Sympathy for the Devils...

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sun Sep 18, 2022 5:07 pm

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President Joe Biden hands the pen he used to sign the Inflation Reduction Act to Sen. Joe Manchin on Aug. 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Biden is helping fossil fuel donors weaken his clean water rule
Originally published: The Lever on September 14, 2022 by Julia Rock and David Sirota (more by The Lever) | (Posted Sep 16, 2022)

In June, the Biden administration made an announcement that irked fossil fuel companies and utilities: Federal regulators would begin reinstating a rule empowering states and tribes to protect waterways against pollution from energy development.

Now, a mere three months later, the Biden White House just declared its support for a secret deal designed to expedite approval of those energy projects, potentially helping oil and gas conglomerates steamroll local opposition to new pipelines near water supplies.

The apparent shift in priorities comes as energy companies have poured big money into Democratic campaign coffers, and as former staffers for top Democrats are lobbying for fossil fuel clients. One of the largest natural gas pipeline companies is now celebrating the Biden administration’s “tailwinds” for the fossil fuel industry amid the worsening climate crisis.

The situation has scrambled congressional politics: Some Democrats who once attacked the Trump administration’s rollback of longstanding environmental protections are now backing the secret deal that could make that rollback permanent.

The tension between President Joe Biden’s environmental regulators and the “permitting reform” side deal reflects the outsized power of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Congress’s top recipient of fossil fuel industry campaign cash. The West Virginia coal magnate conditioned his Senate vote for the Inflation Reduction Act on an agreement to separately pass a “permitting reform” bill that could make it more difficult for communities to use the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws to protect their water resources from new energy infrastructure.

“This is a reckless piece of legislation that would undermine President Biden’s climate goals, as well as efforts within the administration to protect waterways and states’ rights to protect their waterways from damaging fossil fuel projects,” Jim Walsh, policy director at Food and Water Watch, told The Lever.



Constructing pipelines through waterways poses ecological risks from drilling fluid leaks, large removals of soil and sediment, erosion, or other types of disruption. For instance, just last month the pipeline company Energy Transfer was convicted of criminal charges for massive water contamination caused by the construction of its Mariner East natural gas pipeline network in Pennsylvania.

Additionally, when it comes to oil infrastructure, once pipelines are constructed, leaks and spills also pose a threat to water supplies: Since 1986, pipeline accidents have been spilling more than 3 million gallons a year in the United States, according to federal data compiled by the Center for Biological Diversity.

A Battle Over Local Authority
The Biden administration has spent months attempting to resurrect local authority under the 50-year-old Clean Water Act in the wake of President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle it–a move bolstered by the Supreme Court this spring.

That saga began in 2020. That year, as $63 million of fossil fuel industry cash flooded into Republican coffers, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limited the power of states and tribes to enforce Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which was written to ensure new energy infrastructure would not violate local water pollution laws. Trump’s new rules were designed to bypass opposition from state legislatures to fossil fuel projects, after a trio of such projects were blocked or delayed in New York, Washington, and Oregon.

A slew of states and environmental groups sued to block the Trump rule from taking effect, and in 2021, a district court in California vacated the rule. But this spring, the Supreme Court reinstated the Trump rule through the so-called shadow docket.

Before the Trump changes, “Section 401 was used all the time to attach conditions to projects,” Patrick Hunter, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told The Lever.

It is rare that it is used to veto anything–but it is common that it is used to add conditions to a project to ensure that water quality is protected.

In June, Biden’s EPA proposed a new rule, supported by 65 environmental groups, that would return authority to states and tribes to impose conditions on federal permits for infrastructure projects if they would impact local waterways.

“For 50 years, the Clean Water Act has protected water resources that are essential to thriving communities, vibrant ecosystems, and sustainable economic growth,” said Michael Regan, head of the EPA, in a statement on the proposed rule.

EPA’s proposed rule builds on this foundation by empowering states, territories, and Tribes to use Congressionally granted authority to protect precious water resources while supporting much-needed infrastructure projects that create jobs and bolster our economy.

Hunter noted that Biden’s proposed rule is an even-handed way to “require whoever is building the project to provide more information up front with their certification request–so that actually has an opportunity to make things run more efficiently.”

That is apparently unacceptable to the powerful corporate lobbies that went to work to try to stop the initiative.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and CMS Energy, a natural gas company, all reported lobbying on Section 401 of the Clean Water Act in the second quarter of 2022.

Natural gas pipeline companies submitted scathing comments on the rule, arguing it would give states and tribes too much power to slow down or block projects. They didn’t mince their words in pointing out that the rule could interfere with their ambitions to ramp up natural gas production, especially for export to Europe.

The two primary industry trade groups, the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America and the American Gas Association, submitted an extensive comment letter with suggested changes to Biden’s proposed rule.

“The 2020 Certification Rule was EPA’s first update to the Agency’s Section 401 regulations in nearly 50 years,” the comment letter said, in reference to the Trump rule. In reference to the Section 401 regulations that had been in place since the 1970s, the letter later continued,

Under the prior regime, states blocked energy infrastructure projects that were in the public interest of both individual states and the nation as a whole for reasons unrelated to water quality, such as for the project’s perceived climate change impacts or general opposition to fossil fuels.

A coalition of utility companies, including NextEra Energy, one of the developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia and a top Democratic donor, also asked the EPA to retain key components of the Trump rule.

Williams Companies, the largest natural gas supplier in the U.S., argued in a comment letter that the proposed rule would interfere with Biden’s efforts to ramp up natural gas exports to Europe in the face of dwindling supply from Russia.

“President Biden made robust energy supply commitments to the European Commission that will require a rapid expansion of our domestic energy infrastructure,” the company wrote to the EPA.

If the United States is to support the natural gas supply commitment President Biden made to our European Allies, the EPA must rescind this Proposed Rule and propose a rule that better aligns with the commitments and goals set forth by President Biden.

“This Is Something The Republican Party Has Wanted”

While Biden’s EPA rule is currently moving forward, fossil fuel companies may still get the victory they’ve been seeking, in the form of the Manchin side deal that could render the EPA initiative moot.

Last week, the Biden administration began portraying that deal as a win for renewable energy.

“We support the permitting reform bill, which will help us realize the benefits of the historic investments in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as well,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

We want to see it enacted.

However, Manchin made clear the permitting deal is a GOP priority designed to hasten approval of fossil fuel infrastructure.

“This is something the Republican Party has wanted for the last five to seven years I’ve been with them,” Manchin said about the permitting legislation, whose leaked text was emblazoned with an American Petroleum Institute watermark.

Manchin is particularly interested in expediting the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural gas pipeline that cuts through West Virginia, and that critics say would result in gas emissions equal to 26 new coal plants.

That pipeline was originally held up by the very Clean Water Act provisions that Biden’s EPA rule aims to restore, as the Natural Gas Supply Association, a lobbying group for natural gas companies, said in a comment on the proposed Biden rule.

To be sure, the leaked draft of the pipeline deal differs from the Biden EPA rule in a number of ways, including by adjusting the amount of time states and tribes have to certify permits. While the timing issues are technical–they deal, for example, with when the clock starts on the one-year period that states and tribes have to certify permits–the implications are huge for projects, and a fierce battle is now underway in Congress.

Last week, 77 House Democrats released a letter calling on their party leaders to keep permitting reforms out of an unrelated stopgap spending measure. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Congress’ top recipient of utility industry cash, responded by pledging to include the deal in that spending bill, as Manchin has reportedly been enlisting the help of fossil fuel CEOs to pressure lawmakers.

House leaders have said they are waiting to see the final text of the permitting deal to decide whether to include it in the spending measure.

Then on Monday, Republicans released their own permitting reform proposal, which would codify Trump’s 2020 version of the Clean Water Act rule into law. That industry-parroting proposal could help Democratic leaders cast Manchin’s pipeline deal as a moderate compromise.

Following The Money And Lobbying Trail

All of the lobbying and policy zig-zagging has happened amid a flood of cash from the energy industry.

In the 2022 election cycle, Democratic candidates and committees have vacuumed in more than $13 million from donors in the fossil fuel, utility, and pipeline industries. Schumer, Manchin, and Democrats’ Senate and House campaign committees have together accepted more than $760,000 from donors at NextEra, the conglomerate leading the Mountain Valley Pipeline project.

Manchin’s former chief of staff was recently hired as a lobbyist at the namesake firm of a former House Energy and Commerce Committee staffer who helped sculpt federal energy legislation. He has been lobbying for a separate pipeline giant and an oil conglomerate. Manchin’s former energy adviser is also now lobbying for two pipeline conglomerates and a utility company. Similarly, a former Schumer staffer has also been lobbying on those issues for a major utility firm.

As that lobbying blitz has intensified, some Democratic lawmakers who lambasted Trump’s repeal of the original Clean Water Act rule and praised Biden’s proposed rule are now backing the still-secret permitting reform deal.

“The Clean Water Act quite clearly gives states, territories, and Tribes the ability to protect their water quality when projects are permitted or licensed,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, in a statement on the proposed Biden rule.

I commend Administrator Regan and the technical experts at EPA for taking a prudent step to help these governments act to address local water quality.

Carper is now backing the permitting reform deal. His office did not respond to a request for comment.

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Williams Companies, America’s largest natural gas supplier, last week told shareholders that policy changes under the Biden administration have created “tailwinds” for the company. (Source: Williams Companies shareholder presentation, 9/8/22)

Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry is celebrating its policy victories. At an energy conference in early September, Williams Companies CEO Alan Armstrong said Biden and the Democrats are creating favorable conditions for his company.

A slide on a presentation, headlined “Recent U.S. policy changes present tailwinds for Williams,” included a list of benefits from the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as “potential for constructive permitting reform.”

https://mronline.org/2022/09/16/biden-i ... ater-rule/

I dunno how anyone can expect anything different from a capitalist party. If you support the Democratic Party you are complicit.

In the category of Most Important Stuff not a dime's worth of difference.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Fri Sep 23, 2022 2:50 pm

THE US BETWEEN IMPERIAL PLANS AND BIDEN'S DEMENTIA
19 Sep 2022 , 7:16 pm .

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Biden's senility has generated more tensions between the United States and China (Photo: Getty Images)

President Joe Biden again shows discursive contradictions typical of mental frailty and senile dementia. During an interview this Sunday, September 18, he said that his country's military forces would defend Taiwan from "an unprecedented attack."

"Yes, if indeed there was an unprecedented attack," Biden responded when interviewer Scott Pelley asked the president if US forces would "defend the island."

Earlier in the interview, Biden had said that the United States contradictorily defended its "One China" policy, in which it has avoided formal recognition of the government in Taipei. "We agree with what we signed a long time ago. And that there is a one China policy, and Taiwan makes its own judgments about its independence. We don't move, we don't encourage them to be independent," she said.

According to Bloomberg , a US official said on Sunday that US policy has not changed, noting that Biden had made the same points before.

For her part, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning urged the United States to "fully understand the nature of the Taiwan issue and abide by the one-China principle" to prevent further damage to China-China relations. both countries. Since Nancy Pelosi's visit last month, tensions have grown.

These statements by Biden are not new and add new uncertainty to Washington's longstanding policy of "strategic ambiguity" toward Taiwan. The White House makes a statement and then other officials come out and say they didn't mean exactly that.

https://misionverdad.com/eeuu-entre-los ... a-de-biden

Google Translator

There are degrees of dementia, manifestation can come and go, and Joe Biden is a sneaky, sly motherfucker. His handling of the Dem progressives is just the latest 'triumph' of this adroit liar. Like the drunk said, "I didn't mean to say it but I meant what I said."

These bastards would toast the planet rather than relinquish hegemony.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sat Sep 24, 2022 2:52 pm

PSL editorial – Democrats deepen embrace of the cops with police funding bills
Liberation StaffSeptember 22, 2022 380 2 minutes read
Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... sts/109273

Democrats in the House of Representatives today passed a police funding bill aimed at further distancing themselves from the movement against racist brutality that burst onto the scene in 2020. While many Democratic Party politicians cynically attempted to position themselves as supporters of the movement when it first emerged, now they are showing their true selves – loyal supporters of the cops.

Four bills advanced through the House today as part of a single package. The centerpiece is the “Invest to Protect Act of 2022” pushed by Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a former Bill Clinton speechwriter who went on to hold senior positions at Ford and Microsoft. This bill allocates additional funding for police agencies that have fewer than 125 members, primarily for recruitment incentives aimed at bolstering the number of cops on the streets and enticing them to stay on the job with significant cash payments. This is in line with the Biden administration’s proposal to expand the country’s police agencies with 100,000 additional officers.

Gottheimer noted in an official statement that he was “especially appreciative of the support and input from the National Association of Police Organization (NAPO) [and] the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)” on the bill.

There are three other bills packaged together with “Invest to Protect”. These include measures to encourage a non-police response to mental health crises and funding for violence interrupter programs that have proven effective at improving public safety. But the fact that these relatively mild reform measures had to be paired with a bill crafted in part by cop “unions” that pours more money into police forces across the country shows how little support there is for the movement against racism among the ranks of elite Democratic Party politicians.

The police funding package advanced by a single-vote margin: 216 to 215. The Congressional Progressive Caucus initially raised objections, but folded after the upper limit to qualify for the additional funding was reduced from 200-member forces to 125-member forces. Six members of Congress associated with the progressive “Squad” grouping still objected, but after last minute negotiations the package went forward with five voting no but Ayana Pressley abstaining from the vote, allowing it to pass.

The strength of the historic 2020 uprising forced the leadership of the Democratic Party to temporarily reorient and accept elements of the program and rhetoric of the movement for Black lives. But as the intensity of the rebellion faded, pro-police forces went on a counter-offensive, demagogically taking advantage of people’s legitimate concerns about violence. The Democrats’ leadership is now portraying police reform as an electoral liability, falling over themselves to show that they oppose the demand to defund the police.

The police in the United States are out of control, routinely denying people the most basic democratic rights like due process, equal protection under the law and protection from unreasonable search and seizure. This has been true throughout the entire existence of this country, and the situation is only getting worse as more and more money and militarized equipment is poured into police forces nationwide.

And the police are completely ineffective when it comes to preventing violent crime! Especially in oppressed communities, people know that the police never seem to be there when someone is actually in danger, but always present when it comes time to carry out petty harassment or worse. We need a new approach in which neighbors are empowered to come together to resolve problems and direct resources where they are needed to address the root causes of violence. But the Democrats are simply interested in pledging allegiance to the cops.

https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-edit ... rationnews

Obviously we cannot defund the Democratic Party, only the rich can do that. But we can deny them our votes and their legitimacy. Honest to god, how much worse can it get?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Sep 28, 2022 4:30 pm

Biden Lies at the United Nations
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 28 Sep 2022

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President Joe Biden addresses to the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, September 21, 2022, at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

U.S. presidents routinely violate international law and the United Nations Charter. Yet every year they appear before that body and proclaim American innocence.

It takes a special kind of hubris for a president of the United States to speak at the United Nations, the place where international law is supposed to be upheld and defended. Yet the representative of the worst violator of international law predictably shows up every September when the United Nations General Assembly holds its annual session. The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez got it right when he spoke in 2006:

“Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world. I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation, and pillage of the peoples of the world.”

Chavez is no longer with us, and Joe Biden is the third man to serve as U.S. president since George W. Bush was compared to the devil. But the words are as true now as they were then. This year Biden’s speech was replete with the usual drivel about the United States being some sort of guarantor of peace. Among other things, he said that permanent members of the Security Council should “...refrain from the use of the veto, except in rare, extraordinary situations, to ensure that the Council remains credible and effective.”

Perhaps Biden thinks that the rest of the world has amnesia. Every time the members of UN General Assembly condemn Israeli apartheid it is the U.S. that predictably steps in with a Security Council veto to protect its ally and partner in crime. Twelve of the 14 U.S. vetoes since 2000 were made on behalf of Israel. Any U.S. proposal calling for change in the Security Council structure is intended to weaken China and Russia’s veto power and to bring in its own puppets such as Germany and Japan.

Of course, Russia bashing was the focus of Biden’s speech with false claims of a nuclear threat, unprovoked attack, and accusations of war crimes. He didn’t mention well documented Ukrainian war crimes such as the shelling of civilians in Donetsk. Worse yet, there was no acknowledgement that Ukraine and Russia were negotiating until the U.S. and the U.K. intervened and scuttled the talks. Biden’s speech was full of projection and every condemnation leveled against Russia or Iran or Venezuela was instead an indictment of U.S. behavior in the world.

The world has changed but American administrations don’t. They continue behaving as if the U.S. is still the all-powerful hegemon that will always get what it wants. It does have the world’s reserve currency and the biggest military, but it can’t control the world without doing harm to itself and its allies. The United States cynically used the United Nations to call for a “no fly zone” over Libya, which allowed it to destroy that nation. Partnerships with jihadists brought destruction to Libya and to Syria, causing a humanitarian disaster which displaced millions of people. The 2014 coup against the elected government of Ukraine has turned into all out war. The sanctions targeting Russian gas and oil have raised prices all over the world and damaged European economies more than any others. The ruble has risen in value and the euro has declined. Even hegemons don’t always get their way.

While Biden mouthed platitudes and falsehoods at the United Nations, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met with representatives from China, Cuba, Eritrea, Serbia, Laos, Jordan, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Algeria, Burkina Faso, India, Mali, Sudan, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Mexico among others. So much for Washington’s claims that Russia is an isolated pariah.

While Washington rails against Moscow, it continues to ignore UN votes to end sanctions against Cuba. This year Cuba will again submit a resolution calling on the U.S. to end its trade embargo. During the 2021 vote only the U.S. and Israel voted no. The next vote will have the same result, and reveal Biden’s words, “The United States will always promote human rights and the values enshrined in the U.N. Charter in our own country and around the world,” as a sham.

The United Nations is in serious need of reform. It is part of the Core Group which chooses presidents for Haiti and acts against the will of its people. Biden mentioned Haiti in passing and called for an end to gang violence. But that violence is the direct result of U.S. interventions there. The 75-year history of allowing the permanent Security Council members to dictate to the rest of the world should change. But who should do the changing? Not the U.S., which always has ulterior motives and dirty hands.

Biden did make one valid statement. “Because if nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequences, then we put at risk everything this very institution stands for.” It is unfortunate that the U.S. ignores the consequences of its own actions.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/index ... ed-nations

It speaks volumes that the ruling class is offended by the vulgar, ignorant Trump but not this feeble, querulous lying sonofabitch.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Sep 29, 2022 3:10 pm

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Anthony J. Cotton [Source: airandspaceforces.com]; left, Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove [Source: commonedge.org ] [Collage courtesy of Steve Brown.]

Is that a chilling echo of Dr. Strangelove we are hearing from Biden’s nominee to oversee America’s nuclear weapons arsenal?
By Jeremy Kuzmarov (Posted Sep 28, 2022)

Originally published: CovertAction Magazine on September 26, 2022 (more by CovertAction Magazine) |

Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1964 film Dr. Strangelove featured an unhinged Air Force General named Jack D. Ripper, who orders a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union after he becomes convinced that the Soviets were polluting the U.S. water supply.

The scenario presented in the film, unfortunately, is not inconceivable today given the Dr. Strangelove type characters who are prevalent in the upper-ranks of the U.S. military and political establishment.

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Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s classic, Dr. Strangelove. [Source: great-characters.fandom.com]

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[Source: filmartgallery.com]

On September 16, President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, Anthony J. Cotton was asked at his Senate confirmation hearing by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) whether he thought nuclear war was unthinkable.

He responded that if confirmed as STRATCOM commander, his role would be to “ensure that the 150,000 men and women supporting strategic command are prepared to do what some folks think may be unthinkable”—that is to deploy weapons from the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Later in the hearing, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IO) asked Cotton whether in light of the 2018 National Defense Strategy’s conclusion that the U.S. would struggle to win a war with China over Taiwan, “the president should have flexible nuclear options to prevent conventional defeat at the hands of our adversaries in this particular scenario.”

Cotton replied: “yes I do.”

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Joni Ernst [Source: armed-services.senate.gov]

Criminally Insane?

Cotton’s predecessor, Carl J. Richard, would have likely responded in the same way. Last year, he wrote in the U.S. Naval Institute’s monthly magazine that the U.S. military had to “shift its principal assumption from ‘nuclear employment is not possible’ to ‘nuclear employment is a very real possibility,’” in the face of threats from Russia and China.

Former Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg stated that Richard sounded like he was “criminally insane.”

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Admiral Carl J. Richard [Source: nypost.com]

Pitch For Even Bigger Nuclear Weapons Budget

The son of an Air Force Master Sergeant who served in the Korean War, Anthony Cotton grew up in Dudley, North Carolina and was commissioned in the Air Force through ROTC at North Carolina State University in 1986.

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[Source: facebook.co m]

He went on to rise through the Air Force, becoming deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office, a senior military assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, commander of the 45th space wing and commander of the Air Force global strike command.

Besides specifying his intent on preparing U.S. forces to wage nuclear war, Cotton used his confirmation hearing to make a pitch for an even bigger budget for the U.S. nuclear arsenal—when the U.S. government is already slated to spend $634 billion over the 2021-2030 period, for an average of $60 billion per year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

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US nukes Source cbogov

According to Cotton, “for the first time since 1945, the first time for us as a nation, we have two near-peer nuclear adversaries [China and Russia] [and will have to] roll up our sleeves to ensure that we are doing everything we can strategy-wise to [deal with] two.”

Cotton said that the U.S. nuclear arsenal was helping “constrain” Russia’s actions in Ukraine and could serve as a bulwark against a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. “I absolutely believe that our nuclear deterrent force held,” he said. “We did not see Russia do anything with our NATO partners. We may have heard the rhetoric, but I think at the end of the day, Russia and China both understand that we have a strong, resilient nuclear force that is offering deterrence to ourselves and extended deterrence to our allies.”

Such logic obscures the fact that it was the U.S. that provoked conflicts with Russia in China in the first place—and has provoked the new nuclear arms race which could end with the obliteration of much of planet earth with people like Cotton in positions of authority.

https://mronline.org/2022/09/28/is-that ... s-arsenal/

So tell me again about that 'lesser evil' thing....You wanna vote for that??
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 05, 2022 2:50 pm

Congressional Black Caucus Continues Its Downward Spiral
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 05 Oct 2022

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President Biden spoke at the 2022 Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Phoenix Awards Dinner in Washington, October 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference returned with the usual corporate sponsorships and obedience to the democratic party oligarchy. Joe Biden received a warm welcome from a group which does little except live off of a progressive reputation which it has not deserved in a very long time.

“You know me, and I know you.”

Those words were spoken by president Joe Biden at the recent Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Annual Legislative Conference. No doubt he was purposefully evoking congressman James Clyburn’s 2020 endorsement. Clyburn famously said , “I know Joe. We know Joe. But most importantly, Joe knows us.” The identity of the other party in the first person plural was never stated, but was widely assumed to mean Black people. The oligarchs of the democratic party had chosen Biden and that meant Clyburn went along as well. He is not the king maker he is made out to be. Of course the importance of his endorsement extended beyond the South Carolina primary and was considered to be a stamp of approval for all of Black America.

The CBC hasn’t improved any since that time. The annual conference host is the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which this year secured a sponsorship from Amazon, the corporation whose warehouse workers suffer injuries at double the rates of counterparts at other companies. Amazon’s low pay and working conditions churn out low income workers so rapidly that in many places their warehouses have run out of people to hire. The behemoth corporation fought tooth and nail against a successful unionizing drive at one of their warehouses in New York.

As always the CBC conference was sponsored by corporate giants such as Amazon, Coca Cola, Pepsico, Delta airlines, Bank of America, fossil fuel corporations Dominion Energy, BP, Exxon Mobil, Conoco Phillips, and big pharma corporations such as Genentech, Johnson & Johnson, Ferring, and Bristol Meyers Squibb. It is no coincidence that Congressman Clyburn receives more campaign money from big pharma than any other member of the House of Representatives. As the House Whip he is unlikely to allow any legislation that his funders would not want to see realized.

Biden acted like the good white boss in his appearance, telling jokes about attending Howard University, bragging about appointing Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and supporting Historically Black Colleges and Universities, “With the CBC, we invested an historic 5.8 billion dollars — that’s “B” with a — “B” — billion dollars…” He even told a story about the Voting Rights Act being passed when neither he nor CBC members seemed to be concerned about protecting it after SCOTUS made its most important provisions null and void. Biden bragged about Medicare negotiating drug prices but left out the fact that this won’t happen until 2026 and will apply to only ten drugs. Kingmaker Clyburn surely played a role in securing that outcome.

The Black political class is doing what it always does, serving as a prominent buffer class, and giving a pass to the democratic party. That is their most important function, not fighting for their constituents, but keeping their constituents in line by propping up Obama or Biden or any other democratic president while mouthing fake condemnation when republicans are in office.

If Biden is the good white boss who can tell jokes and get reliable laughs in return, he won’t be taken to task for giving Ukraine and the military industrial complex $80 billion. He won’t be asked about the failure of Build Back Better or why the majority Black city of Jackson, Mississippi has a failing infrastructure that doesn’t provide clean water.

Of course CBC leaders aren’t stupid and they held sessions on topics of importance such as Black maternal health, obesity and stopping gun violence. But a closer look shows a mishmash of corporatist nonsense which absolves them of taking effective action on a number of critical issues. The Prosperity Gap could be reduced with a higher minimum wage and legislation making it easier for workers to organize at Amazon and other corporations. How can there be a Self Sustaining Africa under imperialism? How can Black workers aspire to home ownership when they are relegated to jobs at conference sponsor Amazon?

The CBC was once called the “conscience of the congress” but that was before the democrats became a party of and by wealthy people and corporations, just like the republicans. Now it is a shell of its former self, happily joking with presidents who give the police $30 billion.

Two days before appearing at the CBC conference the Biden administration announced that its already insufficient student loan debt relief program would help fewer people than initially intended. Now recipients of private loans will no longer be eligible for the $10,000 or $20,000 in inadequate relief. Biden didn’t mention that in his speech at the conference though and continued saying of his plan, “It’s a gamechanger.”

The game changers in politics always spring from mass movements. That is why the Black Alliance for Peace protested on the first day of the conference. As part of its International Month of Action Against AFRICOM BAP demanded that the CBC end AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, and give African nations their sovereignty and people in this country the billions of dollars that are spent on the military industrial complex.

Electoral politics is the place where movements go to die, and the Congressional Black Caucus is Exhibit A. It is true that “Joe knows us.” He knows that too many Black people are wedded to the notion that they have no options other than following democratic party politics which have failed them time and again. A movement will get rid of scams like a belief in king maker politicians who are in fact owned by the democrats. We do know Joe, Jim Crow Joe, and must act on what we know to be true.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/congr ... ard-spiral

Combat Nihilism: Revolutionary Optimism in the Age of U.S. Imperial Decline
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor 05 Oct 2022

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Optimism would seem to be counter intuitive given the many crises facing millions of people in the U.S. and around the world. But optimism backed up by a revolutionary thinking is just what is needed in this moment.

Hurricane Ian. The threat of nuclear war. Inflation. Mississippi’s water crisis. Any one of these developments have the potential to send even the most clear-headed individual into a state of nihilism and despair. And this is just the short list of calamities currently plaguing humanity.

Life under the decline of U.S. imperialism is far from easy. Little relief exists from the toxic stress induced by poverty, debt, racism, militarism, social isolation, and mainstream media propaganda. Exhaustion is widespread. Trust in the institutions that form the fabric of U.S. society is incredibly low. These conditions have ripened the fruit of nihilism which is growing in abundance in the United States.

In Combat Liberalism , Mao Zedong condemned the liberal worldview as “a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension.” Liberalism generates empty and hollow faith in a system designed to exploit and oppress the masses. Anger in the establishment causes some to rise up in protest, others to seek scapegoats, and still others to internalize the pain. But in the United States, protest has been criminalized and repressed with state violence. Nihilism sprouts from liberalism’s destructive seeds, breeding disappointment and despair in a social order that was always predicated on the most brutal forms of class rule.

Nihilism most often takes the form of a persistent hopelessness that accepts oppressive conditions as an unchangeable phenomenon. History, class struggle, and the heroic resistance of the people are relegated to a status worse than non-existent. Capitalist dogma becomes religion. “The news” is taken as a universal truth even if distrust in mainstream media reaches peak levels. Phrases like “it is what it is” or “there is no alternative” become etched into the consciousness of the oppressed.

The most immediate antidote to nihilism is revolutionary optimism. Revolutionary optimism isn’t rooted in a blind hope that change will come at some unknown point in the future. It is cultivated by the acknowledgement that only through participation in the struggle to liberate the people can the lives of the people be transformed. Revolutionary optimism is bolstered by a deep curiosity in and knowledge of the history of class struggle. Social change is treated as a science, one with distinct properties and elements that are both inevitable and profoundly dependent upon the actions taken by the people.

Revolutionary optimism thus analyzes all phenomena from a dialectical materialist lens. Dialectical materialism observes the motion of contradictions and how their development leads to new contradictions. Imperialism lays the basis for its own destruction but won’t fall on its own. Revolutionaries make the conscious decision to play a leading role in the creation of a new socialist planet but understand that the objective conditions before us present both a hinderance and an opportunity to build such a world. U.S. imperialism has indeed become more volatile and mired in crisis after crisis. The more that U.S. imperialism contracts economically and loses political legitimacy at home and abroad, the more repressive it becomes.

Mass incarceration, torture, austerity, privatization, surveillance, censorship, and endless war have all intensified in the last three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union to ensure that a coherent socialist movement would never arise again. This has caused the class struggle to retreat in the command center of imperialism, the United States. But even here, the emergence of mass protest movements such Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street have given birth to electoral arrangements meant to suffocate the birth of a socialist movement in its crib. The ruling class has placed a significant emphasis on repressing these movements and incorporating large sections of its participants in the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the so-called “Squad” arose from the ashes of Barack Obama’s masterful service to the elite as an escape valve back into the Democratic Party’s graveyard of social movements.

The dialectic is clear: masses of people are politically supportive of universal, socialist-oriented policies like Medicare for All but the Democratic Party stands in the way of building an independent mass movement toward actual socialism. The class struggle in the United States may be fractured and fragmented but the toiling masses are sitting atop a bubbling cauldron of unrest amid a number of unprecedented economic and geopolitical crises. U.S. militarism threatens nuclear conflict with both Russia and China, and the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine is rapidly accelerating in this direction. U.S. and E.U. sanctions on Russia’s critical energy sector are a major catalyst in the unending spike in prices that has increased the immiseration of the working class and sent the world capitalist system on the way to its third economic crisis in fifteen years.

Under these conditions, revolutionary optimism must spring forth from the potential opportunities to organize an independent, socialist-oriented mass movement. This means first and foremost confronting the Democratic Party’s stranglehold on the definition of “socialism” and “leftism” in the United States. Socialism and leftism cannot be relegated to electing Democrats out of fear of the GOP or supporting whatever reformist policy is the flavor of the day for the Democratic Party’s most progressive-sounding opportunists. Socialist and leftist politics champion the capture of genuine power for the working class and the oppressed, by any means necessary. They are decidedly anti-imperialist and stand in unconditional solidarity with the oppressed nations and peoples around the world fighting for the right to determine their own destiny as enshrined by international law.

Internationally, the contradictions are more favorable for combatting the scourge of nihilism. China is fast on its way to the status of modern socialist country and leads in the world in key areas such as poverty alleviation, renewable energy, high-technology, modernized public infrastructure, and more. Russia stood up to U.S. imperialism in a major way by asserting its right to exist amid NATO military encirclement. Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, Eritrea, and several others have stood up and defended their sovereignty and social gains in the face of U.S. aggression and economic sanctions warfare. And all of the aforementioned countries, led by China and Russia, are forging deep economic, cultural, political, and military bonds in an attempt to create a multipolar world system that can overcome the challenges of unipolar U.S.-led imperialism.

Nihilism festers when the masses are forced into a state of isolation and desperation—two major consequences of the endless austerity and war waged by the U.S.-led imperialist system. To combat nihilism means to embrace revolutionary optimism. Revolutionary optimism is not merely a mindset, but a duty to fulfill our commitment to liberation of the masses from an outmoded system in decline. And it isn’t simply reacting to a hope for a better future, either. Revolutionary optimism is realizable when a concrete analysis of concrete conditions leads to a higher level of consciousness that a better world is not just possible, but a process that is very much alive in the here and now.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/comba ... al-decline
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 08, 2022 3:09 pm

<snip>

It just says so much about where we’re headed as a society that the most surefire way to enrage a liberal in 2022 is to say that reckless nuclear brinkmanship is probably a bad idea.

Opposing armageddon to trigger the libs.

Mainstream liberals are so fucking stupid that they think the only possible choices with regard to Russia are either (A) handing Putin the entire world on a silver platter or (B) just continually charging toward direct confrontation as though Russia doesn’t have nukes. They don’t know what detente is. At all. They don’t even know it’s a thing, let alone an option here. Like if you ask them they don’t know about the existence of the word or the concept. I’ve been complaining about this since long before the invasion.

Detente used to be a household word. Mainstream politicians campaigned on and debated about it. Now hardly anyone knows it’s even a thing, let alone a real option in dealing with the horrifying escalations between NATO and Russia. This is because the political/media class never tells them.

It’s supposed to be the news media’s job to create an informed populace, but because their real job is propaganda they actually do the opposite. News media never mentioning detente is like a preschool teacher never mentioning sharing or cooperation and just telling kids to fight.

This is the only reason anyone who advocates de-escalation and detente gets met with “SO YOU’RE SAYING WE SHOULD JUST GIVE PUTIN WHATEVER HE WANTS???” instead of a sane adult response. It’s because people haven’t been told that de-escalation and detente are historically viable and successful.

We will know we are living in a healthy society when people like John Bolton are chased out of every town and driven away wherever they’re seen until they’re forced to live out the rest of their miserable lives alone in a cave eating bats.

Since 2016 progressive Democrats have been worse than useless on the single most important issue in the world, namely de-escalating tensions between the US and Russia. They’ve been feeding into the Russia hysteria that got us here and backing proxy warfare in Ukraine to the hilt.

(more...)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/10/07 ... ve-matrix/

As Ms Johnstone ain't from around these parts I guess she can be forgiven for not knowing that progressive Democrats ain't nothing but tits on a boar, the token 'left' of the hegemonic monster.

***********

Biden ‘Disappointed’ by OPEC’s ‘Short-Sighted Decision’ to Cut Oil Production
OCTOBER 6, 2022

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US President Joe Biden Photo: Gettyimages.ru

According to the White House, the administration will consult with the US Congress on “additional tools and authorities to reduce OPEC’s control over energy prices.”

US President Joe Biden is “disappointed by the short-sighted decision” of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Plus (OPEC+) to cut production by two million barrels per day, read a statement published this Wednesday in the White House website.

“At a time when maintaining a global supply of energy is of paramount importance, this decision will have the most negative impact on lower- and middle-income countries that are already reeling from elevated energy prices,” read the White House statement.

OPEC+ To Cut Production Quotas by 100,000 Barrels of Oil Per Day


It is noted that Biden will continue to order the release of millions of barrels from the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and that he is instructing the Secretary of Energy to study the possibilities of further increasing domestic production in the short term.

In addition, the Biden administration will consult with the US Congress on “additional tools and authorities to reduce OPEC’s control over energy prices.”

The statement was released just hours after members agreed to a deep cut in their output target at an OPEC+ meeting in Vienna, curbing supply in an already tight market, despite pressure from Washington to pump more. .

Several experts maintain that this step will be a blow to the Biden administration, since it would cause a significant increase in the price of gasoline in the US.

OPEC Secretary General Visits Venezuela, Confirms Commitment to Balanced Oil Market


For his part, the secretary general of the organization, Haitham al-Ghais, indicated during a press conference held after the OPEC+ meeting that “they are not endangering the energy markets,” but rather, “they are providing security, stability to the energy markets… Everything has a price. Energy security also has a price.”

https://orinocotribune.com/biden-disapp ... roduction/

Are all you environmentalists feeling 'punked' yet? You should be, politics and hegemony will always 'trump' even lip service to survival. Lesser evil, huh? If the Chumpster had been doing this you'd be screaming bloody murder, but all I hear is crickets.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 12, 2022 2:51 pm

Biden's Marijuana Policy Frees No One
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 12 Oct 2022

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Senator Joe Biden in 1993 (Photo: AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Biden's announcement of pardons for federal convictions of marijuana possession is meaningless. The pardons free no one from prison and don't even expunge records.

“So there are no individuals currently in federal prison solely for simple possession of marijuana.”

Quote from a Senior administration official

Joe Biden’s announcement that he would pardon all federal convictions for possession of marijuana was quickly met with excitement. It isn’t hard to understand why that would be the case. Everyone knows that the United States is the world’s biggest jailer, with more than 2 million people behind bars, and that the various “wars on drugs” contributed to this dubious distinction.

But upon examination, the announcement was found to be meaningless. Anyone who thought that thousands of people would be freed from jail was in for a surprise. Most convictions in this country occur at the state level, not federal, so any Biden pardons would impact a small number of people. Also, very few people are convicted solely for possession of marijuana or any other narcotic. They are usually convicted for selling, distribution, or conspiracy as well. By definition, very few people would be eligible for a pardon.

Approximately 6,000 people have been convicted of marijuana possession in the last 30 years, but none of them are currently incarcerated. Biden’s announcement won’t free anyone from prison. Nor does a pardon expunge a criminal record. Those pardoned will still have convictions on their records that can make them ineligible for housing or employment. To use an overused expression, Biden’s marijuana pardon is a huge nothingburger.

This attempt to pull the wool over millions of eyes should be loudly condemned. Many of those 6,000 people convicted were victimized by the 1994 Crime Bill which was championed by a senator named Joe Biden. At the time he bragged that the legislation did “everything but hang people for jaywalking .” Or even send them to jail for marijuana possession.

Not only did Biden make a great show of doing absolutely nothing, but he also tacitly admitted that he has the power to end any possibility of federal marijuana convictions. Marijuana is currently categorized as a Schedule 1 drug on the list of controlled substances, just like heroin and cocaine. Now a few weeks before election day he claims he will look into making a change that he could have made as soon as he came to office.

Ronald Reagan began the draconian laws which created a 100 to 1 sentencing disparity for crack cocaine. Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama did nothing to change those harsh sentencing rules. Even when the disparity was lessened to 18 to 1, those already behind bars had no recourse. It was Donald Trump signing the First Step Act which provided the possibility of sentencing relief, although that legislation also fell short and freed far fewer people than it should have.

Biden’s smoke and mirrors are a direct insult to Black people, who have been harmed more than any other group in the decades long drug war that punishes the convicted for years after they may be freed from incarceration. But a last minute effort at window dressing and trickery only proves why Biden and the democratic party have done so much harm.

When the fine print became obvious the pardon announcement was disappeared by the administration and its friends in corporate media. This sorry episode is further proof of how the duopoly trap hurts Black voters, who are already predisposed to come to the aid of democrats even when they don’t deserve the help.

Of course Biden’s presence as Obama’s vice president and then beneficiary of more Obama help in 2020 were also slaps in the face. Jim Crow Joe should be anathema to Black voters but he isn’t. This last minute campaign stunt is just the latest insult in his nearly 50-year political career which allows him to tell bizarre stories about a Black man named Corn Pop, make remarks about a “racial jungle” and insult Black people to their faces.

Has any Black “leader” stated plainly that Biden’s marijuana pardon is a bad joke played upon people who want to see restorative justice? The question is rhetorical because the happy vassals in the Black political class continue to go along to get along. A few journalists have ferreted out the truth but unless the public are interested they may think that Biden has actually done something important on their behalf when he has actually done nothing at all.

Biden tried to cover himself with an appeal to governors to change their sentencing practices but thus far none have stepped forward. But it could not be otherwise in a system dedicated to keeping Black people controlled and punished. Every effort to diminish the prison industrial complex is met with fierce resistance, and racism is the reason why this phenomenon persists. No one knows this better than the man known as Jim Crow Joe. Any claim he makes of ameliorating mass incarceration is bound to be phony.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/biden ... ees-no-one

So, Joe is blowing smoke yet again...

I defy you to name one supposed constituency of the Democratic Party that Biden hasn't shit on in just two years. 'Progressives', minorities(all of the above), environmentalists, immigrants, and now even the potheads get dissed. But to the Enemies of Humanity, the Oil Barons, The Masters of War, the Ruling Class in general, to them he gives with both hands.

What more do you need to know?

There will be no progress until the Democratic Party is utterly de-legitimized in the eyes of the working class.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 13, 2022 3:02 pm

Trump Calls for Peace in Ukraine While Democrats Make Support for War a Midterm Campaign Issue
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist 12 Oct 2022

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Image: Youtube

Donald Trump is no peace maker, but his stance on negotiations to end the war in Ukraine is in stark contrast to that of the democrats, who fully support continuing the dangerous proxy war against Russia. Anti-war forces must step up and struggle for peace.

Since the U.S. sponsored coup in Ukraine in 2014, taking a stand against the plan by the U.S. to use Ukraine as a weapon of war against Russia was a perilous stance for pro-peace and anti-imperialist forces. What made opposition especially difficult was that the plan was being executed by the administration of Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama with the full support of the right-wing neoliberal establishment that controlled and still controls the U.S. state.

But, while it was a challenge to oppose the many criminal adventures of the Obama administration, the return of that administration to power under Joe Biden has ushered in the acceleration and normalization of censorship, the blatant politicization of the investigative agencies of the state and a war fever that has gripped the culture. Opposition to the neoliberal war agenda and domestic subversion has become an affront subject to criminal prosecution, or at minimum social ostracism.

Yet, as dangerous as the environment has been, the vocal call by Donald Trump to seek a path to peace in Ukraine will make it even more hazardous for anti-imperialist and anti-war forces to demand an end to the war. Trump said , “We must demand the immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine, or we will end up in World War III and there will be nothing left of our planet.” In the past that position would have found a home in the democrat party, even if it was along the side of more hawkish elements. But in the new democrat party, support for the most aggressive policies of a foreign policy community that seems increasingly out of touch with reality is the norm, with no deviation from the “line” tolerated.

And while only the most naïve would believe that Donald Trump was committed to an anti-war position, there are three points to be made here: First it is a fact that during his administration the U.S. did not initiate any new conflicts and secondly, the opportunism and political myopia of the U.S. liberal/left in aligning itself with the neoliberalism of the democrat party disarmed itself rhetorically from offering principled criticisms of the obvious turn to the right by the democrat party foreign policy establishment, that lastly, represents yet another example of the political and ideological ground conceded by the liberal/left forces to the Trumpian right that it pretends to be opposed.

Trump’s call for negotiations and an end to the war presents a dilemma that is not confined to the contradictory positions of the U.S. liberal/left. Trump is tapping into a sentiment that significant portions of the electorate share and that is that the Ukrainian war has made life even more precarious for them with higher food and fuel prices on top of inflation that is felt as a pay-cut by workers. However, even more importantly, the public is starting to embrace the position that the sacrifices they are being asked to make for Ukraine and the war effort that they did not vote for, does not seem to be shared by the rich. In fact, it appears that the rich, especially the military contractors and energy companies, are benefiting quite well from the conflict and not having to sacrifice much, if at all.

Those sentiments are out there. It is being expressed by democrats, independents and by increasing numbers of republicans that cannot be reduced to Trump supporters. Those positions are just not being covered by the corporate press because the corporate/capitalist press is committed to the class agenda of big capital and that means the war agenda.

The democrats do not get it though, even the so-called progressives. The neoliberals reneged on most of the progressive agenda Biden pretended he would govern by. In response, progressives have supported every piece of legislation presented to them by the leadership, including uncritical support for aid to Ukraine even as the capitalist class shifted the cost of the war to their working-class constituencies. In May of this year, for example, the growing divergence between the republicans and democrats on funding for Ukraine was obvious when Congress voted 368-57 in the House and 86-11 in the Senate to approve an additional $40 billion for the war. Every single no-vote – 11 in the Senate and 57 in the House – came from a Republican. All the “progressives,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, The Squad, Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee and most members of the Congressional Black Caucus all fell in line without one question and not a peep of a criticism of the war agenda or of its cost.

This should be an opportunity for the anti-war and anti-imperialist movement. For the last five years, the Black Alliance for Peace has advocated that a major strategic objective for the anti-war and anti-imperialist forces during the bourgeois electoral season should be to attempt to place the issue of war and the U.S. imperialist agenda at the center of national discourse. That never happened.

Therefore, it is ironic, or perhaps contradictory, that both Trump and the democrats have taken up the initiative to insert the issue of war into the national electoral discourse. The democrats were moving to make continued support for the war a partisan issue in the upcoming midterm election before Trump made his remarks on Ukraine. The democrats, though, with the full support of the corporate media were constructing a line that suggested republican questions or opposition to the position of all-out support for Ukraine reflected the pro-Putin influences of Donald Trump. That totalitarian position has ensured that democratic party operatives and elements of the liberal/left either gave verbal support for the war agenda or were cowed into silence.

CODEPINK reported that as part of its week of action against the war in September, Medea Benjamin, Jodie Evans and retired Colonel Ann Wright went door to door to the offices of members of the more than 100 members of the House Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). What they found was that not one member of the caucus would commit to voting against the $12 billion expenditure for the Ukraine war that was contained in the Continuing Resolution legislation that passed on September 30th.

It will take bold and fearless actions on the part of anti-war and anti-imperialist forces if we are to win more of the public to take a stance against an agenda that is antagonistic to the interests of most of the public, especially the public that makes up the working class and the oppressed nationalities.

The servants of imperialist power in the duopoly want to make support for the white supremacist U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination a litmus test in the midterm election. They will frame all opposition to the neoliberal war agenda as unpatriotic and even foreign inspired. The FBI has already been unleashed against the anti-imperialist forces in the African/Black communities with the raid on the properties of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP).

We are preparing our forces for an even more intense struggle. For the Black Alliance for Peace, “Peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather the achievement by popular struggle and self-defense of a world liberated from the interlocking issues of global conflict, nuclear armament and proliferation, unjust war, and subversion through the defeat of global systems of oppression that include colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy.” We do not fight for ideas in people’s heads, we fight the structures of oppression.

This is the “Black radical peace tradition.” It is a tradition of struggle informed by the historical necessity that we must win. We will not be intimidated into silence by the state, the democrats or confused collaborative leftists.

We continue to struggle for peace, but we understand that there will be no peace without justice and for justice we have to fight for it. On that commitment we say there will be no compromise and no retreat!

https://www.blackagendareport.com/trump ... aign-issue

Well, I wouldn't say the Dems took a 'right turn', a brief examination of history shows them to be the more belligerent party, if only because the Rs are too cheap to wage war without immediate tangible profit.

The 'progressives', from Bernie on down, are nothing but a gang of opportunists running cover for the ruling class and should be despised.

Red because if that don't make you 'see red' then you're on the other side. .
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Fri Oct 14, 2022 3:03 pm

What Did Malcolm X Really Think about the Democratic Party?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 9, 2020
Timothy Alexander Guzman

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“I’ll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years”
– U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson to two governors on Air Force One according to Ronald Kessler’s “Inside the White House


Malcolm X was a controversial figure during the civil rights era. If Malcolm X were alive today he would have been disappointed with the African-Americans and others who overwhelmingly vote for the Democrat party. Why? Because Malcolm X often spoke out against the American establishment, in particular, the Democratic Party for their involvement in the destruction of the African-American community and how they are used as “tools” for political power over their Republican rivals. There is no doubt that he would have continued to expose the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and how they have failed the African-American community for decades. Malcolm X was not a Republican and he certainly was not a Democrat as he once said “We won’t organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party.” Before and even after the Civil Rights Act was established in 1964 under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. and the well-known racist President Lyndon B. Johnson, racism in America was still at an all-time high.

Malcolm X gave a controversial speech on December 1st, 1963 speech at the Manhattan Center in New York City called ‘God’s Judgment of White America (The Chickens Come Home to Roost)’ following the assassination of John F. Kennedy which earned him a 90 day suspension from the Nation of Islam:

In this deceitful American game of power politics, the Negroes (i.e., the race problem, the integration and civil rights issues) are nothing but tools, used by one group of whites called Liberals against another group of whites called Conservatives, either to get into power or to remain in power. Among whites here in America, the political teams are no longer divided into Democrats and Republicans. The whites who are now struggling for control of the American political throne are divided into “liberal” and “conservative” camps. The white liberals from both parties cross party lines to work together toward the same goal, and white conservatives from both parties do likewise.

The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political “football game” that is constantly raging between the white liberals and white conservatives.

Politically the American Negro is nothing but a football and the white liberals control this mentally dead ball through tricks of tokenism: false promises of integration and civil rights. In this profitable game of deceiving and exploiting the political politician of the American Negro, those white liberals have the willing cooperation of the Negro civil rights leaders. These “leaders” sell out our people for just a few crumbs of token recognition and token gains. These “leaders” are satisfied with token victories and token progress because they themselves are nothing but token leaders


Malcolm X was asked about the assassination of JFK and said that the U.S. government had assassinated various foreign leaders including Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba who was a target of the CIA. Lumumba’s government was destabilized in 1960 which led to his abduction and was tortured and murdered by January 1961. Malcolm X had suggested that JFK’s assassination was a “case of the chickens coming home to roost” and that those who commit crimes against others will come back to haunt the perpetrators of those same crimes. The Nation of Islam in Chicago made a decision that after the 90-day suspension, Malcolm X would be suspended indefinitely.

However, Malcolm X had announced his departure from the Nation of Islam and announced the establishment of the Muslim Mosque Inc, a religious group that would eventually get involved in the electoral political process and community organizing for black civil rights. However, many people especially in the U.S. and to an extent across the world do not know much about Malcolm X. For starters, he was not a supporter of the Democratic Party as he was convinced that they were the party of racists. Was he correct to point out that the Democratic Party had racists within their ranks? Consider the 33rd President of the United States Harry S. Truman, a Democrat who wrote a letter to his future wife Bess regarding his thoughts about African-Americans and Chinese nationals:

“I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s not a n*gger or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made a White man from dust, a n*gger from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, Yellow men in Asia and White men in Europe and America”

The late Democratic Senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd wrote a letter to Senator Theodore Bilbo from Mississippi in 1944 and said:

“I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side … Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds”

History books in American public schools do not teach or even mention what Malcolm X represented as an anti-establishment revolutionary who never voted for either political party because he saw the blatant hypocrisy. Larry Elder, a radio show host, writer, attorney and a registered Republican who grew up in the poverty stricken Pico-Union and South Central areas in Los Angeles wrote an article on what Malcolm X would say about African-Americans who overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic Party today:

What would Malcolm X say about today’s 95 percent black vote? Did the Democratic Party keep its promises to promote family stability, push education and encourage job creation? The black community, over the last 50 years, has suffered an unparalleled breakdown in family unity. Even during slavery when marriage was illegal, a black child was more likely than today to be raised under a roof with his or her biological mother and father. According to census data, from 1890 to 1940, said economist Walter Williams, a black child was slightly more likely to grow up with married parents than a white child. What happened?

When President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1965, 24 percent of black babies were born to unmarried mothers. Today that number is 72 percent. Then-presidential candidate Barack Obama said in 2008: “Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves.”

Not only has family breakdown coincided with increased government spending, but the money has not done much to reduce the rate of poverty. From 1965 until now, the government has spent $15-20 trillion to fight poverty. In 1949, the poverty rate stood at 34 percent. By 1965, it was cut in half, to 17 percent — all before the so-called War on Poverty. But after the war began in 1965, poverty began to flat line. It appears that the generous welfare system allowed women to, in essence, marry the government — and it allowed men to abandon their financial and moral responsibility, while surrendering the dignity that comes from being a good provider. Psychologists call dependency “learned helplessness”


“Humanitarian Intervention” and the Democratic Party

The Democratic Party (founded on January 8th, 1829) and the Republican Party (founded on March 20th, 1854) have had their fair share in foreign and domestic wars since their founding. Since World War II, the Democratic Party has participated in numerous foreign interventions as they have often proved that they can be as hawkish as their Republican counterparts as Reagan and the Bush family. It was the Democratic Party of Harry S. Truman who authorized the use of the atomic bomb on the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Truman administration also started “The Forgotten War” known as the Korean War where Truman called the U.S. intervention a “Police Action” under the authorization of the United Nations (which was dominated by the U.S.) due to North Korea invading South Korea. The U.S. and the United Nations backed South Korea while China and the Soviet Union backed North Korea during the war. The ‘Truman Doctrine’ also led to the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The ‘Truman Doctrine’ originally implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after the war and helped establish NATO to counter the Soviets in 1949. The Truman Doctrine also provided economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey to help fight the “communist threat.”

The Democrats became even more militaristic with the Kennedy administration with their funding and training of Cuban exiles for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in an attempt to remove the Castro government. The Kennedy administration also deployed nuclear missiles in Turkey which presented a direct threat to the USSR that eventually led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam War, Bill Clinton’s war on Somalia and Serbia to Obama’s destruction of Libya and the support of the Islamic State terrorists to oust President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and elsewhere.

The Democratic Party of today is more in sync with tribalism than they are for any real democracy. Under the Obama administration, Libya was destroyed and the Democrats said nothing. If it was George W. Bush or Donald Trump today that authorized NATO’s invasion of Libya, the liberal Democrats would be protesting in the streets. But since it was a Democrat, it was for the greater good, a “humanitarian intervention.” Some people who vote for the Democrats actually think that the Democratic Party is some sort of revolutionary resistance against the Republican Party however; both parties are the core of the political establishment closely aligned with special interest groups such as the major corporations, the Military-Industrial Complex, international banking cartels and other powerful figures and institutions behind the scenes.

Before his assassination, Malcolm X was already seen as a revolutionary figure who defied the American establishment at home and abroad. Democrats should read about the history of Malcolm X and learn the truth about the Democratic Party and possibly the next time they vote, it will be for a third or fourth party candidate that stands for a real democracy and justice that would dismantle the two-party system and the power of American Empire from within. But as long as the American public continues to be brainwashed by the mainstream-media, the education system and the political establishment from both parties, the American Empire will run amok until its inevitable collapse.

Here is a segment from Malcolm X on what he thought about the Democratic Party:
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https://libya360.wordpress.com/2020/02/ ... tic-party/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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