Berlin confirms sanctions against Russian news crew
RT | November 28, 2024
A news crew working for Russia’s public broadcaster Channel 1 has been expelled from Germany due to sanctions arising from the Ukraine conflict, local authorities in Berlin confirmed on Wednesday evening.
Officials have told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper that correspondent Ivan Blagoy and cameraman Dmitry Volkov have been denied residency permits.
According to the immigration office for the state of Berlin, the decision to punish the news crew was taken because Channel 1’s co-owner, National Media Group, has been blacklisted under the EU’s ninth sanctions package.
The permits were, therefore, denied under a law applying to foreigners who “impair or endanger the interests” of Germany, Berliner Zeitung said. Overall, five people were targeted under anti-Russia sanctions in Berlin “in recent months,” according to the newspaper.
Channel 1 reported on Wednesday morning that the German authorities had ordered the closure of its bureau in the EU country’s capital. The German Foreign Ministry quickly rejected these claims as “false,” insisting that “Russian journalists can, as before, broadcast freely and unhindered in Germany.”
The broadcaster said the journalists were, in fact, singled out because of their employer. “Yes, our press credentials have not been revoked. However, we were barred from being physically present in the country, which means we were effectively barred from working in accordance with our credentials,” Blagoy said in his news report.
According to the journalist, he received a notice from the Berlin authorities claiming that Channel 1 is spreading “propaganda and disinformation” about the conflict in Ukraine and poses “a significant and direct threat to public order and security of Germany and the European Union.”
Blagoy has denied the allegations, saying his reporting has been truthful. The broadcaster similarly described the expulsion of its staff as “punishment for truth and professionalism.”
Russia has responded in kind, expelling correspondent for Germany’s state broadcaster ARD, Frank Aischmann, and technical employee Sven Feller. ARD Foreign Coordinator Joerg Schoenenborn condemned the decision, accusing Moscow of “intimidation and restrictions” on the channel’s reporting.
The EU has banned multiple Russian news organizations since 2022, citing “disinformation.” Russia has responded by blacklisting dozens Western media outlets.
Biden seeking extra $24bn for Kiev – Politico
RT | November 27, 2024
Outgoing US President Joe Biden has quietly asked Congress to allocate an additional $24 billion in Ukraine-related spending, according to a report by Politico on Tuesday.
The funding pitch includes $16 billion to backfill US stocks depleted by deliveries of weapons to Kiev and $8 billion to pay US arms producers for contracts in support of the Ukrainian military, the news outlet said, calling Biden’s bid a “long shot”.
The report is based on a document produced by the White House Office of Management and Budget, which was sent to lawmakers on Monday, according to Politico’s sources on Capitol Hill.
The Biden administration previously vowed to spend every dollar already approved for Ukraine before the president leaves office on January 20. Last week, he also wrote off some $4.7 billion in forgivable loans given to Kiev. The money was part of a tranche approved by Congress in April, with $9.4 billion provided as a “loan” to appease lawmakers, who opposed continued funding of the Ukraine conflict.
President-elect Donald Trump claimed during the election campaign that he would end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours if voters grant him a new term in office. Some of his allies have accused the “lame duck” Biden of trying to corner the next administration into a continued conflict with Russia.
Republican Senator Mike Lee reacted negatively to the new funding request from the White House, especially as it came days after Biden’s unilateral move on the loan.
”Congress must not give him a free gift to further sabotage President Trump’s peace negotiations on the way out the door. Any Biden funding demands should be DOA,” he wrote on X.
Elon Musk, a key Trump supporter, who will lead an effort to reduce government waste in the incoming administration, has called the request “not ok” and said the money would be “funding the forever war,” if lawmakers authorize the spending.
Sen. Johnson Threatens Legal Action Unless HHS Turns Over Unredacted Emails on COVID Vaccine Safety
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender |November 22, 2024
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Tuesday demanded public health agencies provide complete and unredacted documents about the development and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, after learning of extensive redactions in documents released in response to multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
In a letter sent Tuesday to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Johnson said the redactions make the documents nearly impossible to comprehend and obscure the public’s understanding of issues like myocarditis and pericarditis linked to vaccines.
He also called out the agencies for not responding to his own requests for COVID-19 vaccine safety information. He wrote:
“The lack of transparency from your agencies during the Biden presidency has been appalling. Your agencies’ refusal to provide complete and unredacted responses and documents to my numerous oversight letters on the development and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines has hindered Congressional oversight and has jeopardized the public’s health.”
Johnson, an outspoken critic of the government’s handling of COVID-19-related information, sent over 60 public letters requesting more transparency on virus origins, early treatment and vaccine safety.
“What is clear from these excessive redactions, however, is a concerted effort to obscure Congress’ and the public’s understanding of your agencies’ detection of and response to COVID-19 vaccine adverse events such as myocarditis and pericarditis,” he wrote.
Johnson’s latest request demands the agencies preserve and release unredacted documents, specifically three documents he said comprised “only a small fraction” of the documents on myocarditis and pericarditis that the agencies “continue to conceal.”
Johnson gave the agencies until Dec. 3 to respond, warning that if the agencies don’t comply, he would take further action, including issuing subpoenas once he becomes chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the next Congress.
CDC delayed telling public about link between vaccines and myocarditis
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) scientists Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., and Brian Hooker, Ph.D., in 2022 published a study showing the CDC delayed reporting the incidence of myocarditis to the general public for three months after the first statistically significant signal appeared in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database.
CHD, attorney Ed Berkovich, The Epoch Times and others submitted FOIA requests seeking more information about what the public health agencies knew and when.
In his letter, Johnson cited responses to those FOIA requests as examples of how the agencies obstructed attempts by the public to hold them accountable.
For example, heavily redacted documents indicate that then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky had received Pfizer documents regarding myocarditis and pericarditis by May 22, 2021. However, the Pfizer report provided via FOIA was completely redacted except for the cover page, making it impossible to decipher what Walensky learned and when.
Johnson included the FOIA documents in his letter so the public could see the extent of the redactions.
The documents showed that after receiving the FOIA data, Walensky and other CDC officials considered whether to issue a public warning about the risk of myocarditis from vaccination. They drafted a Health Alert Network (HAN) for the website, which is how they communicate “urgent public health incidents” with public information officers, practitioners, clinicians and local public health officials.
The draft alert sent to Walensky was redacted when the CDC produced documents in response to a FOIA request. A partially unredacted email to either a Moderna or Pfizer employee indicated that the agency was debating the pros and cons of issuing a HAN, but didn’t “want to appear alarmist.”
The agency never issued the alert. Instead, the CDC said on its website that there were “increased cases of myocarditis and pericarditis” reported but the CDC continues to recommend the vaccine for everyone ages 12 and up.
Johnson requested all documents about the alert, but the CDC has not provided them.
In Johnson’s third example, the Biden White House sent top public health officials 17 pages of talking points for a “tough QA” on COVID-19. In the FOIA documents, all the topics are redacted, making it impossible to know what the White House was communicating.
“Ultimately, despite your agencies’ awareness of the risks associated with the COVID-19 vaccines, the main talking point from these and other public health officials was uniform and entirely deceptive: the vaccines are safe and effective,” Johnson wrote.
Pattern of stonewalling and evading by government health agencies
Risa Evans, staff attorney at CHD, told The Defender that over the last several years, CHD has filed several FOIA requests with the FDA, CDC and National Institutes of Health seeking records connected with post-authorization safety monitoring of COVID-19 shots.
“We have found that obtaining these records is a challenge, due to a mix of denials, redactions and delays by the agencies,” she said.
When the agencies failed to respond to FOIA requests for records related to safety signals, CHD filed multiple FOIA lawsuits seeking the requested documents.
In one case the FDA requested at least 18 months to fulfill the request — after it had already delayed 14 months.
“The agencies’ failure to respond to our requests in a timely and open fashion is particularly ironic in light of recent statements by Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, calling for more transparency as a way of combating vaccine ‘hesitancy,’” Evans said.
The FDA also famously attempted to delay documents related to the licensing of Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine for 75 years.
The U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic also investigated Dr. David M. Morens, a 25-year veteran of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, after it was revealed he used his personal email address to evade FOIA requests for communications related to the origins of COVID-19.
Emails made public during that investigation also showed that Morens connected Fauci to Kaiser Health News reporter Arthur Allen through a “secret back channel.”
Jablonowski, who was among the first to detail the deception around myocarditis, told The Defender if the public health agencies aren’t compelled to be transparent, they can’t be held accountable.
He said the FDA and the CDC, “are not transparent in matters of myocarditis resulting from the COVID-19 vaccines. They are opaque, hidden behind redactions, and not accountable to the American people or members of Congress.”
“This is a rot in our government, and it spreads well beyond the confines of myocarditis, the CDC and the FDA,” he added. “How far beyond? We won’t know until we broadly investigate the actions and actors.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Israeli Soccer Hooligans Cry Out as They Strike You
By Kevin Barrett – American Free Press – November 22, 2024
On November 7, chaos erupted in the streets of Amsterdam. Soccer hooligans flown in from Israel, flanked by Mossad handlers, watched their their Maccabi Tel Aviv team lose 5-0 to the Dutch team Ajax. After the game, the Maccabi fans ran wild, arming themselves with wood sticks and metal pipes and attacking cabs, busses, police vans, and individuals unlucky enough to cross their path. Palestinian flags—a common sight in the Dutch capital—were torn down. As they rioted, the Maccabi fans showcased their favorite chants, including “There are no schools left in Gaza because there are no children left”; “F*** the Arabs,”; and F*** you terrorists, everybody die.”
A video account of the event by a teenage journalist known as Bender showed that the violence was incited by Israelis, not locals. Bender followed the Israelis from the stadium and filmed them arming themselves and attacking people and vehicles. He was threatened and told to stop filming, presumably by the Mossad handlers overseeing the event.
As often happens, the spectacle of foreign soccer hooligans attacking people in their own city led to a defensive response. Locals confronted the hooligans, in some cases getting the better of physical altercations. A few Israeli thugs managed to get themselves beat up, while others were unceremoniously introduced to the pleasures of swimming in Amsterdam’s insalubrious canals.
If British soccer hooligans had attacked Paris, or German soccer hooligans had attacked Prague, media accounts would have been reasonably evenhanded and accurate. But because the hooligans were Israelis attacking the city of Anne Frank, the media sought to convince the world that a third Holocaust had occurred. (The second, of course, was the Hamas raid of October 7, 2023.)
Here are a selection of headlines:
*Israeli Fans Attacked After Soccer Match in Amsterdam; Violence Condemned as Anti-Semitic (Washington Post ).
*Israeli soccer fans targeted in wave of violence in Amsterdam (Fox).
*Holocaust survivor calls vicious mob attack on Jews in Amsterdam a ‘modern-day Kristallnacht’ (New York Post ).
*Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam ambushed by gangs of anti-Israel attackers shouting ‘Free Palestine,’ Netanyahu sends planes to evacuate citizens (New York Post ).
*The New Kristallnacht: Antisemitic Attacks in Amsterdam Demand Global Action (Times of Israel ).
*Global leaders react to Amsterdam pogrom (The Jerusalem Post ).
*Amsterdam Has Failed Its Jews (Spectator ).
The United States Holocaust Museum issued a statement stating that the Museum “strongly condemns the vicious attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam and the outrageous celebrations of those attacks.” The Anti-Defamation League shrieked about the “obscene, unprovoked violence” which it described as follows: “This is what ‘globalize the intifada’ looks like. Mobs of hate-filled people chasing down and attacking innocent Israeli soccer fans who they have dehumanized as ‘Zionists,’ hunting down and brutalizing ordinary people who came to Amsterdam simply to enjoy a soccer match.”
But why did these Israeli “ordinary people” repeatedly commit assault, battery, and vandalism, long before any locals retaliated? Why did the Israeli attacks on people and vehicles draw no response from local police, who pointedly ignored the rioting until the tables had been turned? And why were the hooligans flanked by Mossad agents as they incited a riot?
Dutch scholar and author Alexander Wolfheze, who was in Amsterdam on November 7, describes the event as a “psy-op.” In a November 12 interview with this author Wolfheze agreed with critics who argue that the Israeli hooligans’ attack on Amsterdam was carefully orchestrated by intelligence professionals in order to produce precisely the headlines listed above, and thousands more like them: “I believe that there are PSYOP aspects (to the hooligans’ attack). It happened just before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, something that the mainstream media did not fail to exploit.”
Dr. Wolfheze added that the November 7 Mossad op was also designed to influence Dutch domestic politics: “Holland is once again at the forefront of the Israelization of Europe, the Zionisation of Europe. Holland was the first country to get a real neo-Zionist government (Geert Wilders). And exactly at that time, after the appointment of this new cabinet, this new government here, and this new reality here, we are seeing this program (total Israeli takeover of Holland -KB) being implemented through the hooligans.”
If Israel can attack your country, pretend to be the victim, and force your entire government and mainstream media to go along with the transparent lie, they basically own you. Fortunately, Israel does not own social media journalists like Bender and Max Blumenthal, both of whom were instrumental in exposing what really happened in Amsterdam.
The Israeli attack on Amsterdam once again illustrated the Jewish State’s perfidy, and provided more evidence that when they cry out as they strike you, it isn’t just a hobby—it’s how they make a living.
Obama and Russiagate: The Untold Story
Part 2 of our series on how Barack Obama undermined U.S. democracy
By Jeff Carlson & Hans Mahncke | TRUTH OVER NEWS | November 15, 2024
One of the least known aspects of the Russiagate affair is the central role that Barack Obama played in it. For years, the focus has been on individuals such as James Comey, Peter Strzok, the infamous dossier author Christopher Steele, and, of course, Hillary Clinton. And those names are indeed central to the plot, with Clinton being the one who devised the nefarious scheme to portray her opponent as a Russian agent. However, there was someone in the background, pulling many strings, who was even more crucial to the entire scheme: the then-sitting president, Barack Obama.
In this installment of our series on how Obama undermined U.S. democracy, we take a closer look at his role in both promoting and weaponizing the Russiagate hoax, which fraudulently linked Trump to Russia.
July 28 disclosure
We know from emails released by WikiLeaks that early discussions regarding the Clinton campaign’s dirty trick to associate Trump with Russia—what Clinton called the Swiftboat plan—were in full swing by February 2016. Over the following months, various components of this nefarious project came together. These included the hiring of campaign operatives Fusion GPS, commissioning the dirty dossier from Christopher Steele, and enlisting a group of IT specialists tasked with creating a false data trail linking Putin and Trump. We do not know whether Obama was privy to these early efforts. The earliest documented date we have for Obama’s involvement in the scheme is July 28, 2016. On this day, Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, came to the Oval Office and briefed Obama on Clinton’s Swiftboat project. Thus, we can say with certainty that, at the very latest, it was on this day that Obama became aware that the allegations of Russian collusion were nothing more than a fraudulent scheme concocted by Hillary Clinton.
As president, voters had entrusted Obama with the solemn responsibility of keeping the United States safe and secure. For this reason, Obama had a critical duty on July 28, 2016, to promptly put an end to the fraudulent allegations of collusion with Russia. The nominee of a major political party for president being falsely portrayed as a Russian agent posed numerous national security concerns. The fact that the entire scheme had been orchestrated by his opponent, arguably constituted an even more significant national security threat. In simple terms, of the two individuals who could become president, one was falsely accused of being a Russian agent while the other was the one who had cooked up the scam.
However, consistent with the theme throughout our series on Obama, he opted for treachery instead of truth. He wanted the country to tear itself apart, which is why, instead of telling Clinton to put an end to her devious scheme or, better yet, asking his Justice Department officials to investigate her campaign for creating a national security nightmare, Obama went full steam ahead in helping to perpetuate the hoax. Within 72 hours of the Oval Office meeting, the FBI launched its fraudulent Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump.
No peaceful transfer of power
It was a terrible betrayal of the American public who voted Obama into office, and the situation would only worsen. Over the coming months, the fraudulent Russia collusion investigation intensified. Numerous members of Trump’s campaign team were surveilled and monitored by the FBI. When an FBI analyst raised alarm bells about the fabricated Alfa Bank story—a tale concocted by Clinton’s IT operatives to link Putin to Trump—the analyst was promptly sidelined, and the matter was handed over to more pliant agents. However, it was all to no avail. Clinton lost, and Trump was suddenly the president-elect. At this point, it was once again Obama who intervened to undermine Trump and, consequently, American democracy.
The media incessantly discusses the so-called peaceful transfer of power, lamenting that Trump refused to hand over the reins in January 2021. Leaving aside that this assertion is demonstrably false—he did transfer power and retreated to his Mar-a-Lago estate—it is often overlooked in the debate about the peaceful handover of power that it was Obama who did not peacefully hand over power in 2017. Instead, he weaponized the Russia collusion hoax to undermine the incoming Trump administration. He did so fully aware that it would jeopardize Trump’s presidency, and in many ways, it indeed did. It is remarkable how much Trump accomplished despite the persistent cloud of Russia collusion allegations that loomed over him daily.
The specifics of Obama’s actions are relatively straightforward, yet they are seldom discussed. Immediately after Trump won the election, Obama, in collaboration with the intelligence community, initiated an effort to publish an official report, the Intelligence Community Assessment, that would claim that Trump had only won because of Putin’s help. This strategy served two purposes. First, it absolved Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party of accountability for a humiliating defeat. Second, and far more significantly, it created a huge roadblock for the incoming Trump administration. In addition to the persistent inquiries regarding Trump’s alleged connections to Putin, which hindered the administration’s ability to focus on other matters, Obama understood that his plan would effectively criminalize diplomatic relations with Russia. It was sabotage.
Trump’s hands were tied. He could not engage with Russia without provoking an immediate and loud outcry from Democrats, the intelligence community, and the media. Even something as mundane as meeting the Russian ambassador—an event that would ordinarily never make the news—was immediately portrayed as an act of treason. When Trump met Putin in person, the media had a massive meltdown, even accusing Putin of secretly bugging a soccer ball that had been gifted to Trump’s son, Barron. The hysteria knew no bounds, and this was catastrophic, especially given that all of this was occurring against the backdrop of escalating hostilities in Ukraine and the warming of relations between Russia and China—something that the United States should have done everything possible to prevent.
Secret meeting with journalists
And if all of that wasn’t enough, on January 17, 2017, Obama invited a group of journalists to a secret White House meeting. A 21-page transcript, which was only recently released, reveals that Obama used this meeting to carefully plant the fraudulent Russia collusion narrative in the minds of the attending journalists. He did this despite knowing that the entire situation was a hoax. But Obama ensured that the media perceived things otherwise, providing not only the presidential seal of approval to the Russia collusion hoax but also the impression of confirmation from someone with access to all the relevant secret intelligence. In other words, Obama abused the presidency to ensure that his successor would be burdened with the incessant Russia collusion narrative.
Obama’s central role in promoting the Russia collusion hoax was partially revealed by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who in 2020 disclosed details of the July 2016 meeting between Obama and Brennan. Other intelligence officials within the Trump administration, including his first Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, had access to the same information as Ratcliffe. However, instead of speaking out, they actively sought to undermine the president they were supposed to serve. Ratcliffe’s recent nomination as CIA Director represents not only a significant step toward reforming the intelligence community but also suggests that accountability for Obama may finally be on the horizon.
“Christians” United for Israel is a force within the Israel Lobby, but who controls their agenda?
If Americans Knew | November 21, 2024
David Brog is a Jewish American attorney who previously practiced corporate law in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Forward newspaper listed Brog in its 2007 “Forward 50” most influential Jews in America. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is Brog’s cousin.
Brog is the author of “Reclaiming Israel’s History.” He is executive director of the Maccabee Task Force, funded by American billionaires Sheldon Adelson, who once said he regretted serving in the US Army instead of the Israeli military, Miriam Adelson, Haim Saban, and Adam Milstein.
Charisma News reports: “Brog is the powerhouse behind the Christian organization, yet he’s also a conservative (non-Messianic) Jew.”
The article reports: “Brog, who was chief of staff to liberal Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania for seven years, is said to run CUFI like a political campaign. He has talking points, stays focused and rallies his constituency.” – https://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/i…
Rachel Stephens is a “theology teacher at Crack Your Bible®, a YouTube ministry.” – https://www.quora.com/profile/Rachel-…
John Hagee is the founder of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, that seats 5,000 and claims a membership of 22,000. John Hagee Ministries is said to reach nearly 100 million households worldwide.
The full David Brog/Rabbi Tully Weisz video is at:
• “Champion of Israel” David Brog runni…
The full Rachel N Stephens/ Crack Your Bible video is at:
• 😱 The truth about God’s Biblical Bles…
For information on the Maccabee Task Force see https://israelpalestinenews.org/flash…
RELATED: “The Scofield Bible: The Book That Made Zionists of America’s Evangelical Christians” –https://israelpalestinenews.org/the-s…
The Democratic Party Faces Its Day of Reckoning
By Leonard C. Goodman | Scheer Post | November 19, 2024
Following its crushing defeat in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party might finally face its day of reckoning. The party markets itself as the champion of the working class and a bulwark against the party of the plutocrats. But this has been a lie for at least three decades.
The Democratic Party has partnered with Wall Street donors since at least the 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, the party overturned Glass Steagall and other New Deal programs that had effectively restrained Wall Street greed for 60 years. It also sold out American workers with so-called trade deals that freed their bosses to ship American jobs overseas. It ended welfare “as we know it” and passed draconian crime bills that destroyed mostly black and brown communities, sending mothers and fathers to prison for decades in the name of a cruel and senseless war on drugs.
Into the 21st century, the Democrats continued pushing the lie that they were fighting for working people. After September 11, 2001, the party put up a token resistance to the Bush/Cheney regime of illegal regime-change wars, black sites, indefinite detention and torture. All the while, it continued soliciting campaign contributions from the arms dealers profiting from Bush’s wars.
In 2008, the party found a Black face to carry on its Wall Street-friendly agenda. Gullible Americans, myself included, were taken in by Barack Obama’s promises to end “dumb wars” and to institute a single payer healthcare system. We ignored the red flags, like the fact that Obama’s campaign broke records in pocketing Wall Street donations. It was later revealed by Wikileaks that nearly every member of Obama’s cabinet had been selected by the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup.
It didn’t take long for President Obama to crush our hopes that he was a different kind of Democrat. One of his first acts as president was to funnel trillions of dollars to the big banks that, newly freed by Clinton from FDR-era regulations, had embarked on an orgy of unbridled greed, swindling millions of Americans out of their homes and retirement savings with a scheme to sell worthless mortgage-backed securities.
Adding insult to injury, Obama saw to it that the bailed-out bank executives faced no criminal prosecutions and received their year-end bonuses. In their place, the Obama Justice Department brought federal mortgage fraud charges against thousands of poor people — I represented a half dozen of these folks — who had signed their names to the phony mortgage loans that the Wall Street bankers encouraged, packaged and sold to pension funds and other unwitting investors.
The pipe dream that Obama would be an anti-war president was also quickly dispatched. During his two terms, Obama ushered in a new era of continuous war, envisioned by George Orwell and favored by Wall Street. Obama expanded Bush’s bombing campaigns into Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia. Today’s Democratic Party is indistinguishable from the Republicans in its ties to war profiteers and trillion-dollar Pentagon budgets.
Obama also effectively ended the Democrats’ promise to fight for a true national health care system in which all Americans would be able to go to the doctor when sick without fear of bankrupting their families. In its place, Obama pushed through a health care plan developed in right-wing think tanks, that guaranteed profits (and taxpayer subsidies) for the private insurance industry and did little to contain costs.
By 2012, Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report was describing the Democratic Party as the “more effective evil” for using its reputation as protector of the working class to neutralize effective opposition and push through right-wing policies that the Republicans could not get passed.
In 2016, the Democrats received a wake-up call when their chosen successor to Obama lost the White House to a crude-talking New York City real estate developer and game show host with no prior political experience. But with the help of its partners in corporate media, the party managed to limp along for another eight years, first by telling the American people that President Trump was an agent of Russia, and then by claiming that Trump was Hitler who was planning concentration camps and firing squads for his political enemies.
Now after the November 2024 elections in which Trump won every swing state and the popular vote, the Democratic party is finally being forced to face some uncomfortable truths. The party’s partners in the corporate media initially tried blaming the election result on the voters for being too misogynist, too racist, or too dumb to vote correctly. But there is little trust that remains in corporate media.
The party’s corporate consultants have put the blame on the party’s excessive focus on identity politics. But the issues for the Democrats run much deeper than bad messaging. The real problem is that the party takes direction from plutocrats whose interests are antagonistic to the needs of the working people it pretends to represent. Both Democrats and Republicans are financed by the same corporate interests. Thus, there is general agreement and support for policies that guarantee high rates of return on investment capital, policies like continuous war, for-profit health care, and outsourcing jobs. This leaves few issues for the parties to fight about other than abortion and identity politics.
Fifty years ago, American capitalists still relied on American workers to build everything from cars and televisions to sneakers and light bulbs. These titans of industry had to care about things such as functioning schools, decent wages, cities and public transportation. But the times have changed. Today’s plutocrats support outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries and have little concern for the condition of American workers. And while ordinary Americans want the country’s resources to be spent at home, plutocrats are heavily invested in foreign wars, and they shun diplomacy.
These contradictions could only be covered up for so long. Even with reliable partners in the corporate press, the internet has given Americans alternative sources for their news. During the last few years, in a desperate effort to keep its scheme afloat, the Democrats embraced censorship and a regime of corporate “fact checkers” to police social media and remove or punish unsanctioned speech. In so doing, the party abandoned the last of its core principles: standing up for free speech and the right to dissent.
Many Democrats argue that they had to go after Wall Street money to compete with the Republicans. In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explained the strategy: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” But for this plan to work, the party still needed an actual message to take to the voters.
Forbes Magazine reports that during the 2024 presidential race, Kamala Harris’s campaign raised a billion dollars while Trump’s campaign raised $388 million. Harris’s substantial edge in fundraising allowed her to flood the airwaves with commercials. But she had nothing of substance to say to voters.
The Atlantic Magazine reports that early in her campaign, Harris gained ground by attacking Trump as a stooge of corporate interests—and touted herself as a relentless scourge of Big Business. But then, suddenly, Harris abandoned her attacks on big business at the urging of her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer.
Many Democrats, especially in swing states, opposed the Biden Administration’s unfailing support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million residents. Harris could have gained the support of many of these voters by promising to stop arming Israel during the genocide. But her Party’s donors wouldn’t allow her to even hint at such a change in policy. Two days before the election, while campaigning in the swing state of Michigan, Harris stated, “I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza.” But as Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada pointed out on election night, this promise carried no weight because Harris had also promised that she would never do the one thing within her power to stop the slaughter: cut off the flow of bombs to Israel.
After decades of malfeasance and deception, it has become evident that the corporate Democratic Party cannot serve as the lone opposition party to the corporate Republicans. The American people need a viable political party that represents the interests of ordinary working people.
A true workers party will not raise as much money as the corporate Democrats. But it will have an honest message with the potential to appeal to large numbers of Americans. Further, a political party that actually represents workers will press for reforms that begin to even the playing field between the haves and the have nots.
For example, one the most effective ways plutocrats game the political system is by flooding campaign contributions to the lawmakers who sit on the key committees that oversee their businesses. Members of Congress covet these committee chairs because they guarantee high fundraising numbers. Lawmakers who sit on the House Financial Services Committee have jurisdiction over banks and insurance companies and are targeted by those firms with campaign contributions. Lawmakers who sit on the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees provide funding for lucrative government contracts and are flooded with war industry cash.
These practices are corrupt and deprive American citizens of their right to be governed by representatives free from conflicts of interest. A judge who has received political contributions from a litigant must be removed from the case. Similarly, the most important functions of government, such as determining tax and how our tax revenue will be spent, should be performed by lawmakers who have not been bribed.
In 2017, the Center for American Progress, a think tank aligned with the Democratic Party, proposed a “Committee Contribution Ban” for Congress. It asserted: “Congress should enact a law to make it unlawful for members of Congress to accept campaign contributions from entities that fall within the jurisdiction of their committees.” Unsurprisingly, this proposal never reached the floor of Congress, that I could find.
Some states have enacted similar conflict of interest rules. And Congress could certainly pass such a law, if it chose. Of course, this will never happen as long as we are ruled by two corporate parties that benefit from the corruption. But if we had a political party that represented ordinary people, countless opportunities for positive change would soon emerge.
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense lawyer and has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at DePaul University.
Dog Ate My Nord Stream: German Media Doubles Down on Ukrainian Connection Claim
Sputnik – 20.11.2024
Even though the United States has long been identified as the primary suspect in the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines, German media continues peddling the narrative where Ukraine is to blame.
This week, one German magazine presented an account that looks more like a Cold War spy thriller script, detailing an alleged effort by Ukrainian saboteurs to take out Nord Stream.
– The entire operation, codenamed “Diameter” was supposedly carried out by 12 people: 11 men and one woman who was included to help disguise the team as a tourist group
– Five of the group’s members were divers, selected from some 20 candidates
– The bombs – diving tanks loaded with octogen and hexogen explosives – were planted on the seams to ensure maximum damage to the pipelines
– The entire budget of this operation was only $300,000, allegedly donated by some entrepreneur “close to the Ukrainian special forces”
– The plan of this operation was ostensibly presented to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny then-chief of Ukraine’s army, who supposedly liked it so much that he suggested carrying out a similar terrorist act against the TurkStream natural gas pipeline that runs from Russia to Turkiye under the Black Sea. No details of this second operation are provided, save for that it failed
– Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky was allegedly unaware of this entire scheme
– The US purportedly learned of the Ukrainian terrorists’ plan in June 2022, three months before the Nord Stream attack, and demanded that it be called off, to no avail.
In other words, this narrative portrays the US leadership and Zelensky as blameless and pins the blame on a small group of rogue Ukrainian operative, which is very convenient for the US and Ukraine, not to mention Germany who needs to avoid making any uncomfortable discoveries in the Nord Stream affair.




