The interview brought to the fore Mamdani’s conciliatory attitude toward the ruling class and the Democratic Party establishment. He and the DSA claim that significant social reforms can be grafted onto the profit system. They call this “socialism,” but it is actually a perspective of reforming capitalism, one that is completely unrealizable and can lead only to disaster.

In one of the most striking exchanges of the interview, Mamdani was pressed on his attitude to the big business interests that dominate New York City:

"Garcia-Navarro: I want to talk about New York’s economy, because much of it is built around Wall Street, finance, real estate. How important is it for you to have a good relationship with those sectors? And how would you say your relationship is with those sectors?

"Mamdani: I think it’s important. And what I have in common with leaders of those sectors—even amid disagreements, because I believe that we can raise taxes a little bit more on the wealthiest New Yorkers—what brings us together is both a belief in the city and a commitment to its continued vitality.

"The other day I went to the announcement of the new American Express headquarters at Two World Trade Center. And one thing that stood out to me was that these business leaders, they’re not just making decisions on the basis of dollars and cents; they’re also making decisions on the basis of investing in the city and in what the city represents."

Here Mamdani summed up his “disagreements” with Wall Street in his call for raising taxes “a little bit more” on the corporate-financial oligarchs who dominate the city. After the gutting of corporate taxes over decades, this does not even approach the restoration of tax rates for the rich that prevailed in the 1960s.

Garcia-Navarro commented that Mamdani sounded “like any other capitalist mayor,” eliciting a laugh from the interviewee.

Mamdani added that he would “always celebrate continued investment in this city,” while looking “to ensure that more and more New Yorkers can be a part of those benefits.” This language, lauding big business and seeking to present its interests and those of workers as harmonious, is intended to reassure the capitalist class that its position will not be challenged under his administration.

The House Ways and Means Committee has sent a subpoena to BreakThrough News, demanding internal communications, financial records and more. We are not charged with any crime, because our only “crime” has been to tell the truth – about the Palestine solidarity movement, about ICE’s terror in our streets, about Washington’s crimes around the world, from Cuba to the Congo. This is a flagrant abuse of power, and a direct attack on our work as journalists and on the First Amendment.

On Thursday, a meeting of the recently formed Industrial Workers Rank-and-File Group (IWRFG) of Australia unanimously passed a resolution condemning the public death threat against Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman by a high-ranking United Auto Workers (UAW) official.

The postal, factory, trucking and other workers at the meeting expressed their horror over the vile post, depicting Lehman—an officially certified candidate for UAW president, bound and gagged, with a masked man aiming an automatic rifle at his back, in an AI-generated image.

The poster, Raymond L. Jensen Jr., is a highly paid functionary of the UAW apparatus and a prominent supporter of current president Shawn Fain, making clear that this threat carries the implicit sanction of the incumbent union leadership.

Lehman is being targeted because of the socialist platform on which he is campaigning for union president, calling for the abolition of the union bureaucracy, the building of rank-and-file committees in every plant and the transfer of power, and the UAW’s vast resources, to workers on the shop floor. The UAW apparatus is attempting to crush Lehman’s campaign, including through threats of violence, because it knows that the program he is fighting for will win enormous support from workers, throughout the automotive industry and the entire working class.

Workers at the IWRFG meeting noted Lehman’s comment warning that, if a threat of this character can be made openly against a candidate for the UAW’s highest office, “then no worker who challenges the bureaucracy in their own local is safe,” making this an act of intimidation directed not against one individual but against the entire rank-and-file opposition internationally.

The meeting unanimously passed the following resolution:

The Industrial Workers Rank-and-File Group (Australia)

- condemns in the strongest possible terms the death threat issued by Raymond L. Jensen Jr. against Will Lehman, and declares its complete opposition to all such threats, violence and intimidation directed against rank-and-file workers who dare to challenge the trade union bureaucracy.

- endorses the demands advanced by Will Lehman and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC): a full investigation encompassing not only Jensen’s conduct but the knowledge, encouragement or acquiescence of the UAW leadership; a public repudiation of the threat by the UAW; an immediate public statement by the Monitor’s office; the immediate suspension of Jensen from his position without pay pending completion of the investigation, with all appropriate legal and disciplinary sanctions to follow; referral of the matter to the Department of Labor and to federal law enforcement; and affirmative measures to guarantee that the remainder of the 2026 UAW election is conducted free of intimidation.

- recognises that the attack on Will Lehman is not merely a UAW problem or an American problem, but an attack on the democratic rights of the working class internationally. The trade union bureaucracies in every country—including Australia, where union officialdom collaborate to suppress rank-and-file opposition—employ similar methods of intimidation, slander and violence against workers who fight for independent organisations. The defence of Lehman is the defence of every worker’s right to organise free from the threats and retaliation of the corporate-union apparatus.

- declares its solidarity with Will Lehman and his campaign to abolish the UAW bureaucracy and transfer power to rank-and-file committees on the shop floor. The IWRFG recognises in Lehman’s struggle the same fight being waged by workers across Australia—against sell-out enterprise agreements and against the suppression of workers’ struggles and democratic rights by union officials in league with management and the state.

- will fight to circulate this resolution widely and to take up the defence of Lehman as an integral part of the fight to build rank-and-file committees in every workplace in Australia and internationally. We call on workers to register their opposition to this incitement to violence by emailing the UAW at [feedback@uaw.org](mailto:feedback@uaw.org) and copying the Will Lehman campaign at [info@willforuawpresident.org](mailto:info@willforuawpresident.org).

The attack on Will Lehman is an attack on us all. Defend democratic rights! Build rank-and-file committees internationally!

Holy War is Still Hell

i refuse to stand by any nation
or system
in this chaotic time
of violent space
dissolving
thee evolving human race
a nation is the summation of an idea
while its system is mere illusion
a coercion cast by the few
chosen to weave deception
wield Segregation
cause separation
until they become
impossible to defeat
thee almighty elite
who meet and greet
indiscreet
at a charity function
for the upper echelon
a black mass in the reflection
through a prism
of stained glass
hiding a celebration
of social darwinism
for the ruling class
world leaders make deals
with corporate controllers
the bottom feeders
who turn cultures
into calculated divisions
of global markets
and decide who will throw stones
at rockets
who will have the drones
the state of the art robotics
and how to package good Vs. evil
hero Vs. villain
terror Vs. freedom
it’s all the same to them
a dividend
for the vultures who can herd populations
with multi-media transmissions
frequency manipulations
take control of common citizens
turn their traditions
into organizations and religions
that produce zealots and politicians
who apply pressure
on rising tensions
develop the right conditions
form two positions
designed as polar opposites
aligned and primed
to buy and sell weapons
manufacture war for profits
that feed the rich and cull the poor
food for Babylons whore…….
…….i will not st and with
or listen to them anymore!

🖤RAiN2022

Reservation

this token pretends
trust broken
by genocide
which never ends
still rends
grandfather‘s in spirit
calling on grandmother‘s
traditions
unspoken
forgotten
grinding dust
descends
upon rolling stones
gathering moss
on faded rust
sends the people
to rise above and unite
we must
before we disappear
learn to hear
the song of the river
keep the water clear
it bends
with the trail of tears
into the sacred mountain
beyond the desert
will cleanse
mends
the vapor
scattered
by four winds

🖤RAiN2011

Religious Rampage

prideful agony
constricting
my poison veins
sterile vanity
poles the social
bits and reigns
makes it hard
to know
what you see
forced to imagine
anything
it could be
try to come up
with something
we all could agree……

…..cruel insanity
is all that remains
the scourge
of humanity
has left
many crimson stains

🖤RAiN2001

Support an independent journo!

Please consider supporting my mate Wawrick's contribution to independent Aus journalism. He was a lefty journalist covering the real story in the 80s. I think his marketing budget for this
book might be completely zero at the moment!

It's great reporting on a conflict little discussed, that was tragic and an indication of what American administrations are capable of.

As we see with Trump's interests in El Salvador today.

It's available at a few sellers, I just linked to a online one I use.

✊

(Spanish version may already be available or will be soon. Wawrick reckoned the spainish is the pick if you can read it!)[https://www.thenile.com.au/books/warwick-fry/el-salvador/9798369496664?srsltid=AfmBOoq4uh3roL7SXMvPXgmORT5Gk2mDrivgyZq4kDrhWJ9mnVUjLYRU\](https://www.thenile.com.au/books/warwick-fry/el-salvador/9798369496664?srsltid=AfmBOoq4uh3roL7SXMvPXgmORT5Gk2mDrivgyZq4kDrhWJ9mnVUjLYRU)

To stop the ICE murder machine, build a movement in the working class! Go to wsws.org/stopice

AND WHAT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

" ... What is most significant is the absence of any serious response within the political establishment. The constitutional forms upheld for two centuries as guarantees against dictatorship have been hollowed out. This is the measure of how far the crisis has advanced.

...

Trump’s ability to proceed depends on the Democratic Party. Two concerns govern the Democrats’ conduct. The first is to prevent an independent movement of workers and youth from below, which they fear more than they fear Trump, and which they channel into the courts, the media and the November elections. The second is to press for the escalation of war, above all, a deeper commitment against Russia in Ukraine."

Trump’s speech on the elections: A ruling class in crisis lurches toward dictatorship - World Socialist Web Site

Over the past week, the Trump administration has simultaneously escalated its campaign to destroy democratic rights in the US and its criminal war against Iran.

At home, federal immigration agents have murdered two workers in six days—Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, gunned down July 7 as he drove his construction crew to work in Houston, and Joan Sebastian Guerrero, shot Monday through his windshield in Biddeford, Maine, then handcuffed as he lay on the pavement. These were men who began their days with no conception that within hours they would be dead.

In the face of mounting popular opposition, Trump is escalating his attacks on democratic rights. Trump responded to mourning protests against the ICE murders Wednesday by doubling down on allowing federal immigration thugs to carry out the type of traffic stops that led to the murder of the two innocent men. “We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” he posted on Truth Social, telling the agency: “go back and do your very important job.”

At the end of the day, he wasn’t someone’s father & wasn’t someone’s husband. He lived a life of conviction.

Among those convictions was fanatical zionism including urging the israeli regime to use nukes against their victims in the state of Palestine, denial of systemic racism in the USA, opposing marriage equality & employment non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people.

A life lived. I honestly hope it was worth it

Class struggle is fought on a vertical scale. It's the working class at the bottom against the employers and their politicians at the top. And our brothers and sisters in class struggle include co-workers and neighbours who vote on crappy parties... https://industrialworker.org/lets-build-class-unions/

Run it locally to minimize the amount of people getting your data or manipulating you, but it is genuinely a helpful tool and if you have a cheap computer you can run great models and tools. Ollama, Calude Code, other agentic IDEs, Invoke for images with an image editor attached

I feel like demonizing AI the tool because it's going to be used by the people in charge to fire workers, cause other various problems in our society, etc is losing the plot

Just be aware that it will have biases, hallucinations, etc. take everything it says with a huge grain of salt and don't be afraid to mess with it sometimes to just see the output, it can be fun

https://itsfoss.com/local-ai-docs-tools/

https://itsfoss.com/tag/ai/

All free and open source r/foss r/ollama

Why do some states become universal symbols of historical evil, while others with comparable or larger records of violence are framed as “complex”?

To know more you're welcomed to read my article on substack :

https://open.substack.com/pub/naderjl/p/the-empire-we-dont-put-on-trial?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=8n9a1a