Showing posts with label Democratic Alliance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democratic Alliance. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Rand Tumbles After South African President Zuma Survives "No Confidence" Vote

National assembly speaker (and purported replacement) Baleka Mbete"s secret no-confidence vote has failed to oust South African President Zuma.



Speaker of Parliament Baleka Mbete shocked South Africans Monday when she announced her decision to allow the vote to proceed on a secret ballot, which would allow party members to vote against their leader outside the public spotlight.





"I understand and accept that a motion of no confidence in the president is a very important matter, a potent tool toward holding the president to account," she said at a press briefing Monday in Cape Town. She did not take questions from reporters.



The no confidence vote, she said, "constitutes one of the severest political consequences imaginable" and her decision to allow the vote to proceed anonymously is "about putting the resilience of our democratic institution to test."



Mbete needed 201 votes (Zuma"s ANC dominates the Parliament with 249 out of 400 seats and so for the motion to pass, at least 50 party members would have to defect to the opposition - something that has never happened before in a party that defeated South Africa"s apartheid system and is known for its loyalty).


However, some have argued that the number is lower. If the need arises, National Assembly will seek legal opinion on whether majority in no-confidence motion on President Jacob Zuma is based on number of seats in assembly or if vacancies in NA should be subtracted, Speaker Baleka Mbete tells lawmakers in Cape Town.


  • Mbete says simple majority to be calculated as 201, or 50% plus one seat of 400 seats in National Assembly.

  • Democratic Alliance, which is the main opposition party, argues seats should exclude 5 vacancies, which takes total number of seats to 395 and lowers majority needed to pass the motion


South African lawmakers began to cast their votes at 1043am ET (ZAR had leaked very modestly lower into the start of the vote).


Voting finished at 1150ET and the count began (as lawmakers squabbled over constitutional details).


Counting finished at 1235ET. ZAR dropped on the riging on the 5-minute warning bells.


The result:





Motion of no confidence in South African President Jacob Zuma was defeated by 198 votes against 177 supporting it, Baleka Mbete, the speaker of the National Assembly, announces at a sitting in Cape Town.



9 of the 384 members in the assembly, where the ANC has a 62% majority, abstained



The reaction is clear... The Rand tumbled...




Zuma will now retain his position as ANC president until his tenure ends in December. His term as president of the country runs through 2019.


Saturday, May 27, 2017

NYC Mayor De Blasio Staffer Arrested On Child Pornography Charges


Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com


A 29 year old staffer for NYC mayor Bill De Blasio"s office has been arrested and charged with two felonies after police found a massive collection of child porn on his laptop, according to court documents. The NYPD"s investigation began March 29th when Jacob Schwartz, 29, handed over his laptop - on which over 3,000 images and 89 videos were discovered depicting sexual acts with children as young as 6 months old.


Schwartz - a computer programmer making $66k / year was also the president of the Manhattan Young Democrats - as well as VP of the NY State Young Democrats. When the NY Post reached the former organization for comment, they said they were "shocked" by the allegations against Schwartz - adding that he is "no longer a member of the board."


Schwartz thought he was hot shit in Democrat circles, rubbing elbows with and promoting Hillary"s campaign manager Robby Mook.




Breitbart obtained a now-deleted biography of Schwartz from the Manhattan Young Democrats:


Jacob was born and raised in the heart of Greenwich Village, and was involved in political organizing from a young age. Some of his oldest memories are handing out leaflets for his father, as he campaigned for District Leader. More recently, he helped start the New Democratic Alliance in New York City, and, in 2012, worked for the Obama campaign as a Field Organizer in the Lehigh Valley. A graduate of Lehigh University with an M.S. in Energy Systems Engineering and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Jacob currently works for the New York City Department of Design and Construction on their Build It Back Hurricane Sandy recovery and resiliency program. He is also the founder and executive director of a climate education non-profit called Common Climate, and previously served as Issues Assembly and Policy Director for MYD.


Schwartz was charged with promoting a sexual performance by a child and possessing a sexual performance by a child under 16, both felonies.



Schwartz"s father is huge Democrat insider


Jacob Schwartz"s father is Arthur Schwartz, a prominent Manhattan attorney, community activist, and DNC operator. Schwartz served as council to Bernie Sanders during the 2016 election. He was also a delegate during Barack Obama"s 2008 run for president.


Schwartz has also represented SEIU, several unions, and served as general council to ACORN from March of 2009 to October 2010.


He also made a killing in NY real estate


Arthur Schwartz turned a 2003 investment of $499,000 into $20.89 million when he sold in 2014.


The elder Schwartz has called his son"s arrest "a personal tragedy," and told the Post "He"s already in therapy for this."


The younger Schwartz is out on $7500 bail.



And poor NY Mayor Bill De Blasio - the vocal Trump critic who headed up an anti-Trump protest in Columbus Circle, clogging up traffic, railed against Trump"s Immigration Executive Order - calling it "Simply Un-American," accused Trump of being the cause of Anti-Semitic threats (which turned out to be an Israeli guy). De Blasio also refused to assign a label of terrorism to a Sept. 2016 Manhattan bombing carried out by Afghani named Ahmad Kahn Rahimi which injured 29 people. Even though a note left on an unexploded pressure cooker referenced al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.


So, a rising star NY Democrat was arrested on charges of pedophilia, and two of Trump"s most vocal New York City critics on the left have been thoroughly dragged into the mud. 


Boy was Hillary"s timing bad...


During Friday"s commencement address at Wellesley College, Hillary tried to smear those investigating high level pedophilia:



Saturday, March 18, 2017

Why Is South Africa Being Stirred Up?

Authored by Alexander Mezyaev via The Strategic Culture Foundation,



Since the middle of February, the internal political situation in South Africa has worsened once again. During South African president Jacob Zuma’s annual address to the country’s parliament, the main opposition parties, primarily the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters, became rowdy and delayed the president’s speech for an hour. For security reasons, the parliament building was surrounded not by the police, as it was last year, but by  the SADF staff.


The opposition parties know they are not in a position to take power democratically, so the only choice they have is to destabilise the situation in the country. To be more precise, this means provoking bloodshed and seeing it through to a regime change. The actions of the parliamentary Economic Freedom Fighters party – insulting the country’s president or the parliamentary speaker and behaving like clowns – only seem like hooliganism at first glance. In fact, the tactic is intended to bring different segments of the population into conflict with each other and cause riots that will lead to fatalities. In the meantime, the Economic Freedom Fighters have so far done nothing to try and achieve their declared objectives legislatively. One of the main points of their political programme was the nationalisation of land without compensation, but while the Freedom Fighters were raising an uproar, a bill to change the Land Act, which provides for such nationalisation, was put forward by the African National Congress. This initiative of the ruling party led to even more ferocious attacks being launched against it by the Democratic Alliance, which represents the interest of local and transnational monopoly capital.


On 22 February, the High Court of North Gauteng (where the country’s government is located), ruled in the case brought by the Democratic Alliance that South Africa’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is «unconstitutional and invalid». What’s more, the court ordered President Zuma to revoke the notice of withdrawal. Against the backdrop of the recent coup in Gambia, the events in South Africa seem like an attempt, amid instigated large-scale riots, to make the government use force against ‘peaceful protesters’, thereby paving the way for an investigation by the International Criminal Court.


The danger of last year’s pogroms against ‘foreigners’ has come back with a vengeance. On 24 February, large-scale demonstrations were held in a number of cities, including the capital, against immigrants, who then held their own demonstrations in response. Violence was unavoidable. The situation was summed up fairly shrewdly by the leader of the Zimbabwean diaspora in South Africa: «In our view, the xenophobic attacks are well coordinated and political. Opposition parties which are fighting the ANC government want to make South Africa ungovernable and they are mobilising communities to attack foreigners».


Behind this picture is the blatant desire to disrupt the government’s plans outlined in President Jacob Zuma’s address to parliament. These plans include amendments to the law on mineral resources in terms of the State’s right to exercise sovereignty over all the country’s mineral resources, and changes to the racial imbalance within the country’s mining industry. At present, nearly all of the major mining companies are owned by transnational corporations (diamond mining is dominated by De Beers, which is owned by Anglo America plc, and platinum mining is dominated by Anglo Platinum Limited, which is part of Anglo American Platinum Ltd owned by Anglo American plc). The government is planning to pursue direct state involvement in this sector of the economy. A bill on these issues will be introduced into parliament this year.


There are also other plans. An interesting programme is being implemented in South Africa’s agricultural sector to create collective farms. The construction of free housing will continue – more than four million families have already been provided with houses. Nine million households that did not have electricity have now been connected to the grid. Only two of the six million jobs that the government planned to create by March 2019 have so far materialised, but this is also an achievement. A total of seventeen million people, almost one in three, receive social support from the government.


In addition, the government has responded to last year’s mass student protests over the increase in university tuition fees by allocating 32 billion rand to support higher education. This will not solve the problem entirely, but it will allow those less well-off to continue on with higher education.


The bold steps being undertaken by President Jacob Zuma in the social and economic sphere are being reinforced by the pan-African scope of South Africa’s foreign policy. Good examples of this are the plans to create a pan-African free trade zone by merging three regional organisations – the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community (EAC) – and South Africa’s participation in peacekeeping operations in Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Mozambique, South Sudan, Libya, and Somalia.


The ruling African National Congress party conference is set to take place at the end of 2017. The ANC will elect its new leader and, by extension, the country’s most likely president (should the ANC win the parliamentary elections). The approach of this political challenge, along with the South African government’s determination to continue along its chosen course, is increasing the anxiety of those who regard what’s going on as a threat to their centuries-old positions – positions that are no longer looking quite so unshakeable.

Monday, February 13, 2017

Zimbabwe 2.0: South Africa's President Vows To Redistribute White-Owned Land And Businesses

In a stark flashback to the events that led to Zimbabwe"s terminal collapse into banana republic status, as well as unleashing hyperinflation and economic devastation, on Thursday South African President Jacob Zuma pledged to break up white ownership of business and land to reduce inequality, in a State of the Nation address which as the WSJ reports was disrupted by a fistfight, walkouts and a release of pepper spray in the parliamentary chamber. It appears South Africa is not fond of implementing "Rule 19."



Scenes of verbal and physical clashes inside the parliament, some 27 years to the day after Nelson Mandela was released from prison, as well as Zuma"s contentious speech, highlight the precarious future course facing Africa’s most developed economy.


As the WSJ reports, on Thursday, lawmakers from the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters "shouted over an initial attempt by Mr. Zuma to start his speech, after complaining about what they said was a threatening increase of security inside and outside Parliament. Previously the president had for the first time deployed several hundred troops to help lock down Cape Town’s parliamentary precinct in anticipation of potential clashes between ANC and opposition supporters."


Things then quickly got out of control:





“You’re a constitutional delinquent,” EFF lawmaker Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said of Mr. Zuma, referring to a court finding last year that the president had violated the constitution when he refused to pay back public money that an official report found was used for unnecessary upgrades to his private home. Mr. Zuma has since paid back some of the funds. When EFF lawmakers, dressed in their customary red workers’ overalls and maids’ uniforms, refused to quiet down or leave the chamber, they began fighting with parliamentary orderlies. Some lawmakers used their red hard hats to hit the orderlies, while other legislators were dragged out of the chamber.



Soon after, South Africa’s other main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, walked out in protest over the increase in security. ANC lawmakers shouted after Mmusi Maimane, the DA’s first black leader, as he led his party’s MPs out of the chamber, calling him a racist and sellout. Around the same time, several DA members in the visitors’ gallery
reported that tear gas had been released into the gallery, which quickly
emptied.



According to the chairwoman of South Africa’s upper house, Thandi Modise, an initial investigation showed that the substance released was pepper spray and called the incident a “breach of security” that shouldn’t have happened. She didn’t say who was behind the incident.


Meanwhile, Zuma didn’t acknowledge the disruptions when he returned to the podium to continue his speech. Instead, he focused on the one issue which may soon plague South Africa for years to come: the stark economic divide between black and white South Africans, one of the issues that the EFF has seized on in recent years.


To appease the rising populist anger, and taking a page out of developed economies around the globe, Zuma then said that “today we are starting a new chapter of radical socioeconomic transformation., The president added that 22 years after the end of apartheid “white households earn at least five times more than black households.”


President Zuma’s focus on redistribution comes as his African National Congress party prepares to elect a new leader to succeed him in December and as he finds himself under growing pressure over corruption allegations. He also said that he planned to send back to Parliament a bill that will make it easier for authorities to redistribute land taken away from blacks during colonization, although white landowners will still receive market prices for any seized land.


Where have we seen this kind of land "redistribution" not too long ago? Oh yes, Zimbabwe.



It took Zimbabwe 15 years to admit its mistakes, and invite white farmers back. It now appears that South Africa will have to learn from the mistakes of its northern naighbor in due course.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Leaked Docs Expose Media Matters Conspiring with Facebook & Google to Censor Alternative Media

Washington, D.C. – A recently leaked briefing document from political operator David Brock’s ultra-liberal, self-proclaimed media watchdog, Media Matters, has exposed the hard-left activist group conspiring with Facebook and Google to create a strategy to marginalize and ban political thought outside of the progressive neoliberal paradigm – essentially censoring libertarian and conservative political speech.


For those uninitiated, Brock is the key cog in the hard-left neo-liberal political media attack machine that attempts to propagandize the public into accepting a progressive political narrative as fact. Essentially, Brock acts as the tip of the spear in the left’s culture war – forwarding a divide and conquer paradigm based largely on identity politics.


To give some perspective into this strategy one need only look back to the teachings of ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu and his seminal treatise, The Art of War. He proposed that indirect warfare is one of the most efficient ways of fighting an enemy. It allows an opponent to defeat their adversary without directly engaging them, thereby saving themselves the resources that would have to be expended in a direct confrontation.


This dynamic of indirect warfare is clearly at work, as the hallmarks of an information war are unmistakable in Media Matters methodology and approach described in the leaked document.


The employment of hybrid warfare will unmistakably be marked by “protests,” as we have already seen in the form of “The Women’s March,” and insurgents, such as the Anitfas presence at the UC-Berkley riots. Fifth columns, such as Media Matters, will be formed by non-state actors, like Brock, which publicly behave as civilian organizations, but operate with vested political motives and strategic militant-like precision. Social media and similar technologies will come to replace precision-guided munitions as the “surgical strike” capability of the aggressive party, and chat rooms and Facebook pages will become the new “militants’ den.”



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Besides the tactical advantages of this hybrid warfare, there are also strategic ones as well. In this case, indirect warfare, in the form of information warfare, is clearly being employed in an effort to destabilize any messages that are outside of the neoliberal globalist paradigm.


The leaked briefing book, entitled “Media Matters: The Top Watchdog Against Fake News and Propaganda — Transforming the Media Landscape” (obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon) was privately published by Brock in January to solicit donors, and lays out the strategy for controlling the  U.S. media narrative.


The briefing book advances the narrative of “Fake News,” which actually began with Media Matters, and reveals Brock is attempting to launch what the hard-left calls “a meme.” A “meme” is essentially a narrative designed to discredit news organizations that dare report from anything other than a neoliberal perspective. The goal is to discredit any organization that doesn’t toe the neoliberal line.


The main thrust of this narrative Brock is forwarding is to paint anyone who opposes the neoliberal agenda as “alt-right” – with a direct implication that they are racist, anti-Semitic, or misogynistic. It must be noted that this blanket term is used to intentionally marginalize anyone that disagrees with their ideological stance. Make no mistake that conflating neo-Nazis and racists, with constitutionalists, libertarians and conservatives is a strategic maneuver meant to marginalize the voice of large segments of the U.S. population.


Brock implicates both Google and Facebook as co-conspirators in forwarding this “Fake News” narrative against independent media organizations like The Free Thought Project.



Brock clearly articulates this strategy, as laid out on page two of his briefing book:



“Over the next four years, Media Matters will focus on achieving the following outcomes:



“Serial misinformers and right-wing propagandists inhabiting everything from social media to the highest levels of government will be exposed.



“Internet and social media platforms, like Google and Facebook, will no longer uncritically and without consequence host and enrich fake news sites and propagandists.



“Toxic alt-right social media-fueled harassment campaigns that silence dissent and poison our national discourse will be punished and halted.”



This clear attempt to consolidate control over the informational narrative Americans are exposed to is dangerous, and nothing less than a true threat to freedom. In essence, Brock is attempting to create a more effective “propaganda model,” as forward by academic Noam Chomsky, to prevent people having any perspective outside of the one the hard-left wants seen by the public — using social media as the weapon.




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The narrative of “fake news” had a creeping, but clear, drive to delegitimize alternative media outlets, such as us here at The Free Thought Project, likely due to our reporting on U.S. hegemony/imperialism and topics like the contents of WikiLeaks’ releases of the DNC and Podesta emails during the election – while the mainstream media largely refused to do so.


Revealing the origins of this soft-censorship regime, Lachan Markay reported in the Washington Free Beacon that during the 2016 presidential campaign Media Matters launched a petition drive aimed at pressuring Facebook into prohibiting “fake News” websites and to “adjust its model to stem the flow of damaging fake news from its platform pages.”


There was a clear trickled down agenda enacted after a secret post-election meeting of progressive elites with the Democratic Alliance, co-founded by Soros in 2005, with Media Matters acting as the propaganda arm by issuing a press release about “fake news”– and, like clockwork, numerous publications, such as the Washington Post, began running articles about “fake news.”


In the leaked briefing book, Brock acknowledged that Google was a relatively easy sell on the “fake news” narrative, but Facebook was a much harder sale — with Mark Zuckerberg initially calling the notion that “fake news is a problem” is “crazy.”


So, how did Media Matters handle this?


According to the briefing documents:






“In November, we launched a campaign pressuring Facebook to: 1) acknowledge the problem of the proliferation of fake news on Facebook and its consequences for our democracy and 2) commit to taking action to fix the problem.”



Brock subsequently reported that “as a result of our push for accountability,” Facebook would now toe the neoliberal/globalist line and implement a soft-censorship regime under the guise of ridding Facebook of “fake news.”



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In the wake of this full-court press by the neoliberal establishment, President Obama disingenuously proclaimed “fake news” a threat to our democracy during a speech in Berlin. In turn, Mark Zuckerberg caved to the pressure and announced a fact-checking regime, laughably announcing the use of Politifact, Snopes and ABC News to fact-check and flag disputed stories — which would then result in disputed stories being given a lower algorithm ranking, thus not as often appearing in people’s newsfeeds.


Make no mistake that this is simply an attempt by the corporate oligarchy to regain control of the informational gates of society, which they have lost due to the rapid rise of social media, in an effort to soft-censor any dissenting world views.


Brock believes that the only truth is that which supports a neoliberal-globalist agenda, and that all other points of view must be marginalized. It’s painfully obvious that Media Matters, Brock and his oligarchic ilk have no respect for free speech, as they attempt to create an echo chamber for neoliberal globalism, while attempting to silence all other voices.


Make no mistake that these actions, by the oligarchic left, are simply war by other means.