Monday, September 29, 2008

WHY I AM RUNNING IN THE GENERAL ELECTION FOR THE U.S. CONGRESS IN THE 13TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT.

UP FRONT News August 25, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UPFRONTNewsdiscussionforum
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

By Tom Weiss

When, after the August 24 service at the First Central Baptist Church in Staten Island, I told FCBC Rev. Demetrius Carolina that I am planning to run for the U.S. Congress as a Democratic write-in candidate in the 13th congressional district, he smiled, shook my hand and said, "I love it." While I am not taking his very positive reaction as an endorsement of what will be an uphill race against the very politically entrenched City Councilman Michael McMahon, as well as Republican and Independence Party candidates, I am very glad to receive the encouragement of perhaps Staten Island's most outspoken civil rights leader.

And if he ends up as a citizen supporting my candidacy it will not necessarily be because I am a member of his very community and human rights-conscious church; it will be because he sees me as the most human rights-oriented candidate for the U.S. Congess in the 13th congressional district, which includes all of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.

The incumbent congressman, Republican Vito Fossella, is going into political retirement as a direct result of his getting arrested last May while driving drunk on the way to his lover's house in Virginia. In Fossella's case the irony and hypocrisy involved are more apparent than in the case of let's say the even less monogamous Bill Clinton, Fossella having often pontificated about "family values" and other "conservative" virtues.

Within a few political moments of Fossella's downfall (as rapid as those previously of Elliot Spitzer and subsequently John Edwards) Councilman McMahon, who had been openly planning to run for the Borough Presidency of Staten Island, announced his candidacy for congress.

That announcement was soon followed up by expressions of support from various figures in the big money Democratic political establishment such as Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton as well as some union endorsements. In a move the surprised absolutely no one, State Senator Diane Savino, an important cog in the almost lily-white Democratic Party machine that runs the North Shore of Staten Island Carmine de Sapio-style, a politician who employs a seriously anger management-challenged hack named Robert Cataldo as her Chief of Staff, has endorsed McMahon.

As a steadily increasing number of Staten Islanders, who do not depend for their news on the establishment-protecting multi-billionaire (Donald Newhouse)-owned Staten Island Advance, perhaps New York's most politically "controlled" paper, are aware, Councilman McMahon has engaged in at least one very serious act of politically motivated negligence.

It is the job of an elected official to represent all his or her clients, regardless of political views. Mr. McMahon, however, operates by a different standard, and in fact in December, 2006, refused to assist me on a number of very serious problems involving abuses against me by several government agencies. Indeed, my attorney at the time, Jacob J. Goodman, who has since passed away, who provided some legal advice and assistance on these matters, urged me to obtain assistance from my elected officials. Mr. Goodman obviously did not understand the corrupt political machine in power in Staten Island, ruled colony-style by politicians from Manhattan (City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg) and Westchester (Hillary Clinton).

The details of the games played by Diane Savino and State Assemblyman Matthew Titone (who may be the worst state legislator in what has been correctly labeled "the worst state legislature in the country") are described in UP FRONT News. You will not find a syllable in the very politically censored Advance (known to many as the Staten Island Retreat).

Indeed when I ran as a Democratic write-in candidate for the U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton, the Advance suppressed that story for months. My name finally got into the paper after the seriously paranoid and CIA-linked NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum - with whom via a family member of mine, I've been personally acquainted since 1979 - claimed during a televised campaign debate that I was "stalking" her. My rebuttal to Gotbaum's totally false defamation (for which she later very privately apologized) first appeared in NYC Newsday on August 26, 2005, in an article which also reported my candidacy for the U.S. Senate against Mrs. Clinton. Generally accurate stories appeared in the Daily News and The New York Times on August 27.

Tom Wrobleski's error-riddled slanted story on the Gotbaum vs. Weiss dispute appeared with a front page lead in the Advance on August 27. The Advance reneged on its offer to print corrections. And they refused to print my letters to thre editor which they suggested I write.

Gotbaam's "stalker" fantasy cames as a result of my being present as a reporter at various public events as which Gotbaum spoke. And as far as "stalking" Betsy Gotbaum is concerned, my punch line is always the same, i.e. a reference to a country song recorded by Dwight Yoakum titled "I Ain't That Lonely Yet."

And is was only after I wrote an article on my U.S. Senate campaign blog at http://www.tomweissdemocratforussenate.blogspot.com/ accusing the Advance of censorship and inaccurate reporting that Mr. Wrobleski was induced to interview me again and write an article about my U.S. Senate candidacy that appeared on the front page on August 21, 2006.

Councilman McMahon, after verbally promising to assist me with my serious problems in- volving several government agencies, changed his mind after he read an UP FRONT News article criticizing his political boss Quinn (aka the Marie Antoinette of NYC politics), for her refusal to respond to my polite face-to-face and e-mailed urgings that she sponsor a City Council resolution citing the racist Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet and calling for the removal of the 2008 Olympic Games from Beijing. (City Councilman Tony Avella, a Democrat from Queens, and a candidate for mayor, did, at my behest, introduce a resolution - #1299 - along those lines which died thanks in part to lack of support from the powerful and autocratic Quinn.)

McMahon, in an angry December, 2006 e-mail to me, expressed his resentment that I had criticized Quinn and then showed his further ignorance of his responsibilities as a City Coun-cilman by declaring that for the City Council to express views on "international issues" was a "waste of time." Perhaps that would explain why the Council in 2001 unanimously passed (with Quinn ripping off the credit from another Councilmember) resolution #802 (my idea)
which denounced Communist China for its atrocities in Tibet. That resolution, however, had minimal impact because it made no mention of the Olympic Games issue, the big money issue.

Perhaps Councilman McMahon would like to explain, if it is a "waste of time" for the Council to address "international issues", why he voted some years ago in favor of a pro-Iraq War resolution.

Mike McMahon, who will go around claiming to be a labor advocate, might be experiencing some sibling-related discomfort over his lobbyist brother Tom McMahon's services to the Arker Domain Corporation, accused of Walmart-style anti-labor practices at the publicly funded construction project at Markham Gardens.

Under any circumstances, I know I have a stronger union background than certainly any candidate for congress in the 13th CD, having been an elected shop steward in Local 1199, District Council 37, and District Council 1707 during the years when I was a social worker.

Michael McMahon is, in a manner of speaking, being challenged for the Democratic nomination by "peace candidate" Steve Harrison, a lawyer from Brooklyn. Harrison ran against Fossella in 2006 and, in a solidly Democratic year, lost decisively to the Republican.

Mr. Harrison, who has shown hesitating interest in my very serious issues with McMahon even to the point of agreeing to hold a press conference on the matter but not being able to commit to a date, is approaching the primary race much in the way that John Kerry took on George Bush, weakly. Harrison's campaign organization is heavily influenced by some ultra-left types like the occasionally threatening David Jones of the marginal Peace Action of Staten Island, which features self-described "anarchist" Mike May, a guy with links to a full-fledged Lyndon LaRouche-oriented neo-fascist and criminal Geoffrey Blank. All indications are that Steve Harrison, who thinks that talking and talking about Iraq will beat Mike McMahon, will be decisively defeated in the Democratic primary.

There is no way I will vote for Mike McMahon - and not too long after he opened a campaign office very near my home in Stapleton on August 24 I politely told Mr. McMahon so personally. At the very least, Mike McMahon owes me a written apology for his December, 2006 refusal to assist me and a promise that he will assist me from now on, at least in his capacity as my City Councilman.

As I left church on Sunday on my way to McMahon's Stapleton office (and then to man- hattan), FCBC churchmember Marilyn Averett, as she is recurrently in the habit of doing, pulled me aside and sort of admonished me to behave with McMahon, as she was heading in the same direction. I told her that McMahon is the one who has disrespected me and I gave her a carefully graphic description of one such instance.

Ms. Averett is a member of Staten Island Community Board 1 (as is the sometimes hot-headed First Central Baptist Church member Larry Beslow), and is thereby the beneficiary of a political gift bestowed by Councilman McMahon - and, only a little less directly, by Michael Bloomberg, who controls the CB's in the name of the big real estate developers and gentrifiers who want to convert "downtown" Staten Island, including working class Stapleton, into another Soho.

When I told Ms. Averett of my intention to run against McMahon, in part because of his arrogance in speaking and voting against a City Council bill that would have changed the name of a few blocks of a Brooklyn Street to honor the late and controversial black nationalist Sonny Abubadika Carson, she replied with a saying about "staying close to one's friends but closer to one's enemies." That seemed to be her rationalization for perhaps voting for McMahon (although I doubt he would appreciate the "enemy" reference). The logical electoral extension to that interpretation of the "closer to one's enemies" saying, would suggest that a Jew in the 1930's could cast a ballot for Hitler or that a Tibetan would vote for Mao Zedong or that an African-American would vote for Strom Thurmond.

In any event, it is clear to me that none of the candidates for congress in the 13th congressional district is ready to make his priority human rights and integrity in office. My platform, which will be released soon, will make that clear.

Vote for me.
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Friday, September 19, 2008

MESSAGE TO MIKE McMAHON, ET. AL. DO NOT IGNORE WRITE-IN CANDIDATES.

UP FRONT News September 8, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UPFRONTNewsdiscussionforum
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

By Tom Weiss, Publisher - UP FRONT News and Write-in
candidate for U.S. Congress, 13th congressional district.

Write-in candidate wins primary in California - and the machine cracks down.
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Entrenched machine politicians, such as Michael McMahon, the Republicrat City Councilman from Staten Island, seeking to become the congressman representing the 13th congressional district, need to take write-in candidates, of which I am one, running for the same the monied McMahon seeks to purchase, very seriously. I expect to face all post-September 9 primary candidates, Democratic (McMahon), Republican, and "Independence Party of New York" in the November 4 general election. I am ready to debate with all.

And for those interested in very long shots taking on the party machines, google "Michael Sessions", the young man some years ago, fed up with major party machine control of his town of Hillsdale, Michigan, who ran for mayor as write-in and won.

And as far as Mike McMahon is concerned, it was most enlightening at the September 7 11:00 AM service at the largely African-American First Central Baptist Church in Stapleton (of which I am a member) to experience Mr. McMahon's impersonation of a civil rights-conscious peace candidate. In his spirited effort to win the New York City Political Chameleon of the Year Award, McMahon expressed opposition to the Iraq War, stating (as if the congrega- tion didn't know) that many of the soldiers killed in Iraq are people of color.

Mike McMahon, who has always marched to the beat of Chief Chameleon Hillary Clinton's drum (e.g. actively opposing Barack Obama until he had no other choice), neglected to mention his pro-Iraq War vote in the New York City Council.

Perhaps at his next visit to FCBC - and/or in a debate with me - Mr. McMahon will explain his vociferous opposition in the City Council to the renaming of a few blocks of a Bedford-Stuyvesant street (now named for a slaveowner named Gates) after the late black nationalist/community activist Sonny Abubadika Carson.

Maybe McMahon will also explain how he could vote for a pro-Iraq War resolution in the City Council and than a few years later, refuse to support a Councilman Tony Avella (D.-Queens)-introduced resolution citing the Chinese Communist racist Genocide in Tibet and opposing the Beijing Olympics by claiming, in his angry December, 2006 e-mail to me that for the City Council to vote on "international" issues" is a "waste of time."

Like I said, Mike McMahon is a member of the Chameleon Party.
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For more information on my campaign please visit: http://www.tomweissforuscongress.blogspot.com/
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California Write-In Candidate Wins Primary, Denied Place On General Election Ballot
Posted in July 15th, 2008
http://foolocracy.com/2008/07/california-write-in-candidate-wins-primary-denied-place-on-general-election-ballot/
by Glenn Church in Abel Maldonado, California, Dennis Morris
When Democrat Dennis Morris learned that no Democrats were running against Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, Morris decided to run.

The filing period to get on the primary ballot had expired in California, but Morris announced his candidacy as a write-in. Senator Maldonado, sensing he might cut-off his opponent, also announced he would run in the Democratic primary as a write-in. Maldonado announced he wanted to give his mother, a democrat, an opportunity to vote for him.

California law states that a write-in candidate must get 1% of the total for that office in the last general election. For the 15th State Senate District the necessary number is 3,689 votes. Morris got 2096. Maldonado received 533 votes, including his mother.

This leaves everything cut and dry. Morris barely received half the required amount. Except Morris read a bit further into the election code and found a section that conflicted with the 1% requirement.

The election code also reads: political party shall not be denied the ability to place on the general election ballot the candidate who received, at the primary election, the highest vote among that party candidates.
Solution: lawsuit.

When the courts are faced with two equally opposing sections in electoral law, they generally support the one that gives voters a wider choice. Expect Morris on the November ballot. Maldonado should be happy also. It gives his mother another chance to vote for him.

GRASS ROOTS NO COVER CHARGE PERFORMING ARTS ALIVE IN STATEN ISLAND.

UP FRONT News September 11, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UPFRONTNewsdiscussionforum
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

GRASS ROOTS NO COVER CHARGE PERFORMING ARTS ALIVE IN STATEN ISLAND. OPEN MICS, SICOLAB, AND THE FIRST CENTRAL BAPTIST CHURCH - AND KEEPING STAPLETON, ETC. GENTRIFICATION-FREE.

By Tom Weiss

I am one of what may be a small group of people who have lived in all five boroughs of New York City; I now live in the no longer "hidden" borough of Staten Island. And, while I think much of the Democratic and Republican machine-dominated politics in S.I. needs to be cleaned up (which is a major reason why, although I am a registered Democrat, I am running as a write-in candidate for the U.S. Congress in the now very visible 13th congres- sional district, which includes all of S.I. and parts of Brooklyn), when it comes to the arts and other phenomena, Staten Island is a breath of fresh air. (And I have lived in lofts in the artsy neighborhoods of Soho, Noho and Tribeca, now among New York's most over-developed and gentrified communities.)

For sure, another reason I am running for Congress is to empower those of us who will resist the real estate developer power-and-money grab which has the North Shore of Staten Island, in particular my working class ethnically diverse neighborhood of Stapleton, in its crosshairs. I live a few feet from the vast acreage of the Homeport, the naval base that becomes a tourist attraction every year during Fleet Week. The Homeport and the adjacent streets have the predatory developers and their (I choose the possessive "their" intentionally) politicians, e.g. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, City Councilman Michael McMahon (the Democratic Party machine candidate for Congress) interested in their glitzy "Downtown Staten Island Plan." The plan, which was presented at a Democratic club meeting in Westerleigh some weeks ago by the not very grass roots "Downtown Staten Island Council", would, if implemented, lead immediately to increased homelessness in Staten Island. These geniuses seek for example to eliminate an entire block of businesses and residences (including mine) along Stapleton's (S.I.) Canal Street (and, in case Manhattan is interested, there is a Canal Street in the South Bronx) to create a "greenway" to the Homeport. Bloomberg talks environmental "green" but he rules in the interest of cash green. My answer to that idea: Hands off Canal Street!!! Even if the Quinnberg/McMahon-controlled Staten Island Community Board 1 remains silent.

And I think I will have the support not only of my Canal Street neighbors but of an increasingly politically visible civil rights leader, Rev. Demetrius Carolina, the Martin Luther King follower who is the pastor of the First Central Baptist Church in Stapleton, of which I am a member. Rev. Carolina, who has already introduced me as a congressional candidate at a recent forum (for later soundly primary-defeated Democrat Steve Harrison), is, aside from myself, among the first to raise "gentrification" as a major political issue in Staten Island. Rev. Carolina doesn't only read the Bible; he also reads UP FRONT News.

Rev. Carolina is also an arts engine, as services at FCBC are full of performance art, mostly gospel music and dance. And last spring, with his family, he walked around the corner from the church to The Cup - a combination coffeehouse/nightclub that is a major performing arts venue and gallery well known not only for "major artist" events but also for poetry and music open mics - and read several of his poems at an "UP FRONT News presents" event earlier this year.

Staten Island is certainly a center of the small "d" democratic "open mic" tradition. The Cup has regular open mic events on Mondays and also the first Thursday of the month "Come Vibe with Us." There are open mics at The Everything Goes Bookstore Cafe and a weekly one (Mondays) at a Stapleton bar called Martini Red. The Martini Red event runs by Lower Manhattan time standards, generally casually starting after 10:00 PM and - because music- ian performers are allowed up to three songs, which can be a long time - sometimes don't wind up until 3:00 AM. There is no question, however, that they are entertaining. I enjoy reading my poetry there and, unless it gets too late, I also enjoy performers like guitarist Paul Strayfer and singers such as Frank Giallombardo and Jaclyn Shaw, among others. To be sure the First Amendment is put to the test by "Terrible Tim", who can expect banishment not only at houses of worship but in any venue that has children present. He would also not be appreciated at a feminist event. He is good with rhyme and I think his verse would sound better if he more carefully tuned his guitar.

I've produced two UP FRONT News presents events at The Cup which have featured performers including two of the greats of rock 'n' roll and the blues, singer Joy Ryder accompanied by guitarist Michael Packer, both known around the world and both residents of Staten Island. David Peel, for a time a musical colleague of John Lennon, at my invitation, performed at a Cup open mic.

Also featured at UP FRONT News events at the Cup and elsewhere (which always include an open mic), aside from Paul Strayfer and Jaclyn Shaw, have been poet Jack Freedman, story-writer Maria Loginova, poets Jackie Cassen, Eric Hines, Pia Garber, Henry Dennis, Ellen Aug-Lytle (Manhattan) Jeniene Lilly (Bronx), Evie Ivy (Brooklyn), Robert Dunn (Queens), Piedad Guzman (Manhattan), Jim Feast, Bruce Weber (both Brooklyn) and others. Open mic performers have included Staten Islanders such as singers Frank Giallombardo and Jennifer Sprosty and classical pianist former Queens resident Peter Schultheis, poet Adrianna Goffredo and comedienne Mary Dimino.

A few weeks ago I received a call from an art activist named Nima Beckie who invited me to a meeting of "SIcoLab" (Staten Island Collaboration). In fact SIcoLab is generationally beyond the "under 40" reported in the Staten Island Advance. SIcoLab (which has some membership overlap with the Council on Arts & Humanities for Staten Island - COAHSI) , however, is clearly a steadily increasing-in-size network of artists, including writers, painters, photographers, musicians, dancers, etc., focusing on grass roots creativity - the kind of thing perhaps missing in the new Tribeca, and probably on Sutton Place.

SIcoLab had a "Homeless Art Gallery" exhibit in Silver Lake Park last July, a concert/party at Gallery6 in Stapleton after Hurricane Hannah left town and is sponsoring an all day "art happening" event called "Bridge the Gap" on September 20 at Alice Austen House Museum at 2 Hylan Boulevard in the Rosebank neighborhood in Staten Island, which will include an open mic. Many of the SIcoLab participants are from Staten Island's North Shore and the event is in part intended to bridge whatever "gap" there may be with Mid-Island and South Shore.

And in what may be something of a NYC dwindling tradition being kept alive in the arts in Staten Island, there is no cover charge. Not even for the "bridge and ferry crowd."
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THE BIG ISSUES IN NEW YORK CITY: GENTRIFICATION, OVER-DEVELOPMENT AND THE HOUSING CRISIS.

UP FRONT News August 19, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UPFRONTNewsdiscussionforum
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

THE BIG ISSUES IN NEW YORK CITY: GENTRIFICATION, OVER-DEVELOPMENT AND THE HOUSING CRISIS. THE LOWER EAST SIDE IS GROUND ZERO AND STATEN ISLAND'S STAPLETON IS GROUND ONE. WE ARE ALL,IN THIS TOGETHER AND IT IS TIME FOR THE INNER-DIRECTED LOWER EAST SIDE TO REACH OUT.

By Tom Weiss

While gentrification and over-development are worsening the housing crisis and afflicting working class communities throughout New York City, Ground Zero may be the real estate goldmine known as Lower Manhattan. Made up of communities including the Lower East Side, the Greenwich Village, Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho and Tribeca, affordable housing in those communities, except for those surviving in rent-protected apartments (and lofts), is a thing of the past. What New Yorkers get under the Michael Bloomberg/Christine regime is what we least need, luxury housing! When I lived in a loft in Tribeca from 1977 until I was displaced in 1993 by one of the most avaricious, politically connected (and Orthodox) landlords (Thomas Berger) since the Old Testament, that neighborhood was working class in character. Thanks to a wave of over-development and gentrification, and the perfidies of the totally Mike McKee and Chuck Delaney-co-opted Lower Manhattan Loft Tenants, many loft tenants lost our homes. Tribeca has been Robert de Niro-ized and is now one of the richest neighborhoods in the world. People like poetry mogul and elitist-leftist Bob Holman are among those who occupy the Tribeca luxury lofts, the eastern urban equivalent to Beverly Hills. And as far as I am aware there is no Section 8 in Soho. The Lower East Side/East Village/Chinatown areas have for years been a focal point in the developer/tenant wars. Although twenty years ago the focus was on the homeless living in Tompkins Square Park, the police riot against the homeless, squatters and others in that community reverberated far beyond the homeless and made front page news for days. Loopholes (thank you Mike McKee) in rent protection laws have opened the way for greedy landlords like the Ekonomakis family to bully rent protected tenants such as those facing "owner occupancy" eviction at 47 East 3rd St. Huge real estate conglomerates such as the Bush/oil mogul-connected Carlyle Group are buying up properties there. NYU, the higher education equivalent of Russia under Vladimir Putin, is hoping to convert at least some of the neighborhood into a sort of captive nation. A corollary of over-development and gentrification - which are aided and abetted by politicians such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, et. al. -, is rampant bar proliferation of which Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side is perhaps the most conspicuous example. In a classic attempt at conquering by dividing, Bloomberg & Co. have designed a rezoning plan which provides some protection to the Lower East Side and the East Village at the expense of Chinatown. One of the battlegrounds of all this has been Manhattan Community Board 3. I have attended and testified at a number of CB3 meetings. Rhetorically speaking it is certainly class war. Among the more eloquent and convincing voices against gentrification, over-development and bar proliferation is musician/activist Rebecca Moore, who lives in the heart of the LES. There are plenty of others who speak out at Community Board meetings, legislative hearings, rallies, etc. They include John Penley, Rob Hollander, Monte Schapiro (constantly facing down his landlord Ben Shaoul) and Lower East Side music legend David Peel - who has offended some in the neighborhood with his musical use of the term "yuppie" (even applying it to older people) in connection with slimy stuff floating on swamp surfaces. There are perhaps, on a percentage basis, more activists on the Lower East Side than any other neighborhood in New York, "liberal" or otherwise. And yet the steadily gentrifying neighborhood is losing the battle. All one needs to do is walk through the once low rise-bordered streets of the Lower East Side, and its main thoroughfare East Houston Street and to check out the glass houses from which residents should not throw stones. The Lower East Side is starting to look like White Plains, a center of sterile corporate architecture. As far as I am able to determine, one of the political and organizational essentials that the talent-laden Lower East Side is not good at is reaching out and doing mutual support with other communities. In certain ways the Lower East Side is too inner-directed. As far as I am concerned, people like the recurrently protesting Rebecca Moore (who led a protest against the Varvatos elitist priced boutique, which replaced the displaced and deceased CBGB's) and others should be heard in other affected neighborhoods. I am not aware of much in the way of reaching out by just about any Lower East Side activist to other communities. Tenants rights activists in for example Brooklyn and Queens are much better at that. That may explain why perhaps the two most tenant rights-oriented members of the New York City Council are Tony Avella from Queens and Charles Barron from Brooklyn. (And if Avella is elected mayor in 2009 as he hopes and if Barron is elected Borough President of Brooklyn as he plans, there will be changes.) I live in the very gentrification and over-development-threatened ethnically diverse working class community of Stapleton on the North Shore of Staten Island, an area very much in the crosshairs of the developer-predators. Bloomberg, the machine Democratic City Councilman Michael McMahon, and moneymen and women are hoping to transform downtown Staten Island, which includes Stapleton and its real estate-undeveloped "Homeport", very near my home, into another Lower Manhattan-style "green" luxury district. It's nothing other than Soho-ization and economic ethnic cleansing. Staten Island Community Board 1, like all the CB's, has its voices of dissent but is run by the Bloomberg/Quinn/McMahon machine. Democratic City Council candidates (to replace the mercifully term-limited McMahon, who wants to be a congressman) Rev. Tony Baker and activist Debi Rose have had little to say on the gentrification/over-development issue. I am, however glad to report that Rev. Demetrius Carolina, the very influential Pastor of the First Central Baptist Church in Stapleton, of which I am a member, ex-pressed his concern about "gentrification" in a recent sermon. Rev. Carolina is a regular reader of UP FRONT News. Two members of his church are also members of Staten Island Community Board 1 and, at least as far as I am aware, have been essentially silent on that issue. Indeed one of those members became enraged at me a few months ago at a "peace" event at FCBC because I said something critical about Bloomberg, a savvy politician who has personally reached out to Rev. Carolina.

I've gone to a lot of LES protests, etc. including some recent ones in support of the 47 East 3rd St. tenants. I am glad that the president of the 47 East 3rd St. tenants association, recognizing that they have been victimized by a legislative loophole, has replied positively to my e-mail urging that we work together to get the New York State legislature to pass a law closing the "owner occupancy" loophole. And, while we're at it, we need to pass a law along the lines of the Mike McKee-murdered Flynn-Dearie Rent Protection Act, which would require any landlord or landlady seeking a rent increase for any reason to open his or her books to prove need. To do all that and to save neighborhoods such as the Lower East Side and Stapleton from real estate extinction, we will all have to work together. Some cliches have relevance, such as the one which reminds us that if we don't hang together we will surely hang separately.
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VIOLENCE, RACISM (AND INCOMPETENCE) AT WORKFORCE1 IN STATEN ISLAND.

UP FRONT News July 18, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UPFRONTNewsdiscussionforum
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

By Tom Weiss

Allen Dawson is a racist thug from Staten Island who doubles as a job-seeking client of Workforce1 in Staten Island. He and his collaborator, client Olga Gordon, have, on multiple occasions, whispered clearly ethnic slurs at me and, in Dawson's case, followed it up with explicit threats of violence, on of which was witnessed by Vincent Savoca, a formerly Sottile-employed security guard at Workforce1. Dawson has also threatened me on the street (three times on Bay Street Staten Island and once in Greenwich Village in Manhattan).

Workforce1 is a privately (Arbor Education & Training) run agency that contracts with the City of New York (NYC Department of Small Business Services) and the U.S. Department of Labor to provide employment and training services. As an internet-dependent free lance journalist, I have been a client at the Workforce1 Center at 60 Bay Street in Staten Island for months, regularly using primarily the first floor computer resource room.

As far as I am aware the Arbor-employed director at Workforce1 is Robin Johnson, whose office, significantly, is on the second floor. Ms. Johnson, who has covered up the multiple abuses against me, is without question one of the most inept and dishonest administrators I have ever encountered. And I speak as a former director of a social work department. Ms. Johnson is also living proof that, even though we still live in a class-based racially segregated society, racism is ironically interracial. Allen Dawson and Olga Gordon are black and former Chicagoan Johnson is white.

A major racist ingredient in this situtation, which is known to the NYPD and is being inves- tigated by Office of Deputy Mayor Bob Lieber, is a perhaps 280 lb sadistic character named Anthony McCarthy, who practices what might be called racial "McCarthyism." McCarthy, an African-American, is the Sottile-employed security guard who to my knowledge has been at Workforce1 in Staten Island for several months. McCarthy is acquainted with the racists Allen Dawson and Olga Gordon. He sees his role in terms similar to those used by guards in Nazi concentration camps. His role is to blame and persecute the victim.

On a number of occasions when McCarthy willfully mishandled Dawson's and/or Martin's abuses against me, I was able to obtain assistance from the then Arbor-employed Staten Island Workforce1 Strategic Operations Coordinator Biguita Hernandez, who has since left the agency and now, interestingly, works for the aforementioned NYC Department of Small Business Services. Ms. Hernandez' office was on the first floor and she in fact often served as the second in command at an agency where Ms. Johnson's absentee landlord-style of administration repeatedly generated serious breakdowns in service and other chaos. (In fact, for example for several days the computer printer was useless because it needed new toner and no one knew where Ms. Johnson had hidden the supply closet key. Indeed, Ms. Hernandez, who later located the key, sent me a nice e-mail thanking me for bringing the problem to her attention. For days clients had to circulate resumes on colored photocopy paper because of the Robin Johnson-caused absence of white paper. Ms. Johnson should be George W. Bush's next choice to run FEMA).

On June 12, the day before Ms. Hernandez' scheduled departure from Workforce, she was not at her desk in the morning. I arrived at the entrance door at about 8:55 AM. At around 9:07 McCarthy lumbered to the door, unlocked it and made certain to let it fall on me. I en-
tered and placed my belongings on a computer chair. I then returned to the McCarthy-run
sign-in area at the reception desk where a line had formed. McCarthy ordered me to cut in line and sign in. Since such a step would have inevitably led to an argument, grounds for at least a one day expulsion, no matter who is at fault, I refused. He repeated his order and I told him that I would get at the end of the line and sign in. When he repeated his demand again and began advancing in my direction, citing the absolute fact that I was feeling some discomfort from an injury I had sustained at home earlier that morning, I said that I would first go to the bathroom and then sign in.

Anthony McCarthy, who, despite his apparent age, may have been trained at Auschwitz, moved further in my direction, told me I couldn't go to the bathroom and said that he was
calling the police. At that point Arbor staffer Sal Fuentes, whom I have dubbed the person
with perhaps the worst manners in Staten Island (I think he is a racist), emerged from his office and told McCarthy to go ahead and call the cops.

They needn't have bothered because I called the NYPD. That was a very reasonable thing to do because, with the assistance of Sgt. Al Fiore of the NYPD's Intelligence Division (whom I first met some years ago when the severely paranoid and maritally CIA-linked NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, with whom, via a family member of mine, I've been acquainted since 1979, tried to have me arrested at her office when I was there to discuss staff abuse of homeless people in drop-in centers and shelters) I have filed a criminal complaint (#6401) against Dawson and Gordon.

Sgt. Fiore is also interested in Anthony McCarthy and has not received a return call from the Sottile Corporation, which employs the sadist McCarthy and has placed him at Workforce1 in Staten Island. Indeed Sgt. Fiore on his own traveled to Staten Island and had a very unsatisfactory meeting with Ms. Johnson, who aside from her other offenses, is now guilty of a potentially very serious one in lying (about me) to a police officer.

Not too long ago McCarthy (who once called the police when I talked to a client named Danielle McClain whom he had been bothering to the point where she was near tears) made a veiled threat of possible consequences to me should I return to Workforce1. At considerable internet cafe expense to myself I have stayed away for the time being. But, as Gen. McArthur once said, "I shall return" - and he did.

In the meantime I have telephone informed Arbor CEO Paul Dunn at his office in Texas that he has a serious problem named Robin Johnson of which he needs to rid himself. Arbor has been the subject in the past of one very critical article in the Daily News.

I have also made a formal complaint to the NYC Department of Small Business Services, which itself was the subject of a very unflattering article by Wayne Barrett a few weeks ago in the Village Voice.

Since I've gotten little in the way of a response from SBS I contacted the Office of Deputy Mayor Lieber, who has administrative responsibility for SBS. I spoke at some length by telephone with his Senior Policy Advisor, Nnenna Lynch, who asked me to formalize my complaint with an e-mail to her. She received my e-mail on July 11.

Complaints as needed will go to all relevant government and private human rights and con- sumer complaints groups.

There is general agreement that racism is alive - if not well - in America. There is no question that much of the racism is anti-Semitic in nature. Some of that has been fed by people such as the Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.-connected African-American racist Lenora Fulani. That association of course makes nice Jewish boys and men like Michael Bloomberg very uncomfortable because, even as she spouts pseudo-populist black nationalism, she had the Independence Party of New York, of which she was the dictator, give Bloomberg the IPNY ballot line which enabled him to squeeze by Democrat Mark Green to win the mayoralty in 2001. Fulani endorsed Bloomberg again in 2005. The Mayor has responded by helping her and her mentor, the Jewish racist and cult leader and LaRouche ideologue "Dr." Fred Newman, get large Industrial Development Agency tax breaks for their front organizations known as the All Stars Project (Fulani) and the Castillo Center (Newman).

Perhaps in part because some in my family did not survive the Holocaust I am more sensitive than some others to any sort of racism.

As a great many people know I am a member of the largely African-American First Central Baptist Church in the Stapleton neighborhood of Staten Island. The eloquent pastor Rev. Demetrius Carolina, a major civil rights leader in Staten Island and beyond, and I are friends.
A number of FCBC members are Workforce1 clients. I have asked them and I am asking all FCBC members, not to speak of the general community, to refrain from using Workforce1 at least in Staten Island, at least until my rights as a client are fully restored. As far as I am aware, only one FCBC member has expressed any objection to my request. Church regular Lillian Rodriguez, quite abruptly interrupted me as I was briefly describing the situation at Workforce1 to her, declared "I have to go there", and walked away. In fact, there are plenty of places, no doubt much better run, where Ms. Rodriguez and anyone else can go for employment and/or training.

The bottom line here is that there is racism at Workforce1 in Staten Island and the place should be boycotted. There's no point in waiting until some like the violent Dawson, now very well known to the NYPD and elsewhere, decides to integrate the message of the KKK and burn a cross on Staten Island.
* * * * * * *

THE UNION SQUARE SPEAKOUT-RELATED FILM PAYMENTS: TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN

UP FRONT News September 11, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
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http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

THE UNION SQUARE SPEAKOUT-RELATED FILM PAYMENTS: TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN. GEOFFREY BLANK REDUX? RICHIE DEGEN: AN "ANARCHIST" HEDGE FUND?

By Tom Weiss

It is no surprise that addictively self-proclaimed "anarchist" Richie Degen recurrrently hangs out on Saturday afternoons socializing with Holocaust-denying neo-nazis like Andy Kellerman, the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs-employed Jew hater who parades as a "Palestinian rights" advocate at the pathetic mini-Nuremberg protests on the traffic island at 14th Street and Broadway next to Union Square in Manhattan. (Just in case there is any doubt about the explosive Kellerman's views, during something of a confrontation with me some months ago - in which Kellerman became so enraged that he physically threatened me and chased me into the street - he once told me that there is no evidence that the Holocaust ever occured. He told me that the Jews made up the whole story. On a later occasion, the squeaky-voiced local Hitler-LaRouche wannabe told me that, if there was a Holocaust, "I don't care." Why the otherwise generally rational Green Party guy Bob Nash sometimes still participates in these depressing demonstrations, which include a handful of Geoffrey Blank-Fred Newman-style self-hating Jews, I do not know.

Richie Degen, while spouting a semi-coherent blend of leftism, populism, and black militance (Degen is as black as, say, David Duke) often sticks in some of his visceral xenophobia and racism. He regularly openly refers to Barack Obama as an "oreo." (That might make Degen the equivalent of melba toast.) Degen, unquestionably one of the most voluntarily unemployed and homeless people I have ever encountered, has been known to blame his chronic joblessness on illegal aliens. He was really out of place some weeks ago trying to spread his lumpenproletariat version of anarchism at an immigrants right rally un Union Square.

It seems that Richie Degen is now a profiteering thief, appropriating monies for himself that may very well rightfully be turned over to the nameless group that for several months has been organizing and sustaining the Thursday and Sunday afternoon and evening speakouts in Union Square.

For several years a leaderless group known as the No Police State Coalition - which despite its law enforcement-focused name, is essentially a network of free speech activists of a wide range of political and economic ideologists - held speakouts in Union Square. Those speakouts, started after 9/11 by activists such as Dennis Griggs, for some time also involuntarily featured some jihad-spewing neo-fascists parading as anti-Bush peace advocates, most conspicuously the violent and psychopathic Geoffrey Blank, aided and abetted by his 30+ year old baby brother Jason and (erstwhile?) Blank supporter Joel Meyers. Blank would stand in Union Square, appropriate the bullhorn for himself, preach the virtues of "free speech" under his obnoxious "Defend Geoffrey Blank" banner and proceed to threaten those, in particular me, who sought to express differing views. He would also solicit money in the name of the No Police State Coalition and keep the money for himself. Blank was, among is numerous other vices, an embezzler. Blank also felt that he could confront what he called police harassment by referring to the NYPD in barnyard terms. Geoffrey Blank was and is at least an ideological agent for the convicted felon, megalomaniac and racist Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., who is busily again infiltrating the left via "third party" racists such as the Jew-hating African-American demogogue and cult-leader (along with psycho-psychotherapist Fred Newman) Lenora Fulani. Blank is a career criminal with several convictions on his record but who has not yet been prosecuted for his more serious and violent crimes against me. I do not know if he is under investigation for his financial and political ties to a group leftishly calling itself the Freedom Socialist Party, which according to an unrebutted December 26, 2005 article in the New York Post, was (is?) under international investigation for ties to terrorism in Iraq. The FSP spokesperson, a Blank associate named Stephen Durham, is on record in the Post article as supporting the hostage beheadings perpetrated by the late Musab al Zarqawi. In fact, Geoffrey Blank is the closet thing to New Yorker al Qaeda supporter I have met.

Thanks to a series of UP FRONT News exposes and several criminal convictions Blank has been deposed as the Saddam Hussein of Union Square. Another Blank wacko making occasional appearances near the revived speakouts is the "Staten Island Stalker" Gary ("Enough") Phaneuf, a violent "missing link"-type who dresses up like one of Mao's murderous Red Guard vigilantes and tries to sell the Chinese Communist local house organ, sometimes to eyerolling Staten Island ferry commuters.

Several months ago, largely as a result of the initiatives of a former Blank associate Eric Rassi and myself, the speakouts were restarted. We were helped by the fact that, with the assistance of speakout veteran Griggs, I had obtained a copy of the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court "Saia decision." In summary the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of an upstate New York evangelizer (Saia) to preach the Word through a bullhorn on the streets without a permit. The Court determined that a bullhorn, as distinct from a full-fledged sound system, is essential to the practice of First Amendment-protected free speech and that no permit is required for bullhorn use. (Geoffrey Blank in fact used a different sort of "bull.") I made certain, via intermediaries, that NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly acquainted himself (and Michael Bloomberg) with the Saia decision and to take the necessary action to keep the First Amendment-hostile brass at the 13th precinct under control.

Mr. Rassi, Roman Shusterman and I have been the most regular organizers and participants of the speakouts and the occasional post-speakout meetings. The speakouts, (bullhorn use open to anyone with time limits and a taboo on profanity and racial/ethnic slurs) have included small "d" democratic leftists such as myself, Eric Rassi as well as small "d" democratic conservatives like the Ayn Rand "objectivist" Frank Giallombardo, and the "humanist/pacifist" Shusterman. There have been poets and singers. Indeed, the speakout, scheduled for Thursday and Sunday afternoons and evenings, have drawn crowds of increasing size. The crowds do, however, tend to thin out when, as he does on occasion, Richie Degen begins to spout through the bullhorn. To hear him for example talk about the Mumia Abu-Jamal case, one might think that Degen was a witness to the 1981 shootings of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner and African-American radical journalist cab driver Mumia Abu-Jamal in Philadelphia in which officer Faulkner wound up dead. In the subsequent trial Mumia was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Both the conviction and the sentence are being appealed.

Indeed, Degen, not known for the thoroughness of his readings of history, is absolutely certain that convicted and executed anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent.

My own view is that I do not know the facts of what happened that night in Philadelphia (I think that Abu-Jamal's brother, also a cabdriver and present at the time of the shooting, may have been involved. Reportedly a man by the name of Arnold Beverly has confessed to the shooting of officer Faulkner. I also think that the trial judge was and is a racist and that Abu-Jamal did not get a fair trial. As far as Sacco and Vanzetti are concerned, I know at least one very knowledgeable leftist who is convinced they were guilty. In any case, I am opposed to the death penalty.) Richie Degen is an "anarchist" balloon. He is full of hot air.

A couple of speakout regulars told me that a few weeks ago, when Richie Degen and a few other occasional speakout people, Ted Rourke and Kim Schimdt, happened to be in Union Square, they were approached as speakout participants by a "filmmaker" connected to the "Diesel" clothing store on the corner of Union Square West and 14th Street. According to reports I have from several speakout-connected sources (none of them Richie Degen), for being in some kind of film each was paid a total of $150. Speakout participant Sophia Boswell (who has dual Israeli/U.S. citizenship, and has what may be described as "right wing" views on the Arab/Israeli issues; she is also an effective speaker and so I have dubbed her the Sarah Palin of Union Square) told me that Degen had since assured her that he would show up in Union Square on Thursday, Sept. 4. He didn't. (I am not surprised. It took well over a year for me to collect some money I had lent Degen, the repayment only taking place after a loud and embarrasing - to him - confrontation between us in Tompkins Square Park as he was eating some free food.)

As far as I am concerned, regardless of film content, the filming is speakout-related and as such any monies paid belong to the group as a whole. The group would certainly include Ms. Boswell, Mr. Rassi, Mr. Shusterman, myself and perhaps some others.

I sent an e-mail bout this to Ted Rourke. In his (initial?) reply he acknowledged the payments and suggested that the filming was devoid of political content. In my reply, I wrote that content is irrelevant since the financial offer was made, as far as I am aware, to people on the basis of their involvement in the speakouts. I haven't heard back from Mr. Rourke.

Eric Rassi expressed his unhappiness about the payments to me, indicating that he opposes accepting money in this way from a corporate source.

I am also told that in Richie Degen's film segment he was very political.

I am also told that on his own Degen returned to "Diesel", demanded more paid filming and became irate when he was turned down. I am also told that the virulently anti-Israeli Degen, who may fancy himself an anarchist Don Juan of the Vito Fossella/John Edwards Hollywood stud variety, made the Zionist Ms. Boswell an inappropriate offer that she had no trouble refusing.

On September 9 Degen sent me an e-mail which can only be described as irrational and defamatory. He accuses me of being paid by Barack Obama, of being connected to the Mossad (the Israeli equivalent of the FBI, only the Mossad does a much better job) and to the Police Benevolent Association.

When it comes to integrity Richie Degen is approaching one of the icons of hypocrisy, Geoffrey Blank, in his fundamental lack of principle. Degen is a guy who publicly labels the NYPD a "criminal organization" and then presses charges against a fellow speakout activist Dennis Griggs. During a political discussion some months ago at the Odessa Restaurant, Degen literally got in the recurrently volatile Griggs' face. He ignored Griggs' urgings to cease and desist. (It was at that point that I moved to another table and so I missed the physical contact. Eric Rassi served as the volunteer referee.) Degen wound up with a cut on his nose.

Degen, with both what he perceives as his dignity and his nose injured, insisted on having Griggs arrested. Accompanied by Mr. Rassi and myself (I am no apologist for fisticuffs but, since there was absolutely no serious injury, I urged him not to press charges) Degen entered the 9th precinct to do business with what he regards as a "criminal organization."

Griggs was in fact arrested and released shortly thereafter, the situation creating a temporary crisis because of Mr. Griggs' disabled daughter, who was with him and who requires constant supervision.

As far as I am concerned, based on the information I have, a total of $450 should be turned over to the group for deposit and for a decision as to what to do with the money. I for one might support donating a portion to Mr. Rourke and Ms. Schmidt for their film labors. Giving money to Richie Degen is like investing in an anarchist hedge fund.
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POLITICAL WARFARE IN STATEN ISLAND. WAGNER COLLEGE (TWICE) HARASSES A JOURNALIST (ME).

UP FRONT News September 6, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
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http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

POLITICAL WARFARE IN STATEN ISLAND. WAGNER COLLEGE (TWICE)
HARASSES A JOURNALIST (ME). THE SILENCE OF "ARTIST" APRIL (AKA ALEX) HART. IT'S POLITICAL. THE GEOFFREY BLANK (LAROUCHE) AND BETSY GOTBAUM/STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE ANGLES. ROBERT MORGENTHAU, MATTHEW TITONE, DIANE SAVINO, AND MICHAEL McMAHON CONTINUE TO COVER UP.

By Tom Weiss

A couple of years ago as a journalist I attended an "anti-War" event at Wagner College in Staten Island. Among the participants were members of Peace Action of Staten Island (PASI), a small but recurrently visible group that has both sincere peace advocates and some very hotheaded political extremists. Indeed, on November 12, 2005 at a so-called PASI Peace & Justice Festival in Tappen Park, not far from my home in the Stapleton neighborhood of Staten Island, I had a loud confrontation with invited guest speaker Geoffrey Blank, a known criminal and neo-fascist from Queens who promotes the extremist ideologies of people like Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., Lenora Fulani and Saddam Hussein.

The clearly psychopathic Blank is guilty of a number of politically motivated crimes, some of them against me, mostly in connection with his attempted hijacking of Union Square, Manhattan speakouts conducted by a leaderless free speech group called the No Police State Coalition. While Blank was for a time the beneficiary of some puff media attention in The New York Times, The Villager, and WBAI, the full story of his pseudo-left demagoguery and criminality appears in several issues of UP FRONT News. Blank became quite notorious for bellowing about "free speech" through a bullhorn in Union Square and simultaneously threatening those, in particularly me, who dissented from his views, which, couched in "anti-Bush" language, bore a remarkable similarity to the rhetoric of Al Qaeda. Blank in fact is linked to a group calling itself the Freedom Socialist Party that, according to an unrebutted article by Niles Lathem in the New York Post on December 26, 2005, is under international investigation for ties to terrorism in Iraq. Indeed, the FSP spokesperson, a Geoffrey Blank associate named Stephen Durham, is on record in that article is condoning the hostage beheadings perpetrated by the late Musab al Zarqawi.

Geoffrey Blank had been invited to speak at the PASI event by PASI organizer, self-described "anarchist" Mike May. Indeed some months before, when I was a Democratic write-in peace candidate against the militaristic Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Senate, activist college teacher Giovanni Marinelli, no doubt unaware of May's ties to Geoffrey Blank, had introduced me to May at the Staten Island coffeehouse/nightclub then known as The Muddy Cup (now The Cup). Indeed Mr. Marinelli had suggested that I might be a speaker at the event. Mike May's response could fairly be described as cool. May failed to respond to a couple of polite e-mails from me. When I learned of the Blank invitation, I sent May a couple of more e-mails containing some facts about Blank, a racist, sexist, and violent individual whose full list of crimes has not yet been prosecuted. No response.

When I ran into May handing out flyers at the St. George Ferry terminal a few days before the November 12, 2005 event, I politely approached him about my e-mails. May reacted with a sudden and loud outburst of anger and, when he literally leaped in my direction, I pulled back and a policeman nearby came to separate us. I told the cop about Geoffrey Blank and Mike May and got on the ferry while May continued to hand out flyers, almost all of which wound up in ferry trash cans.

I invited No Police State Coalition activist Roman Shusterman, a man very knowledgeable about Geoffrey Blank, to the Staten Island event. When Blank arrived, I unleashed a barrage of expose-style heckling not unlike what Blank had to face from me in Union Square, but only long after he had suppressed my right to speak and criminally harassed me (and sometimes others) on multiple occasions. It soom became apparent, first to me and later to others - including many UP FRONT News readers - that Blank was an ideological stalking horse for the convicted felon, racist and megalomaniac LaRouche. Whenever I would ask Blank about the connection, he would respond with silence and his trademark satanic grin.

Geoffrey Blank's younger brother Jason, however, pretty much let the crypto-fascist cat out of the bag in a conversation some years ago with No Police State activist and bicyclist and photographer Tomas Melchor. In response to Mr. Melchor's inquiry of Jason (who, despite being in his 30's and only a few years younger than Geoffrey, openly functions as his older sibling's indentured servant) as to the UP FRONT News-reported LaRouche/Blank ties, the baby brother replied, "I'd rather not answer that question."

Lyndon LaRouche, now a once again politically hyperactive septuagenarian, has been described by investigative reporter Dennis King as "the most dangerous man in America." LaRouche, who masquerades as an FDR-worshiping Democrat, is an admirer of Hitler and similar personalities but is well disguised - using Mr. King's characterization - as a "nazi without a swastika." LaRouche, who spent seven years in a couple of federal penitentiaries after his conviction for mail and credit card fraud, is notorious for his dramatic ideological shifts from the ultra-left to the ultra-right - and, more recently (as the Bush presidency has imploded), back to the ultra-left. Mr. King's very unauthorized biography of LaRouche, properly titled "The New American Fascism", writes about LaRouche's efforts to ignite a race war in America by collaborating with the KKK and simultaneously with rabidly anti-white elements among the Black Muslims. These days LaRouche has become something of a poster-boy for genocide-perpetrating Communist China and Jihadist Iran.

LaRouche, who is despised by most people aware of him, runs a cult and actively spreads his venom through surrogates, perhaps the most prominent of whom is the African-American racist Lenora Fulani, herself a protege of the racist Jewish cult leader "psychotherapist" "Dr." Fred Newman, creator of the politics-and-sex-with-your-therapist hoax called "social therapy." Lenora Fulani, quite successfully using her rhetorical gifts, has for years presented herself as a populist and black nationalist. At the same time, for years, capitalizing on the widespread dissatisfaction among Americans with both the Democratic and Republican Parties, she has been singing the siren song of "independent" and "third party" politics. As the LaRouche/Newman-created pseudo-left fraud known as the New Alliance Party (NAP) folded (after being exposed first in UP FRONT News and later in the Boston Phoenix, the Village Voice and elsewhere), NAP mouthpiece Fulani tried to politically seduce third party presidential candidate Ross Perot in the 1990's. She made a similar attempt with right winger Pat Buchanan. As they recognized the neo-fascist in their midst and separated from her, she created the Independence Party of New York which, partly due to her propagandistic gifts, became the third largest political party in New York State.

The IPNY's main operative in Staten Island is long time Fulaniite Sara Lyons. (Since I am running for congress and the IPNY has endorsed Carmine Morano for Congress, Lyons, Fulani and LaRouche will be campaign issues.)

Selling herself to the highest bidder, Ms. Fulani endorsed Republican Michael Bloomberg and gave him the Independence Party ballot line in 2001, enabling Bloomberg to squeeze by Democrat Mark Green in a very close election. Fulani did the same thing in 2005, helping Bloomberg defeat Democrat Fernando Ferrer in a less close contest. In return the Bloomberg-controlled Industrial Development Agency awarded Fulani's front organization, The All Stars Project, with major tax breaks. Ms. Fulani does not talk about her political godfather LaRouche in public.

Fulani also operationalized LaRouche's Hitler-conceptualized split-the-left strategy by infiltrating the Green Party, in fact generating and controlling the Ralph Nader presidential candidacies, which have given us eight years of Cheney/Bush. Green Party crypto-fascist operatives using "fifth column" disguise tactics include Gerald Kann (still with Nader), Paul ("Zool") Zulkowitz, a violent thug named George Tatevosyan, Cathy Sadell, Cathy Stewart, et. al. This year LaRouche and subjects have widened their split-the-left efforts as, even while people like the Kann (a Blank associate) have stuck with Nader, the Green Party, seeking to sink Barack Obama while breathing leftist anger at McCain, has endorsed former U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney for president. And like Nader, although Ms. McKinney did tell me that she has discussed her presidential candidacy with Fulani, she has remained tight-lipped about the LaRouche connection.

And now, back to the peace event at Wagner College. I attended the event as an observer/journalist for awhile, taking care not to interact with the PASI element there. As I was later sitting outside for a break, I was approached by two Wagner security officers and ordered to leave the campus under penalty of arrest. When I asked why, they made a general reference some kind of complaint from someone at the peace event.

I subsequently made a complaint to the president of Wagner and, via an administrator there, was advised that the matter would be investigated. I recall no further communication with Wagner.

In April, 2008 I attended a performance event at the Everything Goes Bookstore Cafe (ETG) in Staten Island. Among the performers was Alex Hart. Ms. Hart also announced that she was a painter and mentioned her upcoming exhibit at Wagner. After the performance, I introduced myself to Ms. Hart as a journalist. She readily invited me to the May 9 opening at the Horrmann Library and wrote down the information for me and, at my request, gave me her e-mail address.

I arrived at Horrmann perhaps a 1/2 hour before the opening. After I identified myself as a journalist there for Ms. Hart's exhibit opening, the library person asked me for a picture ID, which I gave her. After a few moments and after consulting a document on her desk, she ordered me to leave, stating only that my name was on a "list." When I asked her the source of the list, she did not reply, headed for a phone and called security. A few minutes later a short and surly female security guard showed up, angrily ordered me to leave and, as had the librarian, ignored my assurances that I was there on invitation from Ms. Hart. As two other security people arrived on some kind of politically correct mini-vehicle I left. I later called a police officer with the NYPD's Intelligence Division to advise him that I had (again) been criminally harassed at Wagner College.

I subsequently got on touch by telephone with Wagner College President Frank Guarasci and was referred to his Chief of Staff David Martin. It took him awhile to follow up on his promise to reply to the e-mail he requested of me. Some time later in a somewhat apologetic e-mail to me, he made reference to having read an article in 2005 in the Staten Island Advance about my very public dispute with my acquaintance (via a family member of mine) of many years, with the seriously paranoid and CIA-linked NYC Public Advocate Betsy Got-baum. Ms. Gotbaum, a wealthy and ambitous power-seeker (she wants to be mayor), has a closetful of skeletons, some involving the CIA and some involving adultery. (Ms. Gotbaum is reportedly a card-carrying member of the Elliot Spitzer/Vito Fossella/John Edwards/Bill Clinton anti-monogamy society.) Her anxiety about me as a reporter, who sometimes covers events she has been at, led her to once suggest on television that she was being victimized by a "stalker." Since she had once privately made such a defamatory reference to me in a communication to her Public Advocate opponent Norman Siegel, with whom I am quite well politically acquainted, I knew her "stalker" comment referred to me. I went to the papers. In fact on August 26, 2005 NYC Newsday's Dan Janison broke the story and, in so doing, also broke the story of my U.S. Senate candidacy against Hillary Clinton. On August 27, the Daily News (Celeste Katz) and The New York Time (Jonathan Hicks) also published articles accurately reporting my side of the story.

Bringing up the rear was Tom Wrobleski of the Staten Island Advance, who had been willfully suppressing the news of my U.S. Senate candidacy for months. Seeing Newsday's story, Wrobleski hurriedly called me asking for an "exclusive." On August 27, with a front page lead, Wrobleski's story appeared. It was so riddled with willful errors and so pro-Gotbaum-slanted that one attorney said it constituted defamation. His article also contained totally false and defamatory comments about me made by State Senator Diane Savino (D.-S.I.) and by the corrupt and competent political hack Keith Parascandola, then Chief of Staff to Assemblyman John Lavelle and, following Lavelle's death, Assemblyman Matthew Titone. Titone has since earned the UP FRONT News award for the being the worst state legislator in what has been rated as "the worst state legislature in the country." (Gotbaum, in her pathologically secretive way, later telephoned an apology for her "stalker" defamation to my UP FRONT News associate and friend Willard Whittingham.)

It was Wrobleski's article and Savino's and Parascandola's comments that Wagner's David White cited as a reason for the security call. White also made reference to the earlier incident involving the peace event. Mr. White, apparently not wishing to further interfere with my First Amendment rights, suggested that, if and when I wish to return to Wagner, I should contact security.

In order to expedite the clearing up of the harassment against me at Wagner on May 9, I sent Ms. Hart an e-mail advising her of the incident and, since I did not have a written invitation at the time, asking that she send me an e-mail confirming that invitation. Ms. Hart did not reply. I do not know why.

The guy who had introduced Ms. Hart at her performance at Everything Goes was the emcee Mister Mark Davis (he insists upon being addresses as "Mister"), who told me that he and Ms. Hart are good friends. I told him about the incident and he acknowledged that he had heard about it from Ms. Hart, who was "sorry" that it had happened. When I told him that I had not received a reply to my polite e-mail to her, he became visibly somewhat nervous but said he would bring it up with her again. Receiving nothing, I called Mr. Davis who was not responsive during our brief weekday 10:00 AM conversation. In response to my subsequent e-mail to him, he sent me an angry, nervous reply complaining that I had awakened him and asserting that he would not help any more (as if he had already been of help).

I am a write-in candidate for the U.S. Congress in the 13th congressional district, which includes all of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. And so, as a candidate, journalist and law-abiding citizen, I expect to visit Wagner and I expect Wagner to end its suspension of my civil rights. For more on my candidacy please visit http://www.tomweissforuscongress.blogspot.com/

And so when I saw Mister Mark Davis at the ETG open mic August 30, I carefully brought up Ms. Hart's non-response. Indeed on August 30 some of Ms. Hart's paintings, under the name April Hart (two names, two personalities?), were on exhibit at ETG. I reminded him that the matter of the Wagner harassment against me is known to law enforcement and that there is therefore the possibility that Ms. Hart could be contacted as part of a criminal investigation. An e-mail from her to me confirming the invitation could considerably simplify matters, certainly for me. Davis rather blithely said that Ms. Hart is "fine" with a contact from law enforcement. I replied that I think that, especially since I went to the lengths of showing up at her exhibit, perhaps to do a review, Ms. Hart would do well to show some consideration toward me and send me an e-mail. At that point Davis got very nervous and said only, "I can't discuss this any more." And I told him I'd wait a few days for an e-mail from Ms. Hart and, in the absence of an e-mail from her, she can expect some honest coverage in UP FRONT News, and perhaps (if the Staten Island Advance and the college paper The Wagnerian, et. al. pick up the story) elsewhere.

Artistic talent and good character are not synonymous. Alex ("April") Hart is covering up something. UP FRONT News has been exposing coverups for decades.

And when it comes to other political crimes against me, at least one very violent one involving Geoffrey Blank and not yet prosecuted, New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and the entire political establishment in Staten Island, including City Councilman Michael McMahon, Diane Savino and Matthew Titone are covering up also.
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WAGNER COLLEGE SUSPENDS THE BILL OF RIGHTS FOR A JOURNALIST (ME) ON CAMPUS.

UP FRONT News June 11, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UPFRONTNewsdiscussionforum
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

WAGNER COLLEGE SUSPENDS THE BILL OF RIGHTS FOR A JOURNALIST (ME) ON CAMPUS. THE DEFAMATORY LEGACY OF NYC PUBLIC ADVOCATE BETSY ("CIA") GOTBAUM AND STATE SENATOR DIANE SAVINO, PROTECTED BY THE STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE. "ARTIST" ALEX HART WIMPS OUT AND OPEN MIC HOST "MISTER MARK DAVIS" LOSES HIS COOL.

By Tom Weiss

Although Wagner College, affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is
named after the son of Rochester, N.Y.-based John G.Wagner, in consideration of how it abuses visiting journalists, e.g. me, the school might more appropriately named after the composer Richard Wagner, who had a strong totalitarian bent. (Wagner, the composer of a bunch of mega-heroic Teutonic operas, was Adolf Hitler's favorite composer.)

A couple of months ago at a well-attended open mic event at the Everything Goes Book-store Cafe (aka ETG) in Staten Island, one of the performers, Alex Hart (a woman, her name notwithstanding) made it known that she is also a painter and that she was having an opening of her exhibit at the Horrmann Library at Wagner College on May 9. I introduced myself as a reporter (UP FRONT News is well known at ETG and environs) and she invited me to attended the opening and, at my request wrote down the location specifics and travel direction along with her e-mail address.

I got to the library at around 5:15 PM or so, before the scheduled 6:00 PM opening. I told the librarian at the front desk that I was a reporter there to see and possibly review the Alex Hart exhibit, which was visible at some distance from the front desk. At the librarian's request I showed her some identification. She then looked at some kind of document, asked me to state my name (maybe she had some reading problem, unusual in a librarian) and then told me I had to leave. She refused to provide an explanation, stating only that my name was on a list. She refused my request as to who may have issued such an order and then called security. A few moments later a short uniformed female security person arrived and ordered me to leave. Her attitude was not unlike what Hillary Clinton's might be were I to enter her mansion in lily-white Chappaqua, N.Y. unexpectedly. When I told her that I had been invited by the "artist" (I am now using that word loosely) Alex Hart to attend her opening, the security person became somewhat abusive and called for backup, which arrived shortly thereafter in the form of two males on some sort of politically correct vehicle. I told them I didn't need to be accompanied to the campus exit.

Indeed, I had once been similarly harassed at Wagner a few years ago when, with an invi- tation, I attended an anti-War event there. While there I noted the presence of some "peace" activists known for their aggressiveness but said and did nothing, since I was there as a journalist. As I was sitting outside, a couple of security people came over and ordered me to leave.

The next day I called Wagner Administration to complain. I recall no e-mail exchanges but I did communicate at the time with an administrator, left my contact information and never heard from Wagner again.

Some days after the harassment at the Alex Hart show, I called the office of Wagner College President Dr, Richard Guarasci. He referred me to his Chief of Staff David Martin.

I spoke to Mr. Martin at some length by phone expressed no awareness of the incident or any reason for banning me from the campus. He said he would investigate and asked me to send him and e-mail. I agreed to do so with the explicit understanding that, upon his receipt of my e-mail, he would send me an immediate e-mailed acknowledgement. I sent my e-mail on May 14 and he reneged on his promise. I sent a second e-mail on May 16 and received his reply, which stated that he was busy with commencement exercizes and that he would be in contact "very soon."

On May 28 I got an e-mail from him stating that I had been "asked to leave" (his first mistake, no one "asked" me) because of a "previous incident on campus" but providing no further specifics.

And then Mr. Martin got Wagner and a bunch of people into big political (and possibly legal) trouble. He made reference to an August 27, 2005 article in the Staten Island Advance about the dispute between NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and me over her having defamed me by making a televised reference to me as a "stalker." Ms. Gotbaum, clearly one of the most paranoid people to ever have held elective office in New York, had once claimed to attorney and Public Advocate Norman Siegel that I was "stalking" her. In fact, via a family member of mine, I have been personally acquainted with Betsy Gotbaum since 1979. Ms. Gotbaum, who has at least one closetful of skeletons (e.g. CIA ties, adultery), some years ago tried to have me arrested at her office when I was there for a scheduled appointment with her Chief of Staff Scott Coccaro to discuss staff abuse of homeless people in drop-in centers and shelters. Fortunately the officer called, Sgt. Al Fiore, is a good deal more stable and competent than the clearly psychologically impaired Gotbaum. After interviewing me for several minutes, Sgt. Fiore realized that Gotbaum's assertion that I had made a "threat" against Linda Gibbs, at the time the Commissioner of the NYC Department of Homeless Services (Gibbs had covered up the staff abuse of homeless people and I had criticized her in UP FRONT News) was nonsense. He told me to go home and leave Gotbaum alone for awhile.

In fact I have never stalked anyone in my life. My response to the suggestion that I might stalk Betsy Gotbaum is always the same. I refer to a great country song by Dwight Yoakum titled "I Ain't That Lonely Yet." I have written that if Gotbaum were the only woman on earth and I were desperate, I would revert to celibacy. In fact, by suggesting that anyone other than the most carnally desperate would stalk the narcissistic Betsy Gotbaum is flattering herself. Indeed she is also flattering herself with her announced interest in becoming the mayor of NYC. And, considering her close ties to the surveillance community, she is about as qualified to be mayor of New York City as is J. Edgar Hoover.

The Staten Island Advance article referred to, written by Tom ("Wrongleski") Wrobleski, one of the most dishonest journalists I've ever encountered, is riddled with factual errors and also
contains defamatory comments about me by State Senator Diane Savino and Keith Para-scandola, then the Chief of Staff to Assemblyman Joh Lavelle's. After Lavelle died, Para-
Parascandola became Chief of Staff to Assemblyman Matthew Titone, the man who may be the worst legislator in what has been properly rated as "the worst state legislature in the country."

Tom ("Wrongleski") Wrobleski is the political editor for what has to be the most politically censored daily paper in New York. That however should be no surprise in a paper that is owned by Donald Newhouse, a reactionary and First Amendment-ignoring multibillionaire. The Staten Island A Advance is corporate media at its worst.

In fact Wrobleski suppressed the story of my Democratic write-in candidacy for the U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton for months and then, thanks to Betsy Gotbaum's destructive stupidity, got scooped by Dan Janison in NYC Newsday.

In fact the obviously journalistically limited David Martin didn't bother to read the Gotbaum
vs. Weiss articles in Newsday (August 26, 2005), the Daily News and The New York Times (both August 27), all of which were far more objective than Wrobleski's garbage.

In fact after I wrote an article on my U.S. Senate campaign blog accusing Wrobleski of censorship, he was essentially ordered to write an article about my campaign. That artiicle appeared on the front page of the Staten Island Advance on August 21, 2006. As I have written, the article would probably get a C+ from an easy grader in journalism school. Wrobleski spent about 85-90% of the article on the technicalities of running as a write-in and devoted scant attention to my very heavy issues with Clinton, such as her direct involvement, and that of her wandering husband, in the coverup of the Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet.

Since then the Advance has been made fully aware of the negligence and corruption of for example Titone and Savino. Savino's Chief of Staff, Robert Cataldo is a de facto wacko who once nearly assaulted me when I was there for an appointment in connection with a serious
emergency when I was homeless. Diane Savino, who is clearly a very, very poor judge of character, still has Cataldo on staff. She has also lied to me with regard to a promised meeting with her to discuss some very serious matters, including the mishandling by New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau of the prosecution of Wan Yun, who on April 7, 2005 violently assaulted me. Involved in the de facto criminal conspiracy is the Wan Yun acquaintance the terrorsm and Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.-linked extremist Geoffrey Blank, who lives in Rockaway Park, Queens but has ties to some hotheads in the Staten Island "peace" movement.

Back to Wagner. Mr. Martin, in his e-mail to me, directs me to contact Wagner's Director of public safety Tony Martinesi when I plan to visit again. My reply reminds him of the U.S. Constitution and, in very diplomatic language, tells him what he can do with that suggestion.

Because Wagner in fact violated my human rights, I am asking law enforcement to investigate. And since my lawyer, Jacob J. Goodman, passed away some months ago, I contacted civil rights attorney and (again) NYC Public Advocate candidate Norman Siegel (who is helping me find a new lawyer) and told him about Wagner College's apparent Declaration of Exemption from the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.

I have also asked, with two e-mails, Alex Hart to make things easier for me (and for her) by sending me an e-mail confirming the invitation to her show. She has refused to respond.

I have also discussed the matter with ETG open mic host "Mister Mark Davis" (that is how he insists upon being called), who describes himself as a friend of Ms. Hart. He told me that she is of course aware of the incident that took place before she arrived at her exhibit on May 9. He said she felt sorry about it but that she "preferred" not to put anything into writing. I politely suggested that he try again and offered him my business card. Stating that he would "lose" my card, he refused it and asked me to write him. Witnessing the conversation between Mister Mark Davis and me that took place in front of the ETG bookstore on May 31 was singer Frank Giallombardo. He and I later commented on the evasiveness of a guy who uses a business card to promote himself and refuses mine.

In any event, after not receiving a reply from Ms. Hart to my very first polite e-mail I called
"Mister." He again said that Ms. Hart "prefers" not to put anything into writing. He suggested that she might be concerned about some punitive action by Wagner. I told him that I was mainly trying to obviate the necessity of her being contacted by law enforcement. At that point "Mister" became somewhat hysterical and said, "My friend [Alex] is not a criminal." I replied that I had no recollection of having made any suggestion that she is. I again asked him to bring the matter up with Ms. Hart again. "Mister's" response was silence and so I hung up. The next day I got a somewhat hysterical e-mail from "Mister" complaining that I had awakened him (my call was after 10 AM on a weekday) and stating he did not want to assist me further, an absurd statement since he hadn't helped me yet.

Betsy Gotbaum needs to make very public the apology for her defamation of me that she had an aide phone to my UP FRONT News associate Willard Whittingham.

Tom Wrobleski should be removed as the political editor of the Staten Island Advance, appropriately characterized by my pastor civil rights leader Rev. Demetrius Carolina of the First Central Baptist Church in Stapleton, Staten Island as a "controlled" newspaper (another S.I. African-American activist labels the paper "racist").

"Artist" Alex Hart needs to be less fearful and to be less of an ingrate. (In fact, at the very least she owed me an e-mailed "thank you" for trying to attend her show.)

"Mister" Mark Davis needs to be more helpful to others and, at least with respect to me, to chill. And as far as his open mics are concerned, it will be interesting to see if he respects the First Amendment there.

Machine politician Diane Savino needs to get rid of Robert Cataldo and to start telling the truth.

And machine politician Matthew Titone should hope that no independent-minded activist, Republican or Democrat challenges him for the Assembly seat he is disgracing.

And (Richard?) Wagner College needs to clean up its act.
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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

A VOTE FOR RALPH NADER IS A VOTE FOR JOHN McCAIN

UP FRONT News September 26, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UPFRONTNewsdiscussionforum
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

By Tom Weiss

No matter what Ralph Nader says on any issue at this point, the fact remains that he remains a stalking horse for the split-the-left politics of Lyndon LaRouche and Lenora Fulani. Like LaRouche's fascist predecessors Hitler and Mussolini, the Virginia-based felon, racist and megalomaniac does not come on "conservative" but rather selectively ultra-left. The strategy, just like Hitler's depicting himself as a capitalism-denouncing "socialist", is to factionalize progressives, whether moderate, liberal or radical. Ultimately the electoral benefi-ciaries are the right-wingers, who won office in Weimar Germany and in 2000 and 2004 here. No amount of rationalizing can negate the fact that Nader's LaRouched/Fulani-controlled candidacy in 2000 helped elect Cheney/Bush and helped to re-elect them. Predictably things got worse socially and economically in Weimar Germany and have gotten worse in Cheney/Bush America, creating the conditions fascists need to advance to power.

Locally speaking, the clearest indication that the Fulaniites are still running things for Nader is the fact that a key Nader operative here is the crypto-fascist and violent Jerry Kann, a dedicated Fulaniite from the Long Island City/Astoria area of Queens who twice ran as the Green Party candidate for the City Council. As I recall the first time he garnered about 20% of the vote and the second time, after he was exposed in UP FRONT News as a violent LaRouche/Fulani loyal crypto-fascist he drew about 8%. No doubt Nader is also being supported by the left-spewing thug George Tatevosyan, a close associate of Mr. Kann. They'd be better off supporting their associate Geoffrey Blank.

This year LaRouche seems to be spreading his net even wider as the thoroughly LaRouche/
Fulani-infiltrated Green Party is running Cynthia McKinney. As far as I am aware the Green Party remains an essentially very non-proletarian almost lily-white group running an African-American for president. Ms. McKinney, with whom I've spoken on several occasions, is to be credited with raising important questions about the official story on 9/11 and for her support for self-determination for Tibet, perhaps among other issues. She has remained silent as to the nature of her political ties to Fulani & Co.

At a recent Union Square speakout Robert Hernandez spent a few minutes at the bullhorn waxing proletarian and singing the praises of Ms. McKinney. He was so enthralled with his wisdom that he didn't even bother to listen to my rebuttal dealing with the Fulani/LaRouche link. He was too busy screaming at a speakout observer.

A vote for Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney is a vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin!
* * * * * * *

THE PROFITEERS OF THE UNION SQUARE SPEAKOUTS

UP FRONT News September 25, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UPFRONTNewsdiscussionforum
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

By Tom Weiss

As a great many Union Square speakout participants and observers are aware, three speakout participants, Richie Degen, Ted Rourke, and Kim Schmidt, using their speakout involvement, accepted payments of $150 each to participate in a film reportedly connected to the Diesel store on 14th St. and Union Square West. Ted Rourke, in acknowledging the payment, stated that the film content was not political. Speakout participant Sophia Boswell has advised me that Richie Degen, aside from his other indiscretions of a potentially more physical nature, told her that the film content was political. I have also been advised that Richie Degen, for whom other people's money is little more than a food handout to be taken and devoured, subsequently returned to Diesel, demanded more paid film time and became irate when refused.

As far as I am concerned, the money belongs to the speakout group as a whole and its use should be determined by the group, which most certainly includes a number of people, e.g. Eric Rassi, Roman Shusteran, and myself, beyond those who took the corporate money and ran.

Ted Rourke is in coverup mode having been unresponsive to my most recent e-mails. The only thing he had to say at a recent speakout when I asked him about it is, "I spent the money." So what? He has a job and can pay it back - even in installments. Kim Schmidt literally fled from Union Square at a speakout as soon as I brought the matter up. Richie Degen has responded as perhaps Lindsey Lohan or even the newly political Paris Hilton might, by suggesting that I perform on him what, if it involved him, would by definition be an unnatural act. I have refused. It is my understanding that the xenophobic Israel-hater Degen is so carnally deprived that be has tried to rather aggressively talk a rather militant Zionist of the opposite sex into bed. She has also wisely refused. Perhaps, in that case, Richie might consider using his ill-gotten gains as Elliot Spitzer did - only on a somewhat less extravagant level. There are presumably "anarchist" streetwalkers around.
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

LES JAMIESON, LYNDON LAROUCHE, OSAMA BIN LADEN AND THE 9/11 "INSIDE JOB."

UP FRONT News September 18, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UPFRONTNewsdiscussionforum
http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

By Tom Weiss

Although I try to avoid making snap judgements on political matters, I am pretty much convinced that just about anything of a political nature, certainly including 9/11, emanating from either Les Jamieson or Frank Morales, regardlessly of how leftishly expressed, is at best poop and at worst a part of the "inside job" that they accuse various Americans of being involved in.

I won't go through the entire history of Jamieson's and Morales' repeated suppressions of for example my free speech rights at their dictatorially controlled "9/11 Truth" meetings at St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery Church in Manhattan. Much of the information as to how Jamieson and Morales have served as at least ideological agents for the mega-conspiracy theorist himself, the fascist Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., is in my newspaper UP FRONT News at http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/.

Indeed Jamieson's first (whispered) threat against me came a few years ago when I suggested to him that guest speaker Webster Tarpley's experience as a major figure in the LaRouche cult should be made known to the "9/11 Truth" group as a whole. "You better keep your mouth shut about that", Jamieson hissed to me out of everyone's earshot. And then a few weeks later when at the post-Tarpley speech Q&A at St. Mark's, I included a LaRouche reference in my question to Tarpley, Jamieson desperately ran over and tried to physically push me away from the questioners' microphone.

Jamieson's and Morales' decision to invite the psychopath and neo-fascist LaRouche ideologue Geoffrey Blank as a guest speaker on December 4, 2005 almost led to political violence against me as Blank came with some reportedly club-bearing brownshirts of his such as the St. Mark's-regular wacko Karl Rosenstein, a seriously disturbed Blankie who has tried to assault me on three separate occasions. Other Blank brownshirts who threatened me that evening included the "Staten Island Stalker" Gary ("Enough") Phaneuf. Indeed these are some of the reasons why St. Mark's deserves its UP FRONT News-bestowed name of "Our Lady of LaRouche", at least as long as "Father Frank" Morales tries to LaRouche-ize Jesus.

As far as I am concerned, the cultist Jamieson - who as far as I am aware won't respond to questions about the sudden death of young Dan Wallace, a "9/11 Truth" participant who was also beleagured by LaRouchies and who had witnessed some of the Morales/Jamieson harassments against me and who did a video interview with me outside St. Mark's only to be found dead in his bed in Queens a few weeks later - is a part of the "inside job." With regard to the death of Dan Wallace, LaRouche victim Jeremiah Duggan comes to mind.

If Les Jamieson, citing the claimed expertise of Kevin Barrett, suggests that Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11, that in itself adds to the evidence that bin Laden was involved.

I would be very interested in knowing about any communications between for example Lyndon LaRouche (who has long enjoyed ties to terrorists, genocide practitioners, drug traffickers, Jew haters and Holocaust deniers and murderers) and Osama bin Laden. Since Jamieson is so interested in finding out the truth and since Jamieson is well acquainted with high-level laRouche-ites such as Tarpley, maybe he can get the answers as to whether Lyndon LaRouche was - and is - part of the inside job.

I won't hold my breath.
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