With the Democratic presidential field a uniquely inept mix of the hopeless and insane Bloomberg using saturation advertising to buy himself wins in delegate-rich red states with weak Democratic parties like North Carolina, Florida and Texas is a good strategy, if he was interested in winning.
But he’s not. He’s running to clear the field for Hillary.
It’s been obvious to me since he declared that Mike Bloomberg is not a serious candidate for the Democratic nomination. He is everything the Democratic base doesn’t want — white, billionaire, oligarch, Wall St. 0.000001%’er.
Oh, and until just a couple of years ago, he was a Republican. Billionaires like Bloomberg change parties to where ever they see their money will go the farthest.
Right now, that is the quickly fracturing Democrats, who are staring at a revolt to Bernie Sanders that doesn’t sit with Wall St. at all.
It’s also obvious that Bloomberg is animated by personal animus towards Donald Trump that I suspect is as much about Mike’s ego as it is his desire to protect Wall St. from having any of its dirty laundry aired during a Trump 2nd term.
Because with the failure to convict Trump in the Senate those that were behind that coup attempt are now uniquely exposed to his retribution. And that trail of tears for all involved leads right back up to Hillary Clinton’s poisoned garden of a 2016 presidential bid.
With the Democratic presidential field a uniquely inept mix of the hopeless and insane Bloomberg using saturation advertising to buy himself wins in delegate-rich red states with weak Democratic parties like North Carolina, Florida and Texas is a good strategy, if he was interested in winning.
But he’s not. He’s running to clear the field for Hillary.
Because the fight over these early states are as much about splitting the delegate count as possible, to strip Bernie Sanders of his chance at the nomination. Hillary is still angry at Bernie for challenging her in 2016.
She still wants another chance to fulfill her life’s ambition and if she can screw over all the men that she feels denied her that then it will be all the sweeter when it happens.
Because, honestly, Bloomberg isn’t interested in being president anymore than I am. He’s 78. He’s not campaigning. What he’s doing is a pantomime of a campaign covering for a very sophisticated form of campaign finance evasion.
And he’s doing it to figure out what is necessary for a ‘centrist’ Democratic candidate to say (and where) to steal electoral college votes from Donald Trump in November.
Bloomberg is spending this money today knowing that a targeted campaign which can figure out how to undermine Trump where he is strong can shift the map enough to sneak out a victory.
So Mike will spend more than $1 billion as an in-kind contribution to the DNC in the form of campaign advertising to get this done.
Because, let’s get serious here for a second. None of the candidates, including Bernie Sanders, has a hope in hell of beating Trump this fall. Any mistakes Trump’s made dwarf the basic message that he believes in the U.S. in a way that is genuine, even that vision of America is flawed.
The wizards at the DNC know this. Impeachment was their last real hope. That’s why it was rushed through and so shoddily done, they didn’t have anything substantive. And all it did was cement Trump’s base to him more thoroughly than it was before.
Their best shot is running a moderate who can out-Trump Trump on the issues and raise a ton of money along the way for 2024 while retaining some control over the party proper.
The intention is to hoover up delegates, confound the map and throw up roadblocks to Bernie. This paves the way for Hillary’s emergence at a brokered convention to hand her the rematch she, Wall St. and the DNC want.
The messaging has already begun. Drudge ‘broke’ the story the other day about Bloomberg being open to Hillary as his running mate. Oh please! It’s the other way around.
To top it off, he wants to save healthcare by letting old people die.
We all know Mike hates poor people. He’s a geezer auditioning for the top job in the U.S. who hates old people. He’s a thorough authoritarian and corporatist whose disdain for the plebiscite is palpable.
Nothing says U.S. Presidential material like the blatant disregard for human suffering. On second thought, maybe Mike is the perfect candidate?
All of this was known before, so why these things now?
These videos and quotes are out there to undermine him, casting him in the role of the out-of-touch oligarch.
This is designed to outrage the Deplorables. It’s designed to put a cap on Mike’s likability. It gives Hillary a wedge to drive in and say, “No, Mike you can be MY running mate!”
Mike Bloomberg: billionaire, entrepreneur, media mogul, three-time Mayor of New York, bond vigilante… beta-cuck.
So thoroughly Hillary.
This way, he can have his turn as the front-runner, rising far enough on his money to earn some delegates and ensure a brokered convention. Then hand them to Hillary as a gracious peace offering.
This is about manufacturing Hillary as the unity candidate of a failing Democratic Party while sidelining Bernie in the process. That’s the game plan folks.
It’s not tough, honestly.
If it wasn’t all so painfully obvious it would almost be clever. But it’s not because these people simply don’t understand why no one likes them.
Because they suck.
Bloomberg, Hillary, Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Booker, Harris and the rest of the crazies, including Bernie, they all suck. Bernie may be honest that he’s a Commie, but that’s what makes him un-electable, if a little more likable.
And for 2020, the DNC would rather roll the dice with two-time loser Hillary, ensuring a candidate acceptable to Wall St. wins, than put Bernie up as the nominee.
Because no matter what happens the Democrats become the Commie and Crazy-Cat Lady party with Bernie as the nominee. And that creates a clear delineation between them and the Republicans.
But, that’s the worst possible result. Because, the most important thing to Bloomberg, Hillary and those they represent is that the illusion of choice between globalist dirtbags remains in place. This is the true face of Democracy in the U.S.
That’s the key to understanding the game he and Hillary are playing.
And once you see that for what it is there’s no unseeing it.
If Bernie sees it clearly, then he will take his Bros, extend his hand to Gabbard and run an independent campaign to split the Blue Wall and destroy these people for real.
If he doesn’t then he’s the same feckless schmuck I pegged him to be in 2016.
Either way, this is now Hillary’s nomination and Bloomberg is the latest goat on its way to her altar.
In almost 4,000 posts, Q has painted a disturbing, multi-faceted portrait of a global crime syndicate that operates with impunity. In recent weeks, President Trump has grown more explicit about some of the syndicate’s crimes. Speaking to the National Governors Association, President Trump stated, in an almost casual, offhand manner, why the United States had recently upgraded its nuclear missile technology at great expense.
We’re living in dramatic times that are difficult to understand. One way to try to interpret them is through the cryptic clues provided by Q, which appear on an anonymous online forum and imply top-secret knowledge of upcoming events.
As I wrote in my article “An Introduction to Q,” “Q’s followers believe that Q is a military intelligence operation, the first of its kind, whose goal is to provide the public with secret information… Q is a new weapon in the game of information warfare, bypassing a hostile media and corrupt government to communicate directly with the public.” It’s interesting to note that shortly after my article was published here, American Thinker suffered a series of unprecedented hacking attempts. Also noteworthy is that Twitter permanently shut down the account of Zero Hedge, a popular finance blog, two weeks after it posted my article.
President Trump continues to bring attention to Q, repeatedly retweeting Q followers, featuring Q fans in his ad campaign, and making a public display of a “Q baby” at a rally. Yet the media never asks Trump the obvious question: What do you think about Q?
Instead, the media keeps ratcheting up its attacks on Q and the ever-growing worldwide movement that Q inspires. On February 9, both the AP and New York Times published blistering anti-Q articles, claiming that Q promotes baseless, debunked far right conspiracies and accusing Q of inciting violence in deranged followers. The day before this latest media ambush, a massive cyber assault temporarily brought down 8kun, the message board on which Q posts. Ron Watkins, 8kun’s administrator, tweeted,
“Attacks have been coming in all day. Very sophisticated and expensive attacks; the person paying for this likely has deep pockets.”
At the same time that 8kun was attacked, X22 Report, which covers Q postings, also was bombarded. On its Twitter feed, the site wrote it was “being attacked from 54 different countries using hundreds of different IP addresses, I have never seen anything like it.”
On February 12, in response to these events, Q posted, “Highly sophisticated ‘State-level’ attacks [v 8kun] followed by FAKE NEWS attacks [v Q] the next day? Coordinated? Ask yourself a simple question – – why? It’s time to wake up.”
In almost 4,000 posts, Q has painted a disturbing, multi-faceted portrait of a global crime syndicate that operates with impunity. In recent weeks, President Trump has grown more explicit about some of the syndicate’s crimes. Speaking to the National Governors Association, President Trump stated, in an almost casual, offhand manner, why the United States had recently upgraded its nuclear missile technology at great expense. “…we’re buying new, we have the super-fast missiles, tremendous number of the super-fast. We call them super-fast where they’re four, five, six, or even seven times faster than ordinary missiles. We need that because again, Russia has some. I won’t tell you how they got it. They got it supposedly from the Obama Administration when we weren’t doing it. And that’s too bad. It’s not good. But that’s how it happened.”
The President’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has also grown more specific in his accusations, tweeting “The Biden Family Enterprise has been selling his office for years. The corrupt media has been covering up. It was handed to me and I had the courage to reveal it knowing the Swamp would try to destroy me. I served my country. They are betraying it. I will not stop.”
Q followers were not surprised by President Trump’s remarks or Giuliani’s charges, since they have probed into Q’s numerous clues about the treachery of America’s elite. The Q Army reads the headlines through a different lens than those who rely on the mainstream media for information. For instance, Q followers expected Jussie Smollett’s recent arrest on charges related to his alleged staging of a hate crime, and they anticipate his hoax will be tied directly to two failed presidential candidates and their political strategies.
I would like to offer some Q references that may help to illuminate recent events and prepare us for future developments. With the defeat of the impeachment threat, President Trump appears to be launching significant countermoves against those he accuses of plotting a coup. Q followers anticipate that he will declassify sensitive government documents, revealing shocking crimes and collaborations. The exposed criminals are likely to respond with dangerous counterattacks, most of which are unseen by the public. As Q recently wrote, the silent war continues.
Let’s take a look at some recent events, in light of Q’s messages.
Trump Acquitted of Impeachment Charges: When Republicans lost the House of Representatives in 2018, many Q followers were dismayed. They feared the Democrats would use their new power to unleash disruptive investigations and push impeachment. Q responded several times that the Senate was the target, emphasizing that the Q team’s midterm election strategy centered on strengthening the Senate as part of a long-term plan. With President Trump emerging from the impeachment ordeal at his political zenith, Q’s confidence in the midterm election results continues to resonate.
The Best Is Yet To Come: Trump’s New Reelection Theme
President Trump ended his recent State of the Union address by declaring, “The best is yet to come.” This statement, with its inherent optimism, appears to be central to his reelection message, and he and his team have deployed it several times.
The President debuted this message on January 28 by concluding his massive rally in Wildwood, New Jersey with these exact words. However, Q followers were already familiar with the slogan, because Q had dropped it at 2:26 that same afternoon.
Trump Hints at Tarmac Meeting Deal: On June 27, 2016, Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch held a supposedly impromptu meeting on her plane at Phoenix Airport, where they discussed (according to them) golf and grandchildren. Skeptics have long suspected that Clinton and Lynch were working out a deal in which Lynch agreed to drop the probe into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal in exchange for a payoff.
On January 14, at his Milwaukee rally, President Trump offered some insight into the nature of the payoff, when he suggested that Bill Clinton promised Lynch a Supreme Court appointment, which would be conferred after Hillary’s expected victory.
Q followers were already familiar with this scenario, because on February 6, 2018, Q had posted the following message about the Tarmac meeting: SC/LL deal > AS 187
Here’s how some Q followers interpreted that message: The Supreme Court/Loretta Lynch deal was connected to the purported murder of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. (Note: 187 is police code for murder. Q often uses this term when discussing alleged Deep State murders.) Scalia died suddenly at a Texas ranch on February 13, 2016, and was declared dead of natural causes over the phone. No coroner or medical examiner ever saw him and no autopsy was performed.
Trump accuses Adam Schiff of being “a very sick man.” President Trump has accused House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of various acts of political chicanery, but in a January 26 tweet, he raised his criticism to another level: “Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!”
The president’s words immediately evoked one of Q’s signature phrases, which Trump himself has also said: “These people are sick.” But moving from “these people” to the specific person of “Adam Schiff” marks another phase of disclosure. On January 31, 2018, Q dropped hints that Schiff committed serious criminal acts that connected to the Standard Hotel chain. Q directed attention to a California helicopter crash that had just killed Kimberly Watzman, General Manager of the Standard Hotel in West Hollywood, and asked: “What happened @ those hotels?” Perhaps some context for these potential criminal acts may be inferred from Schiff’s close friendship with Ed Buck, a major Democratic donor who was arrested in October 2019 for killing two men with drug overdoses in his apartment and almost killing a third. Schiff has also publicly praised his friend, Dr. Bruce Hensel, the NBC medical correspondent, who was arrested in 2019 for sex charges involving a 9-year-old girl.
Q has named this extraordinary time “The Great Awakening,” in which the world moves from “dark to light.” As the darkness of horrific elite secrets gives way to the light of public scrutiny, our fortitude will be tested. But Q assures us, “You are watching the systematic destruction of the OLD GUARD.” And when the news gets too frightening, it’s worth remembering Q’s oft-repeated directive: “Pray.” Q posts are compiled here: https://qmap.pub/https://qanon.pub/
Jeffrey’s formula is just another recycling of the myth that the Syrian opposition consisted of good folks who wanted to establish democracy in the country. In reality, it incorporated terrorist elements right from the beginning and groups like ISIS and the al-Qaeda affiliates rapidly assumed control of the violence. That Jeffrey should be so ignorant or blinded by his own presumptions to be unaware of that is astonishing.
The first week in February was memorable for the failed impeachment of President Donald Trump, the “re-elect me” State of the Union address and the marketing of a new line of underwear by Kim Kardashian. Given all of the excitement, it was easy to miss a special State Department press briefing by Ambassador James Jeffrey held on February 5th regarding the current situation in Syria.
Jeffrey is the United States Special Representative for Syria Engagement and the Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIL. Jeffrey has had a distinguished career in government service, attaining senior level State Department positions under both Democratic and Republican presidents. He has served as U.S. Ambassador to both Turkey and Iraq. He is, generally speaking, a hardliner politically, closely aligned with Israel and regarding Iran as a hostile destabilizing force in the Middle East region. He was between 2013 and 2018 Philip Solondz distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank that is a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He is currently a WINEP “Outside Author” and go-to “expert.”
Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, academic dean at Harvard University ‘s Kennedy School of Government, describe WINEP as “part of the core” of the Israel Lobby in the U.S. They examined the group on pages 175-6 in their groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy and concluded as follows:
“Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel and claims that it provides a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East issues, this is not the case. In fact, WINEP is funded and run by individuals who are deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda … Many of its personnel are genuine scholars or experienced former officials, but they are hardly neutral observers on most Middle East issues and there is little diversity of views within WINEP’s ranks.”
In early 2018 Jeffrey co-authored a WINEP special report on Syria which urged “…the Trump administration [to] couple a no-fly/no-drive zone and a small residual ground presence in the northeast with intensified sanctions against the Assad regime’s Iranian patron. In doing so, Washington can support local efforts to stabilize the area, encourage Gulf partners to ‘put skin in the game, drive a wedge between Moscow and Tehran, and help Israel avoid all-out war.”
Note the focus on Iran and Russia as threats and the referral to Assad and his government as a “regime.” And the U.S. presence is to “help Israel.” So we have Ambassador James Jeffrey leading the charge on Syria, from an Israeli perspective that is no doubt compatible with the White House view, which explains why he has become Special Representative for Syria Engagement.
Jeffrey set the tone for his term of office shortly after being appointed by President Trump back in August 2018 when he argued that the Syrian terrorists were “. . . not terrorists, but people fighting a civil war against a brutal dictator.” Jeffrey, who must have somehow missed a lot of the head chopping and rape going on, subsequently traveled to the Middle East and stopped off in Israel to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It has been suggested that Jeffrey received his marching orders during the visit.
Two months later James Jeffrey declared that he would like to see Russia maintain a “permissive approach” to allow the Israelis to attack Iranian targets inside Syria. Regarding Iran’s possible future role in Syria he observed that “Iranians are part of the problem not part of the solution.”
What Jeffrey meant was that because Israel had been “allowed” to carry out hundreds of air attacks in Syria ostensibly directed against Iran-linked targets, the practice should be permitted to continue. Israel had suspended nearly all of its airstrikes in the wake of the shoot down of a Russian aircraft in September 2018, an incident which was caused by a deliberate Israeli maneuver that brought down the plane even though the missile that struck the aircraft was fired by Syria. Fifteen Russian servicemen were killed. Israel reportedly was deliberately using the Russian plane to mask the presence of its own attacking aircraft.
Russia responded to the incident by deploying advanced S-300 anti-aircraft systems to Syria, which can cover most of the more heavily developed areas of the country. Jeffrey was unhappy with that decision, saying “We are concerned very much about the S-300 system being deployed to Syria. The issue is at the detail level. Who will control it? what role will it play?” And he defended his own patently absurd urging that Russia, Syria’s ally, permit Israel to continue its air attacks by saying “We understand the existential interest and we support Israel” because the Israeli government has an “existential interest in blocking Iran from deploying long-range power projection systems such as surface-to-surface missiles.”
Later in November 2018 James Jeffrey was at it again, declaring that U.S. troops will not leave Syria before guaranteeing the “enduring defeated” of ISIS, but he perversely put the onus on Syria and Iran, saying that “We also think that you cannot have an enduring defeat of ISIS until you have fundamental change in the Syrian regime and fundamental change in Iran’s role in Syria, which contributed greatly to the rise of ISIS in the first place in 2013, 2014.”
As virtually no one but Jeffrey and the Israeli government actually believes that Damascus and Tehran were responsible for creating ISIS, the ambassador elaborated, blaming President Bashar al-Assad for the cycle of violence in Syria that, he claimed, allowed the development of the terrorist group in both Syria and neighboring Iraq.
He said “The Syrian regime produced ISIS. The elements of ISIS in the hundreds, probably, saw an opportunity in the total breakdown of civil society and of the upsurge of violence as the population rose up against the Assad regime, and the Assad regime, rather than try to negotiate or try to find any kind of solution, unleashed massive violence against its own population.”
Jeffrey’s formula is just another recycling of the myth that the Syrian opposition consisted of good folks who wanted to establish democracy in the country. In reality, it incorporated terrorist elements right from the beginning and groups like ISIS and the al-Qaeda affiliates rapidly assumed control of the violence. That Jeffrey should be so ignorant or blinded by his own presumptions to be unaware of that is astonishing. It is also interesting to note that he makes no mention of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, kneejerk support for Israel and the unrelenting pressure on Syria starting with the Syrian Accountability Act of 2003 and continuing with embrace of the so-called Arab Spring. Most observers believe that those actions were major contributors to the rise of ISIS.
Jeffrey’s unflinching embrace of the Israeli and hardline Washington assessment of the Syrian crisis comes as no surprise given his pedigree, but in the same interview where he pounded Iran and Syria he asserted oddly that “We’re not about regime change. We’re about a change in the behavior of a government and of a state.”
Some of James Jeffrey’s comments at last week’s press conference are similarly illuminating. Much of what he said concerned the mechanics of relationships with the Russians and Turks, but he also discussed some core issues relating to Washington’s perspective on the conflict. Many of his comments were very similar to what he said when he was appointed in 2018.
Jeffrey expressed concern over the thousands of al-Nusra terrorists holed up in besieged Idlib province, saying “We’re very, very worried about this. First of all, the significance of Idlib – that’s where we’ve had chemical weapons attacks in the past… And we’re seeing not just the Russians but the Iranians and Hizballah actively involved in supporting the Syrian offensive… You see the problems right now in Idlib. This is a dangerous conflict. It needs to be brought to an end. Russia needs to change its policies.”
He elaborated, “We’re not asking for regime change per se, we’re not asking for the Russians to leave, we’re asking…Syria to behave as a normal, decent country that doesn’t force half its population to flee, doesn’t use chemical weapons dozens of times against its own civilians, doesn’t drop barrel bombs, doesn’t create a refugee crisis that almost toppled governments in Europe, does not allow terrorists such as HTS and particularly Daesh/ISIS emerge and flourish in much of Syria. Those are the things that that regime has done, and the international community cannot accept that.”
Well, one has to conclude that James Jeffrey is possibly completely delusional. The core issue that the United States is in Syria illegally as a proxy for Israel and Saudi Arabia is not touched on, nor the criminal role in “protecting the oil fields” and stealing their production, which he mentions but does not explain. Nor the issue of the legitimate Syrian government seeking to recover its territory against groups that most everyone admits to be terrorists.
Virtually every bit of “evidence” that Jeffrey cites is either false or inflated, to include the claim of use of chemical weapons and the responsibility for the refugees. As for who actually created the terrorists, that honor goes to the United States, which accomplished that when it invaded Iraq and destroyed its government before following up by undermining Syria. And, by the way, someone should point out to Jeffrey that Russia and Iran are in Syria as allies of its legitimate government.
Ambassador James Jeffrey maintains that “Russia needs to change its policies.” That is not correct. It is the United States that must change its policies by getting out of Syria and Iraq for starters while also stopping the deference to feckless “allies” Israel and Saudi Arabia that has produced a debilitating cold war against both Iran and Russia. Another good first step to make the U.S. a “normal, decent country” would be to get rid of the advice of people like James Jeffrey.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
“Much of that torture will have taken place in a prison medical ward, on doctors’ watch,” they said.
“The medical profession cannot afford to stand silently by, on the wrong side of torture and the wrong side of history, while such a travesty unfolds.”
LONDON — More than 100 medical professionals have accused Britain of denying proper health care to jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and continuing to allow treatment that a U.N. envoy said amounted to torture.
The doctors urged Britain to end the “psychological torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange … before it’s too late.”
“Should Assange die in a UK prison, as the U.N. special rapporteur on torture has warned, he will have effectively been tortured to death,” the Doctors for Assange group said in a letter to medical journal The Lancet.
“Much of that torture will have taken place in a prison medical ward, on doctors’ watch,” they said.
“The medical profession cannot afford to stand silently by, on the wrong side of torture and the wrong side of history, while such a travesty unfolds.”
Australian citizen Assange, 48, is due to face an extradition hearing in London next week, after the U.S. government accused him of conspiring with former U.S. military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to leak a trove of classified material in 2010.
The documents relate to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to information on intelligence sources.
In November, Nils Melzer, the U.N. rapporteur on torture, said the British government had shown “outright contempt for Mr. Assange’s rights and integrity” by ignoring the advice of Melzer and medical experts who visited Assange at a London prison.
Melzer said Assange, who had lived inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for seven years before his arrest last year, displayed “all the symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture.”
Be seeing you
I am from the government, mate, and am here to help.
Just imagine if today Donald Trump would tell Hispanic Americans living in the southwest, in territories annexed to the United States from Mexico in the 19th century, that they are Mexican citizens now and no longer American citizens. . . That is exactly what they are trying to do to us.
The U.S. mainstream media, with the New York Times in the lead, is covering up a shocking feature of the Netanyahu/Trump annexation plan that would strip 350,000 to 400,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel of their citizenship. The “denationalization” proposal is a crime against humanity, but the American press is ignoring it.
Thabet Abu Rass lives in the affected area, a predominately Palestinian part of northeast Israel known as “The Triangle,” where he heads an organization devoted to promoting peace between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens. Here’s how he translated the denationalization proposal:
Just imagine if today Donald Trump would tell Hispanic Americans living in the southwest, in territories annexed to the United States from Mexico in the 19th century, that they are Mexican citizens now and no longer American citizens. . . That is exactly what they are trying to do to us.
Abu Rass’s comments appeared in the independent Israeli daily Haaretz, as part of an excellent report by Judy Maltz. She visited The Triangle, and listened to him and other Palestinian Israelis talk about their fears. Eyed Amer, a high school principal, explains that “there is no contradiction between identifying as Palestinian and being a proud holder of Israeli citizenship.”
Amer says:
You can be proud of your ethnicity and religion, and still want to be Israeli — even if you don’t necessarily identify with all the symbols of the state.
None of this has appeared in the New York Times or anywhere else in the U.S. mainstream. A few days after Trump announced the annexation plan at the White House, Times reporters David Halbfinger and Isabel Kershner took what is for them an unusual step — they contacted a few Palestinians and asked for their views. The two barely hid their satisfaction at the resignation and despair they heard, but every Palestinian they quoted was from the occupied West Bank.
In fact, the Times consistently erases the 20 percent of Israelis living within the 1967 borders who are Palestinian. They have still not done a profile of Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Joint List, the third-largest force in Israeli politics. Nor has the paper ever interviewed Issawi Frej, another Palestinian who actually served in the Israeli Knesset for 6 years as part of the small, left-wing, mostly Jewish Meretz party.
Haaretz continues to do the reporting that the Times hides from. Amir Tibon and Noa Landau found that it was Benjamin Netanyahu himself who pushed the proposal to denationalize The Triangle’s residents, in a conversation with Jared Kushner back in 2017. The two somehow had no problem eliciting a comment from Ayman Odeh, who denounced what he called Netanyahu’s
dangerous attempt to revoke the citizenship of 400,000 Israeli Arab citizens, who were born here. . . [Netanyahu] is conveying a clear message to all of Israel’s Arab citizens: ‘You are not welcome here and your turn will come when the next plan is released.’
…that the vault was created as a storehouse for lethal biological pathogens, the DNA of which can be combined with GM seed and unleashed anywhere with the help of these same seed companies. No other use would explain the list of participants or the need for the remote location and virtually nuclear-proof security.
GM seeds and GM food carry great risks for all nations, so much so that for many reasons it is probably imperative these foods be banned outright. This subject is too large to be discussed here, but one aspect requires brief notice. If we were to ask about the origin of GM seeds, how the idea was conceived and developed, who did the research and who provided the funding, how would we reply? We might reasonably suggest that perhaps the concept originated in the Biology or Agricultural Department of some university, or that a government lab doing research on food supplies might have conceived and pursued the idea. Or, we might suggest a private company in the agricultural field was looking for more productive varieties of grains and stumbled on this process.
We might suggest all those answers, but in each case we would be wrong. GM seed was conceived, promoted, researched and funded by the US Department of Defense – the American War Department. GM seed was never meant as a way to feed the hungry, but was instead conceived and developed as a weapon or, more precisely, as a weapons-delivery system. Genetically-Modified seed was never intended to support human life, but to eliminate it.
GM seed is neither more productive nor healthier than traditional heritage crops, and is far more expensive and destructive, but it presents almost irresistible military advantages against any nation that becomes dependent on this source of food grains. One is that the US can use it as a political weapon, refusing to supply seed to a disfavored nation, perhaps causing widespread famine and dislocation. The other is more sinister, in that many groups have experimented with gene-splicing technology, inserting unrelated DNA into various seeds.
In one case in Canada, a government department discovered an “anti-freeze” gene contained in the blood of fish living in Arctic waters, permitting them to survive in waters of sub-zero temperature. (20) The scientists spliced this gene into Canadian wheat crops, permitting the wheat to withstand freezing temperatures without damage. Monsanto also forced these genes into tomatoes, resulting in the first GMO tomato. (21) An American research lab spliced the genes from fireflies into tobacco plants, producing a tobacco field that glowed in the dark. (22)
These examples may be harmless, but others are much less so. The US Defense Department has invested huge sums in research directed to splicing lethal genes into these GM crop seeds, including smallpox, bird and swine flu viruses, coronaviruses, the plague, AIDS, and more. As a military weapon, such science is priceless. Why begin a shooting war when Monsanto or Cargill can sell rice, corn and soybeans that contain smallpox, H5N1, or a coronavirus? When the seed is harvested and passes into the nation’s food supply it could, within weeks, exterminate 50% or more of the population without firing a single shot.
And this was precisely the reason GM seed was conceived and developed by the Americans. It is a weapon of war, designed and meant to deliver to a nation’s entire population a lethal virus or other disease, to literally exterminate an enemy with no risk to the aggressor. Many scientists and US military documents have demonstrated that seeds are far cheaper and much more effective than bombs in the search for military domination. One such military document I’ve discussed elsewhere stated the cost per death of an enemy population by nuclear, conventional and biological weapons, the latter being orders of magnitude less than the former.
In 2001 scientists at the Epicyte bio-lab in San Diego created a GM contraceptive corn, having discovered a rare class of human antibodies that attack sperm. Their researchers isolated the genes that regulate the manufacture of these antibodies and inserted them into corn plants, creating horticultural factories that make contraceptives. (23) (24) Shortly after the 2001 Epicyte press release, all discussion of the breakthrough vanished. The company was taken over by Biolex and nothing more was heard in any media about the development of spermicidal corn. Epicyte, DuPont and Syngenta (sponsors of the Svalbard Seed Vault) had a joint venture to share and use this technology. Silvia Ribeiro, of the NGO ETC Group, warned in a column in the Mexican daily La Jornada, that “The potential of spermicidal corn as a biological weapon is very high”, and reminisced about the use of forced sterilizations against indigenous peoples.
The Doomsday Seed Vault at Svalbard
A new and serious cause for concern is the recently-announced seed vault built on a piece of barren rock named Svalbard, which is owned by Norway, is very remote near the North Pole, and virtually inaccessible. According to press releases, this seed vault has dual blast-proof doors with motion sensors, two airlocks, and walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. There are no full-time staff, but the vault’s relative inaccessibility will facilitate monitoring any human activity. The stated purpose is to store the entire world’s heritage seeds so that crop diversity can be saved for the future, but that crop diversity is already “saved”, stored in vaults all around the world. What do these people foresee, that such a remote and secure facility should be developed?
The promoters and financiers of this venture are the same people who control the world’s GM seeds and who have been among the most outspoken proponents of drastically reducing the world’s population: the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, Syngenta, DuPont, Monsanto and CGIAR. These are the same people who are actively destroying crop diversity all over the planet. Why would they suddenly get religion and decide to save in Norway the same seeds they are destroying everywhere else?
Some time ago, William Engdahl wrote an excellently researched article on this subject of the seed vault and arrived at the same conclusion, that the vault was created as a storehouse for lethal biological pathogens, the DNA of which can be combined with GM seed and unleashed anywhere with the help of these same seed companies. No other use would explain the list of participants or the need for the remote location and virtually nuclear-proof security. Engdahl asked, “Is it a coincidence that these same organizations, from Norway to the Rockefeller Foundation to the World Bank are also involved in the Svalbard seed bank project?” (25)
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Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com
But it’s not just the wearing of a “Hail Satan” shirt that I can regulate in my home. I find almost as offensive the wearing of a “Bernie 2020” shirt. If one of my invited guests shows up wearing such a shirt, I have the same options. Why, because it is my property. And because it is my property, if I demand that all of my guests wear or not wear red shirts, Trump hats, or LeBron jerseys, then that is my right.
The case of the woman on the airplane with the “Hail Satan” shirt has nothing to do with free expression and everything to do with property rights.
“Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.” ~ U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut (1937)
Is freedom of expression absolute?
In the case of Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky (2018), the U.S. Supreme Court held that a Minnesota statute prohibiting individuals from wearing political apparel at a polling place violated the First Amendment.
An airplane is not a polling place.
Near the end of last year, American Airlines issued an apology to a woman after flight attendants objected to her “Hail Satan” shirt that she wore on the plane.
Back in October, Swati Runi Goyal of Key West was on board an American Airlines flight from Florida to Nevada when a crew member told her to change her shirt or leave the plane because the flight crew found her shirt to be “offensive.” According to a page on the American Airlines website titled “conditions of carriage,” under “passenger responsibilities,” passengers are required to, among other things:
Behave appropriately and respectfully with other passengers on board
Dress appropriately; bare feet or offensive clothing aren’t allowed
Passengers who fail to comply by being “uncooperative or show the potential to be uncooperative on board” may not be allowed to fly.
Goyal maintains that “she’s worn the T-shirt many times in the past without incident, including on airplanes.”
Although Goyal claims to be an atheist, she is a member of the Satanic Temple—an organization that’s “become well-known for its activism on issues such as separation of church and state, free speech, and religious freedom.” “It’s an ironic shirt,” she said. “People usually laugh at it, or they give me a thumbs-up because they understand the meaning behind it.”
The flight went on to Nevada as scheduled after the woman put on one of her husband’s shirts over her “Hail Satan” shirt. Goyal said that she was “humiliated” by the situation and contacted American Airlines after her flight to file a complaint. Only after she voiced her displeasure on Twitter did American Airlines apologize.
As a Christian, I find the “Hail Satan” shirt offensive. But since I recognize that I have no right to not be offended, what are my options?
If I see someone wearing a “Hail Satan” shirt out in public and don’t want to confront him, I can ignore him and just keep walking or I can go home and pray for him. If I see someone wearing a “Hail Satan” shirt out in public and want to confront him, I can stop and tell him that his shirt offends me and ask him not to wear it or I can tell him why I think we should hail Jesus instead of Satan. Those are my options. Forcing him to remove the shirt or seeking the government to force him to remove the shirt are not options.
If I see someone wearing a “Hail Satan” shirt that I have invited into my home, then I have other options. Why? Because it is my property. Now I can tell him to change his shirt or leave. Now I can preach to him, yell at him, insult him, or seek to embarrass him in front of my other guests for as long as he is willing to listen. He is, after all, free to leave on his own.
But it’s not just the wearing of a “Hail Satan” shirt that I can regulate in my home. I find almost as offensive the wearing of a “Bernie 2020” shirt. If one of my invited guests shows up wearing such a shirt, I have the same options. Why, because it is my property. And because it is my property, if I demand that all of my guests wear or not wear red shirts, Trump hats, or LeBron jerseys, then that is my right.
It is no different when it comes to American Airlines. Although it may be a dumb thing to do from a business perspective, if American Airlines wants to require all passengers to wear formal attire or prohibit all passengers from wearing Delta shirts, then the company should have the right to do so.
The case of the woman on the airplane with the “Hail Satan” shirt has nothing to do with free expression and everything to do with property rights.
Interestingly, the proposed exemption would include electric cars manufactured by car companies that also build non-electric cars – a legislative nudge clearly meant to “encourage” them to build more electric cars since they’d be able to sell them directly, too.
Which will also nudge these manufacturers in the direction of closing their dealerships and – eventually – selling only EVs.
They are very difficult to sell on a level playing field.
So the field must be tilted – in the direction of the EV.
It’s apparently not enough to pay people to buy EVs – using other people’s money. EVs must be given additional artificial advantages – so that they may “compete” even more unfairly with non-electriccars.
Because, of course, they can’t compete on the merits.
The state of Colorado – which is becoming very much like the state of California, due to all the Californians who’ve fled California but brought California ideas with them to places like Colorado – is pushing to grant EVs an exemption from state law requiring new cars be sold through new car dealerships.
Such laws have been in force for decades and are favored by new car dealers – who don’t want to have to compete directly with the manufacturers, including the brands they sell themselves. A Ford dealership, for example, doesn’t want you to be able to buy a new Ford from Ford.
These must-buy-at-a-dealer laws are obnoxious, but granting an exemption just for electric cars is even more so.
If the exemption is granted, it would give EV manufacturers like Tesla an enormous advantage over other car manufacturers – who would still be required by law to sell their cars through a dealer network, with all the costs that involves.
Which would make it harder for them to sell non-electric cars.
Clearly – if you believe in the idea of a free market – every car maker ought to be free to sell its cars however it likes. Or rather, however buyers like. If people are willing to purchase directly from a manufacturer – and by doing so, pay less for it – why should they be prohibited by law from making the transaction?
The argument is that people need the assistance of dealership sales staff to help them figure out what to buy, to deal with the transaction itself – and to “prep” the car prior to delivery (i.e., remove the plastic from the seats and so on).
But people are allowed – loathsome term but an accurate term – to buy practically everything else online, from electronics to food to furniture.
Why should cars be any different?
Well, because of state laws – like the one which is still in force in Colorado – which forbid new cars to be sold this way.
Unless they’re electric cars.
Interestingly, the proposed exemption would include electric cars manufactured by car companies that also build non-electric cars – a legislative nudge clearly meant to “encourage” them to build more electric cars since they’d be able to sell them directly, too.
Which will also nudge these manufacturers in the direction of closing their dealerships and – eventually – selling only EVs.
Consider it the Harrison Begeroning of non-electric cars. Like the eponymous character in Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, non-electric cars are too good. Electric cars can’t compete with them on any level except virtue-signaling and brief bursts of speed – paid for by long waits to recharge. They are very difficult to sell on a level playing field.
So the field must be tilted – in the direction of the EV.
First, by regulations that serve as de facto EV manufacturing requirements. The big one being “fleet average” miles-per-gallon minimums that force a car company that builds popular models like trucks and SUVs that don’t meet the minimums to build EVs – which use no gas – to up their “fleet average” numbers, in order to avoid fines for not meeting the MPG minimums.
Second by outright EV manufacturing quotas – a legal requirement that a certain percentage of every car company’s model lineup be electric or else they’re not allowed (that word, again) to sell any cars at all.
California has just such a requirement.
Third, pay people to buy electric cars – using other people’s money.
But even that hasn’t been enough – because electric cars are still not good enough to overcome what’s bad enough about them. In Colorado, only 25,000 EVs are put-putting (and waiting). This is less than 1 percent of all the cars registered in the state.
Enter the new exemption.
“I really feel like we needed to have parity for all EV manufacturers,” says Colorado State Senator Chris Hansen, one of the exemption’s main advocates.
He means an advantage for all EVs – at the expense of all non-EVs, which will cost comparatively more under this scheme because what you pay for one at the dealership will necessarily – by law – include the cost of the dealership. The building, the staff – the taxes – recouped in part by what the dealer earns by selling the cars.
Direct-selling of EVs eliminates all those costs, artificially reducing the cost of the EV – at the expense of non-EVs, which become more expensive to sell, in order to make up for the money not being made selling EVs through the dealership.
It’s just another means by which people who don’t want an electric car are being forced to pay for someone else’s electric car.
With the end goal being that you won’t be able to buy anything other than an electric car – directly or otherwise.
The Democrats have, once again, offered us their preselected corporate candidates. We can vote for a candidate who serves oligarchic power, albeit with more decorum than Trump, or we can see Trump shoved down our throats. That is the choice. It exposes the least worst option as a con, a mechanism used repeatedly to buttress corporate power. The elites know they would be safe in the hands of a Hillary Clinton, a Barack Obama or a John Kerry, but not a Bernie Sanders — which is a credit to Sanders.
The quadrennial political game of least worst, or how to scare the public to vote for presidential candidates who serve corporate power, comes this season with a new twist. Donald Trump, if he faces Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar or Michael Bloomberg, will continue to be an amalgamation of Adolf Hitler, Al Capone and the Antichrist. But should Bernie Sanders manage to evade the snares, traps and minefields laid for him by the Democratic Party elites, should he miraculously become the party’s nominee, the game of least worst will radically change. All the terrifying demons that inhabit Trump will be instantly exorcised. But unlike in the biblical story of Jesus driving the demons into a herd of swine, they will be driven into the senator from Vermont. Trump will become the establishment’s reluctant least worse option. Sanders will become a leper. The Democratic and Republican party elites, joining forces as they did in the 1972 presidential election, will do to Sanders what they did to George McGovern, who lost in 49 of the 50 states.
“If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US. Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he’ll ruin our economy and doesn’t care about our military,” former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (net worth $1.1 billion) tweeted. “If I’m Russian, I go with Sanders this time around.”
Blankfein, who calls for cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and who headed Goldman Sachs when it paid Hillary Clinton $675,000 for three speaking engagements in 2013, laid out the stance of the billionaire class that controls the Democratic Party. The New York Times reported that Mike Novogratz, “a Goldman Sachs alumnus who runs the merchant bank Galaxy Digital, said Mr. Sanders’s oppositional nature had prompted ‘too many friends’ to say they would vote against him in November. ‘And they hate Trump,’ he said.”
“Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it,” Hillary Clinton says of Sanders in a forthcoming television documentary.
The courtiers in the press, pathetically attempting to spin Sanders’ New Hampshire win into a victory for the corporate-endorsed alternatives, are part of the firing squad. “Running Sanders Against Trump Would Be an Act of Insanity” read the headline in a piece by Jonathan Chait in New York magazine. “No party nomination, with the possible exception of Barry Goldwater in 1964, has put forth a presidential nominee with the level of downside risk exposure as a Sanders-led ticket would bring. To nominate Sanders would be insane,” he wrote. David Frum — now a darling of the Democratic elites, like many other Republicans who morphed from George W. Bush supporters into critics of Trump — announced in The Atlantic that Bernie can’t win. “Sanders is a Marxist of the old school of dialectical materialism, from the land that time forgot,” Frum wrote. “Class relations are foundational; everything else is epiphenomenal.”
Jennifer Rubin declared in The Washington Post that a Sanders nomination would be a “disaster for the Democrats.” “Sanders’s campaign, like all primary campaigns, is a preview of the general-election race and, if elected, the administration he would lead,” Rubin wrote. “A nominee who insists on personally attacking all doubters and the media might be a model for the Republican Party, but Democrats are not going to win with their own Donald Trump, especially one who has burned bridges and stirred resentment in his own party.”
Thomas Friedman, in a column supporting Bloomberg, the newest savior in the protean Democratic firmament, wrote of Sanders: “On which planet in the Milky Way galaxy is an avowed ‘socialist’ — who wants to take away the private health care coverage of some 150 million Americans and replace it with a gigantic, untested Medicare-for-All program, which he’d also extend to illegal immigrants — going to defeat the Trump machine this year? It will cast Sanders as Che Guevara — and it won’t even be that hard.”
MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews, descending to the Red baiting employed by Blankfein, said that “if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War there would have been executions in Central Park and I might have been one of the ones getting executed. And certain other people would be there cheering, okay?”
Despite the hyperventilating by corporate shills such as Matthews and Friedman, Sanders’ democratic socialism is essentially that of a New Deal Democrat. His political views would be part of the mainstream in France or Germany, where democratic socialism is an accepted part of the political landscape and is routinely challenged as too accommodationist by communists and radical socialists. Sanders calls for an end to our foreign wars, a reduction of the military budget, for “Medicare for All,” abolishing the death penalty, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and private prisons, a return of Glass-Steagall, raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, canceling student debt, eliminating the Electoral College, banning fracking and breaking up agribusinesses. This does not qualify as a revolutionary agenda.
Sanders, unlike many more radical socialists, does not propose nationalizing the banks and the fossil fuel and arms industries. He does not call for the criminal prosecution of the financial elites who trashed the global economy or the politicians and generals who lied to launch preemptive wars, defined under international law as criminal wars of aggression, which have devastated much of the Middle East, resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of refugees and displaced people, and cost the nation between $5 trillion and $7 trillion. He does not call for worker ownership of factories and businesses. He does not promise to halt the government’s wholesale surveillance of the public. He does not intend to punish corporations that have moved manufacturing overseas. Most importantly, he believes, as I do not, that the political system, including the Democratic Party, can be reformed from within. He does not support sustained mass civil disobedience to bring the system down, the only hope we have of halting the climate emergency that threatens to doom the human race. On the political spectrum, he is, at best, an enlightened moderate. The vicious attacks against him by the elites are an indication of how anemic and withered our politics have become.
The Democrats have, once again, offered us their preselected corporate candidates. We can vote for a candidate who serves oligarchic power, albeit with more decorum than Trump, or we can see Trump shoved down our throats. That is the choice. It exposes the least worst option as a con, a mechanism used repeatedly to buttress corporate power. The elites know they would be safe in the hands of a Hillary Clinton, a Barack Obama or a John Kerry, but not a Bernie Sanders — which is a credit to Sanders.
The surrender to the “least worst” mantra in presidential election after presidential election has neutered the demands of labor, along with those organizations and groups fighting poverty, mass incarceration and police violence. The civil rights, women’s rights, environment justice and consumer rights movements, forced to back Democrats whose rhetoric is palatable but whose actions are inimical to their causes, get tossed overboard. Political leverage, in election after election, is surrendered without a fight. We are all made to kneel before the altar of the least worst. We get nothing in return. The least worst option has proved to be a recipe for steady decay.
The Democrats, especially after Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential run, have erected numerous obstacles to block progressives inside and outside the party. They make ballot access difficult or impossible for people of color. They lock third-party candidates and often progressives in the Democratic Party, such as Dennis Kucinich, out of the presidential campaign debates. They turn campaigns into two-year-long spectacles that cost billions of dollars. They use superdelegates to fix the nominating process. They employ scare tactics to co-op those who should be the natural allies of third parties and progressive political movements.
The repeated cowardice of the liberal class, which backs a Democratic Party that in Europe would be considered a far-right party, saw it squander its credibility. Its rhetoric proved empty. Its moral posturing was a farce. It fought for nothing. In assault after assault on the working class it was complicit. If liberals — supposedly backers of parties and institutions that defend the interests of the working class — had abandoned the Democratic Party after President Bill Clinton pushed through the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, Trump would not be in the White House. Why didn’t liberals walk out of the Democratic Party when Clinton and the Democratic Party leadership, including Biden, passed NAFTA? Why didn’t they walk out when the Clinton administration gutted welfare? Why didn’t they walk out when Clinton pushed through the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which abolished the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis that trashed the global economy in 2008? Why didn’t they walk out when year after year the Democratic Party funded and expanded our endless wars? Why didn’t they walk out when the Democrats agreed to undercut due process and habeas corpus? Why didn’t they walk out when the Democrats helped approve the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens? Why didn’t the liberals walk out when the party leadership refused to impose sanctions on Israel for its war crimes, enact serious environmental and health care reform or regulate Wall Street? At what point will liberals say “Enough”? At what point will they fight back?
By surrendering every election cycle to the least worst, liberals proved they have no breaking point. There never has been a line in the sand. They have stood for nothing.
Bernie Sanders arose in 2016 as a political force because he, like Trump, acknowledged the bleak reality imposed on working men and women by the billionaire class. This reality, a reality ignored by the ruling elites, was spoken out loud. The elites were held accountable. The Democratic elites scrambled, successfully, to deny Sanders the 2016 nomination. The Republican elites squabbled among themselves and failed to prevent Trump from becoming the party nominee.
The 2016 chessboard has reappeared, but this time in the Democratic Party primary. The Democratic hierarchy, as horrified by Sanders as the established Republican elites were by Trump, is flailing about trying to find a political savior to defeat the Red menace. Their ineptitude, Sanders’ primary asset, was displayed when they mangled the Iowa primary. They, like the Republican elites in 2016, are woefully disconnected from their constituency, attempting to persuade a public they betrayed and no longer understand.
Joe Biden, long a stooge of corporate America, for example, is frantically attempting to paint himself as a champion of poor people of color after his defeats in the largely white states of Iowa and New Hampshire. The onetime vice president, however, was one of the driving forces behind the strategy to take back the “law and order” issue from the Republicans. He and Bill Clinton orchestrated the doubling of the prison population, the militarization of the police, and mandatory minimum sentences along with juvenile boot camps, drug courts, policing in schools and the acceleration of the deportation of “criminal aliens.” During Biden’s leadership in the Senate — where he served from 1973 until 2009, when he became Obama’s vice president — the Congress approved 92 death-eligible crimes in an almost identical period. These Democratic “law and order” policies landed like hammer blows on poor communities of color, inflicting untold misery and egregious acts of injustice. And now Biden, who pounded the nails into those he crucified, is desperately trying to present himself to his victims as their savior. It is a sad metaphor for the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party.
Biden, however, is no longer the Democratic ruling elite’s flavor of the month. This mantle has been passed to Bloomberg, once the Republican mayor of New York and a Rudy Giuliani ally whose indiscriminate stop-and-frisk harassment of, mainly, African Americans and Latinos was ruled unconstitutional. Bloomberg, whose net worth is estimated at $61.8 billion, said he is ready to spend $1 billion of his own money on his campaign, what The New York Times has called “a waterfall of cash.” He has bought the loyalty of much of the ruling Democratic establishment. He spent, for example, $110 million in 2018 alone to support 24 candidates now in Congress. He is saturating the airwaves with commercials. He is lavishing high salaries and perks on his huge campaign staff. Sanders, or anyone else defying the billionaire class, cannot compete financially. The last desperate gasp of the Democratic Party establishment is to buy the election. Bloomberg is ready to oblige. After all, Bloomberg’s money worked miracles in amassing allies to overturn New York City term limits so he could serve a third term as mayor.
But will it work? Will the Democratic elites and Bloomberg be able to smother the Democratic primaries with so much money that Sanders is shut out?
“As with Republicans in 2016, the defining characteristic of the 2020 Democratic race has been the unwieldy size of the field,” Matt Taibbi writes. “The same identity crisis lurking under the Republican clown car afflicted this year’s Democratic contest: Because neither donors nor party leaders nor pundits could figure out what they should be pretending to stand for, they couldn’t coalesce around any one candidate. These constant mercurial shifts in ‘momentum’ — it’s Pete! It’s Amy! Paging Mike Bloomberg! — have eroded the kingmaking power of the Democratic leadership. They are eating the party from within, and seem poised to continue doing so.”
If Sanders gets the nomination it will be due to the Keystone Cops ineptitude of the Democratic leadership, one that as Taibbi points out replicates the ineptitude of the Republican elites in 2016. But this time there will be a crucial difference. The ruling elites, once divided between Trump and Hillary Clinton, with most of the elites preferring Clinton, will be united against Sanders. They will back Trump as the least worst. The corporate media will turn its venom, now directed at Trump, toward Sanders. The Democratic Party’s mask will come off. It will be open warfare between them and us.
At the end of the Cold War, nationalists in Manila ordered the U.S. to vacate the great naval base we had built at Subic Bay. We should have used that expulsion to let the 1951 security treaty lapse.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has just given us notice he will be terminating the Visiting Forces Agreement that governs U.S. military personnel in the islands.
His notification starts the clock running on a six-month deadline. If no new agreement is negotiated, the VFA is dissolved.
What triggered the decision?
Duterte was offended that one of his political allies who led his anti-drug campaign in the islands, which involves extrajudicial killings of drug dealers, had been denied a U.S. visa.
Yet, Duterte has never been an enthusiast of the U.S. presence. In 2016, he told his Chinese hosts in Beijing: “I want, maybe in the next two years, my country free of the presence of foreign military troops. I want them out.”
The Pentagon is shaken. If there is no VFA, how do we continue to move forces in and out to guarantee our ability to honor the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty? Defense Secretary Mark Esper called Duterte’s action “a step in the wrong direction.”
President Donald Trump openly disagreed: “If they would like to do that, that’s fine. We’ll save a lot of money.”
The Philippine Islands are among the largest recipients of foreign aid in East Asia, and we’ve provided $1.3 billion in military assistance over the last two decades. But money shouldn’t be the largest consideration here.
Trump has been given a historic opportunity to reshape U.S. and Asia policy along the lines he ran on in 2016.
He should tell Duterte that we accept his decision and that we, too, are giving notice of our decision to let the 1951 treaty lapse. And following expiration of that treaty, the U.S. will be absolved of any legal obligation to come to the defense of the Philippines.
Time for Manila to take charge of its own defense. Indeed, what is the argument for a treaty that virtually dictates U.S. involvement in any future war in 7,600 islands 8,000 miles from the United States?
When we negotiated the 1951 treaty, it was a different world.
We had entered a Cold War with Stalin’s USSR. We were in a hot war in Korea that would cost 37,000 U.S. lives. Gen. Douglas MacArthur had just been relieved of his command of U.S. forces in Korea by Harry Truman. A disarmed Japan had not fully recovered from World War II.
The Communist armies of Chairman Mao had overrun China and driven our Nationalist allies off the mainland. The Viet Minh were five years into a guerrilla war to drive the French out of Indochina.
Today, the Cold War is long over. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is no threat to the Philippines. Nor is China, though Xi Jinping has occupied and fortified islets like Mischief Reef in the South China Sea that are within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines.
There is no U.S. vital interest at risk in these islands to justify an eternal war guarantee or treaty commitment to fight Beijing over rocks and reefs in the South China Sea.
Trump should seize this opportunity to tell Duterte that when the VFA, which guarantees immunity for U.S. forces in the Philippines, is dissolved, the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty is dissolved.
A message would be sent to Asia, and the world, that Trump was serious when he said that he intends to revisit and review all the defense alliances and war guarantees entered into 60 and 70 years ago, to address threats that no longer exist in a world that no longer exists.
The U.S. has a long history with the Philippines, beginning in the War of 1898 with Spain, when Admiral George’s Dewey’s Asian squadron sank a Spanish fleet in Manila harbor, and we invaded, occupied and colonized the islands, thus emulating Europe’s imperial powers and abandoning the anti-colonial legacy of the Founding Fathers.
“Take up the White Man’s burden,” Rudyard Kipling admonished us.
After Filipino patriots fought for nearly four years to liberate their islands from the Americans, as they had from the Spanish, inflicting on U.S. soldiers and Marines thousands of casualties, the New York Herald replied to the Poet of Empire:
“We’ve taken up the white man’s burden/Of ebony and brown/Now, will you tell, Rudyard/How we may put it down.”
After Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Japanese invaded and occupied the islands, until Gen. MacArthur made good in on his famous pledge on leaving Corregidor, “I shall return.”
In 1944, we liberated the islands.
A year after Japan’s surrender, on July 4, 1946, we granted the Philippines full independence. And that nation and people, far more populous and prosperous than in 1946, should take full custody of the defense of their own sovereignty and independence.
At the end of the Cold War, nationalists in Manila ordered the U.S. to vacate the great naval base we had built at Subic Bay. We should have used that expulsion to let the 1951 security treaty lapse.
