Sympathy for the Devils...

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blindpig
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 23, 2024 3:03 pm

Kamala’s Campaign To Court Polish American Voters Is Counterproductive

Andrew Korybko
Oct 23, 2024

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Kamala expects Polish Americans – many of whom are already several generations removed from Poland, don’t speak Polish, and never even visited there – to “be more Polish than native-born Poles and the Polish government” when it comes to the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine.

Politico published a critical piece last week about how “Kamala Harris is warning Polish Americans not to vote for Donald Trump. Many will.” They comprise 5.69%, 7.61%, and 8% of the population in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin so they can make or break the election. Kamala has tried winning them over to her side by fearmongering that Trump will sell out Ukraine and then let Putin attack Poland next, but most Polish Americans care more about socio-economic issues than foreign ones.

She’s therefore making a mistake by pandering to what her campaign wrongly expects Poles to care about, namely helping Ukraine and containing Russia, when even Poland at the state and civil society levels is no longer as gung-ho about those goals as before. Regarding the first, its Defense Minister admitted in late August that his country maxed out its military support for Ukraine, while its Foreign Minister suggested last month that the state should cut benefits for conscription-aged Ukrainian males.

As for the second, a recent survey from a publicly funded research center revealed that two-thirds of Poles demanded that conscription-aged Ukrainian males be deported to fight and only less than half supported continuing the conflict. Nevertheless, Kamala expects Polish Americans – many of whom are already several generations removed from Poland, don’t speak Polish, and never even visited there – to “be more Polish than native-born Poles and the Polish government” when it comes to this proxy war.

That’s another mistake because most don’t self-identify with their ethno-national group as strongly as African Americans do so they’re much less influenced by appeals to their group’s perceived interests. Even those that do identify in that way don’t usually care more about foreign affairs than socio-economic ones, and among the miniscule minority that does, they’re informed of their ancestral homeland’s evolving approach towards this issue, which differs from how Kamala has presented it as proven above.

Moreover, this miniscule minority knows that outgoing conservative-nationalist President Andrzej Duda favors Trump with whom he’s formed a closed friendship while incumbent liberal-globalist Prime Minister Donald Tusk detests him, so “ancestral loyalty” in this election also has a partisan dimension. By condescendingly treating Polish Americans as a homogenous blob of easily manipulatable Russophobes, however, Kamala is ignoring the real issues that’ll determine who they’ll vote for.

Those of them who she’s trying to court from those three swing states reside in the Rust Belt, which naturally predisposes them to prioritize socio-economic issues over foreign ones much more than average voters do because of how deeply they’ve been affected by them. Even Politico’s piece mentions how some Polish Americans are complaining about all the money that the US already gave to Ukraine so Kamala’s fearmongering about Trump cutting it off might actually win them over to his side.

They’d prefer for this money to remain inside the US and reinvested into improving the lives of fellow Rust Belt residents regardless of their partisan disposition or ethno-national identity. Considering how important of an issue this is to them, many naturally support Trump over Kamala since the latter shares responsibility with Biden for the downturn in their living conditions over the past four years, hence why her campaign is desperately trying to distract them with counterproductive foreign policy pandering.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/kamalas- ... urt-polish

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Kamala Harris: The War Hawks' Candidate
21 Oct 2024 , 5:10 pm .

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It is curious that progressives agree on a common cause with war criminal Dick Cheney (Photo: The New York Times)

With just a few weeks to go before the US presidential election, some former officials in the country's establishment have publicly expressed their support for Kamala Harris' candidacy.

On this phenomenon, James Carden, a political analyst and former advisor to the State Department's Bilateral Commission on U.S.-Russia, published an article on September 25 entitled "When hateful foreign policy elites rally around Harris ," in which he argues why the opinion of these former officials who have made "some of the bloodiest and stupidest national security decisions in recent times" should not be considered.

The author cites two letters in which more than 100 prominent Republican figures linked to the national security sphere support Vice President Harris.

"We are former national security and foreign policy officials who served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and/or Donald Trump, or as Republican members of Congress. We have served in the White House, the Departments of Defense, Treasury, State, Justice, Homeland Security, Commerce, and other agencies, and in Congress," one of the letters reads , adding that they support the Democratic candidate because they believe she can "promote and defend American security and values."

Brief context
The Democratic nomination for the presidential elections on November 5 has been marked by several events. At the beginning of August, it was determined that Kamala Harris won the party's presidential nomination. This occurred after months of uncertainty revolving around Joe Biden's mental health, doubts that actually arose from the beginning of his mandate, which grew as the deterioration became undeniable.

Biden's image finally collapsed, and therefore that of his party in general, when the first televised Trump-Biden face-to-face was held on June 27. A decadent and senile image of the current president was perceived , and although there was no solid argument in either candidate, the Republican referred to the economic collapse, the migration crisis and the failed US foreign policy, weak points of the Democratic administration.

Biden was perceived as incapable of articulating ideas due to his deteriorating physical and psychological state, which some analysts called a "collective suicide" for the ruling party. Former President Barack Obama came to the defense, arguing that it was a "bad night" of debate, but it nonetheless reignited the debate over finding a replacement.

At first, the fact that Kamala Harris is the first African American woman and the first Asian American to lead a presidential ticket was used as a novelty to boost the Democratic Party. However, this has not been enough to lift the polls. At the beginning of October, the polls indicated that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were in a technical tie. Today, that trend continues or the Democrat leads by a very narrow margin.

Warhawks to the rescue
Given this background, it is not difficult to understand why the US foreign policy establishment published these open letters signed by hundreds of former national security officials almost simultaneously.

James Carden points out that many of these endorsements come from individuals who have been architects of wars and interventions, which even Democrats have openly criticized as stains on recent American history.

The letter details that the first letter was signed by more than 100 former Republican officials, students of all the administrations of that party from Reagan to Trump on national security issues, who "strongly oppose the election" of the latter even though "they expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues."

Given that these are "respectable" former officials, one would expect them to back up their decision with solid arguments; however, the resources used are commonplaces that are easy to dismantle, such as "Trump's susceptibility to flattery, his manipulation of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, his unusual affinity with other authoritarian leaders, his disregard for the norms of decent, ethical and legal behavior, and his chaotic decision-making in matters of national security."

First of all, we must mention the double standards of these hawks who benefited from endless wars for 20 years straight.

Carden notes that the first letter also includes sensible and responsible pillars of the Washington establishment , including former Defense Secretary and U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel and former FBI and CIA director William Webster, but they are overshadowed by the fact that most of the signatories "carry with them the scent of the war party, the consensus party, or even the neoconservatism of the 9/11 era."

What is even more surprising is that, unlike before, the liberal media took this support as a "victory" for Harris' campaign. It is curious that "progressive" sectors agree on a common cause with war criminal Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, both officials from the Bush Jr. era.

The need to maintain the status quo in Washington is so great that they forget about Cheney's criminal past and present him as a guardian of American values, even though history indicates that these are precisely the imperial values ​​that underlie them.

It is ironic that they denounce Trump's "unethical behavior and disregard for the time-tested principles of constitutional government of our Republic," but they worked alongside those already named and former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and former chief John Ashcroft during the Global War on Terror.

Eliot Cohen, a former U.S. State Department counselor; Eric Edelman, who led the National Defense Strategy and called for increased military spending for a multitheater war against China and Russia; Michael V. Hayden, the former director of the NSA and CIA and one of the principal architects of the warrantless surveillance program of American citizens; and John Negroponte, the first Director of National Intelligence and one of the architects of the bloody interventions in Latin America under President Reagan, are also listed as signatories of the letter in support of Harris.

Regarding the second letter , with 700 signatories and a more partisan focus, James Carden says that it is a "more serious effort" that appeals to the democratic values ​​of the United States embodied by Harris, while former President Donald Trump "endangers them." "She understands the reality of American military deterrence and promises to preserve the status of the armed forces as the most lethal force in the world," argue the retired military officers, front-line officers and diplomats.

That it is a "slightly more serious" effort does not indicate that the signatories are morally clean enough to be considered examples of good governance. The fact that Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Victoria Nuland, Michael McFaul and Leon Panetta appear as signatories is already indicative that this letter also includes a large number of war criminals.

"The inclusion of several of the most reckless and irresponsible civilian national security leaders of our time only serves to dilute the seriousness of the message: any letter in which they appear is one that can and should be safely ignored," Carden says.

The fear of Donald Trump's return to the presidency has brought together progressives, liberals and the militaristic elite that has led wars and interventions in other countries to preserve and defend the supposed values ​​that they want to take away from them, as if the Republican did not have the same imperial impulses that have dominated American politics in recent centuries.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/ka ... -la-guerra

Google Translator

("It is curious that progressives agree on a common cause with war criminal Dick Cheney" No, it's not curious, it's class interest.)

******

New York Times Attacks “Peace-peddling” Jill Stein as the Presidential Race Comes Down to the Wire
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 23 Oct 2024

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The New York Times scapegoats Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein as polls indicate a dead heat between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

On October 20, the New York Times published “Jill Stein Won’t Stop. No Matter Who Asks .” Its reporter Matt Flegenheimer writes, “For the last eight years, Ms. Stein has taken her place as a peace-peddling, Democrat-bashing, Republican-aided, formerly Russian-boosted villain of the left (and champion, admirers say, of the farther left) while Mr. Trump’s opponents relitigate his rise and move desperately to prevent his return.”

The absurdities and glaring contradictions in this hit piece presumably have the blessing of the Times editorial board, which endorsed Harris on September 30.

Jill Stein is “peace-peddling”?

Imagine that. It would be comical if it didn’t indicate this country’s commitment to perpetual war and military industrial profit.

“Democrat-bashing”?

Is the Democratic Party now a hallowed institution beyond criticism? Is it not bashing the Republicans daily and running a negative ad blitz against Jill Stein? Are Stein and the Green Party supposed to sit back passively and take it?

Is the Harris campaign, with its billions of dollars, its army of consultants, and its huge advertising budget unable to credibly, logically defend itself against the critique of a medical doctor carrying the “People, Planet, and Peace ” banner of the Greens, which has raised well under $2 million in the current campaign season?

“Republican aided”?

On October 21, the Washington Post ran a report headlined “Harris hits three states with Liz Cheney .” The vice president has the support of Liz and Dick Cheney and that of Condoleezza Rice, among other high-profile Republicans, and she’s vowed to include a Republican in her cabinet. How dumb does the Times think its readers are? And/or how dumb are they? Their allegation against Dr. Stein is that some Republican-affiliated lawyers helped with her legal battles to gain ballot access, particularly in Nevada, where the state gave the Green Party the wrong signature-collecting forms, then refused to add her name to the ballot because the Greens had used them.

“Formerly Russian-boosted”?

The Times reporter repeats the endlessly recycled charge that Jill Stein visited Moscow and sat at a dinner table with Vladimir Putin—as she did—despite its own 2015 report, “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deals ."

"And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One,” that report reads, “Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.”

Shouldn’t profiting off a deal to transfer ownership of fissile material used to manufacture nuclear weapons be of more consequence than a bit of dinner table chat in the interest of transboundary understanding?

“villain of the left (and champion, admirers say, of the farther left)”?

This seems to assume that the Democratic Party is by some calculation “the left,” despite its complicity in the proxy wars in Ukraine and West Asia and in the 2010 bank bailout, the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history, which led to the financialization of real estate and the current housing crisis. The Democratic Party is “the left” even though Biden-Harris have overseen record oil-drilling leases , and imposed more crippling sanctions all over the world, most of all in Africa. Sad to say, that does seem to be what’s left of “the left,” aside from the “farther left” allegedly now represented by the tiny but persistent Green Party.

Vice presidential candidate Butch Ware has said that Greens are actually “centrist” in that they stand for what the majority of Americans want—peace, health care, decent education, affordable housing, clean energy, and more—while the two major parties are extremists.

Stein voters will not elect Donald Trump

The central allegation in the New York Times hit piece is, of course, that Dr. Stein may cost Vice President Harris the election, as Stein allegedly did Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The central flaw in this endlessly recycled argument is the assumption that Stein voters would vote for Harris if they couldn't vote for Stein when there's no evidence of that. I know a lot of Green voters but only one who got so scared of Trump that he decided to vote for Harris.

I live in a state so blue that the tiny sliver of Green voters has no impact beyond political expression, but I’m in contact with swing state Green voters, none of whom would vote for either of the duopoly’s presidential candidates if they couldn’t vote for Stein, Cornel West, or Claudia de la Cruz in the states where a third party managed to get on the ballot.

The claim that Stein could cost Harris the election might be slightly more plausible this time because of the Muslim and Arab American voters who have traditionally voted overwhelmingly Democratic and who may make the difference, especially in Michigan, by refusing this time. But would they vote for Harris if they couldn't vote for Stein, West, or De la Cruz? It certainly doesn't seem so. "Abandon Harris," a group quoted in the NY Times piece, first began organizing as "Abandon Biden" last November. They launched a campaign to defeat first Biden, then Harris, in the swing states, which they defined as a moral imperative, a campaign against genocide, ten months before endorsing Jill Stein .

And how can anyone tell Muslim and Arab American voters that they should vote for Harris when they're seeing whole family lines savagely wiped out in Gaza and Lebanon with 2000-lb. US bombs and even white phosphorus, which causes deep, severe burns, penetrating even through bone?

There are two million Palestinians trapped in Gaza, probably minus some hundreds of thousands by now given that many are no doubt buried under the rubble. The vast majority can't leave either by land or by sea because Israel controls all the exits. They're trapped in a concentration camp with our bombs raining down on them, and now they're dying of hunger and thirst. Some ten kids are having one or both legs amputated every day. How does this differ from a Nazi concentration camp?

Nevertheless, the Muslim and Arab American vote isn't uniform in refusing to vote for Harris. A mostly Muslim and Arab American group calling itself "The Uncommitted " withheld their votes from Biden in the primary and then held a sit-in on the steps of the Democratic National Convention because the Dems let the Israeli American relative of a hostage speak but refused to let a Palestinian American speak. The Uncommitted ultimately said they wouldn't endorse Harris but thought it was important to stop Trump, which was essentially endorsing Harris.

In September a group of leading Muslim American scholars and imams signed a letter calling on Muslim voters to spurn Harris and vote for Stein or one of the other third-party candidates. This week a group of approximately 50 Black Muslim leaders signed a statement saying the same.

Also this week, Michigan’s American Arab and Muslim Political Action Committee endorsed Stein.

There are an estimated 2.5 million Muslim voters in the US and an estimated 2.5 million Arab American voters who no doubt largely overlap. The key swing state of Michigan contains the largest Lebanese American community, and the city of Dearborn has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country. The New York Times hit piece acknowledged that there are more than 300,000 Michigan residents with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry.

If Kamala Harris loses Michigan and therefore loses the election, and/or if she loses because of the Muslim and Arab American vote in other swing states, she’ll have only the Biden/Harris genocide to blame, not Dr. Jill Stein.

The Times on Green Party presidential candidate Butch Ware

Stein's running mate, Butch Ware , is a history professor and polyglot specializing in Africa and Islam who teaches at the University of California, San Diego. He did his doctoral research in West Africa, studying the Islamic/Sunni/Sufi pacifist movement founded by Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba, who led a nonviolent struggle against French colonialism. The Times notes without comment that he calls Harris the “Black face of white supremacy” and likens Barack Obama to a “house negro.” I had to explain to alarmed relatives that these expressions are common to Black intellectuals who think that both Harris and Obama are committed to white supremacy to the detriment of Black Americans and Africans, and that the “house negro” reference harkens back to Malcolm X's famous speech "The House Negro and the Field Negro ," in which Malcolm said he was a field negro.

I also explained that October 20 was the anniversary of the execution of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi at the end of the NATO bombing war on Libya and on the orders of Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Libya was the most prosperous country in Africa, and it's been a wreck ever since. Gaddafi's crime was nationalizing Libyan oil; US oil companies moved in amidst the chaos that followed his assassination. That's just one reason, I explained, why many Black intellectuals refer to Obama as a “house negro.”

The Times also noted that David Duke had endorsed Stein, so I also had to explain to relatives that she disavowed the endorsement, which she had never sought. Many thought it was a psyop to damage Stein, and it may well have been, but David Duke is reported to have said he supported her because she's the only candidate opposing US wars in the Middle East and I can't argue with that, however reprehensible he is.

Will the hit piece have any consequences?

Will the New York Times hit piece change anyone’s mind? Not likely. Will it persuade traumatized Muslim and Arab Americans to vote for Kamala Harris? There isn’t even any argument that they should.

Will it shame anyone into voting for Kamala Harris instead of “peace-peddling, Democrat-bashing, Republican-aided, formerly Russian-boosted villain of the left” Jill Stein? There’s nothing there to convince them, just a lot of smears.

The hit piece seems more like a scream as this closest-ever presidential election comes down to the wire. Whenever they lose, the Democrats rush to scapegoat the Green Party rather than considering their own failings, which in this case are most obviously the devastation of Gaza and Lebanon to the horror of many but most of all to the Muslim and Arab American communities.

The New York Times has given Democrats a headstart on the shaming and blaming in the very real possibility that they’ll lose.

https://blackagendareport.com/new-york- ... -down-wire

The Green Party of the USA is indeed centrist as despite it's environmental mission it refuses to condemn and utterly repudiate capitalism as the source of most environmental woes. Which just goes to show how far right the Democratic Party is.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 24, 2024 3:10 pm

Class of 2018 CIA/Pentagon Democrats Continue to Advance Hawkish Policies in Congress
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - October 21, 2024 1

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[Source: republicbroadcasting.org]
In March 2018, Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site published a political pamphlet entitled “The CIA Democrats.”

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[Source: mehring.com]

In it, he wrote that “an extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department” were “seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections.”[1]

Some of these candidates, like Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq,[2] were recruited as part of a “red-to-blue” program targeting vulnerable Republican-held seats.

In the 2018 race, there were far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party than for the Republicans. Martin wrote that there were so many “spooks” that with a “nod to Mad Magazine,” one might call the primaries “spy vs. spy.”[3]

CovertAction Magazine has kept tabs on the “spook-soldiers” who were elected as part of the Class of 2018 and followed their careers in Congress. (according to Martin, 30 spook-soldiers won primaries and 11 were elected to Congress).

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Elissa Slotkin [Source: jpost.com]

Key members of this class continue to advance hawkish foreign policies along with the shadowy practices of the intelligence agencies as members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which is supposed to be a congressional oversight body.

Below is a summary of the five key members of the 2018 class we have tracked:

1. Elissa Slotkin
A conservative Democrat endorsed by Liz Cheney (R-WY) who is now running for the U.S. Senate, Slotkin is the wealthy heiress of the Hygrade Foods fortune and has supported a bill to boost funding to local police.

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The CIA Democrat on the campaign trail with Liz Cheney. [Source: wsws.org]

Prior to her election to Congress, Slotkin put her stamp on the U.S.’s disastrous Ukraine policy as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs following the U.S.-backed Maidan coup in 2014.

In February 2021, Slotkin was appointed Chairwoman of the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Subcommittee within the House Committee on Homeland Security. In that capacity, she pleased her former employer by hyping threats to public safety from domestic extremists and alleged foreign terrorists, while pushing for ever more draconian anti-terrorism legislation than what was already on the books.

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Slotkin during one of her three tours in Iraq. [Source: wsws.org]

Slotkin’s category of domestic extremists included people who oppose pandemic restrictions, despite their harmful effects on mental health and violation of constitutional liberties, along with those whom she brands as “conspiracy theorists”—a term that was made pejorative by the CIA in the 1960s in order to try to validate the corrupt Warren Commission and its false conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone JFK assassin.

A super-hawk on Ukraine, Slotkin was part of a congressional delegation that met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom she characterized as a “man who has risen to the occasion in war.” Slotkin subsequently told an NPR reporter: “I think we got to give them [Ukraine] what they need….This is a black and white issue. Our weapons have made a huge difference.”


Elissa Slotkin, second from left, and other members of Congress with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. [Source: wins.com]
When the war with Ukraine broke out, Slotkin supported a bill that aimed to expedite security assistance to Ukraine, and another designed to eliminate Europe’s energy dependence on Russia.

Inserting a clause into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would direct the Pentagon to better capitalize on commercial innovation in Michigan’s auto industry, Slotkin has sponsored the “Dictator Act” which would investigate whether the Chinese government is helping Vladimir Putin evade Western sanctions.

Described as a “moderate” or “conservative” Democrat of the kind the CIA and plutocratic elite that it serves likes, Slotkin is one of only five Democratic House members who voted against an amendment to prohibit support to and participation in the Saudi-led coalition’s military operations against the Houthis in Yemen—a genocidal operation.

Endorsed by the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) because of her strong pro-Israel stance, Slotkin further voted against H.Con.Res. 21, which directed President Joe Biden to remove U.S. troops from Syria within 180 days.

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Elissa Slotkin’s favorite film. [Source: itunes.apple.com]

When asked by a reporter about her favorite CIA movie, Slotkin tellingly responded: “Zero Dark Thirty” which glorified the use of torture in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

In the same interview, Slotkin praised the CIA’s Hollywood liaison office, which she said helps Hollywood to “really understand what is going on”—comments that are in line with the CIA’s official cover story for their PR operations in Hollywood, and make it seem like the Agency is merely concerned with greater accuracy, not covering up its crimes or trying to rehabilitate its public image.

2. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA)
Spanberger grew up in Richmond, Virginia, holds an MBA from Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management (now Business), and taught English literature at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia. She worked as a CIA case officer from 2006 to 2014 in the Middle East after previously working on money-laundering and narcotics cases for the U.S. Postal Service.[4]

Today, Spanberger serves on the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which is supposed to provide oversight of the CIA and other intelligence agencies!

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CIA Democrat Abigail Spanberger. [Source: yahoo.com]

When the Democratic Party nominated her to the party’s leadership table, the World Socialist Network concluded that the Democrats had “made what amounts to a pledge of allegiance to [a] program of imperialist aggression.”

Promoting a hard line on China and advancing strong support for NATO, Israel and greater military surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico border, Spanberger is conservative on economic and criminal justice issues but liberal on social issues like abortion.

The World Socialist Website described Spanberger as “one of the more notorious right-wing figures among House Democrats when she denounced the political impact of the mass protests against the police murder of George Floyd.”

On a conference call of House Democrats after the 2020 election, Spanberger declared, “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again,” adding that the party would get “fucking torn apart in 2022” if it did not suppress policies such as Medicare for All.[5]

Stating her firm belief that “the United States of America is the world’s superpower, and we have a responsibility to be a stabilizing force,” Spanberger had the backing of Foreign Policy for America, a political action committee promoting the anti-Russian campaign being waged by the Democrats and the military-intelligence apparatus.

Spanberger used her bully pulpit to defend the intelligence agencies for allegedly “providing good information that allowed presidential administrations to make good decisions on policy initiatives and engagement with foreign countries.”

She also led the charge about Russian election meddling, stating: “The fact that Donald Trump would at times seemingly take the side of foreign adversaries over the well-sourced intelligence of the intelligence community [in denying Russian election meddling on his behalf] is troubling as an American—not just as a former intelligence officer.” [6]

Echoing Kamala Harris, Spanberger criticized Trump for meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, stating that “I think any time we see the president of the United States warmly greeting an authoritarian leader and later professing to have fallen in love with him, no matter how tongue-in-cheek those comments are, is deeply concerning.”

But Spanberger was later silent when Joe Biden met with Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman and many other autocratic foreign leaders allied with the United States.

And as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Spanberger voted to provide billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine—whose president banned 12 opposition parties and sanctioned terrorist attacks on political rivals and journalists.

As a reflection of her hawkish views, Spanberger has led the attempt to get the State Department to designate Russia as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. Spanberger told MSNBC that she believed the U.S. should be as “absolutely supportive of Ukraine as we possibly can” and to “give them enough weapons to win this war.”

Just as the CIA and military-industrial complex want.

3. Jason Crow (D-CO)
Crow is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Foreign Affairs Committee, who served in the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq and as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2006.

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Jason Crow [Source: sengov.com]

Crow is a gung-ho supporter of the war in Ukraine, advocating for providing more long-range missiles and rockets to Ukraine and more advanced fighter jets capable of striking inside Russia.

Holding close friendships with Ukraine military and political leaders, Crow claims against all evidence that Putin engaged in an “unprovoked war” in Ukraine—the CIA’s line—and that Putin is intent on reforging the Russian empire.

Crow supports the New Cold War and the Pentagon’s arms build-up targeting Russia and China, calling Xi and Putin dictators who “would love to see the democratic free nations of this world fail.” Crow claims that “Taiwan would eventually fall if we’re not able to help Ukraine win.”

He calls for turning Ukraine into a heavily armed “porcupine” over the long term so the country could never be swallowed by Russia. Crow is part of the NATO parliamentary assembly, which is NATO’s Congress. Endorsed by AIPAC, he is also an Israel hawk.

One of Crow’s biggest donors, revealingly, is Palantir Technologies, a data-analytics company founded with CIA seed money, which has played a key role in the Ukraine War by tracking Russian military movements and helping Ukraine to coordinate battlefield maneuvers along with bomb targeting.[7]

Palantir additionally signed a major cooperative agreement with the Israeli Defense Ministry and has provided Artificial Intelligence (AI) software used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for bomb targeting and for accumulating data on Palestinians in the occupied territory. There is concern that the company’s AI software platform also is being weaponized against ordinary Americans.

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An “unwelcome party” for Palantir after it moved to new headquarters in Denver from Silicon Valley. [Source: 5280.com]

4. Jared Golden, (D-ME)
Jared Golden is a Marine Corps veteran who served combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and was elected with the class of 2018 to Congress in Maine.

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Jared Golden [Source: en.wikipedia.org]

A conservativre Blue Dog Democrat who was named Vice Chairman of the of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommitte of House Armed Services Committee, Golden supported gargantuan military budgets under the National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA).

The latter have significantly increased funding for the Portsmouth naval shipyard in Kittery, Maine and provided funds for developing new naval destroyers and F-35 jets and CH-53k helicopters, which will benefit Pratt & Whitney’s factory in North Berwick, Maine, and the Hunting Dearborn factory in Fryeburg, Maine.

Rejecting calls for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza War, Golden voted in favor of a bill that would provide an additional $14.3 billion to support Israeli military operations in the Gaza strip, and organized a letter signed by himself and other members of Congress advocating for President Biden to give F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. [8]

Kristen Salvatore, who was arrested protesting outside Golden’s office, said that to see my tax money going to drop bombs on civilians as advocated for by Rep. Golden is “reprehensible.”

5. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ)
Equally reprehensible is the record of Mikie Sherrill, a former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot who flew missions in Europe and the Middle East, and served as a Russian policy officer, working at the Commander-in-chief of the U.S. Navy, Europe.

A conservative Democrat who has voted with Joe Biden 100% of the time, Sherrill received over $300,000 from the financial industry in 2023-2024.

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A beaming Sherrill after her election night victory in November 2018. [Source: nj.com]

Sherrill has served on the House Armed Services Committee and Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and Chinese Communist Party, a relic of the Cold War which promotes Sinophobia and confrontation with China.

On her website, Sherrill wrote that, serving on the House Armed Services Committee, she was able to “significantly increase funding for Picatinny Arsenal—a major military research and manufacturing institute in her district—which remains the Army’s leading research institution for armaments and ammunition.”

Sherrill continues: “Beyond supporting the critical research and development programs at Picatinny, I am also proud to support the many defense technology companies that call NJ-11 home and are on the cutting edge of modernizing our Armed Forces. Many of my provisions in the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act support funding for our local defense industrial base and businesses.”

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[Source: milbases.com]

Sherrill is an anti-Russia and anti-China national security hawk. On her website, she writes:

“Both Russia and China have continued to build their military might and promote their influence across the globe. Neither country shares our values and often they are undermining our interests across the world. We must ensure we modernize our military to meet this threat and provide critical funding for cybersecurity and election protection. Putin instigated an unprovoked attack against Ukraine—a sovereign, democratic nation. He has attempted to rewrite history and has unleashed propaganda and disinformation in pursuit of his clear desire to rebuild the Soviet Union’s so-called sphere of influence. [In 2022], I traveled twice to Ukraine, once in January before Putin’s invasion and again in July. I met with President Zelensky and other top Ukrainian officials about the support they need from us and imparted to them the fierce support in New Jersey—home to one of the largest Ukrainian American communities in the country—for their independence and democracy. We secured emergency funding through a bipartisan package to support the Ukrainian people in their fight for freedom. American weapons support has made a tangible difference in the Ukrainians’ ability to hold off Russian aggression, including the M-777 Howitzer, developed here at Picatinny Arsenal.”

The M-777 Howitzer, it should be noted, has been used to strike at and kill civilian targets in the Donbass, though has not reversed the failings of Ukraine’s summer 2023 counteroffensive.

Image
M-777 howitzer that Sherrill champions. [Source: en.defense-us.com]

Sherrill favors continued military support to Israel and a growing police state at home. She boasts on her website about supporting the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022, which she claims would “better equip our law enforcement with information related to possible attacks and their relationship with hate crimes.”

In May 2022, Sherrill and then-Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Chairman of the Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and Chinese Communist Party, participated in a strategic-operational war game, “Dangerous Straits: Battle for Taiwan 2027,” with the Center for a New American Security and NBC’s Meet the Press.

The war game provided important insight into how a potential war with China over Taiwan could develop, and how the U.S. and its allies and partners could defeat an attack on Taiwan by China.

Image
Meet the Press war game in which Mikie Sherrill participated. [Source: nbc.com]

Where Have You Gone George McGovern and Frank Church?
Sherrill’s participation in the Taiwan-China war game is emblematic of the hawkish positions adopted by the class of 2018 soldier-spooks.

The group reflects the takeover of the Democratic Party by neo-conservative, pro-militarist and pro-CIA elements.

In the 1970s, the Democrats included in their ranks figures like George McGovern and Frank Church who opposed the Vietnam War and most other wars and crusaded against the CIA and its excesses.

Those days—unfortunately—are long gone.

Image
(Left) George McGovern [Source: boston.com]; (Right) Frank Church [Source: en.wikipedia.org]



1.Patrick Martin, The CIA Democrats (World Socialist Web Site Pamphlet Series, 2018), 7. ↑



2.Slotkin was a top aide to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who oversaw death squads as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and in Honduras during the 1980s Contra War. ↑



3.Martin, The CIA Democrats, 8.


4.The CIA’s official webpage describes Spanberger’s position with the CIA as an agent involved in “clandestinely spotting, assessing, developing, recruiting, and handling non-US citizens with access to foreign intelligence vital to US foreign policy and national security decision makers.” Spanberger is next planning to run for governor of Virginia. In late October 2023, Spanberger signed a letter with Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Dan Goldman (D-NY), and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) thanking the Biden administration for “demonstrating strong U.S. global leadership in a dangerous and uncertain moment for Israel, the greater Middle East region, and the world.”↑



5.In 2021, after Republican candidates won the statewide contests in Virginia and took control of the state assembly, Spanberger publicly complained about the “leftist” policies of the Biden administration which she claimed had sparked a right-wing backlash. “Nobody elected him to be FDR,” she said. “They elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.” ↑



6.Spanberger led the charge in Congress for impeachment of Donald Trump on the grounds that he tried to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into enacting an investigation into Hunter Biden and his shady business dealings in Ukraine. ↑



7.Palantir supplied Ukraine with software systems to help it target Russian tanks and track Russian troop movements. Palantir CEO Alex Karp met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, after which he agreed to open an office in Ukraine. Karp later bragged that Palantir was “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine,” referring to Russian tanks, artillery and other weapons systems. Karp also told David Ignatius of The Washington Post that “Palantir AI was ‘winning’ the war for Ukraine.” ↑



8.During the 2022 election cycle, Golden received $31,530 from AIPAC. In April 2024, he and Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), and John Moolenaar (R-MI), sponsored a bill to impose sanctions on any Chinese military firm that provides material support to Russia. Golden stated that “Russia’s aggressive push for territorial expansion is a direct threat not only to the sovereignty of Ukraine, but to the American-led security framework established after World War II. Vladimir Putin is testing boundaries in a way we haven’t seen since Hitler invaded Poland. I’m proud to work with Rep. Gallagher to ensure there are consequences for the PRC enabling Russia’s dangerous behavior.” ↑

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Fri Oct 25, 2024 3:51 pm

Image

The Only Good Thing About This Nightmare Is That It’s Exposing The Monsters For Who They Are

A really extraordinary moment occurred on the CNN “town hall” with Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday.

Caitlin Johnstone
October 25, 2024

A really extraordinary moment occurred on the CNN “town hall” with Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday.

Asked by an audience member what she would do to end the slaughter of Palestinians by US-sponsored bombs, Harris delivered her usual canned answer about how “far too many” Palestinians have died and the need for a two-state solution, after which host Anderson Cooper asked a follow-up question.

“What do you say to voters who are thinking about supporting a third-party candidate, or staying on the couch, not voting at all because of this issue?” Cooper asked.

What followed was an absolutely jaw-dropping answer from the vice president. In essence she says that people who have strong feelings about the genocide in Gaza need to get over it and vote for her anyway if they want abortions and affordable groceries, because she supports the genocide and that’s not going to change.
Caitlin Johnstone
@caitoz
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"I'm Speaking"

Oil on canvas.

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“Listen, I am not going to deny the strong feelings that people have,” Harris said. “I don’t know that anyone who has seen the images who would not have strong feelings about what has happened, much less those who have relatives, who have died and been killed. And I and I know people and I’ve talked with people, so I appreciate that.”

“But I also do know that for many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries,” Harris continued. “They also care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist. They also care about the fact that we need practical, common-sense solutions from a leader who is willing to work across the aisle on behalf of the American people and not themselves. They want a president who cares about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body, understanding that we’re not trying to change anyone’s belief, but let’s not have the government telling women what to do with their body.”

Which is just wild. I mean, technically she’s not saying anything different from what liberals have been shouting for months at Americans who oppose the Gaza genocide, but she’s not supposed to say that! She’s not supposed to come right out and admit that she’s a genocidal monster and tough shit if you don’t like it because the other candidate is the greater evil. That’s normally the sort of disgusting manipulation you let other people do for you while pretending to be a good person.


The only positive thing coming out of this nightmare is that it’s exposing the real monsters for who they are.

More and more people are seeing that the US government is much too evil to be allowed to rule the world.

More and more people are seeing that the state of Israel is much too evil to be allowed to continue to exist in its present iteration.

More and more people are seeing that the western press are propaganda services for the US power alliance and should never be trusted.

More and more people are seeing that the Democratic Party exists solely to protect the murderous and corrupt oligarchic status quo of the US empire and not to promote the interests of ordinary human beings.

More and more people are seeing that western liberalism is just a more photogenic version of fascism.

When you’ve got a leading presidential candidate standing in front of the nation saying that yes she will continue an active genocide but you’d better vote for her anyway if you want abortions and affordable groceries, that shows people something about the kind of nation they live in that you could never get across to them by sheer argumentation.

When you’ve got evidence of mass atrocities entering people’s social media feeds on a daily basis while the entire political-media class tells them this is fine and normal, that communicates a message which would be hard to receive in words alone.

There is so very, very little to say about this horror that is remotely positive. But it is opening eyes. And enough open eyes is all that’s required to change the world.

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Tue Oct 29, 2024 3:40 pm

Democrat War Games: Could They Try for a Color Revolution After a Trump Victory?
Posted on October 28, 2024 by Lambert Strether
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?” –Abraham Lincoln, The Lyceum Address

Here is the current EC status from 270toWin (which nets out the same as O.G. Larry Sabato’s):

Image

Agonizingly close, then.

I think it’s fair to say that if the Democrats believe what they say about Trump, then they cannot possibly allow him to take office. And yet, there has been curiously little public discussion about what they might actually do to prevent that event, should Trump be in a position to win the Electoral College (EC) vote, the day after Election Day.

I would speculate that discussion of “The Day After” has taken place — like so many matters of importance, these days — in rooms we will never enter. And so — again as like so many matters of importance — we don’t really know what anyone is after. But it would be irresponsible not to speculate. In this post, I’m going to focus on what the Democrats might do, partly because I came up through the Democrats, so I’m more familiar with the players and their collective mentality. More importantly, from 2016 (RussiaGate) – 2020 (lawfare), the Democrats have form.

Readers will recall that I have periodically muttered that the parties must be wargaming out 2024 (just as Democrats did in 2020). In fact, the Democrats are doing just that. In this post, I’ll first compare 2020’s “Transition Integrity Project” with 2024’s “Democracy Futures Project.” I will then present one scenario that seems to have emerged from whatever hive mind produced the wargame, and that depends on the functional equivalent of a Color Revolution. I will then speculate on where the energy to mobilize such a color revolution would come from, and who the footsoldiers would be. Finally, I will present the closest thing there was in Election 2016 to a color revolution, the Women’s March (“pink pussy hats”), and speculate how a successor might be modified to achieve greater success through the admixture of more items from the list of Gene Sharp’s “198 Methods of Non-Violent Resistance” (Sharp being the theorist of color revolutions). Of course, all this meta-war gaming is a little bit mad, with a hegemonic yet unelected establishment using the tools of, er, resistance, to carry out an autogolpe, but here we are. Because we know so little, I will have to string together a lot of this with bubbe gum and baling wire (that being my preference to an overly tight yarn diagram). I hope this post stimulates discussion, at least.

Projects to Defend “Our Democracy”: 2020 and 2024

Vox describes Election 2020’s Transition Integrity[1] Project (TIP) (Aug 18, 2020):

This may sound far-fetched. But in June, an organization called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) convened a group of more than 100 bipartisan experts to simulate what might happen the day after Election Day — running a kind of political “war game” where veteran Democrats role-played as the Biden campaign and veteran Republicans acted as the Trump team.

They simulated four scenarios: a big Biden victory, a narrow Biden win, an indeterminate result à la the 2000 election, and a narrow Trump victory. In every scenario but a massive Biden blowout, things went south.

Here are the results of the wargames. More:

“We anticipate lawsuits, divergent media narratives, attempts to stop the counting of ballots, and protests drawing people from both sides,” TIP writes in a post-exercise report summarizing their findings. “The potential for violent conflict is high, particularly since Trump encourages his supporters to take up arms.”

Nils Gilman, the vice president of programs at the Berggruen Institute think tank, is one of the project’s co-founders. In his view, the exercise highlighted key flaws in our electoral system, ranging from the rickety 18th-century design of the presidential election system to our modern plague of hyperpartisanship. These problems, Gilman says, make the electoral system particularly vulnerable to a catastrophic collapse in 2020 — and some of them could still be addressed before it’s too late.


Note that mass mobilization has formed part of Democrat “Day After” thinking since 2020[2]:

Nils Gilman, the vice president of programs at the Berggruen Institute think tank, is one of the project’s co-founders…. And ordinary citizens, Gilman says, “need to be prepared to take to the street in nonviolent protest” if the results appear to be corrupted — one of the last lines of defense when a political system breaks down.

Biden won, so no mass mobilization was needed.

The Guardian describes Election 2024’s (notably bipartisan) Democracy Futures Project (July 30, 2024):

About 175 people participated in five exercises, bringing to the process an extraordinary wealth of bipartisan institutional knowledge. Among the lineup were senior officials from successive administrations of both parties, including the Trump administration.

They came with a mission: to wargame Trump acting out the most extreme authoritarian elements of his agenda and explore what could be done, should he win in November, to protect democracy in the face of possible abuses of power.


Here again we have mass mobilization along with what seems to be the desired result. Trump, in the scenario, is legitimately elected, and then this happens:

It is the afternoon of 20 January 2025 and Donald Trump is in his White House dining room, glued to the same TV where he sat transfixed as the January 6 attack on the US Capitol unfolded four years ago. This morning, he completed one of the most spectacular political comebacks in US history, reciting the oath of office at the inauguration ceremony that returned him to the most powerful job on Earth.

His political resurrection has caused turmoil in the transition period, and massive anti-Trump demonstrations have erupted in several big cities. In his inaugural address, the 47th president makes clear his intention to deal with his detractors: “They are rioting in the streets. We are not safe. Make our cities safe again!” he commands.

The peaceful marches are portrayed on Fox News, the channel he is watching, as anarchic disorder. Trump grows increasingly incensed, and that evening calls his top team into the situation room with one purpose in mind: to end the demonstrations by any means necessary.

“I need to make sure that our streets are safe from those who are running amok trying to overthrow our administration,” he tells the group of top law enforcement, national security and military officials. A flicker of alarm ripples through the room as the president cites the Insurrection Act, saying it allows him to call up the national guard in key states to suppress what he calls the “rebellion”.

Discerning the concern among his top officials, Trump gives them an ultimatum. He is in no mood to compromise or stand down – he did that in his first term in the face of “deep state” opposition. “I have been charged by the American people to make this country great again,” he states, “and I need to know right now that everybody in this room is on board.”


(This war game was put on by the Brennan Center, although Rosa Brooks[3] participated in both.) Do note the lack of agency in “has caused” and “have erupted.”

Let me now turn to one published proposal for how Democrats might leverage mass mobilization.

“Option 4:” Mass Mobilization (a.k.a. Color Revolution)

From the New York Times Op-Ed page, “There Are Four Anti-Trump Pathways We Failed to Take. There Is a Fifth” (October 24, 2024):

That leaves a fifth strategy: societal mobilization. Democracy’s last bastion of defense is civil society. When the constitutional order is under threat, influential groups and societal leaders — chief executives, religious leaders, labor leaders and prominent retired public officials — must speak out, reminding citizens of the red lines that democratic societies must never cross. And when politicians cross those red lines, society’s most prominent voices must publicly and forcefully repudiate them.

[In Germany, public declarations [by leaders against an AfD meeting with neo-Nazi leaders] took place against the backdrop of the largest street demonstrations in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The demonstrations were organized by a civil society coalition called ‘Hand in Hand,’ which encompassed 1,300 different organizations, including unions, churches, doctors’ associations, refugee protection agencies and even environmental groups. Millions of citizens from across the political spectrum gathered week after week in large cities and small towns in defense of democracy. Although the AfD remains very popular in several east German states, its national support has declined by approximately 25 percent since the protest movement began.

When President Bolsonaro began to threaten democratic institutions in the run-up to the 2022 election, Brazilian civil society mobilized in a similar manner. Mr. Bolsonaro threatened the Supreme Court, attacked the legitimacy of the electoral system, and sought to dismantle Brazil’s electronic voting system. This spurred business, religious and civic groups to mobilize.


The authors of this Op-Ed are carefully non-committal about whether this “societal mobilization” takes place before election day, or “The Day After,” if Trump wins, and, if so, what the goal is. I’m going to assume the latter, simply because of the publication date of October 24, and that, unlike the efforts in Germany and Brazil, the Op-Ed seeks to replace an elected government. Therefore, I’d classify it as a Color Revolution.(As in the Democracy Futures Project, the agents and organizers of social mobilization is carefully undefined). WikiPedia (sorry) defines a Color Revolution:

The colour revolutions (sometimes coloured revolutions) were a series of often non-violent protests and accompanying (attempted or successful) changes of government and society that took place in post-Soviet states (particularly Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan) and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the early 21st century. The aim of the colour revolutions was to establish Western-style liberal democracies They were primarily triggered by election results widely viewed as falsified. The colour revolutions were marked by the usage of the internet as a method of communication, as well as a strong role of non-governmental organizations [NGOs: in the protests.

(Russia’s Social Engineering Agency (!!) gives an account of color revolution stages here[4]).

The Women’s March of Election 2016

If we look at the the characteristics of the Women’s March of Election 2016, it looks very much like an self-abortive color revolution (abortive, because if the demand was not for a change of government, what was the point?). WikiPedia once more:

The Women’s March was a worldwide protest on January 21, 2017, the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as US president…. It was at the time the largest single-day protest in U.S. history… The main protest was in Washington, D.C., and is known as the Women’s March on Washington with many other marches taking place worldwide… The Washington March drew over 470,000 people…. The crowds were peaceful: no arrests were made in D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, or Seattle, where a combined total of about two million people marched. The organization’s website states that they wanted to adhere to “the nonviolent ideology of the Civil Rights movement”. Following the march, the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington posted the “10 Actions for the first 100 Days” campaign for joint activism to keep up momentum from the march.

We have the non-violent ideology, we have the heavy NGO involvement, we have the election trigger, we have the color. Here I cannot help but present the following image and caption from Vogue: “The Missoni family wearing pink pussy hats during the finale of the Fall 2017 runway show in Milan“:

Image

Perhaps the most enduring result of the Women’s March was the addition of “pink pussy hat” to the Pantone system of colorways.[5]

Mass Mobilization in 2024

Where would the protest potential for mass mobilization come from the 2024? We can turn to the now-famous Mark Halperin interview with Tucker Carlson for the answer. From the transcript:

[CARLSON:] Let’s say Trump wins. Three weeks from today, what happens? The Democratic Party, I mean, as you said, a lot of Democrats, maybe the majority, believe that Trump becoming president again is the worst thing that ever could happen. So how do they respond to that?

[HALPERIN:] I say this not flippantly. I think it will be the cause of the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country. I think tens of millions of people will question their connection to the nation, their connection to other human beings, their connection to their vision of what their future for them and their children could be like. And I think that will require an enormous amount of access to mental health professionals. I think it’ll lead to trauma in the workplace. I think there’ll be some degree of.

[CARLSON:] Are you being serious?

[HALPERIN:]100% serious. 100% serious. I think there’ll be alcoholism, there’ll be broken marriages.

[CARLSON:] What?

[HALPERIN:]Yeah, they think he’s the worst person possible to be president. And having won by the hand of Jim Comey and Fluke in 2016 and then performed in office for four years and denied who won the election last time. And January 6, the fact that under a fair election, America chose by the rules, pre agreed to Donald Trump again, I think it will cause the biggest mental health crisis in the history of America. And I don’t think it will be kind of a passing thing that by the inauguration will be fine. I think it will be sustained and unprecedented and hideous, and I don’t think the country is ready for it. It.

[CARLSON:] So mental health crises often manifest in violence.

[HALPERIN:]Yeah, I think there’ll be some violence. I think there’ll be workplace fights. There’ll be fights at birthday kids birthday parties. I think there’ll be protests that will turn violent.


I think Halperin is right on the “psychic energy” that so many liberal Democrats, especially PMC women, have invested in a Kamala win and a Harris loss. But I think Halperin has the order of events reversed. First will come the protests (ideally non-violent, from the standpoint of the organizers), and only afterwards the therapy, alchoholism, broken marriages, and so forth (in fact, protest may be seen as a form of empowerment to avoid all those bad outcomes.

A Color Revolution in 2024?

So, assuming that we have (1) a model for a Color Revolution in the election 2016 Women’s March, and (2) a mobilized populatiion very demographically similar to the Women’s March, plus (3) the non-violent ideology, the heavy NGO involvement, the election trigger, and color (to come: blue?), how would we improve on the Women’s March to yeild a “better” outcome, ideally preventing him from taking office, but certainly punishing his base?

Let’s turn to Gene Sharp, the architect of color revolutions[6], and his famous “198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION“[7] (all the methods are numbered, which is really neat). The Women’s March clearly used the following methods:

Formal statements of all kinds (#1-#6)
Communications With A Wider Audience (#7-#12), but most importantly:
#19 Wearing of symbols (the “pink pussy hats”)
#38 Marches


And that’s basically it. No economic non-cooperation; no political non-cooperation; no non-violent interventions.

Now let’s fast forward to 2024, and realize that (1) our “mobilized population” is the PMC, and that it’s class-conscious, and that (2) the NGOs include, as the Women’s March did not, members of the intelligence community (remember this is an autogolpe by a hegemonic class):

#50 Teach-ins (on Constitutional issues)
#55 Social boycott (of Trumpists)
#57 Lysistratic nonaction (we’ve seen this from Kamala already)
#76 National consumers’ boycott (of Trump-supporting entities)
#143 Blocking of lines of command and information (by the organs of state security)
#173 Nonviolent occupation (perhaps not the capital, this time)
#187 Seizure of assets (bank employees, as with the Canadian truckers)
#86 Withdrawal of bank deposits (major corporatioons, from big banks)
#198 Dual sovereignty and parallel government (why not?)


This “Color Revolution” would have, as the Women’s March did not, but previous color revolutions in foreign countries did, the weight of the entire Democratic apparatus behind it (Democrat electeds, the press, NGOs, the organs of state security, etc.) So if you want to establish a “permission structure” for overthrowing a government that you regard as fascist. the above methods could be very helpful, particularly if they appeared to be outpourings from a spontaneous movement, as the press would surely present it.

Conclusion

“We’re bringing the war back home!” as Firesign Theatre sang. In the case of a Trump victory, it would certainly seem odd if the Democratic apparatus, allied with the Blob, did not use same tools to “defend democracy” here at home that they have used with such success abroad

NOTES

[1] “Never eat at a place called “Mom’s”.’

[2] The example cited is the Movement for Black Lives, which ultimately accomplished little.

[3] Rosa Brooks is the daughter of John Ehrenreich and Barbara Ehrenreich (of “PMC” fame). Pete Buttigieg’s father translated Gramsci; Kamala’s father was a Marxist scholar. What is it with these blue diaper babies?

[4] Amusingly, the Russian view: “Put simply, the Russian understanding of ‘colour revolutions’ is a ‘coup d’ état’ supported by the West” (or what we might define as The Blob).

[5] Unkind to the creator of the hat, Krista Suh, but here we are.

[6] See Jacobin, “Gene Sharp, the Cold War Intellectual Whose Ideas Seduced the Left.”

[7] As readers know, I love classification systems, and have been quite taken with “198 Methods,” but I don’t think it’s a very rigorous scheme. For example, “Establishing new social patterns” (174) and “Overloading of facilities” (175) are clearly at different levels of abstraction, but are placed adjacent to each other.

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 30, 2024 3:48 pm

Trump Rally, Washington Post and Michelle Obama Generate Fake Outrage
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 30 Oct 2024

Image
Trump rally on October 28, 2024 at Madison Square Garden with Empire State Building in the background. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Liberals love to indulge in performative virtue signaling rather than serious political conviction. Recent events proved that their highest priority is maintaining alliances with the Democratic Party, while dismissing any inconvenient truths that point out their hypocrisy.

Nothing reveals the corrupt nature of U.S. politics like a presidential election. The theater of the absurd is played out every four years, giving the illusion of choice between two parties that more often act in agreement than not. Millions of people become emotionally invested in candidates who use red meat to generate support from their respective constituencies while defense contractors, big pharma executives, and oil company oligarchs sit back and watch, knowing that they will get what they want regardless of the outcome. Fake outrage is the order of the day, as the public is swayed by manufactured dramas meant to encourage participation, but often over insignificant issues.

This columnist personally witnessed the fervor of Donald Trump supporters as they entered New York City’s Madison Square Garden to attend a rally held on October 27. The MAGA hats and other paraphernalia that were worn and sold by street vendors are rarely seen in Manhattan and the arena which hosts sporting events and concerts instead had a large sign proclaiming, “DREAM BIG AGAIN!” with an image depicting a giant Trump who towered over the Empire State Building.

The rally was most definitely an opportunity for the MAGA crowd but failed because it reminded low motivation voters that they don’t like Trump very much and encouraged the normally apathetic to go to the polls. The proceedings probably did more harm than good as Trump and his supporters lived up to the worst expectations held about them. Some of the rally proceedings were comical, as Oprah Winfrey’s creation, Dr. Phil McGraw, proclaimed himself to be against DEI programs. The unqualified quack psychologist shouldn’t be seeing clients at all but became rich and famous because of patronage bestowed on him by a Black woman, but no matter. He knew his audience.

So did Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani has been disbarred in New York and in Washington, DC as a result of his 2020 shambolic courtroom performances in the futile effort to have Trump declared the winner. A judge ordered him to give the two Black women he defamed possession of his apartment in order to pay the judgment they won against him. Giuliani is financially embarrassed in large part because Trump has refused to pay the legal bills he incurred as a result of the quixotic election effort.

But Giuliani is sticking with his ungrateful client and continues to make a fool of himself on his behalf. He felt compelled to say that we must fear Palestinian toddlers . "The Palestinians are taught to kill us at two years old," shrieked the man once known as “America’s mayor.” For good measure, he added, "She (Kamala Harris) wants to bring them to you. They may have good people. I'm sorry I don't take a risk with people who are taught to kill Americans at two."

Of course, his comments were outrageous, but neither Giuliani nor Trump hold any office in the U.S. government now. Palestinian children are themselves killed by Israel with the help of the U.S. The fact of the U.S.'s role in their suffering is rarely mentioned by the liberals who upset themselves upon hearing Giuliani’s words. Many of these same people have proclaimed support for Kamala Harris, whose administration is killing Palestinian men, women, and children. More Palestinian women and children have been killed over the past year than during the same period of time in any conflict in the last 20 years. The dismal statistic is the result of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' decision-making, yet many of those unnerved by Giuliani’s words stand by their candidate who is actually responsible for the ongoing genocide.

Not to be outdone by McGraw and Giuliani, a so-called comedian named Tony Hinchcliffe said, “I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

The blatant racism is rightly condemned, but Puerto Rico, stolen from Spain in an imperialist war and kept as a “commonwealth”, is a U.S. colony and suffers due to its status. Tax giveaways to corporations plunged the island into debt , vulture hedge funds bought the debt and then sued Puerto Rico’s government when it couldn’t repay. Devastating austerity programs were presented as the only solution. Puerto Rico’s problems were created by republicans and democrats alike, and the independence that would solve its problems is stymied at every turn. Puerto Rico is rarely discussed but the musings of a racist comic put it back in the news with little discussion of what is right for the people there.

The Trump rally was not the only means of channeling well-intentioned but wasted energies. The Washington Post is a legacy newspaper that has always been a conduit of information for the state and often functioned as a cover for the CIA , hiring CIA agents as journalists or getting journalists to do its work. Even the Frank Church Senate Committee investigating the work of intelligence agencies hid the extent of CIA and media connections at the request of former agency directors such as George H.W. Bush.

The paper is not as liberal as widely believed, but until this year reliably endorsed the Democratic Party presidential candidate. However, billionaire owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, decided not to endorse and the floodgates of liberal angst opened wide. The newspaper’s editorial team was apparently ready to endorse Harris but refrained on Bezos’ orders.

Bezos ownership was always problematic. The Post was the creator of the Propaganda Or Not hoax alleging Russian influence in outlets such as Black Agenda Report. Amazon has cloud computing contracts with the CIA, National Security Agency, and the Department of Defense. It is believed that Bezos feared losing his Blue Origins space exploration contract with the federal government if Trump should win. Trump met with the Blue Origins CEO after the non-endorsement was announced.

Liberals reacted by canceling their subscriptions; more than 200,000 readers did so. They were not outraged by its long history of colluding with the state, of allowing journalists to spy, or even by the Bezos purchase. In 2019 Bernie Sanders was vilified when he questioned the Post’s biased coverage of his presidential campaign. But once the corporate media icon declined to give Harris the seal of approval, liberals declared war.

But it was Michelle Obama who delivered perhaps the week’s masterpiece of fakery and foolishness. She didn’t hold back as she spoke passionately in favor of abortion rights , but that was not the only issue she raised.

“To anyone out there thinking about sitting out this election or voting for Donald Trump or a third-party candidate in protest because you’re fed up, let me warn you, your rage does not exist in a vacuum.” It wasn’t enough for Michelle Obama to say she supports reproductive rights, she was also there to dissuade any independent thinkers from acting independently. But it isn’t a small party candidate that stands in the way of protecting abortion rights. It is democrats like her husband.

Barack Obama campaigned in 2008 claiming to be in support of codifying the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision into law by passing the Freedom of Choice Act . He was elected with control of both houses of congress, including a veto proof majority in the senate, but he took no action to pass the Act he claimed to care about. Ninety days into his term he declared that it was not his highest priority . It wasn’t even a low priority. Neither he nor any democratic member of congress attempted to get it passed.

Michelle Obama exhorted women to talk to the men in their lives about reproductive rights. Hopefully, she talked to her own husband about his betrayal of millions of people who wanted him to do what he said he would do. Now his wife pretends that the loss of abortion rights has nothing to do with him and everything to do with Donald Trump.

The Democratic Party is once again setting up its supporters for the okey doke. Even if Kamala Harris is elected with control of both houses will she fight for abortion rights, or will she say that her political capital must be spent elsewhere, or claim the parliamentarian won’t let her do what she wants? Will Puerto Rico be free or will it remain an exploited colony? As for Palestinian children, Harris has already answered that question. She says there will be no arms embargo against Israel and so Palestinians will continue to be killed.

Who knows what phony outrage awaits with less than one week before Election Day. There will surely be something but it is up to us not to be fooled again and to call out hypocrisy and lies when we hear them.

https://blackagendareport.com/index.php ... ke-outrage
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 31, 2024 4:11 pm

It’s Harris’s Race to Lose…
Posted on October 31, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

Conor here: A quote comes to mind.

“How many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?”

-Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72


And the lesser of two evils—including whoever it is this go-round—often seem to get more evil.

By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies

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I’m trying not to comment much on the election, but I will say this: It’s Harris’s race to lose, and she might lose it.

Why?

A Change Election?

Some analysts think this is still a change election — I’m among them — and many voters are still sick of billionaires running their lives. So what can those who want change do in this election? Democrats are still the party of “keep things the same, only better.” Not much change in that; or at least, not enough.

So what’s left to do? Voters who want change can support an agent of chaos (that’s definitely Trump) and upset the cart entirely, or they can stay home. Trump already has all his voters (see below), so the choices become either Harris or stay at home.

Unstrategic? You could say that. But angry people, in the main, aren’t perfect strategists, and the very very angry aren’t strategic at all.

The stay-at-home strategy hurts Harris the most, since Trump, as I see it, maxed out his voting ranks a long time ago — his peak is always near 48% — while Harris could still grow hers among undecideds. Yet instead of gaining new votes, her growth has stopped or receded. (See chart above.) Undecideds aren’t breaking in her direction, at least not in good enough numbers. Her campaign has stalled.

Working Class Voters

To try to determine why Harris has stalled, a survey by the Center for Working-Class Politics, YouGov and Jacobin magazine, tested various messages with workers in Pennsylvania, a key swing state. They chose five gleaned from her actual campaign and two alternatives, trying to see what worked best.

The real messages tested (those based on her campaign) were these:

The Soft Populist message acknowledges that most businesses are job creators and play by the rules but calls out big corporations and Wall Street for price gouging and not paying their fair share of taxes.
The Moderate Economic message focuses on Harris’s economic vision of an “opportunity economy” that achieves broad-based growth and emphasizes tax cuts for middle-class Americans.
The Democratic Threat message calls on voters to defend democracy and liberal norms against the threat posed by Trump, highlighting his felony criminal convictions.
The Defend Abortion message emphasizes Harris’s support of abortion rights against Republican proposals to enact a nationwide abortion ban, a position she attributes to Trump.
The Immigration Critical message underscores Harris’s support for increased border security while facilitating a path to citizenship for immigrants who play by the rules.


The messages that weren’t from her campaign were these:

The Strong Populist message more aggressively targets economic elites for getting richer while working Americans suffer, sets up a strong contrast between the working class and the billionaire class, and blames not only economic elites and Trump (as in the Soft Populist message) but a wider cast of Washington politicians for leaving workers behind.
The Progressive Economic message foregrounds progressive economic positions, some of which Harris has already endorsed but often fails to emphasize, along with some policies that fall outside the campaign’s current policy proposals. These policies include reshoring American jobs, guaranteeing jobs for all those looking for work, and expanding Medicare access to include younger Americans who lack adequate health insurance.
Matt Karp summarized the results. The solution is clear. Nonpartisan populism beats all other messages, including partisan, anti-Trump populism; and the “threat to democracy” message actually loses some voters.


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Apparently people still hate the billionaires. Yet Harris and her strategists persist in the partisan populist message and “threat to democracy.” To working class voters convinced the system is (still) rigged, she doesn’t look like the answer.

Democracy Under Threat

The failure of the threat-to-democracy message deserves comment. Trump has indeed let his strongman flag fly, proving to liberals that this threat is real. So why doesn’t this message work with the working class?

The answer is implied by the discussion above, but some writers make it explicit. Working class people are the primary national victims of billionaire greed. So what do they see as the threat, Republicans or billionaires?

Here’s Carl Beijer’s take: “‘Democracy is at stake’ messaging only works in a democracy”. From the paywalled part of his piece:

I would argue … that “democracy is at stake” messaging only works in a functional democracy. And since most people don’t think of the US as a functional democracy, most people don’t think that it’s actually “at stake” in any meaningful sense.

He explains, referencing the survey discussed above:

[W]hen Democrats start going on about how Trump could suspend elections or crack down on free speech or launch all kinds of other attacks on liberal democracy, a lot of people just shrug because they already think they have nothing left to lose.

The advantage of this explanation is that it also explain[s] the popularity of the Strong Populist message — which, again, emphasizes that DC actually answers to the powerful rather than the people. [emphasis mine]

So yes, people might believe democracy is at stake. But maybe, just maybe, they define the problem as bipartisan, and Harris, in doing not much to “take on the billionaires” (to quote a once popular populist), fails to look like the answer.

Of course, we’ll find out soon what worked and what didn’t. But the “embrace Dick Cheney and comfort the rich” approach could cost her a lot.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/10 ... -lose.html

******

CovertAction Bulletin – Activists Take on Elections: No Votes for Genocide
By Rachel Hu and Chris Garaffa - October 30, 2024 0

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CLICK HERE to listen on podcast platforms worldwide https://linktr.ee/CovertActionBulletin

We’re just days out from the U.S. presidential elections. With many polls putting Trump and Harris within just a few points of each other, it’s easy to get caught up in the fear and uncertainty of the race as we continue to see horror after horror unfolding in Gaza and Lebanon as well as critical domestic crises like housing and infrastructure going unaddressed.

On this show, we’re focusing on the work of activists looking past the mainstream. They’ve been in the streets, they’ve pushed local resolutions, called for ceasefires and weapons embargoes, they’ve voted Uncommitted and called to abandon Biden and Harris and any candidate who won’t speak out against genocide. We talk with some organizers who have been building peoples’ movements for power and solidarity about how they view the elections, what they’ve been doing in the lead-up, and most importantly, we’ll hear what they’ll be doing on November 6 after all the ballots have been counted.

We’re joined by Dr. Hassan Abdel Salam – co-founder of Abandon Biden, which is now Abandon Harris. Later in the show, we discuss the No Votes for Genocide campaign with Francesca Maria, an organizer with the CT Palestine Solidarity Coalition and co-chair of Connecticut DSA.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/1 ... -genocide/

*****

On immigration, Harris and Trump have more similarities than one might think

Ahead of the US presidential election, Peoples Dispatch analyzes the continuity between Trump and Biden’s immigration policy

October 30, 2024 by Natalia Marques

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Harris speaks to Border Patrol agents on the campaign trail (Photo: @KamalaHarris/X)

Yesterday, Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris delivered a “closing argument” for her campaign for the presidency. “Politicians have got to stop treating immigration as an issue to scare up votes for an election,” she said, referencing Trump’s plan to deport between 15 to 20 million people. But her “solution” to mass migration does little to change the current realities of US immigration policies, which many have criticized as inhumane. “I will work with Democrats and Republicans to sign into law the border security bill that Donald Trump killed,” she said, positing herself as even harsher on immigration than Trump.

With less than a week until US presidential elections, immigration remains a top issue for US voters, especially among those who support former President Donald Trump as their candidate. According to the Pew Research Center, 82% of Trump supporters list immigration as a very important issue (this trails the economy, the top issue for both Trump and Harris supporters, with 93% of Trump supporters listing this as a very important issue).

According to YouGov, there is a significant gap between Trump and Harris supporters in terms of how much of a priority immigration is. 77% of Trump supporters rate immigration as a top three issue, while only 14% of Harris supporters consider it among their three most important issues in this year’s election—the largest gap between any of the issues YouGov polled, which includes the economy, health care, crime, and social issues.

In responding to conservative attacks that claim that the current Democratic administration is “soft” on the border, Harris has also attempted to outcompete Trump for who is toughest on migrants. Harris has bragged that a so-called “border security” bill pushed by the Biden administration was endorsed by the US border patrol. Harris has also pledged to continue funding the border wall by hundreds of millions of dollars.

“The United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill which I supported,” she continued. “And that bill would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border to help those folks who are working there right now over time trying to do their job. It would have allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States,” she asserted during the last presidential debate.

However, this does not change the reality that Trump’s promise to conduct mass deportations of 15 to 20 million people is a major threat. This plan could lead to widespread family separations that could have ripple effects through the entire Latino community in the US, potentially impacting one in three Latinos in the country. Trump’s campaign has defied expectations in his borderline fascistic rhetoric this election cycle, hurling debunked allegations that Haitian migrants are eating other peoples’ pets in Ohio and that Venezuelan migrants are terrorizing tenants in Colorado.

In fact, Trump dubbed his mass deportation plan “Operation Aurora” after the controversy over a building in Aurora, Colorado that was claimed to be taken over by a Venezuelan gang—which turned out to be a falsehood spread by the building’s landlord who had neglected the property for years.

“The border will be sealed. The invasion will be stopped. The migrant flights will end and Kamala’s app for illegals will be shut down immediately, within 24 hours,” Trump has said of his first day in office.

In a video published by Radio Jornalera, Julieta, a Mexican immigrant and part of the Day Laborer Network (NDLON), debunks racist myths spread by both Trump and his vice presidential hopeful J.D. Vance. “Migrants come to find security and a job,” Julieta articulated. “You say that immigrants are bad for the country, but you know who is bad? The liars and the racists.”

But would a Harris administration look significantly different than a second Trump administration? Both Biden and Harris have come under fire by the left for perpetuating not only Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, but many of his same policies.

Biden perpetuated Trump’s immigration policies
While Harris has made attempts to differentiate and distance herself from Biden as a candidate, nothing changes the fact that she serves as the Vice President of the current administration. This is the same administration that has continued to expand the US-Mexico border wall, even waiving federal laws in order to do so.

Earlier in October, the Biden administration announced that it will not renew a program that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, and Nicaragua to stay legally live and work in the US.

Biden’s administration has expelled five times as many migrants as Trump, although a key factor is that far more migrants have crossed the border during Biden’s presidency than during Trump’s, with 2.2 million unauthorized border crossings in 2022, compared to just over 300,000 in 2017. Notably, under the Biden administration, naturalization of immigrants applying for citizenship increased, as well as total refugees admitted, and the number of immigrants permitted to enter the US through immigration parole.

Yet, Biden has also made it more difficult for asylum seekers to find safety in the US. “Seeking asylum is legal and a human right, long recognized in both US and international law,” writes the International Rescue Committee. “The current administration’s June 2024 executive order and ‘Asylum Ban’ rule run contrary to this.” In June, Biden issued an executive order shutting down the US-Mexico border, which temporarily suspends the processing of most asylum claims at the southern border when the seven-day average of crossings exceeds 2,500. Biden extended this asylum ban in September. In response, Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, stated that “This rule is illegal, as we have explained in our pending lawsuit. Today’s announcements do nothing to address the ongoing violations of law.”

These latest asylum restrictions are only one of several that Biden has enacted throughout his administration. On May 11 of 2023, Trump’s Title 42 expired, which had used the COVID-19 emergency as an excuse to swiftly expel migrants at the southern border. Biden moved swiftly to replace Title 42 with a “transit ban” that placed impossible demands on migrants seeking a better life in the United States. Migrants would have to apply for asylum in each country they pass through before reaching the United States, and be rejected, before they can be eligible in the US.

The Biden administration’s crackdown on Haitian immigrants has also been shocking to many, especially following the images circulated of border patrol officers chasing Haitian migrants on horseback with whips.

The Democratic Party administration has also received backlash for its approach to detaining child migrants, a practice which had sparked controversy during both Trump and Barack Obama’s administrations. “No kids in cages” became a straightforward demand of the immigrant rights movement. However, Biden has not ended the practice, and instead reopened two detention facilities for undocumented immigrant minors in 2021, which had been shut down by Trump’s administration following protests and interventions by Democratic Party lawmakers.

US policies cause mass migration
No major establishment candidate has denounced what many refer to as the true causes of mass migration via the US-Mexico border: economic and political destabilization of countries in the Global South, caused by the United States itself.

The US’s undermining of the economic and political sovereignty of other countries has historically been a chief cause of mass migration. One such example are the 2017-2018 migrant caravans originating from Central American countries such as Honduras, where socioeconomic conditions had deteriorated following a US-backed military coup in 2009. This is especially true for Trump’s newest scapegoat, Haitian migrants, who have endured decades of US-backed coups, invasions, and neoliberal labor exploitation. The US has devastated Haitian local agriculture in favor of creating an economy of imports that benefits US industry, while blocking Venezuela from supplying Haiti with much-needed fuel.

In recent years, the strict unilateral coercive measures imposed by the US on countries that defy US interests, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and over 30 others, have inflicted serious devastation onto targeted countries. This economic devastation in turn has fueled record levels of immigration out of these countries.

The Venezuelan migration that Trump so frequently references, is one such case. Venezuela has been facing US sanctions since 2014, but these measures intensified under the Trump administration in 2017 and were followed by a sharp increase in Venezuelan migration (not only to the US). “We began to experience the phenomenon of migration after the implementation of sanctions against Venezuela,” said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil Pinto, “Then we saw a process begin of people leaving, trying to find a better economic income, because, of course, the sanctions have had an enormous economic impact on the country.” This view is not only shared by Venezuelan officials, but also by US lawmakers.

“Experts widely agree that broad-based US sanctions—expanded to an unprecedented level by your predecessor—are a leading contributing factor in the current surge in migration,” reads a letter penned last year by Democrats in the House of Representatives, led by Representative Veronica Escobar and including Nanette Barragán of California, Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona, Greg Casar of Texas, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

According to the US Office of Homeland Security, Venezuelan and Cuban asylum seekers make up the highest proportion of applications for asylum in the United States—two countries targeted heavily by US sanctions.

The Biden administration has refused to lift these measures and ease the economic burden on these two countries and given Trump’s track record of intensifying the sanctions regime on both Venezuela and Cuba, with 243 additional sanctions and the inclusion of Cuba to the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, neither candidate seems to be genuinely invested in addressing the root causes of why people risk everything to come to the United States.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/10/30/ ... ght-think/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 02, 2024 3:16 pm

A No-Win Dilemma for US Peace Voters
Posted on November 2, 2024 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies provide an important service by chronicling some key belligerent actions of the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations and why both are sure to continue and extend US war-mongering. However, anti-war advocates too often seem to overlook opportunities to build strong alliances with other natural opponents of the military-industrial complex, such as environmentalists and green energy advocates and proponents of stronger social safety nets. It may be too much to ask given the urgency of the genocide in Gaza and the potential the Middle East conflicts and the war in Ukraine to trigger a nuclear exchange for peace advocates to up their game as organizers. But that is the task before them if they are to increase their base of support and ability to mobilize it.

Admittedly, a core problem, as the framing of the article makes clear, is the fact that American democracy is not all that democratic. Witness, for instance, the perverse way in which views that score well in polls are demonized as populist and more and more of our elites demand social media censorship. Former US Ambassador Chas Freeman, in a recent interview with Nima of Dialogue Works, points out that our “democracy” is similar to that of the much-pilloried “authoritarian” Iran [starting at 19:30]:



And I think probably Iranian voters, who after all do function in a guided democracy, it is a democracy, it is a guided democracy in which certain positions are ruled out of order for the elections, frankly although that is open and institutionalized in Iran, it’s not that different from other democracies. There are opinions in the United States, for example, the majority of people in the United States want an end to arms sales to Israel, do not want a war with Iran, do not want a wider war in the Middle East. Probably a majority now are against continuing to support Ukraine in the manner we have. And yet our political elite rules their views as out of order and proceeds as though they didn’t exist. So one of the phenomea that has emerged which is deeply disturbing everywhere is elite opinion ignoring popular opinion, manipulating it, but not taking it into consideration so there is a gap between the political establishment and the society as a whole, and this calls democracy into disrepute and it threatens it. And this is the case in almost every democracy that I know these days.

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, the authors ofWar in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022. Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq

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On October 24th, a U.S. presidential candidate told an interviewer, “Our day one agenda… also includes picking up the phone and telling Bibi Netanyahu that the war is over, because it’s basically our proxy war. We control the armaments, the funding, the diplomatic cover, the intelligence, etc., so we can end this in the blink of an eye with a single phone call, which is what Ronald Reagan did when Israel had gone into Lebanon and was massacring thousands of people. So we can do that right now. That’s day one.”

Tragically, the candidate who said that was not Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, but Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Most Americans have been persuaded that Stein cannot win the election, and many believe that voting for her in swing states will help elect Trump by siphoning voters from Harris.

There are many other “third-party” candidates for president, and many of them have good policy proposals for ending the genocidal U.S.-Israeli massacre in Gaza. As the website for Claudia de la Cruz, the presidential candidate for the Party of Socialism and Liberation, explains, “Our tax dollars should be used to meet people’s needs — not pay for the bullets, bombs and missiles used in the massacre in Gaza.”

Many of the principles and policy proposals of “third-party” and independent candidates are more in line with the views of most Americans than those of Harris or Trump. This is hardly surprising given the widely recognized corruption of the U.S. political system. While Trump cynically flip-flops to appeal to both sides on many questions, and Harris generally avoids committing to policy specifics at all, especially regarding foreign policy, most Americans understand that they are both more beholden to the billionaires and corporate interests who fund their campaigns than to the well-being of working Americans or the future of the planet.

Michael Moore has published a flier titled “This Is America,” which shows that large majorities of Americans support “liberal” positions on 18 different issues, from a ceasefire in Gaza to Medicare For All to getting money out of politics.

Moore implies that this should be reassuring to Democrats and Harris supporters, and it would be if she was running on those positions. But, for the most part, she isn’t. On the other hand, many third party and independent candidates for president are running on those positions, but the anti-democratic U.S. political system ensures that they can’t win, even when most Americans agree with them.

War and militarism are the most deadly and destructive forces in human society, with real world, everyday, physical impacts that kill or maim people and destroy their homes, communities and entire countries. So it is deeply disturbing that the political system in the United States has been corrupted into bipartisan subservience to a military-industrial complex (or MICIMATT, to use a contemporary term) that wields precisely the “unwarranted influence” that President Eisenhower warned us against 64 years ago, and uses its influence to drag us into wars that wreak death and destruction in country after country.

Apart from brief wars to recover small neocolonial outposts in Grenada, Panama and Kuwait, all now many decades ago, the U.S. military has not won a war since 1945. It systematically fails on its own terms, while its nakedly lethal and destructive power only fills graveyards and leaves countries in ruins. Far from being an effective vehicle to project American power, unleashing the brutality of the U.S. war machine has become the fastest, surest way to further undermine America’s international standing in the eyes of our neighbors.

After so many wars under so many administrations of both parties, neither Republicans nor Democrats can claim to be a “lesser evil” on questions of war and peace, let alone a “peace party.”

As with so many of America’s problems, from the expansion of corporate and oligarchic power to the generational decline in living standards, the combined impact of decades of Democratic and Republican government is more dangerous, more lasting and more intractable than the policies of any single administration. On no question is this more obvious than on questions of war and peace.

For decades, there was a small but growing progressive wing in the Democratic Party that voted against record military spending and opposed U.S. wars, occupations and coups. But when Bernie Sanders ran for president and millions of grassroots Democrats rallied around his progressive agenda, the Party leaders and their corporate, plutocratic backers fought back more aggressively to defeat Bernie and the progressives than they ever fought to win elections against the Republicans, or to oppose the war on Iraq or tax cuts for the wealthy.

This year, flush with blood money from the Israel lobby, pro-Israel Democrats defeated two of the most progressive, public-spirited Democratic members of Congress, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.

On the Republican side, in response to the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, the libertarian Republican member of Congress Ron Paul led a small group of Republicans to join progressive Democrats in an informal bipartisan peace caucus in Congress. In recent years though, the number of members of either party willing to take any kind of stand for peace has shrunk dramatically. So while there are now over 100 Congressional caucuses, from the Candy Caucus to the Pickleball Caucus, there is still not one for peace.

After the neocons who provided the ideological fuel for Bush’s catastrophic wars reconvened around Hillary Clinton in 2016, President Trump tried to “make America’s military great again” by appointing retired generals to his cabinet and characteristically staking out positions all over the map, from a call to kill the families of “terrorists” to a National Defense Strategy naming Russia and China as the “central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security,” to casting himself as a peacemaker by trying to negotiate a peace treaty with North Korea.

Trump is now running against Biden’s war in Ukraine and trying to have it both ways on Gaza, with undying support for Israel and a promise to end the war immediately. Some Palestinian-Americans are supporting Trump for not being the VP for Genocide Joe, just as other people support Harris for not being Trump.

But most Americans know little about Trump’s actual war policy as president. The unique value of a leader like Trump to the military-industrial complex is that he draws attention to himself and diverts attention away from U.S. atrocities overseas.


In 2017, Trump’s first year in office, he oversaw the climax of Obama’s war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which probably killed as many civilians as Israel has massacred in Gaza. In that year alone, the U.S. and its allies dropped over 60,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan,Yemen, Libya, Pakistan and Somalia. That was the heaviest bombing since the first Gulf War in 1991, and double the destruction of the “Shock & Awe” bombing of Iraq in 2003.

Most chillingly, the Iraqi forces who defeated the last remnants of ISIS in Mosul’s Old City were ordered to kill all the survivors, fulfilling Trump’s threat to “take out their families.” “We killed them all,” an Iraqi soldiertold Middle East Eye. “Daesh, men, women and children. We killed everyone.” If anyone is counting on Trump to save the people of Gaza from Netanyahu and Biden’s genocide, that should be a reality check.

In other areas, Trump’s back-pedaling on Obama’s diplomatic achievements with Iran and Cuba have led to new crises for both those countries on the eve of this election. By moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, bribing Arab despots with ‘Abraham’ deals, and encouraging Netanyahu’s Greater Israel ambitions, Trump primed the powder-keg for the genocide in Gaza and the new crisis in the Middle East under Biden.

On the other side, Harris shares responsibility for genocide, arguably the most serious international crime in the book. To make matters worse, she has connived in a grotesque scheme to provide cover for the genocide by pretending to be working for a ceasefire that, as Jill Stein and many others have said, the U.S. could enforce “in the blink of an eye, with a single phone call” if it really wanted to. As for the future, Harris has only committed to making the U.S. military even more “lethal.”

The movement for a Free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza has failed to win the support of the Republican or Democratic presidential campaigns. But this is not a failure on the part of the Palestinian-Americans we have listened to and worked with, who have engaged in brilliant organizing, gradually raised public awareness and won over more Americans to their cause. They are leading the most successful anti-war organizing campaign in America since the Iraq War.

The refusal of Trump or Harris to listen to the calls of Americans whose families are being massacred in Gaza, and now in Lebanon too, is a failure on the part of the corrupt, anti-democratic political system of which Trump and Harris are figureheads, not a failure of activism or organizing.

Whomever each of us votes for in the presidential election, the campaign to end the genocide in Gaza will continue, and we must grow stronger and smarter and more inclusive until politicians cannot ignore us, no matter how much money the Israel lobby and other corrupt interests throw at them, or at their political opponents.

Whomever we vote for, the elephant in the room will still be US militarism and the violence and chaos it inflicts on the world. Whether Trump or Harris is president, the result will be more of the same, unless we do something to change it. As legendary Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu famously said, “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”

No American should be condemned for voting for a candidate of their choice, however successfully the Democrats and Republicans have marginalized the very concept of multi-party democracy that the U.S. claims to support in other countries. Whoever wins this election, we must find a way to put peace back on this country’s national agenda, and to make our collective voices heard in ways that cannot be drowned out by oligarchs with big bags of cash.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11 ... oters.html

The Organs of State Security Involved in Authenticating Election 2024 (or Not)
Posted on November 1, 2024 by Lambert Strether
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Readers will recall my view that the distinctive competence of the modern political party is control over the ballot: Who gets listed on it, how and when it gets cast (and who gets to cast it), how it is counted, and the validity of the count[1]. In the modern era, since Bush v. Gore (2000), this question of validity (“certification”) has assumed increasing importance, and since Trump (2016—), the “intelligence community” (IC) [2] has become increasingly involved with it, under the aegis of preventing “election interference.” (This effort is closely allied with the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” with its notions of misinformation and disinformation.)

Readers will also recall my view that the modern political party is in fact quite hard to put a boundary around, but that the Democrat Party can be thought of as a network that includes electeds, funders, vendors, apparatchiks, NGOs, miscellaneous mercenaries, most of the press, and the dominant figures in the intelligence community (all, of course, centered on the ballot, as above).

This post started out, and I really hoped was going to end up as, a simple listing of the intelligence agencies (“spooks”, OED sense 2[3]) involved with “election integrity.”[4] However, in the collective, trackless Gish Gallop that is our contemporary discourse, “Foreign Malign Influence Center” was suddenly all over the field, and I had to add material to cover it, which is interesting and revealing, as we shall see.

The institutional fluidity of the Democrat Party allows events like the following to take place. From Politico (2020), “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say“:

More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The letter, signed on Monday, centers around a batch of documents released by the New York Post last week that purport to tie the Democratic nominee to his son Hunter’s business dealings. Under the banner headline “Biden Secret E-mails,” the Post reported it was given a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive by President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who said he got it from a Mac shop owner in Delaware who also alerted the FBI.

While the letter’s signatories presented no new evidence, they said their national security experience had made them “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case” and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin’s hand at work./p>

“If we are right,” they added, “this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”


Later, of course, it turned out that the letter was not quite as spontaneous (“dozens of former intel officials say“) as we had first supposed. From the Wall Street Journal (2023), “The Hunter Biden Laptop Disinformation Is Exposed“:

Now we have this deposed transcript with [Michael Morell, former acting CIA director] in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, and he says that three days after the Post story broke, he got a call from Antony Blinken who was at that time, a senior age, the Biden campaign, who is now Secretary of State, saying, “What’d you think of this story?” And the way the letters put it is that while he apparently called, mostly is just gathering Morell’s reaction to it. Morell acknowledged that prior to Blinken’s call, he didn’t have any intent to write this statement. After Blinken’s call, he got all the rest of the intelligence officials together and put it out there. The Biden campaign also apparently helped strategize its release in terms of who it went to in the press. And so the bottom line is, this letter that supposedly was this automatic response from some of these officials that they felt they needed to set the record straight. In fact, the Biden campaign had been involved in the genesis of this statement, which it then went on to use to refute any of the claims that were out there.

Summarizing, the letter was arranged by the Biden campaign, through its then campaign operative, Anthony Blinken, and the spooks were only too happy to co-operate (supporting Gramsci’s concept, if I summarize correctly, that the State (the CIA) and civil society (the Biden campaign) are only separable as objects of study, and in fact are two aspects of a single ruling class).

Given the above, therefore, in what follows we need to disabuse ourselves from the notion that intelligence officials are in any way politically neutral. Many, perhaps most, of them are; but when a perceived emergency coincides with the appropriate permission structure — say, the election of a “Hitler” — the professional integument bursts asunder, and party is revealed (rather like the chestbuster scene in Alien, except with 50 former senior aliens[5]).

In this post, then, I’ll first present that simple list; if and when any of them appear in the news, at least we’ll have a scorecard that lists the players. Then I willl dig into the “Foreign Malign Influence Center.” I’ll conclude with some more speculation on the structure of the Democrat Party.

Spooks Involved with “Election Integrity”

Let me caveat that this list is the result of some reasonably persistent searching. I can’t claim to have found every Federal intelligence agency involved with election integrity (and I didn’t even look at the states (or the localities; looking at you, NYPD)). Nor can I claim that I understand the org chart, let alone the real relationships). In any case, here they are (and there are rather a lot):

DHS (Department of Homeland Security). From their Election Security page:

We recognize the fundamental link between the trust in election infrastructure and the confidence the American public places in basic democratic function. A secure and resilient electoral process is a vital national interest and one of our highest priorities at the Department of Homeland Security.

We are committed to working collaboratively with those on the front lines of elections – state and local government, election officials, federal partners and the vendor community – to manage risks to election infrastructure. We will remain transparent as well as agile to combat and secure our physical and cyber infrastructure against new and evolving threats.

DHS has a sub-agency, CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency):

CISA’s services are available at no cost to the state and local government and officials. All services we provide are available upon request and are strictly voluntary, CISA only provides services when requested by state and local election officials.

Key areas of our services include the following:

Cybersecurity Advisors and Protective Security Advisors, regionally located personnel who offer state and local governments, as well as private sector partners, immediate and sustained assistance, coordination, and outreach to prepare for and protect from cyber and physical threats.
Cybersecurity Assessments, such as Cyber Hygiene Scanning, Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, and Cyber Resilience Reviews.
Detection and Prevention, such as Cyber Threat Hunting and Enhanced Cyber Services.
Information Sharing and Awareness, such as National Cyber Awareness System alerts and advisories, and the Homeland Security Information Network portal.
Incident Response, provides 24/7 intrusion analysis in response to cyber incident.
Training and Career Development, including the Federal Virtual Training Environment (FedVTE) cybersecurity training, and National Initiative for Cybersecurity Careers and Studies Catalog.
Additional Resources

Election Infrastructure Security Resource Guide
Glossary of commonly used cyber terminology (Note: this glossary is based on standard definitions, and is not intended to be technically comprehensive)


FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). From the Election Crimes and Security page:

Fair elections are the foundation of our democracy, and the FBI is committed to protecting the rights of all Americans to vote.

The U.S. government only works when legal votes are counted and when campaigns follow the law. When the legitimacy of elections is corrupted, our democracy is threatened.

While individual states run elections, the FBI plays an important role in protecting federal interests and preventing violations of your constitutional rights.

An election crime is generally a federal crime if:

The ballot includes one or more federal candidates

An election or polling place official abuses their office

The conduct involves false voter registration

The crime intentionally targets minority protected classes

The activity violates federal campaign finance laws


And from Election Crimes and Security:

The FBI is the lead federal agency responsible for investigating foreign influence operations. In the fall of 2017, Director Christopher Wray established the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) to identify and counteract malign foreign influence operations targeting the United States.

Foreign influence operations have taken many forms and used many tactics over the years. Most widely reported these days are attempts by adversaries—hoping to reach a wide swath of Americans covertly from outside the United States—to use false personas and fabricated stories on social media platforms to discredit U.S. individuals and institutions.

Other influence operations by adversaries include:

Targeting U.S. officials and other U.S. persons through traditional intelligence tradecraft
Criminal efforts to suppress voting and provide illegal campaign financing
Cyber attacks against voting infrastructure, along with computer intrusions targeting elected officials and others
ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)


From the FMIC (“Foreign Malign Influence Center” home page, “We Lead The IC’s Efforts to Protect The United States From Foreign Malign Influence“:

We mitigate threats to democracy and U.S national interests from foreign malign influence (FMI) by managing the Intelligence Community’s (IC’s) collection resources, building partnerships, and advancing strategic analysis, while protecting the privacy and civil liberties of the American people.

FMIC serves as the primary U.S. Government organization for integrating intelligence pertaining to foreign malign influence (FMI), including on election security. FMI is defined as subversive, undeclared, coercive, or criminal activities by foreign governments, non-state actors, or their proxies to affect another nation’s popular or political attitudes, perceptions, or behaviors to advance their interests.

To address the persistent and dynamic threat from foreign malign influence, the FMIC team engages with colleagues from a wide variety of institutions, including other IC agencies, the wider U.S. Government (including law enforcement and diplomatic elements), the private sector, civil society, and the academy.


(More on the FMIC below.) Non-IC Federal actors include DOJ (United States Department of Justice), the EAC (United States Election Assistance Commission), and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). For those who have long memories, I should also mention Fusion Centers, which Obama used to suppress Occupy. Washington D.C.’s Fusion Center is interesting, because it seems to be operating with a national scope. WaPo, “As midterms near, D.C. fusion center watches for political violence“:

As the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election approach, analysts at D.C.’s fusion center are scanning social media and browsing the dark corners of the internet, looking for threats against election officials in battleground states and large rallies that could turn violent.

D.C. has had a fusion center — where analysts gather threat-related information and distribute it to other local, state and federal agencies — since 2012, but will soon break ground on a new facility in the Navy Yard area. The new facility’s Emergency Operations Center is about 9,000 square feet — three times the size of the previous facility — and will have larger, better-equipped conference rooms, officials said.

For the midterms, [Christopher Rodriguez, the Director of D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency], said the city has contacts with the other 79 fusion centers in the country…


Now let’s turn to FMIC, in detail.

The “Foreign Malign Influence Center”

The New Yorker’s David D. Kirkpatrick, “The U.S. Spies Who Sound the Alarm About Election Interference” begins with local color:

The Intelligence Community Campus-Bethesda, a vast office complex covered in vertical panels of maroon siding and mirrored glass, sits on a cliff overlooking the Potomac, surrounded by a forty-acre lawn and a tall wrought-iron fence. Roughly three thousand employees of various United States spy agencies work there. About two dozen of them are assigned to the Foreign Malign Influence Center—the command hub of the battle to protect the Presidential election from manipulation by foreign powers. The center, which opened in 2022, is responsible for deciphering, and defeating, surreptitious efforts to rig or tilt the American vote. The October before an election is the busy season.

And the story begins with an interview:

Jessica Brandt, a forty-year-old newcomer to the intelligence world, is the center’s first director. Before her appointment, last year, she’d spent her career writing research papers at Washington think tanks, most recently on “digital authoritarianism”—the way dictators use technology to control or manipulate people, at home and abroad. At a thirty-seat conference table in the center, we talked about her move from theory to practice. Now that Brandt has access to classified intelligence, she knows as much as anyone about how foreign powers are trying to tamper with American elections.

“Writing research papers at Washington think tanks” seems curiously vague for a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, especially one who started his career as a fact checker. So who is Jessica Brandt? From her bio at JustSecurity:

Jessica Brandt (@jessbrandt) is Head of Policy and research at the Alliance for Securing Democracy. She is a David Rockefeller Fellow of the Trilateral Commission and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Let’s stop our knees from jerking at the mention of the Trilateral Commission and the CFR, and ask: What is the Alliance for Securing Democracy? (From Brandt’s CV, she was at both ASD and GMF 2019-21, immediately after the events I am about to relate.) From the German Marshall Fund (GMF):

The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a nonpartisan initiative housed at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, develops comprehensive strategies to deter, defend against, and raise the costs on autocratic efforts to undermine and interfere in democratic institutions. ASD has staff in Washington, D.C., and Brussels, bringing together experts on disinformation, malign finance, emerging technologies, elections integrity, economic coercion, and cybersecurity, as well as Russia, China, and the Middle East, to collaborate across traditional stovepipes and develop cross-cutting frameworks.

More to the point:

The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) is a political advocacy group formed in July 2017.

The organization is chaired and run primarily by former senior United States intelligence and State Department officials.


(In other words, when Kirkpatrick writes that Brandt is “a forty-year-old newcomer to the intelligence world,” he’s just wrong.) Even more to the point, ASD created the notorious Hamilton 68 Dashboard. From Matt Taibbi, interviewed by Chris Hedges, in “Hamilton 68: How former intelligence officials and Democratic operatives conspired to manufacture “Russiagate’”

[TAIBBI:][T]he shortcut version of this story is that after Trump won the election, Chris, there was immediately a series of stories coming from different directions saying that the election was illegitimate, that Trump had been assisted by Russians, that there was some kind of collusion going on, and that there was disinformation in the news media that had been amplified by Russian accounts that Trump’s own accounts and hashtags and tweets had been amplified by Russian forces. And then formally in, I believe it was August of 2017, this group Hamilton 68 came out. It’s an outgrowth of both the German Marshall Fund and a think tank called the Alliance for Securing Democracy. And it was basically a tool designed to be used by reporters and academics that “track Russian disinformation” by monitoring accounts that were called linked, “linked to Russian influence activities online.”

Now, they never disclosed what was on this list or what they were actually tracking, and it was only by accident looking through some Twitter files, emails that we find this big conversation where internally Twitter is saying, we’ve got the list. We’ve reversed engineered it, and they’re not Russians. These are mostly ordinary people. Out of 644 accounts, only 36 of them began in Russia, and most of the rest of them, from what I’ve found, were ordinary people, a lot of them right leaning, but some of them on the left, too. So it was a fraud. It was a big gigantic media fraud


And Taibbi writes, in “Matt Taibbi: Move Over, Jason Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud,” hammering home the partisan connections:

Hamilton 68 was and is a computerized “dashboard” designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure “Russian disinformation.” It was the brainchild of former FBI agent (and current MSNBC “disinformation expert”) Clint Watts, and backed by the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan think-tank. The latter’s advisory panel includes former acting CIA chief Michael Morell, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary for America chair John Podesta, and onetime Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.

And:

This was not faulty science. It was a scam. Instead of tracking how “Russia” influenced American attitudes, Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming. As Roth put it, “Virtually any conclusion drawn from [the dashboard] will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.”

Now let’s return to Brandt’s CV. I have examined her two-and-one-half pages of “Select Recent Publications.” Of the eight articles that might have reasonably have mentioned the Hamilton 68 project — Mueller’s investigation is over. Russia’s election meddling isn’t (2019), How global efforts to limit disinformation could infringe speech (2019), How Not to Handle Security Threats to Our Elections (2019), Defending 2020 (2021), How Democracies Can Win an Information Contest Without Undercutting Their Values (2021), and When democracies employ repressive technology, what are the repercussions? (2023) — none did, whether pre-Taibbi, as a success, or post-Taibbi, as a debacle. A strange omission for ASD’s Head of Policy and Research! And a question that surely Kirkpatrick might have asked?

(Tantalizingly, ASD’s Wikipedia’s page has a “See also” entry for Propornot, which, aided by Marty Baron’s WaPo, attacked Naked Capitalism in 2018. ProporNot, however, which looks like a crude and early version of Hamilton 68, seems to be a creature of The Atlantic Council, not ASD, although its definitely spook-adjacent. See Yves on Propornot here.)

The bottom line is that Brandt walks, as it were, both sides of the the street: She may very well be a spook defending the country against election-related foreign malign information, but she has also been intimately involved with spook-adjacent and -filled institutions that created and weaponized domestic malign information that smeared US citizens, civilians, exercising their First Amendment rights, on behalf of one political party, and so far as I can tell without a moment of self-reflection. If she took any responsibility for the debacle, her CV certainly doesn’t show it. And yet all that goes unquestioned in Kirkpatrick’s piece, which we must now sadly characterize as “puff.” Down the memory hole it goes!

Conclusion

So now ASD’s Jessica Brandt is taking point for election integrity at ODNI’s Foreign Malign Influence Center; what she comes up with will surely be not without interest, especially in the event of a Trump victory. In that case, one might wonder whether questions about the validity of the balloting could be raised, particularly if foreign malign influence were to be “assessed,” as with RussiaGate. I am sure we will all follow Brandt’s career with interest, now that The New Yorker has introduced her to a broader public. I make no predictions, but I do indicate possibilities. These people, after all, have form.

* * *
I said I’d speculate a bit on the structure of the Democrat Party, which seems to be top-of-mind with a variety of people. Eric Raymond, of open source software fame, has this to say:

I think it’s because the Democratic fraud machine isn’t a single organization with a unitary command structure. It’s decentralized in order to be deniable – a bunch of little, relatively localized criminal conspiracies run by GOTV operatives and corrupted partisan bureaucrats, a stochastic network the DNC funds but deliberately doesn’t control or coordinate.

And from Roger Kimball in The Spectator:

By “the Syndicate” (what I sometimes call “the Committee”), I of course mean the shadowy board of overseers that controls the Democratic Party and, by extension, the administrative apparatus that governs us. No one knows exactly who sits on this board. I suspect that even those who, in retrospect, we can see have occupied senior positions in its ranks are often uncertain about their place in the hierarchy.

Elsewhere, I have invoked C.S. Lewis’s idea of “The Inner Ring” to explain the dynamics of this phenomenon. In every social organization, Lewis noted, there exist two hierarchies. One is an official and public hierarchy. The other is covert. The names of its members are “not printed anywhere.”

You are never formally and explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable ways, that it exists and that you are outside it and then later, perhaps, that you are inside it… It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is inside and who is outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously out, but there are always several on the borderline.


I think Raymond has the right structure but the wrong scale; and Kimball has the right scale but the wrong structure. A “stochastic network” makes sense to me, but at the national level (though to be fair, Raymond is talking about election fraud, typically local); and “the Inner Ring” that “governs us” makes sense, too, but there is no single board. The phrase “emergent Flex-Net” popped into my head, but that is a post for another day.

NOTES

[1] Note that the Electoral College can be considered a form of balloting, too.

[2] There is, amusingly, a government site called “The Intelligence Community,” which includes 18 agencies, but has no About page. The page has an ODNI logo on it, so I assume that’s who runs it.

[3] Sense 3: “A derogatory term for a black person.” That’s not my intent. My impression is that this usage is now fading (Merriam-Webster leaves it out.) I’ve been using “spook” to mean intelligence operative for some time, and that usage seems never to have given offense. And I’ve never been able to come up with a better term. In any case, LeCarré has been said to have used it.

[4] Never eat at a place called “Mom’s.”

[5] None of whom were ever reprimanded, and many of whom are still making bank on national television.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11 ... r-not.html

******

Image

Vote However You Feel; This Whole Show Is About Feelings Anyway

Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re doing anything other than sucking on an emotional pacifier, because you’re not.

Caitlin Johnstone
November 2, 2024

My one and only position on how Americans should vote is that they should do whatever makes them feel nice, since that’s all US presidential elections are: an emotional pacifier to let the masses feel like they have some meaningful control over their country. It’s about feelings and nothing else.

If voting for Kamala Harris makes you feel nice because it lets you pretend you’re stopping fascism or protecting women and minorities or helping to secure a ceasefire in Gaza or whatever, then go right ahead. That’s what your vote is there for.

If voting for Donald Trump makes you feel nice because it lets you pretend you’re sticking it to the establishment or punishing the Democrats for their misdeeds or ending the wars or whatever, then by all means do so. This whole spectacle is exclusively about feelings.

If voting for a third party makes you feel nice because it lets you pretend there might be some answer in electoral politics or that the empire will ever allow anyone who truly opposes the abuses of capitalism, militarism and imperialism anywhere near power, then get in there and cast that vote. Whatever makes your feely bits feel nice.

Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re doing anything other than sucking on an emotional pacifier, because you’re not.

No matter how you vote, Democrats will continue to win approximately half the time, and Republicans will win the other half.

No matter how you vote, the ever-expanding abuses of capitalism and plutocracy will continue making life worse for ordinary Americans.

No matter how you vote, the US war machine will continue inflicting nightmarish mass military violence on people in other countries in order to maintain its globe-spanning empire.

No matter how you vote, the profit-driven systems which rule our world will continue exterminating our biosphere at an alarmingly rapid rate.

No matter how you vote, the empire’s looming confrontations with Russia and China guarantee more world-threatening nuclear brinkmanship in the near future.

No matter how you vote, people in the global south will continue to be robbed and exploited to give the western citizenry of the imperial core enough cheap stuff to keep them pacified and compliant.

No matter how you vote, the US will continue using starvation sanctions, blockades and economic warfare to bully weaker nations into obedience.

Your rulers will never give you the tools to end any of these abuses, because too much power rides on their continuation. They will only give you the tools to mollify your own frustrations and placate your discontentment by giving you a phony ritual to participate in every four years that lets you feel some degree of control.

You’re never voting your way out of this. The oligarchs and empire managers who rule you are never going to let you overthrow them by ticking a box. These sociopaths are never going to give their power to you voluntarily out of the kindness of their hearts.

Their rule will end when the project of the US empire ends — either because of outside forces beyond their control, because of inside forces beyond their control, or some combination of these two factors. It will not come about because of how anyone voted in any November. It will only happen because it was forced to happen.

You can help force this to happen by working to foment a revolutionary zeitgeist within your country. You can do this by helping to wake up as many of your countrymen as possible to the fact that their government and media are lying to them constantly, that everything they’ve been taught about their nation and their world is false, and that a better world is possible.

Lies and propaganda play an enormous role in holding the imperial power structure together, so the most effective way to help bring it down is by spreading truth and awareness. Show people how they’re being lied to, abused and stolen from. Teach them the truth about the wars, about their government, about their media, about their nation, about the people their government has designated as enemies, and about the abusive systems they all live under.

That’s real action. That kind of work matters. Your vote doesn’t matter beyond its ability to help you feel a certain way. So do whatever you need to do to feel how you want to feel on election day, and then go do some real work.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/11 ... gs-anyway/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 04, 2024 4:22 pm

“The Ballot is Stronger than the Bullet,” So Let the Games Begin!
Posted on November 3, 2024 by Lambert Strether

“Which is it going to be, that’s all? The conspiracy or the f*ck-up?” –John LeCarré, The Honorable Schoolboy

Not that I’m jaded. Or cynical. In any case, the quotation in the headline is not from Lincoln, like so many other quotes from Lincoln that are not[1]; that was the catchphrase that came to hand with “ballot” in it. In any case, let’s hope it’s true, provenance aside.

If the legitimacy of election 2024 is to be contested, by either (any) Party, balloting issues and claims are likely to figure largely in the discourse, and in whatever measures each party takes, as they did in 2000, 2004, 2016 (in the electoral college), and 2020 [2]. In this post, I will not look in any detail at current ballot-related legal challenges; the numbers exceed my capacity, so it makes more sense to see what shakes out. In any case, many if not most of them are frivolous (and that goes twofold, threefold, tenfold for unauthenticated — “Look! A truck! By the side of the road!” — videos on the Twitter. When “citizen journalism” actually becomes journalism, that’s gonna be great, but we are so not there yet).

Instead, to aid understanding the debacle I devoutly hope will not happen on Election Day and days following, I will first look at the inordinate complexity (hence vulnerabilty) of our balloting systems; there’s rather a lot of it. I will then take a cursory, swift look at current controversies in swing states. I’ll conclude with the hope that if there is a debacle, we’ll learn from it MR SUBLIMINAL Fat chance!

Complexities and Vulnerabilities of our Balloting System

First, let’s check in with the spooks, starting with a handy Diagram from the Department of Homeland Security:

Image

Let’s not think of this as just a diagram; let’s think of it — as the spooks probably do — as a map of attack surfaces, which I’ve helpfully highlighted. At the bottom of the diagram, highlighted in yellow, we have traditional (non-digital) methods, all of which were executed in Ohio 2004: “equipment” (which can be concentrated in favored precincts, thinned out in disfavored ones, or fail altogether, depending), “voting locations” (ditto), “opening and closing polls” (ditto), “processing votes” (slow or fast, depending), and “publishing unofficial results” (as FOX did in Florida 2000, causing Gore to concede, though he later unconceded). At the top of the diagram, in red, I have underlined modern (digital) methods: online registration, voting machines, optical scan voting ballots, DRE machines, Optical Scans, Email, Fax, “Electronically,” and audits (because IIRC some audits simply consist of running the ballots through a scanning machine as a second time.

Past use of traditional attack surfaces proves that, no matter how trustworthy the vast majority of election workers are, wrongdoing still happens (“If men were angels, no government would be necessary”).

For digital attack surfaces, suffice to day that digital = hackable, by definition (Edgers Dijkstra: “Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence”, a bug being a potential attack surface for a bad actor. Ken Thompson: “The moral is obvious. You can’t trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.)”[3]

Now let’s look at the Brennan Center (more here), who assure us that everything is hunky-dory:

Since 2020, the nation’s electoral apparatus has upgraded its equipment, tightened its procedures, improved its audits, and hardened its defenses against subversion by bad actors, foreign or domestic. Ballot tabulators [but not voting machines?] are air-gapped from the Internet [how about USB sticks] and voter-verified paper records are the norm.

Let’s stop right there. By “voter-verified paper records” the Brennan Center means that the voting machine prints out a paper ballot (in essence, a receipt) so that the voter can “verify” a print-out against the choices they made on screen. There are two difficulties with this. First, many people simply trust the machine and don’t do the check at all (do you carefully verify every receipt you are given?). That opens the way for a stochastic process where some altered votes slip through due to a hacked system. There are two additional problems, depending on the architecture used. (1) If, as in the VSAP system used in Los Angeles, the voting machine transmits results digitally to the ballot counter, and then, in parallel, prints out a receipt for the voter, the real ballot is the digital transmission, not the paper receipt. The two don’t have to match, the voting machine could have been hacked, and so there is no verification at all. (2) If the voting machine prints out a receipt and then, in sequence, the receipt is scanned by a digital ballot counter, that simply moves the digital attack surface to the ballot counter.

Needless to say, I don’t find that underlined sentence from the Brennan Center a confidence builder. But let’s go on:

At the heart of that system are nonpartisan election officials at the federal, state, county, and local level who are dedicated to delivering a free and fair election. Poll workers will verify the identity and registration of every person who casts a ballot, in person or by mail. When polls close on Election Day, sooner in some states, election workers will begin tabulating early and mail-in ballots and in-person votes, usually on [hackable] scanning machines. As they proceed, officials will secure counted ballots, compile the results from the [hackable] tabulation machines, and save worksheets and (for 98% of votes cast[4]) paper records for official and public review. The entire procedure is overseen by poll watchers from both parties.

I yield to nobody in my admiration for the church ladies who carefully cross my name off the registration list, hand me my paper ballot, and then give me my “I voted” sticker (and I think hassling them is really vile, and should stop). That said, the key issue is not how the system operates on the whole and on the average. In an election that (almost) universally expected to be close, only a few insiders in a few precincts in some of the seven swing states are required to hack the outcome (and you can bet that there are “black hats” whose very expensive business it is to know those insiders, those precincts, those states, and, of course, the hack. And very few of them go up in small planes). And finally:

No human enterprise that spans tens of thousands of polling places, hundreds of thousands of election officials, and more than 150 million projected voters can aspire to be flawless, says Jen Easterly, a former Army intelligence officer who directs the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). “There could be a ransomware attack on an election office,” Easterly says. “There could be a distributed denial of service attack on a website, so you can’t see election-night reporting. Somebody will forget their key to a polling place, so they could open late. A storm may bring down a power line, so a polling place needs to be moved.”

(We will see in a moment how disingenuous the Brennan Center is, describing CISA’s Easterly as “former Army intelligence officer.” The New Yorker played the same trick with FMIC’s Jessica Brandt). I also yield to nobody in my admiration for election workers generally, and in my frustration at the enormous number of human errors that get blown up into malfeasance on social media, generally without attestation. More:

What matters, she says, is that election officials have trained for all those contingencies. “They are prepared to meet the moment and to deal with any disruption,” she says. Easterly and her state counterparts play this message of reassurance on repeat, interview after interview and speech after speech. It has the virtue of being true. There really are playbooks and backup procedures and well-designed mitigation plans for every bad thing they have ever seen happen to an election, and none of those bad things pose a genuine threat to the integrity of the vote.

“Every bad thing”? No. Except for one. Can you guess? Take a moment:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ? (“Who watches the watchers“, Juvenal, c. 100 AD).

100AD, what would be… 2024 – 100 = 1924 years ago. That’s a lot! And Jen Easterly “was deployed to Baghdad as chief of the cryptologic services group for the National Security Agency. She also worked for NSA’s elite Tailored Access Operations,” the “hacking unit” exposed by Edward Snowden, that infiltrated computers around the world. Clearly, if there’s a “watcher” who, wearing a White Hat, is equipped to protect all those digital attack surfaces, it’s Jen Easterly. Equally clearly, if there’s a watcher who, wearing a Black Hat, is equipped to hack them, it is also Jen Easterly[5]. That would be a Bad Thing. And yet hacking, in general, goes unmentioned both by the Brennan Center and Easterly. Odd!

Now, I would never attribute means (***cough*** Tailored Access ***cough***), opportunity (***cough*** CISA directorship ***cough***), or motive (***cough*** Orange Hitler ***cough***) to Easterly without any evidence. But I don’t have to. We’re talking systems, not persons. The principle to keep in mind here is Akerlof and Shiller’s “Phishing Equilibrium” (see NC here, here, and here), which I summarize as: “If fraud can happen, it will already have happened.” The same principle applies in the famous joke about the two economists walking down the street. One spots a twenty dollar bill lying in the street, and bends to pick it up. The other stops him, saying “If that twenty were real, somebody would already have picked it up.” Every digital attack surface could be that real twenty dollar bill. The goal of election security, therefore, should not be to create a three-ring binder with a page for every contingency — except, naturally, for Black Hat insider attacks, because who knows, we might need them some day — but to simplify the system so the number of attack surfaces is as minimal as possible. Why leave twenty dollar bills on the street?

And speaking of twenty bucks lying in the street, here’s a tweet from Marc Elias, Democrat election lawyer extraordinaire and the cut-out through whom the Clinton campaign laundered its payments to spook Christopher Steele, of dossier fame. Democracy Docket is Elias’s website:
Marc E. Elias
@marceelias
·
Follow
NEW: A record setting 200 voting and election cases have been filed in 2024. The states with the most:
Pennsylvania 27
Georgia 24
Nevada 15
Wisconsin 14
Arizona 13

For a limited time, Democracy Docket is offering $20 off premium membership. http://democracydocket.com/member-me/
4:19 PM · Nov 2, 2024
The Harris campaign has a billion dollars and counting, unless they’re lying. Are they paying Elias in such meagre coin that he’s got to hit up the rubes? With that, let’s turn to the Swing States.

Recent Balloting Issues in Swing States

Let me caveat once more that I make no attempt to be exhaustive; the tweets that follow are simply the latest Swing State-related froth from my Twitter timeline. However, readers, if you live in any of these seven states and have anecdotes or links you wish to share in comments, please do so!

Arizona

Curing ballots:
MLS
@Michael90937613
·
Follow
Arizona is a crucial state where we need every blue vote!

Help make sure ALL votes are counted by "curing” ballots that have mistakes (like missing signature). Learn how you can make sure EVERYONE'S voice is heard.

#Voterizer #KamalaDeliversJoyToUS
Image
Swell, if it’s non-partisan, which this clearly is not.

Georgia

“Georgia judge says voters can hand in mail ballots in rejection of GOP lawsuit” [FOX]. “A judge in Georgia on Saturday dismissed a Republican lawsuit that sought to block voters from hand-returning mail-in ballots in the state over the weekend…. A Fulton County spokesperson said on Saturday afternoon that only a couple dozen ballots had been returned to the four open county offices.” • To me, the same as above. Commentary:
Thomas G
@Thomasguam
·
Follow
Georgia judge says voters can hand in mail ballots in rejection of GOP lawsuit

Here we come go again!
Last minute changes in voting rules by Democrat
supportive Judges.
It also happened in 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections.

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foxnews.com
Georgia judge says voters can hand in mail ballots in rejection of GOP lawsuit
A Republican lawsuit in Georgia that claimed voters shouldn't be allowed to return absentee ballots once early voting ended on Friday has been rejected.
11:31 AM · Nov 3, 2024
I understand the point about last-minute rule changes, but I see this as a problem of not being able to determine all the edge cases in an absurdly complex system, rather than as malfeasance.

“Republicans score victory in Georgia fight over election observers, RNC chairman says” [FOX]. “Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said on X, ‘We’re pleased that Fulton County has implemented our requirement allowing monitors in the spirit of Georgia law. But we are concerned that this was ever a question in the first place.’ The alleged exclusion of poll watchers from the weekend absentee ballot submission hours was not limited to just the GOP. It included all observers, Republicans said. An RNC spokesperson told Fox News Digital having public poll observers through the weekend benefited both Republicans and Democrats but argued their absence would hurt the GOP more in left-leaning areas. The spokesperson said the RNC worked with Georgia election officials to secure access for poll observers.” • Poll watchers are good, unless and until they morph into a “bourgeois riot,” as in Miami 2000, or similar levels of officiousness.

Michigan

“Spreadsheet showing Michigan voter data isn’t proof of election fraud” [WTSP]. “Recent social media posts alleging election fraud in Michigan have gone viral as millions of Americans cast their ballots. The posts show a spreadsheet with Wayne County, Michigan, addresses and voter ID numbers. In the image, a highlighted voter ID column appears to show the same ID assigned to multiple addressees, suggesting one person has cast multiple votes…. The image is not proof that any individual in Wayne County, Michigan, cast multiple votes. A formatting error in the state’s voter registration database mistakenly made it look like people voted multiple times, Michigan election officials and Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump confirmed. The error has since been corrected and each voter listed in the report only voted once in the election, officials said.” • Commentary:

Image

Nevada

“Nevada’s high court allows counting of mail-in ballots without postmarks” [Politico]. “The Nevada Supreme Court has turned down a bid by Donald Trump’s campaign to block state officials from counting mail-in ballots that lack postmarks but arrive within three days after Election Day… The court’s majority said adopting the GOP position could disenfranchise some voters through no fault of their own. The ruling affects only a small number of ballots that arrive by mail but lack postmarks due to what the majority called ‘random postal service omissions.'” • The decision looks fine to me — readers? — if you accept the proposition that mail-in ballots shold be normalized, and if indeed the omissions are random (“small” is not relevant. The margins are small!)

North Carolina

Ballot selfies:
Olli at the Clock Shop
@llhall2
·
Follow
AGAIN, PLEASE.. CHECK TO SEE IF RECORDING, TAKING A PICTURE WITH YOUR BALLOT IS LEGAL IN YOUR STATE! It is illegal IN NORTH CAROLINA to do a "ballot selfie" or recording and can be cause for invalidation..
(Video at link)
I DON'T WANT ANY JUSTIFICATION FOR INVALIDATION, PLEASE CHECK YOUR STATE.
2:05 PM · Oct 21, 2024
“Election Day Voting Equipment by County” [North Carolina State Board of Elections]. This is an impressive piece of work:

Image

Note, however, that the ADA ballot marking is done digital, and I cannot find what the standard is for voting on paper vs. voting on machine.

Pennsylvania

“Supreme Court rules Pennsylvania may count back-up votes when mail ballots are rejected” [CNN]. “The US Supreme Court on Friday left in place a Pennsylvania court ruling that is expected to expand options for voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected for technical reasons to have their votes counted, in a defeat for Republicans in a critical battleground state. There were no noted dissents. For Pennsylvania voters who made a mistake in how they prepared their mail-in ballots, it could ensure they have a backup option to have a provisional ballot counted…. It’s unclear how many Pennsylvania voters will benefit because not every county notifies voters of defective mail ballots. But both sides in the appeal before the Supreme Court characterized the dispute as affecting potentially “thousands” of votes at a minimum…. Different counties in Pennsylvania have different procedures for dealing with defective mail ballots, some more forgiving than others. That patchwork of rules makes it difficult to say with certainty how many ballots were at stake in the case.” • Looks like a mess.

Wisconsin

“Pro-Trump poll watchers primed for Election Day action in key state” [Reuters]. “Many local officials fear the activist action at election sites, while limited, was merely a rehearsal for a much larger-scale event on Nov. 5, when Republican Trump goes up against Democrat Kamala Harris in the fight for the White House. ‘It was absolutely a dry run for the general election,’ Glendale’s Democratic Mayor Bryan Kennedy told Reuters, adding that police were called to two polling stations by election workers and ordered two observers to leave, when it was decided the ballot challenges were without basis. ‘They were challenging every absentee ballot with whatever reason they could pull out of thin air,’ Kennedy said. With days to go until the presidential vote, opinion polling shows the election is on a knife-edge, with few places as pivotal as Wisconsin.” • Thousands of Marc Elias mini-mes? What a prospect. And then there’s this:
MAGA Wisconsin Election Commission director Kimberly Zapata found guilty on all felony counts for falsifying military ballots. She could face 5 years in prison
Life’s rich pageant!

Conclusion

Of course, as I urged here (“The Organs of State Security Involved in Authenticating Election 2024 (or Not)“, and back in 2016, here (“Federalist 68, the Electoral College, and Faithless Electors“) the over-riding issue, the change in our Constitutional order, comes from putting the spooks in charge of authenticating our elections. What happens, to invent a not-entirely-implausible scenario, if Trump wins because of a 10,000-vote margin in Pennsylvania, but an anonymous leak to the New York Times on “The Day After” claims those 10,000 votes were the result of a hack? And then, after a week or so of hysteria, it turns out that the source of the leak is Jen Easterly, late of NSA’s Tailored Access Operations, who assures us it’s all true, really, but can’t reveal intelligence sources and methods? Granted, this is rank speculation. But do we want a system where such speculation is even possible? Because that’s the balloting system we have.

* * *
The obvious solution is to have elections that are validated by citizens, not spooks (as I wrote in “What “Our Democracy” Should Look Like When Voting: A Simple Plan). In essence: Ballots should be hand-marked on paper and counted in public. All voting should take place on the same day. Election Day should be a national holiday (with much more detail in the post). Keep it simple, stupid!

Take digital out of the equation, you take the spooks out of the equation, and you save the Constitutional order. What’s not to like?

NOTES

[1] Quote.org shows that Lincoln used this “bullet”/”ballot” antithesis numerous times — and no wonder — but “The ballot is stronger than the bullet” has no cite. Hilariously, Google’s alternative, “To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary,” has no cite either. “Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets,” implying the civilization advances, comes from Lincoln’s Message to Congress, July 7, 1861.

[2] It seems to me likely that Democrats, in the event of a Trump victory, would not make the main thrust of their assault within the judicial branch, given the composition of the Supreme Court; see here. Republicans might well do so, given the same givens.

[3] One of the most offensive butcheries of Trump’s farcical butchery of the 2020 election challenges — which may have turned paper ballots into a partisan issue, setting it back by a generation, good job Don — was his failure to demand voting machine source code. How on earth can we even begin to know it’s secure without examining it?

[4] With election margins as thin as they are, that 98% figure seems a little sus.

[5] Are we really to believe that the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations unit has not hacked voting machines in Color Revolutions abroad? Heck, what good are they if they haven’t? But who watches the watchers to make sure those hacks don’t go domestic? Especially when “President Hitler” could undoubtedly be framed as a national security issue, say by a “thirty-five year national security expert“?

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11 ... begin.html

******

2024 US elections: what the corporate media won’t tell you

The Peoples Dispatch guide to underreported issues and perspectives regarding the 2024 US presidential election

November 03, 2024 by Peoples Dispatch

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Protesters hang a banner reading "No votes for genocide" ahead of the US presidential elections in Boston, MA. The Israeli genocide in Gaza has become one of the defining issues of the elections. Photo: Micah Fong/PSL

With this year’s US presidential elections days away, US voters are once again faced with two establishment candidates with the highest likelihood of winning.

During the last 8 years of the Trump and Biden administrations, working people have endured the COVID-19 crisis that resulted in over 1 million people dead and millions losing their jobs. The social protections implemented during the pandemic including an eviction moratorium, expanded public healthcare coverage, and increased unemployment insurance payments, were almost all scaled back during Biden’s term, which has been characterized by new crises of inflation and the complicity in Israel’s genocidal war.

There is much about this grim reality that the mainstream media has chosen to ignore. Peoples Dispatch has compiled a list of our coverage, from the frontlines of struggle to reports on the untold stories of poor and working class realities, to keep people across the world informed about what’s at stake in these next presidential elections from the belly of the beast.

What else is on the ballot?
Beyond the presidential race, there are 34 seats in the Senate that are up for election on November 5, as well as all 435 seats in the House of Representatives. The population that was eligible to vote in the US in 2020 was nearly 240 million, with 66% of those people turning out to vote for the highest office of President.

There are some notable ballot measures, which include ten states with ballot measures related to abortion rights. Only one of these measures, Nebraska Initiative 434, relates to the restriction, not the promotion, of abortion rights.

Eight states will have ballot measures to add additional statewide bans on noncitizen voting, as conservatives have drummed up a significant controversy over the widely debunked theory that noncitizen voting has swayed elections to the Democratic Party. Only US citizens are permitted to vote in the US, and noncitizen voting is already banned nationwide.

There are six states that are deciding on ballot measures related to wages. Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, and Missouri have ballot measures to increase the minimum wage, and Nebraska is requiring employers to provide earned paid sick leave to their workers. Arizona’s Proposition 138, on the other hand, would actually lower the minimum wage for tipped workers.

Slavery is on the ballot this year, with two states weighing in on the legality of forced labor in prisons. Prison labor is among the most controversial aspects of mass incarceration in the United States, with some argue that it perpetuates the long legacy of enslavement by forcing the disproportionately Black prison population to work for little to no wages.

Millions of people in the US have already voted in the early voting process, both by mail and in person. However, it is unlikely that final results will come out on election day itself, which is Tuesday, November 5. Full results might not come for days. A similar delay happened in the last presidential election of 2020, due to mail-in ballots and Trump’s allies requesting recounts after his loss.

Who are the candidates?
Harris and Trump are the two front-runners representing the Democratic Party and Republican Party respectively. How are they making the case for themselves to working people in the US?

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Trump and Harris spar in the second US presidential debate of the 2024 election year (Screenshot)

Kamala Harris is the current Vice President and a former Senator from California. Harris has a background in the criminal justice system as the California Attorney General and San Francisco District Attorney. Her record as prosecutor in California has come under fire for inflicting harsh punishments on parents whose children were not attending school. This law sought to make an example out of parents, who were often working people whose children could not attend school due to a variety of circumstances. These included a mother, Cheree Peoples, of Orange County, arrested and walked out of her home in her pajamas in front of cameras, whose daughter could not attend school regularly due to sickle cell anemia. Harris has also come under scrutiny for defying a Supreme Court ruling to decarcerate the state to maintain high levels of cheap and forced prison labor in California. With regards to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Harris has maintained that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and has rejected calls to condition aid or implement an arms embargo as it escalates the war.

With Biden out, Kamala Harris becomes the new Democratic Party choice for President. The Democratic Party seeks to distance itself from the unpopular presidency of Joe Biden with his withdrawal from the upcoming elections, but does Harris really represent a significant change?
Kamala Harris accepts nomination from Democratic Party National Convention. Harris’s speech set to differentiate her from Trump’s far-right, but instead highlighted notable similarities.
Former president and media personality Donald Trump has promised to implement a hardline conservative agenda if elected, including the mass deportation of 15 to 20 million people. Before entering the political arena, Trump was widely known for his borderline fascistic political views, which include calling for the death penalty for five Black men (the Central Park Five) who were falsely accused of rape, spreading claims that former President Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya, and promoting racist myths regarding migrants crossing the US-Mexico border.

As President, Trump implemented massive tax cuts for the wealthy in 2017, allowing many billionaires and corporations to pay lower taxes than working people. These “reforms” effectively transferred USD 2 trillion from workers to the ultra-rich.

Trump makes more false promises to the working class. Former president Trump’s first speech following the attempted assassination against him was an appeal to workers from a pro-boss candidate.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to “lift up” workers. Here’s what he actually did in power. While announcing his candidacy for president, Donald Trump claimed to be pro-working class and a champion of the poor. However, his record as president shows otherwise.
Harris and Trump fight over who is the most conservative candidate. How both candidates, who have already held some of the highest positions in the country, have failed the working class.

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Jill Steins speaks at a demonstration protesting Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the UN General Assembly (Photo: Wyatt Souers)

Alternative candidates: With the dominance of the two-party system in the US, some candidates are seeking to break through the duopoly by running independently of either the Democratic or Republican Party. They’ve experienced serious attacks by establishment party operatives as a result.

Jill Stein refuses to take marching orders from political elites. Peoples Dispatch spoke to the Green Party candidate for US President on her candidacy and the establishment attacks against her.

Amid war and natural disasters, capitalism is at root of crisis, says socialist candidate for president. “A third party option takes away that consent from the ruling class and gives power to working class people,” says Claudia De la Cruz, socialist candidate for president.
The Democratic Party is trying to kick socialists off the ballot ahead of November elections. Democrats are waging legal battles in an attempt to limit ballot access.

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Claudia De la Cruz at a campaign event in the Bronx, New York (Photo: the Party for Socialism and Liberation)

What are the key issues?
Cost of living: The economy and cost of living continues to be the top issue for the people of the US, who are struggling under astronomical housing and grocery costs.

Working people place cost of living as top concern in US elections. The economy and cost of living continues to be the top issue for the people of the US, who are struggling under astronomical housing and grocery costs.
Immigration: Establishment parties have scapegoated migrants as responsible for the problems of the average worker.

On immigration, Harris and Trump have more similarities than one might think. Peoples Dispatch analyzes the continuity between Trump and Biden’s immigration policy.
How a New York landlord exploited anti-immigrant propaganda in Aurora, Colorado. Peoples Dispatch spoke to Aurora community organizer Nate Kassa on CBZ Management’s weaponization of anti-migrant rhetoric.
Natural disasters: The US government has failed to allocate the necessary funds for the survivors of recent devastating hurricanes.

Hurricane Milton wreaks havoc in US as FEMA begs for more government assistance. Florida residents denounce “every man for himself” style of hurricane response.
US leaves Hurricane Helene survivors behind while funding Israel’s genocidal war. Congress has made no efforts to secure more disaster relief funding.
Congress failed to allocate relief funding ahead of Hurricane Helene, then skipped town early due to the storm. Volunteers in the US South contend with the massive devastation and inadequate relief efforts, as climate change ensures that the worst is yet to come.

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Harris speaks to Border Patrol agents on the campaign trail (Photo: @KamalaHarris/X)

Palestine solidarity: The vast majority of people in the US oppose aid to Israel, both candidates say they will continue to back Israel and refuse to support an arms embargo or even conditioning aid.

Democrats propose no change on unflinching support for Israel in national convention. The Democratic Party’s National Convention convenes to formally nominate a candidate for President, with Kamala Harris the likely choice.
One year of resistance to genocide. The mass movement for Palestine within the US has raised the consciousness of millions who have become outraged at how time and again, the US government has made genocide its top priority over its own people.
Voices from the Palestine solidarity movement. Over the past year, the diverse sectors of the Palestine solidarity movement within the United States have united in opposition to the funding, support, and supply of genocide.
Thousands march against Netanyahu’s UN Visit. As Israel’s aggression continues to isolate it on the world stage, people of conscience in the United States, Israel’s largest military and financial backer, attempt to isolate it in the belly of the beast.
Conservative US lawmakers hound pro-Palestine organizations. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and other Republican lawmakers launch direct attacks against organizations standing with Palestine.
Seven major labor unions demand US end military aid to Israel. Major step taken in overcoming past divisions and uniting Palestine solidarity and labor movements in the United States.
61% in US are against sending aid to Israel. The movement for Palestine in the US has mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to oppose the US policy of unshakable support for Israel. Last Saturday, 100,000 surrounded the White House as part of the “people’s red line” against genocide.

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Pro-Palestine protesters rally outside of the White House on June 8 (Photo: the Palestinian Youth Movement)

Foreign policy: US imperialism continues to be the default foreign policy of both major parties.

East Asia: How the US continues attempts to corner China.

US begins another military exercise with the Philippines and other Asian allies near Taiwan strait. The US has increased joint military exercises in the last few years and built up its military infrastructure in the region.
United States destabilizing East Asia: a regional perspective. Speakers from across East Asia and the Pacific participated in a webinar organized by No Cold War regarding the attempts by the US to destabilize and dominate the region.
How Australia helps the US destabilize Asia. As the US ramps up its Cold War against China, Australia has been one of its key partners in increasing pressure, despite its strong economic links with China.
West Asia: The US continues to unconditionally support Israeli genocide.

US sends THAAD missile defense system to Israel. The move is seen as an escalation of US involvement in Israel’s genocidal war against countries in the region at a time when Israel has rejected ceasefire talks.
The United States has sent 17.9 billion dollars to Israel since October 7. Opposition to US aid to Israel continues within the belly of the beast as US continues to bankroll genocide.
US-British warplanes launch airstrikes across Yemen. By attacking Yemen, the US, and its allies have tried to defend Israel, maintain their interests in West Asia region, and undermine the capabilities of the Axis of Resistance.
US threatens “severe consequences” for Iran. The US military shot down Iranian missiles headed towards Tel Aviv, launched by Iran as part of a broader response against Israel’s aggression in Lebanon.

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Demonstrators at the largest pro-Palestine demonstration in US history in Washington DC, on November 4 (Photo: Carolyn Yao/ANSWER Coalition)
Latin America and the Caribbean: The US continues to subvert democracy in the region.

Dominican Republic in the crosshairs of the US imperialist ambitions in the Caribbean. Last month the Dominican President met with Antony Blinken in Santo Domingo, solidifying a crucial partnership for the US as it faces an uncertain political landscape in the region.
As Cubans face blackouts, US-based activists organize material solidarity. Manolo De Los Santos of the People’s Forum discusses the solidarity efforts of the Let Cuba Live campaign.
Puerto Ricans take to the streets against Kamala Harris’s visit. Puerto Ricans protested Harris’ visit citing the ongoing US occupation of Puerto Rico and support to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
How billionaire Elon Musk is trying to buy political influence across the Americas. The world’s richest man has successfully adopted media, political, and economic strategies that allow him to be an influential figure inside and outside the United States.
Africa: People across the African continent have marked recent years by standing for sovereignty against neo-colonialism.

Chagos Islands agreement keeps Diego Garcia base under US control. An agreement between the UK and Mauritius on the Chagos Archipelago is being hailed as a key step in decolonization, but the Diego Garcia island will remain a military base under US control.
Why has Niger declared US military presence in its territory illegal?. Only months after forcing its former colonizer France to withdraw its troops, Niger, West Africa’s largest country, has said the presence of US troops is illegal. This could be a major blow to the US military’s power-projection capacity in the region.
“France out of Africa, US and NATO too!” Activists picket the UNGA. US activists protested outside of the UN General Assembly against US and French imperialism and warmongering in the Sahel.
Europe: The war in Ukraine continues with the US standing firmly against peace.

Peace is nowhere on the horizon as Ukraine war completes two years. Two years into the war, Ukraine has suffered a significant setback with the fall of Avdiivka. However, neither this defeat nor the failure of its counter-offensive has led to calls for peace, either from its rulers or western allies.

Climate change: How the US has not fulfilled its responsibility to people and the planet.

The US is evading its responsibility on climate change. Eugene Puryear of BreakThrough News explains the failure of the United States to fulfill its responsibilities in combating climate change. He also talks about how its positions are hurting countries in the Global South.

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(Photo: via ACLU)

Abortion rights: The Republicans successfully dismantled abortion rights, and the Democrats failed to fight back.

Two years since abortion rights were overturned in the US, poor women bear the brunt of restrictions. How have poor and working women been affected by the overturning of nationwide abortion rights over the past two years?
50 years since Roe secured abortion rights, women across the US are left in the dust. Peoples Dispatch spoke to Jenice Fountain of the Yellowhammer Fund about the impact of Dobbs on those in the Deep South.
The push-pull of the abortion rights struggle continues in the US. The struggle to regain abortion rights for millions of women in the US continues, while Biden makes repeated concessions to the right.
Issues you don’t hear about: These are issues that the corporate-owned media doesn’t talk about. Can you guess why?

In the US, voting is a privilege, not a right. People in the US are set to head to the polls soon to decide their next president. But the country has yet to contend with a past and present reality of voter suppression.
Has the two party system failed Black men? The potential for dwindling support among Black voters, particularly Black men, alarms Democratic Party operatives ahead of the election.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/11/03/ ... -tell-you/
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 05, 2024 4:38 pm

Abandon Harris campaign is seeking “the defeat of a genocidaire”

Peoples Dispatch spoke to Dr. Hassan Abdel Salam, director of the Abandon Harris Campaign, which seeks to draw votes away from Harris in key swing states

November 04, 2024 by Natalia Marques

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Dr. Hassan Abdel Salam speaks with a reporter (Photo via Abandon Harris)

For one year, demonstrators at Palestine solidarity marches in the United States have been chanting “In November, we’ll remember.” With US presidential elections happening tomorrow, this promise could finally come to fruition.

Peoples Dispatch spoke to Dr. Hassan Abdel Salam, director of the Abandon Harris Campaign, which initially launched as Abandon Biden last year, in response to Biden’s refusal to call for a ceasefire. Although the US has since issued verbal support for its version of a ceasefire agreement, to this day the US government continues to provide the military support necessary for Israel to perpetuate this genocide, with no signs of stopping.

This policy of unconditional support for Israel is one of the few things both establishment candidates fully agree on. With that reality, what are the options for voters heading to the polls who want to firmly oppose genocide?

For Dr. Salam, the option is to “send a signal to the political landscape that you should never have ignored us, and that when you engage in genocide, you lose.” This means not voting for Harris, with full acceptance of the fact that this might lead to a second Trump administration.

“It’s an argument based on sacrifice, that we have to tough it out, that we have to struggle,” Dr. Salam said, who himself, as a survivor of torture within Israeli prisons, is no stranger to sacrifice and struggle. Dr. Salam has spent this past year building a powerful base of voters in key swing states that are prepared to face the consequences of a Harris loss, if that means voting their conscience.

Peoples Dispatch: We’re only a few days from November 5. What is your overall message to voters in this country that want to end this genocide?

Dr. Hassan Abdel Salam: We have a historic opportunity, unparalleled, to punish a genocidaire.

Never has this happened. A peaceful deposition of a leader, complicit in genocide in Gaza. This will be a moment in the history of civil rights, human rights, globally, that will be recounted again and again.

How will this happen? At the hands of people of conscience who come out, walk gently behind the curtain at the ballot box to speak the truth against the pharaohs in the White House.

It is truly a strategy that we have pursued from the very beginning, in October, when Abandon Biden emerged.

Our strategy was to punish the President, and now the Vice President, for her genocide. To take the blame for her defeat, in so doing, buy power to send a signal to the political landscape that you should never have ignored us, and that when you engage in genocide, you lose.

There’s truly a cynical thing that’s taking place here, that the Democratic Party, which supposedly stands for values like life, health care, equality, for the end of racism, the end of anti-Semitism, the end of Islamophobia, that party that Muslim-Americans and their allies, people of conscience, supported in droves in 2020. 85 to 90% of Muslim Americans alone voted for President [Biden].

And now we see a cynical attempt to do what? To engage in genocide. After everything we’ve learned in our history: segregation, slavery, separation, inequality, Jim Crow. We should never allow and reward leaders who speak to us and say, I’m going to offer you Social Security and health care, forgiveness of student debt, fight climate change, and yet shed blood across the planet.

What we believe is that since we, in huge numbers, voted for the Democrats, now we have the power to say you should never, ever have engaged in genocide. And because of it, you will lose. History will have a resounding message that when you engage in genocide, your own people will come out and ensure finally your rule will come to an end.

PD: What would you say to someone who seems deeply convinced of the need to vote for Harris to avoid a second Trump administration? Trump has enacted many racist policies as president, and promises even more racist policies. What would you say to someone who is afraid of that, and wants to stop that from happening by any means they can?

HAS: When we began Abandon Biden in November, you should have seen how much we were talking to our community.

They were skeptical in the swing states throughout the country. The major question they asked, the question that came again and again perpetually was, but [what about] Trump?

The truth is that when I was living under Trump between 2016 and 2020, I literally closed my laptop. I couldn’t hear his grating voice talking about Latino judges and people living with physical disabilities, him spewing racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism. We remember Charlottesville. And then the [January 6] insurrection, his COVID denialism, his absolute rejection of climate change. This is a person who is despicable.

I canvassed for Senator Casey in Philadelphia in 2006. I canvassed for Barack Obama in 2008. I cried when Hillary lost. I jumped in my living room when Fox News called Arizona for Biden, because I knew what that meant. It meant that he won, that he was going to be the President.

How could this have happened? How could a community that has suffered Islamophobia at the hands of a despicable candidate, like Trump, who awaits in the corridors to become the president? If our strategy wins, he is the president. How could this have happened?

The reason in one word: genocide.

There is no such thing as a lesser evil when it comes to genocide. You pass a threshold of no return. When we were persuading our community, we would say four years under any Republican is incomparable to one day in Gaza. It’s an argument based on sacrifice, that we have to tough it out, that we have to struggle.

If we were to walk to the ballot box in droves again, and reward the Vice President and the President after this horrifying year, what would that mean for the country? It would mean you could do anything. You could even claim that there’s a lesser evil.

It’s an existential question, no longer a simple political calculation between tax rates, tax cuts, infrastructure plans, health care plans that have public options or no public options. We are in a territory that is truly unimaginable.

We have got to get rid of foreign policies that execute human beings, that mean a reign of bombardments upon innocent people on the verge of disintegration.

And this is just Gaza. It’s happening across the world at the hands of American policy. American exceptionalism must end.

We follow the light of Martin Luther King, not just the Martin Luther King that we remember so dearly who sung those songs, We Shall Overcome, on that Selma Bridge, or who penned a letter from a Birmingham jail telling all people to end the vile segregation that America was drowning in.

But we remember the Martin Luther King, [who] a year before his assassination, spoke out against the Vietnam War, a man who knew then in the 1960s that American exceptionalism was vicious. Civil rights belong to all people, not just Americans.

PD: Is there anything that Harris could do at this point that would, in fact, win your vote?

HAS: There is absolutely nothing that she can do at this point. We are three days away from the election. Nothing can happen that she would say or do that would change our position.

We put out an ultimatum on October 27, asking the president to call for a ceasefire by October 31. History wrote that this didn’t happen on November 1, Abandon Biden emerged. Then we vowed to actively campaign against the President because three weeks of genocide is intolerable to the American conscience.

We are now three days from the election. [There is] nothing that she can say.

We only need 70,000 votes in Michigan, 10,000 in Arizona, 10,000 in Wisconsin, 10,000 in Georgia, 10,000 in Pennsylvania. Because we’re not seeking to bring someone into the White House. We are seeking the defeat of a genocidaire.

Many people around the world don’t know that these states are neck and neck. And it’s the swing states that decide this election. In fact, our democracy does not abide by the popular vote, but by states. States determine the outcome of the presidency. These swing states, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, these states will determine the presidency.

One shocking thing, by the way, is that the Republicans constantly are courting us, asking us to endorse them, saying that they’ll have peace, that here are these positions that people will get, that you will have the opportunity now to actually be a part of the party, that we will not be Islamophobic, we will not have a Muslim ban, that we seek to have more just policies throughout the world and the Middle East, that we don’t wish to be a racist party.

And this is incredible, because it shows that when you stick to your position and your resolve, then you gain leverage. Of course, we will never endorse the Republicans. The Republican Party must be a party of unity, of inclusivity, a party of diversity, a party that seeks justice at the level of foreign policy abroad and not just in America. And so we’re in no place to endorse them.

PD: What is the future of the Abandon Harris campaign after November 5?

HAS: A lot of people ask us how is it that you’re endorsing the Green Party? Are they going to win? Our campaign is a campaign of truth. I will be completely transparent. We endorse knowing that the Green Party has no chance of winning.

Why did we endorse? To show our power to be a credible threat, as I described. But there is another reason a lot of people don’t realize the importance of having a third party. We believe that it is essential to stand away from these two despicable parties and to build from a distance, even if we never win the presidency.

Why? Because we can gain leverage and actually compel these parties to shift their policies from that distance by showing that we are galvanizing and mobilizing the community.

Then we have a base, a headquarters from which we can actually alter these two parties, put them into a competitive bid as they seek to get voters from the Green Party to come in and vote for them.

At Abandon Harris, we want policies to end genocide and torture, to bring an agenda of universal health care, an agenda to end racism in our country, an agenda for us to have economic equality.

The Green Party, people in the party should be as durable as your supermarket, as durable as the stations, health care, hospitals, schools. That’s how permanent we should be, and we should be everywhere. We should be not just in the swing states, we should have a 50 state strategy, and that will be so much easier for us to galvanize, to bring in volunteers, to then create a base from which we can fund for justice.

We need a new voice, a new representation, and then we feel people will get excited, will hear a message of hope, will come into the party and we can attract millions.

This is just the beginning, when we show we can defeat with such a small percentage. Imagine, with 10 million, 20 million, 30 million, we could turn the tide away from this two party system and capture the two parties as their policies become greener and greener, because inevitably they’ll discover they can never win without that bulwark of conscience.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/11/04/ ... nocidaire/

Ahem, The Green Party is essentially petty bourgeois and suburban, and for all it's environmental claims it is not anti-capitalist. Thus it is actually anti-environment as it precludes any effective action. 'Red is the best Green'.

******

Elections 2024: America at the End of Its Tether
Posted on November 5, 2024 by Yves Smith

Yves here. This post provides a much-needed departure from a lot of election-eve commentary. It focuses on root causes of American discontent and strife, which is inequality and rising economic stress and how neither major party has much interest in delivering concrete material benefits to ordinary citizens.

Of course, another way to summarize why citizens are so unhappy and why that unhappiness is playing out in such an extreme form in American society is Lambert’s Neo-liberalism Expressed as Simple Rules:

Rule #1: Because markets

Rule #2: Go die!

By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website

With every tick, the election clock feels like dread closing in on Americans.

A recent Forbes Health survey shows that over 60% of participants consider their mental health to be under siege, grappling with everything from mild anxiety to deep distress as the political circus intensifies. A LifeStance Health survey backs this up, revealing that a staggering 79% of Americans feel anxious about the upcoming presidential election, exposing a nationwide mental health crisis fueled by political chaos. Younger generations are taking the hardest hit, with nearly two-thirds of Gen Z and millennials feeling serious stress. Many are changing their social media habits and hitting pause on major life decisions.

There’s even a text hotline to help stressed-out voters cope. According to the American Psychological Association, politics has become a significant source of chronic stress, significantly impacting our physical and mental health—and it’s only getting worse.

This election has devolved into a nightmare of fierce partisanship, marked by assassination attempts, courtroom battles, and the threat of prolonged battles over a contested outcome, even possible violence. Social media feuds, strained family dinners, and alienated neighbors only make it worse. The left warns about “fascism” and “the last free election,” while the right screams about “woke elites” and a “Communist takeover.”

Staying politically engaged feels like swallowing broken glass. How did we get here?

While it’s undeniable that the 21st century has handed us a parade of dystopian delights—9/11, the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and the Covid pandemic—leaving ordinary folks feeling trampled, betrayed, and thoroughly disempowered by the responses — the truth is, the rabbit hole goes much deeper.

Take, for instance, a little nugget you won’t hear most politicians mention—America has been slipping into the mold of a developing nation for quite a while now. For decades, we’ve seen something emerge in place of the more egalitarian, hopeful America we once knew, and it’s not a Communist or fascist America (yet). It’s a Third World America: a country divided not by party membership, but by economic realities. Noted economist Peter Temin has shown that U.S. citizens now live in two distinct sectors: roughly 80% in the low-wage sector and about 20% in the affluent sector.

People get sorted not so much into red and blue worlds but into different financial systems, living conditions, and educational opportunities. When they get sick, deal with the law, travel—you name it—their experiences are like night and day. They exist in separate spheres. Pretty much the only way for someone in the low-wage sector to break into the affluent one is through a top-notch education—but that path is riddled with obstacles, even if you can find the money.

For most, escape is a distant dream.

The well-educated affluent sector makes decisions, sets the agenda, while the rest are just trying to survive – and getting sicker and dying younger. One cohort makes moves, while the other is caught in the aftermath.

As a rule, here’s what usually happens when a country splits into a dual economy:

*The low-wage sector has hardly any say in public policy.
*The high-income sector keeps wages down in the low-wage area to secure cheap labor for their businesses.
*Social control is used to keep low-wage workers from pushing back against policies that favor the wealthy.
*The main goal for the richest in the high-income sector is to cut taxes.
*Social and economic mobility become rarer.

Does any of this sound familiar? Sure, social media magnifies divisions among Americans, but interestingly, ordinary people within the Republican and Democratic parties aren’t so very far apart in the basic things they want, never mind what Fox or MSNBC tells you.

*Across party lines, the majority of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy and big corporations.
*Most Americans want to increase Social Security benefits and oppose cuts.
*The majority favor higher taxes on the wealthy to keep Social Security robust.
*Most U.S. adults think the federal government should guarantee healthcare coverage for everyone. The majority favor single-payer – a single government program for healthcare.
*A bipartisan majority of voters want to expand Medicare to cover long-term, in-home care services.

And on it goes. Americans see very little real action from politicians in either party on these issues. In fact, they often see the opposite. Misleading rhetoric won’t make their concerns vanish.

The electorate is not stupid. Most Americans know perfectly well that their wages have not kept up with inflation, no matter how politicians try to spin it. They see the ever-rising costs of essential goods — keeping a roof over their heads, seeing a doctor, and going to college. They realize that the rich are profiting off their hard work and refusing to contribute their fair share in taxes. Black men, in particular, are worse off than they were before the pandemic – and people wonder why they aren’t supporting the status quo as they once did.

Americans sense the gap between the rich and poor is wider now than it used to be, and they are correct. No politician can erase the following facts: Over the past 40 years, the richest 1% of Americans have experienced the fastest income growth. From 1979 to 2021, the average income of the top 0.01%—about 12,000 households—grew nearly 27 times faster than that of the bottom 20%. By 2021, the top 1% earned, on average, 139 times more than the bottom 20%. Income inequality has reached extreme levels. The pie is being gobbled up by the rich, leaving miserable slivers for hard-working people.

The U.S. income divide wasn’t always this extreme. In the early 1900s, social movements and progressive policies fought Gilded Age inequality, advocating for fair taxes and unions. The New Deal provided crucial support for ordinary people, including social security and labor protections. But those efforts have faded since the 70s – or been crushed — deepening inequality and leading to serious social, health, and political consequences that Americans now recognize.

In theory, democracy is supposed to adapt to the needs of the people, ready to handle crises and promote peaceful political change. But how’s that working out? With wealth concentrated as it is and the rich able to manipulate the political system, not very well.

Capitalism promised abundance but left us with long hours, workplace surveillance, insecure jobs, and little control. Rather than delivering prosperity, it’s given rise to increasingly predatory entities that undermine the businesses we depend on and reduce us to sitting ducks—like private equity—an industry that lines the pockets of politicians from both parties while gaining control over everything from emergency rooms and nursing homes to classrooms and housing markets. We’re getting looted, but the private equity industry often operates behind the scenes, making it difficult to pinpoint why many businesses are delivering subpar services and taking advantage of consumers.

We know we’re being preyed upon, underpaid, and our work often strips us of our humanity. With scant parental leave and unaffordable childcare, it’s no surprise many are hesitant about having families. This year, 30% of 18-34-year-olds are unsure about having kids. Elon Musk giving away his sperm won’t change that.

Neoliberalism—where the market rules all—has crushed us by prioritizing profit over well-being, widening inequality, and dismantling social safety nets. As public services get privatized and deregulated, the basics we need to live become harder to access. This focus on market solutions leads to job insecurity, with workers facing unstable jobs and stagnant wages while the rich keep getting richer. Both Republicans and Democrats have jumped on the neoliberal bandwagon since the late 20th century. Conservatives were the initial champions, but many liberals jumped aboard, resulting in a bipartisan push for globalization, trade deals, and welfare reform that has entrenched neoliberal principles across the board.

The result is that with paths blocked to economic security, social status, and political influence, people feel loneliness, rage, and resignation—or all of the above. A future we never wanted is being forced on us. Just like a self-driving car follows a programmer’s instructions, we find ourselves without real control. We’re not in the driver’s seat—and we know it.

Politicians, fully aware of the deep alienation out there, spin narratives that frame policies benefiting the wealthy as vital for efficiency and economic growth, masking their true motives with fake promises of individual success that distract us from the widening wealth gap and completely ignore our collective well-being.

Meanwhile, in a world plagued by war, climate change, disease, and the chaos of demagoguery, the familiar is fading. The new—like advancements in AI—feels increasingly bewildering and downright frightening.

German sociologist Max Weber offers valuable insight into the psychic depths of our current dynamics, highlighting how rationalization distorts human behavior and shifts power. In a rationalized world, logic and efficiency overshadow community, family, and empathy. As these connections fade, relationships turn transactional, pushing us to prioritize personal success over collective well-being. This focus on efficiency leaves us feeling isolated in a society that values numbers over genuine experiences. We’re told this is progress, but it often feels instinctively wrong: we become cogs in a machine, disconnected from the meaning of our actions. Our emotional and ethical lives shrink, leading to disillusionment with our social and political worlds.

Weber warned that this shift could eat away at the trust and morals needed for good governance, anticipating that charismatic leaders would rise to challenge the lifeless norms created by elites. We find ourselves in a deep crisis in the ways we understand ourselves and relate to others and our circumstances.

Publisher Judith Gurewich, a sociologist and practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst, points out that our old tactics for pretending things are different no longer work. She argues that the work of Weber can shift our focus from individual experiences to a broader collective understanding.

Gurewich suggests that part of the anxiety of the electorate “comes from the fact that the stupidity of their leaders is so much greater than their own.” Plus, the current election has magnified feelings of helplessness. “All is exposed,” she points out. “We are completely at the mercy of some play of dice. It doesn’t matter where they land: it’s going to be bad or it’s going to be horrible, and people feel powerless to do anything. They can go in the street as much as they want, but they feel that nothing is changing. So there is a sense of implacable logic.”

We find ourselves in a bewildering, Kafkaesque world where words no longer seem to matter. Gurewich highlights “Verstehen,” a key concept from Weber that focuses on understanding social actions by grasping people’s motivations and meanings.

“Weber argued that if you give people a reason to suffer—one that is logical and meaningful—they will accept that suffering. He compared this to different types of religions, where people might refrain from eating because there’s a story behind it that makes sense. For instance, they may believe they must endure hunger for the salvation of their souls. The narratives people hold onto provide meaning in their lives, even if suffering is part of the equation. But current politics offers no narratives to make the suffering meaningful to anyone. Capitalism doesn’t even have to justify itself anymore.”

This may be why beyond the anxiety, a disillusionment has spread over the political processes – a dangerous environment where people become apathetic or, conversely, radicalized, seeking out alternative movements or leaders who promise change without addressing the underlying issues. Politicians can tap into this vulnerability, stoking fear and division to gain support, while genuine concerns get sidelined. Ultimately, the erosion of meaning in suffering can destabilize the political landscape, making it ripe for populism, authoritarianism, or other disruptive forces that thrive on discontent and chaos.

So here we are, looking over a political abyss, and it’s clear that this is about more than just electoral anxiety; we’re facing a crisis of meaning. Voters are fed up with a system that churns out candidates who offer little more than empty slogans and theatrical performances. The pain of disconnection—between our lived experiences and the hollow narratives spun by our leaders—leaves us disenchanted, lacking meaningful stories to anchor us, looking for something real.

If we really want to reclaim our democracy, we need leaders who not only grasp the depth of our suffering but also present a vision that speaks to our shared humanity. Otherwise, we’re just going to be stuck as passive spectators in a political theater that’s lost the plot and doesn’t serve us anymore.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11 ... ether.html

How can ya 'reclaim' something ya never really had? The Founding Fuckheads saw to it that the masses could never take commanding power. their class was to rule forever.

Ferget Weber. Just ask, "who benefits?"
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 06, 2024 2:53 pm

So What Happens After a Trump or Harris Win?
Posted on November 5, 2024 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Thomas Neuburger ruminates on Ryan Grim’s election predictions. The big takeaway is neither Trump nor Harris would be able to do any where near as much as their opponents suggest. However, there is plenty of scope for increased harm in the international arena. It would not be hard to see either of them compensating for domestic frustrations by trying to take reckless bold moves abroad.

By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies

Image
Detail from this painting, artist unknown

Many people have made election predictions (some in abundance), but few have looked at the post-electoral state. What happens if Harris wins? What does a Trump II world look like?

I offer below what Ryan Grim sees post-November. I think in the main he’s right. His virtue is that he avoids conventional thinking and looks at what’s real.

The whole piece went out to his Drop Site News subscribers and is also available there. But I’d like to offer it here; I know our readers are thoughtful and decidedly unconstrained by conventional ways. No one wants to fall prey to “what everyone knows to be true” without close examination.

Grim’s analysis, with his permission, is printed in full below. Some comments first.

A Pyrrhic Victory
Grim holds that if Harris wins, it will work like a loss. First, she’d likely rule without House and/or Senate support.

Without the Senate, Harris will have a hard time confirming a dog catcher, let along [sic] a judge or a cabinet nominee. With the Senate but without the House, she won’t be able to get any of her agenda through. Worse, the debt ceiling will be hit in January, before she’s even inaugurated.

Would Democrats, especially decidedly unpopulist ones, be willing to take advantage of the advantages that populism-by-executive order confers? They haven’t yet. Grim is doubtful they will — to do so, Harris would have to find “populist Jesus” — and I would agree. Democrats are self-defined as the party of status quo Jesus. “Nothing will fundamentally change,” we’re regularly told, a contrast to the change their electoral opponents would bring.

For that plan to work, people have to like what they see. Playing it safe in a land this dissatisfied won’t produce lasting wins.

Image

Grim also thinks a Harris win now tees up a Republican win in 2028. A status quo powerless Democrat with no personal base of support (“support for Kamala is more accurately described as opposition to Trump and support for Democratic policies generally”), ruling a party reduced to “an upper-middle-class center,” is not a winning combination, especially if it follows a term where little gets done.

What Kind of Dictatorship?

After a Trump win, many predict a dictatorship. Grim disagrees:

Even with two new justices, the Supreme Court is not willing to turn power over to him. Trump is their tool to wield power, and they will be content to see him retire from the field. Trump also lacks the support of the military leadership. Without the court or the military, he has no path to hold on to power illegally.

“Without the court or the military” — sounds pretty third-world to me. That’s how Egypt is ruled. Just wanted to point that out.

The Realignment

This will take much more thought, but the start point is here:

[T]he class realignment already underway … leaves a coalition of the working class and the super rich in the Republican party. That’s an extremely dangerous coalition, and while it will be hampered by Trump’s defeat, it would be structurally strengthened longterm by a Harris victory[.]

What it looks like when all the ripe apples have dropped is anyone’s guess. Grim thinks its possible that Republicans, if Democrats keep shedding their base, could “lock in generational power” in 2028.

We’ll see if that’s true: it’s a “dangerous coalition” indeed. What happens with working class Sanders populists — yes, there are many; Sanders might have wiped the floor with 2016 Trump — is clearly up in the air. Rich material for a novelist.

The NatSec state

Here Grim is silent, but we don’t have to be. At this point, no president can oppose the cemented-in apparatus, our heroes who “maintain security.” (Trump on Joe Rogan talked about how he was convinced not to release the JFK files as he first intended. Listen between the lines and you hear, “Sir, you don’t want to do that.”)

To the extent there’s real rebellion in the U.S., there will be real repression, more than what’s already here. What elites do abroad, they will do at home, given a sufficiently media-marginalized target. (The military calls this “preparing the battlefield.”)

There are only two end points historically for this kind of collision — a state in chaos (think ‘60s and ‘70s rebellion) or a locked-down, Stasi society, surveilled and policed. Ask yourself, how would today’s guardians of security handle the 1960s? Gloves on or gloves off?

Now for Grim’s analysis. If you want just his bottom line, skip down to “What It Means”. Enjoy.

Ryan Grim’s election predictions
What will realistically happen if Harris or Trump wins

Just like Jeff Bezos, I would never tell you who to vote for. You don’t need that from me anyway. What I can do though is offer a few thoughts on what might happen if either candidate is elected, which I haven’t seen anybody try to do with any seriousness.

According to Elon Musk, if Kamala Harris wins, there’ll never be another election, and according to lots of Democrats, if Trump wins, he’ll turn into a dictator. Both are wrong. The truth is more complicated but not necessarily less frightening. In tonight’s newsletter, I’ll game out what that might look like. (Scroll down for that.) …

If Kamala wins:
Congress goes

If Harris wins, the chance she also takes Congress relies on a number of miraculous upsets. Joe Manchin is leaving the Senate, and his Senate seat is leaving the Democratic caucus for the rest of all of our lives. That takes Dems from 51 down to 50 seats. Jon Tester won extremely narrow races in Montana in 2006, 2012, and 2018, and he’s about as good a rural politician as you’re going to find, but Montana’s rightward drift might be too much for him to overcome. Polls have him down. If they’re right, he’s toast, and that brings Democrats down to 49 seats.

To get back to 50 – which would let Tim Walz break ties – they’d need to hold on to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin (all doable, even likely) but also win in either Florida or Texas – or Nebraska.

If you’ve been following our coverage of the Nebraska Senate race, you know independent populist Dan Osborn has a genuine shot at upsetting the incumbent Republican. Internal polls I’ve heard about from both sides, however, suggest Trump’s ads tagging him as a “Democrat in disguise” may have done enough damage to blunt his momentum. If he wins though, I’m confident he’d caucus with Democrats, and that would make a majority. But he’s still a longshot.

Colin Allred, the former NFL linebacker and member of Congress, has a credible chance of beating Ted Cruz. The question will be whether pollsters missed an influx of Democratic donors to the Lone Star state. If they did and the polls are slightly off, he could win. But he’s also a longshot.

Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell could theoretically pull off an upset in Florida, but man is that hard to see. So Democrats would need one of those four longshots—Montana, Nebraska, Texas, or Florida—to come through.

And then they’d have to win the House, too.

Without the Senate, Harris will have a hard time confirming a dog catcher, let along a judge or a cabinet nominee. With the Senate but without the House, she won’t be able to get any of her agenda through. Worse, the debt ceiling will be hit in January, before she’s even inaugurated.

Bankruptcy?

With control of Congress, Republicans will play economic-armageddon brinksmanship, take a chunk out of the global economy, get our credit-ratings downgraded, and probably extract a chunk of fiscal flesh in exchange for simply agreeing to pay the bills that are due. The other possibility, that we actually go over the cliff and get a mini or major financial crisis can’t be ruled out.

Antitrust

Harris will then be left to govern strictly from the executive branch. She’d probably have to keep Lina Khan, whether she wants her as chair of the FTC or not, since Republicans wouldn’t confirm a replacement anyway. Her victory would be meaningful for climate action, as she’d continue to disperse and execute the clean energy policy and subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act, while Trump would smother it (or send it all to Elon Musk?).

Taxes

Trump’s tax cuts also expire during Harris’s first two years in office, meaning she’ll negotiate their extension. There, she has the advantage, because if she does nothing, the old tax policy snaps back into place. Her ability to do anything at all her first two years would be limited to this tax realm and, potentially, immigration. She’s likely to sign a tough border and immigration bill into law.

It’s hard to see how she emerges from this two years with anything higher than an approval rating in the low-30s. Given she has no organic base of support—support for Kamala is more accurately described as opposition to Trump and support for Democratic policies generally—it’s impossible to say how low her floor is. We might find out.

Ukraine

Russia is making major advances in Ukraine and the U.S. public is no longer interested in the war. Harris will probably have to end it with some sort of ceasefire/non-deal that leaves Ukraine in a wildly worse off position than they’d have been in if they’d made a deal in early 2022—a deal the U.S. scuttled at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Or she could prove she’s a tough commander-in-chief—leader of the “most lethal military” ever, as she puts it—by escalating the conflict and striking deeper inside Russia, risking nuclear war. Let’s hope it’s not that. The same dynamic could be at play with China, with much of her party leadership egging on confrontation.

The Mideast

I interviewed Israeli journalist Amir Tibon recently, who said that Netanyahu made a bet sometime around December that Trump would be elected president and therefore he was willing to take whatever minor grief he suffered from Biden for ignoring all the U.S. entreaties to protect civilians, allow in humanitarian aid, and negotiate in good faith toward a ceasefire. There was little grief. But, said Tibon, if Harris wins, Netanyahu will be exposed politically, and he predicted his government would collapse “within months.” A Harris win would signal to Netanyahu’s coalition partners that two of their big dreams will be at least put on hold for four years. Those two major ambitions, Tibon said, are reform of the Israeli courts in order to subsume them to the judiciary, and the Israeli settlement of Gaza. With those ambitions stymied, Netanyahu’s coalition becomes untenable.

Foiling Netanyahu’s bet on Trump is the most persuasive case I’ve heard for a vote for Harris. The problem, though, is what comes next. Tibon is confident a candidate from a coalition that does not includes the ultra-orthodox or settler movements would triumph and that any new government that replaced Netanyahu would be similarly supportive of the various Israeli war efforts, but more willing to cut a ceasefire-for-hostages deal. But I checked Tibon’s theory with people in Israel to the right of Tibon, and they agreed that the Netanyahu government would indeed fall and new elections would be called—but that Netanyahu would win those new elections.

Abortion Rights

Harris wouldn’t be able to get anything through Congress, but having Democrats control the Justice Department and Health and Human Services would put some of the brakes on right-wing states pushing ahead with increasingly aggressive abortion restrictions, including laws that make it a crime to “traffick” a minor across state lines to get an abortion. Such laws are plainly unconstitutional, but Trump’s DoJ would do nothing to stop them, whereas a Harris administration would.

Midterms

Every president faces brutal headwinds in their first midterm, and Republican gains are the most likely result of the 2026 midterms. The only pickup opportunities in the Senate would be in Maine and North Carolina, and both would be unwinnable in a Republican reaction year. The good news for Dems is they don’t have to defend many seats – Georgia and Michigan – but they’d still fall that much further behind in the House.

2028

Republicans would be the heavy favorites in 2028. Democrats seem to hate primaries, so maybe Harris doesn’t face one even if she’s in the low 30s, with Democratic rivals holding their fire for 2032. The most likely outcome, then, of a Harris victory in 2024 is a Republican sweep in 2029, giving them a trifecta and the opportunity to lock in Supreme Court control for several generations. That court could issue abortion-related rulings that would make Dobbs look downright liberal.

If Trump wins:
Let’s take seriously what Trump will actually do, versus what his opponents claim he’ll do. Some of the more lurid warnings, I think, are wildly overblown. But not all of them. It’s extremely likely he will assign significant resources toward a roundup of immigrants, and will do so in a flamboyant fashion, deploying the military if he can get away with it. If he’s extra lucky, there’ll be mass resignations of military brass as a result, allowing him to elevate loyalists.

Stephen Miller, a deeply dangerous and strategic man, will have immense power. Trans rights will be in the crosshairs and so will abortion rights.

I’m less worried about his promise to add a 20 percent tariff to everything. He continues to speak highly of Robert Lighthizer as his top trade adviser, and Lighthizer is very good at what he does. Lighthizer was Trump’s United States Trade Representative and lefty trade hands and unions were generally supportive of his approach, even as they had some disagreements. If Lighthizer guides trade policy, it won’t be reckless.

Trump’s tax cuts from his first term will also come up for renewal, and I’d expect he’ll successfully extend and deepen them, particularly for the rich and corporations.

He will fire an enormous number of federal employees. Whether he can hire enough to replace them is a different question, but at minimum he’ll be able to break a lot of federal agencies.

He’ll go after the American university system with a vengeance. Look at what Chris Rufo has managed to do in Florida under Ron DeSantis for a flavor of what Trump could do nationally.

He will rescind or simply not deploy much of the climate spending included in the Inflation Reduction Act. He hates eclectic vehicles, though his alliance with Elon Musk may protect some of that.

Supreme Court

Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas will retire, allowing Trump to appoint at least two more justices.

Trump, however, will not have the capacity to become a dictator. Even with two new justices, the Supreme Court is not willing to turn power over to him. Trump is their tool to wield power, and they will be content to see him retire from the field. Trump also lacks the support of the military leadership. Without the court or the military, he has no path to hold on to power illegally.

Voters will reject his displays of extremism at the polls in the 2026 midterms, likely delivering the House and Senate both to Democrats. They’ll impeach him immediately, just as Republicans will impeach Harris, but neither effort will have enough support in the Senate to go anywhere. In 2028, Republican voters will choose between J.D. Vance and opponents like Ted Cruz (unless he loses his Senate race, of course).

The economy will probably take a cyclical downturn toward the end of Trump’s term, and he’ll be deeply unpopular. Democrats would be favored to win in 2028 and likely hold Congress, too.

Mideast

It’s impossible to predict what Trump will do here. On the one hand, he calls himself “the candidate of peace”—on the other, he has said Biden’s biggest problem has been that he’s been too tough on Netanyahu and he should let him take the gloves off. Trump has been mad at Netanyahu for congratulating Biden on his win, but he knows Bibi has been rooting for him and doing what he can to help him win, and in Trump’s world alone, that means a lot to him. You know Trump as well as I do, I’ll let you guess on this one.

Ukraine

The conventional wisdom is that Putin will strike a deal to end the war if Trump wins, on favorable terms to Russia, given how much ground they’ve gained. On Ukraine, the CW is probably right.

China

Trump will do way more jawboning of China than Harris would, but he seems to have no appetite for a war. Let’s hope that prevails.

What It Means
So far, we’ve talked about the near-term future relying on historical precedent. That only gets us so far. We also have to look at the coalitional trends underway and ask how a victory by each candidate influences each. If Harris wins, Democrats will be rewarded for having skipped the nominating process and overseeing a genocide in Gaza. They will have done so while embracing the Cheneys and other neocons expelled from the MAGA coalition. They will now have to be understood as a faction of the Democratic coalition. With Democrats already becoming increasingly militaristic, that only pushes the party further toward a confrontational imperial foreign policy.

Harris also ran detectably to Biden’s right when it came to labor, antitrust, and the economy. Winning on that message could convince Democrats that their dalliance with economic populism was unnecessary, which would speed up the class realignment already underway, with more working class voters of all races and genders feeling unrepresented by Democrats, who come to fully stand in for coastal elites. With Democrats representing an upper-middle-class center, that leaves a coalition of the working class and the super rich in the Republican party. That’s an extremely dangerous coalition, and while it will be hampered by Trump’s defeat, it would be structurally strengthened longterm by a Harris victory—unless Harris somehow finds populist Jesus like Biden did. There is still a strong faction of populist-progressives in the Democratic coalition, and Harris’s victory would not be the final word. But a Democrat who comes after Harris could be facing nearly insurmountable odds if Republicans are able to lock in generational power in 2028.

The short version is that there’s reason to be optimistic that Harris may win. There’s reason to be scared if she does. Or doesn’t. Hope that helps.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11 ... s-win.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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