A House of 12: Debate Four Shows Dems Have No Platform – Biden Stands No Chance
By Joaquin Flores | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 22, 2019
The DNC continues to promote Biden despite his not resonating with likely voters, undecideds, and swing-staters. Gabbard shone bright, but appears to have earned her place back by putting in work for Biden. The DNC must focus on fully socialized healthcare, as Trump’s foreign policy record is strong in the eyes of anti-war voters actually paying attention. But the DNC can’t, and so Trump will likely win.
It was Round Four of the Democratic debates on Tuesday, with 12 candidates squaring off in Westerville, Ohio.
Staged in the critical swing-state of Ohio, the small town of Westerville hosted Round Four of the Democratic Party primary race debates on October 15th. Democrats obviously are pinning hopes on being able to win a few of the swing states they lost to Trump.
The Democratic Party continues its strategy of maintaining a very high number of contenders in the race. In short, the party realizes that the front runner it wants to win – Biden – really lacks the grass roots support, big ideas, and mobilizing capacity that interesting candidates like Sanders, Yang, and Gabbard in fact have. So they keep these more interesting candidates in the race, so that potential voters are more invested in the process for longer. The idea is to try to transfer some of that Yang and Gabbard excitement and support, onto Biden. If that seems like a Herculean task and a strategy not likely to succeed, you would be right. But bear in mind that this is the same Clinton controlled DNC that came to believe that Hillary would win by a landslide.
Gabbard was no doubt the real-winner of this debate – because a victory in 2019 is whatever meme, soundbite, or viral clip you can produce from this sort of event. And Gabbard’s slicing and dicing of Warren was absolutely the highlight of the debate.
By European standards, the Democratic Party is a center-right liberal-austerity party, engaged in an abusive tactic of working against the mandate handed to them by their own more social-democratic constituency. Their programmatic aim is to reduce and tame the real demands of most of their voters, and present ‘pragmatic’ candidates with a ‘chance to win’. In reality, they force their own voters to bargain against themselves. The much weakened and diluted program that the pragmatic candidates take with them into office, is then in turn ‘bargained down’ in their negotiations with law-makers on the other side of the aisle. The result are candidates that no one really likes, going in and beginning negotiations with the position that one ought to arrive at in the end, and absolutely not begin with.
Healthcare
For example, on healthcare – as we saw again in debate number four – Biden promotes only nominal tweaks to Obamacare, which is a non-starter for the activist base of the party which knows that other developed countries consider healthcare both a right and a necessary foundation that makes all other profitable and industrious parts of socio-economic life possible and significantly more robust.
This base is required to generate excitement and launch candidates to wider audiences.
This is an entirely foolish position for many reasons, for nearly 60% of the general public according to recent Gallup polling, also believe that government must provide healthcare. Assuming that every voting Democrat supports a government mandate on healthcare, then nearly 60% means that about 20% of those are Trump voters, making this something of a non-partisan issue.
Interestingly, that polling data also shows that Obamacare ruined the public’s perception of government involvement in healthcare, and support for some kind of intervention dropped from all time pre-Obama high in 2006 of 69% in 2007, all the way down to some 46% in the time period that the travesty of Obamacare was passed into law in 2010. It would take another nine years for the support number to rise to where it is now, still 12 points below its 2007 high.
No Alternative to Trump’s Dovishness
The candidates in the Ohio debate took turns posturing tough on the need to beat Trump, but the DNC seems bent on backing any candidate who seems the least likely to. The reason that Trump will win if this continues – and win ‘big league’ – is that this is not only another ‘change’ election in the eyes of progressive and independent voters, but in fact a larger change paradigm.
Trump’s biggest weakness is his generally conservative position on social programs and healthcare, which is generally unpopular, even though his nominal trade wars with Europe and China were aimed at raising the position of the American worker.
The reality is that even during the administration of Bush 43, the Republican base was growing and voters were trending Republican. The victory of Obama was made possible around three factors: the unpopularity of the wars, which he promised to end, but did not; the massive new-voter registration campaign that was done through the back-door of ostensible labor organizing campaigns by SEIU in swing-states like Colorado; the massive energy at the base created around the prospect of a paradigm-shifting president, African-American no less, that would open the door to larger social-democratic movement – this also was spelled out in new-voter registration and turn-out.
Clinton attempted to use what the Obama energy had built, despite the 2016 election also having been a change election. But this need for ‘change without hope’ was absolutely at odds with the ‘hope + change’ campaign of 2007. Clinton was in the position of not being particularly inspiring to anyone, and needing to use the Obama energy and Obama machine to win an election which in all reality was a mandate against many of Obama’s actual policies and failings.
Without new voter turn-out, and without a genuinely populist campaign from the Democrats, Trump doesn’t have a serious contender to deal with.
Democrats have no real alternative program to offer to Trump, appealing instead to Trump Derangement Syndrome and the ‘Orange-Man-Bad’ mantra. But none of their supposedly front-runner candidates have anything of substance to counterpoise to Trump, with the exception of Warren on healthcare. But Warren will never escape the tag of being Pocahontas, and like Gabbard and Sanders, her anti-war positions may resonate against some of Trump’s rhetoric – if cherry-picked – but voters really concerned about war as a priority are more or less informed that it is Trump, and none other, that has been the first U.S president since perhaps Ford that has not begun a fresh U.S military campaign abroad.
We live in times where the entire U.S Empire is being dismantled, and being dismantled much to the chagrin of vested interests who may know better, but nevertheless insist on policies that stretch out the inevitable in the most short-term profitable way, to the extreme detriment of long-term thinking along strategic and national security/sovereignty lines. These ‘neoconservatives/neoliberals/whatevers’ have been using the vehicle of the Oval Office to see their plans through since the end of the Cold War. The policies of Clinton and Obama were practically indistinguishable from their Republican ‘opponents’ from the same era. All Trump will have to do is continue to run against the past Obama administration on foreign policy, deep state and all, since they’ve been so adamant about controlling and owning the process up to and until now. The numerous times he’s been threatened with impeachment was explicitly aimed at steering him back on track on aggressiveness on Syria, despite that their strategy failed nonetheless.
That means that what differentiates progressives from Trump is not the actual foreign policy positions as such – in this sense Trump feels and acts more like a dove than a hawk – but rather domestic policy on healthcare. Given the real state of inequality, costs, employment, and so forth, healthcare costs are simply out of hand, and too many Americans who have fallen ill have had to mortgage their homes, sell whatever earthly possessions they may have, wind up homeless, or simply die in hospice care.
This is the reality that Americans are facing, and it is therefore strategically ‘insane’, also being unconscionable as an aside, that Democrats continue to push characters like Biden and Harris who oppose single payer along ‘tax increase’ lines. Warren, as was on display in the debate, continues to support some kind of Medicaid for all, and rightly points out that any tax increases will be easily off-set by the end of insurance premiums. Everyone apparently knows this but Biden and Harris, so insurance companies and HMO’s continue to bankroll significant parts of the Biden and Harris campaigns.
We live in a ‘punishment’ paradigm, not a ‘lesser of two evils’ paradigm. Democrats on the fence are not ‘centrists’ as Biden backers insist, but rather ‘to the left’ of Democrats on foreign policy and healthcare, and will simply vote against any Democrat to punish them the way they themselves have been punished by Democrats for hitherto voting for said Democrats until now. Democrats in swing states will vote against Democrats, not vote, or vote for Trump for the very teachable moment that such a move creates.
For that reason, we continue to see 12 candidates all on one stage. Most of what is being written and read this week on the subject has a relatively transparent method and goal: to give a blow by blow of the debate and focus on the ‘horse-race’ angle of it, instead of how the candidates’ positions reflect things that actually matter to voters, and to promote Biden, Warren, and Harris as ‘front-runners’ simply by promoting this idea and repeating it until it becomes a matter of fact as a result. This, despite the fact that these three are among the least likeable candidates, and are indeed very uninspiring people with very little of substance to say.
It has to be said, and must be said again, that it is Sanders, Gabbard, and Yang that motivate and inspire the base. The DNC has no intention in allowing any of them to get the nomination, but need them in the running.
Nobodies like Buttigieg, whose political experience constitutes being a homosexual mayor of a town of three-hundred thousand folks, are in this race for no apparent reason. Except as some sort of latent insult to gay voters, implying that gay voters are interested in a gay candidate for their gayness alone, despite not having any political experience in state-wide, let alone national politics. That, and attempting to keep some sort of Democratic Party interest in Indiana, a state that Obama won in 2008, lost in 2012, and that Trump won in 2016. No wonder Buttigieg, in his ‘tremendous’ political experience at 37 years old and mayor of some place no one has heard of even in Indiana, wants to abolish the electoral college. Why is Buttigieg still in this race? This campaign has to be ‘fake news’ as nobody on the ground is excited about this lad.
Gabbard was the highlight, and she’s still in it
In our simulated and scripted reality, Gabbard ‘made a come-back’ after being excluded from the third debate, and qualified for the fourth. She has shown real utility on numerous occasions for being one of the three most interesting candidates on the one hand, but showing a particular acumen for landing punches on Biden’s opponents – punches that Biden himself can’t seem to land. She’s showing herself to be a very important part of this race, because our Kshatriya warrior princess keeps grass-roots Democrats engaged. The most interesting part of this debate was Gabbard taking aim directly at Warren’s inexperience militarily, that she has no experience to serve as Commander-in-Chief. Moderators cut her off right as she landed this punch, a punch which everyone heard nonetheless, and received an audible ovation from the audience. That clip will no doubt be viral for the coming weeks.
Zombie Nation: the Democratic Party Is Dead, and Everyone Knows It but Them
By Helen Buyniski | Helen of DesTroy | October 22, 2019
Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, thought to have finally retired from politics after an embarrassing electoral loss to a politically-inexperienced reality show personality, is threatening to enter the 2020 race, serving up reheated Cold War fearmongering and an ironclad sense of royal privilege to a Trump-weary populace. A morally and fiscally bankrupt Democratic Party is poised to enable this sick drama with the help of a spineless and compliant media.
How could this possibly happen? Surely Democrats learned their lesson after their decision to take Clinton’s money in order to stay financially solvent in 2016 required them to rig the primaries in her favor, a crime that likely tanked her candidacy when it was revealed by WikiLeaks? Surely the mainstream media realizes that, three years on, the preposterous Russiagate conspiracy theory they cooked up to defend her has ripped the last shreds of journalistic integrity out of the mainstream media establishment?
Just kidding – the Democratic Party and its media handmaidens bargained away their morals long ago. They’re aiding and abetting a Clinton comeback, wheeling her out to give her opinion on everything from the latest steps toward peace in Syria (bad, needs more war) to the 2020 candidates. Last week, she took aim at Tulsi Gabbard, the best hope the party has of getting voters excited enough to show up in 2020, claiming (without a shred of evidence) that the National Guard major and former DNC chair is being groomed by Russia to act as a third-party spoiler, handing the election to Trump. Had such a claim come from anyone else, the DNC would have slapped it down. But they know on which side their bread is buttered. They’d rather lose than defy their queen.
Let’s do the time warp again
This month’s primary debates proved that, if nothing else, the party has refused to move on from 2016. Candidates clamored to distinguish themselves as the biggest Trump-hater and impeachment zealot, with not one appearing to comprehend that next in line behind their favorite punching bag is Mike Pence. The vice president is a man so possessed by religious sexual phobia that he refuses to be alone in a room with a woman. A Christian Zionist, he is even more willing than Trump to send US soldiers to fight Israel’s battles – the better to hasten the Rapture. Only Andrew Yang – a party outsider – dared speak the truth: “When we are talking about Donald Trump, we’re losing.”
Indeed, everything about the 2020 election is signaling a repeat of the last one. The DNC is broke again, ripe for a Clinton rescue that will once again require the rigging of the primary in return for her kindness. Naysayers who once laughed at the idea of yet another Clinton candidacy are reconsidering their scorn, and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon insists she is, in fact, running – merely waiting for the right moment to officially declare her candidacy. Certainly the media blitz of the past few weeks – ostensibly to promote a book co-written with her do-nothing daughter, but in reality a string of opportunities for her to denounce the “illegitimate” president and remind America that the position is rightfully hers – looks like a campaign publicity tour.
For all that Clinton says she empathizes with current Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, currently being accused of corruption, she has, in these interviews, always brought the conversation back around to 2016, insisting that “the most outrageously false things” were said about her as well (and lamenting that “enough people believed them” to rob her of the presidency). Biden, like Clinton, is still being pushed as the 2020 favorite, despite coming with decades of baggage including flagrant corruption (threatening to withhold $1 billion in IMF loans from Ukraine until it fired the prosecutor probing an energy company that gave his son a no-show job is only the tip of the iceberg).
Even the New York Times has pointed out the similarities between their two candidacies – both physically deteriorating before voters’ eyes, uninterested in changing the status quo, and embraced by the wealthy donors that keep the party afloat. Biden’s Ukraine problem is as massive and impossible to avoid as Clinton’s email problem. Biden, like Clinton, is positioning himself as not the best candidate, but the only one who can beat Trump – embracing his identity as, he hopes, the lesser of two evils. Both have a long history in politics, dozens of skeletons in the closet (literally, in Clinton’s case), and a string of failed presidential attempts. Both cringingly pander to working-class and minority voters despite a history of racism (“superpredators,” the 1994 crime bill, close friendship with segregationists) and classism (NAFTA).
If at first you don’t succeed…
Ever the strategist, Clinton is likely biding her time until the facts come out about Biden’s involvement in Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma during impeachment hearings and sink his candidacy. She’ll then swoop in, volunteering to take his place as the crusty old standard-bearer of the Democratic pack. Biden’s suicidal stubbornness all but ensures he’ll go down in flames (despite his son Hunter’s admitted drug problems and the obvious nepotism and corruption behind his receiving a $60,000/month directorship just months after being kicked out of the Navy Reserves for cocaine use, Biden insists Hunter will join him on the campaign trail).
Clinton feels the presidency is hers by divine right – that it’s “her turn” to take the reins, like she was promised after Obama snatched it out from under her in 2008. Having paid her dues as First Lady, the long-suffering wife and enabler of serial rapist Bill Clinton occupied a Senate seat just long enough to present herself to the public as a stateswoman in her own right, then made a run at the glass ceiling of the presidency – only to be rejected in favor of a spray-tanned novice without her baggage. Patiently serving as Secretary of State, she oversaw the destruction of Libya, once the jewel of the Middle East under Gaddafi with the highest standard of living on the African continent, turning it into the failed state with open-air slave markets it is today. Thwarted in her efforts to do the same in Syria, she left the White House in 2012.
Clinton transformed the State Department into an extension of the Pentagon via her misleadingly-named “smart power” philosophy. The agency once tasked with solving America’s foreign policy problems diplomatically now merely provides diplomatic cover for regime-change operations like the one she helped engineer in Ukraine in 2014 (while she left the State Department in 2013, the processes she set in motion would culminate in the Maidan revolution that saw actual Nazis take over in Kiev) and the one currently trying to pry Hong Kong from China’s grasp.
She also monetized the position, selling access to the presidency through the Clinton Foundation. The Clintons vastly enriched themselves at the expense of the rest of the world, having never met a dictator they didn’t like. But while they elevated corruption to an art form, their actions were wholly in keeping with the modus operandi of the Democratic Party. Swaddle oneself in the appearance of helping the less fortunate (Clinton has appeared with countless ‘save the children’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ type groups like Somaly Mam’s AFESIP, which notoriously invented Cambodian child brothel horror stories out of whole cloth) while exploiting them to within an inch of their lives (Haitians still protest outside Clinton events over the Foundation’s decision to give over 90 percent of the $13.3 billion given in response to the 2010 earthquake to foreign contractors and Foundation donors while Haitians starved and died).
The rot goes to the core
Clinton wouldn’t be able to get away with this sort of thing if her party wasn’t fully on board with such moral depravity. The current impeachment circus is merely the latest proof that they do not believe anything they say in public. For the entire party and its stenographers in the media to turn on a dime from accusing Trump of colluding with Russia to accusing him of engaging in quid-pro-quo with Ukraine (an enemy of Russia, if one is paying attention) suggests they don’t believe either scandal is necessarily based on facts, but that, to quote congressman and impeachment fanboy Al Green, “if we don’t impeach the president, he will get reelected.”
After losing its collective mind with the 2016 defeat, the Democratic Party, led by Clinton and outgoing President Obama along with CIA director John Brennan and FBI chief James Comey, cobbled together Russiagate as their revenge. Relying on a network of spooks and paid operatives, they conjured up a half-baked menace from the depths of Americans’ collective Cold War memories, light on facts but heavy on the implications, with just enough salacious material to ensure it would go viral. The intention was to cripple Trump’s presidency – if they couldn’t remove him from office, they could at least ensure he played by their rules rather than follow through on wild promises to end the wars in Syria and Afghanistan and normalize relations with Moscow. The status quo held until the release of special counsel Mueller’s Russiagate report meant the media could no longer claim with a straight face that Trump was scheduled to be executed for treason any second now. But top Democrats were unfazed when it was exposed as a hoax – they’d invented it in the first place.
If not a sense of moral outrage that the president is colluding with a foreign power, what has driven the party leadership and its enablers in the media to pursue Trump to the ends of the earth? Democrats’ choice of impeachment issues is proof they lack any sort of moral center – as fake as Russiagate and Ukrainegate are, there are dozens of issues that could potentially be used to skewer Trump. The sky-high civilian casualty rates and record number of bombs dropped on his watch don’t faze Democrats – after all, Bush and Obama started those wars, and neither were impeached for the atrocities committed under their watch.
If anything, Democrats are clamoring for more war, shrieking after Trump announced the latest attempt at a troop pullout from Syria that such an action was unthinkable. Weeping and gnashing their teeth over the impending “genocide” of the Kurds, they spun on a dime when Trump announced a five-day ceasefire with Turkey last week, claiming such a deal – which gave Kurdish militias ample time to vanish from the Turkish border area without being attacked – somehow “discredited” American foreign policy. The Democrat-controlled House even voted to condemn the troop pullout – perhaps forgetting they’d never authorized the deployment of troops to Syria in the first place, an easy mistake to make as the US military has been industriously building up a base infrastructure in flagrant violation of Syria’s sovereignty.
The Trump administration’s blatant nepotism – Jared Kushner, a pampered princeling who has never held a real job in his life, was tasked with making peace between Israel and Palestine, despite blatant partiality toward the Netanyahu government (Bibi slept at the Kushners’ home in New Jersey) – didn’t bat a single Democratic eyelash. After all, Hunter Biden got his own lucrative sinecure in Ukraine with as few credentials. The massive deregulation that has seen the deficit skyrocket as corporations and the wealthy pay even less taxes than they did before bothers no one – Democratic donors benefited as much as Republicans, even though billionaires now pay a lower tax rate than the working class. Trump spitting in the face of international law by “declaring” first Jerusalem and then the Golan Heights the property of Israel went down smoothly as can be – no surprise when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi herself has said that she would back Israel “even if the Capitol crumbles to the ground.” Democrats’ problem has always been finding an “impeachable offense” Trump was committing that they were not also guilty of.
The devil’s rejects
Perhaps Democrats’ awareness that they’re morally as well as fiscally bankrupt is what drives them to make the same mistakes they did four years ago. Just as they did with Bernie Sanders, the party is doing its utmost to sideline Tulsi Gabbard at every opportunity, barring her from September’s debate despite her polling higher than several candidates who were included and refusing to speak up for her in the face of Clinton’s baseless smear. Their hypocrisy is transparent, preaching identity politics until a Hindu woman emerges championing antiwar policies. Gabbard is the only one bringing fresh ideas to the table, ideas that have excited many voters sick of the shame they feel knowing their country is the number one killer since World War II. Spike her, and they’re almost guaranteed to lose.
As if to prove that point, Clinton pounced on the Hawaii congresswoman last week with her “Russian asset” smear – not referring to Gabbard by name, but making it clear she was talking about no one else. Her spokesman Nick Merrill, asked if Clinton was really saying Gabbard – who served in the Iraq war – was an agent, confirmed the smear: “If the nesting doll fits…” In a sane society, Clinton’s disapproval would be a badge of honor (and to her credit, Gabbard appears to be wearing it as such) – but in the mainstream media hothouse, it’s another strike against her – along with the guilt-by-association smears that come with a 4chan fan club and even her looks.
Sanders might be able to muster a win against Trump, but at 78, his health is failing, and his base is wary after he betrayed them in 2016. Despite stolen primaries in New York and California, he sat mutely, throwing his own supporters under the bus during the convention. After a solid year of slamming Clinton for giving secret speeches to Goldman Sachs, voting to bail out the banks in 2008, and backing every war in the past three decades, Sanders turned on his supporters and implored them to vote for her. He remained silent while his supporters demanded a legal reckoning. Some have forgiven him and returned to cheer him on in 2020, but many have not.
Nevertheless, he is head and shoulders above most Democrats, who are completely for sale to the highest bidder, whether it’s Israel, the arms industry or Big Pharma. They violate the Constitution on a daily basis, whether it’s by voting to make participation in boycotts of Israel illegal (a blatant violation of the First Amendment, as a Texas court recently found; passing a law permitting indefinite detention without trial for American citizens (as Obama did in 2011, backed by a supine Congress, in violation of the Sixth Amendment); or outlawing religious vaccine exemptions (a violation of both the First Amendment and the Geneva Convention).
In perhaps the most shocking betrayal of the party’s liberal and progressive wing, Democrats have embraced the CIA, the FBI, and the entire intelligence apparatus that has infiltrated and destroyed leftist movements since the 1960s. Once the home of the counterculture, the Party now clings to authority, enthusiastically licking the boots they believe will curb-stomp Trump. Bereft of historical perspective – even the torture revelations of the early 2000s have vanished amid the onslaught of Orange Man Bad – Democrats ironically calling themselves the Resistance wear slogans like “It’s Mueller time!” and “Comey is my homey,” broadcasting their allegiance to men who’ve covered up monumental crimes and even committed a few themselves. It’s no surprise to see the mainstream media taking the side of the intelligence agencies – assets like Anderson Cooper, Ken Dilanian, and Wolf Blitzer have been keeping newsrooms safe for democracy for decades. But never before have ordinary voters leapt to embrace their oppressors quite so openly. The phenomenon can’t even be described as selling out – because selling out implies getting something in return for one’s soul.
A hive of lesser evils
Even if Clinton does not run, her influence permeates the party. “I’ve talked to most of them,” she revealed on ABC’s The View earlier this month, slyly hinting that previous contests’ frontrunners a year before the election had failed to secure the nomination. Instead of Sanders and Gabbard, the Democratic National Committee is propping up Biden and grooming as his second Elizabeth Warren, the neoliberal wolf in sheep’s clothing trying to steal Sanders’ thunder by insisting she’s all he represents plus a pair of X chromosomes. Decked out in borrowed rhetoric and forged identity politics credentials, she earnestly presents herself as a leftist, hoping no one remembers she was registered as a Republican until her 40s.
Lest anyone be fooled by Warren’s “radical” act, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently gushed “I know she’s pragmatic, just wait.” Such an endorsement should be a death knell for her progressive support, especially after the revelation that she has been in constant contact with Clinton. Warren emphasizes in communications with donors that she doesn’t actually intend to upend the status quo, and has flip-flopped repeatedly on accepting big-dollar donors and PACs, only rejecting them once she’d stockpiled a healthy war chest from those very donors.
Many of Clinton’s 2016 campaign operatives have chosen California Senator Kamala Harris as their standard-bearer, and Harris exhibits many Clintonesque characteristics. Her enthusiasm for locking up black men for minor drug offenses (she bragged about increasing drug dealers’ conviction rate from 56% to 74% in just three years) – and black women for their truant children (she supported a law that imprisoned mothers if their kids skipped school, then lied about it on the campaign trail) – is worthy of the woman who called black kids “superpredators.” Harris has praised Clinton for “putting our country first” and “serving with distinction” while calling for Trump to be banned from Twitter for his “irresponsible” language.
The other candidates are largely distractions aimed at getting the selection process at the 2020 convention to a second ballot. With voters clamoring for reform after the 2016 disaster, the party obliged by doing away with superdelegates on the first round, but for any round beyond that, they’re fair game – and the DNC refuses to leave the selection up to chance, or anything so small-d democratic as a vote. With a handful of votes thrown to Pete Buttigieg – the anti-Gabbard, a gay pro-war vet – and Beto O’Rourke – the face of privilege whose Spandering caused the cringe heard ‘round the world in the first primary debate – the convention will progress to a second round, and the superdelegates will slither out of their holes to crown their king – or queen.
Status quo defenders
As much as those Democratic establishment stalwarts with presidential ambitions – Clinton and the two dozen-odd candidates determined to dislodge Trump in 2020 – want to get rid of the Bad Orange Man, the benchwarmers in Congress have learned to love him. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer can merely rail against Trump instead of actually governing, floating whatever irresponsible fantasy bills they want with the knowledge that they’ll die in the Republican-controlled Senate or – at worst – be vetoed by Trump. House Democrats got the chance to virtue-signal about ending the war in Yemen, helping voters forget Obama had gotten the US involved in the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century, knowing Trump would kill the bill to serve their shared Saudi paymasters. And pearl-clutching about kids in cages on the border (cages built, again, by Obama) while calling for open borders attracts the votes of recent immigrants while ensuring they’ll never have to cash the checks they’re writing.
Michael Moore, once a progressive darling, recently appeared on ‘comedian’ Bill Maher’s program to lambaste his fellow ex-progressive about abandoning his own liberal credentials. Maher complained that the “Squad” – progressive congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – were unpopular, that Medicare for All was less desirable than Obamacare, and that a leftward shift would sink the party. Moore whimpered that if the election was held today, Trump would win, just as he had predicted in 2016. But where was Moore in 2016? Pleading on Democracy Now! for Sanders supporters to go to the polls for Clinton, even though “she is to the right of Obama.”
The exchange between the two millionaire entertainers was a disturbing window on the utter alienation of the Democratic Party, insulated by layers of money, from its constituents – and increasingly ex-constituents, as nearly 40 percent of Americans disavow both parties. Maher represents the McCarthyite neoliberal centrism that has taken the mainstream media by storm, in which any flicker of anti-war or pro-working class sentiment is viewed as Russian. And Moore represents the thought-leaders who, despite knowing better, have led the party into its current moral sinkhole, insisting it’s the only pragmatic route.
Moore knows Clinton is – as Gabbard declared – the Queen of Warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long. He just doesn’t care as long as he gets paid. Moore, like Clinton, took money from casting couch predator Harvey Weinstein despite his predation being an ‘open secret’ in the industry. As late as 2015, he called the molesting mogul “one of the best people to work with in this town” in a tweet he quickly deleted after it was dug up in October 2017 following Moore’s belated decision to speak out against Weinstein’s crimes. Even after the New York Times story in which several actresses first went public with their accusations was published, it took Moore weeks to climb aboard the dump-Weinstein bandwagon, likely out of concern it would hurt his film – Fahrenheit 11/9 – about the Trump presidency. The bottom line – not morality, or even being factually correct – is his chief concern.
In that respect, Moore is the Democratic Party writ large. Caught in a vicious cycle of selling out to wealthy donors to keep the lights on, it has sealed itself off to the working class, the minorities whose voice it still claims a monopoly on, and the young people just now awakening to the fact that they’ve been cheated out of a future. There has been barely any pushback against the DNC’s relentless trudge to the right from the mainstream media and the party establishment. Van Jones appeared on CNN calling out Clinton’s red-baiting of Gabbard, pointing out the smear contained “no facts” and that Gabbard had been the party chairman before she was demonized for backing Sanders in 2016, but the rest of the #Resistance remained silent as Clinton insisted that opposition to war was anti-American. Even the few candidates who defended Gabbard from her slurs did not mention Clinton in their rebuttals. No one dares to oppose the party’s owners.
Until someone does, the Democratic Party is dead. And it’s all but turned Trump into the lesser evil.
Trump approves $4.5 million in aid to ‘White Helmets’ in Syria
RT | October 22, 2019
US president Donald Trump has authorized $4.5 million in aid to the so-called Syrian Civil Defense (SCD), aka “White Helmets,” calling their work “important and highly valued.” The group’s critics point to its terrorist ties.
“Over the course of the 8-year conflict in Syria, the SCD has rescued more than 115,000 people, including many ethnic and religious minorities,” the White House said, announcing the aid on Tuesday.
However, the source of this figure is the group itself, and it has not been independently verified. Likewise, the organization has only been around since 2013.
Washington pledged $5 million in aid to the group at a conference back in March. Last May, the Trump administration had announced it would stop funding the White Helmets, only to backtrack a month later and send the group $6.8 million.
The group’s name is highly misleading, as the White Helmets have operated solely in areas controlled by anti-government militants, such as the Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, now called HTS. The actual Syrian civil defense is part of the government, and has been subjected to US sanctions as such.
Currently the White Helmets operate solely in the parts of Idlib province controlled by the militants. Photographs of armed militants with “White Helmets” insignia, participating in the Turkish-backed ‘Operation Peace Spring’ against the Kurds in northern Syria, have appeared on social networks over the past two weeks.
Still, the US continues to encourage “allies and partners” to join in its support of the White Helmets, and “efforts to protect civilians, religious and ethnic minorities, and other innocent victims of the Syrian conflict,” according to the White House.
In December 2018, the Russia-based Foundation for the Study of Democracy presented evidence of their investigations in Syria, showing the group to be engaged in staging false chemical and other attacks, harvesting organs of the people they pretended to rescue, and looting the bodies of the fallen, among other things.
DFLP criticises continuous PA security cooperation with Israel
MEMO | October 22, 2019
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) has criticised the continuous security cooperation between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israeli occupation, a statement said yesterday.
The DFLP wondered about the “feasibility” of the security cooperation in light of the Israeli aggression on Palestinians and the daily desecration of Islamic holy sites in the occupied territories by settlers and officials.
“The daily violations carried out by the Israeli Jewish settlers and Israeli officials against the Palestinians and their properties aims to uproot Palestinians from their historic land and destroy its political and national character,” the statement said.
The DFLP said that the Israeli occupation “is carrying out daily aggression on the ground and steals Palestinian land and property.”
The movement went on to call on the PA and its leadership “to move on from issuing warnings to the international community to tangible responses.”
The DFLP demanded the PA carry out the decisions of the Palestinian National Council regarding the immediate halt of security cooperation with the Israeli occupation.
Foreign agents torturing Palestinian prisoners in Saudi jails
MEMO | October 22, 2019
Palestinian prisoners inside Saudi jails are being interrogated and tortured by foreign agents, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said yesterday.
Speaking to the Shehab News Agency, Abu Zuhri said: “Sadly, the prisoners are being interrogated and severely tortured by foreign interrogators of different nationalities.”
“There are about 60 Palestinian prisoners inside the Saudi jails, including some pro-Hamas or Hamas members,” Abu Zuhri said, noting that some of them have spent more than three decades in Saudi Arabia and contributed to building the country.
“Their detention shocked us and them because it is not justified and not understood.”
Abu Zuhri said that his movement has exerted many efforts, including contacting Saudi and non-Saudi officials through direct and indirect means but has been unable to arrange the release of the prisoners.
He stressed that his movement has not given up working to end the crisis, stating “this is not justified because Saudi has been and is still a supporter of the Palestinians and their cause.”
Last month, rights groups and Hamas revealed that Saudi Arabia has arrested around 60 Palestinians over claims of links to the Palestinian resistance movement, stating that they had disappeared for months without their families knowing anything about their whereabouts. The NGO Euro-Med Observer reported one of the freed detainees as saying that he and the others were subject to verbal and physical torture.
Hamas also revealed that its main official in the kingdom, Mohammed Al-Khodari, 81, has also been arrested.
Hezbollah Firmly Denies Involvement in Beirut Downtown Motorcade
Al-Manar | October 22, 2019
Hezbollah stressed on Monday it has no relation with the motorcade which threatened protests in Beirut Downtown and was thwarted by Lebanese Army.
In a statement, Hezbollah’s Media Relations Office firmly denied involvement in the motorcade.
“The Media Relation would like to affirm that Hezbollah definitely has no relation with the motorcade which went about Beirut Downtown tonight,” the statement released late Monday said.
Lebanese media reported that a motorcade including alleged supporters of Hezbollah and Amal movement attempted to attack protesters in Beirut Downtown, with the Lebanese Army confronting them and saving the protesters.
A video showing the motorcade went viral on social media, with pro-resistance activists stressing that such moves are suspicious and aim at tarnishing Hezbollah’s image.
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah expressed solidarity with protesters who have been since last Thursday staging demonstrations and rallies across Lebanon in protest against hard livelihood conditions and corruption in the state institutions.
In his speech in the Arbaeen commemoration in Baalbeck on Saturday (October 19, 2019), Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that the resistance party stands beside the protesters urging all Lebanese parties including Hezbollah to bear the responsibilities in a bid to solve the long-term crises in the country.
Source: Hezbollah Media Relations (Translated by Al-Manar English Website)
How Russia’s Vision for the Middle East Is Rigged against Iran
By Agha Hussain | American Herald Tribune | October 22, 2019
Stanislav Ivanov writing for the prestigious Russian state-run Valdai Club recently described ‘Israel and most of the Arab countries’ as viewing Turkey’s military presence in Syria as a counterweight to that of Iran. He also added that Iran and Turkey both waged a ‘fierce struggle’ to install a ‘puppet government’ in Damascus.
The Russian perspective is usually channeled, directly or indirectly, by its assorted major think tanks and media outlets and a very clear cut yet under-noticed aspect of Russia’s views on Iran has been made clear as daylight here.
That ‘Most of the Arab countries’ consider Iran’s presence in Syria as something that requires a ‘counterweight’ is a fallacious notion for a number of reasons. Iran’s key allies in the region are Arabs, such as Hezbollah, the Syrian Arab Army and much of the Iraqi government, clerical establishment and de facto military in the form of the Popular Mobilization Units. The same goes for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups in Gaza.
To describe the Gulf Arabs (GCC) and their consensus on Iran’s ‘need’ to exit Syria as the consensus of ‘most of the Arabs’ is thus disingenuous. Notwithstanding the weakness of that consensus itself, given how the UAE quickly distanced itself from the fiasco in the Persian Gulf through assuring signals to Iran as things heated up there, it is not likely that the author is unaware of these issues with the ‘Arabs’ tag.
Nor is it likely that Russian policymakers are unaware of the illogical, dishonest basis of this classification of ‘most of the Arabs’. It remains, regardless of this vital reality, a key cornerstone of Russia’s current geopolitical approach to the Middle East. This can be seen from the Russian outreach to the GCC it began – together with other extremely important yet under-discussed strategic adjustments – in what can be described the ‘post-ISIS’ scenario in Syria.
The Russian-GCC ‘rapprochement’ was lightning fast, with Russia offering to Saudi Arabia and the UAE what it never did to its Iranian or Syrian ‘allies’ constantly attacked by the Israeli airforce: its much-vaunted S-400 anti-air defense system. As one of the earlier examples of Russian preference for the GCC over their Iranian rival, the clarity of the message Russia was sending was illustrated by the fact that it even pitched the system to the small, militarily-insignificant Bahrain.
Russia has taken clear steps to prop up the brittle GCC whenever it has suffered major setbacks, demonstrating its ties with them are not just cordial but strategic. Saudi Arabia, having last month suffered a deadly missile attack on its Aramco oil processing facilities at Abqaiq, received a boost on 11 October as Russia announced plans to invest $1 billion for a petrochemical facility there.
More than 20 deals were signed between Russia and Saudi Arabia during Putin’s state visit days later, including the purchase of a 30.76% in one of Russia’s leading companies, Novomet, by the two countries’ sovereign investment funds and Aramco.
The economic honeymoon, however, started after Saudi King Salman’s historic visit to Russia in 2017. Its progress since then compares starkly to Russia, contrary to expectations of its ‘Eurasianist’ supporters, having adhered to US sanctions against Iran when they were re-imposed last year.
The strategic element which drove Russo-GCC economic ties did influence the decisions of Russian giants such as Rosneft and LUKoil regarding their Iran investments, but to Iran’s detriment as they withdrew from Iran with Russo-GCC ties being a factor as well.
A team from Russia’s MGIMO university at the Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate in November 2018 days after re-imposition of US sanctions on Iran declared in no unclear terms that Russia was not aligned with Iran. The prestigious institution, famed for having top Russian diplomats such as current Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov among its alumni, declared political Islam problematic and Iran to be an expansionist power.
But what are these soft spots Russia tries to hit at in Iran’s geopolitical ‘Resistance Axis’ infrastructure, and is it the GCC’s subsequent empowerment [over] Iran that makes Russia’s ‘contain Iran’ policy dangerous?
The answer lies in Israel and the regional socio-political and military network Iran has forged and sustained since 1979 pivoted around the correct recognition of Israel and Israel Lobby-induced US foreign policy as the premier driver of Middle East wars.
It [Iran] has, thus, through the chaos of Middle East geopolitics since 1979 performed an important task in countering forces of destabilization. Vital to Iran has been its deep involvement in foreign affairs and disingenuously portraying this as ‘Iranian expansionism’ has been a cornerstone of Israeli and GCC propaganda against Iran.
Nobody knows the ‘start the story from the middle’ game better than the Israelis, be it claiming Israel was ‘attacked’ by ‘the Arabs’ in 1948 whilst ignoring the entire pre-planned ethnic cleansing campaign of the 1940s by the Zionists or claiming self-defense in Gaza. The GCC in recent times have latched onto this narrative as well, but with their own crude ‘Iran seeks to dominate the Arab world’ spin.
Had Iran not intervened, the Shia-dominated Lebanese resistance against Israel’s occupation would have lacked a material supporter against the modern Zionist army and Israel would have consolidated Lebanon for both its Jewish colonies scheme and seized its vital water resources. Such had been Zionist ambition as far back as 1919.
Gaza, where the armed resistance born following the First Intifada in the vacuum left by Yasser Arafat’s inept leadership (and subsequent sell-out during the Oslo ‘peace’ hoax) receives arms from Iran, would have by now been fully swallowed by Jewish colonies. It would have shared the fate of the ‘Iran-free’ West Bank, where Mahmoud Abbas carries on the legacy of Arafat’s surrender.
Instead, Lebanon today is far more stable than at any other time in its history and the bridges Hezbollah has built with other religious parties have helped augment internal cohesion. Gaza has shown in recent times increased capability to deal with Israeli military aggression, with its Iran-backed Sunni Islamist groups possessing improved weaponry and exhibiting greater unity.
It was not international mediation and ‘conflict-resolution’ attempts that stabilized – or, given the capacity of Israel’s cohorts to rig such attempts every step along the way, ever truly even could stabilize – the parts of the Arab world worst hit by war. It was Iran’s support to these states and state-less victims of Israeli expansionism that enabled them to weather the storm inflicted upon them and mount a thus-far successful resistance.
Few pundits would, retrospectively, describe past ‘peace deals’ be they Camp David 1978 or the Oslo process of the 90s as anything other than smokescreens for unhinged Israeli warmongering.
For containing Israel, Iranian forward-presence in countries near to Israel has always been a necessity. Iran’s elaborate supply chains, part covert and part overt in nature, going to allies such as Hamas and Hezbollah are transnational and involve supporters on the ground zealously committed to Iran or even just zealously committed to opposing Israel.
Syria is one such vital node. Without Syria, Iran could not supply Hezbollah. Russia is not unaware of this when it constantly pushes for Iranian withdrawal from Syria whilst passing this off as its ‘principled’ position that all foreign forces must leave the country. This most salient stance of Russia is deceptive, given that Russia has consistently implicitly excused Israel completely from adhering to this principle.
The Russian Defence Ministry right after Israel got a Russian aircraft downed in September last year reminded everyone of how Russia at Tel Aviv’s request had pushed for ‘Iran-backed groups’ to withdraw 140 km away from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel’s behavior since then remained the same, but Russian attempts at Tel Aviv’s request to distance Syria from its Iranian ally only intensified, even including lobbying for the removal of heavily pro-Iran officials from the Syrian military and incorporation of ‘ex-rebels’ into its ranks.
The façade is crystal clear: Israel gets to continue its attacks but Iran – who along with Hezbollah contributed to the defeat of terrorism in Syria even before Russia intervened in 2015 – must depart Syria. The constant Russian favors to Israel are here are even more see-through than were the fraudulent regional ‘peace-processes’ of the past which leveraged almost no obligations upon Israel to cease its warmongering yet comprehensively de-fanged and neutralized whatever stood in its way.
Propping up the GCC, working to weaken Iran and looking the other way when Israel attacks its ‘allies’ (or even publicly fawn over the Zionist state at events hosted by financial benefactors of Israel’s military) are all part and parcel of Russia’s geopolitical bigger-picture.
Validating the notion that the GCC – the normalization with whom of Israel’s ties Jared Kushner has fast-tracked since 2016 as an anti-Iran front and plan B following al Assad’s survival in Syria – represents ‘most of the Arabs’ has a specific purpose.
That purpose is to rig the selection of stakeholders for any potential region-wide ‘peace initiatives’ against Iran, sidelining it and declaring the pro-Israel GCC the representatives of ‘the Arabs’. Israel would be the benefactor of any ‘peace deal’ to end the ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’ since both sides would have long ago accepted the need to eradicate longstanding barriers to Israeli hegemony.
What follows next is obvious and has been seen repeatedly in the Middle East ‘peace processes’ in the past: no actual reigning in of Israel, but a thorough neutralization of its foes. For resistance-oriented states like Iran, there is no place in Russia’s vision for the Middle East.
Agha Hussain is a Research Analyst at the Institute of Regional Studies, Islamabad, Pakistan, as well as an editorial contributor to the websites Eurasia Future and Regional Rapport. His writings have a particular focus on Middle Eastern affairs and history and Pakistan’s foreign policy.
Trump: US military companies against bringing troops home from Syria
Press TV – October 22, 2019
US President Donald Trump says his plans to bring American troops home from Syria and other countries have been met with strong opposition from “military companies,” arguing that it is easier for him to let the soldiers get killed and sent back in coffins instead.
Trump said Monday that ending American military presence overseas was one of his two key campaign pledges — besides building a wall — and that he was intent to fulfill that promise despite facing opposition in Washington.
“We’re bringing our troops back home,” he told a cabinet meeting at the White House. “I got elected on bringing our soldiers back home. Now, it’s not very popular within the beltway because, you know, Lockheed doesn’t like it. And these great military companies don’t like it. It’s not very popular.”
Earlier this year, a report from the Security Assistance Monitor project of the Center for International Policy found that the Trump administration in coordination with US weapons manufacturers made $78.8 billion in arms deals in 2018 alone.
A quarter of those deals involved the production of American weapons overseas, the report stated.
Trump said bringing back the troops was what his supporters asked him when he appeared before a large crowd of 25,000 during a campaign rally in Dallas on Thursday.
“When I said we’re bringing our soldiers back home, the place went crazy,” the president said. “But within the beltway, you know, people don’t like it. It’s much tougher for me. Be much easier for me to let our soldiers be there, let them continue to die.”
He said “the most unpleasant thing” he has to do is meeting with the families of the soldiers who have been killed or sustained injuries while deployed abroad.
“I see that big cargo plane open and I see those coffins get rolled off,” he said.
He referred to his administration’s decision to redeploy forces from Syria to Iraq and said while he did not want to leave any soldiers behind, they should deploy elsewhere before returning to the United States.
“Well, they’re going to be sent initially to different parts and get prepared. Then ultimately we’re bringing them home,” Trump said.
In a major U-turn in the US military policy, the White House announced on October 6 that the US would be withdrawing its forces from northeastern Syria, clearing the path for an expected Turkish incursion into the region.
Three days later, Turkey launched the offensive with the aim of purging the northern Syrian regions near its border of US-backed Kurdish militants, whom it views as terrorists linked to local autonomy-seeking militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Saturday that the nearly 1,000 American troops pulling out of northeastern Syria following a military invasion of the area by Turkey would move to western Iraq.
News agencies reported that US troops had in fact crossed into Iraq from Syria through the Sahela border crossing in the northern province of Dohuk on Monday.
Footage was released of US armored vehicles carrying troops into Iraq, with Iraqi Kurdish sources confirming that American troops had crossed into the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region.
Trump has announced similar troop withdrawal plans for Afghanistan but his administration has yet to take a step towards fulfilling that promise.
A Call for a Coup Plus a Week Like No Other for Tulsi Gabbard
Clinton, McRaven and Pelosi all are featured
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • October 22, 2019
There was what might be described as an extraordinary amount of nonsense being promoted by last week’s media. Unfortunately, some of it was quite dangerous. Admiral William McRaven, who commanded the Navy Seals when Osama bin Laden was captured and killed and who has been riding that horse ever since, announced that if Donald Trump continues to fail to provide the type of leadership the country needs, he should be replaced by whatever means are necessary. The op-ed entitled “Our Republic is Under Attack by the President” with the subtitle “If President Trump doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office” was featured in the New York Times, suggesting that the Gray Lady was providing its newspaper of record seal of approval for what might well be regarded as a call for a military coup.
McRaven’s exact words, after some ringing praise for the military and all its glorious deeds in past wars, were that the soldiers, sailors and marines now must respond because “The America that they believed in was under attack, not from without, but from within.”
McRaven then elaborated that “These men and women, of all political persuasions, have seen the assaults on our institutions: on the intelligence and law enforcement community, the State Department and the press. They have seen our leaders stand beside despots and strongmen, preferring their government narrative to our own. They have seen us abandon our allies and have heard the shouts of betrayal from the battlefield. As I stood on the parade field at Fort Bragg, one retired four-star general, grabbed my arm, shook me and shouted, ‘I don’t like the Democrats, but Trump is destroying the Republic!’”
It is a call to arms if there ever was one. Too bad Trump can’t strip McRaven of his pension and generous health care benefits for starters and McRaven might also consider that he could be recalled to active duty by Trump and court martialed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And the good admiral, who up until 2018 headed the state university system in Texas, might also receive well merited pushback for his assessment of America’s role in the world over the past two decades, in which he was a major player, at least in terms of dealing out punishment. He wrote ““We are the most powerful nation in the world because we try to be the good guys. We are the most powerful nation in the world because our ideals of universal freedom and equality have been backed up by our belief that we were champions of justice, the protectors of the less fortunate.”
Utter bullshit, of course. The United States has been acting as the embodiment of a rogue nation, lashing out pointlessly and delivering death and destruction. If McRaven truly believes what he says he is not only violating his oath to defend the constitution while also toying with treason, he is an idiot and should never have been allowed to run anything more demanding than a hot dog stand. Washington has been systematically blowing people up worldwide for no good reasons, killing possibly as many as 4 million mostly Muslims, while systematically stripping Americans of their Bill of Rights at home. “Good guys” and “champions of justice” indeed!
And then there is the Great Hillary Clinton caper. In an interview last week Hillary claimed predictably that Donald Trump is “Vladimir Putin’s dream,” and then went on to assert that there would be other Russian assets emerging, including nestled in the bosom of her own beloved Democratic Party. She said, clearly suggesting that it would be Tulsi Gabbard, that “They’re also going to do third-party again. I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on someone who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”
Clinton explained how the third-party designation would work, saying of Jill Stein, who ran for president in 2016 as a Green Party candidate, “And that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset. Yeah, she’s a Russian asset — I mean, totally. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate. So I don’t know who it’s going to be, but I will guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most needed.”
Tulsi responded courageously and accurately “Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.”
Tulsi has in fact been attacked relentlessly by the Establishment since she announced that she would be running for the Democratic nomination. Shortly before last Tuesday’s Democratic candidate debate the New York Times ran an article suggesting that Gabbard was an isolationist, was being promoted by Russia and was an apologist for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. In reality, Gabbard is the only candidate willing to confront America’s warfare-national security state.
The Hillary Clinton attack on Gabbard and on the completely respectable Jill Stein is to a certain extent incomprehensible unless one lives in the gutter that she and Bill have wallowed in ever since they rose to prominence in Arkansas. Hillary, the creator of the private home server for classified information as well as author of the catastrophic war against Libya and the Benghazi debacle has a lot to answer for but will never be held accountable, any more than her husband Bill for his rapes and molestation. And when it comes to foreign interference, Gabbard is being pilloried because the Russian media regards her favorably while the Clinton Foundation has taken tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments and billionaires seeking quid pro quos, much of which has gone to line the pockets of Hillary, Bill and Chelsea.
Finally, one comment about the Democratic Party obsession with the Russians. The media was enthusing last Friday over a photo of Speaker Nancy Pelosi standing up across a table from President Trump and pointing at him before walking out of the room. The gushing regarding how a powerful, strong woman was defying the horrible chief executive was both predictable and ridiculous. By her own admission Pelosi’s last words before departing were “All roads lead to Putin.” I will leave it up to the reader to interpret what that was supposed to mean.
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
FBI/DOJ Likely to Throw the CIA and Clapper Under the Bus
By Larry C. Johnson | Sic Semper Tyrannis | October 20, 2019
Law Enforcement versus the Intel Community. That’s the battle we will likely see unleashed when the Horowitz report comes out next week. The New York Times came out Saturday with info clearly leaked from DOJ that can be summarized simply–the FBI was relying on the intel community (products from the CIA and NSA) under the leadership of Jim Clapper. If they relied on bad, unverified information it ain’t their fault. They trusted the spies.
Let us start with a reminder of how damn corrupt the NY Times and its reporters are. Consider this paragraph penned by Adam Goldman and William Rashbaum:
Closely overseen by Mr. Barr, Mr. Durham and his investigators have sought help from governments in countries that figure into right-wing attacks and unfounded conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation, stirring criticism that they are trying to deliver Mr. Trump a political victory rather than conducting an independent review.
“Unfounded conspiracy theories?” What a damn joke. The facts of a conspiracy to take out Donald Trump or cripple him are very clear. Robert Mueller and Jim Comey lied when they claimed that Joseph Mifsud, who tried to entrap George Papdopoulus in London, was a Russian agent. Nope. He worked for western intelligence. Unless Comey and DOJ have a document or documents from the CIA or NSA stating that Mifsud worked for the Russians, they have no where to hide. Plus, prosecutor John Durham now has Mifsud’s blackberries. What do you think is the likelihood that Mifsud was in communication with FBI or CIA or MI6 personnel? Very likely.
Then there is Stefan Halper, who played a key role in a sophisticated counterintelligence operation that involved the FBI, the CIA British Intelligence and the media. The ultimate target was Donald Trump. Halper’s part of the operation focused on using an innocent woman who had the misfortune of being born in Russia, Svetlana Lokhova, to destroy General Michael Flynn. Halper and Mifsud both were involved in targeting General Michael Flynn. Not a conspiracy? Halper’s nefarious activities included manufacturing and publishing numerous false and defamatory statements. Halper, for example, falsely claimed that Svetlana Lokhova was a “Russian spy” and a traitor to her country. He also circulated the lie that Lokhova had an affair with General Flynn on the orders of Russian intelligence. Not content to use the unwitting Svetlana as a weapon against General Flynn, Stefan Halper also acted with malice to destroy Svetlana Lokhova’s professional career and business by asserting that she was not a real academic and that her research was provided by Russian intelligence on the orders of Vladimir Putin.
Thanks to Robert Mueller we have clear evidence of a conspiracy against Trump. Mueller’s investigation of Trump “collusion” with Russia prior to the 2016 Presidential election focused on eight cases:
Proposed Trump Tower Project in Moscow—
George Papadopolous—
Carter Page—
Dimitri Simes—
Veselnetskya Meeting at Trump Tower (June 16, 2016)
Events at the Republican Convention
Post-Convention Contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak
Paul Manafort
One simple fact emerges–six of the eight cases or incidents of alleged Trump Campaign interaction with the Russians investigated by the Mueller team, the pitch to “collude” with the Russian Government or Putin originated with FBI informants, MI-6 assets or people paid by Fusion GPS, not Trump or his people. There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign. Not one.
Simply put, Trump and his campaign were the target of an elaborate, wide ranging covert action designed to entrap him and members of his team as an agent of Russia.
We do not need to say anything about Dmitri Simes, who was unfairly smeared by even being named as target in the investigation. And the “non” events at the Republican Convention, pure nonsense.
The other six cases “investigated” my Mueller and his team of clowns are damning.
THE PROPOSED TRUMP TOWER PROJECT IN MOSCOW, according to Mueller’s report, originated with an FBI Informant–Felix Sater. Mueller was downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an FBI informant. Sater was not just a private entrepreneur looking to make some coin. He was a fully signed up FBI informant. Sater’s status as an FBI snitch was first exposed in 2012. Sater also was a boyhood chum of Michael Cohen, the target being baited in this operation. Another inconvenient fact excluded from the Mueller report is that one of Mueller’s Chief Prosecutors, Andrew Weissman, signed the deal with Felix Sater in December 1998 that put Sater into the FBI Informant business.
All suggestions for meeting with the Russian Government, including Putin, originated with Felix Sater. The use of Sater on this particular project started in September 2015.
GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS. Papadopolous was targeted by British and U.S. intelligence starting in late December 2015, when he is offered out of the blue a job with the London Centre of International Law and Practice Limited (LCILP) , which has all the hallmarks of a British intelligence front. It is Joseph Mifsud, working for LCILP, who introduces the idea of meeting Putin following a lunch with George in London.
And it is Mifsud who raises the possibility of getting dirt on Hillary. During Papadopolous’ next meeting with Mifsud, George writes that Mifsud:
leaned across the table in a conspiratorial manner. The Russians have “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, he tells me. “Emails of Clinton,” he says. “They have thousands of emails.”
More than three weeks before the alleged Russian hack of the DNC, Mifsud is peddling the story that the Russians have Clinton’s emails. Conspiracy?
CARTER PAGE. The section of the Mueller report that deals with Carter Page is a total travesty. Mueller and his team, for example, initially misrepresent Page’s status with the Trump campaign–he is described as “working” for the campaign, which implies a paid position, when he was in fact only a volunteer foreign policy advisor. Mueller also paints Page’s prior experience and work in Russia as evidence that Page was being used by Russian intelligence, but says nothing about the fact that Page was being regularly debriefed by the CIA and the FBI during the same period. In other words, Page was cooperating with US intelligence and law enforcement. But this fact is omitted in the Mueller report. The Christopher Steele dossier was used as “corroborating” intel to justify what was an illegal FISA warrant. The FBI lied about the veracity of that dossier. Conspiracy?
TRUMP TOWER MEETING (JUNE 9, 2016). This is another glaring example of a plant designed to entrap the Trump team. Mueller, once again, presents a very disingenuous account:
On June 9, 2016, senior representatives of the Trump Campaign met in Trump Tower with a Russian attorney expecting to receive derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. The meeting was proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email from Robert Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian real-estate developer Aras Agalarov.
The real problem is with what Mueller does not say and did not investigate. Mueller conveniently declines to mention the fact that Veselnitskaya was working closely with the firm Hillary Clinton hired to produce the Steele Dossier. Even the corrupt NBC News got these damning facts about Veselnitskaya on the record:
The information that a Russian lawyer brought with her when she met Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016 stemmed from research conducted by Fusion GPS, the same firm that compiled the infamous Trump dossier, according to the lawyer and a source familiar with the matter.
In an interview with NBC News, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says she first received the supposedly incriminating information she brought to Trump Tower — describing alleged tax evasion and donations to Democrats — from Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS owner, who had been hired to conduct research in a New York federal court case.
Unfounded Conspiracy?
PAUL MANAFORT. If Paul Manafort had rebuffed Trump’s offer to run his campaign, he would be walking free today and still buying expensive suits and evading taxes along with his Clinton buddy, Greg Craig. Instead, he became another target for DOJ and intel community and the DNC, which were desperate to portray Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. Thanks to John Solomon of The Hill, we now know the impetus to target Manafort came from the DNC:
The boomerang from the Democratic Party’s failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia’s 2016 election meddling is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow’s pesky neighbor, Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases tried, to help Hillary Clinton.
In its most detailed account yet, Ukraine’s embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country’s president to help.
In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly’s office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort’s dealings inside the country, in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
Manafort was not colluding, but the Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration were colluding with Ukraine.
GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN. This is the biggest travesty. Flynn was being targeted by the intel community with the full collaboration of the FBI. Thanks to his new attorney, the Honey Badger Sidney Powell, there is an avalanche of evidence showing prosecutorial misconduct and an unjustified, coordinated effort by the Obama team to frame Flynn as catering to the Russians. It is a lie and that will be fully exposed in the coming weeks.
Any fair reporter with half a brain would see these events as pointing to a conspiracy. But not the liars at the New York Times. But the Times does tip us off to the upcoming mad scramble for life boats. It will it the FBI and DOJ against the DNI, the CIA and NSA. According to the Times :
It is not clear how many people Mr. Durham’s team has interviewed outside of the F.B.I. His investigators have questioned officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence but apparently have yet to interview C.I.A. personnel, people familiar with the review said. Mr. Durham would probably want to speak with Gina Haspel, the agency’s director, who ran its London station when the Australians passed along the explosive information about Russia’s offer of political dirt.
There is no abiding affection between the FBI and the CIA. They mix like oil and water. In theory the FBI only traffics in “evidence.” The CIA deals primarily with well-sourced rumors. But the CIA will argue they were offering their best judgement, not a factual conclusion. Brennan and Clapper will insist they were not in a position to determine the “truth” of what they were reporting. It is “intel” not evidence.
The Horowitz report will not deal with the CIA and NSA directly. Horowitz can only point out that the FBI folks insisted that they were relying on the intel community and had no reason not to trust them. This is likely to get ugly and do not be surprised to see the intel folks try to throw the FBI under the bus and vice versa. Grab the popcorn.
Class Issue: Swedish Communist Newspaper Changes Tune on Immigration
Sputnik – October 21, 2019
According to the newspaper’s new editor-in-chief, immigration is not only a right-wing issue, but something that directly affects the working class.
In a marked switch, Proletären (“The Proletarian”), the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, will begin to report on the negative consequences of immigration.
Robert Wettersten, the newspaper’s new editor-in-chief who replaced Jenny Tedjeza after 18 years at the helm, suggested that Proletären’s goal is to “dare to stick out, provoke and ponder the issues that affect the working class anno 2019”.
According to Wettersten, restrictions on the right to strike, which was a relevant issue for many previous generations of left-wingers, is no longer something workers care about. Instead, immigration and integration as well as law and order are at the top of the list among the issues that labour voters consider important.
“Many regard it as a typical right-wing issue, and nothing that a communist labour newspaper should write about. I think that’s wrong. If these are issues that concern workers, then it is our damned duty to take them up in Proletären”, Robert Wettersten said.
Otherwise, he continued, you are “just a working-class newspaper on paper, not in reality”.
“Purely objectively, migration affects most things; labour market, housing situation, municipal finances, equality – you name it! And it is mainly workers and ordinary people who are affected by crime. So this is not an exclusively labour issue, I don’t think so”, Wettersten stressed.
Proletären has been issued by the Communist Party since 1970. A lot of famous Swedes, such as Jan Myrdal, Peter Birro, and Sven Wollter have contributed to the newspaper.
Sweden, a country with long-standing socialist traditions, has not one but two active communist parties, the Communist Party and the Swedish Communist Party, both originating in the 70s. Surprisingly, though, the two are at odds with each other despite formally sticking to Marxism-Leninism, not least over the issue of immigration.
In July 2018, the Swedish Communist Party decided to break all cooperation with the Communist Party, citing the latter’s “development towards opportunism and its adoption of right-wing populism”. Both, however, remain in effect fringe parties with no parliamentary representation.
Owing to the Swedish establishment embracing mass immigration in recent decades, the share of foreign-born has reached 2 million (or 20% of the Swedish population).
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