Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Space alert: Bruce Gagnon's History Gap. America is not the only imperialist.

UP FRONT News June 15, 2015
"The paper that won't be bought and can't be sold."
Published by Tom Weiss
Andrew Mazzone - Media Representative and Economics Advisor
Steven Gradman - Political Consultant
The views expressed in UP FRONT News are those of the publisher or of the contributing writer and do not necessarily represent the views of staff.
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"SPACE ALERT" BRUCE GAGNON'S HISTORY GAP. AMERICA IS NOT THE
                                                   ONLY IMPERIALIST.
   Among the more politically distinctive aspects of U.S. Air Force veteran and peace activist Bruce Gagnon's recent talk at the Catholic Worker's St. Joseph's House in Manhattan was his mini-bio describing his evolution from a right wing Richard Nixonite in 1968 into a defacto ultra-leftist, a process certainly catalyzed by his time in the military. Among the anecdotes I found surprising was his account of life in the barracks, which included a room where anti-war soldiers met to talk resistance and smoke marijuana - without winding up in the stockade.
His analysis of U.S. policies aimed at gaining military hegemony in space certainly made clear that President Dwight Eisenhower's warnings about the rise of the "military industrial complex" were prophetic. As far as I am concerned, corporate capitalism, with unrestrained greed being its central feature, and violence go together - and the corporate military entertainment complex (e.g. the Arnold Schwarzenegger Syndrome) is a major contributing factor. If people like Schwarzegger, et. al. are consistently gripping firearms anf thereby sexualizing violence, why should it be a surprise when power/money-seekling gangbangers do the same?
   When it comes to the realities of history, however, Mr. Gagnon's analysis was ideologically biased. As he described - for the most part accurately - examples of U.S. militarism and explansionism, which he sees as plan to take over the world and outer space, I reminded him that the U.S. is hardly the only imperialistic nation on the planet when I asked him, "What about China?", arguably the most militarized nation in the world, with the possible exception of the human rights disaster case of North Korea, where people literally starve to death, where political imprisonment and torture are widespread and where the very well financed army parades in Nazi-style goosesteps In my question of Mr. Gagnon I made a point of mentioning Tibet, the formerly independent nation that in 1951 was invaded by Mao's People Liberation Army, the result of which has been over 60 years of brutal oppression and a genocide that, according to the Dalai Lama, has led to the deaths of an estimated one million Tibetans.
   In his reply, which made no mention of Tibet, he depicted Communist China (and Russia) as victims of American encirclement. Ignoring China's invasion of Tibet and its political and military backing of North Korea's crossing the 38th parallel separating North and South Korea in 1951, thereby starting the Korean War, and its expansionism in the marine areas in Asia, which have placed the Philippines and the Vietnamese on edge, he presented Communist China as a model of coexistence facing a bullying America and militarizing Japan.
   His defense of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin also revised history by ignoring previously Soviet-occupied Ukraine's ties to the west, which so infuriated Putin that he literally bullied the elected president of that post-Soviet independent republic into renouncing an economic agreement with the west, which in turn led to a full scale rebellion, which most certainly included some fascists who were sorry that the Nazis lost World War II. Mr. Gagnon made no mention of Crimea. And he made no mention of "Pussy Riot", the Russian rock 'n' roll group that Putin's people had thrown in jail.
In his accurate reference to the the loss of Russian lives to the Nazis - which far exceeded U.S. losses in World War - he neglected to mention that it was Hitler and Stalin who started World War II by jointly invading Poland on September 1, 1939, a few weeks after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. (Stalin was a paranoid mass murderer but he certainly allowed himself to get sucked in by a fellow mass murderer from the West.)  It was ony after I reminded Mr. Gagnon that, in his defense of China, he made no mention of Tibet, he acknowledged that, yes, China had invaded Tibet - as if that were a parenthetical little detail.
   The reality is that greed and the obession with power and money - the very things that, as the folks at the Catholic Worker particularly well understand, Jesus and Dorothy Day challenged most consistently and uncompromisingly - are what fuel oppression and war. There is nothing that that militarists and arms merchants in the U.S. like better that saber-rattling and expansionism in China and Russia. And vice-versa!
   A major difference however, is that Robert Gagnon will in all likelihood not find himself thrown in jail for speaking his peace piece at the Catholic Worker, whereas as a Tibetan calling for peace and freedom may do some serious time in Chinese prison.
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Wednesday, June 03, 2015

"Duopoly" in Staten Island. The selection for DA.

UP FRONT News                              June 3, 2015                                        
"The paper that won't be bought and can't be sold."
Published by Tom Weiss
Andrew Mazzone - Media Representative and Economics Advisor
Steven Gradman - Political Consultant
  The views expressed in UP FRONT News are those of the publisher or of the contributing writer and do not necessarily represent the views of staff.
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   "DUOPOLY" IN STATEN ISLAND. THE (S)ELECTION FOR DISTRICT ATTORNEY. CAN MENDY (MIROCZNIK) MEND STATEN ISLAND?
 
   Although in 2000 Presidential candidate Ralph Nader unfortunately became the candidate of the heavily extremist (e.g. Lyndon LaRouche apostles "Dr." Fred Newman/Lenora Fulani/Paul "Zool" Zulkowitz/George Tatevosyan/Cathy Sadell)-infltrated Green Party and wound up helping the Republican ticket get close enough in a few swing states, such as pivotal Florida, to enable George W. Bush and Big Dick Cheney to steal the election in the Electoral College, Mr. Nader made a valid point in declaring the machine-run Democratic and Republican parties a"duopoly." The label appeared in a front page headline in the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin after Nader's speech at Binghamton University.
  There may be no better example of "duopoly" in practice than in the colony of Staten Island, the so-called "forgotten borough of New York City.
   In the recent "special election" for Congress, in the 11th congressional district, which includes all of Staten Island, and the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights, and Gravesend in Brooklyn, the Republican Machine nominated S.I. District Attorney Dan Donovan, who is directly involved in the continuing political coverup of the facts of the police lynching of Eric Garner.
  The Democratic Party machine, which is anything but small "d" democratic", selected the Machine-obedient NYC Councilmember Vincent Gentile from Bay Ridge. Among Mr. Gentile's top campaign officials was John Mancuso, fairly described as a "goombah"-impersonating political thug in the habit of criminally harassing (at least) me as he did on two occasions. The first several years ago when he whispered an explict threat against me at a demonstration protesting the sale of the Jesuit Mount Manresa Retreat to a developer to build "upscale" housing (in a borough which has a major homeless problem). At the time John Mancuso was waxing populist in his capacity as a Democratic candidate for the New York City Council in the 50th Council District. His opponent in the Democratic primary was Mendy Mirocznik, an attorney and now the President of the Council of Jewish Organizations of Staten Island (COJOSI). Unfortunately Mr. Mirocznik's campagn manager neglected to make John Mancuso's propensity for politically motivated criminal conduct a campaign issue and Mancuso won the primary. The voters in the district however solved that problem in the general election by electing Republican Steven Matteo. (From my perspective, better a "conservative" than a thug.)
   I again encountered the apparently habitually belligerent John Mancuso at a March 22, 2015 demonstration at a North Shore, S.I. Home Depot, organized and autocratically led by John McBeth, a Deacon at St. Philips Baptist Church in Port Richmond and a member of the largely African-American Staten Island Political Action Club (SIPAC). The rally was depicted as an Eric Garner-related protest but was actually a promotion for people to register and vote (for Gentile). As I approached Mr. Gentile, with whom I've been acquainted for several years, to shake hands (entirely appropriate inasmuch as I was a write-in candidate for Congress in the special election), John Mancuso literally blocked my way and pushed me aside. It was subsequently of course necessary for me to make, not only a complaint of criminal harassment, but also to report the matter to Ann Ravel, the Commissioner of the United States Federal Election Commission in my capacity as an FEC-registered candidate for federal office. And inasmuch as John McBeth has politically discriminated against me on several occasions and may have been involved with his pal John Mancuso in an attempt to have me arrrested at a candidates forum in Bay Ridge, my report to Commissioner Ravel references John McBeth. On Sundays John McBeth "praises the Lord." On other occasions he disrespects me and ignores the Ten Commandments prohibition against bearing false and also helps deepen the political coverup of the killing of Eric Garner.
   Also a prominent backer of Mr. Gentile was ex-NYC Councilmember and ex-Congressman Michael McMahon, who has been picked by the Democratic Party machine to run for Staten Island District Attorney. The Machine Democrats never learn. A major reason why Congressman McMahon (who got elected in 2008 by hanging onto Barack Obama's coattails to get the African-American vote) was defeated by (Republican) Michael Grimm in 2010 was because I had exposed McMahon's racially charged demonization of controversial African-American actvist, the late Sonny Carson, during a City Council debate on a Council resolution to rename several blocks of a street in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn after Mr. Carson in recognition of his work in helping to create Medgar Evers College and in fighting the drug-traffickers in various Brooklyn neighborhoods. Mr. Carson had numerous highlly publicized confrontations with generally white landlords and with some white cops and, although he vehemently denied being "anti- Semitic" acknowledged "anti-white" sentiments.  
   I attended the Council debate in which Mr. McMahon voiced his fervent support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bloomberg ally Council Speaker Christine Quinn in depicting Carson as an African-American version of Adolf Hitler.  
   Not at all surprisingly Mike McMahon did not bring up the Sonny Carson matter as he campaigned intensively for the African-American vote in 2010.
   I reminded the voters of all the facts, of course suppressed by the Staten Island Advance (once characterized by S.I. African-American activist Kelvin Alexander as a "racist" newspaper and by the Rev. Dr. Demetrius S. Carolina, Sr. of the largely African-American  First Central Baptis Church in S.I. as a "controlled" paper).
  I doubt that (m)any African-Americans voted for Mike Grimm in 2010. But they didn't vote for Mike McMahon and he lost in a close vote.
   I was not at all surprised, as the voters learned from about the nature of the Machine backing of Gentile, that he was easily defeated by Dan Donovan in the may 5 special election. And I was not at all surprised that only a reported 10% of the eligible voters actually cast ballots - a rejection of the "duopoly" machine and thereby ignoring the Staten Island Advance, which continues to function as a mouthpiece for "duopoly."
   I am a registered Democrat, albeit one who will not vote for Democratic Party corruption. I will not vote for a candidate in any way connected with Democratic NYS Senator Diane Savino, who continues to protect the criminal, her Chief of Staff Robert Cataldo, who  in 2006 committed a frightening act of criminal harassment against me at my scheduled appointment with him some years ago when I was homeless and in a situation warranting Sen. Savino's intervention. Anticipating my arrival Robert Cataldo had emptied Sen Savino's district office of all staff so as to assure that his act of de facto terrorism against me - during he went totally berserk, backed me up against a wall, bellowed at me the accusation that I have sexual relations with me mother, spit at me and threatened me with violence and arrest - would have no witnesses.
 That is mob-behavior. And so a report from an important leader in Staten Island's inreasingly politically visible Jewish community that "Robert Cataldo is a member of the Sicilian Mob" comes as no surprise.
  Needless to say all the information regarding Diane Savino and Robert Cataldo has gone to the U.S. Department of Justice (U.S. Attornery General Loretta Lynch),  NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, NYPD Sgt.-Det. Al Fiore (who assisted me in making my NYPD complaint #2006-120-8244 against Cataldo to a reluctant 120th precinct) and of course to the office of the Staten Island District Attorney.  
  At this point I know little regarding the views of Republican candidate Joan Illuzzi, who is well known as the prosecutor in the  Etan Patz murder case.
  I do not think that Mike McMahon, a product of a corrupted Democratic Party machine in Staten Island, is qualified.
   I've suggested that Democrat Mendy Mirocznik consider running. He hasn't said "yes" and he hasn't said "no."
   In any event. the lynching of Eric Garner and the near lynching of me by Robert Cataldo will be campaign issues - even if the Staten Island Advance doesn't like it.
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c.c. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch
      U.S. Federal Elections Commissioner Ann Ravel
      Mendy Mirocznik
      Erica Garner
      NYPD Sgt.-Det. Al Fiore