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Updated: Oct. 12, 2011 added another video
With Ralph Nader
MOXNEWSd0tCOM on Oct 7, 2011
October 07, 2011 News Corp
http://MOXNews.com
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by Danny Lucia
SocialistWorker.org
July 14, 2010
IN THE past year, the mayor of New York City has become $2 billion richer while his city has grown $1 billion poorer.
When this type of thing happens in a country in Africa or Central Asia, we call it a “failed state.” Their failure, apparently, is a lack of subtlety. Looting your country’s grain reserves to build the world’s largest tetherball arena makes you a kleptocratic dictator. But if you get stinking rich selling information technology to the banks that have looted your treasury through bailouts, well, you’re just Mayor Mike.
reuters.com
Wed Feb 27, 2008 Continue reading
Ralph Nader was interviewed by Alexis Glick on Fox Business Network this morning. He spoke about getting into the presidential race.
Added: February 25, 2008
With no clear favorite emerging from either party it appears New York City’s billionaire mayor may be ready to throw his hat into the ring.
Michael Bloomberg has repeatedly said he is not running. But his aides have been conducting extensive research in what looks to be a plan to campaign as an independent.
From New York, Kristen Saloomey has more.Added: January 14, 2008
by David Edwards and Ron Brynaert
Raw Story
Thursday January 10, 2008
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has quietly been polling and conducting a highly sophisticated voter analysis in all 50 states as he decides whether to launch an independent presidential bid, associates said Wednesday.
A source has told CNN’s John King, that “Mayor Mike Bloomberg has asked his pollsters and other political advisors to assemble a vast database of information. Voter registration, who might vote for an independent, voter trends, what they call micro targeting of the polling places… They want all of this data together to analyze his potential chances.” King is told that the analysis of that information has not yet begun. King also says that a final decision on a 2008 run is due the first week of March.
However, King reports that Bloomberg is less likely to run if “a unifying figure like Barack Obama” wins the Democratic nomination.
continued… plus video
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Global Research, November 22, 2007
WorldNetDaily.com – 2007-11-19
Bilderberg author who 1st exposed plot in 1996 sees EU replication as imminent
WASHINGTON – The next giant step toward world government will be integration of the U.S., Canada and Mexico in European Union-style merger in the next few years, says the author of a best-selling book on the power of shadowy international organizations promoting the move.
“I would say [it’s just] a couple of years away,” reports Daniel Estulin, author of “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group.”
Estulin, a Canadian now living in Europe, says the original plans for a North American Union involved the U.S. and Canada as the prime participants. It was motivated primarily by the desire to harvest Canada‘s abundant natural resources.
In his new book, Estulin reveals the first efforts in this plan date back to 1996 when the elite Bilderberg Group first discussed plans for the dismantlement of Canada as an independent nation and proposed its merger – minus Quebec – with the United States into a Greater North America.
“Actually, the North American Union, or rather a Canada-U.S. merger, was initially discussed shortly after the Reagan-Bush candidacy won the White House,” he says in an interview with WND. “Upon taking over the reins of the country, George Bush and Ronald Reagan called in the presidents of the key trans-national companies and asked them for the real picture. The money people told them that if the United States were a corporation it would have to be shut down immediately. It was bankrupt.”
The solution proposed then, according to Estulin, was merger between the U.S. and Canada.
“Canada is virgin country with a multitude of natural resources, water, mines, oil, gas, etc.,” he explains. “They decided that it was going to take 14 or 15 years to put the whole project together. In the interval, the economies, social programs and laws of the two countries would be quietly harmonized as much as possible.” Back then, part of that harmonization plan involved the separation of Quebec as an independent state, he says. “Actually, when all is said and done, it all comes down to money,” Estulin says. “Money makes its own rules. If your goal is to make the most money possible using Canada’s natural resources, what would you ask for? Number one, give me control over the sun. Number two, give me control over the air. Number three, give me control over water. Now, we know we cannot control the sun, nor can we control the air. But we can control water. Water, after all, is the most important element that can be controlled.”
But the plot for a North American Union, as exposed in detail in Jerome Corsi’s new bestselling book, “The Late Great USA,” is but a prelude, Estulin says, to the ultimate merger – one-world government.
“Everything is in place,” he says. “Europe is now one country, one currency and one constitution. North America is about to become one. The African Union has had its working model going for over a decade. Asia is openly discussing the near-future Asian Union, being sold to us as an economic inevitability beneficial to all its citizens.”
Estulin sees the current focus in the U.S. on the presidential election of 2008 as something of a farce in light of this trend.
“Does it really matter who wins?” he asks. “As I make very clear in ‘The True Story of the Bilderberg Group,’ every politician of note and promise belongs to the Bilderbergers, CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) or the Trilateral Commission. Unless you are one of them, you can hardly hope to win the presidency. If we vote for the lesser evil, forced upon us by the secret oligarchies and the powerful men behind the curtain, we end up playing the game imposed upon us by them. Democracy, I guess what I really want to say, is a fallacy, an unattainable dream, a useless label trotted out and dusted off by the rulers every four years for the benefit of the great unwashed – us. There are two sides in this equation – the powerful elite who control the world’s wealth and the rest of humanity.”
Estulin “guarantees” today’s Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani will not get the nomination of his party. With less certitude, he speculates the current mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, could still be positioned to head the GOP ticket.
“Bloomberg, according to my sources within Bilderberg, will emerge as a credible candidate of consensus for the discredited American political establishment, your virtual “People’s Choice” candidate,” he says.
What is the agenda behind these groups, which Estulin says are comprised of “self-interested elitists protecting their wealth and the investments of multinational banks and corporations in the growing world economy at the expense of developing nations and Third World countries”?
“The policies they develop,” he writes, “benefit them as well as move us towards a one-world government.”
Those questioning Estulin’s conclusion as mere speculation need only recall organizational financer David Rockefeller‘s own words as recorded in his “Memoirs.”
“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will,” he wrote. “If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Estulin’s book, first written in 2005 in Spain, has been translated into 24 languages, most recently this English edition. He has covered the Bilderberg Group as a journalist for more than 15 years.
Why does he singularly devote so much attention to exposing their activities?
“They cannot survive the light, and they know it,” he says. “This is why the powerful people have long insulated themselves from that possibility. You see, the greatest form of control is when you think you are free while you are being manipulated and dictated to. People have been disarmed through the greatest hypnotist the world has ever known – the oblong box almost everyone has in the corner of their living rooms known as the television. By persuading ordinary people that what they can see with their eyes is what is there to see, the men behind the curtain have ensured their own survival, because people will laugh in your face when you explain to them that there is a bigger picture they are not seeing.”
What is his personal prescription for fighting back? He offers a five-point program:
1. Understanding that governments do not represent the people nor have their best interests at heart. 2. Understanding that corporate media’s main job is to hide the transgressions of the most powerful people in the world not shine the light of truth on it.
3. Understanding that the corporate media forms part of the world’s elite societies such as the Bilderbergers, the CFR and the Trilateral Commission.
4. Understanding how money works and how through intelligent use of money we can destroy the Bilderbergers of this world.
5. Getting out of debt now.
see
Bloomberg Crams On Foreign Policy: Proof That He’s Planning ’08 Bid? by Sam Stein
Unmasking the wannabe masters of the universe By Bev Conover
Who Runs The World And Why You Need To Know Immediately By Carolyn Baker (updated)
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by Sam Stein
Huffington Post
November 21, 2007 05:16 PM
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been receiving foreign policy briefing sessions on a wide variety of topics, providing the strongest indication yet that he is considering a run for the White House, the Huffington Post has learned.
The sessions, which were confirmed by multiple sources, have been conducted with Nancy Soderberg, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a Clinton Administration foreign policy adviser. One source described her as “Bloomberg’s Condi.”
…
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NOVEMBER 02, 2007 CNN WOLF BLITZER
Added: November 04, 2007
see
Ralph Nader Files Lawsuit Accusing Democratic Party of Conspiring to Block Presidential Run (link)
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Toronto Sun
Sun, August 12, 2007
In New York, New York, neither Hillary nor Rudy is universally adored
NEW YORK — It’s boiling hot, humid enough to float the Staten Island ferry, and a tornado that hit Brooklyn and midtown is filled with seriously overweight tourists from Paducah and Oshkosh who should not be wearing short pants.
The city’s great and good long ago decamped to the Hamptons, where if you don’t have a $35 million “beach cottage” you are considered needy.
But I love New York any time of year. When I was growing up here, a worldly friend of my mother advised me, “there are only three civilized cities in North America: New York, San Francisco, and Montreal. All the rest is darkness!”
Half a century later, I still can’t say he was wrong.
For the first time in my memory, two New York state residents are running for president, former mayor Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton.
Those who liked Bush, will love Rudy.
This week, he blasted Democrats as “ready to embrace defeat” in Iraq.
Giuliani modestly claimed he alone can save America by: a) “continuing the offensive against Islamism,” and b) stopping Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. He left unclear which of these scourges was worse.
Voters here are ambivalent about Giuliani. Many New Yorkers are Jewish or Catholic liberal Democrats.
Some of them look at Bush, the southern holy rollers and NASCAR fans who form his core support, and the rest of the Republican Party’s hard right, as religious bigots.
The other day, a bookstore owner exclaimed to me, quite out of the blue,
“Bush makes me ashamed to be an American.” Her feeling is shared by many here in America’s least American, most cosmopolitan city. They can’t wait to see the backs of Bush and Cheney, but are unhappy about the choices to replace them.
Giuliani was a fine mayor and an honest politician in a city notorious for political sleaze and payoffs. He ran a tight ship, restored city finances wrecked by the inept, corrupt Democratic party machine, cleaned up city streets, and sharply reduced crime by allowing police to do their job.
The Big Apple roared back to life under Giuliani.
NATIONAL PROMINENCE
But Giuliani’s real claim to fame was 9/11, which brought him to national prominence by projecting take-charge competence that contrasted sharply with President Bush’s dazed, lacklustre initial response. Giuliani emerged the hero of 9/11, and has been living off this moment ever since.
But many New Yorkers don’t like their former hero-mayor. He is seen as arrogant, impatient, and notoriously ill-tempered. His Catholic faith and personal life, fraught with divorces and angry children — an estranged daughter briefly claimed this week she supported Barack Obama — won’t appeal to Bible Belt voters.
After eight years of Bush, the last thing most New Yorkers want is more blundering machismo and stupid wars. Giuliani is much smarter than Bush, but he shares many of the president’s perceived faults. Many think him unstable.
Besides, who can trust an Italian who finds it painful to smile? Italians were put on this earth to make life more enjoyable for all of us, not to wage jihad against Islam.
If New Yorker’s are not crazy about Rudy, their feelings for Hillary Clinton are hardly warmer. New Yorkers don’t like or trust many southerners, a feeling many southerners and westerners heartily reciprocate. Hillary has shape-shifted into a New York resident, but she is having trouble escaping her dark roots in smelly Arkansas politics.
BILL’S THE GORILLA
Bill Clinton, the 800-pound gorilla behind Hillary, was not liked either in New York. But after eight years of Bush, he seems almost saintly. Still, people here don’t trust the Clintons, are turned off by their naked power lust, and see Hillary as an unprincipled opportunist who is all make-up and no substance.
The presidential candidate I suspect most New Yorkers would really like to see is their current capable mayor and self-made billionaire, native son Michael Bloomberg. He’s cool, intelligent, and gets things done in a New York minute.
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I find this most disturbing as a photographer and as a citizen. ~ Lo
by Aaron Dykes
JonesReport.com
August 7, 2007
Fairport, NY – Police arrested three anti-war demonstrators for allegedly trespassing at the privately-owned district office of Congressman Randy Kuhl (R – NY), apparently on the orders of Welker Property Management, the landlords. Two of the three arrested were carrying signs related to “9/11 Truth,” including Wendy Painting, one of those arrested, who is a member of “Rochester 9/11 Truth” and an Indymedia reporter.
Painting says all of those arrested were press members. She says that police confiscated her camera and later used its conditional return as incentive to provide information about other cameramen at the event.
“I was told that if I identified the other people taking pictures, I would be allowed to keep my camera.”
Because she refused to identify others, she was told she won’t be able to get her camera back until December. She was released with a citation and her camera remains under police custody.
Wendy Painting said police had also threatened her with jail when she initially refused to show ID and also acted suspiciously towards a tattoo on her arm depicting a “smoking pistol” that Painting says is a personal memento that should obviously be irrelevant to police concerns.
…
CONTACT:
Fairport Police:
585 223-1740
fpd (at) village.fairport.ny.us
Congressman Kuhl’s Fairport District Office:
220 Packett’s Landing
Fairport, New York 14450
585 223-4760 (phone)
585 223-2328 (fax)
Kuhl’s Washington Office:
1505 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202 225-3161 (phone)
202 226-6599 (fax)
Welker Property Management, Inc
(585) 223-1500
FAX: (585)-223-7517
wpm@welkerproperty.com
Wendy Painting can be contacted at illbirdgirl (at) yahoo.com
h/t: Matt
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***
Fairport protest
August 06, 2007
messengerpost
h/t: Matt
Dandelion Salad
by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Atlantic Free Press
Monday, 30 July 2007
The latest bipartisan George Washington University Battleground Poll rightfully received media attention because of its depressing data. There is historic political pessimism and cynicism. But something is more troubling than the data on the dire views of Americans about their elected representatives and government. It is that 72 percent of voters still believe that “voting gives people like me some say about how the government runs things.” Unbelievable! Such confidence in a system that has failed them.
Despite untrustworthy elected officials and a dysfunctional government that takes care of the Upper Class more than everyone else, Americans retain still believe in their democracy. This logical absurdity – or delusional state – is best explained by avoidance of the pain of cognitive dissonance. Americans resist the reality that they are living in a sham representative democracy where the rule of law is a growing fiction…
It should be noted (but was not in the media coverage) that 75 percent of the likely voters were 45 or older, with a third retired. That makes the results even more unsettling. They should know better than to keep believing they can vote the nation into a better condition. Self-identified Republicans were 41 percent, Democrats 42 percent, and Independents 15 percent
Consider these reasons for giving up on voting and elections under the grip of the two major parties: Some 53 percent have an unfavorable view of politicians, with 55 percent believing that most elected officials are untrustworthy. A majority of 52 percent disapproves of the performance of the Democrats in Congress and 61 percent disapprove of Republicans there. An incredible 93 percent feels that lawmakers in Washington put partisan politics first compared with citizens. But the biggest shift in voter opinion is that 71percent think their own Member of Congress puts partisan politics first compared with them, with 63 percent feeling strongly that way.
For the big picture: Seventy-percent are now convinced that the country is off on the wrong track – and 58 percent feel strongly that way. This is the worst score recorded in the history of the Battleground survey. Democrats are universally agreed about this point, but so are 71 percent of Independents and 49 percent of Republicans.
A plurality of 38 percent believes their children will be worse off in the future and only a third said they “think their own children will be better off than they are right now — a drop of 7 points since January.” Pessimism is worst among white Americans: Only 29 percent believe that their children will be better off; 38 percent believe their children will be worse off.
Dan Balz of the Washington Post summed up: “the American people have entered this campaign with a wholly cynical view of the political process.”
One trick of the political status quo establishment to keep many Americans (but still less than about half of all eligible voters) believing in voting is advertising. Consider the current crowded presidential primary season. The mass media constantly work to play up the races among Democratic and Republican contenders. Why not? They make a ton of money from all the money spent on campaign advertising. Televised debates and endless state and national poll data are entertainment that fuel fake competition. It is sheer manipulation of the electorate – to keep them interested in the election and, worse, to keep them believing that it really matters who wins in each party.
In the end, greedy and arrogant power elites will ensure that only a “safe” candidate will be chosen so that the two-party duopoly loses no power and no presidency rocks the political boat or harms corporate America. Having so many contenders in the primary season is a farce. The eventual Democratic ticket will be Clinton and Obama. Period. End of story. It is the lowest risk, smartest political strategy. On the Republican side there is more uncertainty, but the likely ticket will be Giuliani and Thompson.
The true wildcard is whether Michael Bloomberg enters the race as a third party candidate. I am rooting for this. Objective statistical analysis of the American electorate shows that the level of public discontent with Democrats and Republicans is so high that a lavishly funded campaign by Bloomberg can make history. Take independents, turned-off Democrats and Republicans, and the huge numbers of eligible voters that do not usually vote. Bang! You have more than enough votes to make Bloomberg president. By choosing a well known but political maverick that the public trusts as a running mate, he can win. It is exactly the kind of shake-up our political system desperately needs.
Americans must awake from their political stupor and stop letting themselves be victimized and manipulated by the media/political/financial elites running and ruining our nation.
[Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Delusional Democracy, www.delusionaldemocracy.com, and a founder of Friends of the Article V Convention, www.foavc.org.]
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If the New York mayor runs, he will stymie the ability of the Democratic nominee to play both sides of the fence on issues like guns, gay rights, immigration and choice
By Laura S. Washington
In These Times
July 24, 2007
When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg looks at himself in the mirror, what do you suppose he sees?
A hard-nosed, no-nonsense businessman? A non-partisan political operator? Perhaps a nuts-and-bolts manager? Kingmaker, spoiler, billionaire? The next president of the United States?
It’s a perplexing picture that offers up a cornucopia of possibilities. Bloomberg has newly declared himself an independent. Independent runs for the presidency can be treacherous.
“Ralph Nader” became two very dirty words after a certain megalomaniac ensured the debacle of Election 2000. His ill-timed and ill-conceived independent bid ushered in an eight-year horror story.
What does the man in the mirror mean for the left? How will a Bloomberg candidacy—or even its potential—affect the role of the left in presidential politics?
Bloomberg’s recent declaration of political independence last month sent shock waves through the Democratic and Republican sides of the burgeoning presidential contest.
A plethora of candidates from both parties—nearly 20 at last count—are scrambling for their respective nominations. If a third-party Bloomberg candidacy jumps into the fray, the presidential campaign would start to resemble a reprise of Cheaper by the Dozen.
Progressives may be too quick to dismiss the publishing magnate as too far off the reservation. In Gotham City, a surprisingly diverse number of pols and civic types are slyly and quietly trumpeting the possibilities.
With good reason. Take an issue like gun control. Bloomberg is right on the money. Listen to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speak in nuanced and tremulous tones about balancing gun violence and civil liberties. They don’t want to irritate the deer hunters of Pennsylvania, a la Al Gore.
Then listen to Bloomberg. In January 2006, he announced he would use his second mayoral term to campaign against what he called “the scourge of illegal guns.”
According to the New York Sun, Bloomberg proclaimed he would take his gun-control crusade to “Albany, to Washington, and to every capital of every state that permits guns to flow freely across its border.”
Then listen to Tom Teepen, a columnist for Cox Newspapers in Atlanta, who wrote: “If there were an Oscar for sanity about guns Bloomberg not only would deserve it but alas, also would probably be the only nominee.”
Gun control is also a signature issue for many progressives. By mid-June of this year, gun violence in Chicago had claimed the lives of 34 public-school students. Two notable civil-rights activists, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and Michael Pfleger, a Catholic priest, were arrested during a protest outside a busy gun store in Riverdale, a Chicago suburb. This is a gut issue for urbanites, and many were rooting for the Revs, including me.
Would a Bloomberg run, propped up by a very sturdy anti-gun plank, affect the presidential dialogue? You bet.
The Republicans may be shameless, but they are not stupid. My guess is that they won’t commit political hari-kari and allow the Iraq War to dominate the 2008 election.
Here’s the plan: move Iraq off the front page. Spin the troop stand downs, partial withdrawals, and whaddaya know—an 11th hour “victory.”
When the air clears, domestic issues will take front and center. If Bloomberg runs, he will stymie the ability of the Democratic nominee to play both sides of the fence on issues like guns, gay rights, immigration and choice.
About those guns. Bloomberg has become a favorite target of the National Rifle Association, and he doesn’t give a whit. That’s because he has money, money, money. Prognosticators are predicting nominee wannabes will have to surpass the $100 million fundraising mark to stay in the game.
Yawn. The architecture of the ‘08 race would be bent out of shape by a Bloomberg bid. Michael Bloomberg is worth about $5.5 billion, according to the latest billionaire roster from Forbes magazine. A third-party bid by Bloomberg could inject some seriously filthy lucre into the race.
Massive media buys by Bloomberg would drive the debate on domestic issues.
Those kinds of bucks will create a contortion even a yoga instructor couldn’t handle.
No one knows if Bloomberg will run. If he does, he could complicate the centrist tendencies of the Obamas, Clintons, et al. And that could be a very good thing.
Laura S. Washington, an In These Times senior editor, teaches journalism at DePaul University and is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.
More information about Laura S. Washington
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Jackie and Dunlap on switchin’ parties, squashin’ cardboard, and introducin’ Bloomberg.
Dandelion Salad 