Giuliani's Ghosts - Democratic Underground

AtomicKitten

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Sun Mar-04-07 05:14 PM
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Giuliani's Ghosts

Edited on Sun Mar-04-07 05:59 PM by AtomicKitten

The Ghost of Giuliani’s Political Past

By Theodore Hamm

Excerpts:

According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, if the 2008 election were held today Rudy Giuliani would be our next president. Given his stature as a media celebrity, the numbers are not surprising.

* snip *

Before starting the film, I received a flurry of hostile reactions—e.g., “Is this going to make me sicker than I already feel?” and “This is going to make me angry!” When the documentary ended, not one of my 35 students had a kind word for Giuliani. In fact, the most frequent question asked was a fearful one: “Do you really think he could win?”

Why is there such contempt for the man who never tires of reminding audiences of how he “saved” the city after 9/11? As “Giuliani Time” makes abundantly clear, it’s because in the eight years he reigned as New York City mayor leading up to 9/11, Giuliani ruled as a petty tyrant. And the most frequent target of his animosities was the city’s black population.

* snip *

As "Giuliani Time" makes abundantly clear, it's because in the eight years he reigned as New York City
mayor leading up to 9/11, Giuliani ruled as a petty tyrant. And the most frequent target of his animosities was the city's black population.

During his two terms, Giuliani’s two biggest policy initiatives—reducing welfare rolls and fighting crime—also antagonized the city’s low-income populations of color. His much-touted Workfare initiative amounted to an increase in the numbers of the city’s working poor, undercutting better-paying city jobs in the process. And as Village Voice reporter and Giuliani foe Wayne Barrett says in the film, “No one knows what happened to the 600,000 people” who disappeared from the welfare rolls during the Giuliani years.

And as Village Voice reporter and Giuliani foe Wayne Barrett says in the film, "No one knows what happened to the 600,000 people" who disappeared from the welfare rolls during the Giuliani years.

* snip *

By Sept. 10, 2001, Giuliani had pissed off wide swaths of New York City’s population, including free speech advocates, artists and middle-class liberals of all kinds. If we judge him based on his actions during his two terms in office, rather than by the two weeks after 9/11, the thought of Rudolph Giuliani becoming president should alarm most progressives. And for people of color in New York City and elsewhere, the prospect is terrifying.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070227_the_ghost_of_giulianis_political_past/

Giuliani Time trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUr-QP-pEZc&mode=related&search=

Note: the phrase "Giulinai time" comes from an extremely violent anal-rape-by-instrumentation of a black man named Abner Louima http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abner_Louima

While Louima's hands were cuffed behind his back, Officer Volpe sodomized him with a plunger,
causing severe internal damage to his colon and bladder that required several operations to repair.
Volpe then walked through the precinct holding the bloody, excrement-stained instrument in his hand,
indicating that he had "broke a man down."

Louima's teeth were also badly damaged in the attack by having the plunger jammed into his mouth
This is what happens when a vengeful bastard tells his police force to "get tough" with minorities.

http://www.bartcop.com/