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| Pfizer's CEO Supports Israel's Genocide |
Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444 retired
HEO/GED
7-20-25
Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City Democratic Primaries shocked the US ruling class and the Democratic Party leaders that represent them while offering hope to millions of Americans crying out for change. We witnessed the abuse, racism, religious prejudice and outright threats of violence he has faced as a response. He’s been labelled anti-Semitic and the Predator in Chief called him a “communist lunatic” and has threatened to have him deported.
All these accusations are offensive enough but, as the dust settles, a more pernicious threat raises its ugly head and that is Mamdani himself.
Last Tuesday he met 150 NYC business leaders at the offices of the giant real estate firm Tishman Speyer that manages about $58 billion in assets. The meeting was at the behest of the Partnership for New York, the non-profit founded by David Rockefeller to promote business interests in the city. A meeting with the Partnership For New York is a requirement for Democratic Party candidates apparently-----it is their party after all.
Under some pressure from Albert Bourla the Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, the giant drug manufacturer, along with some bad advice from Bernie Sanders, Mamdani said he would discourage the use of the phrase,“globalize the intifada,” and accepted that the phrase can also be interpreted to mean a call for violence against Jews. If there are Jews or anyone else that is still supporting Israel and its genocide against the Palestinians and opposes the term Intifada, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Bourla, who is Jewish and who is the son of Holocaust survivors, produced a host of facts and figures describing Jewish suffering during the Holocaust in an attempt to give some credence to his view that the term is anti-Semitic and a call for violence against the global Jewish population. Unfortunately, in the reports I read Mamdani made no attempt to counter Bourla’s nonsense or bothered to explain what intifada means in Arabic. My understanding is it literally mean to “shake off” or resist. Maybe the term “strike” shouldn’t be used as it “triggers” fear of a loss of profits for employers. Numerous US politicians have made incredibly racist, violent remarks against Muslims and their religion without any backlash about triggering fear and apprehension among the Muslim population or acts of violence that may result from them.
Bourla confronted him for using the term “genocide” with regard to Gaza which is understandable as Bourla has voiced his support for the genocide and the Zionist regime’s destruction of Gaza.
Bourla was joined in the meeting by private equity Barons, real estate magnates (land pimps) representative of the Bank of New York, Macy’s and other coupon clippers.
Let’s not beat around the bush here. The real objection to Mamdani by people like Bourla, the Democratic Party and the other non-Jewish capitalists in attendance, is the very mild pro-worker program of his mayoral campaign and his raising of expectations among the working class population of New York City. As mild as his reforms are, any attempt to undermine the dominant ideology in US society that the market is the answer to all things and profits are sacrosanct are a red flag indeed for this crowd. And yet again, anti-Semitism is being used as a cover for crimes, this time the savagery of the market. This undermines the struggle against anti-Semitism which is real and should be aggressively taken up.
Bourla, received a $14% pay raise in 2024 for a total compensation package of $24.6 million; we know what his goals are. He not only supports genocide unlike the vast majority of the world’s population, he is opposed to controls of prescription drug prices which likely increases the death rate among the poor and sick of this world.
Yet these companies, receive tax breaks and massive amounts of taxpayer funding and one Center For American Progress report cites a study that found with big pharma, from 1997 to 2016, the number of advertisements for drugs increased from 79,000 (including 72,000 television commercials) to 4.6 million (663,000 television25 commercials). This sort of advertising direct to the consumer on TV is illegal in most European countries.
These people are some of the most despicable creatures on the planet.
Kathryn Wylde, the President of the Partnership For New York on a $1.5 million a year salary admits that from an ideological point of view Mamdani’s “stance on capitalism” is a problem. Wylde once referred to herself in a 2020 interview as, "the lone defender of the billionaires at this point". What’s Mamdani doing meeting with these people? He’s assuring them that their wealth and their class is safe.
It's not his tax policies which would have to be approved by the New York State legislature which would be extremely unlikely. Anyway, the problem with simply taxing these people is that they will go on a strike of capital or leave altogether. US corporations don’t invest in East Asia in order to raise the wages of workers there.
A political candidate, especially a socialist claiming to represent working people would not meet with people like these coupon clippers and certainly not with the goal of appeasing them. This meeting with the unelected gang that determine the economics and politics of New York City and the nation, is without doubt the beginning of the slide down that rabbit hole that is inevitable for any politicians thinking the Democratic Party can show a way forward for workers and middle-class people. The fact that Mamdani has been taking advice from Sanders says enough.
We have seen how rapidly Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, whose initial political victory gave rise to millions of Americans seeking real change in society and Bernie Sanders' early campaign that had such an opportunity to turn the tide and change the balance of class forces. But Sanders has no intention of doing that.
Mamdani is forced by his own approach to politics and economics, to make a deal with these social parasites. The pharma industry is hated by the US working class as is real estate and banking and insurance and so on. And they all receive billions in tax payer incentives.
From the Center For American Progress: Billions of taxpayer dollars go into the creation and marketing16 of new drugs. The Los Angeles Times reports that, “Since the 1930s, the National Institutes of Health has invested close to $90017 billion in the basic and applied research that formed both the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.” Despite taxpayers’ crucial investment, U.S. consumers are increasingly paying more for their prescription drugs
Mamdani’s betrayal will be as rapid as AOC’s or perhaps more so unless he changes course and exits the Democratic Party calling on all interested forces to come together to build an independent political voice/party for the working people of this country. We cannot drive back this capitalist offensive without a mass movement at home and internationally.
The response to their threats and the stranglehold they have over politics and economics in US society is to call for the taking in to public ownership the commanding heights of the economy; the Pharmaceutical, Health Care, Tech companies, banking transportation, the finance industry so capital can be directed toward the production of human needs not profits. This is not possible without a political party of our own.
It’s common sense that if workers get higher wages and increased social services that this will mean less profits for the crowd Mamdani is appeasing here and next week when he meets with the tech Barons. They will retaliate.
Capital and wealth is not their product, they never earned it. It’s the product of the collective labor of the majority of us who work for wages. We need to take it off them if we are to save a future for our children and grandchildren; we can guarantee them a job, something they refuse to guarantee us. They have no problem taking our homes. They have no problem as people die through lack of health care or life-saving drugs because they can’t pay for them.
The day of reckoning is coming for Mamdani. He has a choice; us or them.
*I think this term was used by the bourgeois media, maybe the WSJ to describe the heads of Private Equity firms that were worshiped by the capitalist media for a while.
