Sympathy for the Devils...

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sun Sep 26, 2021 10:46 pm

WITH RHETORIC YOU CAN'T HIDE THE SUN
BIDEN'S PACIFIST SPEECH TO THE UN IS BASED ON WAR
23 Sep 2021 , 4:04 pm .

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US President Joe Biden in his first participation in the UN General Assembly (Photo: AFP)

This Tuesday, September 21, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, delivered his speech at the 76th General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), a presentation that stands out because, in addition to being the first of the Democratic president, he was marked by falsehoods and contradictions.

Why was Biden's first speech so eye-catching? To answer this question, it is enough to take a look at the main media aligned with the West.

"'We are not looking for a New Cold War': Joe Biden announces at the UN the beginning of the era of diplomacy" and "Biden assures that he seeks to unify the international community in his speech to the UN" were some of the titles that they took over the global press.

Since last year, exactly when the presidential campaign began, a way has been sought to project Biden as a savior, but above all an attempt has been made to contrast his "renewed" figure with that of Donald Trump, on whom a warmongering image allegedly fell. .

It is worth noting that, whether it is Democrats or Republicans, the image of the United States as an empire is sustained precisely by the war. Therefore, affirming that it seeks to impose another logic different from that is a fallacy because it would be denying the principle that sustains it.

KEYS TO BIDEN'S SPEECH

The pandemic. The current president of the United States began his speech referring to the global pandemic due to covid and the need to create a common front to stop its advance. Clearly this marks a distance from its predecessor. It is also a way of assuming leadership, with your country at the head, of a symbolic fight against an evil. A fairly cinematic projection of imperialism.
Climate change. Biden referred to global catastrophes as effects of climate change and again called for everyone to unite to stop it. Another element for which Trump was questioned.
Human rights. The US president said the world was at a turning point in history. "We are going to fight for a common future or we are going to endanger future generations," he said, referring to the principles that led to the creation of the UN. It is ironic that he calls for the defense of human rights given his actions on different war fronts, especially in recent years.
"A more peaceful world for all". Biden said that they ended 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan while "initiating a new era of diplomacy." The truth is that the resounding withdrawal of the Central Asian country corresponds more to an undeniable defeat than a thoughtful decision.
Ironically, he said that "we will stop the attempts of the strong to dominate the poor or the smallest (...) We do not want a New Cold War or a new division in the world. The United States is willing to work with any country to seek peaceful solutions. ". This, without a doubt, contradicts the imperial logic shown so far.

REALITY

Anyone who moderately follows US foreign policy is aware that Joe Biden's speech does not correspond to reality and points more to a cosmetic, narrative change, to try to re-float a leadership lost after the promotion of other actors on the geopolitical scene. Is the United States really going to change its warlike dynamic for diplomacy? His latest performances say otherwise.

A few days ago, the US military carried out an airstrike in Syria against a target that the US Central Command said was a "senior al Qaeda leader," notes Tasnim News .

"US forces today carried out a kinetic counter-terrorism attack near Idlib, Syria, against a senior al Qaeda leader. Early indications are that we hit the individual we were targeting, and there are no indications of civilian casualties as a result of the attack. attack ", said Monday the spokesman of the Pentagon, John Kirby, picks up the Iranian means of the agency Sputnik.

This bombing occurs just one day before Joe Biden delivered his pacifist speech.

"We have to create a collective future based on the United Nations. End war and destruction. We have to unite. For the first time in 20 years the United States is not at war," he said at the UN.

This sudden change in posture is hard to believe, especially considering that the circuit of war is a cog with many pieces that cannot be moved lightly.

When it does not intervene directly, the United States outsources the war by supporting opposition or rebel groups that serve its interests. "In Syria he for a long time supported Al Nusra and other so-called moderate rebels during the war on terror in Syria, believing that they would topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad," notes Tasnim News .

It is also necessary to mention that US imperialism maintains an occupation force of 900 soldiers in eastern Syria, where it has appropriated several of the oil fields of that Middle Eastern country "whose products are exported to the east through Iraq for truck instead of west on existing gas lines, where the Syrian government could sell it. "

Occupying a territory, appropriating its resources and financing terrorism contradicts that of being willing to seek peaceful solutions, as well as stopping the attempts of the strong to dominate the poor or the smallest.

It is more than demonstrated that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was not due to a change in imperial policy. In fact, the withdrawal had not concluded when the US president said that the war on terror was not yet over and that "the threat from Al Qaeda had metastasized elsewhere, naming Syria as a theater of operations that would continue."

It should also be noted that the flight from Afghan territory was not exempt from what the US government describes as a regrettable "mistake": an air strike during the last days of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan killed 10 civilians, of which seven were children . The incident was condemned worldwide after it was revealed that the attack targeted a civilian vehicle and not a bomb-laden car driven by Daesh militants who were on their way to attack US forces.

More than 750 military bases in 80 countries, as well as strategically located aircraft carriers in all seas, with no intention of withdrawing them, is an indication that a change in US foreign policy is not near. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, when compared to this data, is a negligible move.


"In the UN speech, Biden urges the world to move from conflict to cooperation in order to deal with COVID. So why do we spend $ 738 billion on the military and $ 11 billion on the Control Center of Diseases? "Asks Medea Benjamin, a Codepink activist.

And it is that the unequal distribution of vaccines, as well as their hoarding by rich countries, is also another sign that Biden's speech is more propaganda than anything else. Narrative that, as we said before, points to the concealment of unavoidable realities.

Regarding the defense of human rights, images have recently circulated that cast doubt on their struggle to defend them. That troops from the US border patrol persecute and whip Haitian migrants who try to cross into the North American country is a sample of the immigration policy that is not different from that of the previous president, which by the way was quite questioned by the Democrats.

According to the Biden Administration plan - the Robinson Institute reports - it seeks to accelerate mass deportations in order to deactivate asylum options.

"During his election campaign, in an attempt to distance himself from Trump's immigration strategy, Joe Biden assured that he would end the moral and national shame that the mass detention of migrants and the separation of families implied. But the images of the Border Patrol have shown the electoral instrumentalization of this narrative, and the heavy hand with which all US administrations have approached the issue ", the institute reports.

Joe Biden's pacifist speech is not sustainable over time, and the facts show it. The crimes committed by imperialism leave an image that cannot be reversed, especially if there is no real intention to impose a logic other than the one shown so far.

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

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Coast to Coast Protests Erupt in the US Against Biden’s Deportation of Haitians
September 26, 2021
scorinoco

From coast to coast, thousands of people in 25 US cities marched on September 23 to demand that President Biden live up to his campaign promises to end inhumane treatment of migrants, notably the mass deportation of Haitian refugees clustered under a bridge in South Texas, along with whippings and beatings from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents trying to stop all migrants across the US southern border.

Instead, they declared, Biden should institute policies he promised on the campaign trail: stopping deportations, reuniting families ICE raids split, closing detention centers—especially private for-profit ones—and stopping violence and inhumane treatment of detainees by ICE agents.

The pictures could have come directly out of coverage of Donald Trump’s horror show on the border: fascistic Border Patrol agents herding fearful Haitian families on the Texas border and shipping them off by the thousands for immediate deportation.

In order to carry out the attack on the Haitians, large numbers of extra Border Patrol agents were sent to the encampment of the Haitian immigrants who were rounded up and, as if Trump were still in power, sent back to their “home” country. Only this time Haiti is not even the home country for most of the deported immigrants. They lived for 10 or more years in Central and South American countries other than Haiti. Many had friends and relatives in Brooklyn, New York, for example, who were more than willing to house and shelter them. Brooklyn is home to the largest Haitian community anywhere in the world outside of Haiti.

Demonstrators across the country today insisted too that the Democratic majority in Congress should go the extra mile and solve the underlying immigration issue in the country by passing comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to legalization, for all migrants.


US border patrol personnel attack Haitian migrants as they cross the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña of Mexico into Del Rio, Texas, on Sunday, Sep 19, 2021. Photo: Félix Márquez/AP
Activists say that the statements by the administration and by Vice President Kamala Harris that the horrific scenes of agents using whips on immigrants were “unacceptable” and “inappropriate” were not enough and that the administration and Democrats need to act to solve the problem. “How are you different than Trump?” asked Marisa Franco, executive director of Mijente, in a statement issued by the Latino civil rights group.

The Biden administration claims that it has always been committed to humane immigration policies but has faced roadblocks. The Supreme Court blocked Biden when he tried to bring thousands waiting in squalor on the Mexican side of the border into the country for processing. The Court upheld lower court rulings that the Trump policy of corralling them there was legal.

Federal judges have thrown up other roadblocks and only last Sunday the Senate parliamentarian committee said Biden’s plan for a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of immigrants could not be included in the reconciliation process to get it to become law.

The Republicans have blocked any legislative attempts at immigration reform and are hypocritically blasting Biden for “allowing uncontrolled immigration into the country,” as Missouri’s neo-fascist Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said this week. They would like nothing better than to see a Democratic administration fail to solve the immigration problem. Immigration and chaos surrounding the withdrawal from Afghanistan are their two best talking points, considering that the president’s Build Back Better Agenda is massively popular with Americans.

None of this is stopping immigrant rights advocates from pointing out correctly, however, that it is the responsibility of the Biden administration to act on its own promises.

United We Dream, Defund Hate, and We Are Home coalitions organized the “Communities Not Cages” day of action campaign on September 23. Backers included the Service Employees, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the United Farm Workers, and the American Friends Service Committee.

The Washington DC rally drew several hundred people to Lafayette Square across from the White House. Rallies, silent vigils outside ICE offices, and other events drew tens of thousands more, combined, nationwide.

Migrants’ backers rallied outside the chapel at Loyola University on Chicago’s North Side, held a press conference/rally at Foley Square in Manhattan, gathered for two rallies—one outside an ICE office—in Atlanta, and added a rally outside the federal building in Los Angeles and a silent vigil outside ICE’s Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, Texas.

Participants festooned the rallies with signs demanding legalization and an end to deportations. “Close The Camps,” DC rally signs read. “We Are Essential” others stated, below a picture of a migrant farm worker. “Free Them All,” read a third.

“Down, down, down with deportation! Up, up, up with liberation!” was one of the repeated chants from the crowds in DC.

Speakers demanded Biden end the racist, anti-Black anti-migrant detention and expulsion policies he inherited from his predecessor, Republican Donald Trump, and before him, Democrat Barack Obama. Biden was Obama’s VP.

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US border patrol personnel attack Haitian migrants as they cross the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña of Mexico into Del Rio, Texas, on Sunday, Sep 19, 2021. Photo: Félix Márquez/AP

Activists also denounced ICE and Border Patrol tactics, including horrifying pictures of mounted agents literally whipping people, all of them Black and mostly Haitian, who were trying to enter the US.

ICE, speakers said, should be abolished. Families that its raids inside the US split should be reunited, with detainees returning to their communities, pending formal hearings on their requests to stay here.

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Daniel Foote, Biden’s special envoy to Haiti, resigned in protest over the inhumane treatment of Haitian immigrants. Photo: YouTube screen capture

And to add insult to such injuries, United We Dream’s Grace Martínez Rojas, emceeing the DC event, announced the latest news: Biden wants to ship some rounded-up migrants to the detention center at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuban territory occupied by the US. Under GOP congressional pressure, that center has remained open for 20 years to detain alleged al-Qaeda supporters following the 9/11 attacks.

“We are here to send a clear message to the Biden administration and the Democrats that we need more than words,” she declared. “ICE and the Border Patrol are rooted in white supremacy” in both agents’ views and agency tactics.

Speakers also told stories of inhumane treatment in the detention centers inside the U.S. and migrant camps along the U.S.-Mexico border. The Krome Detention Center in Florida was a particular target. But one speaker pointed out the more migrants whom private centers jail, the more money they make.

In a tape, in Spanish, Florida resident Hector Granado, detained in Krome since ICE agents arrested him as he left for work last October 20, said “part of ICE’s operation is isolation” from families and communities.

A migrant who identified himself only as Daniel, from the Haitian Bridge Alliance, told the DC crowd that he had been in and out of five centers in Southern California. “The US has specifically targeted Black immigrants,” he said.

Those migrants “are fleeing to seek freedom, yet what do we find in the land of freedom? Detention. Medical neglect. Discrimination. A system that’s inherently abusive and unfair.” Female detainees “suffered gynecological exams without their consent.”

But it’s not just Krome or the center he cited, in Irwin, California, that are problems, speakers said. It’s all the centers and the policy that drives them.

“Since taking office, the Biden administration has called for over $24 billion to fund ICE and CBP for fiscal year 2022 and continued to commit violent anti-Black attacks that were pillars of the Trump administration’s white nationalist agenda,” Defund Hate’s statement said.

“Following the horrific photos that surfaced of violence against Haitian migrants at the hands of Border Patrol agents, the Biden administration has carried out at least four additional mass expulsion flights of Haitian asylum seekers, with three more scheduled for later this afternoon.” Biden also appealed federal court rulings against the section of immigration law, Title 42, that justifies detentions and deportations.

Martínez Rojas also had a promise for Biden and Congress if they fail to act—a likely prospect for the immediate future, as comprehensive immigration reform has been ruled out of the package of “reconciliation” legislation now moving through Congress.

“We will not rest, we will not stop, until everybody is free,” she vowed.


Featured image: Migrants, mostly from Haiti, at an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge near the Rio Grande, in Del Rio, Texas, on September 21, 2021. Photo: Julio Córtez/AP

(People’s World)

https://orinocotribune.com/coast-to-coa ... -haitians/

It must suck to feel it necessary to pretend that this administration is anything better than 'not Trump'. Good enough for many, I guess...

"Paging Doctor Fanon"
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Mon Sep 27, 2021 2:39 pm

CONTINUITY AND LEGACY
BIDEN IS THE SAME AS TRUMP BUT IN A DIFFERENT COSTUME
26 Sep 2021 , 6:57 pm .

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Biden and Trump have much more in common regarding their key policies than many dare to claim (Photo: Nathaniel St. Clair / CounterPunch)

Much is said about how different Joe Biden's government is from that of Donald Trump, both in substance and in form. Perhaps in the rhetoric there is a paradigm shift, however the same exceptionalist position continues to be carried as a cover letter, a behavior that is typical of the imperial nature of any White House administration.

Although they try to distance themselves formally, the Democratic president is showing that he continues some of the most controversial policies of the Republican mogul. Especially when it comes to immigration and foreign policy, although much gullible still recites the current catechism of the American media establishment.

Let us take some cases and arguments that show that there is no such break in the background in terms of the fundamental lines of the last two tenants of the White House on those two issues.

CRIMINALIZED IMMIGRATION

Recently the photo of a cowboy policeman whipping a Haitian migrant with his whip in the vicinity of the southern US border caused outrage in (almost) the whole world, as it showed that deep down what the top of the Democratic Party criticized the government A former Republican continued to be open-minded: the criminalizing treatment of immigrants in the United States.

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But little has been said about the details of the case. Outside of the famous photo, the Biden administration was moving in function of expelling migrants camped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas .

Thousands of migrants, many of them originally from Haiti, have been camping in miserable conditions for more than a week.

The government plan hinges on a controversial Trump-era policy implemented in the early days of the pandemic to speed up removals. Such an expulsion plan is based on a rarely used public health law, known as Title 42 . Immigration authorities say a public health order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allows them to expel migrants crossing the border quickly without giving them a chance to apply for asylum.

Although President Biden took office promising a more humane immigration system, his administration has continued to use Title 42 policy and defend it in court, despite mounting pressure from human rights defenders in the United States.

The Trump administration had long argued that migrants crossing the southern border did not qualify as refugees fleeing persecution and therefore were not protected by US asylum law.

In March 2020, with the covid spreading rapidly in that country, the then government decided to invoke Title 42 to take drastic measures at the border.

The government expelled some 9,000 unaccompanied children who crossed the border before a federal judge ordered a preliminary injunction in November aimed at stopping the practice. Judge Emmet Sullivan said Title 42 allows officials to block the entry of non-citizens who carry diseases, but does not allow expulsions. Although this did not stop the rapid removals.

The Biden administration established exceptions for unaccompanied migrant children. It has allowed the majority of parents and children to come together to apply for asylum. But it has continued to evict many others, including some families and tens of thousands of single adults crossing the border.

There are legal disputes that order a similar suspension in the use of Title 42 to reject families with children, establishing a period of two weeks for the administration to comply. The Biden government is appealing that decision.

While the Biden administration defends its use of Title 42 as a public safety measure to curb the spread of COVID-19, doctors and immigrant advocates have denounced that such position is simply a pretext to get migrants out of the country quickly, and the most recent example is those sheltering under the international bridge at the Del Rio port of entry.

Immigrant advocates said they will continue to fight in court to end Title 42. They said it is particularly cruel to implement in this case, as Haiti is still reeling from a recent earthquake and major political upheaval following the Jovenel assassination. Moïse, in which US agencies are allegedly involved.

In this way the Biden administration is fighting in court to preserve one of the Trump administration's most hated border policies.

This does not seem surprising considering that the number of immigrants detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) has increased by 70% under Biden's mandate . When he took office, the number of immigrants in federal custody was at a minimum of 20 years.

From the last quarter of 2001 to the present, more than 5.8 million people have been incarcerated in immigration jails in the United States.
Not only is the number of detainees in question increasing, they continue to lock up children, nearly 15,000 a day , in large-scale military installations and bases. These conditions have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Critics of ICE allege it has done little to keep COVID-19 at bay, spreading infections not only within immigration jails but also in surrounding communities and to other countries through the deportations of thousands of immigrants .

FOREIGN POLICY ON DEMAND

It is true that Donald Trump's tone was always belligerent in relation to international affairs, but he did his best not to start any new war (although the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, the blatant theft of Syrian oil and support to the Saudis against Yemen was an incitement to her in Southwest Asia).


We do not know if Biden plans to establish a new war, beyond the pivot with a view to Asian military containment (China-Russia), but it is true that he fulfilled the mandate established by Donald Trump to leave Afghanistan with the Taliban taking the reins of government. , agreed in February 2020.

Both Biden and Trump demonstrated, for several years, against the then long occupation of Afghanistan; That both made US withdrawal from that key geopolitical territory an objective of their government clearly shows a continuity of policies in the international and military area.

Even the Biden government has moved unilaterally as did its predecessor, both in Afghanistan and in other settings, being criticized by its European peers and even from within NATO , since the United States has taken steps without coordinating with his above allies in different arenas.

For example, the surprise announcement of an agreement by the United States, together with Great Britain, to help Australia build nuclear-powered submarines to be deployed against China in the years to come sparked outrage from the French, who lost a lucrative contract to ship. 66 billion dollars to supply diesel submarines.

In this case, says journalist and analyst Patrick Cockburn in an article published a few days ago that "Biden behaved in true Trump tradition of causing more outrage to an ally than consternation to a potential enemy."

"This brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision reminds me very much of what Mr. Trump used to do," said French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. "I am angry and bitter. This is not done between allies. It is really a stab in the back."

Both the precipitous withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan and the new agreement between the North American country, the United Kingdom and Australia (called AUKUS) are a clear image of what Cockburn describes:

"Biden, who was full of 'America is back' rhetoric early in his presidency, is now treating some of his allies with the same arrogance that Trump never did."

Also, there are other areas in which Biden appears to be following Trump's policies, such as his reluctance to rejoin the Iranian JCPOA nuclear deal, which he promised to do, and should have done so by now if that was his will. Ebrahim Raisi's election to the presidency in the hardline Islamic Republic was a reaction to this: Biden's failure to join the deal.

Now the Iranian government is in a position to take the lead in potential nuclear negotiations in the near future, thanks to Biden's Trumpism.

It could also be argued that no matter who sits in the presidential chair in the Oval Room, US foreign policy will be dominated by other forces that do not represent and precisely support diplomacy and international law, such as the military-industrial complex and decision-makers of international law. CIA and NSA-type intelligence and security agencies. It has been the case at least since just before the Eisenhower era, who warned of the large military contracts that the federal government and Congress entered into with large private companies, still today beneficiaries of the endless American wars.

But it should be noted that there is continuity, and not a break as sold by the New York Times plagiarists and other media spokesmen of the American empire, which can be considered a legacy of how things are done lately in the White House, on the eve of an increasingly multipolar world.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/bi ... ro-disfraz

Google Translator

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Heads Roll As Biden Policies Move To The Right
The Washington Post has a piece on the current deportation of Haitian migrants from the U.S. and how it is charged with racism.

Charges of racism swirl as Haitian Americans, allies unite to protest Biden’s border crisis

One sentence in the piece reveals the supremacist thinking of its authors:

Many in the Haitian American community also blame U.S. foreign policy for spurring Haiti’s humanitarian crisis, saying successive administrations have failed to nurture stable Haitian governments willing to embrace human rights and fight corruption, poverty and criminal gangs.
No one is quoted in support of that delirious claim.


It is not the task of U.S. administrations to "nurture stable Haitian governments" nor has it ever been its aim. The U.S. has in fact done the opposite for more than 100 years and everyone in the Haitian community knows that.

Today its envoy to Haiti resigned over exactly that:

A top U.S. envoy to Haiti tendered his resignation on Wednesday, citing the Biden administration's "inhumane" effort to expel hundreds of Haitian migrants to their home country, which is recovering from a deadly earthquake and plagued by political instability, widespread insecurity and crippling poverty.
Ambassador Daniel Foote, who was chosen to be the U.S. special envoy to Haiti in July, called the Biden administration's policy in Haiti "deeply flawed," saying his recommendations were brushed aside.

"I will not be associated with the United States['] inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life," Foote wrote in his resignation letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which was obtained by CBS News.


Foote's resignation letter (also here) includes some words the State Department establishment does not like to hear:

Haitians need immediate assistance to restore the government’s ability to neutralize the gangs and restore order through the national police. They need a true agreement across society and political actors, with international support, to chart a timely path to the democratic selection of their next president and parliament. They need humanitarian assistance, money to deliver COVID vaccines and so many other things.
But what our Haitian friends really want, and need, is the opportunity to chart their own course, without international puppeteering and favored candidates but with genuine support for that course. I do not believe that Haiti can enjoy stability until her citizens have the dignity of truly choosing their own leaders fairly and acceptably.

Last week, the U.S.and other embassies in Port-au-Prince issued another public statement of support by for the unelected, de facto Prime Minister Dr.Ariel Henry as interim leader of Haiti, and have continued to tout his “political agreement” over another broader, earlier accord shepherded by civil society. The hubris that makes us believe we should pick the winner ‐again‐ is impressive. This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results. More negative impacts to Haiti will have calamitous consequences n o t only in Haiti, but in the U.S. and our neighbors in the hemisphere.


The State Department responded aggressively:

In a statement, State Department spokesman Ned Price pushed back sharply on Foote's assertion that his recommendations were dismissed out of hand, saying Foote "failed to take advantage of ample opportunity to raise concerns about migration during his tenure and chose to resign instead."
"For him to say his proposals were ignored is simply false. I'm not going to parse the contents of his resignation letter, but I do want to emphasize that we have active policy debates in this administration on a number of issues. The role of the President's cabinet and his advisors is to provide the President with the best advice possible," Price said. "No ideas are ignored, but not all ideas are good ideas."

The Biden administration has been using Title 42, a public health authority first invoked under former President Donald Trump, to expel Haitian migrants in U.S. border custody without a court hearing or an asylum screening.


We can chalk this up as another point where Biden follows Trump on foreign policy.

To save its falling ratings the Biden administration is not only moving to a more hawkish position on immigration and foreign policies. It is also removing officials who are not hawkish enough.

The Haiti move follows a day after the Pentagon removed a to nuclear policy official because she was opposing a more aggressive nuclear weapons policy:

The Defense Department has removed a top political appointee in charge of nuclear policy from her position, prompting concern among disarmament advocates that the Pentagon is sidelining those with less hawkish views as the Biden administration develops its official policy on nuclear weapons.
Top Pentagon officials asked Leonor Tomero, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense, to resign from her post in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive personnel matter.

The shake-up comes as the Biden administration hammers out the details of its Nuclear Posture Review, a document that each administration has released since the 1990s to set out its nuclear weapons policy and strategy, and which the administration is expected to release early next year.


The Arms Control Wonk is quoted with a truism:

“People wonder why we don’t learn from failures like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The reason is simple: People who point out alternatives to current national security policies are systematically driven out of positions of authority,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor and nuclear weapons expert at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies. “Firing her sends a clear message to everyone in the Pentagon that there is no tolerance for new ideas when it comes to our nuclear weapons policies.”

Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said in a tweet that Tomero’s firing was not the first time the Defense Department “deep state has ‘reorganized’ a smart, competent person who poses commonsense [questions] that challenge the nuclear status quo out of office.”

It would have been impossible to remove Leonor Tomero, a political appointee, without the approval of the White House.

Biden hopes that a move to the right will allow the Democrats to win the mid term elections. I believe that the strategy will fail.

Posted by b on September 23, 2021 at 17:40 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/09/h ... .html#more
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Sep 29, 2021 2:44 pm

'Nobody wants to blink:' A canceled trip, deal-less meetings and 24 hours to thread the needle
By Phil Mattingly and Lauren Fox, CNN

Updated 8:18 AM ET, Wed September 29, 2021

AOC says she plans to vote no on infrastructure without spending bill

(CNN)In a moment when President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders sought to create desperately needed momentum to pass key parts of the President's agenda, everything appeared to turn in the exact opposite direction.

Biden's meetings with two key Democratic moderates yielded nothing in the form of a tangible -- and absolutely necessary -- public commitment or acknowledgment of their preferred path forward.

The progressive outcry against the planned vote on Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure package didn't just hold, according to several members it actually grew in numbers over the course of the day.
With 24 hours until Speaker Nancy Pelosi has pledged to hold the infrastructure vote, something needs to unlock, and fast, for Biden and Democratic leaders to have any hope of success.

"Nobody wants to blink, everyone thinks the other side is about to," said one source involved in the negotiations. "Neither is right about that, which puts us in a very bad place."

<snip>

No one is backing down

With House Democratic leadership's self-imposed September 30 deadline to put the infrastructure vote on the floor now a day away, House progressives aren't budging. House moderates are still demanding the vote. And Pelosi's not one to violate her own policy that she won't go to the floor without knowing she's going to win.
Right now, progressives claim to have dozens of members ready to vote against Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and there's been absolutely no indication this is a bluff. Progressives feel burned. They feel like they are always accepting less to get something and after nine months, they want to prove they aren't kidding when they say they are standing firm.
"How many bills have we passed in the House that the Senate has not taken up? What about on voting rights? What about the George Floyd Justice in policing? This is not about trust. This is about verify," Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the leader of the progressive caucus, said Tuesday.

<snip>

(The article goes on to describe the generalized issues of politics and procedure which prevent Manchin and Sinema from 'getting on board' with zero mention of the economic interests whom they truly represent. bp)

<snip>

Privately, Biden has discussed with Schumer and Pelosi the reality that Democrats will have to move to address the issue via a fast-track budget process that allows for a simple majority vote, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.
Pelosi has acknowledged privately that is the most likely resolution. Schumer, however, has remained dead set against it for the moment.
"Going through the long, convoluted, difficult reconciliation process with debt limit is very, very risky," Schumer told reporters on Tuesday. "We're not pursuing that."

(more)

https://us.cnn.com/2021/09/29/politics/ ... index.html

Ah yes, the US Senate, bulwark of the ruling class. It does look like Kabuki theater but the tragedy is the US Constitution which through the structure of government it mandates ensures that nothing ever happens without ruling class approval.

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DROP THE ILLUSIONS: BIDEN IS A VICIOUS COLD WARRIOR
Posted by MLToday | Sep 27, 2021 | Other Featured Posts | 0

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By Carlos Martinez

September 23, 2021

This article analyses the recently-announced AUKUS military pact in the context of the Biden administration’s aggressive foreign policy. The article points out that any pro-peace hopes in Biden have been comprehensively dashed; this administration is pursuing an imperialist New Cold War with all the zeal of its predecessor.

After four years of Trump’s unhinged anti-China rhetoric, combined with the intensification of US diplomatic and economic attacks on China, many people on the left and in the anti-war movement breathed a sigh of relief upon Joe Biden’s arrival in the White House.

Gone were such fanatical China hawks as Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Stephen Bannon, Robert Lighthizer and Peter Navarro. Gone was the bombastic and openly demagogic style of the far-right Republican administration, with its racism, its blackmail, its threats. Perhaps it would now be possible to end the trade war; to accept China’s emergence as an important global power; to build an environment conducive to urgently-needed cooperation on climate change, pandemics, nuclear proliferation and peace.

THE LEOPARD HAS NOT CHANGED ITS SPOTS

Such hopes were misplaced, and have since been comprehensively dashed. As Demetri Sevastopulo noted in the Financial Times back in April, “Joe Biden’s hawkish stance on China has been much closer to that of his predecessor Donald Trump than experts had predicted.” Biden has made it abundantly clear that he has every intention of continuing – and indeed escalating – the New Cold War against China, stating: “China has an overall goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world and the most powerful country in the world; that’s not going to happen on my watch.”

One of the Biden team’s first acts in the realm of foreign policy was to work to undermine the EU-China investment deal, which is currently still frozen. Nine months into Biden’s administration and there is no sign of Trump’s trade war being dropped, in spite its manifest failure to revive US manufacturing. Biden continues to repeat Trump’s talking points about China’s “coercive and unfair” trade practices and its “abuses of the international system.”

Meanwhile the US continues to ramp up its military presence in the South China Sea. The US Coast Guard has commenced a massive upgrade of its fleet, for the specific purpose of “countering China’s growing influence in the region.” This has been combined with increased weapons sales to Taiwan.

Facing the reality of US defeat in Afghanistan, you might expect the US military budget to decrease somewhat, and yet even the relatively moderate proposal by Bernie Sanders to reduce military expenditure by 10 percent has been met with resolute, bipartisan opposition. In fact Biden’s 715 billion dollar defence budget will be the largest in history, making a mockery out of his widely lauded infrastructure plan, which commits to spending 3.5 trillion dollars over 10 years – meaning that he proposes to spend more than twice as much on the military as on solving the most basic needs of the American people.

The information warfare against China has if anything accelerated under Biden. His insistence on spreading conspiracy theories about Covid’s origins – dismissing the WHO’s findings that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” and ordering US intelligence services to conduct a separate investigation focused on the Wuhan Institute of Virology – is nothing more than a sugar-coating of Trump’s flagrant ‘kung flu’ racism. When Trump first put proposed the lab leak hypothesis, Democrats correctly dismissed it as a conspiracy theory; now in the driving seat of the New Cold War, these so-called progressives have chosen to take the same road.

The Democratic administration and its media supporters have amplified the crazed accusations of Mike Pompeo about genocide in Xinjiang. In the first week of the administration, national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned that the US would “impose costs for what China is doing in Xinjiang, what it is doing in Hong Kong, for the bellicosity and threats that it is projecting towards Taiwan”. Accusing China of “genocide and crimes against humanity” – on the basis of extremely dubious evidence that has been comprehensively debunked (for example by The Grayzone and the Eurispes Institute of Political, Economic and Social Study) – the US, EU, UK and Canada co-ordinated to impose sanctions on China. The Western media has ramped up its slander campaign in order to win broad public support for anti-China actions at an economic, political, diplomatic and military level.

In summary, as Danny Haiphong has observed, when it comes to the New Cold War, Joe Biden is “a Democrat with Trumpian Characteristics.” The imperialist leopard has not changed its spots. Biden is just as committed as his predecessors were to the preservation and expansion of the US-led imperialist world system. The New Cold War on China constitutes the cornerstone of this bipartisan strategy.

AUKUS AND THE ATTEMPTED REBUILDING OF AN IMPERIAL ALLIANCE AGAINST CHINA

Trump’s bluster, his crudity and his unfiltered aggressive nationalism served to alienate some of the US’s traditional allies. The longstanding coalition of advanced capitalist countries – the US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and Japan – started to fracture under the weight of Trump’s refusal (or inability) to convincingly pretend that neoliberal imperialist plutocracy is good for everyone.

Once installed in the White House, Joe Biden lost no time in declaring that “diplomacy is back” and that he would work to “repair our alliances” in order to “confront China’s economic abuses; counter its aggressive, coercive action; to push back on China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance.” In particular he promised to coordinate with “other democracies” to contain China.

In June, Biden travelled to the NATO and G7 summits in order to promote this anti-China alliance and to reiterate the importance of a “rules-based international order” A genuinely independent press might have queried whether the phrase “rules-based international order” should actually refer to the existing framework of international law as defined by the United Nations – of which, for example, the US’s wars, drone strikes and unilateral sanctions are a clear violation. Needless to say, such analysis was noteworthy by its absence.

The Quad alliance (the ‘Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’ of the US, Japan, Australia and India), dormant for nearly a decade, was revived by Trump in 2017 as an ‘Asian NATO’ with a mandate to increase military pressure on China. Biden’s administration is picking up this ball and running with it – “making the Quad the core dynamic of its Asia policy.” Biden convened the first leaders’ summit of the Quad in March, and on 24 September 2021 the Quad holds its first ever in-person leaders’ summit.

The latest move in this deepening New Cold War is the announcement on 15 September 2021 of AUKUS – a trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK and the US. The pact is designed to “deepen diplomatic, security, and defense cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region” and involves cooperation on cyber warfare, underwater capabilities, and long-range strike capabilities.

The composition of the AUKUS pact serves to expose its nature as a colonial throwback. Boris Johnson may try to present the three countries’ core commonality as being “English-speaking maritime democracies”, but what the world sees is an “alliance of white colonial states” attempting to reassert imperial hegemony and keep the natives in line.

The pact’s most obvious practical significance is in improving Australia’s ability to police the Pacific on behalf of US-led imperialism – specifically, with the aid of nuclear-powered submarines. Julian Borger and Dan Sabbagh write that “the aim is to put Australia’s currently diesel-powered navy on a technological par with China’s navy.”

Nobody is in any doubt that AUKUS is part of a strategy to contain and encircle China. Kate Hudson, General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), observes: “this major new multifaceted defence agreement between the US, UK and Australia sees the latter firmly jump into the US camp and the former strengthen and renew its Pivot to Asia through unashamedly militaristic means.” Gideon Rachman, writing in the Financial Times, describes it as being “ultimately aimed at deterring Chinese power, much as NATO deters Russia in Europe” (Rachman of course considers this a good thing).

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating argued vociferously against Australia’s membership of such a pact, on the basis that it would induce a “further dramatic loss of Australian sovereignty” and that its only objective – “to act collectively in any military engagement by the US against China” – runs counter to Australia’s basic interests.

The provision of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia certainly violates the spirit – and quite possibly the letter – of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), involving as it does the provision of weapons-grade enriched uranium to a non-nuclear weapons state. Kate Hudson points out that the NPT “stipulates that any sharing of nuclear technology must be ‘for peaceful purposes’, and a military pact does not have ‘peaceful purposes’”.

Given these nuclear submarines will doubtless be deployed in and around the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, AUKUS adds significantly to the threat of the New Cold War turning extremely hot. As the spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in Britain put it: “The AUKUS military partnership and cooperation on nuclear submarines risk intensifying global arms race, crippling international non-proliferation efforts and severely undermining regional peace and stability.” Even New Zealand, a fellow “English-speaking maritime democracy”, is keeping its distance from AUKUS, stating that Australia’s new nuclear-powered submarines will be banned from New Zealand waters.

BUILD OPPOSITION TO THE NEW COLD WAR

It is an inescapable fact that the Biden administration does not plan to end the New Cold War or pursue a cooperative, multipolar foreign policy. The US remains a hegemonist power, armed to the teeth and ready to risk humanity’s future for the sake of preserving the imperialist status quo.

The fight against the New Cold War therefore requires a global alliance of the socialist countries, the developing world, the working class and oppressed communities in the imperialist heartlands; alongside the peace movement, the environmental movement, and all forces that can be united to oppose this reckless strategy. Cold War benefits only a tiny handful of people. Meanwhile humanity face global problems that require global solutions: climate change, containment and prevention of pandemics, microbial resistance, and the threat of nuclear confrontation.

Kishore Mahbubani puts the case simply and eloquently in his recent book, Has China Won?: “If climate change makes the planet progressively uninhabitable, both American and Chinese citizens will be fellow passengers on a sinking ship.”

The cooperation we urgently need cannot be built in an atmosphere of fear and distrust, in the context of a New Cold War and a relentless slander campaign. Those of us in the West must demand of our governments and media that they cease their hysterical hostility towards China, stop demonising China, stop attempting to prevent its rise, stop constructing military alliances against it, and start creating an environment conducive to deep and lasting cooperation.

China’s approach to international relations provides an example for others to follow: “No matter how the international landscape evolves, China will resolutely safeguard UN’s core role in international affairs, stay firmly on the right side of history, strive to build a community with a shared future for mankind, join hands with all progressive forces in the world, and work tirelessly to advance the noble cause of peace and development for humanity.”

Let us consolidate and expand our forces, and put our shoulders to the wheel of ending the New Cold War.

https://mltoday.com/drop-the-illusions- ... d-warrior/

*********************************************

Progressives Thought They Had the Upper Hand In Congress. Here’s Why They Were Wrong.
BY JIM NEWELL
SEPT 28, 20218:02 PM
WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 28:

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Rep.. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) speaks to reporters as she leaves the U.S. Capitol on September 28, 2021 in Washington, DC. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

There was a moment in Congress earlier this year when progressives felt they had the upper-hand. A fleeting one.

The Senate had passed its bipartisan infrastructure deal, demanded by moderates, clearing the stage for progressives’ turn: A $3.5 trillion party-line grab bag of priorities on child care, education, health care, and climate change, funded largely by tax increases on the wealthy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had pledged that she wouldn’t hold a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure deal until the Senate had also passed the bigger, party-line bill. Progressives, with the Speaker’s backing, had taken moderates’ top priority hostage, believing it would force their centrist colleagues to negotiate with them on the party-line bill. This set up an inversion of the typical dynamic in Democratic majorities, where the moderates decide what they can live with, and then Democratic leaders jam it down the left’s throat.

A couple of months later, though, the old ways have reasserted themselves. The reconciliation bill isn’t done, but leaders are ready to pass the bipartisan infrastructure deal. It is causing no shortage of betrayal! cries among progressive lawmakers on Capitol Hill now, with some threatening to rebel later this week.

<snip>

In a caucus meeting Monday, Pelosi finally bit the bullet and reversed her position: She told her members that they could no longer hold out on passing the infrastructure bill until the Senate acted on reconciliation. She had made a commitment to pass the bipartisan bill this week, before the highway bill expired, and reconciliation wasn’t ready.

Some progressives have come to terms with this. Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio, a salty veteran of the chamber who’s had vicious things to say about the bipartisan infrastructure bill all along, told me Tuesday that this is the best they can do.

“There’s no alternative,” he said. “This is the best we can do. You know, I’ve been fighting for additional funding for infrastructure ever since Obama killed my bill, and Trump did nothing. So at least the money’s there.”

Others are less acquiescent. Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, in a since-deleted tweet, called the decision to move the bipartisan bill before the reconciliation bill a “betrayal” and threatened to “vote it down” on Thursday. She was not alone in Tuesday’s Congressional Progressive Caucus meeting, where one member after another railed against breached agreement.

“We articulated this position more than three months ago,” CPC chair Pramila Jayapal said in a statement following the meeting, “and today it is still unchanged: progressives will vote for both bills, but a majority of our members will only vote for the infrastructure bill after the President’s visionary Build Back Better Act passes.”

(more)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... wrong.html
“There’s no alternative,” he said. “This is the best we can do.
Get ready, you're going to be hearing a lot of that very soon. Along with "Compromise is the heart of Our Democracy" which in real politik translates into "Resistance is futile!"
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:34 pm

Pelosi faces her toughest moment of truth yet

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

Updated 2:37 AM ET, Thu September 30, 2021


(CNN)Democrats have an almost mystical faith in Nancy Pelosi's ability to count votes, corral her caucus and pass historic legislation. But her reputation is facing its toughest test as the House speaker, trapped between progressive and moderate Democrats, struggles to save President Joe Biden's transformational agenda.

Pelosi managed to defuse one Democratic rebellion Wednesday, as the House narrowly passed a measure extending the government's borrowing authority until December 2022. But she has so far failed to solve a far bigger drama that is splitting the Democratic Party. Pelosi's persuasive powers and legislative tricks have failed and several gambles, designed to enact a $3.5 trillion social spending plan and a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, have backfired.
The showdown is over what supporters say is the most significant legislation in generations to help working Americans access child care, education and health care. The measures are not only critical to Biden; they would crown Pelosi's own legacy toward the end of a pioneering career that, until Kamala Harris became vice president, made her the highest-ranking woman in US political history.
The California Democrat is in her second turn with the gavel, after going head-to-head with Republican President George W. Bush after becoming speaker in 2007. Her role enacting economy-saving legislation during the 2008 financial crisis and driving President Barack Obama's agenda into law, including the Affordable Care Act, made her one of the dominant political figures of the early 21st century. But as she tries to pass trillions of dollars in infrastructure and social spending, Pelosi is now in what looks like an impossible situation.

"I wish Nancy Pelosi well. She has defied a lot of common belief and come through in the past when she's faced these challenges," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday.
"I'm not going to gainsay her situation now."

No margin for error

Ahead of Thursday's self-imposed deadline to hold a vote on the infrastructure plan, Pelosi attended the annual Congressional Baseball Game at Nationals Park in Washington. The President spoke to her there -- and he spent time in the Democratic dugout before crossing to the GOP one in an on-brand example of his vow to reach across the aisle.
The speaker has several huge problems as the critical vote, which she scheduled to placate moderate Democrats who view it as crucial to their reelection hopes next year, looms.

First, she has almost no margin for error in the House. The tiny Democratic majority means she can only lose three votes. Almost every lawmaker in a restive and ideologically diverse caucus must be on board for everything and there can be few opt-outs for lawmakers who fear tough votes that could end their careers.

Second, Pelosi's writ only runs on the House side of Capitol Hill. The current stalemate over Biden's priority bills is pitting her against several moderate senators in a chamber that Democrats control with an even slimmer majority than she has in the House, meaning any one senator can kill any bill. If it does prove impossible to eventually pass the two bills, and Biden's domestic agenda crumbles, the last few fraught weeks will become a lesson in the futility of trying to pass transformational laws with such tiny majorities.

Pelosi's capacity to get her own caucus in line has been thwarted by progressives who see passing the $3.5 trillion spending bill as an existential moment for their movement and sense a moment of historic leverage.

At the root of the problem for Pelosi, who huddled at the White House with Biden and Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday, is a complicated mechanism for passing the bills that she helped construct. The idea was to offer progressives an incentive to vote for the infrastructure bill, which they consider far too small, by linking it with the spending package. And moderates were thought to be so keen to see the infrastructure bill enacted that they would hold their noses and vote for the much larger spending bill.

(more)

https://us.cnn.com/2021/09/30/politics/ ... index.html

What a bullshit story, this oncoming train wreck is the result of a political miscalculation. Uh-huh... It is a rather lame attempt to excuse the Democratic Party's true purpose and intent, continuance of the status quo with them in charge, not the other guys. But the status quo comes first, push come to shove. Little Nancy D'Alessandro (we know where she's from...) will be the scapegoat/pinata for the outraged progressives of her party , thereby absolving the party itself of it's historic treachery against the working class once again.

I have said that the Dems fail because they have no ideology, and this is true on the level of superficial national politics. But there is an ideology on the higher level of policy, and that is the continued dominance of the bourgeois ruling class. For this even elections may be sacrificed, there will be no genuine succor for the toiling masses that cost the bosses more than a trifle, and even that given grudgingly. No goddamn 'slippery slope'... The party, and therefore the duopoly which is a straightjacket guaranteeing debate limited to ruling class expectations, are preserved, the progressive chumps again corralled behind a 2 foot fence that they lack the will and courage to jump.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 07, 2021 3:01 pm

AOC Offers a Hard Lesson on the Need to Dump the Duopoly
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor 06 Oct 2021

Image

AOC Offers a Hard Lesson on the Need to Dump the Duopoly

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other so-called progressives exemplify the dangers of depending on the Democratic Party to enact any meaningful change.

Since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Black Agenda Report has been the most consistent voice on the Left sounding the alarm about Democratic Party bankruptcy. The late founder and executive editor of the publication, Glen Ford, rightly called the Democratic Party the more effective evil serving the Lords of Capital in their reign of terror against the working class and oppressed masses. Late managing editor of BAR, Bruce Dixon, routinely pointed out that the Democratic Party made tepid promises to get elected but refused to enact a progressive policy agenda once in possession of majorities in Congress.

It was impossible to predict, however, that the reign of Barack Obama would precipitate a crisis of legitimacy in the two-party duopoly after his diligent service to the Lords of Capital had reduced much of the Left in the United States to a state of political stagnation. The economic discontent expressed in the Occupy Wall Street movement gave rise to Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign in 2016. Thus began the ongoing split within the Democratic Party between an ever-consolidating establishment and a growing cohort of left-ish "democratic socialists." The Democratic National Committee’s deliberate takedown of Bernie Sanders’ initial bid for the Democratic Party nomination gave rise to “the Squad,” a group of four women of color who adopted the Sanders agenda and successfully won Congressional seats in 2018.

One member of the Squad who has ripped whatever mask was left hanging on the Democratic Party is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). AOC has done a masterful job bursting asunder whatever illusions existed that the Democratic Party can operate as anything other than an engine for war and austerity. AOC attended the $30,000 per ticket Met Gala event in mid-September wearing a dress draped with the message, "tax the rich." This eye-grabbing moment prompted a good number of liberals to applaud AOC for bringing a progressive message on taxation into an elite space. However, others on the Left questioned why the self-described "democratic socialist" would tout a message already popular with majorities of the country instead of expressing solidarity with Black Lives Matter activists protesting outside of the Gala or, better yet, taking more meaningful action to pressure Medicare for All and the rest of the Squad's so-called progressive agenda.

AOC followed up this act by changing her vote on $1 billion in additional U.S. funding for Israel's Iron Dome from "nay" to "present." The sudden decision appeared to be encouraged by House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Photos went viral of AOC visibly in tears following an encounter with Pelosi on the floor of the House. AOC has routinely coined herself a champion of human rights for the Palestinian people yet abdicated her responsibility to oppose additional funding to the settler colonial regime currently colonizing Palestine. To make matters worse, AOC painted herself as the victim in her response to the backlash by insinuating that a climate of “volatility” forced her to make a decision in haste. She did not, however, apologize to the Palestinian people and their allies for the vote.

While AOC has received her fair share of bad-faith criticism from the political right, she has yet to answer any of her good-faith critics from the left. It is thus quite easy to dismiss her most recent errors as worthy of criticism but not total condemnation. However, history is a stubborn thing. History says that AOC is not an innocent bystander in the establishment’s ongoing effort to sheep-dog the Left into the Democratic Party on the one hand and satisfy the interests of the rich on the other. In 2018, AOC called the deceased warmongering Republican John McCain an "unparalleled example of human decency" and expressed admiration for Nancy Pelosi's activist credentials . She then collaborated with Republican Senator Ted Cruz in 2019 on a letter demanding that the National Basketball Association (NBA) pledge support for the U.S. color revolution in Hong Kong.

AOC has tacitly supported imperialism by regurgitating the State Department's narrative of humanitarian imperialism on nearly every major instance of U.S. aggression. She has labeled Venezuela a "failed state" but has yet to demand an end to U.S. sanctions under Joe Biden. On Palestine, AOC has offered a variety of word salads when questioned on her opposition to Israeli colonialism . She has also professed her loyalty to the CIA-backed Dalai Lama . These instances of capitulation to imperialism have only aggravated frustrations held by progressives and leftists who rebuke her tendency to privilege spectacle over meaningful political action in the fight for a so-called “progressive” agenda.

AOC has recently been thrown praise by supporters for standing up to establishment Democrats seeking to tank Biden’s “Build Back Better” spending plan. Yet neither AOC, the Squad, nor the rest of the Progressive Caucus has been willing to take the political action necessary to meet the moment of crisis. AOC refused to force a vote on Medicare for All in exchange for Nancy Pelosi’s House Speaker vote and even suggested that Jimmy Dore and others who demanded that she do so were engaging in violence . AOC and the Squad’s so-called protest against the removal of the eviction moratorium did not include demands for universal housing, healthcare, or income during a deadly pandemic. Furthermore, AOC and the rest of the Democratic Party has been unwilling to take the streets to oppose the Biden administration’s mass deportation of undocumented immigrants , privatization of the Postal Service , and abandonment of police reform but has been more than willing to call Joe Biden a “good faith” partner in the Democratic Party.

AOC offers a particularly difficult but useful lesson on the need to dump the duopoly. In the final analysis, no member of the Democratic Party is equipped to lead the United States out of the abyss of its systemic decline. For successive administrations, progressives and leftists across the political spectrum have allowed the Democratic Party’s massive escalation of war and austerity to go unchallenged. While support for progressive policies has risen among the impoverished majority in tandem with a new wave of “left” sounding politicians, none of this has changed the overall character of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party remains the more effective evil of U.S. imperialism—a system which only independent, grassroots political organization can defeat.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/aoc-o ... mp-duopoly

Changing the Democratic Party into something other than the left wing of the capitalist vulture is a fool's errand. Only those ignorant of history, be it the last century or the past few decades, could think such a thing possible. And the 'Social Democrat' dodge might fool those ignorant of affairs in 1914, 1919 or post-war Europe. But when you dismiss the rhetoric and examine the results it is clear that they form a support of the capitalist hegemony just like Mitch McConnell, each 'servicing'(a stockman's term...) a target populace but all with the same overall mission, preserving and increasing the rule of the bourgeoisie.

As the condition of the working class has increasingly deteriorated since the 1970's the demand for a Democratic Party more responsive to the needs of the workers and the world we must live in has been grudgingly meager at best. People wanted universal health care and got a Republican plan which delivered little benefit and preserved, hell, mandated profits of insurance and health care vampires. Earth Day was over 50 years ago and still we are descending into environmental hell rather than arresting the decline and the perps. The one income household has become the 2,3 or 4 income household just to squeak by, and this is celebrated as women's liberation.(which only works for the real middle class with their physically undemanding jobs). A Republican demagogue drastically slashes the taxes of the rich and the so-called 'left' party cannot even return the rates to the inadequate level of their previous regime.

Joe Biden's spending plan was bullshit from Day One. He knew it, Nancy knew it and I'll bet AOC knew it too, don't think her naive. He knew it would get pared down to something the rich would swallow but promising otherwise was good politics. And so we will again be extolled with the beauty of 'compromise' in our best of all 'democracies'. I can't wait...

Will Bernie and the Squad rise to the occasion, declare betrayal and monkeywrench Biden's deceit? No way in hell, they were party to it too. So the Dems will have nothing to show for their control of government(they really could if they really wanted to, not their brief) and will run on 'Not Trump' again, it worked the last time. But 'lesser evilism' wears thin, something gotta give.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 11, 2021 2:55 pm

Virginia's gubernatorial election is more important than ever as a national barometerrginia's gubernatorial election is more important than ever as a national barometer

(CNN)Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe has admitted President Joe Biden's political woes drag on his gubernatorial campaign. But they pale against the shockwaves that would rip through the White House if he loses his race next month at a perilous time for the party in Washington.
(more)
https://us.cnn.com/2021/10/11/politics/ ... index.html

Here's why Democrats should be worried about the next election

(CNN)American politics is in a state of high flux and both parties are searching, painfully, for balance.

Democrats are holding on to threadbare majorities in the House and Senate and desperate to reach a major accomplishment before midterm politics take over the calendar.
But rather than speak as one, the party's progressives from blue states are in a public and damaging spat with its few majority-making moderates: Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
(more)
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/09/politics ... index.html

Enten breaks down Biden's diminishing independent voter support
New Day

President Biden's 2020 victory was in large part due to his ability to win the center, emerging with a 13-point win with independent voters. CNN's Harry Enten breaks down what his diminishing approval among independent voters means now.
(video)
https://us.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021 ... ay-vpx.cnn
Do I detect a pattern here? The 'center' is completely misconstrueing this situation, painting the sorta leftish wing of the Democratic Party as the obstructionists while a handful of so-called 'moderates', right wingers in any other country in the world, are the voice of reason. Well, that's bourgeois democracy for ya... This suits the ruling class, who worry that any substantial concessions to the unwashed masses indicate a 'slippery slope' to full blown communism.

Meanwhile, the progressive advocates recognize the hatchet job the MSM is doing to their side without realizing that they have been patsys, perhaps willingly at the top level(I'm talkin' bout you, Bernie). And they really cannot do a damn thing about it, the prez, the party bigshots and funders are all lined up against them.

They only thing they could do, the only honorable thing to do is walk away from that shit party. I ain't holding my breath.
Media Praise ‘Mavericks’ for Blocking Aid to American People
EOIN HIGGINS

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President Joe Biden’s agenda, once seemingly on life support after a small coterie of right-wing Democrats announced they’d oppose pairing a social spending bill with infrastructure legislation, has a new lease on life—thanks to progressive Democrats who held the line.

But you wouldn’t know that from corporate media, which disparaged attempts by left-leaning Democrats in Congress to stay the course on the two bills as the divisive behavior of fringe actors. “Take the win,” a frustrated and bemused Chris Cuomo (CNN, 9/30/21) told progressives.

Meanwhile, the obstructionists, who number less than a dozen in the House and Senate, are treated as the lawmakers with their ear to the ground, bold truth tellers who know what the American people really want. Corporate media values—bipartisanship, the “maverick” title, “moderation,” militarism and more—are regularly deployed to maintain the status quo. That they’re only regularly used to describe the actions of center-right and right-wing politicians shouldn’t be surprising.

Quirky critic of ‘woke politics’
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An Axios story (10/1/21) on Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema began with “free advice for anyone trying to bully the wine-drinking triathlete into supporting President Biden’s $3.5 trillion budget bill: She doesn’t play by Washington’s rules—and she’s prepared to walk away.”
Chief among the impedimentary lawmakers receiving a spitshine on their image is Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Perhaps the biggest roadblock to a deal, Sinema is portrayed in corporate media as a quirky, party-bucking, principled politician—rather than the reflexive obstructionist she’s proven to be in negotiations (Vanity Fair, 9/30/21).

That lack of purpose in talks with party leaders is paired with her cozying up to big corporate donors. As Sinema has stifled the social spending legislation, she’s reaped the benefits, taking in hundreds of thousands from the financial, insurance and real estate sectors, according to Open Secrets. She held a fundraiser on September 27 (New York Times, 9/27/21) with industry lobbyists opposed to the tax burden they fear would be a byproduct of the bill, and another high-dollar affair on October 2 with her PAC’s major donors (New York Times, 10/1/21).

When it comes to reworking Sinema’s image, Axios (10/1/21) has been one of the worst offenders, setting up the senator to readers as someone you might think has left-leaning politics, but doesn’t:

Progressives could be forgiven for presuming that Sinema, 45, the first openly bisexual member of Congress, who’s easy to spot in her trademark sleeveless dresses, wry wigs and acrylic glasses, would share their woke politics.

They’ve been befuddled, and increasingly enraged, when she behaves more like the late Republican Sen. John McCain, another Arizonan who didn’t mind challenging party orthodoxies.

AZCentral: Here's what Democrats need to understand about Sen. Kyrsten Sinema
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According to the Arizona Republic‘s Laurie Roberts (9/30/21), “Sinema’s brand is all about being a party unto her own.”
Gannett’s Arizona Republic (online as AZCentral), a conservative paper in Sinema’s home state, has argued in favor of the embattled senator even as her refusal to negotiate in real terms about what she wants frustrates Democratic colleagues. In an opinion piece aiming to recast Sinema’s aimless intransigence as evidence of her independence, columnist Laurie Roberts (9/30/21) claimed that by killing Biden’s agenda, Sinema was acting to save it:

She has charted a middle course, in search of solutions that have bipartisan support. Sort of like a certain president who now is pressing for the entire wish list of progressive proposals.

And Bill Maher, the increasingly right-leaning host of HBO’s Real Time (10/1/21), threw his support behind Sinema as well as West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, sneering that the two senators “might have their thumb more on the pulse on the average Democrat in the country” than the 95-member Congressional Progressive Caucus does.

A popular agenda

Yet the average Democrat—and the average American—supports the full Biden agenda over just passing the infrastructure bill (USA Today, 8/25/21; Daily Beast, 9/16/21). The social spending legislation enjoys majority support of Americans, and doesn’t gain in popularity when it’s pared down (HuffPost, 8/18/21), as centrists have suggested.

The infrastructure bill is popular, too; the $1 trillion spending on roads, broadband and other essential infrastructure has strong support. But spending on expanding existing, popular programs that saw their stock rise during the uncertainty of the pandemic offers the public a different vision of the United States than has been given over the past five decades. The social spending bill is “poised to be the most far-reaching federal investment since FDR’s New Deal or LBJ’s Great Society,” as the Associated Press (9/15/21) put it.

Polling in Sinema’s Arizona shows that voters there have soured on the senator. She’s seen her popularity nosedive with independents and Democrats. A slight bump with Republicans won’t be enough to save her when she’s up for re-election if the numbers hold; GOP voters vote GOP.

Sinema’s policy decisions, including her blocking of Biden’s agenda, are not the priorities of her base. Around 30% of Arizona Democrats view her unfavorably, with 56% supporting her. Nearly 80% of Arizona Democrats have a favorable view of fellow Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly (The Hill, 9/30/21).

Unreasonable lefties
Time: Joe Biden's Agenda Uncertain After Progressives Force Delay on Infrastructure Vote
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Time‘s headline (10/1/21) put the blame on progressives for blocking Joe Biden’s agenda–though the article acknowledges that the social spending bill “forms the core of Biden’s domestic policy agenda.”
Nevertheless, the framing of the conflict between progressives and the president on the one side and a small group of center-right Democrats on the other consistently plays the former against one another, making the left-leaning caucus members appear unreasonable. Time (10/1/21) deployed just this tactic, characterizing progressives as hostage-taking zealots whose actions could “sink the bipartisan infrastructure bill.” Biden’s agenda was described as “uncertain” due to progressive resistance in the piece’s headline (“Joe Biden’s Agenda Uncertain After Progressives Force Delay on Infrastructure Vote”) and opening paragraphs; it’s only in the ninth paragraph, well down the page, that Time admitted that “the progressive position is in line with Biden’s agenda.”

By contrast, the New York Times‘ Jonathan Martin and Jonathan Weisman (10/4/21) described the small cohort of moderates threatening to hold up the bill in glowing terms, in an article ominously headlined, “Biden Throws In With Left, Leaving His Agenda in Doubt.” As Rep. Ilhan Omar communications director Jeremy Slevin noted, Martin and Weisman describe the nine right-wing Democrats threatening to torpedo the agenda in the House as “well-liked” members, who express their “hope” that the president can “bridge” the divide.

On the other hand, Omar and the other progressives working to support the Biden agenda are presented as stopping the infrastructure bill from going through—in one two-sentence paragraph, Martin and Weisman use “blockade” twice and “blockaders” once to describe the left-leaning members.

Cost, not benefits

The spending bill’s price tag—$3.5 trillion—is frequently used in corporate media coverage as a catch-all for the omnibus bill. The New York Times has used the topline number in headlines repeatedly (8/23/21, 8/24/21, 9/9/21, 9/11/21, 9/18/21, to cite a smattering of examples), focusing perception of the bill primarily on its cost rather than its benefits.

It’s a clever rhetorical trick that obfuscates the purposes of social spending, and it’s notably not the approach corporate media take to military spending, which, if maintained at current levels, would amount to nearly $8 trillion over the same time period. And it’s not used for the infrastructure bill, which is instead primarily referred to as bipartisan, as though its concessions to Republicans (Washington Post, 6/3/21)—notably ruling out raising corporate taxes, after cutting the bill’s $2.2 trillion price tag in half—are a virtue.

Times reporter Weisman courted controversy at the end of September for his Twitter editorializing of the back and forth between the two sides, declaring it was time to take center-right Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin “at his word” and give up on moving the $3.5 trillion bill forward.

“The expansive social policy and climate bill once envisioned isn’t going to happen,” Weisman said. “Here’s what could. Look at extending temporary provisions in the American Rescue Plan with some climate to assuage progressives.”

The point of “climate,” of course, is not to “assuage progressives”—but to keep humanity from destroying the climate.

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 14, 2021 3:01 pm

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| Freshly painted banners for the People vs Fossil Fuels protests planned for Oct 11 thru Oct 15 outside the White House The Build Back Fossil Free Coalition is planning the five days of rallies and civil disobedience is calling on the Biden Administration to use its executive authority to declare a climate emergency and immediately stop new fossil fuel projects and crack down on existing production | MR Online (Photo: Josh Yoder / Look Loud )

‘To change course of history,’ U.S. climate movement takes aim at Biden White House

Originally published: Common Dreams by Jon Queally (October 8, 2021 ) | - Posted Oct 12, 2021

Organizers for climate justice are making final preparations Sunday ahead of five days of planned actions this week to confront President Joe Biden over the urgent need to declare a climate emergency, ditch fossil fuels, and move swiftly to create a green energy economy that can create millions of new jobs in the process.

“As fires burn, oceans rise and cities flood, we’re mobilizing to Washington D.C. to demand that President Biden act on climate justice right now,” said Joye Braun, a frontline community organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), a key member of the coalition behind the week-long mobilization dubbed “People vs. Fossil Fuels” which will kick off Monday, include daily civil disobedience at the White House, and culminate Friday with a march on the Capitol Building for a mass sit-in.

“The fossil fuel industry has brought devastation to our homelands and it’s time that we bring this fight to Biden’s doorstep,” said Braun.

The coalition—which includes IEN, 350.org, Sunrise Movement, Center for Biological Diversity, Zero Hour, Friends of the Earth USA, Oil Change International, Climate Justice Alliance, and many others—is calling on the U.S. president to “declare a climate emergency, stop all new fossil fuel projects, fight for climate justice, and launch a just and renewable energy revolution.”

The group’s detailed and complete list of demands can be found here and those who wish to get involved can visit this page on the coalition’s website.

In their invitation to join the cause and back the demands put forth by front-line organizers from around the country, the coalition said:

We are asking you to stand with us. As representatives of communities who have carried the brunt of the harm from fossil fuels for generations, we ask you to join us in solidarity. If we all come together, put our bodies on the line in the name of climate justice, we may be able to change the course of history.



The ‘Build Back Fossil Free’ coalition organizing this week’s mobilization says that Biden has both the executive authority and the popular mandate to act aggressively to address the climate crisis but so far has not acted with nearly enough urgency.

“Biden is faced with a momentous decision, and I and others will be gathering in Washington to encourage that decision: to declare a climate emergency, stop the petrochem build-out, and usher in a just transition to a clean, green renewables economy,” said John Beard, director of the Port Arthur Community Action Network, a Texas group fighting the oil and gas industry in the Gulf Coast.


“President Biden came into office promising bold action to transform our economy with renewable energy and good jobs, but he passed the buck to a dysfunctional Congress,” said Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Energy Justice program.

Biden has immense executive powers to speed the end of the fossil fuel era and ignite a just, renewable-energy revolution. Without executive action on fossil fuels, there’s no way for the president to protect us from the climate emergency. We’re calling on Biden to reclaim his power from coal- and gas-state Senators and show us he can be our Climate President.

According to organizers:

By refusing to stop major fossil fuel projects, President Biden has broken his promises to protect Indigneous rights, prioritize environmental justice, and fully address the climate crisis.

Despite the President’s rhetoric, his administration has failed to stop major projects like the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, defended oil drilling in the Arctic, promoted fossil fuel exports, and allowed drilling, mining and fracking to continue on Native and public lands.

Meanwhile, the impacts of the climate and pollution crisis have only grown worse. Hurricanes have devastated communities from New Orleans to New York City. Wildfires have burned millions of acres across the West. Historic droughts and heatwaves have gripped most of the country. And every day, millions of Americans, especially Black, Brown, and Indigenous People, breathe air and drink water poisoned by fossil fuel pollution.


As Common Dreams reported, over 300 scientists last week backed the demands of the coalition and said that to avert ‘uncontrollable climate chaos,’ Biden must move more swiftly and concretely to end the age of fossil fuels.

“U.S. scientists are done speaking calmly in the face of inaction,” said Sandra Steingraber, a biologist and co-founder of the Concerned Health Professional of New York, who signed a letter alongside 337 colleagues.

Terrified by our own data, we stand in solidarity with the People vs. Fossil Fuels mobilization and its demands. President Biden, listening to science means acting on science. It means stopping new fossil fuel projects, opposing industry delay tactics, and declaring a national climate emergency.

Dr. Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity who also signed the letter, said,

When scientists across the U.S. are imploring the president to get the country off fossil fuels, it’s time to listen.

https://mronline.org/2021/10/12/to-chan ... ite-house/

Just who in the hell do these scientists think they are? They are employees, and will be listened to by the bosses at a whim, if it's what they want to hear , or more likely with a gun to their heads.

We are a social species and societal problems must be addressed socially, which is to say that the climate issue is to be addressed foremost as a political problem to be solved. All of the expertise, the knowledge, the evidence, don't mean squat if the people with the power in our society refuse to listen as a matter of importance to themselves. And what's most important to them is ever increasing their boodle, regardless of 'externalized' cost to the environment, you and me, the future.

So getting up on the podium and lecturing the magnates and their suckfish is just another futile exercise in 'speaking truth to power'. A planned economy, which implies socialism and the expropriation of the means of production from private control is the prerequisite for civilization to survive.
Joining their voices to the rising calls for socialism, their knowledge adding weight to the demand, is the most powerful thing they can do. One would hope that they could figure this out. The whole world is watching.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:46 pm

Manchin and Sinema detail key disagreements over Biden agenda

CNN Digital Expansion DC Manu Raju
By Manu Raju, CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent

Updated 7:47 AM ET, Fri October 15, 2021

(CNN)The two leading Democratic moderates made clear to their colleagues this week that a deal on the party's sweeping economic package is far from secured, raising new questions about the fate of President Joe Biden's first-term agenda, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Among the red flags: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona told lawmakers on a call that she would be hesitant to endorse a final deal on the social safety net plan until the House first passes the Senate's $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. Sinema indicated there had been a "breach in trust" following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to punt a vote on the infrastructure bill earlier this month after she had assured moderates her chamber would hold a final vote on the measure, one of the sources said.
But Pelosi and Biden were forced to reverse course and shelve the infrastructure plan after progressives refused to provide the necessary votes as they demanded Sinema and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin join with the rest of the Senate Democratic Caucus to push through the party's larger social safety net and climate package first.
Yet Sinema and Manchin both made clear this week that they had disagreements with their party on some of the central components of the larger package, the clearest sign yet that Democratic leaders' goal of passing both bills by their self-imposed October 31 deadline seems doubtful at best.

more...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/14/politics ... index.html

So what I think is going to happen is this: these 'moderates' will stick to their guns and Biden, always with an eye to compromise will say OK cause a) he must get something done and b) it suits him personally as he's always been a 'moderate' himself. And they'll pass the 1.2T measure on the assurance that they'll play ball when the progressive bill comes up. But when that happens they will not play ball, listing the objections they have all along(a variation of "you always knew I was a snake") and then the so-called progressives will bend and grovel at the prez's insistence. The chances of them doing something principled, of playing hardball with a party that has always used them as chumps, is slim. It would be very damaging to the party and likely it's chances in the next election or two. You don't want Trump back, do you?

Other than the simplistic optics does it make that much of a difference? The de-legitimization of the Democratic Party is the prerequisite for advancing the people's cause, their sucker bait must be rendered laughable and obviously toxic.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 27, 2021 1:19 pm

TAIWAN AT THE CENTER OF THE DISPUTE

IS BIDEN LOOKING FOR A WAR WITH CHINA?
26 Oct 2021 , 1:15 pm .

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The US government has raised its levels of aggression against China (Photo: Nikkei Asia)

With the administration of Donald Trump, the accumulation of policies and declarations against the People's Republic of China grew, and under the government of Joe Biden it seems that they do not diminish, quite the opposite. Of course, under a lot of recent contradictions that suggest that the United States has no idea how to deal with its Asian counterpart.

During the era led by the Republican tycoon, not only did a trade war unfold but there was also increased recognition and support for Taiwan by Washington, with regular visits from high-level US officials, as well as an increase in arms sales. This set off alarms in the West due to the possible warmongering implications of a scenario in which the United States militarily provokes Beijing on a momentous issue.

The promotion of Taiwan's autonomy, contrary to the "One China" policy, is undermining Chinese-US relations, which continue to ignite with every action or statement that a high-level official in Washington issues. In both the Trump and Biden era there is a continuity of anti-Chinese politics, messy as it may seem.

No wonder the United States created a new NATO for the Pacific, since while the first is dedicated to attacking Russia in a multifactorial manner, the so-called Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (better known in English as Quad , made up of the United States, India, Japan and Australia) does the same with China.

So any talk of multilateralism and "soft" diplomacy by Biden and his team should not be taken seriously, especially when you consider that America's security objectives do not change course so easily.

If anything, according to an article by Alastair Crooke , "the key difference" between Trump / Pompeo diplomacy and that exercised by Antony Blinken "is in style: the new Secretary of State says it in excellent French, while Trump simply He did not do the 'European delicacy'. However, continuity was always present. "

While the US authorities reinforce anti-Chinese rhetoric over the weeks, describing Taiwan as "democratic", "an ally of the United States" and "sharing ideals", in opposition to the government of Xi Jinping, the contradictions of his politics.

EMPTY RHETORIC

October has been a busy month in terms of US declarations and diplomatic actions on China. Let's take a brief tour to understand the contradictions that we indicated earlier.

On October 6, Biden reaffirmed , before his counterpart Xi, the United States' commitment to the "One China" principle, which establishes that Taiwan is a province of China and that it constitutes the basis of diplomatic relations between the United States and China. .
On October 7 Jake Sullivan, Biden's National Security Advisor, met with Yang Jiechi , a diplomat and member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, to "avoid confrontation" and "put Sino-US relations back on track. path of healthy and stable development ".
However, that same day CIA Director William Burns announced the creation of a new "Mission Center" to "counter China" which he described as "the most important geopolitical threat" and "increasingly adverse. "versus the United States.
Furthermore, again on October 7, a Biden government official warned that "US troops have been deployed in Taiwan for at least a year," which is a clear violation of the "One China" principle and akin to an invasion. of the territory of China.
On October 22, Biden said the United States was committed to defending Taiwan in the event of a military offensive from Beijing, changing the strategy of "strategic ambiguity" that Washington has pursued over the past decades.
But a few hours later the White House contradicted the president in a statement, saying there was in fact no change in Taiwan's policy.
The Chinese government considers that any breach of the US commitment to "One China", made in 1972, "is a violation," says Crooke, "of the reddest red lines in China."

Although Biden may be sincere when he says that his administration does not seek war with China, and repeats that he only wants with it "fair competition, fair practices, fair trade", his government has openly undermined the "One China" policy with a series of small and seemingly innocuous moves, such as proposing a quasi-diplomatic US representative office in Taiwan, an action that might be expected from a Trump.


This can only indicate that the United States does not exercise diplomacy but accumulates empty rhetoric in favor of the real policy carried out by the gringo establishment against China.

AIRS OF WAR?

President Xi Jinping, on the other hand, is fully committed to reunifying Taiwan with China.

It is notable for Beijing that the Biden administration "is pursuing," says Crooke, "a stealth policy to encourage the independence of Taiwan (...) that gives the impression that the United States would ultimately support a unilateral act of independence from Taiwan. China's response is unequivocal: that would mean war. "

If Washington is so committed to the ultimate secession between Taiwan and China, it could only mean more US interventionism. Hybrid war a la carte with overtones of conventional warfare, if the United States dares to do more.

This is more clearly expressed in a long article written by an "anonymous" and published by the Atlantic Council , a think tank promoting NATO Atlanticism, in January this year, which proposes the new US strategy against China.

Joe Biden is closely linked to the Atlantic Council (by ideology and business), an organization financed by arms contractors Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, so this call to rewrite the anti-Chinese strategy towards more aggressive movements could be a consensus within the American establishment. The "anonymity" of those who suggest it is striking, in a think-tank that since its creation has promoted the military confrontation first against the Soviet Union and then against Russia.

The Atlantic Council's strategy proposes repeating what was done against Iran, synthesized by Crooke:

"Driving a wedge in the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party; dividing it against itself; mounting a menu of pressure point issues to impose costs on Xi and his allies (Taiwan ranks high at the top of the list); and it specifies the biggest factor that could contribute to Xi's downfall: economic failure. "

Given this, Crooke sentence: "All these identical policies failed miserably in Iran, they never learn."

Apparently the steps taken by senior US officials against the Asian giant are based on the strategy leaked by the Atlantic Council, which aims to "preserve" US supremacy (frankly in decline) and "successfully change decision-making" from top Chinese officials whose political culture they have no idea. This strategy is very likely to end in disaster or even catastrophic war. "

What leaves no doubt is that the United States is raising the flags of war, once again, acting erratically on the diplomatic side with the aim of intervening in all possible ways against the People's Republic of China.

It is very likely that the acceleration of this strategy will not come to fruition, but rather will repeat the factual failure that the United States has already experienced against Iran, with China being a much more powerful and influential player in the international arena.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/ac ... -con-china

Google Translator

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Biden Administration is Undermining the Venezuela Dialogue

October 26, 2021
By Leonardo Flores – Oct 21, 2021

The Venezuelan people deserve better than another administration sabotaging a dialogue and imposing more deadly sanctions.

The talks between the Venezuelan government and the extreme-right wing opposition had been going well. There are still outstanding issues to be resolved, like ending the economic war, but the discussions held in Mexico led to concrete electoral developments. The European Union agreed to send an electoral observation mission. The United Nations decided to send a panel of electoral experts. (Both institutions refused to observe the 2018 presidential and 2020 legislative elections, despite invitations from the government.) Thousands of opposition candidates registered to run in the mega-elections, which include voting for governors and mayors, as regional and local legislators.

It’s a good thing that agreements on the elections were reached quickly, because the Biden administration, following in the Trump administration’s footsteps, has been actively undermining the dialogue. To recap, in 2018, the U.S. threatened an oil embargo and said it would welcome a coup just days before a comprehensive agreement was about to be signed. Then, in 2019, the Trump administration imposed a “full economic embargo” right as talks were going on. Now, it’s the Biden administration’s turn to try to sabotage the talks, although they’re doing it in a much subtler way.

Alex Saab

On October 16, the U.S. extradited Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab from Cape Verde. Before getting into why this relates to the dialogue, it’s worth highlighting a few facts about the case.

Saab was named a diplomat in April 2018. His arrest violates the Vienna Convention and is illegal. It will surprise no one that the U.S. insists on diplomatic immunity for its own people, but routinely disrespects these rights for Latin American countries. In addition to Saab, there’s been their attempted assassination of Assange in the Ecuadoran embassy in London and theseizure of the Venezuelan embassy in D.C.

Saab’s June 2020 arrest took place a day before an Interpol red notice was issued [link to roger harris article]; the notice was used to justify his arrest after the fact. This is one of the reasons why the Economic Community of West African States issued a binding decision calling for Saab’s release. In a letter, Saab denounced being “tortured to testify against Nicolás Maduro and sign my voluntary extradition to the United States.” His extradition came as he had a pending case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit; his hearing was postponed three times by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Miami.

Saab was extradited without the knowledge of his lawyers or family. His wife considers it a kidnapping. The extradition occurred one day before elections in Cape Verde. The winning candidate had previously said he would release Saab. During his time in Cape Verde, the U.S. sent the Cape Verde government $1.5 million in pandemic economic relief aid and announced plans for a new $400 million embassy, of which $100 million would go directly into Cape Verde’s economy.



The charges against Saab allege corruption in Venezuela’s premiere social programs. The Great Housing Mission has delivered 3.7 million homes for working class Venezuelans, the majority of those built under sanctions. Saab himself was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019 for alleged corruption in the CLAP program, which delivers food and other necessities to 7 million Venezuelan families every month in a country of 30 million people.

He was detained by Cape Verde on a refueling stopover. He was headed to Iran to broker a trade deal that would bring fuel, food and medicine to Venezuela. Saab is one of the architects of Venezuela’s capacity for overcoming U.S. sanctions. The U.S. government wants him in order to destroy this capacity and make Venezuelans even more desperate.

The opposition knew that any attempt to extradite Saab would threaten the talks, and apparently, the U.S. government had assured them they would not take the step. After his extradition, the Venezuelan government suspended the talks. This led to a predictable response by the media and D.C. think tanks that blamed President Maduro for the suspension.

Yet imagine if it had been the Venezuelan government that arrested an ally of Juan Guaidó in violation of international law. What would have happened? It would have been denounced by the U.S., its allies and the Venezuelan opposition. It would have scuttled the talks and the Venezuelan government would be blamed.

This sort of hypocrisy is also evident in the case of the six Citgo oil executives currently jailed in Venezuela on corruption charges. All six are Venezuelan-born citizens, though five have dual citizenship with the U.S. and one has a green card. Most media coverage identifies them all as U.S. citizens, perhaps to create the impression that they’ve somehow been kidnapped.

In a gesture of goodwill earlier this year, the Venezuelan government granted them house arrest. As a response to the extradition of Saab, they have now been returned to prison. The U.S. continually advocates for their release, despite the serious charges of corruption.

Similar treatment is offered to former Oil Minister Rafael Ramírez, who is wanted in Venezuela for corruption after seriously harming the country’s oil industry. Ramírez is currently in Italy, a NATO country that refuses to extradite him to Venezuela.

SDRs

The Saab extradition wasn’t the Biden administration’s only attempt to sabotage the dialogue. Gone virtually unreported in the media is the fact that the U.S. Treasury Department is blocking Venezuela from accessing what’s known as Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a sort of international currency issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Approved in August after a year-long delay due to objections by the Trump administration, the issuance of SDRs is meant to address the economic consequences of the pandemic. Hundreds of organizations, including CODEPINK, endorsed this issuance that would allow countries like Venezuela “to import items they need to address the pandemic, such as food, medicine … and medical devices.”

But as is the case with Afghanistan, the IMF has blocked Venezuela from accessing its $5 billion in SDRs. It is understood that the Biden administration is behind this decision. This de facto sanction has gone virtually unreported by mainstream media, despite repeated denunciations by the Maduro government. Again, this decision to block Venezuela’s SDRs was taken by the U.S. during the ongoing talks

To add insult to injury, the Treasury Department released a cringeworthy sanctions “review” on October 18. This review was meant to address the impact of sanctions on the global response to the pandemic. Instead, it offered a plan to strengthen the effectiveness of sanctions, while ignoring the calamitous effect it has on civilians. This review has been denounced by several advocacy groups, including the Sanctions Kill coalition, of which CODEPINK is a part.

The future of the dialogue
Even if the dialogue between the Venezuelan government and extreme right-wing opposition is completely canceled rather than just suspended, the electoral guarantees would likely remain in place. The Maduro government has done a lot to bring the more moderate opposition to the table, and many of their leaders have publicly broken with the Guaidó faction. Moreover, Venezuela is unlikely to do anything else that might threaten the participation of the UN and EU in the elections.

At this point it’s unclear what can save the dialogue. There has been media speculation about a possible exchange of Alex Saab for the Citgo 6. Family members of the Citgo 6 recently sent aletter to President Biden criticizing the U.S. government for not negotiating directly with Venezuela. An offer like this might not be enough to get the Maduro government back to the table, which rightly sees the case of the Citgo 6 as being lawful, and the extradition of Saab as illegal and politically motivated. And it’s unlikely that the Biden administration would offer this in the first place; if that deal had been available, it would likely have happened before Saab’s extradition.

The Biden administration seemingly has little interest in preserving the dialogue and it remains an open question whether anyone in Congress will challenge this reckless continuation of Trump’s policies. The Venezuelan people deserve better than another administration sabotaging a dialogue and imposing more deadly sanctions.


Featured image: A mural in Venezuela demanding freedom for Alex Saab. Yuri Cortez | AFP

(MintPress News)

https://orinocotribune.com/biden-admini ... -dialogue/

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http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20211 ... 70396.html

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 28, 2021 2:52 pm

Biden is No FDR and Build Back Better Legislation Proves It
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist 27 Oct 2021

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Biden is No FDR and Build Back Better Legislation Proves It

The idea that Joe Biden is the "most progressive president since FDR" is a propaganda device meant to quiet the Democratic Party left and force them to stand down.

The capitalist system attempts to divert attention away from its obvious failings in every way that it can, from mindless entertainment to the contrived drama of January 6th and missing person stories to their most valuable diversion – Donald Trump!

That is why the collapse of the latest diversional politics reflected in the Build Back Better (BBB) has not generated the attention that it deserved, and when it did garner attention, it was framed as some grand battle of personalities.

However, the real story of the Democrats’ inability to fashion an agreement on the BBB social infrastructure bill, is not related to the supposed disagreements between the personalities of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and the individuals who make up the “progressives.” No, the focus and real story is related to the shortsightedness, greed and arrogance of the capitalist oligarchy that is unwilling to make any sacrifices to preserve their system and, consequently, making it increasingly difficult for their political servants in Congress to serve their interests without serious political consequences.

As I previously wrote, Biden’s mission was to stabilize the neoliberal order by giving it a more humane face through subterfuge and slick marketing. A ruse of change was necessary because the rulers were quite clear that they were not going to allow substantial change in the systemic plunder that characterizes the current neoliberal stage of capital, [although] they understood that the crisis for workers and the poor will continue and become even more acute.

That potentially explosive social and political situation was the basis for the tentative agreement among the rulers that some degree of ameliorative social spending would be allowed. I am sure they got some degree of satisfaction when they cleverly thought that as their messaging strategy, they could spin the plan as some great Roosveltian departure from neoliberalism.

Captured rhetorically in the Build Back Better legislation, the legislation incorporates a number of policies from the Green Party and Sander’s campaign with the plan to dangle them before the public to demonstrate that the democrats were concerned with the plight of workers and the so-called middle class. Policies like free community college tuition, expanded Medicare, paid family and sick leave, new funding for housing and pre-K and child-care, subsidies for healthcare and expanded Medicaid and millions for climate change policies.

However, initially at a price tag of over six trillion dollars, it was understood that this was not serious. Democratic Party operatives understood that a reconciliation bill passed only by Democrats would have to be reduced significantly. And it was. The six trillion was reduced to 3.5 trillion. But this is where it also got messy.

When the progressives did not initially play the role assigned to them which was to give rhetorical support to the Biden reform agenda but then defer to the more important infrastructure legislation passed by the Senate, it forced the competing capitalist interests out into the open and undermined what had been a general consensus among them to support some degree of social spending.

An army of lobbyists were unleased in Washington from the energy companies concerned with the bill’s climate proposals, big pharma concerned about giving the government the power to negotiate drug prices - to healthcare industry and insurance companies and individual capitalist concerned with maintaining the Trump tax cuts of 2017.

The result?

Biden called the progressives to the white House and announced that the new top numbers would have to be between 1.7 and 1.9 trillion. Why? The reason for this number was never revealed. It certainly did not reflect the result of any new agreement between the progressives and neoliberal forces. It was probably a number that Biden, along with Manchin and Sinema had agreed to in order to moderate the more costly aspects of the bill, and to ensure that there would be no significant increase in taxes for the wealthy.

Regardless of where it came from, it was a dictum to the progressives to cave. In fact, it became clear that even that number was not secure because Manchin and Sinema continued to hold out for no more spending above 1.5 trillion.

And what was response from the “progressives”?

Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of progressive caucus, emerged from the meeting at the White House and acknowledged that cuts were coming but stressed that many of the progressives’ policy priorities in health care, education and social spending remained intact. She also had some strange praise for Biden as “the inspirer, he is the closer, he is the convincer, the mediator-in-chief,” … “He really is doing a phenomenal job.”

Unfortunately, for everyone who thought the progressives were prepared to struggle for their legislation, the signal that they were open to Biden’s number translated into lost leverage with “power” dramatically shifting from the progressives back to the neoliberal party bosses, who, of course, included Biden even though Manchin and Sinema were his stand-ins.

Reports then started to circulate that the proposal for two free years of community college was going to be eliminated. Paid family leave would be cut from 12 weeks to as low as 4 weeks, and child tax credit would be extended by only one year. Inclusion of dental care under Medicare to be scaled back to an $800 voucher and vision and hearing eliminated. Medicare negotiations with Big Pharma to cut prescription drug prices, while still on the table, looks pretty doubtful in light of the enormous pressure being exerted by the pharmaceutical companies. It looks like that the funding for elderly home care and public housing will be slashed and any substantial increase in taxes on the wealthy is off the table.

Even at $3.5 trillion, the capitalist oligarchy understood that the ameliorative measures in the bill were not meant to address the deepening economic crisis facing workers. Yet, there were elements in the bill that would have represented policies that still would have provided some material advantages to workers, particularly to Black women workers who now make up the majority of the Black labor force.

But the Democratic Party, along with its array of allied social forces — labor unions, feminist groups and NGOs — were not prepared to fight for those changes. In fact, these groups were told to stand down.

The Mild Reforms of the BBB legislation were not Benevolent Gifts from the Rulers but Should Be Seen as Individual and Collective Human Rights

A state’s legitimacy is based on its ability to address the human rights of the residents and citizens of that nation. Housing, food, the right to health, a clean environment, the means to make a living, education, real social security, which includes security from unemployment, sickness and social deprevation, and even the right to leisure, are all human rights that the capitalist order is unable to protect and fulfill because it does not even recognize them as human rights.

That is why the capitalist system’s legitimacy crisis will only be exacerbated by the Democrats when they attempt to sell the stripped-down version of what was already an inadequate bill to address the human rights and needs of the working class and the poor in the U.S.

Politically, regarding 2022, it means that any idea that the Democrats could deliver reforms which could win back the millions of white working-class voters who voted for Obama twice has been undermined by the greed, shortsightedness and sectorial conflicts of interests within the ruling capitalist class.

What the BBB debacle has created is another opportunity to demonstrate that reforms of the system are not possible and that the only two paths that exist are either more blatant fascism or socialist transformation and decolonization.

That choice continues to reside with the people, whether they know it or not.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/biden ... -proves-it

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Progressives reeling after moderates inflict savage new blow to spending bill
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

Updated 7:43 AM ET, Thu October 28, 2021

(CNN)Another liberal dream was sacrificed in the cause of saving Joe Biden's presidency.

The Democrats ditched paid family leave Wednesday from their vast social safety net program in yet another cave to Senate moderates, dealing a shattering blow to House progressives -- not to mention millions of Americans who must choose between their jobs and caring for newborns or elderly relatives.
The latest jolt to the sweeping bill that once drew comparisons with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal followed the removal of measures on tuition-free community college and climate -- two campaign priorities for Biden last year -- and came as negotiations drag on in increasingly frantic fashion.

<snip>

Even before the latest negotiations on the spending bill, progressives had watched many of their hopes for Biden's term disappear.
A bipartisan push for police reform in the wake of George Floyd's murder fizzled. Several moderate Democrats are balking at changing filibuster rules to pass a voting rights and election overhaul to respond to anti-democratic power grabs in Republican-led states that will make it easier to interfere in elections. Biden also failed in an earlier push to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
These busted dreams do not take into account the fact that Biden's spending plan -- if it does eventually pass -- will include some of the most significant social and climate reforms in decades. They include free universal pre-school, which could help millions of kids and parents. Expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies and housing subsidies appear likely to survive. As does an extension of a child tax credit that Democrats say lifted millions of people out of poverty -- although a single year of extra funding pales against what progressives wanted. And despite the loss of the green power plan opposed by coal state senator Manchin, $500 billion in climate change spending is included.

<snip>

Assuming some kind of bill eventually does pass, it will saddle progressives with a paradoxical task of selling to their voters a measure they increasingly appear to disdain. But failing to convince their voters of the historic nature of the measure will risk losing even their narrow majorities in midterm elections next year.

https://us.cnn.com/2021/10/28/politics/ ... index.html

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Joe Manchin has made millions from coal. His ties are now facing examination as Democrats scramble for a climate and economic agreement

By Fredreka Schouten, CNN

Updated 7:00 PM ET, Wed October 27, 2021

(CNN)West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin's long-standing financial ties to the coal industry are facing fresh scrutiny following his opposition to key elements of a sweeping climate and economic package that Democrats are scrambling to reach a deal on this week.

Manchin, whose vote is crucial to passage of President Joe Biden's domestic policy priorities in an evenly divided 50-50 Senate, has holdings valued at between $1 million and $5 million in Enersystems, Inc., the coal brokerage business he founded, according to his most recent financial disclosure form that covers 2020 activity.
And last year, he made more than $491,000 from his Enersystems holdings, the filings show. That's more than twice his $174,000 annual Senate salary.

<snip>
"We have a system where a member of Congress can be invested heavily in, for example, the coal industry and then be responsible for overseeing climate policy," said Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for ethics at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. "It doesn't make sense."
<snip>

Between 2011 and 2020, the Democrat made between $4.9 million and $5.1 million from coal-related enterprises, according to an analysis by Open Secrets, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics.

<snip>

Manchin's Senate campaign also benefited from of a flood of political contributions from the energy industry in recent months. He took more than $400,000 from energy interests during the July-to-September fundraising quarter, according to a CNN review of his recent filing with the Federal Election Commission.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/27/politics ... index.html

It could only make no sense to the clueless. The system works the way it was designed to work.

Oh, that Manchin is a bad, bad person, it's all his fault...and so it goes with the politics of personality. Well, in capitalist society there's a greed head minted every minute. If not him, then another, money talks when it's 'Speech'. Like where did this Senema woman come from? And all of a sudden she's the front line defending the rich. Got anything to do with those multiple fund raisers?(which weren't no penny ante stuff)

The Democratic party is inseparable from the crimes and abuses of bourgeois democracy. It seems that the contradictions, growing and naked, will come to a head in the next couple election cycles and result in a serious drubbing because the Dems cannot buck the ruling class which owns them. Past time trying to stop trying to get a silk purse out of a sows ear. Kick them when they're down, erect a new people's party(or at least coalition) cause the way they are going the Dems couldn't score an honorable mention in a 1st grade art contest. We got nothing to lose but the incubus of duopoly.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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