After months of war and over 18,000 Gazans killed, US Senator Bernie Sanders calls for a ceasefire
The Senator, who repopularized socialism with an influential 2016 presidential campaign, had, until now, opposed the demand for a ceasefire
December 13, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders finally calls for a ceasefire, months after the outbreak of Israel's war on Gaza (Photo: Gage Skidmore / Creative Commons)
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist who has received much criticism for his unwillingness to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, finally released a statement on December 13 calling for President Biden to “stop funding this war and to support UN efforts for a humanitarian ceasefire.”
While Sanders’ statement began with a denunciation of the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation carried out on October 7, the bulk of his statement criticizes Israel’s disproportionate military response, mass human rights violations, and violations of international law. He also formally asked Biden to withdraw his support for a portion of an upcoming foreign aid package. “While it is appropriate to support defensive systems that will protect Israeli civilians against incoming missile and rockets attacks, it would be irresponsible to provide an additional $10.1 billion in military aid beyond these defensive systems as contained in the proposed supplemental foreign aid package,” Sanders states. “This money would allow for the continuation of the Netanyahu government’s widespread, indiscriminate bombardment. Therefore, I ask that you withdraw your support for that portion of the funding requested from Congress.”
Sanders also calls on Biden to support the UN General Assembly’s ceasefire resolution. However, the Washington Post reports that Sanders is only backing the UN’s resolution because he believes it is temporary. “Long-term, I don’t know how you can have a permanent cease-fire when Hamas has made it very clear that that’s not what they want or believe in,” Sanders said in a Post interview, also published on December 13.
This announcement comes the same day that reports emerged of Israel slaughtering “execution-style,” men, women, and babies that had been sheltering inside the Shadia Abu Ghazala School in the al-Faluja area in the Northern Gaza strip. “The Israeli soldiers came in and opened fire on them,” said a woman at the scene, according to an Al Jazeera report. “They took all men, then entered classrooms and opened fire on a woman and all the children with her.”
Sanders, who twice ran wildly popular presidential campaigns under a “socialist” platform, has been under pressure from many on the left to call for a ceasefire. Even former Sanders staffers have banded together to put pressure on the Senator.
Well, Bernie's got a 'brand' to look after....He is the only firewall the Dems got to hold them knucklehead progressives in the fold. As Chief Sheepdog his job is increasingly demeaning and difficult what with Demented Joe shooting holes in the corral like a maniac. Yet he's still on the job, how shameful, I understand he was once a good man.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Biden Has Damned the United States Over Israel’s Gaza Genocide
Finian Cunningham
December 14, 2023
The Biden White House has brought the U.S. into global disrepute for its flagrant complicity in Gaza’s genocide.
On a day of global shame this week, the United States voted against calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. It means the U.S. is an accomplice in the genocide by the Israeli regime.
It can’t get more graphic than this. Out of 193 nations at the United Nations, 153 of them (nearly 80 per cent) voted for an immediate ceasefire and the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza where more than two million civilians have been subjected to over two months of non-stop indiscriminate bombing by the Israeli military.
Not just callous deliberate murder of civilians, but a blockade on all basic humanitarian needs. Water, food, medicines, and fuel have all been cut off by an Israeli regime that calls Palestinians “human animals”.
This is the second time the U.S. has voted against the vast majority of nations at the UN General Assembly appealing for an end to the violence. The United States has also vetoed three resolutions at the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire.
In the latest vote on December 12, the U.S. joined with Israel and a handful of minor states in opposing the call for peace. Another 23 states shamefully abstained including Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Ukraine.
On the same day, President Joe Biden gave a speech to fundraisers in Washington DC in which he cautioned Israel to be “more careful” in conducting the military onslaught against Gaza. Biden was more concerned that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of civilians was a public relations problem, not a moral outrage and war crime.
Nevertheless, Biden again reiterated “unconditional” support for Israel by supplying all the bombs and weapons it requests. In the past week, the White House has approved over $100 million in tank artillery shells for Israel as part of an emergency fund that does not require any vetting by lawmakers. The Biden administration is also pushing Congress to pass a much larger military support package worth over $14 billion.
Professor Francis Boyle, a renowned international legal authority, says that the United States is fully complicit in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank territory.
In an email to this author, Professor Boyle points to evidence “all across the board” from the unconditional supply of bombs and missiles by the United States to Israel, to the U.S.’ repeated voting positions at the UN that are enabling the continued mass, systematic violence.
Several Israeli leaders, including Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, have openly stated their genocidal intent of erasing the Palestinian population from occupied territories. The blatant bombing of hospitals and refugee camps and the killing of women and children, in particular, shows that the Israeli regime has no respect for international law.
Netanyahu has publicly thanked President Biden for the United States’ support. It is openly reported that U.S. and Israeli military commands are liaising in the conduct of operations in Gaza.
The presence of U.S. naval forces in the East Mediterranean is meant to deter any Arab or Muslim nation or group from intervening to help defend Palestinians.
The Biden administration is as cowardly as it is duplicitous. It talks about “concern” for civilian casualties in Gaza while giving the Israeli regime its full support to commit the sickening slaughter of innocents. Biden is only concerned about how the massacre doesn’t look so good to the rest of the world and American voters as a presidential election approaches.
Hence the creepy advice from Biden for Israel “to be more careful”. His advice is not to stop the mass murder of children but to just do it more discreetly.
Biden and his administration are morally sick psychopaths with a hopelessly depraved view of history. The president this week talked about the Nazi Holocaust as being the foundation of Israel’s right to exist and its right to “finish off” Gaza.
This is while the fascist Israeli state uses Nazi methods and American bombs to annihilate Palestinian civilians.
In close consultation with American officials, the Israeli military is set to pump seawater into the tunnels in Gaza where it is believed Hamas militants are hiding. More than eight weeks of non-stop bombardment of Gaza resulting in nearly 20,000 civilian deaths has not defeated Hamas. Now, the Israelis are going to flood the estimated 500 kilometres of the underground network.
The Israelis do not care if 140 Israeli hostages are killed along with Hamas fighters. They do not care that the seawater will poison all underground drinking water sources as well as vast areas of farmland for future generations.
This desperate and despicable measure is reminiscent of the Nazi flooding of the cathedral in Prague in June 1942 to kill resistant fighters who were trapped in the crypt. The Czech resistance had assassinated SS commander Reinhard Heydrich weeks earlier. The Waffen-SS went on to inflict reprisal massacres against whole villages as collective punishment.
What the world is witnessing is a repeat of the barbarity, and grotesquely carried out by a supposedly Jewish regime that claims its lawless prerogatives because of the Nazi Holocaust.
Professor Francis Boyle, who teaches international law at the University of Illinois, has long predicted that the Israeli regime’s genocidal crimes and corruption will cause the state to collapse in ignominy eventually.
One might add the United States to that disastrous fall into damnation along with Israel.
The Biden White House has brought the U.S. into global disrepute for its flagrant complicity in Gaza’s genocide. It is damned in front of the whole world.
On the one hand, Joe is a proud Zionist, so no surprise there.
On the other hand, this is part and parcel of standing US policy and ya don't get chosen if ya can't follow the script.(Trump was a mistake/fluke.)
On the gripping hand, it's Joe's finger on the trigger.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Genocide Joe and the Electoralists
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 14, 2023
Steve Salaita
The fundamental inhumanity of electoralism has reached its final stage.
On a more practical level, voting for Biden means disregarding (and effectively forgiving) what he’s done. It requires incredible callousness to forget that Biden validated fabrications about rape and dismemberment; that Biden conceptualized an entire national community as terrorists; that Biden sent U.S. troops and warships and billions of dollars to facilitate carnage of inconceivable proportions; that Biden bumbled his way through an encyclopedia of ridiculous lies; that Biden treated Palestinians with vicious indifference; that Biden repeatedly offered the Zionist entity carte blanche to carry out its genocide.
What do you do with a genocidaire? Demand his resignation? Put him on trial? Drag him through the streets?
If you’re American, apparently you make him president.
Such is the new (but same old) strategy of the new (but same old) liberal disciplinarians aghast that anyone might hesitate to vote for a man orchestrating genocide in the Gaza Strip.
“What about Trump,” they bellow.
“Quit being so selfish,” they bark.
“But…but…but,” they bluster.
If the threats and insults don’t work, things turn philosophical. “Voting is a public good, not a personal crusade,” they declare in the tone of a newly-christened poly sci major.
It’s always a bit shocking to see how much heartlessness underlies this virtuous devotion to U.S. democracy.
Then I remember that devotion to “U.S. democracy” is the entire problem.
Electoralists say they’re protecting something precious and sacred on behalf of all humanity, but in reality their approach preserves an advantageous class position for the elite of both parties at the expense of everyone else. Theirs is a profoundly anti-human way of understanding the world.
What do they get out of voting? Depending on their situation, either the fleeting pleasure of having fulfilled their civic duty (they will have just scored a crucial victory in the battle against fascism, after all) or preservation of an imperialistic system which affords them a comfortable lifestyle without having to think about its source.
What do Palestinians get out of voting? A genocide.
This notion of civic duty isn’t simply self-serving; it’s actively hostile to the countless victims of U.S. foreign policy.
Consider for a second the moral assumptions inherent to a political philosophy that insists on voting for genocidaires rather than making genocidaires accountable to their victims. If we are obliged to reward violence with power, then we essentially resign ourselves to passive spectatorship of ecocide and dispossession. How can we conceive of a decent existence in a society that only allows for mechanical participation? After all that we’ve seen, how can we give even perfunctory license to the U.S. ruling class? Visualizing an outcome different than the current horror is exceptionalism in its most dangerous form.
American exceptionalism is primarily a set of national mythologies asserting that the USA is a unique force for good in the world. This self-image is inextricably tied to conquest both in the past and present. American exceptionalism, then, is also a narrative process about non-Americans and their ontological position in relation to the United States. The process renders much of the world’s population an exception to the dignity of political and economic freedom.
Go ahead and let the magical thinking expire. Gaza leaves no room for fantasies of salvation. Palestinians have long understood this difficult reality. It’s time to think alongside the downtrodden rather than glibly prescribing misery from afar.
On a more practical level, voting for Biden means disregarding (and effectively forgiving) what he’s done. It requires incredible callousness to forget that Biden validated fabrications about rape and dismemberment; that Biden conceptualized an entire national community as terrorists; that Biden sent U.S. troops and warships and billions of dollars to facilitate carnage of inconceivable proportions; that Biden bumbled his way through an encyclopedia of ridiculous lies; that Biden treated Palestinians with vicious indifference; that Biden repeatedly offered the Zionist entity carte blanche to carry out its genocide.
Merely entertaining the idea of voting for Joe Biden is an insult to the thousands of innocent souls whose slaughter he endorsed. The least we can do is ensure that their memories supersede the same old liberal delusions.
Biden Intends To Keep Participating In The Incineration Of Gaza
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Caitlin Johnstone
December 16, 2023
Biden administration officials are telling the press that they have no plans to place any conditions on military aid to Israel.
CNN reports:
The Biden administration currently has no plans to place conditions on the military aid it is providing to Israel, officials told CNN, despite growing calls by Democratic lawmakers and human rights organizations for the US to stop providing weapons unless Israel does more to protect civilians in Gaza.
Speaking to Democratic donors in Washington this week, President Joe Biden acknowledged that he has had tough conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Israel’s military campaign, how Israel is losing international support, and the need for a two-state solution led by the Palestinian Authority. But he said even throughout those discussions, “we’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel in the process. Not a single thing.”
Echoing that sentiment, US officials told CNN that the US has no plans to shift its position and draw any red lines around the transfer of weapons and munitions to Israel.
Barbara Lee, the Sole Member of Congress to Vote Against the War on Terror, Sadly Allies With Forces of Evil in U.S. Politics
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - December 15, 2023 0
Barbara Lee [Source: democracynow.org]
Serves As an Award Presenter at 40th Anniversary Gala of CIA Cutout
Barbara Lee (D-CA), 77, is rightly revered in progressive circles as the sole member of Congress—House or Senate—to have voted against a resolution that gave the president power to wage aggressive war indefinitely in the Middle East after 9/11.[1]
On November 14, however, Lee allied with the forces of evil in U.S. politics when she served as an award presenter at the 40th anniversary gala for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cutout that supports dissident groups in countries targeted by the U.S. for regime change.[2]
Lee, who is currently running the in the Democratic primary against Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, to succeed Dianne Feinstein as a California Senator, presented an NED Democracy Award to female Afghan journalists who have faced persecution by the Taliban.
While on the surface this is a good group to support, the NED has its own agenda of using these journalists to try to whip up public anger at the Taliban and engender support for imperialistic policies that would enable the U.S. to reclaim a strategic foothold in Afghanistan.
Since the withdrawal of U.S. military troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Biden administration has initiated sanctions devastating to the local population whose main purpose is to collapse the Afghanistan’s economy and lay the groundwork for regime change.[3]
Malnutrition ward of the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul. Afghans are suffering greatly because of years of warfare combined with the further ravaging effects of U.S. sanctions, which Lee tacitly supports. [Source: nytimes.com]
As the sole member of Congress to have voted against the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan after 9/11, Lee should know better than to support the whole charade.
Musings from the Margins #4: Black Lackeys, White Social Democrats, Human Rights and Empire’s Decline
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist 13 Dec 2023
<snip>
The Democratic Party is run like a plantation for Black folks. The white neoliberal donors that run that party want Black folks to be seen and not heard. They are to keep their mouths shut, smile on command, get other Black folks to vote for democrats and defend Massa Joe when told. And for the most part that is what the members of the “Squad” and the other “progressives” have done. The “Squad” capitulated on Build Back Better, supported the obscene military budgets and even voted to condemn as antisemitic any criticism of Zionism and Israel, but it was not enough. The squad and other non-white members like Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) — are being “primaried” next year because the white neoliberal donors that control that party decided that they were just not obsequious enough on the issue of Israel. What these donors want is for all the Black folks and people of color to be like Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the embodiment of a servile, slavish servant of white power.
Disapproval of President Joe Biden marks an all-time high
Electorate support for President Biden has not stopped falling since the beginning of his presidency in 2021. | Photo: EFE
Published December 19, 2023
More than two-thirds of those surveyed disapprove of Biden's management of inflation and immigration, while only 34 percent approve.
The level of disapproval of US President Joe Biden's management reached an all-time high on Monday due to the American electorate's concern about the high cost of living and the security problems posed by the immigration crisis in the country. border with Mexico.
According to a survey conducted by Monmouth University, New Jersey, more than two-thirds of respondents disapprove of Biden's management of inflation and immigration, while only 34 percent approve of the president's job.
It was thus possible to verify that support for Biden has not stopped falling since the beginning of his presidency in 2021, when the indices stood at 54 percent. Despite the presidential team's efforts to reverse this, only three in ten Americans say the president is prioritizing the policy issues most important to them.
In this way, only 12 percent of those surveyed consider that their economic situation is improving, while 44 percent say that they have difficulties maintaining themselves financially. Likewise, the investigation revealed that approval of Congress and its leaders is at even lower levels.
The fact that only 17 percent of respondents have a favorable opinion of the legislature's work makes it the lowest rating in a year.
Democrat Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader, was the highest rated on Capitol Hill, with 21 percent approval of his work, while only 17 percent of those questioned had a favorable opinion of the current Speaker of the House. of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson.
JAMES W. CARDEN: THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST, REDUX
DECEMBER 19, 2023 NATYLIESB
By James Carden, ACURA, 12/11/23
Well-heeled and highly credentialed, the proteges of powerful political patrons with ties to New Haven, Cambridge, Oxbridge and corporate America occupy the highest councils of government and advise a sitting US president who, while blessed with long experience as a US Senator, hails from rather less-exalted circumstances than his own advisers. These advisers, with their degrees and pedigrees, stir within their chief a toxic combination of envy, resentment and insecurity which manifests itself through occasional outbursts of bad temper.
The president’s advisers believe (or say they do) in a theory of international relations called the Domino Theory, which means, in the shortest of shorthand, that should a democratic country fall to a hostile authoritarian state, then others will soon meet a similar fate. Hence it is imperative that the United States, beacon of goodness and protector of democracy, stave off the darkness, no matter the cost.
Yet as the course of the war proceeds, it becomes clear to many that victory, once assured, has slipped further and further from reach. In the face of an increasingly skeptical public, the president, who also believes in the Domino Theory (or says he does), urges Congress to stay the course.
If this sounds familiar, it is because it is.
But in this newest iteration of the drama, the title role is filled not by Lyndon Johnson of the Texas Hill Country, but by Joe Biden of Scranton, Pennsylvania. And while the mise en scene of the war in question has moved from Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe, the rationale laid out by the President’s men for continued American involvement remains much the same. As Biden’s Secretary of State, a product of Dalton, Harvard and Columbia, recently put it, “The issue here is not just Ukraine’s security it is the security and safety of the entire Euro-Atlantic space.”
When President Biden named Jake Sullivan to the position of Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, he referred to Sullivan as a “once-in-a-generation intellect.” People used to talk that way about Johnson’s national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, who, among other laurels, was, at age 34, the youngest Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
As it happens, Sullivan, at 44, is the youngest national security adviser since Bundy. And here is how Sullivan, in a gushing profile published this October in The New Yorker, describes his view of what is at stake in the war in Ukraine,
…As a child of the eighties and ‘Rocky’ and ‘Red Dawn’ I believe in freedom fighters and I believe in righteous causes, and I believe the Ukrainians have one. There are very few conflicts that I have seen–maybe none–in the post-Cold War era where there’s such a clear good guy and bad guy, and we have to do a lot for that person.”
This “once-in-a-generation” intellect then went on to compare the foreign policy challenge posed by Russia to a scene from the Mike Meyers comedy Austin Powers, in which…
…there’s a steamroller on the far side of the room, and a guy standing there, holding up his hand, and shouting, ‘No!’ Then they zoom out, and the steamroller is moving incredibly slowly and is really far away.” He added, “I was determined that we were not going to be that guy—just waiting for the steamroller to roll over Ukraine. We were going to act.”
Whatever the merits of these reflections, what is true is that the policy of near limitless financial and material support to the Zelensky regime has only succeeded in killing thousands of Ukrainian civilians and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers who might otherwise have lived had Sullivan, Blinken and Biden showed even a modicum of interest in the very real peace proposals that circulated between Russia and Ukraine in the opening months of the conflict.
A key difference between then and now is that Johnson had, within the highest councils of State, a brilliant, determined dissenter. George Ball, who served as under secretary of state, and later, as US Ambassador to the UN, tirelessly pressed Johnson and his inner circle to re-think the wisdom of their chosen course with regard to the war in Vietnam.
The lesson to which Ball worked for years to draw Johnson’s attention was how quickly, despite the best laid plans, wars can escalate. And like Johnson, Biden has been drawn into an escalatory spiral from which he will find it increasingly difficult to jump off.
As recounted by the journalist and author David Halberstam, Ball challenged “that greatest of American assumptions, that somehow, whatever we did, the other side would lie down and accept it.” In a 1964 memo to Bundy and Pentagon chief Robert McNamara, Ball pointed out that, “Once on the tiger’s back we cannot be sure of picking the place to dismount.”
As Biden sinks the US and what little is left of its reputation into a second war now being waged with the full, indeed shameless, support of the administration, Ball’s warnings about the dangers of inadvertent escalation from a half century ago take on a renewed urgency.
One wonders then: Does Biden have a George Ball of his own; a seasoned veteran who can cut through the cant and nonsense funneled to him on a daily basis from the likes of Blinken and Sullivan? Or is Biden wholly reliant on the slim reeds of his own intellect and the disastrous advice of his most senior aides? Is there anyone else – besides this latest iteration of the American establishment’s “best and brightest“- advising Mr. Biden?
And if so, does he possess the strength of character to find it within himself to listen?
Sorry James, no Chauncy Gardner in this crowd, much less a Molotov.) And Biden, like most all US pols is pretty ignorant of the world around him and only knows US domestic politics and the wants of capital to which all else is subordinated.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Despite continued calls for Tel Aviv to 'protect' Palestinian civilians, the US has continued to ship large quantities of weapons and munitions to fuel the carpet bombing of Gaza
News Desk
DEC 24, 2023
(Photo credit: AP/Evan Vucci)
US President Joe Biden told reporters on 23 December that he did not ask for a ceasefire during his latest call with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I had a long talk with Netanyahu today, and it was a private conversation,” the president said, adding that he “did not ask for a ceasefire.”
The White House said Biden and Netanyahu discussed the Israeli war on Gaza and its “objectives and phasing.”
The US president “emphasized the critical need to protect the civilian population, including those supporting the humanitarian aid operation, and the importance of allowing civilians to move safely away from areas of ongoing fighting,” according to the White House statement.
Biden's phone call came one day after the UN Security Council passed a barebones resolution that called for increased humanitarian aid but failed to demand an immediate ceasefire.
The Security Council had been trying to draft a resolution for several days but was forced to tone down the language at the insistence of US officials who opposed a call for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
The US and Russia abstained from the UNSC vote.
Washington has vetoed two previous resolutions calling for a ceasefire.
“This resolution has been watered down to the point that its impact on the lives of civilians in Gaza will be nearly meaningless,” said Avril Benoit of Doctors Without Borders.
On Saturday, Israel’s Broadcasting Authority revealed Tel Aviv is planning to switch to a new phase of the war in the coming weeks, bringing to an end to ground operations and shifting the focus to continued heavy airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.
While Washington has been calling for a switch to lower-intensity operations to “protect civilians,” maintaining air raids of Gaza is expected to keep the staggering death toll on the rise.
Young voters in the US have increasingly shown support for the Palestinian cause, plunging Biden’s approval ratings. A poll earlier this month showed that 53 percent of US citizens “disapprove of the president.”
"Ask?" If Biden weren't a bought and sold Zionist he could easily told Bibbi, "Stop now or we cut off all arms supplies." I guess $4M+ speaks louder than 20K dead...
******
When The New Yorker Tried to Preempt a Future Biden Impeachment
December 23, 2023
In 2019, The New Yorker‘s partisan Jane Mayer tried to blame Republicans for “conspiracy theories” that now make up substantial evidence in Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry, wrote Joe Lauria.
In trying to get Joe Biden elected in 2020, hyper-partisan journalists, like Jane Mayer of the once-storied New Yorker magazine, tried to dismiss then emerging evidence of Biden corruption in Ukraine as mere Republican fabrications. While Mayer, a once premier reporter, and other Democratic Party hacks helped Biden get elected, without them realizing it at the time, the evidence they were trying to debunk will be tested in an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives that will begin next year.
Since this article appeared, Donald Trump was impeached and acquitted for trying to dig up this dirt, using usual U.S. tactics. The Trump administration at the time was also beginning a largely fruitless probe into the origins of Russiagate, hatched by the Hillary Clinton campaign and U.S. intelligence services.
Hunter Biden, at right, as his father took the oath of office Jan. 20, 2021. (White House/Chuck Kennedy)
By Joe Lauria
in Washington
Special to Consortium News
Oct. 8, 2019
The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer has gained a reputation as one of the best reporters in Washington, but in her latest piece on Ukraine and former Vice President Joe Biden, Mayer has succumbed to the partisan mania ripping apart this city and much of the country.
There is little subtlety in her argument, as evidenced by the title of the piece: “The Invention of the Conspiracy Theory on Biden and Ukraine.” Rather than taking an impartial, non-partisan view — needed now more than ever in journalism — Mayer neglects evidence that would have produced a more nuanced report on this increasingly volatile story.
Such a result required the suppression of a seasoned reporter’s natural curiosity. In other words, maybe the other side has evidence worth examining too.
Mayer is not alone in dismissing serious questions about Biden as merely “a repeatedly discredited conspiracy theory involving Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s work in Ukraine.”
In doing so, Mayer has joined an unthinking media consensus protecting Biden and the media’s own interests to save itself from the shame of having pushed the now discredited conspiracy theory of Trump’s collusion with Russia.
With the Trump Justice Department digging into the origins of that fiasco it was the perfect time to preempt its findings with a trumped up impeachment scandal. The last thing the intelligence agencies and their compliant media need are revelations about how they together duped the country.
Jane Mayer in 2008. (Wikipedia)
Mayer, who distinguished herself on many stories, including a defense of the wrongly accused National Security Agency senior executive Tom Drake—an actual whistleblower—reduced herself to the journalists’ herd that gave Russiagate credence, and in the process undermined scores of media reputations.
Instead of owning up to it, Mayer writes that the media was manipulated in 2016, not by Democrats or intelligence officials, but by Republican partisans. She produces a line about Ukrainegate that would more credibly describe media accomplices in Russiagate: “News organizations continue to be just as susceptible to manipulation by political partisans pushing complicated and hard-to-check foreign narratives as they were in 2016.”
Mayer’s unwillingness to see the corruption of both major parties is stunning.
She writes: “Anyone trying to track the Ukrainian conspiracy stories that were eventually embraced by President Trump is likely to get mired in the same echo chamber of right-wing news purveyors that misinformed voters in 2016” (except that in 2016 it was an echo chamber aligned with Democrats).
Mayer only blames Republicans who were largely on the defensive during Russiagate. Her exoneration of Democrats then and now for misinforming voters, extends to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s approval of an uranium deal with Russia, after which, Mayer reports, “more than two million dollars in contributions” came to “the Clinton Foundation from the businessmen behind the deal.”
She says Clinton is in the clear though because other U.S. agencies also approved the deal and the amount of uranium was “negligible.” It was all just a conservative plot, Mayer tells us.
The Biggest Omissions
Mayer attributes the origins of Biden’s appearance of conflict of interest in Ukraine solely to a disinformation campaign run by a shadowy group set up by Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, the right wing activist, Steve Bannon.
This is intended to put a nail in the story at its origins, portraying it as just a nutty conservative conspiracy, and thus no one needs to be concerned about significant evidence that followed. “For nearly two years, conservative operatives have been trying to weaponize the Ukraine-based story that has led Trump to the brink of impeachment,” Mayer wrote.
She takes at face value Bannon’s braggadocio about his so-called Government Accountability Initiative being “key” and the “predicate” to the Biden-Ukraine story, allowing her to easily dismiss an array of facts, including a public admission of corruption by Biden himself, as merely an “unethically seeming morass.”
Of all the evidence missing from Mayer’s piece, perhaps the most important is the opening act of this Washington drama: the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew an elected Ukrainian government in 2014.
Without that evidence it is impossible to understand the context of the nauseating Biden/Ukraine impeachment story against Trump. She is not alone in this either. The entire elite liberal media and Fox News won’t mention it in a bipartisan cover-up of rapacious American foreign policy.
The press usually takes 25 years, after the declassification of documents, to admit the United States routinely breaks international law by overthrowing sovereign governments, and not in the name of spreading democracy, but in the interests of capital and geo-strategy. That was the case with Ukraine in 2014.
Hunter and Joe Biden at Obama’s 2009 inaugural parade.
Can you imagine if the Trump administration finally succeeds in overthrowing the Venezuelan government and a couple of months later Vice President Mike Pence’s son (who wasn’t kicked out of the Navy for drug use) lands a spot on the board of a privatized Venezuelan national oil company?
That is exactly what happened with Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine.
And then imagine that the U.S.-installed government of Juan Guaidó begins an investigation into corruption at the oil company and wants to question Pence’s son.
So Pence flies to Caracas and tells Guaidó he won’t get a $1 billion U.S. credit line until the prosecutor is fired. Six hours later the prosecutor begins cleaning out his desk and Pence later brags about it in an open forum at the Council on Foreign Relations.
That is exactly what Biden did in Ukraine.
The fired Venezuelan prosecutor then gives an affidavit under oath that Pence had him fired because he was investigating his son’s company and that the U.S. had taken over the country’s prosecutor’s office.
That is exactly what the Ukrainian prosecutor testified.
But none of these facts are in Mayer’s story. In the face of the affidavit and Biden’s open admission on video, she still somehow calls these “baseless tales claiming that Biden corruptly intervened on behalf of his son’s Ukrainian business interests.”
Instead Mayer attacks the reporter who revealed most of these facts, John Solomon of The Hill. A partisan reporter attacking another partisan reporter is what passes for journalism these days.
Being non-partisan — a requirement to practice serious journalism — means looking past the politics of a reporter or a news outlet, and even overlooking their partisan motivation, if they present documented evidence. The motive is irrelevant if the evidence is substantiated.
There was no such evidence in the Russiagate farce, but that never stopped partisans in the Democratic media. The same lack of skepticism has accepted now two C.I.A. officials as “whistleblowers” without questioning their motives, while showing no interest in real whistleblowers who challenge the Establishment on behalf of the nation.
If the Department of Justice and its investigation into the origins of Russiagate is serious and reveals wrongdoing by intelligence officials and by extension the media, the best move those officials and journalists can make is to go on offense as their best defense.
It also gives them another crack at Trump after failing with Russiagate. And Trump gave them the opening to do it.
Trump’s Blunder
Zelensky and Trump at the UN last month. (Wikimedia Commons)
Trump’s mistake was to get personally involved in the investigations into the origins of Russiagate and the Bidens. By mentioning both in a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he broke the wall that should exist between the White House and the Justice Department.
Though there was no clear quid-pro-quo, Trump hinted that he would release military aid to Ukraine in exchange for the investigations. If Trump did that it is the routine corrupt way the U.S. carries out foreign policy, as Biden openly admitted.
Trump compounded his problems by publicly calling for China to investigate Hunter Biden’s dealings in that country. By getting personally involved, instead of leaving it up to the DOJ to investigate his possible challenger in next year’s presidential election, Trump allowed his enemies in intelligence and the media to portray his conversation as an impeachable offense.
Every move the DOJ or Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, makes in investigating Russiagate or the Bidens’ corruption, including legitimately asking foreign governments for assistance, is now tainted as political because of Trump’s unwise intervention. He threw a lifeline to intelligence officers and journalists like Mayer, who will continue to make the most of it even if it means turning their backs on their professional commitments.
“Genocide Joe” is under fire for his unconditional support for Israel—but he failed long before that
December 28, 2023 by Natalia Marques
Protesters march down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, NYC with a puppet of Joe Biden
Biden is about to wrap another dismal year as his administration’s participation in the genocide in Israel is set to wreak havoc on his 2024 presidential campaign. People across the US have been taking to the streets, protesting the ongoing Israeli’s siege on Palestinians in Gaza since October 8. As the death toll in Gaza nears 22,000, the United States and the Biden administration continue to unconditionally support Israel.
As a result, voters, especially Arab-American voters, have abandoned their support for Biden and the Democratic Party in droves. But Biden is no stranger to neglecting the demands of his base, as his record as president has shown:
1. Mass protests condemn Biden’s participation in genocide
The Biden administration as directly and indirectly facilitated the genocide in Gaza. Biden himself has bypassed Congress to send weapons to Israel, and continues to push for massive Israel military aid packages at the legislative level. The seven-day pause in Israeli aggression ended following Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to the state, when he essentially gave the greenlight to Israel to resume strikes on Gaza. Biden has participated in pro-genocide rhetoric, openly questioning the validity of the Palestinian death toll. The White House went as far to condemn the progressive congress members calling for a ceasefire, calling the pressure for peace “repugnant” and “disgraceful.”
2. Working class in jeopardy as social safety net destroyed
Biden’s domestic policy is a reflection of overzealous military spending and a willingness to neglect the needs of his own people. Biden has allowed for the further destruction of the COVID-era social safety net during his presidency.
Due to the so-called “unwinding” of pandemic-era public healthcare expansion, at least 2.2 million children have been removed from the government insurance program Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program—although the real number could be closer to 3 million. Experts say that Biden has not done enough to stop the purging of up to 30 million people from public health insurance programs. It is not only states with Republican leadership that are some of the worst offenders in “purging” people off of Medicaid roles—states with governors from Biden’s own Democratic Party are also doing the same.
“The same Congress where the Democrats control the Senate, the Republicans barely control the house, five million people, and more than 1.5 million of them are children, who can no longer go to a doctor because Congress has decided that Medicaid expansion, which took place during COVID has been rescinded,” said socialist leader Brian Becker at the Dilemmas of Humanity conference in Atlanta this summer. “It’s not because they don’t have the money, they decided to do this. They decided to do this. I mean they just spent 880 billion dollars for the next military budget for one year. 880 billion dollars. And they’re saying we don’t have the money for low income families and their children to go to a doctor?”
3. Cost of living squeezes workers as Biden looks on
Meanwhile, conditions remain dire for working people, with over half of those surveyed by the US Census having some difficulty affording basic weekly expenses. Food prices have risen dramatically during Biden’s administration, rising by 10.6% from November 2021 to November 2022, and continuing to rise by 2.9% from November 2022 to November 2021—in part due to the ongoing war in Ukraine that Biden only wants to continue.
4. Student loan borrowers granted no relief due to Biden’s failures
Federal student loan payments, which had been on pause since March 2020, resumed on October 1 of this year following a series of failures by the Biden administration and Democrats to enact significant debt relief. In August of 2022, Biden launched a student loan debt relief program that would have zeroed out the debts of 20 million people. However, conservatives led legal challenges against the program that immediately halted it before anyone’s debt could be forgiven. The case against the program was taken up all the way to the conservative Supreme Court, which struck down the measure in June. The Debt Collective, a group which organizes student loan borrowers into a “debtor’s union,” claims that Biden had executive authority to do far more to keep college grads out of debt.
5. Building on a legacy of broken promises
Biden started off his presidency breaking major campaign promises to the people of the US. One major promise was to raise the federal minimum wage from a paltry USD 7.25 an hour to USD 15, a goal of the organized labor movement for many years. Instead, only a few months into his presidency, he gave up all pretenses of a fight by surrendering to a technicality in the Senate proceedings, which his administration could have easily bypassed.
Also early into his presidency, Biden shorted the people of the United States on stimulus checks. In the version of Biden’s American Rescue Plan that was finally passed by Congress in March of 2021, the originally planned COVID-19 stimulus check was brought down from USD 2,000, as promised by Biden and the Democrats during his election campaign, to USD 1,400. The additional weekly unemployment benefits of USD 300 passed in the Plan were much smaller than the USD 600 that was previously afforded in the CARES Act, passed in March of 2020 during Trump’s presidency.
Biden put up zero fight in September of 2021, when expanded pandemic-era unemployment benefits expired for 7.5 million people.
It is highly likely that the candidates from the two major parties in 2024 will be Biden and Trump—two presidents who oversaw the deterioration of the living conditions of the vast majority of people in the US. Many are looking for an alternative to the Republican and Democratic tickets. Several strong contenders for President have emerged, including the socialist and anti-imperialist campaign of Claudia De La Cruz, which has been openly challenging Biden’s policy regarding Israel, among other things.
Pressure rises for Biden to drop military aid to Israel
After over two months of genocide, support for the US’s usual policy of unconditional aid to the Zionist state is dwindling
December 29, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch
Image from demonstration outside of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's house on Christmas morning, protesting US policy in Israel
Since October 7, Biden has added to Israel’s massive US-made military arsenal and sent more weapons to Israel as it carries out its genocide in the Gaza Strip, even bypassing Congressional review to do so. After nearly three months of war, however, support for the US’s usual policy of unconditional aid to the Zionist state is dwindling.
Some of the most bloody attacks against Palestinian civilians have been made possible with US-made bombs, such as the attack that leveled an apartment block in the Jabalya refugee camp, killing over 100 people.
Many of the atrocities perpetrated by Israel with US-made weaponry and funded by US money have been broadcast internationally across communications channels for even the people of the US to see. As a result, mass protests have erupted in the streets for months, often disrupting major commercial centers and events throughout the busy holiday season.
A recent poll shows that popular support for US aid to Israel has dropped since November. According to a poll from Quinnipiac University released on December 20, less than half (45%) of registered voters support sending “military aid to Israel for their efforts in the war.” This is a significant drop from the results of Quinnipiac’s previous poll from a month ago, in which 54% of voters expressed their support for military aid to Israel. A comparison of the two polls reveals that support for aid to Israel has dropped among voters in both the Republican and Democratic parties. In the November poll, 71% of Republicans and 45% Democratic voters said they were in favor of further military aid to Israel. Those numbers dropped in December, with 65% of Republicans and only 36% of Democrats supporting more US aid to Israel.
The dwindling support for US support to the Zionist state follows the trends of other polls in the growing popularity of the Palestinian cause, such as an early December Date for Progress poll which found that 61% of voters support calls for a permanent ceasefire—including nearly half, 49%, of Republicans.
Pressure for the Biden administration to shift its policies on Israel has also been coming from within Congress itself—not even necessarily from the most progressive elements of the legislature. Six members of security-oriented committees of the House of Representatives, including the Intelligence, Armed Services or Foreign Affairs committees, none of whom are known progressives, penned a letter to Biden on December 18, calling on the President to “use all of our nation’s leverage to shift the Israeli military’s strategy.”
“The mounting civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis are unacceptable and not in line with American interests,” the letter reads. The representatives also reference the history of “America’s war on terror” as a warning for the future, stating, “We know from personal and often painful experience that you can’t destroy a terror ideology with military force alone. And it can, in fact, make it worse.”
Several prominent humanitarian organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders USA, Oxfam America, and Amnesty International, have also penned a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, urging him to halt military aid to Israel. The organizations urge the Pentagon to “withhold U.S. assistance, in accordance with U.S. law and policy, that would facilitate violations of international humanitarian law.”
Biden himself has not responded to any of the outside pressures against his Israel policy, and has only dug his heels in. As his administration told CNN earlier this month, the US has no plans to place conditions on Israel aid as it carries out genocide in Gaza.
"Six members of security-oriented committees of the House of Representatives, including the Intelligence, Armed Services or Foreign Affairs committees, none of whom are known progressives, penned a letter to Biden on December 18, calling on the President to “use all of our nation’s leverage to shift the Israeli military’s strategy.”
So where's 'The Squad'? Ya don't hear much of them these days, after the beatings, the cheating and betrayal they nonetheless put Partry above all considerations of decency and morality. People of goodwill should shun these hypocrites like they were plague dogs. The so-called 'lesser evil' ain't such.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
