Photos from President Leamon Wilson’s funeral program.

By Diane Bukowski

April 27, 2012 

DETROIT – A large crowd including Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT) bus mechanics and drivers, and city and union leaders, saluted Leamon Wilson, president of AFSCME Local 312 for 20 years, as a “warrior” and “hero” at his funeral April 15, at Kadesh Missionary Baptist Church. 

Leamon E. Wilson and his mother Gail (McCullers) Wilson leave church after ceremony April 15, 2013.

Kathy Woodyard said President Wilson carried on his family’s legacy. 

“Leamon’s grandfather was a coal miner in bloody Harlan County Kentucky, and his father broke the color barrier in the U.S. Marine Corps, receiving a Congressional Medal of Honor,” Woodyard said. “He stood and fought for people who couldn’t fight for themselves, and he has instilled in us a commitment to community and responsibility.” 

Leamon’s wife Gail i(nee McCullers) is an attorney who met her husband when she represented Local 312’s members. They have one son, Leamon E. Wilson, who is starting college this year after winning an AFSCME Council 25 scholarship by penning a moving tribute to his father and the union struggle.

Leamon E. Wilson’s tribute to his father and his union legacy, from funeral program.

Click on What AFSCME has meant to our family By Leamon E Wilson for clear text. 

President Wilson passed April 8 at the age of 55, after years of struggle for his mechanics, and to maintain self-determination for Detroiters and control and adequate funding of DDOT. His efforts and those of other city and union leaders stalled the creation of a suburban-controlled “regional authority” for decades, saving the livelihoods of many DDOT workers and limiting service cuts son’s essay. 

Retired Local 312 bus mechanic Anthony Brown said he hired in the same day as President Wilson in 1980.

Members of Local 312 with DDOT bus decorated in their President’s honor.

“Before 90 days, he told our fellow members that they were planning to privatize DDOT,” Brown said. “I watched Leamon as he read law books and got any local, state and federal material he could get his hands on, preparing himself to take a position on the grievance committee. There are many soldiers who go to battle, but what you really want is a warrior like Leamon. If you worked for DDOT in the last 20 years, you owe your jobs to this man. I got suspended for 30 days pending discharge five times, and he saved my job, my life, my marriage and my home.” 

After the city’s unilateral imposition of “City Employment Terms” under the 2012 PA 4 “consent agreement,” Wilson protected his membership by filing suit under the federal Urban Mass Transportation Act, which requires governments receiving federal transportation funds to honor collective bargaining agreements and otherwise protect workers. 

Flower bearers including (l to r), retired AFSCME Local Pres. Elmira Willis, Councilwoman JoAnn Watson, and AFSCME D-DOT Local 214 President June Nickelberry (4th from left) outside church.

One Local 312 officer told VOD, “Leamon would file suit at the drop of a hat.” For that purpose, he retained militant attorney George Washington for his local, rather than depending on more conservative firms utilized by AFSCME Council 25. 

Elder Carl Graham, now a D-DOT driver, said, “If you were a steward, he made you look extremely well, because you could tell management you would call him. He lived and breathed Local 312, and we will keep his legacy going forth. WE WILL NOT GIVE UP EASILY.” 

Pallbearers included many Local 312 members and officers.

Many other members related similar personal stories. City Councilwomen JoAnn Watson and Brenda Jones, AFSCME International Vice-President Larry Roehrig, AFSCME Presidents June Nickelberry of D-DOT Local 214, also President of the City of Detroit Presidents’ Council, and John Riehl of DWSD Local 207, among others, also gave heartfelt tributes and presented resolutions in honor of their fallen comrade. 

“I wouldn’t be in office without Leamon Wilson,” Councilwoman Watson said. “He helped me. He stayed on after everyone else had left council meetings on privatization contracts to continue the battle. He fought like Joshua. He was strong and courageous, trying to bring his people to the promised land.” 

She said later that Leamon E. Wilson worked in her office as well.

Pres. Leamon Wilson’s obituary pages.

Attorney George Washington recalled that President Wilson always thanked him when they won a legal victory, but Washington said that President Wilson was really responsible for those victories. 

Councilwoman Brenda Jones (r) and others watch as pallbearers take Pres. Wilson to his final rest.

“He was a brilliant and capable man. way more so than people with fancy degrees and making way more money while they run down Detroit,” Washington said. “He was a man who represented everything great about the city. Although we can never replace him, we have got to go on with the battle, that’s what he would have wanted us to do.” 

Despite the heroic battle waged by Leamon and others, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed Public Act 387 into law during the state legislature’s infamous 2012 lame duck session. The Act created a Southeast Michigan Regional Transit Authority (RTA) with a 10-member board, only one appointed from Detroit, although DDOT is the largest bus system in the region. All federal funds and other grants will now flow through the authority. Click on RTA mcl-Act-387-of-2012 for full text of RTA Act.

The majority of D-DOT’s funding, about $80 million, comes from the federal government. 

D-DOT riders will see more cuts to service under the RTA.

One Local 312 member told VOD that in the last months of President Wilson’s life, all he could talk about was the battle to stop the RTA. He had retired from his city job, but continued as Local 312 President, planning to leave only after his term expired. President Wilson kept his failing health and eyesight from the view of everyone, particularly management, as he continued the battle. VOD contacted him numerous times over the last year for comments and documents related to its stories on D-DOT and the dismantling of Detroit, and he never failed to provide what was needed. 

Shortly after President Wilson’s death, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) voted April 26 to transfer $7 million in federal funding from DDOT to the Suburban Mobility Transportation Authority (SMART), although DDOT has three times as many riders as SMART. The deal was part of a proposed permanent change of the federal funding formula for the region.

Originally, Detroit got 65 percent and the outlying areas received 35 percent based on the larger ridership and size of D-DOT. Now, the RTA is proposing the change the formula to 51 percent for the suburbs and 49 percent for Detroit.

Earlier, 30 D-DOT buses were also given to SMART.

At the RTA’s first meeting, they voted to hire the Miller-Canfield law firm to represent them, the same firm whose attorney Michael McGee co-authored the original “Dictator Act” PA 4 and advised Bing and the Detroit City Council on the disastrous consent agreement. Such anti-Detroit actions are likely to be repeated many times over under the new RTA, ironically vindicating President Wilson’s life’s work

Many “liberals” supported the RTA. The Huffington Post celebrated its first meeting. Other supporters included Transportation Riders United (TRU), MOSES, and even some members of Occupy Detroit. Sponsors of the bills which led to the RTA included Democratic state legislators Sens. Bert Johnson (D-Detroit) and Rebecca Warren (D-Ann Arbor), and Reps. Fred Durhal (D-Detroit), Thomas Stallworth (D-Detroit), and Phil Cavanagh (D-Redford), among others. 

Before one City Council session, a TRU member loudly blamed D-DOT bus mechanics for the disastrous bus service cuts enacted by Mayor Dave Bing in 2011 and 2012, and heard VOD’s equally loud approbation in response.  President Wilson strongly spoke out on this matter at another City Council public hearing, shown in video below.

President Wilson and his mechanics have long complained to city management about cutbacks in their workforce, costly outsourcing of repair work to out-of-state agencies, and the disastrous route cuts that took place after Bing outsourced management of D-DOT. President Wilson helped VOD expose Bill Nojay, who filled the position of Deputy Director under the outsourced management, for violating the Hatch Act when he ran for office in New York State. Nojay is a rabid right-winger who ran a racist talk show from his home town in New York. 

Former Detroit COO Chris Brown disappeared from view after Pres. Wilson helped expose the role of racist Bill Nojay in DDOT.

When Nojay left Detroit under the pressure in August, 2012, President Wilson exulted, “That racist is gone!”

The federal Office of the Special Counsel recently refused to find Nojay, Bing, or former Detroit COO Chris Brown guilty under that Act after VOD filed charges based largely on documentation President Wilson supplied.  However, Brown, who was everywhere running the city’s business previously and widely hated by city workers and residents, suddenly dropped from view after the exposes, another victory attributable to President Wilson. 

Keith Davis, a cousin of President Wilson’s, is also Vice-President of UAW Local 2334, representing City of Detroit Sanitary Chemists. 

“We collaborated on many endeavors with Locals 312 and 207,” Davis said. “A union is the sum of all its parts. Management always seems to want to blame the workers for its screw-ups. But he was a warrior, and now we must fight for him. No guts, no glory.” 

Jon Miller with fellow Local 312 member after funeral.

Ronald Carter said, “I knew Leamon for 20 years, and we always talked politics. We talked about how every year the so-called movers and shakers would go up to Mackinac Island and party, the wolves that put profits before the people. They kill everything, take everything, and give nothing. They come to us with their hands closed. But we are the fighters, and we will follow in Leamon’s footsteps.”

Later, Local 312 grievance committee person Jon Miller told VOD that Local 312 has a militant history, beginning with its founding in 1942. He said he and President Wilson interviewed former AFSCME Council 77 President Lloyd Simpson before his death. Simpson told them that he was the first Black mechanic to hire into the local, and white workers walked out when he was moved to the engine rebuild floor.

The late AFSCME Local 457 President Hazel Edwards.

“But later, two white workers came to him and asked him to run for steward,” Miller said. “In 1946, Local 312 members voted to affiliate with the United Public Workers of America (UPWA), which was later driven out of the AFL-CIO during the red scare.”

AFSCME Local 26, representing DPW workers, had similar roots, originating in the UPWA. The AFSCME International was instrumental in ousting the UPWA. Later, AFSCME Council 77, representing only Detroit locals, was subsumed into Michigan AFSCME Council 25, amid much opposition including that of former AFSCME Local 457 President Hazel Edwards, a heroic leader who fought against the privatization of Detroit’s only public hospital, Detroit General.

Funeral program cover.

________________________________________________________________

AFSCME Local 312 resolution in honor of President Leamon Wilson.

________________________________________________________________

From Diane: I will always remember my dear friend Leamon Wilson and his support for me as I battled false charges related to the murderous State Police chase which resulted in the deaths of James Willingham and Jeffrey Frazier on the day Pres. Barack Obama was elected, Nov. 4, 2008.

Here, Councilwoman JoAnn Watson, UAW Local 2334 Pres. Dave Sole, and myself at defense rally in the AFSCME Local 312 hall. President Leamon Wilson opened his hall to us and spent hours at my trial waiting to testify as a character witness. I deeply mourn his passing, as I mourned the passing of James Willingham, Jeffery Frazier, and the continued assault on the people of Detroit.

James Willingham and Jeffrey Frazier, whose families have never received justice for their deaths.

LONG LIVE LEAMON WILSON, PRESIDENT OF AFSCME LOCAL 312, AND A WARRIOR FOR THE PEOPLE!

Related article which has links to all recent VOD articles involving Warrior President Leamon Wilson of AFSCME Local 312, as well as clear version of Leamon E. Wilson’s tribute to his beloved father.

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/04/09/beloved-afscme-union-leader-leamon-wilson-dies-at-55-arrangements-below/

Also see the following which detail some of the actions President Wilson took on behalf of his members and the residents of Detroit over the years. In addition to these, under his leadership, Local 312 was at the forefront of struggles for affirmative action and other progressive causes.

AFSCME Locals 214 and 312 v DARTA

AFSCME Mechanics Cite Lack of Parts to Repair Air Conditioning On Detroit City Buses

BOSTON FREEDOM RIDER

                                                                                                                         By BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

Wed, 04/24/2013

Matthew Joseph, killed by Detroit police April 2, 2013.

“Americans are like spoiled children, whining over their suffering, while showing no empathy for anyone else’s.” Worse, they give the OK to kill other people’s children all across the non-white world. They are easily frightened, throwing away their civil liberties at the drop of a hat, yet generous in insane ways, sending $20 million to Boston without “knowing who needed it or for what purpose.”

“We have been propagandized to believe that some lives, white Americans’, are more valuable than others.”

Detroit and state police cars at Linwood and Hooker in Detroit April 2 after officers shot and killed 23-year-old Matthew Joseph under suspicious circumstances. Media reports indicated “friendly fire” was involved in the shooting of one cop, and that Joseph was being pursued as a suspect in the killing of another cop’s drug-dealer son. Joseph was shot multiple times.

Every year, 4,600 Americans are killed in work place related accidents. Every 28 hours [6] a black person is killed by police, corrections officers, security guards or vigilantes. Every year more than 30,000 people are killed by gun violence in this country. The odds of being killed by a terrorist are only 1 in 20 million.

These statistics are rarely mentioned and never had a chance to be addressed after two bombs were exploded during the Boston marathon. Death under horrific but commonplace circumstances attracts scant media attention or political action. Acts labeled as terrorism, which are unlikely to kill anyone, bring an inordinate amount of hysteria among the populace and cynical attention from press and politicians.

Texas fertilizer plant after explosion, which killed 14 people.

Just two days after the Boston marathon a fertilizer plant in West, Texas exploded, killing 14 people, most of them the much worshipped “first responders.” The risk of dying in an industrial accident is far greater than the odds of being killed by a terrorist, but no matter. The people were whipped into a frenzy and told to cast their eyes in the place where they should pay less attention rather than more.

It is frightening that the risks which Americans are subjected to on a daily basis are ignored as if they are unwanted background noise. Some of the passivity is understandable. Black people in particular are able to function in large part because the ever present risk of stop and frisk, false arrest, and police brutality are difficult to bear. There is a thin line between being conscious and losing one’s mind.

“The odds of being killed by a terrorist are only 1 in 20 million.”

In 2011, Libyan counter-revolutionaries supported by the U.S. and NATO slaughtered tens of thousands of Libyans, targeting in particular Black Libyans like this man who was later killed.

All Americans’ behavior is understandable if one acknowledges that we are constantly subjected to propaganda of various kinds. We have been propagandized to believe that some lives, white Americans’, are more valuable than others, namely anyone not white nor from the United States. There is no other way to explain why the government’s killing of thousands of people abroad is met with a shrug, if it is acknowledged at all. Americans are like spoiled children, whining over their suffering, while showing no empathy for anyone else’s. They feel that only their victimization is worthy of note, and in fact many of them support their government’s acts of violence carried out around the world. Continue reading →

Posted on Facebook by Daymon J. Hartley: 

Now these are the stories you didn’t see on CNN and the evening news. Coming into your homes and pulling you out at gunpoint.
This is what fascism looks like. Please like and share this widely…just incredible.
The person taking this video also risked being shot and/or arrested.
Now I want to hear from some of my “liberal’ friends how they can justify and rationalize this.  Imagine this in your neighborhood.

Published on Apr 20, 2013     

WATERTOWN, MA — On Friday, April 19, 2013, during a manhunt for a bombing suspect, police and federal agents spent the day storming people’s homes and performing illegal searches. While it was unclear initially if the home searches were voluntary, it is now crystal clear that they were absolutely NOT voluntary. Police were filmed ripping people from their homes at gunpoint, marching the residents out with their hands raised in submission, and then storming the homes to perform their illegal searches.

This was part of a larger operation that involved total lockdown of the suburban neighborhood  to Boston. Roads were barricaded and vehicle traffic was prohibited. A No-Fly Zone was declared over the town. People were “ordered” to stay indoors. Businesses were told not to open. National Guard soldiers helped with the lockdown, and were photographed checking IDs of pedestrians on the streets. All the while, police were performing these disgusting house-to-house searches.
https://www.facebook.com/PoliceStateUSA 

MORE COVERAGE OF HOUSE-TO-HOUSE RAIDS IN WATERTOWN:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Gb6i… 

FROM ALEX JONES’ INFOWARS SITE: http://www.infowars.com/category/police-state/

Total media blackout now under way on most likely suspects in Boston marathon bombing

One of many photos alleged to be of black ops groups waiting at Boston Marathon finish line before explosion. This shows what Infowars says is the Craft Communications Van.

 VIDEO ABOVE ALSO FROM INFOWARS STORY

Tells Russian interviewer FBI was monitoring older son; FBI admits it

Both parents say internet use was monitored

By Timothy Heritage

MOSCOW, April 20 (Reuters) – One of the two ethnic Chechens suspected by U.S. officials of being behind the Boston Marathon bombings had been under FBI surveillance for at least three years, his mother said.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the English-language Russia Today state television station in a phone interview, a recording of which was obtained by Reuters,  that she believed her sons were innocent and had been framed.

Boston bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnev.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout with police and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar was captured after a day-long manhunt.

“He (Tamerlan) was ‘controlled’ by the FBI, like, for three to five years,” she said, speaking in English and using the direct English translation of a word in Russian that means monitored.

“They knew what my son was doing, they knew what sites on the Internet he was going to,” she said in what Russia Today described as a call from Makhachkala, where she lives in Russia’s Dagestan region after returning from the United States.

Tsarnaeva echoed the boys’ father, Anzor, who said on Friday that he believed they had been framed. Both suggested in separate interviews that the FBI had made no secret of the fact that at least one of the brothers was being watched.

Scene of carnage at Boston bombing/AP photo. Is it possible the U.S. government, which has slaughtered millions across the world in ongoing wars, set up this massacre as well?

“I do not believe that my sons could have planned and organised the terrorist act, because they knew U.S. national security services were keeping an eye on them,” Anzor Tsarnaev told Russia’s Channel One television.

“They (the security services) said ‘We know what you eat, what you read on the Internet’,” he said, without making clear how the security officers had made contact.

In her interview with Russia Today, Tsarnaeva suggested FBI officers had visited her home when she still lived in the United States and told her that Tamerlan “was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him.”

“It is really, really a hard thing to hear. And being a mother, what I can say is that I am really sure, I am, like, 100 percent sure, that this is a set-up,” she said.

She did not say whether the FBI had started to take an interest in Tamerlan although she also referred to the security services’ interest in what Internet sites he visited.

U.S. government officials have said the brothers were not under surveillance as possible militants.

But the FBI said in a statement on Friday that in 2011 it interviewed Tamerlan at the request of a foreign government, which it did not identify.

It said the matter was closed because interviews with Tamerlan and family members “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign”.

The FBI statement was the first evidence that the family had come to security officials’ attention after they emigrated to the United States from Dagestan about a decade ago.

It is not clear when Tsarnaeva and her husband left the United States. (Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Military-style manhunt for bombing suspect in Boston suburbs April 19, 2013. News media are championing paramilitary forces involved, saying this incident should convince U.S. public to cede their civil liberties in some circumstances.

FBI interviewed dead Boston bombing suspect years ago

The FBI admitted Friday they interviewed the now-deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev two years ago and failed to find any incriminating information about him. 

As first reported by CBS News correspondent Bob Orr, the FBI interviewed Tsarnaev, the elder brother of at-large bombing suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, at the request of a foreign government to see if he had any extremist ties, but failed to find any linkage. 

Both Tsarnaev brothers were legal permanent residents of the U.S. There is no evidence so far that either brother received any tactical training. 

CBS News correspondent John Miller reports it is likely Russia asked to have the elder Tsarnaev vetted because of suspected ties to Chechen extremists. 

Formerly known as Carlos Bledsoe

The FBI is likely to have run a background check, running his name through all the relevant databases, including those of other agencies, checking on his communications and all of his overseas travel. Miller reports that culminated in a sit-down interview where they probably asked him a lot of questions about his life, his contacts, his surroundings. All of this was then written in a report and sent it to the requesting government. 

This is an issue they’ve had in the past. They interviewed Carlos Bledsoe in Little Rock, Ark., before he shot up an Army recruiting station in 2009. They were also looking into Major Hasan Nadal before the Fort Hood shootings. 

Major Hasan Nidal

However, the FBI has maintained in those incidents that they took all the steps they were asked to and were allowed to under the law. 

Although the FBI initially denied contacting Tsarnaev, the brothers’ mother said they had in an interview with Russia Today. 

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said her son got involved in “religious politics” about five years ago, and never told her he was involved in “jihad.” 

She insisted the FBI “knew what he was doing on Skype” and that they counseled him “every step of the way.” 

Tsarnaeva, who is a U.S. citizen currently in Russia, told Russia Today the FBI had called her with concerns about her elder son, although she did not specify when exactly she was contacted. 

“They used to come [to our] home, they used to talk to me … they were telling me that he was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him,” Tsarnaeva said. “They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites… they were controlling him, they were controlling his every step…and now they say that this is a terrorist act!” 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Liberty City Seven

Some of numerous cases where FBI actively participated as agent provocateurs, targeting poor Black communities:

LIBERTY CITY SEVEN, FLORIDA

“The charges centered around the group’s belief that they were being offered money by someone in Yemen to help their mission in Liberty City, provided they supported the al-Qaeda jihad. The FBI agents represented themselves as representatives of al-Qaeda (but who were actually undercover FBI agents), and persuaded Batiste to provide plans for a stated intention to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago, the FBI field office in Miami, and other targets. Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation John S. Pistole described the group’s plot as more “aspirational than operational”; the group did not have the means to carry out attacks on such targets. The group had no weapons and did not seek weapons when they were offered. The group had no communication with any actual al-Qaeda or other terrorist operatives.”    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_City_Seven

IMAM LUQMAN ABDULLAH, DETROIT

Imam Luqman Ameen Adbullah Photo provided by Muslim Alliance of North America

“Family members of Imam Luqman Abdullah, along with religious and civil rights leaders, have reacted with shock and anger to the U.S. Department of Justice’s exoneration of four FBI agents who shot the Imam to death Oct. 28, 2009.

Imam Abdullah, leader of the Masjid El-Haqq mosque in Detroit, sustained 21 gunshot wounds, a broken arm, and numerous lacerations to his face and upper body, which one medical examiner said resulted from police dog bites. Sixty-six federal agents, as well as local and international law enforcement officials, were involved in the raid which ended with his death. . . .

The raid culminated a two-year FBI undercover investigation of the Imam’s mosque, which turned up no terrorism-related charges, only petty theft and weapons-related violations. The indictment was issued the day before the Imam’s death and was based largely on reports by FBI-paid infiltrators of alleged conversations with the Imam and his followers. Almost none of of the conversations were taped.”

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2010/10/16/family-religious-and-civil-rights-leaders-outraged-after-doj-exonerates-imam-luqman-abdullah%e2%80%99s-killers/

ALLEGED BRONX TERRORISM PLOT 2009

Bronx suspects: (Clockwise from top left) Laguerre Payen, James Cromitie, Onta Williams and David Williams.

“On May 20, 2009, US law enforcement arrested four black Muslim men in connection with a plot to shoot down military airplanes flying out of an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, New York and blow up two synagogues in the Riverdale community of the Bronx.^[1][2] The terrorist ring, led by James Cromitie, was tried and all were convicted.

The FBI’s use of two informants, and offers of money and food incentives to the convicted men in the case has led some^[3][4] to accuse the FBI of entrapment. All four are appealing.”    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_New_York_terrorism_plot

After World War II, members of the French resistance shaved the heads of French people who had collaborated with the Nazis, and paraded them through the streets. The photo above shows these collaborators, with heads of the City Council 6 superimposed.

The majority on the Detroit city council have done further harm to the besieged metropolis, voting to allow emergency manager Kevyn Orr’s former law firm to represent the city’s interests. “It will be argued that the people’s representatives have effectively given thumbs up to the nullification of Detroit,” thus weakening any legal challenges to corporate dictatorship over the city.

 By Glen Ford, executive editor, Black Agenda Report

April 16, 2013

Jones Day offices in Cleveland, where the global law firm was founded.

The Detroit city council voted 5 to 2 to approve awarding the rightwing law firm Jones Day the contract to represent the city’s interests, even as several dozen protesters registered their disgust at the arrangement – until police cleared the chambers. Two council members made themselves absent from the vote.

Jones Day is the same law firm in which Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s state-appointed emergency manager, was a partner before Michigan’s governor made him dictator of Detroit. Which means that Orr, a bankruptcy lawyer who will have the power to dispose of the city’s assets, property and contracts, will work directly with his old firm. Meanwhile, Jones Day already represents a number of banks that are at opposite ends of derivative deals with Detroit, involving hundreds of millions of dollars. Jones Day and its supporters on the council claim they see no conflict of interest.

Kevyn Orr

“Even a blind person can see that this is not right,” said Charles Williams Sr., a protester and member of the National Action Network. It was Detroit’s pro-business mayor, Dave Bing, who pushed for Jones Day to get the contract in the first place. Based on the powers that emergency manager Kevyn Orr claims to have, it would not have mattered if the council had voted against Jones Day; Orr could simply have overridden them.

“The council majority have managed to inflict more injury on Detroit.”

So, why did the Council do it? That’s a question that goes beyond the current assault on democracy in Detroit. The former Motor City is no different than the rest of Black America, where a venal, self-centered Black Misleadership Class holds their fellow African Americans in utter contempt. They grovel before Power, hoping only that some of the crumbs will fall their way. Service to the people is an alien concept to this crowd, whether in Atlanta or DC or Detroit. If they were more competent, they would be even more corrupt, but as often as not they fail even to enrich themselves, and succeed only in impoverishing and embarrassing us all.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder–Bing has said they are “joined at the hip.”

Kevyn Orr understand that all he had to do to keep a majority of the City Council in check was allow them to continue receiving their salaries, which by law had been reduced to zero and could have been kept there at Orr’s pleasure. Mayor Bing, the corporate water boy, had already proposed in his budget that each council person be reduced to one staff member – certainly not enough to keep track of the machinations of Kevyn Orr and his friends and former colleagues at Jones Day, who will surely feast on the bones of Detroit.

However, even in their impotence, the council majority have managed to inflict more injury on Detroit. By approving the Jones Day contract, the majority has certainly weakened any legal challenges to the disenfranchisement of Detroit’s people. Even though their vote was not necessary, the council majority have endorsed the machinery of Detroit’s disempowerment. It will be argued that the people’s representatives have effectively given thumbs up to the nullification of Detroit, which has ceased to exist as a real city, except as debtor and prey to the bankers.

The Black Misleadership Class cannot – and will not – defend Black people. In the end, they can’t even defend themselves.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .  

The late President Ronald Reagan and current U.S. President Barack Obama. Photo montage: courtesy of The Black Agenda Report

Bruce Dixon

         By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

         Apeil 10, 2013

They say that elections do matter, and that there are real differences between Republican and Democratic presidents. But backing up the view to 30 years, that difference looks a lot more like continuity, both at home and in America’s global empire.

Is This Barack Obama’s 2^nd Term or Bill Clinton’s 3^rd Term, or Ronald Reagan’s 9^th?

U.S. soldiers with captive citizens of Grenada, a predominantly Black, socialist-led country..

The answer is yes to all three. Ronald Reagan hasn’t darkened the White House door in decades. But his policy objectives have been what every president, Democrat and Republican have pursued relentlessly ever since. Barack Obama is only the latest and most successful of Reagan’s disciples.

Like the present era, the Reagan presidency marked a series of decisive rightward turns for US empire at home and abroad.

U.S. soldiers threw bodies of Panamanians, from the predominantly Black neighborhood which housed Gen. Noriega’s headquarters, into mass graves.

Reagan’s invasion of Grenada, along with his bloody contra wars in Central America and southern Africa signaled the renewal of on and off the books of US military interventions when and wherever the logic of empire suggested, and regardless of namby-pamby concerns of human rights, domestic or international law. But if being a Republican means you can be a naked imperialist at home as well as abroad, being a Democrat like Barack Obama means making sufficiently ambiguous noises war and empire to enable corporate media and your own campaign to manufacture a false narrative of actual and substantive difference between Democrats and Republicans.

U.S.invaded Somalia in 1993, but the Somalians fought back. Here they drag the body of a dead U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.

The first president Bush invaded Panama, and landed US troops in Somalia, a supposed “humanitarian” intervention. Bill Clinton massively increased the shipment of US military hardware and training to more than 50 of Africa’s 54 nations, fueling the conflict in Congo which has taken 7 million lives to date. That’s continuity of purpose and of policy.

In Barack Obama’s case all he had to say was that he wasn’t necessarily against wars, just against what he called “stupid wars.” Corporate media and “liberal” shills morphed that lone statement into a false narrative that Barack Obama opposed the war in Iraq, making him an instantly viable presidential candidate at a time when the American people overwhelmingly opposed that war. Once in office, Barack Obama strove mightily to abrogate the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq which would have allowed US forces to remain there indefinitely. 

An Iraqi army soldier, accompanied by U.S. army soldiers from Fox Troop, Sabre Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, walks down a field as plumes of smoke rise from a burned irrigation canal in a deserted area on the outskirts of Balad Ruz, in Iraq’s Diyala province, some 75 kilometers ( miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Aug. 10, 2008. Soldiers from Fox Troop burned thick growth inside irrigation canals as they were searching for weapons caches in the area. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)

But when the Iraqi puppet government, faced with a near revolt on the part of what remained of Iraqi civil society, dared not do his bidding, insisting that uniformed US troops (but not the American and multinational mercenaries we pay to remain there) stick to the withdrawal timetable agreed upon under Bush, liberal shills and corporate media hailed the withdrawal from Iraq as Obama’s “victory.”

Barack Obama doubled down on the invasion and occupation of large areas of Afghanistan, and increased the size of the army and marines, which in fact he pledged to do during his presidential campaign.

US Major General David Hogg inspects Ugandan troops. Photo Ryan Sutherland

Presidential candidate Obama promised to end secret imprisonment and torture. The best one can say about President Obama on this score is that he seems to prefer murderous and indiscriminate drone attacks, in many cases, over the Bush policy of international kidnapping secret imprisonment and torture. The Obama administration’s reliance on drones combined with US penetration of the African continent, means that a Democratic, ostensibly “antiwar” president has been able to openly deploy US troops to every part of that continent in support of its drive to control the oil, water, and other resources there.

The MPLA of Angola vanquished the U.S.-supported anti-revolutionary UNITA front after years of a bloody civil war.

The objectives President Obama’s Africa policies fulfill today were put down on paper by the Bush administration, pursued by Bill Clinton before that, and still earlier pursued by Ronald Reagan, when it funded murderous contra armies of UNITA in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambque. It was UNITA and RENAMO’s campaigns, assisted by the apartheid regimes of Israel and South Africa that pioneered the genocidal use of child soldiers. Today, cruise missile liberals hail the Obama administration’s use of pit bull puppet regimes like Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, all of which shot their way into power with child soldiers, to invade Somalia and Congo, sometimes ostensibly to go after other bad actors on the grounds that they are using child soldiers.

Under Barack Obama, U.S. has “boots on ground” all over Africa, under AFRICOM.

If either George Bush, or if Ronald Reagan had openly deployed US troops to Africa on anything like the scale President Obama has, black America would be up in arms. They wanted to. They couldn’t. It seems that now, by giving us a black president, the empire can get just about whatever it wants.

It works the same way at home. Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush would have liked to tamper with social security, but dared not. All Reagan could do was tell welfare queen jokes, and despite Reagan’s open disdain of organized labor, NAFTA was a distant wet dream of corporations and billionaires. The first president Bush proposed NAFTA but could never get it through Congress.

Bill Clinton had John Engler co-chair his “welfare reform” task force”

Former Michigan Gov. John Engler

It took a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who marshaled a minority of Democrats in Congress to vote with Republicans both to pass NAFTA and to eliminate welfare. It was Bill Clinton who publicly embraced Republican myths about balancing the US budget, while allowing liberals to imagine he would deliver a “peace dividend.” The second president Bush openly trumpeted right wing lies about the solvency of social security and the (lies which Barack Obama happily repeats to this day) and tried more than once to privatize it. Again, that’s continuity across administrations and parties.

True to form, Obama picked the ball up where his predecessors left it and has run relentlessly righward ever since. Barack Obama uses the language of the elites when he calls social security, Medicaid and Medicare and other federal benefits “entitlements” and asserts that their growth must be trimmed. He championed the formation of a deficit reduction commission chaired by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, both advocates of privatizing social security and drastic cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and federal benefits and tried to fast-track their recommendation through Congress. Fortunately that recommendation never came.

Numbers of Black and Latin youth in prison have skyrocketed under Obama.

Just last week, Obama offered as his opening position in negotiations with Republicans, the chaining of social security and all other federal benefits to the consumer price index — a monstrous betrayal that will reduce social security benefits by as much as $100 monthly by a decade from now. It wasn’t anything he had been cornered into by Republicans. It was the point from which Barack Obama decided to start. That’s continuity. Only a Republican president, like Richard Nixon, could go to China in the 1970s. Only a black Democrat can break his promises to labor on championing a card check law, refute his commitments to a just and fair media with network neutrality, and do nothing to roll back the prison state which has engulfed black and brown youth. Only a black Democrat could deport more Latinos than all the last three Republicans together, in his first term alone.

VIDEO ABOVE: Gil Scott Heron: “Winter in America”

In the game of advancing the interests of the American people, it seems, Democrats and Republicans are not mutual opponents. They are a tag team, each one pushing the ball further and further down the field in the wrong direction. It’s still winter in America, and the dead hand of Ronald Reagan still guides this nation, decades after his exit from the White House. Welcome to the 9^th term of Ronald Reagan, in the person of Democrat Barack Hussein Obama.

One could also argue, since we are in the grips of the greatest depression, although we don’t call them that any more, since the 1930s, and Obama’s economic policies bear more in common to Herbert Hoover than to Franklin Roosevelt, that we’re living through Herbert Hoover’s third term as well. But we’ll save that for another day.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and lives and works near Marietta GA. He is a state committee member of the GA Green Party and can be reached at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com. 

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/barack-obamas-2nd-term-it-bill-clintons-3rd-or-it-ronald-reagans-9th

No Emergency Financial Manager For Detroit! City Council April 9, 2013         A No Struggle, No Development Production! By KennySnod

Posted April 10, 2013

Overturning Emergency Manager! We oppose Emergency Managers because they rob us of our right to elect our own local representatives and deny democratic self-rule at the local level. We are demanding our elected leadership remember that they were elected by the same people who voted in the referendum against PA4 Nov. 6th, 2012. We demand that you abide by their decision.

Protesters in downtown Detroit demand cancellation of Detroit’s debt to banks.

Now we’re working to “Overturn Emergency Manager In Detroit!” We ask you to sign our “White House Petition: 1) End the Consent Agreement/ No Emergency Manager. 2) Begin the Justice Department Intervention, and 3) Stop Voter Suppression and Constitutional Violations. At: http://wh.gov/wGJK. We also ask you to join us in our 1) Our Mass demonstration, rallies, press conferences to protest and denounce the actions of Governor Snyder and his collaborators; 2) To expose the criminal nature of the banks and the corporation who are at the root of the financial crisis in Detroit and throughout the State of Michigan; 3) We must link this struggle in Detroit with the plight of other cities throughout Michigan like Benton Harbor, Flint, Highland Park, Inkster, Ecorse, Muskegon. As well as dozens of other cities in the USA like California, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Rhode Island and many others facing similar crises.

A No Struggle, No Development Production! By Kenny Snodgrass, Activist, Photographer, Videographer, Author of 1} From Victimization To Empowerment… www.trafford.com/07-0913  eBook available at www.ebookstore.sony.com
2} The World As I’ve Seen It! My Greatest Experience! {Photo Book}
YouTube: I have over 390 Video’s, over 136,000 hits averaging 5,000 a month on my YouTube channel @ www.YouTube.com/KennySnod

PRES.PUGH INTRODUCES DISCUSSION WITH SHINOLA AWARD                 (VOD apologizes for use of racist graphic to make our point)

 CITY COUNCIL MOVES AHEAD WITH JONES DAY VULTURE CONTRACT 

By Diane Bukowski

April 13, 2013

DETROIT – Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh and his majority cadre apparently didn’t “know sh-t from Shinola” regarding the Jones Day law firm contract during meetings held April 9 and 10, which ended with their moving the costly contract for a vote at Council to be held April 16 in Council Chambers at 10 a.m.

(Definition–sh-t from Shinola: common saying in U.S. beginning 1950’s re: lack of knowledge, ignorance.)

Dameeko Williams of Project Save Detroit 2013.

“This is nothing but vulture capitalism,” Dameeko Williams of Project Save Detroit 2013, representing the city’s youth, told Council before their deliberations. “Jones Day only represents the banks and the bondholders, like Comerica, Wells Fargo and Chase which hold most of Detroit’s debt..” 

Pugh opened the session April 9 by introducing his friend from Shinola, LLC, Randy Montgomery, who said he and his partners will make watches, bicycles and other “cool Detroit” paraphernalia at the College for Creative Studies.  Pugh sponsored a special award ceremony for this white-owned business, whose officers he met at a meeting of the white-dominated Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, a corporate front for privatization. 

Charles Pugh with officers of Shinola, LLC at Council April 9, 2013.

Shinola? Apparently Pugh et. al. are not old enough to remember Shinola shoe polish. Incredibly, the owners of Shinola, LLC bought the rights to the name from that company, ignoring associations of black shoe polish with racist black face caricatures of old. (See racist Shinola ad above; VOD hereby apologizes for reprinting it to make our point.) 

But perhaps the symbolism was appropriate. 

Speakers say Kevyn Orr represents “vulture capitalism.”

Detroit’s Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr (African-American) is fronting for his alleged former employer Jones Day, a white-dominated law firm associated with right-wing racist causes and foundations.  Case in point, Shelby County v. Holder. a challenge to the Voting Rights Act just heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. (See earlier VOD stories on Jones Day; links at bottom of article.) 

Detroiters blasted Council throughout public comment (as seen in Kenny Snodgrass’ video above), before its discussion of Jones Day. VOD even brought copies of its latest article on Jones Day to educate the Council, but to no avail. Just as the majority evidently did not read the Consent Agreement, which gave away virtually all their powers, before approving it April 4, 2012, they prefer to read the sound-byte version of affairs from the big-business media to make their decisions 

Rev. Charles Williams II, representing Michigan chapter of National Action Network.

“We are here from the National Action Network because we believe that Jones Day is a destroyer of democracy, we are standing against it and asking you to vote NO,” Rev. Charles Williams II told the Council. “Jones Day in one month got almost 12 million of TARP (federal Troubled Asset Relief Funds) to restructure Chrysler under bankruptcy. They bailed out the big companies, but 40 creditors pulled away from Chrysler, as unions and others were left out of the bail-out.” 

Valerie Glenn of Free Detroit-No Consent said the Jones Day contract and others let to firms like Miller Canfield, Ernst & Young, Conway McKenzie and Milliman constitute corporatocacy and genocide. 

“You will go down in history as the administration that completely destroyed Detroit,” Glenn said. “We call for your resignation.” 

Theo Broughton of Hood Research speaks at City Council April 9, 2013.

Theo Broughton of Hood Research agreed. 

“If Jones Day partners are getting $1100 an hour, we urge you to vote NO,” she said. “All of these firms are sucking up the city’s money.” 

Cecily McClellan, a laid-off city worker and Vice-President of the Association of Professional and Technical Employees said, “Billionaires are trying to turn Detroit into a playground for the wealthy. They are the real criminals.” 

One woman asked Council members a simple question. 

Speaker asks: What does democracy mean to you, Gary Brown, James Tate and Saunteel Jenkins?

“Our democracy has been taken away, our constitutional rights have been violated,” she said. “I ask you Gary Brown, James Tate, Saunteel Jenkins—what does democracy mean to you?” Is anybody able to step up to the table and answer my question?” 

Saunteel Jenkins replied haughtily, “Those who are here to express disagreement with this body are showing our expression of democracy.” 

Ironically, a Council police officer present interfered with the First Amendment and this newspaper’s right to democracy during the session, preventing VOD videographer Kenneth Snodgrass from standing with other news photographers on the side of the Council table to take his videos and photos properly. When VOD editor Diane Bukowski’s camera malfunctioned, she was forced to borrow his camera to take photos, despite her protest to the officer that Snodgrass had VOD credentials and should be treated equally.

Pastor Willie Rideout speaks against Jones Day contract.

Pastor Willie J. Rideout of All God’s People summed up, “We are the people. We voted you in. You came to our churches to get you elected, and now we are telling you to vote no on Jones Day, say no to the creditors, stop this predatory movement. Push the Emergency Managers out and put the money back into our cities. Let the millionaires and billionaires pay their taxes.” 

Councilwoman JoAnn Watson agreed, “Detroit’s debt to the banks should be re-negotiated. Banks and bondholders should not be paid first.” 

The Jones Day contract was actually being referred to the Internal Operations Standing Committee for its meeting the following day. Councilwoman Brenda Jones, who chairs that committee, agreed to have a Committee of the Whole session then for the entire Council to ask questions about a contract they had just received in committee. 

Councilwoman JoAnn Watson at table April 9, 2013, gives telling look at Council members Saunteel Jenkins and Kenneth Cockrel, Jr.

Council Pres. Pro-Tem Gary Brown contradicted Adam Hollier of Mayor Dave Bing’s office about the bid process for the contract. Hollier claimed it went through regular bid channels, but Brown said he discovered it had not gone through the Purchasing Division, but through a special process. 

Councilwoman Jones, chair of the Internal Ops Committee, asked her fellow committee members James Tate and Andre Spivey on April 9 not to move the contract to the full Council yet, calling for due diligence. 

The Committee heard a presentation in support of Jones Day from Edward Keelean, Acting Corporation Counsel in the wake of the Mayor Dave Bing’s demotion of his predecessor Krystal Crittendon after she stood up against the consent agreement and the hiring of Miller Canfield, a co-author of Public Act 4. 

David Whitaker, head of the Council’s Research and Analysis Division, said they had done a partial report on the contract but had not been privy to numerous documents Keelean discussed during the meeting, despite asking for them repeatedly. 

Jones asked that RAD be given sufficient time to make a full report, but  she was outvoted by Tate and Spivey, leading to more blistering condemnation of those Council members during public comment. 

Long-time activist Ken Parks was to the point in his remarks. 

“We are big-time debt slaves to the masters of finance capital,” he said. “If we are going to restructure, we need to restructure our priorities, so that people are first and profits are second. The banks said from the start they knew their loans were not repayable; it’s up to them to take responsibility. It is time again for a Year of Jubilee, where our debts are forgiven.”

____________________

Related articles:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/04/08/costly-jones-day-em-contract-faces-council-vote-tues-apr-9-come-at-9-am/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/31/detroit-council-to-vote-on-jones-day-contract-firm-represents-criminal-banks-holding-citys-debt/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/27/detroiters-march-in-cleveland-tell-jones-day-and-banks-get-out/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/23/detroit-leaders-announce-drastic-direct-action-to-fight-em-banks/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/20/banks-behind-detroit-emergency-manager-takeover/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/17/detroit-efms-law-firm-advises-worlds-biggest-crooks-including-libor-banks/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/01/18/the-gang-rape-of-detroit/

Residents of South Korea call on U.S. Secy. of State John Kerry, who is currently in their country, to start peace talks with North Korea, instead of promoting war.

By Jay Janson

March 30th, 2013 — Dissident Voices

While staring at the New York Times front page photo of the bat-winged nuclear-capable B-2 Stealth Bombers up in the blue sky on their first non-stop long-range mission from the US on their way to a practice sortie to end in a mock bombing drop of inert munitions on a range off South Korea’s coast, I ponder.

U.S. warplane

The thought that ‘enough is enough’ will apparently never arise in the mind-set of those commanding the first planet-encompassing space-age military, blown up now to an uncontrollable magnitude and fueled by an uninterrupted flow of trillions of dollars by ledger line pre-occupied elite of the speculative investment banking community; a community possibly still being led by multi-war promoting confidants of ninety-eight year old David Rockefeller.¹

Koreans have been victims of U.S. war crimes for more than a century.

Former president of Korea, Lee Myung-bak dutifully bought loads of new US weapons of mass destruction. Does he ever remember watching his two tiny siblings begin to slowly die before his eyes during a US bombing raid on his family’s farm? As the nuclear capable black bat wings make their run over her beloved Korea, does the new President, Park Geun-hye, keep in mind her father’s point blank assassination by the head of the, allegedly American overseen, Korean CIA?

Following is a short history of homicidal crimes against humanity bitterly suffered in the Land of the Morning Calm from savage attack, conquest, and manipulation by the most recent of the many mindlessly brutal white colonial empires to one degree or another descendent from the barbaric Goths and savage raid-or-trade Vikings.

Painting of Koreas fighting U.S. invasion in 1871.

1871, June 10 — Adm. Rodgers, commanding five warships and a landing party of over 1,230 men armed with Remington carbines and Springfield muskets attack Choji Fortress of Kanghwa-do, and proceed to occupy the whole island (116.8 sq mi), killing 350 Korean defenders of the island while losing only three of their own, withdrawing to China when the Korean army sends in reinforcement armed with modern weapons. This war known in Korea as Sinmi-yangyo and as the 1871 US Korea Campaign in America.²

1905 — US President Theodore Roosevelt cuts all relations with Koreans, turns the American legation in Seoul over to the Japanese military, deletes the word “Korea” from the State Department’s Record of Foreign Relations and places it under the heading of “Japan,” approving of what will be a brutal, too often murderous, forty year occupation, during much of which, Koreans are forbidden even to speak their language; an unconstitutional act of the US president, said to have been in exchange for acceptance of the continuing US occupation of the Philippines by Japan, recognized as a half-brother empire of the European colonial powers.³

On March 1, 1919, Koreans gather at Tapgol Gong-won (current day Pagoda Park in Seoul) to protest Japanese rule and fight for independence.

1918 — President Woodrow Wilson officially recognizes Korea as territory of the Japanese Empire, refuses to receive delegations from Korea and Vietnam demanding restoration of sovereignty, delegations mistakenly hopeful for Wilson having proclaimed before both houses of Congress, as an addendum to his ‘Fourteen Points“ of a day earlier, “National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. Self determination is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action…. that peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them;” a promise become known in the third world as an infamous, cruel and preposterous lie (the Japanese occupiers were deadly in punishing all those involved in the country-wide March 1st Korean Independence Movement).

US troops arrive in Korea to partition the country 1945.

1945, September 8 — US State Department officials, arrive in Korea with the US Army, disband the government of the Korean People’s Republic created September 6, in Seoul, by delegates from local peoples’ offices from all provinces throughout the peninsula formed when Japan announced intention to surrender (August 10), proceed without any Korean authorization whatsoever, to immediately cut Korea into two parts to be occupied by US and Soviet troops and establishing a military government, flying in from Washington DC (in General MacArthur’s private plane), Singman Rhee, to head it; eventually installing him as president of a separate South Korea Government that will include collaborators, and will outlaw all strikes, declare the KPR and all its activities illegal and begin a deadly terror of persecution of members of the disallowed Korean Peoples Republic, communists, socialists, unionists and anyone against the the partition and demanding an independent Korea.⁴

Mass grave of Koreans slaughtered under U.S. backed regime.

1946-1949 — The US in effect declares war on the popular movement of Korea south of the 38th Parallel and sets in motion a repressive campaign dismantling the Peoples’ Committees and their supporters throughout the south, becoming massively homicidal as Rhee’s special forces and secret police take the lives of some 200,000 men, women and children as documented recently by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the National Assembly of the Republic of (South) Korea; on the Island of Cheju alone, within a year, as many as 60,000 of its 300,000 residents are murdered, while another 40,000 fled by sea to nearby Japan some two years before the Koreans from the north invade the South. [Wikipedia]

U.S. bombs Korean city 1950.

1950, June 28 — The US attacks by, air, sea and land, aiming at the southward invading army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North), which nevertheless unifies the peninsula in five short weeks (except for the US defended port city of Pusan); with little resistance from South Korea’s ROK military as most of its soldiers either defect or go home; over the next three years US will commit dozens of high death toll documented atrocities (some recently apologized for) as American planes level to the ground almost every city and town of any appreciable size in the entire peninsula, north and south, in the end threatening to drop the atomic bomb, and be charged with germ warfare by some not easily dismissed sources.

UN members vote to impose sanctions on North Korea.

1953-2013 — The US using its control over international financial institutions and its power over the financial policies of most of the nations on Earth, keeps in place economy crippling sanctions and trade blockades (only loosening them slightly from time to time in attempts to halt the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea production of nuclear weapons as it faces a US, constantly condemning it in intense belligerency, massively armed with ever new nuclear weapons. (US sanctions obviously violate Principle VI c. Crimes Against Humanity: “inhuman acts done against any civilian population.”)

U.S. and South Korean navy vessels in war exercises off the coast of Korea, March 18, 2013.

1945-2013 — The US Government, under control of its speculative investment banking elite, uses the gigantic world-wide reach of its likewise controlled US media cartel to manufacture an upside-down reality regarding US business and government intentions in Korea (and elsewhere), by blocking, slanting, omission, disinformation, misinformation and a virulent demonization of a nation once bombed flat, twice over, by US war planes; a six-decade propaganda campaign surely prosecutable as a media crime against peace under Principle VI c. of the universally signed on to Nuremberg Principles in the UN Charter.⁵

2010 May — An example of ‘sentence 8’ is the Russian Navy derided, and Chinese government ignored story of a old North Korean torpedo having cut in half a modern South Korean warship in an area where days before, US-ROK live fire exercise war games were menacingly taking place off the coast of North Korea; detailed investigation by Japanese found that a US minesweeper, known to have left the day before, might have been practicing with the newest US spider mine weapon, entirely capable, as most modern mines are indeed capable of, blowing a small warship into two pieces; though a discredited and fabulous US accusation, this media doctored widely broadcasted UN backed accusation has however, become accepted as fact by most of the entire Western media audience and will continue on into the future as the truth until the day it can no longer be of interest).⁶

2013 March — A second example of US media crimes against peace, is the present startling situation, as offered in US TV and print media, namely, that of the somewhat tiny nation, North Korea (size of US State of Pennsylvania), threatening the greatest military power the world has ever seen, possessing tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, with a nuclear attack, not for the sake of the bravely warning of its defense and retaliation power to ward of a feared attack from US planes and ships which periodically fire heavy weapons of mass destruction within earshot of its capital Pyongyang as part of frequent military exercises off its coast; the whole world is constantly ‘informed’ of what a madcap menace its leader is, by a Pentagon fed US media, which at the same time is justifying US bombings, invasions, occupations of some three dozen other small nations. (Citations and author bio follow.)  Continue reading →