a racist and imperialist whose antipathy for Adolf Hitler was motivated by his concerns that the Nazis might take over the British empire - may be appropriate, since Blank is a racist and imperialist, although his chances at ruling any empire are remote. Any suggestions that Blank is a civil rights leader should have Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King spinning in their graves and Jesus doing like-
wise - if He were still in His grave, which He is not.

Suffice it to say that Blank is a political thug who makes it a habit to intimidate anyone, especially me, who criticizes him in any way. He uses threats and violence, directly and indirectly. He has bragged about being financially supported by the Freedom Socialist party, a “left” group, whose spokesperson, a Blankie named Stephen Durham, is on record (New York Post December 26, 2005) as condoning Musab al-Zarqawi’s hostage beheadings. The Post, in what is as far as I am aware an unrebutted story, reports that the FSP is under international investigation for links to terrorism in Iraq. Blank, a frequent supporter of for example Saddam Hussein, is, as far as I am concerned, a local terrorist and is understandably a person of considerable interest to law enforcement, for behavior far more serious than his sound device permit violations in Union Square.

Geoffrey Blank and Edwin Class: examples of the “classless society?” Possibly, since they have no class.
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

STATEN ISLAND: IT’S NOT THE BOROUGH THAT IS “FORGOTTEN”, IT’S THE PEOPLE. THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY MACHINE. A FERRY TRUE STORY

UP FRONT News May 5, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com

STATEN ISLAND: IT’S NOT THE BOROUGH THAT IS “FORGOTTEN”, IT’S THE PEOPLE. THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY MACHINE. A FERRY TRUE STORY

One of the reasons I believe that there are, relative to the rest of New York City, proportionally more Republicans in Staten Island than the other boroughs is because of the cliquish and boss-like nature of the Democrats. While much of Staten Island is Republican, and has repeatedly elected as Congressman Vito Fossella, a reactionary pal of Dick Cheney, the north shore is heavily Democratic.

I’ve lived in Staten Island for over two years and have learned the machine politics of for example Carmine de Sapio in Manhattan and Meade Esposito in Brooklyn continue to prevail. The boss is Hillary Clinton and her control is enforced by people like New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and her pal City Councilman Michael McMahon. “Liberals” such as State Senator Diane Savino – who has a Chief of Staff named Robert Cataldo who, in the privacy of Savino’s district office on Richmond Terrace office, once threatened me with violence when I was seeking urgent constituent assistance as a homeless person – enforce Mrs. Clinton’s dictatorial rule. The late Assemblyman John Lavelle was less blatant but just as Clinton-subservient.

You see, the machine Democrats do not take kindly to a citizen, such as me, who publishes a newspaper that exposes Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, Christine Quinn and Ed Koch, among others, as frauds when it comes to human rights. And Democratic machine, particularly in Staten Island, was not at all happy when I ran as a Democratic write-in candidate for the U.S. Senate against Mrs. Clinton, an elected official who some years ago not only denied me urgent constituent services but threatened me personally. My campaign widely voiced the truth about Clinton, who is greedy, power-obsessed, anti-poor, anti-peace, and anti-human rights.

Staten Island is also something of a media monopoly borough. While there are plenty of Times, Daily News, and steadily increasing number of UP FRONT News readers, The Staten Island Advance is still sort of the paper of record. A few weeks ago I was at a meeting of enrolled Democrats, all of a progressive, Clinton-independent nature. Someone brought up the subject of the Advance and what followed was something of a cascade of derogatory comments. A few months ago, a professional landscape engineer I met on the ferry referred to the paper as the Staten Island Retreat, a label I have been using for months. The political editor of the Advance is a dour fellow named Tom Wrobleski, an apparent McMahon/Quinn pal, who for months censored out the news of my candidacy. When he did cover me, he wrote a possibly libelously incorrect account of the very public dispute that emerged when the paranoid Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, publicly referred to me as a “stalker.” Tom Wrobleski politically selects the phone messages and e-mails to which he will not respond. Indeed, I had to complain to News Editor Dean Balsamini, who essentially directed Wrobleski to do a story on my campaign. Wrobleski conducted the interview by telephone and his story appeared on page one (thanks no doubt to Balsamini) in the Advance on August 21, 2006, long, long after he knew of my campaign. The best part of Wrobleski’s article is his mention of the fact that I have accused Hillary Clinton of covering up the Genocide in Tibet. And that makes Tom Wrobleski and the Staten Island Advance perhaps the only paper that doesn’t follow up a story on Genocide.

Despite all this, I like Staten Island, which, believe it or not, has a history of progressive activism, some of which even occasionally gets reported in the Advance, a newspaper clearly purchased more for its advertising and local sports than for its political reporting. There are no-nonsense human rights activists like Majorie Ramos, of the Staten Island Unitarian Church, Bill Johnson, and Sally Jones. Perhaps New York City’s most genuinely progressive elected official, former City Councilmember Mary Codd, represented Staten Islander’s a lot better than its citizens are being represented under the local Clinton machine, was a Staten Islander. Mrs. Codd is one of the reasons why Staten Island has perhaps New York City’s most potent environmental movement. She would have made a great mayor but she decided too late to run against Ed Koch.

I wound up living in Staten Island quite by chance while homeless and staying at a drop-in center near the ferry known as Project Hospitality. While the food was good, among the many things that the machine in Staten Island covers up is staff abuse there. I was a victim of same and it was perpetrated by a guy named “Maurice”, who used to force people to stand outdoors coatless at 6:00 AM in frigid weather while he supervised floor cleaning. He also liked to throw people out who stood up to him. He would have been something at Treblinka or Abu Ghraib. A Palestinian acquaintance of mine helped me find a place and I’ve been living in Staten Island since.

There is, however corruption and it is a reality that the politicians are playing games with me when it comes to representation and constituent services. I have already received an explicit refusal of assistance on several quite urgent matters involving several government agencies and also involving Project Hospitality from McMahon, who openly cited his anger at me for criticizing his pal Quinn. McMahon, as is now widely known thanks to some tabloid coverage, ranks low on the ethics scale as he has been found to have his staff do some of his personal chores. Diane Savino’s staffer Cataldo might be out of his mind so I can’t approach her. Newly elected Assemblyman Matthew Titone, whose office is run by the later Lavelle’s Chief of Staff, is a McMahon pal.

Parts of Staten Island are very beautiful; it has perhaps the world’s greatest collection of Tibetan art at the Jacques Marchais Museum, appropriately located at New York City’s highest altitude in what I call the Staten Island Himalayas. The presumably forever free ferry is for me a much better commute than a crowded subway.

Staten Island, however, has a political dark side and it appears that UP FRONT News will shed light on it.
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THE TRIALS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL. AN AMERICAN POLITICAL PRISONER AND FAIR PLAY.

UP FRONT News April 23, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com

THE TRIALS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL. AN AMERICAN POLITICAL PRISONER AND FAIR PLAY.

I was one of the very few reporters at an April 23 City Hall news conference at which City Councilman Charles Barron and several supporters accused the 9th precinct of the NYPD of utilizing intimidation tactics against the Remote Lounge, a Lower Manhattan nightclub where a hip-hop concert to support convicted radio-journalist and death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal was to be held on April 15. Attorney Michael Warren asserted that a number of explicit threats against the club appeared on a police “log” and that the club was suddenly violation-blitzed. Councilman Barron, who opposes Mayor Bloomberg’s use of the police to restrict political activism, is not likely to get much support from a City Council ruled by Speaker Christine Quinn, who sees eye to eye with the mayor on police matters and (except for the deceased West Side Stadium) development matters.

Mr. Barron made the constitutionally valid point that, regardless of what one’s opinion
might be of as to the guilt or innocence of Mumia Abu-Jamal, an African-American left wing radio journalist convicted of murdering a policeman in Philadelphia in 1981 and sentenced to death, the government has no right to interfere with lawful efforts in support of the death row prisoner.

Although I was not a witness to the 1981 incident which left police officer Daniel Faulkner dead and taxi-driver Abu-Jamal wounded on a Philadelphia street, it appears that the wrong man was convicted. There is credible evidence that Office Faulkner was shot by someone else and that Abu-Jamal did not get a fair trial. Perhaps a series of very anti-defense rulings in the trial might be explained when one learns that the judge, the now retired Albert Sabo, was overheard by a the court staffer named Terri-Mauer-Carter expressing his intent to help the prosecution “fry that nigger.” The case has a history of the Philadelphia police mishandling evidence, testifying falsely, and suppression of evidence that ties a friend of Abu-Jamal’s brother, Billy Cook, named Kenneth Freeman to the murder. Freeman later came to a violent end. Although an appeals judge later overturned the death sentence because of confusing directions given to the jury, Abu-Jamal remains on death row because the District Attorney, wanting to execute him, appealed the ruling.

There is a certain irony in the reality that some of the groups, such as the dictatorially run International Action Center, spouting free speech, are pro-Mumia loyalists. While the IAC is always at Free Mumia rallies and helps out in other ways, its Maoist, autocratic ways alienate many.

Mr. Abu-Jamal’s very strong case for a new trial is, however, being backed by a number of true human rights organizations such as Amnesty International.

There is a bigger irony, however, in the fact that the U.S. promotes justice in all the jurisdictions we invade or control more legitimately - but not in Philadelphia.
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REGIME CHANGE IN NEW YORK: TONY AVELLA RUNS FOR MAYOR; NORMAN SIEGEL RUNS FOR PUBLIC ADVOCATE

UP FRONT News April 29, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com

REGIME CHANGE IN NEW YORK: TONY AVELLA RUNS FOR MAYOR; NORMAN SIEGEL RUNS FOR PUBLIC ADVOCATE

There is a real possibility of true regime change coming up in not only the presidential election of 2008 but the Mayoral race in New York City in 2009. By regime change I mean not just a shift in personalities and parties but an end to government by private interest such as has characterized the reigns of, among others, the Clintons and the Bushes, but also Rudolph Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, Betsy Gotbaum, Christine Quinn and a bunch of members of the New York City Council. During all these administrations the poor have consistently been punished, there has been a tsunami of housing gentrification as well as a pattern of civil liberties infringement, favoritism, greediness and the habitual subordination of human rights to property rights.

Among the most blatant and gross acts of greed was perpetrated by the combination of City Council Speaker Quinn and Mayor Bloomberg when, in a time of intensifying poverty and related stresses, they rammed through a totally unwarranted salary increase (Intro. 458) for the Councilmembers and a bunch of high paid Mayoral aides. This maneuver was conducted in a sneaky manner with almost no publicity. That explains why I was one of very few people at the Council testifying in opposition. It also explains why Quinn looked at me as if I were Che Guevara. Quinn was a dud when I was her constituent and brought to her attention the fact of staff abuse of homeless people at Peter’s Place, a drop-in center in the heart of her district where I stayed for some months. Quinn is also responsible for a Resolution, #802, in 2001 on the Genocide in Tibet - which I did just about all the lobbying for - that was rhetorically eloquent but politically impotent because did not oppose the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. She has refused to respond to my January 30, 2006 e-mail to her about this and numerous others contacts. Christine Quinn, described by one prominent human rights advocate in New York as “two-faced”, in fact marches to Hillary Clinton’s corporate beat. Quinn wants to be mayor and has used the Clinton-supporting Rupert Murdoch and his New York Post as her press agent.)

The most vigorous Council opposition to the salary increase came from Councilman Tony Avella, a Democrat from Queens, who not only denounced the raise as an act of greed but refused to take the money, which Quinn paid herself and her colleagues, while soup kitchen and food panties are overloaded and some City workers have to depend on food stamps. (We learn nothing about people like Nero - or Spartacus for that matter.)

Mr. Avella, who strongly opposes the Bloomberg-Quinn pro-development and gentrification policies, is running for Mayor. A number of other Democrats are also expected to run. If the election was held today and other candidates were Avella and Quinn, I’d vote for Avella.

One of the Mayoral wannabes is Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, who, in her term limited second term as Public Advocate, seems to think she can only move up. Betsy Gotbaum, with whom I have been acquainted personally through a family member of mine since 1979, is not qualified to be Public Advocate, let alone Mayor. Betsy Got- baum is a paranoid public official who seeking to keep from the public her links to the Central Intelligence Agency (this watchdog is watching us), has personally harassed me big time. Once, as I was waiting for my scheduled appointment with her Chief of Staff Scott Coccaro to discuss the staff abuse of the homeless problems that had already been covered up by Quinn, Gotbaum tried to have me arrested, citing an imaginary “threat.”

Fortunately the police sergeant from the NYPD’s Intelligence Division she called turned out to be a good deal more rational than she and, after a brief interrogation, suggested I go home and leave Gotbaum alone for awhile. Gotbaum made things much worse when, no doubt angry that I supported civil rights attorney Norman Siegel for Public Advocate against her, she complained to him that I was “stalking” her. Like the police officer, Mr. Siegel and I understand what is going on. In 2005 during her run for re-election, in a televised campaign debate, she explained her refusal to reveal her appointment schedule by once again making reference to “homeless stalker.” As far as I am concerned that assertion was defamatory and the matter became a story in Newsday, The Daily News, and The New York Times and so my side got out to a great many people. The story in the Staten Island Advance by Tom Wrobleski, the taciturn don’t-rock-the-establishment political editor there, Tom Wrobleski, contained serious errors and was slanted toward Gotbaum.

Gotbaum’s notions of being stalked are delusional. Being delusional is not an asset for a Public Advocate or for a Mayor. She is a phony.

Norman Siegel and I were observers at a recent Critical Mass bicycle ride as it got started in Union Square and I was glad to learn from him that he will run for a third time for Public Advocate. Mr. Siegel said that as Public Advocate he would have staff present at for example Critical Mass rides to make certain that no one’s civil rights are threatened. I supported Mr. Siegel, with whom I’ve been acquainted for several years, in his last two campaigns against Gotbaum. As far as I am concerned, he was defeated for two reasons. One was Gotbaum’s money and Democratic Party machinery. The other was that Mr. Siegel’s campaign was influenced by populism-spouting elitists like Howard Deaniac Tracy Denton (a person who, in her loyalty to the Lyndon LaRouche-linked Jonathan Tasini, last year tried to have me arrested at a candidates’ night when I was running for the U.S. Senate against Clinton) who rendered the gentrified Siegel campaign remote from thousands of poor people. Norman Siegel would be a very good Public Advocate and Betsy Gotbaum might consider seeking employment as a spy.
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THE DEMOCRATS AND THE REPUBLICANS: THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. BUT HILLARY IS NOT ONLY POLARIZING BUT BIPOLARIZING. AND GIULIANI IS A SECURITY RISK

UP FRONT News May 9, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com

THE DEMOCRATS AND THE REPUBLICANS: THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. BUT HILLARY IS NOT ONLY POLARIZING BUT BIPOLARIZING. AND GIULIANI IS A SECURITY RISK

Anyone who saw and/or has read about the recent separate debates among the Democratic and Republican candidates for president and continues to suggest, like some of the opportunists the Green Party, that the no difference between the major parties, is way off base. While, in consideration of big business candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, there is no question of major corporate authority in the Democratic Party, there is no way that candidates like John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel could ever fit into the Republican Party.

Although Mr. Edwards has not spoken out in some major issues, such as the Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet and the related matter of having an Olympics in a nation that practices Genocide while abetting same in Darfur, his views on poverty and homelessness are significantly opposed to the Republicans who, no matter what they say, are anti-poor and believe that the best way to eliminate poverty is by eliminating the poor – by any means necessary. Dennis Kucinich, who grew up in a multiply evicted family in Cleveland, has views on the Iraq War and other issues that are diametrically opposed to the Republicans. Kucinich, some of whose people read UP FRONT News, has, as I did a long time ago, called for the impeachment of Dick Cheney – first. I’d like to hear a Re- publican support that idea. Mr. Gravel, the longest shot of all, views the Iraq War as a criminal venture.

The Republicans currently offer the authoritarian Rudolph Giulani, who as mayor appointed a major crook named Bernard Kerik as Police Commissioner and almost made him head of Homeland Security. I don’t care what Giuliani say about abortion and I don’t care how many gullible or mega-ambitious women he marries. He is a security risk. John McCain was certainly right in his view that Donald Rumsfeld was a security risk. McCain’s view of the world, however, is essentially military. The only things “surging” are the bloodshed in Iraq and the hatred for America. The Republicans are a right wing political party, some of whose most prominent members are ideologically not far from Francisco Franco.

While the contrast here is not as clear is it was in the recent French election, Mr. Sarkozy would be a Republican here and Ms. Royal would be a Democrat and not, despite her gender, a Hillarycrat.

No matter what the polls may show at any particular point in time and no matter how may Democrats are purchased by Hillary Clinton’s cash and her Wehrmacht-style political machine, many people recognize that Mrs. Clinton is not only polarizing, she is bipolarizing. I have observed a number of the often well-attended Obama meetups in New York City and it is apparent that much of the Obama “surge” derives from wide- spread distrust and antipathy among Democrats for Mrs. Clinton. As I have made clear in UP FRONT News and in my Democratic write-in campaign against her for the U.S. Senate, Hillary Clinton is the Queens of Opportunism. It is not surprising that this “liberal” is supported by both Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump. I would vote for her only if for example David Duke became the Republican nominee. While I think Ralph Nader served as a very false prophet in 2000 and 2004 with his not at all “independent” candidacies (they were choreographed by the racist Lenora Fulani, a surrogate for the fas- cist Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.), I’d consider supporting him if Mrs. Clinton became the Democratic nominee.

As far as Barack Obama is concerned, I am thankful to him for attracting enough cash to significantly slow down the Clinton juggernaut. Mr. Obama, who is attracting much Wall Street support (always a concern in my book), however, operates something of a juggernaut of his own. I’ve been involved in many political campaigns. It is not surprising that a campaign organization is a reflection of its candidate. And while Barack Obama preaches populism, accessibility, and participation, the reality is otherwise. His press people presumably respond to the New York Times, but my telephone conversations with Obama press official Katie Hogan and several other Obama campaign staffers in Chicago and my e-mail requesting his views on the Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet have yielded nothing. Indeed, a local high level Obama meetup official, at my request, raised this matter with a Obama campaign staffer but was told he could not reveal to me the identity of that individual.That is how cover-ups happen. On a lower level, I have found the organizer of the Staten Island Obama meetup to be arbitrary and inconsiderate.

John Edwards’ New York City meetup is organized by political science professor Steven Gradman, an unabashed progressive who is not only a Democrat but a democrat. Andy Solari, a high level Edwards campaign apparently responds to e-mails on tough issues. My views on the Iraq War are close to those of Mr. Kucinich. While Kucinich has (like I did when I ran against Mrs. Clinton) not gotten a fair shake from the media, he is also a long shot because his campaign organization seems to be a scattershot affair with some very questionable participants. For years perhaps the most vocal Kucinich supporter in New York City has been Charlene Barker. The fact is that Ms. Barker, aside from working for one of the most predatory corporations on the planet, runs meet-ups under Joe Stalin’s Rules of Order. A presumably past Kucinich worker is Charles Lenchner, a man directly connected to LaRouche who criminally harassed me several times when I was running against Clinton. Lenchner has tried slither into the Edwards campaign but I have outed him.

The Republicans’ best chance is if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton.
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THE CHILDREN’S MAGICAL GARDEN VS. SERGE’S ‘SURGE”:

UP FRONT News May 7, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com

THE CHILDREN’S MAGICAL GARDEN VS. SERGE’S ‘SURGE”: GREEN GARDEN FACES
“GREEN” DEVELOPER CASH.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg talks about “greening” New York City. As far as I am aware, regardless of any of his politically correct public relations campaigns, the main “green” ingredient to Bloomberg’s politics is cash. Very similar to the color code followed by Cheney/Bush and Hillary Clinton among many others in politics.

Among the venues for true botanical “green” are New York’s urban gardens, many under assault from real estate developers, who have been given pretty much free reign
by Mr. Bloomberg, aided and abetted by the developer and Hillary Clinton-friendly City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

One of the battles is taking place at the Children’s Magical Garden on Stanton Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, an oasis of play and learning for kids and families for several decades. Developer Serge (“Surge”) Hoyda has obtained ownership of 1/3 of the Garden and wants the rest to put up a building for rich people, with a few apartments to be somewhat euphemistically classified as “affordable.” At a recent meeting at ABC No Rio, representatives for City Councilman Alan Gerson revealed that if Hoyda doesn’t get his way and is limited to 1/3 of the land, he will build there – but only for the rich. Mr. Hoyda wants the Garden moved to another location. Based upon the apparently unani- mous view expressed by community residents and activists, including Garden caretaker Alfredo Feliciano (his late wife Carmen Rubio started the Garden), at the meeting, Mr. Hoyda is between a Garden and a hard place. The Lower East Side needs luxury housing about as much as it needs Halliburton and is (respectfully) insisting that Mr. Hoyda leave.

The Children’s Magical Garden is one of many gardens that the developers want for only one reason, which is to make more money. Activists including Aresh Javadi, found- er of the Bronx-based More Gardens and Rebecca Moore, the musician who founded the Ludlow Orchard Community Organization (LOCO), prefer the gardens to the money and to Serge’s “surge.” Although I live in relatively bucolic Staten Island, as a very frequent visitor to the Lower East Side, as far as I am concerned, as in Iraq, I oppose the “surge.”
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CHENEY IS WORSE THAN BUSH. KUCINICH AND SHARPTON CALL FOR IMPEACHING CHENEY. AN UP FRONT NEWS IDEA MOVES AHEAD.

UP FRONT News May 2, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com

CHENEY IS WORSE THAN BUSH. KUCINICH AND SHARPTON CALL FOR IMPEACHING CHENEY. AN UP FRONT NEWS IDEA MOVES AHEAD.

As far as I am aware, the idea of impeaching Dick Cheney first originated last year in UP FRONT News during my Democratic write-un campaign for the U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton. Pseudo-left frauds like Senate “candidate” Jonathan Tasini and the lemmings in the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party-generated “World Can’t Wait” cult, have called for the impeachment of George W. Bush. From any standpoint that is stupid for at least two reasons. First of all, it is not going to happen given the makeup of the House and Senate. There is about as much chance of successfully impeaching Bush as there is of the Bronx High School of Science baseball team capturing the American League pennant. The second reason, only to be considered if a political miracle occurred and Bush were removed from office, is that if Bush goes Cheney is in, constitutionally. As far as I am concerned, as bad as Bush is, Cheney is significantly worse. Bush is a liar, he is reactionary, he is shallow, he has no understanding of poverty, and he is best off pitching hay in Crawford, Texas. Dick Cheney, however, is from my perspective the closest thing we have had to a real live fascist a (purportedly defective) heartbeat way from the presidency. Cheney is obsessed by money and power and will step over - and if necessary on - anyone who gets in his way. (He is very much like Hillary Clinton.) He and his Halliburton friends have profited enormously from the blood spilled by Iraqis and Americans. He spies on people. He condones torture. His involvement in the vengeful Libby outing of a CIA agent whose husband would not lie for the Cheney/Bush Administration and its planned war is the stuff of treason. I am one of many who believe he knew about 9/11 before it happened. He is an “inside job” all by himself. He is evil.

In recent months, no doubt related to the increasing in print and internet circulation of UP FRONT News as well as some mainstream coverage of my Senate campaign, Impeach Cheney sounds are emerging. Indeed, the megalomaniac Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. who is known for jumping on others’ bandwagons and claiming credit for himself, has called for impeaching Cheney. More rationally, U.S. Congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (who, whether he knows it or not, has had LaRouche people infiltrating his campaigns, very much like the LaRouche/Lenora Fulani-infused Green Party) has introduced legislation calling for Cheney’s impeachment.

Last Saturday I attended a rally at Rev. Al Sharpton’s House of Justice in Harlem. Rev. Sharpton, who had a few days previously given Mr. Kucinich a very warm reception at his National Action Network Convention, which I also attended, gave an intense political speech/sermon. Aside from some well-directed comments about the music industry moguls in midtown Manhattan who profit off misogyny and violence in gangsta rap, like Don Imus profited off the same, Rev. Sharpton, mentioning Kucinich, called for the impeachment of Dick Cheney.

Rev. Sharpton, whom I first met years ago through my minister, Rev. Timothy P. Mitchell of the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Flushing, Queens, and with whom I sometimes talk about church and politics, knows that Bush as Acting President is bad news and must be resisted. Cheney as President is unacceptable and must be prevented.

My view is that the political benefits of removing Cheney from office for Americans and the rest of the world would be enormous. For one thing, Bush without Cheney would be the lamest of lame ducks.

UP FRONT News said it first. And, regardless of one’s views about Rev. Sharpton, the fact is that, when he speaks, people listen.
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