The 111th Mayor of New York City

"A new poll shows that 74 percent of Democrats prefer Democratic socialism over capitalism."

"The poll shows that even 58 percent of Republicans agree that our economic system is 'rigged in favor of corporations and the wealthy'."

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

 

"I had arrived in a society where privilege was a different color. Gone was the image of the white Christian male that I had grown accustomed to, and in its place was a darker, more familiar picture -- one that, for the first time, I fit: brown skin, black hair, and a Muslim name."

"After just a little while in Tahrir [Square, Egypt--Arab Spring] I understood the addiction of revolution, of protest."

"Those who traditionally had little say on society's direction were immediately granted the chance to speak, with the promise of an echo of thousands."
"Ideas of class and status were upturned, as men without means stood high on the shoulders of others, their voices loud. This new solidarity was founded in a widespread opposition to all that the government had grown to represent -- inefficiency, unjustness and sectarianism." 

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic front-runner in the New York City mayoral race, speaks outside a Bronx Mosque and cultural center on October 24, 2025 in the Bronx borough of New York City (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

 

"He is the candidate for Pakistanis, Indians, and Bangladeshis alike, though they are not exactly one another's friends."

"And most of them are robust supporters of the market-driven New York economy and merit-based schools. How would they like living in Zohran's socialist paradise?"

"All the while he is also cultivating his base of disaffected -- mostly white and heavily female -- underemployed college graduates."

The Spectator

 

"What Western city or country has improved as the Muslim population has increased?"

"America's largest city was attacked by radical Islam 24 years ago, and now a similar form of that pernicious force is poised to capture city hall."

Charlie Kirk

 

New York City boasts the largest populations of both Jews and Muslims of any city in the Western Hemisphere. To the present an estimated 1.1 million Jews are New Yorkers, and roughly 750 Muslims now inhabit the city. It will not be the presence of Muslims in their voting strength that will elevate 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani to the mayoralty, but that of those Jews who feel he is the right person to administer the affairs of the most influential of American cities. Jews in Brooklyn who saw fit to honour the man when a group called Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, burst into applause when he spoke of the 'genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli military in Gaza'; a reported thousand in attendance. 

 

That declaration in its unadorned antisemitic slander elicited a response, however, from the political newsletter City & State: "Until recently, this kind of anti-Israel rhetoric would have been unthinkable in New York City politics". 

 

Mamdani, who only became a U.S. citizen in 2018, was born in Uganda, son of a 'progressive' filmmaker and a scholar of settler colonialism -- mother and father respectively; Shia Muslim and Hindu respectively. When Idi Amin, Uganda's dictator, expelled expatriate Indians who thrived there as business people and skilled entrepreneurs, academics and journalists among the Ugandan-Asian minorities, he enfeebled the Ugandan economy and robbed its culture. From the age of seven Zohran and his parents lived in Manhattan where Zohran was suckled on the socialist left. 

 

His campaign spiel of no-fare transit, inexpensive apartments, discount groceries and anti-Zionist bile has found wide favour among local voters, enough to catapult him as the leading contender for mayor when the vote takes place on November 4. A card-carrying Democratic Socialist to become the 111th mayor of Corporate Capitalist City. This young, bearded, confidence-smiling man won himself the June Democratic Party primary for mayor. His strident condemnation of "Israel's Genocide" won close to half of the Jewish primary vote.

 

Zohran Mamdani attends a campaign rally calling for the full enforcement of New York City's sanctuary city laws in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, New York, on 21 June 2025. Photograph: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty Images

 

His approval rate burped upward again when he committed to arresting both Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu should either dare to ever deplane in New York City. A New York Times/Siena College poll from early September saw 57 percent of the city's Democratic vote sympathizing with Palestinians in Gaza, a mere 18 percent with Israel. Assaults on Jews in New York city have been documented by the New York Police Department at an all time high, an increase of 583 percent since 2020; over 1,400 antisemitic incidents in 2024.

 

His opponents, down to the wire, are Curtis Sliwa, Republican known 40 years ago as a subway vigilante, fighting street crime, and Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York State. The one-and-only (thank the heavenly stars) Senator Bernie Sanders of Brooklyn, all 84 years-old of him, campaigned with Mamdani, as did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx and Queens, at packed halls to wild applause. "Sanders said the United States should not be sending aid to 'the government of Israel that is currently starving children to death'", reported NY Jewish Week, of his statement that garnered a standing ovation.

 

Mamdani has promised "affordability", vowing to freeze rents on a million municipal-operated apartments. His own residence is a one-bedroom, rent-stabilized flat in a century-old building in the Borough of Queens for which he pays $2,300 monthly, where he moved in 2018. Interesting choice for a scion of wealth and privilege. This is a man with no work experience, never having earned a real paycheque. A former rapper, and  few months served as a community organizer in Seattle and Texas.

 

Former three-term mayor Michael Bloomberg has distinguished himself by generously handing six million to Cuomo's race as an 'independent'. Prominent Jewish real estate developers financially supported opposition to Mamdani's campaign, warning "There is no more time for delay, discussion, or dithering -- we must act decisively to ensure that the next mayor of New York is Andrew Cuomo."  

"We hold a common belief in the shared dignity of every person on this planet, and the refusal to draw a line in the sand when it comes to Palestinian lives."

"Our victory in June was evidence of many things, but truly, among them, it was a lesson that so many in this city are horrified by the genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli military in Gaza."

Zohran Mamdani 

House Republicans are hammering Mamdani over his path to citizenship. Andy Ogles/ X

Re-Fashioning Society to Reflect 'Race Socialism'

"Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and white neighbourhoods."

"That is just a description of what we see right now. It's not driven by race."

"It's more of an assessment of what neighbourhoods are being under-taxed versus over-taxed."

New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani 

 

"[The Mamdani family were wedded to] diasporic intellectualism, where ideas about justice, decolonization and identity were household conversations."

"[Mahmood Mamdani is one of the western world's more well-recognized scholars in the field of] postcolonial studies [with a special interest in Africa."

"His son Zohran would be] the first to carry the intellectual legacy of postcolonial Africa into the political heart of the West." 

Africa Report quarterly

 

Global left-wing politics is alive and well and evidently booming in New York City. Where the Democratic nominee for the mayoralty election espouses taxing the rich to benefit the city's poor. And the issue of 'race socialism' championed by Zohran Mamdani, steeped deep in left-wing politics, promises to set off an explosion of similar sentiments elsewhere, say for example Canada, where the far-left publication Canadian Dimension called for a wealth tax, linking it to race: "It's no secret that extreme wealth in western democracies is overwhelmingly held by white people, and Canada is no exception." 

 

A "critical tax theory" movement in North America argues that white taxpayers should pay higher taxes to achieve equity for all others. Zohran Mamdani increasingly appears the role model for a dystopian future of white versus colour, wealth versus poverty. Simply put, white imperial colonialists living grand on the land while their traditional victims, people of colour, indigenous and trapped in poverty, remain victimized by the ancestors of the colonists who trapped the original inhabitants of the land in a cycle of disadvantage.

 

Mamdani's family, heavyweights in the world of far-left academia, clearly shaped his outlook on life, as well as the solutions that are to be applied to correct all the wrongs of the world where there are sharp divisions between the haves and the have-nots. Simply yank most of the wealth from those that own it and transfer it to those that covet it. 

 

It's interesting to look at Africa in the wake of European rule collapse where wealth redistribution was meant to correct old wrongs. How well did countries like Uganda and Zimbabwe fare under their own agency, did they prosper, did all citizens share equally, did peace and prosperity march in when colonial rule marched out? In Uganda, Idi Amin looked at the minority entrepreneurial population of Asian Ugandans and cleansed the country of their presence, expropriating their businesses and confiscating their assets.

 

In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabwe supervised attacks against the white farming community with the intention of redistributing the land among native Zimbabweans. Those farms falling into the holds of his old comrades in 'resistance' against colonization, were left fallow. All the agricultural expertise and interest in farming the land gone with the white farmers who were dispossessed if not outright murdered. Food scarcity, sky-high inflation, currency devaluation followed. How now, brown cow? 

 

The West, and New York City in particular, is consumed with the narrative of the oppressed colonized and the unworthy imperialism of the colonizer. Ancestral guilt has been assigned to the descendants of Europeans who settled on the land already in possession of a native population. The English-speaking world now accepts that it bears the burden of colonialism and has much to atone for, in their guilt. In Australia, Canada, and Britain in particular the indigenous colonizer conflict is alive and well.

 

Zohran Mamdani's meteoric rise to political stardom bespeaks racial politics in conjunction with the socialist revival brought into raw play courtesy of Bernie Sanders and and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for whom the arrival of Zohran Mamdani heralds their dream of socially-virtuous, social-progressivism's time has finally arrived...  

 

New Yorkers are split on Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s plans to raise taxes on the rich and corporations, according to a new poll. AFP via Getty Images

 

 

Engulfing New York With A Socialist Tidal Wave

"I don't think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality."

"[New York is] the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty." 

"Globalise the intifada [is] a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights." 

"I have already to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I'm from, who I am, ultimately because he wants to distract from what I am fighting for." 

"Why is it that there are five or six fast food restaurants in a five-block radius, but I can’t find anywhere where I can actually afford to buy groceries?"

"What this [proposed] network of municipally-owned grocery stores would provide is a guarantee of cheaper groceries and a recognition that food is a non-negotiable for New Yorkers."

Zohran Mamdani, Democratic candidate for mayor of New York  

Mamdani made history last week as the first Muslim American to win a mayoral primary race in New York City   Bloomberg via Getty Images

"What you've built goes far beyond New York City." 

"You've captured the imagination of progressives everywhere with a blueprint for how we can win: with hope, with values, and with the belief that politics can be a force for good."

"We're watching -- and we're inspired."

Marit Stiles, Ontario NDP leader  

He is 33 years old, has held American citizenship for all of seven years. And he has won a primary to be the Democratic representative in a ballot for mayor of the wealthiest, most populous city in the United States, a huge proportion of which are Jewish New Yorkers. He is also held to be a rampant antisemite, although he denies it. He does champion the 'Palestinian cause' and faults Israel. He represents the most progressive of the democratic movement in the United States and he feels he is able to diagnose all the ills of American society and in the process change the culture to reflect what many call a communist ideal.

 

 

 

Openly socialist, he champions the very essence of far-left causes, beloved of radicals that cling to the socialist ideal. His sudden appearance as the successful nominee for the city's November mayoral election has been a shock to many and a celebratory event to many others. At the present time he appears favoured to win the city government mayoralty. This is not just any American city; it is the most vitally important financial and cultural centre anywhere on Earth. Seated as mayor this man has the potential to become the most influentially prominent of American politicians.

 

Andrew Cuomo, once lionized as New York's progressive mayor who impressed Americans during his  tenure with his leadership before falling into disfavour, appeared not to have stood a chance against this personality cult campaign he was unable to compete with, a vibrant personality prized by the young and disaffected, and those for whom life's expenses were a drain on their expectations of the future. 

 

His supporters celebrate his promises of free transit, public daycare and government services to New Yorkers, all paid for by draining the wealth of rich New Yorkers. Law and order, as far as he is concerned can look after itself, with a reduction in the number of NYPD police. And nor will prisons be needed under his administration, since solving poverty will also solve the commission of crime. The 'progressive prosecutors' and public disorder solutions will carry on as before. 

 

Skilled in non-English languages, Mamdani was able to reach out  to those for whom English is not their mother tongue, in a city and a country increasingly beset with illegal immigration and migrant penetration. His attention to foreign conflicts greatly appeals to many of that segment of the population in this sanctuary city that takes Emma Lazarus's 'New Colossus' more seriously than ever: "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free".

 

His winning political ways scrutinizing far-off conflicts makes him a critic of Israel, refusing to condemn the phrase "Globalize the Intifada", with all its glorious connotations of destroying Israel, and handing the territory vacated over to the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians in favour of inheriting by force the ancestral homeland of ancient Judea. Mamdani's supporters and admirers are also those who admire and support Hamas, big surprise.

 

In the best progressive manner conceivable, the prospective New York mayor supports the use of public funds to subsidize transgender health care, supports sexual minority rights, typifying modern left-wing populism with its aspiration to tax the wealthy under a government planning to seize power to manipulate the economy to its liking. And that liking extends to rent caps, subsidized public housing and free city government services. 

 

In the process the new city council under its new mayor will succeed in driving out capital with its hostility to private wealth management, along with its averse attitude to law enforcement. The smiling man that now basks in the adoration of New York's disaffected whose cost of living agony demands rescue, is prepared to introduce socialism on steroids to the most interesting, dynamic city in the world.  

 

New York mayoral candidate, State Rep. Zohran Mamdani (D-NY) speaks to supporters during an election night gathering on June 24, 2025. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

 

 

 

Migrant Crisis in New York City

"If you're going to leave your country, go somewhere else."  

"We have to let the word out that when you come to New York, you’re not going to have more hotel rooms.We don’t have capacity, so we have to also message properly." 

"The smarter thing is to apply for asylum before you leave your country."

"[It was never meant to ensure] an unlimited, universal right or obligation on the city to have to house literally the entire world."

"[Places like New York] really are at capacity. We have large hearts. You want to be generous and supportive to people who are experiencing humanitarian crisis, but there is a limit to what we can do."

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul

Anti-migrant protesters demonstrate outside the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on Friday. (Barry Williams for NY Daily News via Getty Images)

"This is a crisis of their own making [Democratic lawmakers]."

"It's very similar to cashless bail. When you create a sanctuary city policy that invites migrants to come regardless of their status, you are going to get a lot of people coming, and now they can't handle the influx."

Republican Representative Mike Lawler

"The No.1 thing I learned as an Army officer: When in charge, take charge."

"We are in a crisis, the president is in charge, and he and his team need to take charge."

Democratic Representative Pat Ryan

"Everybody understands this is a potential liability [the migrant crisis in view of an upcoming general election]."

"I know there's been a lot of finger-pointing and kerfuffles, but there's also pretty good evidence the mayor and the governor are trying to figure out how to solve this."

Democratic consultant Tim Persico

Migrants are pictured outside the Roosevelt Hotel, currently being used as a shelter, in New York City. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

In fact, New York felt so desperately overwhelmed by the ongoing flood of seemingly unstoppable arrivals who accepted the challenge from the Texas border with Mexico to travel on to sympathetic Democratic cities like New York, with its sympathetic credentials, they even bused them there. And New York in turn convinced new arrivals they'd be better off continuing their journey and to cross the New York border in Canada at Quebec, to which purpose they too bused unwanted migrants to the border where taxis were only too eager to bring them to Roxham Road where they could foot it into Quebec.

There, thousands of migrants, making their way to illegal crossings, ignoring the legitimate crossings where they would be questioned and when declaring themselves 'refugees' would be returned to the American side, reflective of a 'safe first border' agreement between the two countries where migrants were to be returned to their first country of entrance. In bypassing the legitimate border crossing and declaring themselves refugees, the RCMP escort them to an official Border crossing where they fill out applications for refugee status.

And then their accommodation and humanitarian social services become the headache of whichever Canadian community they wander into, where their numbers have created problems so great that many are forced to sleep out on the streets of cities like Toronto, unable to support and house any more migrants, and where their presence and humanitarian needs compete with Canadian families in dire need of supported housing and other public social measures.

 

The camping migrants didn’t want to move out of fear they would lose their spot in line CNN

 

During the current election season in the United States drawing ever closer, migrants and the need to give them haven, despite efforts to restrain them from crossing the border from Mexico, has become a conflicting political issue moving to impact the 2024 U.S. election. With Republicans increasingly critical of the Democrats' inability to stem the flow of migrants, hoping to use the issue and the rising tide of voters' anger at the disruptions to give them the political leverage they need to secure the House majority.

New York has seen a rapid arrival of over 100,000 asylum-seekers, wreaking havoc on government budgets, and turning Democrats against one another in their hapless efforts to stem the tide. Republicans whose election status seemed less than assured in a half-dozen districts now view the volatile issue as a lifeline. Where they point the electorate toward the picture of a Democratic party incapable of governing adequately and coping with the dilemma.

For their part, Democratic candidates have clashed with their Republican counterparts, but also with their own party leaders, President Biden included. The lone front-line Democrat who survived the Republican suburban victories in the 2022 midterm elections has made peace with two Republicans, the trio demanding that Biden declare a state of emergency. Paul Ryan broke with his party in support of a bill to discourage schools from sheltering migrants.

Another Democrat trying to take a neighbouring district spoke of the "offensive" aloofness of the Democratic president, on the pressing refugee issue. He was joined by a former Democratic congressman mounting a comeback attempt of his own, warning of "consequences at the polls" should his party not step up to a solution. The issue that drives them, where almost three thousand migrants arrive in a week has shifted battle lines.

 

Migrants accept apples as they camp outside the Roosevelt Hotel.  CNN

 

The irony is that New York while a city acknowledged as a bastion for immigrants has seen a challenge to its political system. It is currently housing approximately 59,000 asylum-seekers nightly, reflecting a unique right-to-shelter mandate dating back decades, while preparing to enroll some 19,000 migrant children this fall in public schools. Temporary shelters in hotels, parks, on public land have prompted harsh protests.

While New York City Mayor Eric Adams repeatedly warns of budget cuts caused by the cost of caring for the newcomers which keep rising into billions of dollars of taxpayer money that could otherwise be used to help New Yorkers themselves, as the Republicans helpfully point out. A recent poll found 82 percent of registered voters consider the migrant influx a "serious problem", with a majority stating that their state had "already done enough" for asylum seekers and should focus on curtailing their arrivals.

"Let me tell you something New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to — I don’t see an ending to this."

"This issue will destroy New York City."

Mayor Eric Adams

Migrants line up along 45th Street.  CNN

 

S I N K I N G S L O W L Y

"New York is emblematic of growing coastal cities all over the world that are observed to be subsiding. Meaning there is a shared global challenge of mitigation against a growing inundation hazard."

"New York City is ranked third in the world in terms of future exposed assets to coastal flooding, and 90% of the 67,400 structures in the expanded post-Hurricane-Sandy flood risk areas have not been built to floodplain standards."

"As coastal cities grow globally, the combination of construction densification and sea level rise imply increasing inundation hazard. The point of the paper is to raise awareness that every additional high-rise building constructed at coastal, river, or lakefront settings could contribute to future flood risk, and that mitigation strategies may need to be included." 

"Major cities on every continent except Antarctica are observed to be subsiding."

"Cumulative pressure applied to the ground from large buildings contributes to subsidence not only from initial primary settlement caused by soil compression and reduction of void space, but also through potential secondary settlement caused by creep in clay rich layers that can continue indefinitely."

"Major cities around the world are expected to grow disproportionately relative to rural areas, with a projected 70 per cent of the world’s population living in cities by 2050."

"As these trends [growing flood hazards] continue it will be important to be mindful of accompanying mitigation strategies against inundation in growing coastal cities."

Study, United States Geological Survey

The view north from the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building on March 18, 2023, in New York City. (Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

 New York City, home to 8.4 million people, has been warned on previous occasions by experts that the city should put a stop to building skyscrapers, to avoid sinking. due to rising ocean levels and climate change. Geologist Tom Parsons led the latest study of the United States Geological Survey which suggests that ongoing development is responsible for exacerbating dangers faced by a city where the sea level is predicted to rise by five feet to the end of the century.

"The point of the [study] paper is to raise awareness that every additional highrise building constructed at coastal, river, or lakefront settings could contribute to future flood risk, and that mitigation strategies may need to be included."

New York City is said to contain a million buildings whose combined weight is estimated at 771 million tonnes. The latest study points out that the city is at the present time sinking by one to two millimetres annually. Lower Manhattan and parts of the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens face the greatest threat.

"New York City faces accelerating inundation risk from sea level rise, subsidence, and increasing storm intensity."

"A deeply concentrated population of 8.4 million people faces varying degrees of hazard from inundation in New York City."

"Two recent hurricanes caused casualties and heavy damage in New York City."

"In 2012, Hurricane Sandy forced seawater into the city, whereas heavy rainfall from Hurricane Ida in 2021 overwhelmed drainage systems because of heavy runoff within the mostly paved city."

"Additionally, urbanization itself may exacerbate the problem."

 The threat is real, this latest study repeats in large part, what has been examined before and relayed to city authorities who have previously been urged to address the critical issue. Nonetheless despite the threat, the authors emphasize that the response has been inadequate, in spite of the fact that New York City's ranking is the third most threatened city in the world at risk of coastal flooding.

Fully 90 percent of the buildings constructed in areas at risk of flooding following the catastrophe of Hurricane Sandy, were not built to the required standard. "New York is emblematic of growing coastal cities all over the world that are observed to be subsiding, meaning there is a shared global challenge of mitigation against a growing inundation hazard."

 

In 2014, scientists gave warning that over fifty cities could be at risk, highlighting fears over flooding on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. Planners in Boston recommend that canals be built in the city's Back Bay area to protect the city. Miami Beach has initiated an upgrading of its stormwater system to prevent the sea from backing up into its pipes, and Norfolk has returned some of its coastal parks to naturally absorbtive wetlands.

 

The water around New York City has risen by about 9in since 1950. Photograph: Alexander Spatari/Getty Images

"It’s not something to panic about immediately but there’s this ongoing process that increases the risk of inundation from flooding."

"The softer the soil, the more compression there is from the buildings. It wasn’t a mistake to build such large buildings in New York but we’ve just got to keep in mind every time you build something there you push down the ground a little bit more."

"[New York and other coastal cities] have to get planning for this. If you get repeated exposure to seawater, you can corrode steel and destabilize buildings, which you clearly don’t want."

"Flooding also kills people, too, which is probably the greatest concern."

Tom Parsons, Geophysicist, United States Geological Survey

Anti-Semitism as Domestic Terrorism

"This is terrorism, it is domestic terrorism."
"These are people who intend to create mass harm, mass violence, generate fear based on race, colour, creed."
"This is an intolerant time in this country. We see anger, we see hatred exploding. It is an American cancer in the body politic."
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo

"We have nothing to indicate at this time that there were other people [involved], but that will be part of a very lengthy, very methodical and thorough investigation."
New York Police Department Commissioner Dermot Shea

Members of the Rockland County Sheriff's Office escort Grafton Thomas from Ramapo Town Hall to a law enforcement vehicle on Sunday

Crimes of ethnic and religious hatred targeting Jews have been occurring steadily and increasingly throughout the world. In the United States, once considered the most accepting, safest place for Jews to live and contribute to their society, episodes of virulent anti-Semitism have exploded in numbers. Episodic harassment of Jews are regularly increasing occurrences in public, and violent attacks are no longer strangers to the streets of New York in particular.

When someone is publicly and verbally attacked passersby simply pass by; no one seems to want to become involved, to muster the interest or the courage to come to the aid of a victim. And nor do people appear to react one whit when attacks transcend the verbal and become violent. So, despite what Police Commissioner Dermot Shea contends, there are other people involved in the sense that they deign not to become involved. It's a Jewish problem, evidently, not a societal one.

The machete attack by a 37-year-old man who went to the trouble of looking for prominent Jews and Jewish Orthodox Synagogue locations before carefully planning where he would travel some distance from his home to access an area with a large Jewish population for the express purpose of exposing his Jew hatred through a vicious attack on unarmed and unsuspecting celebrants at a Hanukkah party taking place in a private home of a rabbi whose synagogue was located right next door was planned and atrocious.

The attacker stormed into the home of Rabbi Chaim Leibush Rottenberg at around 10pm last Saturday and began wildly swinging a knife at some 60 worshipers gathered for a candle-lighting ceremony for the seventh night of Hanukkah

Grafton Thomas whose home is in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., travelled to the town of Monsey with a purpose in mind. And after he had invaded that private home and viciously assaulted the celebrants, stabbing five people, a number seriously enough that brain damage is suspected of a 72-year-old victim, he fled. And would have escaped had not one of those present taken down the license plate number of his vehicle, enabling police to arrest him as he drove through Manhattan.

The man's family was quick to respond, declaring him to be suffering from mental illness. One might logically suppose that anti-Semitism is a mental illness. An ageless pathology of unreasoning, viral hatred that afflicts people with often violent tendencies. Arraigned on five counts of attempted murder, held on $5-million bail, the 'motive' in the stabbing, according to Ramapo town supervisor is yet to be determined. This is a  man who upon entering the rabbi's home said "Nobody going anywhere", as he launched his stabbing attack.

This is an attack that is by no means isolated. Patrols being stepped up in heavily Jewish neighbourhoods will do little to ease the fear of residents of those neighbourhoods who fear for their children's safety, and will henceforth go out and about with an anguished sense of isolation where once they felt themselves equal members of the nation in which they and their predecessors have lived for centuries.

Preceding this attack were numerous others. Following in the wake of this horrifying attack, has been another succession of blatantly hateful attacks on other Jews, vulnerable and victimized. The shoppers killed in a shooting rampage at the kosher grocery store in New Jersey would never have imagined their time to live life to its fullest was soon to be abruptly cut off. The Poway attack in San Diego where a woman rabbi was killed and three others wounded left no doubt that Jews are targets.

Josef Neumann was among the five people injured in the Hanukkah stabbing attack in Monsey, New York last Saturday. His family released this harrowing photo of him in hospital and said they fear he will never regain consciousness

"Our father's status [72-year-old Josef Neumann], is so dire that no surgery has yet been performed on the right arm."
"Doctors are not optimistic about his chances to regain consciousness, and if our father does miraculously recover partially, doctors expect that he will have permanent damage to the brain, leaving him partially paralyzed and speech-impaired for the rest of his life."
Neumann family statement

Neighbours gather to show their support of the community near a rabbi's residence in Monsey, N.Y., Sunday, Dec. 29, 2019, following a stabbing Saturday night during a Hanukkah celebration. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

The New York Taxi Ponzi Scheme

"The whole thing was like a Ponzi scheme because it totally depended on the value going up."
"The part that wasn't fair was the guy who's buying is an immigrant. They were conned."
Haywood Miller, debt specialist, New York

"People love to blame banks for things that happen because they're big bad banks."
"We didn't do anything, in my opinion, other than try to help small business people become successful."
Robert Familant, former head, Progressive Credit Union

"It was a safe and stable asset, and it provided a good life for those of us who were lucky enough to buy them [taxi medallions]."
"Not an easy life, but a good life. And then, everything changed."
Guy Roberts, in the Taxi industry since 1979

Symbolic coffins at a Wednesday protest by New York taxi drivers to mourn a series of recent suicides.

Mary Altaffer/AP

Years of driving for bosses he hated spurred Mohammed Hoque, 48, an immigrant from Bangladesh, to move up from driving taxis in New York City for others for the past nine years, to aspiring to acquire a medallion, the city permit that would legalize a yellow cab of his own. So when a businessman contacted him with an offer to sell a medallion, he bit. The offer was $50,000 would earn him the medallion, if he paid it immediately. For the rest, the businessman would help him obtain a loan.

Feverishly emptying his bank account, borrowing from friends, he rushed to the man's office to be handed a stack of papers in exchange for his cheque. Mr. Hoque signed, and left. That he had signed a contract requiring him to pay $1.7 million in total for the medallion escaped his notice. This is a man who had made about $30,000 for the year, 2014. Four years later, he had paid about $400,000 into the medallion fund, leaving $915,000 still owing, along with interest.

"It's an inhuman life. I drive and drive and drive. But I don't know what my destination is", he said, as he brought his third child home from hospital. Home, where his little family lived in the same cramped apartment; he had gained nothing, nothing at all. Who to fault? Well, Uber and Lyft come to mind. Pulling the taxi rug out from under drivers and fleet owners, right?

Evidently not. In the past year alone, eight suicides were noted, by New York City taxi drivers. An investigation by The New York Times appears to have uncovered an artificial price manipulation of taxi medallions; a bubble that would eventually burst. It took ten years, but it did. Thousands of drivers were channeled into reckless loans and hundreds of millions of dollars were extracted from them first, and then the market collapsed.

Drivers assembled at City Hall on Wednesday afternoon called for "regulation now," and demanded that the city "stop Uber's greed."  Miranda Katz for Wired

The drivers were left perplexed and in poverty, and still legally owing money on their medallions which had become worthless. But profits were seen in abundance for bankers, brokers, lawyers, investors, fleet owners and debt collectors. Mostly immigrant families were stripped of savings and destroyed by crushing debt. Over 950 medallion owners filed for bankruptcy, with thousands more barely managing to carry on.

Between 2002 and 2014 a medallion rose in price to over one million from $200,000, underwritten by banks and loosely regulated private lenders who wrote risky loans, encouraging refinancing, similar to what happened with the housing market crash that heralded the global economic meltdown of 2008. Driver incomes changed little, however.

It was the illusion and the trust that they owned something valuable that would enhance their earning potential that kept them in thrall to the system; hope over reason.

During that period, about four thousand drivers bought medallions, mostly of immigrant background. A Pakistani immigrant thought he was buying a car, ending up with a $780,000 medallion loan leaving him impoverished and unable to pay his rent, while a Bangladeshi immigrant was told to fabricate his income on his loan application and he eventually lost his medallion. When a Haitian immigrant worked exhaustively to hand over monthly payments he went bankrupt when he discovered he had been only paying interest.

Originally, taxi medallions were created by the city in 1937 to deal with the fact that unlicensed cabs crowded the city. City officials designated around 12,000 specialized tin plates, making it against the law to operate a taxi without one bolted on the car hood. Each medallion was sold for $10. They could be sold by those who bought them just as any other kind of asset would be. Soon an industry grew around he medallions where entrepreneurs bought up nonindependent medallions to build fleets, controlling the market.

Drivers working for fleets worked a typical 60 hours weekly, earning less than minimum wage, receiving no benefits. The legend thrived that driving could work as a pathway to join the middle class and where drivers could eventually buy an independent medallion to increase earnings and give them stability in an asset they could sell at some future date to fund their retirement years. At that time those who borrowed money for a medallion submitted a large down payment and had to repay within five to ten  years.

Since the city released no new medallions for a half-century, values climbed steadily; $100,000 in 1984 and $200,000 by 1997. And then in the early 2000s a new cab industry generation took the reins; sons of longtime industry leaders who had new money-making ideas where the lenders accepted smaller down payments and eventually none at all, because interest on loans would provide all the incentive for the lenders and more, to essentially make money hand-over-fist.

"It got to a point where we didn't even check their income or credit score. It didn't matter", reminisced Monte Silberger, a former credit union official. As well, lenders encouraged borrowers to refinance when medallion prices rose, and as standards were relaxed even more, returns increased. Not through a rise in interest rates, but by enforcing a mix of extra costs; origination fees, legal fees, financing fees, refinancing fees.

Loan lengths were extended, with deals developed to last 50 years; some saw interest-only loans that could go on ad infinitum. Until 2014, when the bubble burst and medallion values fell, leaving borrowers to ask for breaks, but lenders called in their loans, deciding to leave the business. Some seized medallions and resold them profitably, others tried to get borrowers to surrender their homes.

As Mr. Hoqe said, it was an inhumane strategy for life.