Sympathy for the Devils...

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blindpig
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 04, 2022 3:48 pm

"Meet the new boss............."

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Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, center, announces the creation of a controversial Justice Department effort called the “China Initiative”during a press conference at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 1, 2018. [Source: theintercept.com]

FBI is recklessly misusing Trump-era espionage policy to create “Climate of Fear” among scientists—terrorizing families and ruthlessly destroying careers
Posted Jan 04, 2022 by Jeremy Kuzmarov

Originally published: CovertAction Magazine (December 30, 2021 )

However, its primary targets have been academics prosecuted for failing to properly disclose their connection to Chinese universities on grant forms and it has led to numerous miscarriages of justice.

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Dr. Charles Lieber. [Source: cnn.com]

On the Tuesday before Christmas, Dr. Charles Lieber, the former chair of Harvard’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department, was convicted by a federal jury of lying to the U.S. about his involvement with China’s government and failing to disclose income from China on his tax returns. He faces up to five years in federal prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

Lieber had been prosecuted as part of the Justice Department’s China Initiative, which was established in 2018 to crackdown on Chinese economic and scientific espionage.

An investigation by MIT Technology Review found that instead of focusing on economic espionage and national security, the China Initiative appeared to be an umbrella term for cases with almost any connection to China, whether they involve state-sponsored hackers, smugglers, or, increasingly, academics accused of failing to disclose all ties to China on grant-related forms.

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[Source: nytimes.com]

Lieber had worked with a former student of his at the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in 2011/2 to set up a WUT-Harvard Joint Nano Key Laboratory, and to train young scientists in the nanotechnology that he pioneered. The initiative was part of a Chinese recruitment drive called the “Thousand Talents Program.”
Recipient of the prestigious Wolf Prize in chemistry in 2012 and Welch award in 2019, Lieber was considered a Nobel Prize candidate for his work in inventing electronics so small and flexible, they could be injected into the retina or the brain, promising breakthroughs in restoring sight to the blind, and movement to the paralyzed.1

Brian Timko, who worked under Dr. Lieber as a graduate student and now heads his own laboratory at Tufts University, said he believed China Initiative had strayed from its original focus on espionage toward disclosure violations that, a few years ago, “would have been handled at the university level.”

“I think these cases are about scaring the scientific community,” he said. Dr. Timko, who attended stretches of the weeklong trial, said he was troubled by the way Dr. Lieber’s work had been “twisted” by prosecutors. “Charlie spent his whole career trying to help the world, and a handful of individuals who don’t even understand how science works tore the whole thing down,” he said. “And that is just not fair.”

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Brian Timko. [Source: mobile.twitter.com]

Parallels to the McCarthy Era

Lieber was arrested on January 28, 2020, at his Harvard office and interrogated by the FBI at the Harvard police station.

According to prosecutors, Lieber earlier denied to investigators from the Pentagon’s Criminal Investigative Service that he was ever asked to participate in the Thousand Talents program.

The latter offered him a monthly salary of up to $50,000, about $158,000 per year in personal and living expenses, and more than $1.5 million in funding for a joint laboratory between Harvard and the WUT.

When the FBI showed Lieber documents he had signed at the Harvard police station, he acknowledged that he had misled investigators—out of fear of being arrested—and offered details about his financial arrangements with the WUT.

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Peter Zeidenberg. [Source: arentfox.com]

Washington, D.C. lawyer Peter Zeidenberg, who has defended some of the accused in the FBI’s China Initiative told The New York Times that “The reason people like Lieber lie is because they are afraid. It’s really sad. They are afraid to answer truthfully, ‘Are you a member of the talent program?’ I’m sure during the Red Scare, people said they were not a member of the Communist Party.”
In an exclusive interview with CAM, Zeidenberg stated further that Lieber had not “stolen anything” and had “even told the truth to FBI agents, though not National Institute of Health (NIH)2 investigators.” While one should fill out accurate income tax reports and tell the truth to government agents, “the bottom line is that Lieber was a leading scientist in the world in nano-technology who made advances in science that was of benefit to the United States and world. Now he is not doing that anymore. They made a criminal out of him for something trivial and we are all the worse because of it.”

Entire Scientific Community Being Terrorized

According to Zeidenberg, the China initiative, was “designed to prevent and discourage and deter theft of intellectual property,” but “morphed quickly into a gotcha campaign” targeting people who “failed to disclose their affiliation with China.”

The initiative in his view is “badly misguided and counterproductive and doing a great deal of harm to the scientific community,” which “has been terrorized and made to fear collaboration with anyone from China.”

Zeidenberg noted that all the scientists that he represented benefited greatly from the collaboration between U.S. and Chinese colleagues.

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Charles Wray speaking at a China Initiative conference in February 2020 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. [Source: fbi.gov]

The scientists are “not divulging trade secrets or proprietary intellectual information” but rather “exchanging information and knowledge that results in publications in scientific journals that are publicly accessible. Thus, the China Initiative has no benefit. It is preventing effective collaboration and causing scientists to lose their jobs, and others to go back to China [amidst a climate of fear].”
Racial Profiling?
In June 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray, said that there were more than 2,000 active investigations being carried out under the China Initiative, which has continued under the Biden administration.

Many cases have little or no obvious connection to national security or the theft of trade secrets. Nearly 90% of the defendants charged are of Chinese heritage.

On September 8, 2021 177 Stanford University professors sent to U.S. Attorney Merrick Garland a letter highlighting their belief that the China Initiative was causing racial profilingand terrorizing scientists.

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Gisele Kusakawa. [Source: advancingjustice-aajc.org]

Gisela Kusakawa, a staff attorney at an Asian American advocacy group, stated that. “Essentially, national security issues are being used as a pretext to target our community. This is resulting in a brain drain from and distrust towards the United States.”

An Ominous Precedent

Peter Zeidenberg noted that “the zeal to prosecute violators under the China Initiative [like in the anticommunist witch-hunts of the McCarthy era] has led the FBI to neglect using its normal filters” and to “ignore all red flags. The FBI plunges ahead without doing careful questioning or proper investigative work.”

An ominous precedent was set when Dr. Xi Xiaoxing, chairman of Temple University’s Physics Department, was falsely accused in 2015 of sharing sensitive American-made technology—a pocket-heater developed through research into superconductors—with China.

The FBI, however, failed to consult with scientific experts before taking the case to the Grand Jury. The engineer who invented the pocket heater testified that Xi had not shared any information about pocket heaters—the FBI had the wrong technology.

Though his case was dismissed, Xi—who has published over 300 research papers and holds three patents—said that he barely came out of the nightmare alive.

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Xi Xiaoxing [Source: nytimes.com]

His reputation was tarnished and his two daughters were traumatized after their home was ransacked in the pre-dawn hours by FBI agents and their father was taken away in handcuffs.
Miscarriage of Justice #2: Anming Hu
Professor Anmung Hu, a Physics professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, was another man falsely accused under the China Initiative who had his life turned upside down.

A Canadian citizen with two Ph.D’s, Hu was accused of having hidden his connection to Beijing University of Technology while being funded for a nanotechnology project by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

During the ordeal, Hu was tailed by the FBI and lost his job.

The Judge assigned to the case, Thomas A. Varlan, stated “there was no evidence presented that the defendant ever collaborated with a Chinese university in conducting NASA-funded research, or used facilities, equipment or funds from a Chinese university in the course of such research.”

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Anming Hu outside the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. [Source: theintercept.com]

FBI agent Kujitim Sadiku admitted that he relied on Google Translate to translate the Chinese articles that had first triggered the investigation, and that he “wasn’t familiar with NASA grants” or with the “granting process of government agencies, of university conflict of interest policies, nor was he familiar with the ways universities engage with government agencies for purposes of sponsorship proposals,” wrote Varlan in a stinging footnote to his opinion.
At one point in the investigation, Sadiku—who falsely claimed that Hu worked for the Chinese military—tried to convince Hu to spy for the FBI which he refused to do.

Juror Wendy Chandler told a reporter with The Intercept that Hu’s case “was the most ridiculous case. If this is who is protecting America, we’ve got problems.”

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Judge Thomas A. Varlan [Source: archive.knoxnews.com]

Chandler stated that she had “kept looking for the big reveal, and there wasn’t one. All I saw was a series of plausible errors, a lack of support from UT [University of Tennessee], and ruthless ambition on behalf of the FBI.” On Sadiku, she added: “I don’t think there could have been a worse witness than him.”

Reliance on False Information From an Informant

Feng “Franklin” Tao is a tenured professor at the University of Kansas charged two years ago with defrauding the federal government by concealing that he was a full-time professor at China’s Fuzhou University and received money from a Chinese government talent recruitment program while simultaneously receiving U.S. grant funds.

Peter Zeidenberg, who is representing Tao, has filed a motion, quoted in the Washington Post, alleging that FBI agent Stephen Lampe knowingly used false information from an informant to obtain warrants to search Tao’s emails, computers, home and office.

The motion says Lampe deliberately withheld information that would undercut the informant’s credibility and the reliability of the evidence.

Zeidenberg refused to speak to CAM about the case because it is pending, but according to his motion, the informant is a Chinese researcher who sought to frame Tao as a Chinese “tech spy” in retaliation for what she saw as a snub by Tao— not giving her sufficient credit for her contributions to a scientific paper, for which she felt she was owed $310,000.

The informant created three fictitious email addresses to submit the complaints, and occasionally slipped up, for instance signing an email purporting to be from one researcher with the name of another.

The informant also sent an email from a fake email address but signed it with her real name.

Though the FBI knew about her subterfuge, Zeidenberg wrote in the motion, Lampe did not inform the court when applying for the warrant. The researcher, identified in Tao’s motion only as a “former international visiting scholar” and as a “government informant,” had admitted to the FBI that she impersonated others.

Towe’s case exemplifies overzealous prosecution and shoddy police methods in the China Initiative, which are being driven by what Zeidenberg characterized as a “huge amount of anti-China fear.”

The Biden administration campaigned on a pledge to help advance a more tolerant society; however, his continuation of Trump’s anti-China rhetoric and preservation of the China Initiative is resulting in some of the worst abuses of domestic liberties since the McCarthy era.

Notes:
↩ Some of Lieber’s work had military applications. His father, Dr. Robert L. Lieber, helped pioneer advances in rocketry, telemetry and satellite tracking and radar systems while working for the Defense Department. According to Stephen Mosher, president of the population research institute, Lieber and his Chinese colleagues experimented with implanting microchips in the brains of lab animals to monitor and affect their behavior. This would indicate that Lieber was potentially involved in some kind of successor to the CIA’s infamous MK-ULTRA mind control project, and has led to speculation of deep political intrigues behind his arrest and prosecution.

↩ Lieber’s research group at Harvard had received $15 million in research grants from the NIH and Department of Defense, and was hence under obligation to report his arrangement with WUT to them.

https://mronline.org/2022/01/04/fbi-is- ... cientists/

Once any cops get a tool that gets 'results' they are bound to extend it's applicability every which way, examples being "no-knock" and entrapment. Cause they gotta have 'flexibility', cause their impunity must go unquestioned.

And of course the current regime is on board with this, as was the previous regime. The liberals and progressives can blame Trump as much as they want, but there is always more continuity in US government than there is policy change when the Ds & Rs play musical chairs. It would be impossible to do business otherwise, and that is the government's overriding concern, as is illustrated by covid policy as it develops(degenerates...). It was delusional to think that the senile old fixer Biden was gonna fix anything other than getting Trump off the TV so much, but that got him elected. As for his promises, they follow the Dem playbook, "run 'left', fail to deliver, get stomped in the next election". This was clear at the beginning of this regime when the filibuster was taken 'off the table' preemptively despite the Rs repeatedly "ax'in for it". I cannot see any reason why that sequence will not repeat again, very soon.

Some people should consider that quote about repeated idiocy often attributed to Albert Einstein...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 07, 2022 5:46 pm

Time to change the subject...
Biden rediscovers his fighting spirit as he takes on Trump
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

Updated 1:03 AM ET, Fri January 7, 2022

(CNN)In marking the anniversary of the Capitol insurrection, President Joe Biden rediscovered the sense of mission and political clarity that had disappeared when his presidency slumped during a cascade of crises in the second half of 2021.

Biden's speech Thursday -- from the spot where Donald Trump's mob defiled the US tradition of peaceful transfers of power a year ago -- was easily his most authoritative moment as President. He redefined himself against the extremism of the ex-President after struggling to project control during brutal months when a resurgent pandemic and chaos in his own party withered away any sense that he was commanding the political stage.

In generations to come, his address may be viewed either as the rallying call that saved the American experiment or as a pained eulogy for the democracy that his predecessor and would-be successor seems determined to destroy.

<snip>

Early in his presidency, Biden sought to consign Trump to history by depriving him of the commodity the ex-President most craves: attention. In his inaugural address nearly a year ago, he sought not to wage old wars over the election but to instead stress national unity -- a concept hard to imagine after the violence that had unfolded on the steps beneath him just weeks before. Later in the year, he dissed Trump as the "former guy" and urged Americans to together take up arms, literally, in a new challenge: the vaccine drive that he hoped would end the worst pandemic in 100 years.

<snip>

Ever since the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the resurgence of Covid-19, a supply chain crunch and a spike in inflation, Biden has struggled to control events. His authority has also been tarnished by Democratic infighting that stalled the massive social spending and climate change bill that could cement his legacy as a historic, reforming Democratic President.

(more...)

https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/07/politics/ ... index.html

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

Biden just threw down the democracy gauntlet
Opinion by Frida Ghitis

Updated 3:04 PM ET, Thu January 6, 2022

(CNN)President Joe Biden, marking the anniversary of the January 6 attack at the US Capitol, delivered the most powerful, blistering speech of his presidency thus far, signaling a stark shift in his approach to the nation's ongoing crisis of democracy.

Biden pummeled former President Donald Trump, mentioning him 16 times but without once using Trump's name -- and doing it in ways that surely infuriated the disgraced politician in Mar-a-Lago.

<snip>

This was a historic address, one that not only marks an important pivot point -- at least a rhetorical one -- for his presidency. Biden's appeal that Americans work to make January 6 "the beginning of a renaissance of liberty and fair play," begs the question -- how is that going to happen?
The very personal allusions to Trump, coupled with Attorney General Merrick Garland's speech on Wednesday, when he said the Justice Department will hold "all January 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law -- whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault," should make the former president very nervous.

Biden has taken the mantle of the warrior in the effort to lead the country out of the existential crisis he described. Now he has to show how exactly he plans to win that battle for the soul of America, the campaign to save American democracy from an ongoing menace.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/06/opinions/ ... index.html
With covid politically eating his ass and the economy not exactly humming, with almost all of his major legislation stalled because of members of his own party and his foolish or calculated insistence on bipartisanship for most of the year, what to do? (And btw, there's an election coming up...)

The foreign boogeyman is the tried and true resort of the sitting politician with nothing to show and indeed the current regime is going after all them 'enemies of democracy' hammer and tong. But as his opposition is of like mind in this being the other wing of the capitalist party, so that will not serve to differentiate much. But why look over yonder when the tried and true is in your own back yard?

The Dems calculated they could freeze Trump out of the headlines by ignoring him but their media allies could not do so consistently, they got advertising to sell. And they figured that covid would be a past number real soon...They also expected to pass some legislation, however watered down, and declared victory, regardless of how puny.

None of that shook out so it's back to the tried and true, Trump. Make no mistake, Trump is a criminal many times over and some of these investigations might bear fruit before the shithead kicks the bucket. But we know that bourgeois democracy is a sham disguising effective bourgeois rule, and that this crusade to save it from an authoritarian moron has little to do with real democracy and more to do with business stability and the facade of legitimacy. And so the MSM, our masters' voice, is kicking out the jams in support of the Dem, just as they did during the election. Some of that hyperbole is downright embarrassing.

"But what about Fox?" you might ask. Well, that is capitalist democracy at it's 'finest', because the illusion of freedom, like freedom of speech, must be maintain or people might start looking elsewhere, there is a market for what they're 'selling' and so a profit to be made. And as long as the ruling class consensus is expressed by a large majority of it's mouthpieces it all falls together nicely.

(PS - I'm an old fart but christ on a cracker doesn't Biden look like he should be laid in a box with flowers on it?)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 08, 2022 3:32 pm

Democrats’ inaction on tax credit condemns millions of children to poverty
Kenya ElliottJanuary 7, 2022
Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... sts/100987

Working class families are faced with an extra burden as the new year begins – the expiration of the expanded child tax credit. The expansion provided support for families struggling during the pandemic by changing some key factors of the already existing credit. Namely, the expansion increased the annual amount per child from $2,000 to between $3,000 and $3,600, it paid the credit in monthly installments rather than in one lump sum, and it expanded the full benefits of the credit to families who previously had been ruled ineligible due to their income being too low.

On the same day that the CTC expansion expired, there were almost 450,000 new COVID cases reported, almost double the number reported at the same time in 2020. The 7-day average was over 380,000 cases per day. The expiration of the CTC is just the latest in a wave of COVID protections that have been allowed to end, despite the fact that the pandemic is worse than ever. The Paycheck Protection program ended in March of last year, enhanced unemployment benefits ended in September, the federal eviction moratorium expired over the summer, and we haven’t received a stimulus check since the spring of 2021.

There was an attempt to make the CTC permanent as part of Biden’s proposed social program budget, as supporters of the expansion had been hoping from its inception. In the six months since the expansion started it kept almost 4 million children out of poverty, reducing the child poverty rate by almost 30% and providing much needed aid to millions of families. However, just like how the social program budget started out with provisions that would provide funding for clean energy, free community college, paid family and sick leave, and tax increases on the hyper-wealthy and corporations that were all eventually removed or drastically reduced, right-wing Democrats have stood in the way of the CTC expansion as well.

Joe Manchin in particular is responsible for killing the CTC extension, citing racist and elitist “concerns” about what families will use the money for, along with the entirety of the social program budget. Research has shown that the CTC extension has reduced child poverty and food insecurity, and that in a time where the system is failing left and right to protect and provide for working class people, recipients of the tax credit used it to buy food, pay rent and other bills, pay for childcare, buy clothes, create savings, and pay down debt. These are all necessities that should be provided to everyone, and while the child tax credit was nowhere close to the full scope of social support that’s needed, it provided an invaluable safety net for families across the country that has now been ripped away.

Despite having control of the House, Senate, and presidency, the Democrats have failed at every turn to adequately handle the COVID-19 pandemic. They have repeatedly capitulated to right-wing forces within their own party that stand opposed to instituting, or even continuing, the most meager social benefit programs. They could use their power and influence to apply pressure to Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and other right-wing Democrats who so clearly and blatantly work to obstruct any legislation that would benefit the working class. Instead, Biden and the Democratic Party shrink their proposed bills, remove key elements, and chip away at reforms that working class people desperately need in an attempt to find “common ground”.

By allowing Manchin and others to do away with the most progressive elements of the social program budget, by allowing corporate greed and interests to supercede the needs and wellbeing of the people, by allowing themselves to be controlled by the furthest right members of the party, the Democrats have once again failed the same working class people they claim to represent. They have put themselves in a position where they are unable to pass any but the most limited reforms. COVID cases are at an all-time high across the country, millions of people have gotten sick, and yet the Democrats have let the relief programs that were in place expire, and have failed to implement anything meaningful in their place, leaving millions of struggling people vulnerable to food insecurity, housing instability, serious illness, and more.

The expiration of the child tax credit makes the failure of the Democratic Party painfully clear. We need a new system, one that prioritizes human need over the profits of corporations, and cannot be held hostage by the whims of an individual.

https://www.liberationnews.org/democrat ... rationnews

Manchin and Sinema are not 'causes', they are symptoms of the nature of the Democratic Party, which is that of a capitalist party. The Dems have been known to 'bend' in the past when confronted with the likelihood of major civil disturbance from the working class but none of that on the immediate horizon from the left and so no serious need to pass the grossly inadequate 'BBB". But wasn't it useful in tying the party's lame left ankle and wrist to the semi-corpse of Joe Biden? And so the little possibility of some progress is stymied and and demoralized for the next cycle or two. Joe might be half senile but he knows his wretched party and that's why he was pushed ahead of Bernie, who would have just confused things.

They will pass something in the next six months and declare victory, but it will be something the Rs would vote for if they came up with it(like Obama care), not anything worth a damn to us. The winners will be the ruling class regardless of who gets elected in '22.
In the meantime they depend upon the ever cheapened bread and circuses to keep the peace and Trump to keep them in their lucrative offices.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Jan 12, 2022 4:24 pm

Biden puts it all on the line in voting rights battle

(CNN)It took a year for Joe Biden to make an irrevocable bet that puts the credibility of his presidency on the line. If his bid now to change Senate rules to pass voting rights legislation fails, he'll lose more than just the bills he sees as vital to saving democracy. His drained political capital could spell the end of the entire domestic, legislative phase of his administration.

<snip>

Democrats cannot pass two stalled voting rights bills on their own owing to the opposition of Senate Republicans who won't even allow them to come up for debate. To evade their obstruction, Biden must find a way to persuade all 50 Democratic senators to at least amend the filibuster -- a device that means major legislation effectively needs 60 votes to pass.

<snip>

In some ways, the voting rights push and the Build Back Better plan represent the last big legislative chance for a President who already has a bipartisan infrastructure law and $1.9 trillion Covid-19 rescue package on his record, which is still shadowed by his failure to pass his most ambitious goals.

<snip>

In short, Biden didn't have much choice but to act as his did. The perilous resonance of the moment for Democrats, with voting rights bills stuck in the Senate, was summed up by Vice President Kamala Harris, who was with him in Georgia.
"We do not know when we will have this opportunity again," she said.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/12/politics/ ... index.html
So, Joe Biden finally gets a fire under his ass...The 'why' of it is simple and stated above: it's do or die, politically. But the 'why now?' is less clear.

Why didn't Biden go for the filibuster on Day 1? He made a bunch of noise about 'bipartisanship' but that was just posturing, only the disingenuous could say something like that after the way the Republicans have played hardball in the Senate and their constant chiseling at the polls as seen in 2000 and 2004. "Forgive and forget" is not anyone's political maxim. And he almost surely could do enough arm twisting to get his rebellious Senators in line despite the horseshit they feed us. But anyway, he's gonna do it now, it's crunch time. Because there is a big difference between now and then: money. 'Money' as in the couple trillion proposed to be spent in part on things the working class actually needs. Money that in a considerable way was going to come out of the pockets of the rich and their corporations. Which is something the Dem bosses, as responsible tools of the rich, were not keen on. So Machin and Sinema did what comes natural to them while Joe & Nancy, & Chuck wrung their hands(and rolled their eyes...).

And the money is what is different now, cause it ain't coming out of the pockets of the owners and it is to Democratic Party advantage politically to get this passed. It's tough being perceived as 'the lesser of two evils' by a large portion of your electorate. Who wants to make the extra effort, to stand in line for hours, for 'the lesser of two evils'? To be sure, some of the crap the Rs are pulling disproportionately effect black and other disadvantaged voters. Banning Sunday voting comes immediately to mind, I expect there are others. But a lot of those measures affect all voters fairly equally and I think there are at least as many elderly, disabled and otherwise challenged white voters as black. The difference is motivation: however deranged, Republican voters believe their votes matter, that Trump represents them. Not so much on the other side; only the naive could believe that a hustler like Biden is on anybody's side other than mastercard. And so the Dems gotta make it easy peasy for their voters to reluctantly pull the donkey tail.

And besides the Rs playing dirty, a fact long before Trump's political emergence, there is The Man himself, a loose cannon who snuck into the White House due to ruling class hubris and whom the bosses have had entirely enough of. So the Big Money will be firmly behind the Dems as will the MSM.
At least one of the voting bills will pass, victory will be declared and the road to 2024 will be open. And this is why we are starting to see some Rs getting Trump-shy even as the Dems secretly pray for Donny's nomination cause it's all they got and maybe not even that is enough if the Rs jimmy the vote enough. Because 'stability' is the most important thing to business, the business of Amerika is business, and the Dems, by not doing anything are just the party to deliver that.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 14, 2022 4:14 pm

Is Biden's presidency doomed?
Julian E. Zelizer-Profile-Image
Opinion by Julian Zelizer, CNN Political Analyst

Updated 6:28 PM ET, Thu January 13, 2022

(CNN)President Joe Biden is struggling politically. Recent polls have shown that his approval ratings continue to fall. According to CNN's Poll of Polls, the President stands at 42%, while Quinnipiac's January poll placed him at 33%. Those are the kinds of numbers that would leave any White House unsettled.

The fate of the Build Back Better legislation remains precarious, while the President's emboldened words about the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act were tougher than ever. On Tuesday, he asked elected officials, "Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?" in what appeared to be a question implicitly targeting Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who still refuse to accept the filibuster carve-out that would allow the voting rights legislation to overcome Republican opposition. Even worse, Omicron has driven up hospitalizations and left huge swaths of the population despondent about when the pandemic will come to an end. "It's déjà vu all over again," as the baseball legend Yogi Berra liked to say.

(more...)

https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/13/opinions/ ... index.html

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

The Democratic Agenda May Be Dead

It’s last call for legislating at the O.K. Corral.

BY JIM NEWELL
JAN 13, 20225:47 PM

Image
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Even by their own standards, Democrats are frantic this week.

A monthslong effort to jam voting rights legislation through Congress is reaching a head in the Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is pushing to change filibuster rules to circumvent a Republican blockade. President Joe Biden, under pressure from voting rights groups, traveled to Georgia to deliver an aggressive speech endorsing those changes, or whatever else was necessary to get a voting rights bill through. (Some groups demanding the legislation actually boycotted the speech to make the point that the time for words, instead of action, is over.)

But it looks to be of no avail. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on Thursday gave a floor speech reiterating her firm opposition to weakening the filibuster, and Sen. Joe Manchin followed up later that afternoon with his own statement ruling out such a move too.

(more...)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... -dead.html

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

Day of defeats threatens Biden's attempt at second year reset
By Kevin Liptak, CNN

Updated 7:04 PM ET, Thu January 13, 2022

(CNN)By the time President Joe Biden was climbing into his limousine on Capitol Hill, his Thursday was already going poorly.

An hour before he'd arrived to meet Senate Democrats, Arizona centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema declared on the Senate floor she couldn't support any changes to filibuster rules that would be required to pass new voter protection laws. It was less-than-welcome news to the White House, which learned of Sinema's plans earlier in the day as aides were preparing for Biden's visit.

<snip>

The boulder-pushing was continuing Thursday evening at the White House, where Biden met with Sinema and her fellow centrist, Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The trio planned to discuss voting rights, though each senators' definitive statements opposing changes to the filibuster made for an unclear path forward.

<snip>

Entering his second year, Biden hopes to regain the initiative by drawing sharper contrasts with Republicans and resetting expectations that even some of his allies believe were oversized when he entered office.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/13/politics/ ... index.html
Oh, the hand wringing, the drama, cue up the Doors: https://youtu.be/ZeMlQEWEg2Q

Naw, don't think so. Because a complete political massacre of the Dems does not serve the bosses' purposes. First, most of them don't want Trump back, he's proven too unstable and has an isolationist streak to boot. That ain't no way to do business. And it is clear that the big money is aware of the demographic changes in progress and are working hard to coopt the change, at least in appearances, and raise suitable candidates from among oppressed minorities to positions of responsibility, as we can see from Hillary, Obama, various CEOs...without changing the rate of profit or the grinding misery of capitalism significantly.

The Rs have painted themselves into a corner, starting with taking the hand-off of overt racism from the Dems, who gave it up reluctantly and only because of the measures taken to prevent more cities burning back in the 60s. It was a serious voting block up for grabs, how could the party of Lincoln refuse? Especially as their old strongholds of New England(going liberal) and the Midwest(lost farm demographics) were fading. And it has worked for most of my life, but the pitter-patter of black and brown feet is creeping up behind them. Nixon and Raygun had bought them time in the midterm but not the long term. And in the near future those demographic numbers are coming home to roost. This has been the source of all their weaseling, bending and ignoring the rules of gentlemanly comport. The Republicans stand against the tide while the Dems and the ruling class consensus try to adapt without seriously affecting the bottom line.

And this is why I think that by hook or crook Biden will get his filibuster change and voter protection law(s). It is even possible that one or more of the five retiring Republican Senators decide to exit with a big "fuck you!" for Trump. By getting this win Biden stays politically alive(though not so sure otherwise...), he can declare victory at least within the party thereby stuffing his progressive wing with his win while blaming them for 'BBB' not passing cause it was 'too left'. So probably business as usual.

Of course I could be dead-ass wrong, and for real progress that could be the best thing. An utterly failed Democratic Party might be ripe for dissolution as the old guard defends the status quo to the death while the numerous progressives walk in utter frustration. That would leave an opening for a real workers party, the beginning of the beginning.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 18, 2022 4:00 pm

More drama
A grave week for civil rights, democracy and a presidency
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 12:55 AM ET, Tue January 18, 2022

(CNN)Democrats appear certain to add another failure to their list of missed deadlines and thwarted legacy goals this week, with a push for voting rights bills expected to crash in the Senate with humiliating implications for Joe Biden's presidency.

The party faces a moment of stark symbolism just a day after the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., which Democrats had set as a deadline to pass new laws to counter Republican curtailments on voting in multiple states. Votes expected to be called by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will enshrine ideological divides in the party and call into question the credibility of an under-pressure President who has led a full-throated campaign for legislation demanded by modern civil rights leaders in the week that he marks his anniversary in office.

Democrats will hold a high-stakes caucus meeting on Tuesday evening, but there is no sign they can convince holdout colleagues to support efforts to change Senate rules to pass the two bills with a simple majority.

That means that when Schumer, a New York Democrat, brings up voting rights legislation later this week, it will fail because Democrats are unable to get 60 votes to break Republican filibuster tactics.

Schumer could then hold a vote on changing those filibuster rules to pass the two bills with the votes of all 50 Democrats and a tie-breaker vote from Vice President Kamala Harris.

That tactic would force Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who oppose removing the Senate filibuster, to go on record opposing a centerpiece of Biden's presidency and may only deepen their estrangement with their colleagues.

<snip>

A failed voting rights drive will also deal a blow to Black leaders who were instrumental to Biden's win in the Democratic primary and the election in 2020. Many of those campaigners believe that the White House waited too long to make voting rights the main focus on his presidency -- notwithstanding the fact that Biden had no credible path to passing the bills into law. Without the legislation, there could be serious consequences for Democratic enthusiasm and turnout in vital swing states in November's midterm elections.

<snip>

This week's theater will create a fresh picture of the futility of Democratic power in Washington. Yet the obstacle to passing voting rights reform and the Build Back Better climate and spending bill were obvious long ago. But the White House and Democratic leaders chose to press ahead anyway with no clear path to success.

(more...)

https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/18/politics/ ... index.html
So, what's it gonna be?
The worst political party in history
or
The greater evil masquerading as the lesser evil
How about both?

On one hand they utterly fail their stated core constituencies, haplessly flailing in a comedy and tragedy rolled into one. On the other hand through apparent incompetence they maintain the status quo for capitalists, polluters, imperialists and other lowlifes. It's a tough act but in bourgeois democracy somebody's gotta do it.

It's looking grim for the Biden regime, at least in the short term. I still suspect they might pull this one off, if only because the political playing field will get too imbalanced without it and that ain't good for this system of two capitalist parties. People might look elsewhere, away from the established dichotomy. Can't have that.

But perhaps the means for pulling these chestnuts outta the fire just ain't there, and thru a combination of Republican shenanigans and Democratic demoralization the Ds get stomped like bugs in November. Then what? Of course the Dems will double down as usual and after the mandatory blaming their left for the disaster and some futzing around they feign going left again to build popular support....and here we go again. Oh, and please send money.

Maybe, just maybe, there might be an opening for a worker's party, a home for the disgruntled rank & file(but NOT the treacherous leaders), a party that might represent the large group of citizens who have never seen a party that would genuinely represent them. Could be an opportunity there that we shouldn't miss. If the Democratic Party is down we should kick the snot out of it to ensure that it no longer takes up all the air in the politics of the masses.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 20, 2022 3:21 pm

On the Biden Plantation
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 19 Jan 2022

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Biden at Bethel AME Church Wilmington DE Photo credit: Reuters

The idea that Joe Biden would provide harm reduction was created to help the unpopular candidate secure an electoral victory. The reality is a litany of lies and certain defeat for democrats at the polls. There is no harm reduction in a system dedicated to neo-liberalism and austerity.

“Biden came across as a plantation owner telling the field hands that they have a good life and ought to be grateful.”

This columnist wrote those words in December 2020 before Joe Biden was inaugurated. His meeting with a group designated as Black leaders was as bad as one could expect, complete with dismissal, rudeness, and outright disrespect. It was vintage Biden, a man who was never the brightest and is now elderly and not fully in command of his faculties.

But the real Biden was always an unreconstructed racist, bragging about the 1992 Crime Bill which he said would, “Do everything but hang people for jaywalking.” Barack Obama chose him as a running mate precisely because of his credentials among conservative, race baiting democrats. Having run as a fake progressive Obama needed someone decidedly in the conservative camp to balance the ticket.

In 2020 Obama and the rest of the party establishment decided to make Biden the nominee, ordering others out of the race and clearing the field for the candidate who had no constituency outside of the wealthy individuals and corporations that keep the democrats afloat. A combination of fundraising prowess and antipathy towards Donald Trump created a large voter turnout and Biden won the popular and electoral vote.

The democrats’ propaganda machine played no small role in dragging Biden over the finish line. They settled on the term “harm reduction” to convince the skeptical that they should put aside their concerns and vote for the man they didn’t want. Biden won with a record breaking number of votes, and in cities across the country democrats quite literally partied in the street when he won.

Biden was propelled by the same propaganda effort when his term began one year ago. We were told that he was “the most progressive president since FDR.” The democrats are still living off their reputation from Franklin Roosevelt’s Social Security Act and the creation of Medicaid and Medicare during the Lyndon Johnson administration. No democrat has created anything of the sort in the last 50 years but the memories lingers and scoundrels evoke the past in order to fool the people in the 21st century.

We were told that Biden’s stimulus plan and child tax credits would “cut child poverty in half.” Absent an increase in the federal minimum wage and lacking permanent legislation, it did no such thing. The child tax credit ended in 2021. Unemployment compensation ended three months ago, and republican led states refused to provide the additional payments that congress had authorized. They did so without push back from Biden or from democrats in congress.

Now Biden’s approval ratings have plummeted and it isn’t hard to understand why. Put simply, he lied in order to get votes. He said he would forgive student loan debt for those who attended public colleges and whose families met income guidelines. He could have done this without congressional approval but he hasn’t acted. It is clear that he never had any intention of raising the minimum wage, using the Senate Parliamentarian as an excuse to avoid doing what he promised voters he would do.

The enormity of the duplicity is galling to millions of people. After Trump advocated raising a stimulus payment from $1,400 to $2,000 Biden did as well, but after assuming office $2,000 turned into just $1,400. Adding the $600 already received to $1,400 was an outright betrayal but it is one that was explained away by the corporate media and democratic party operatives.

The Build Back Better bill languishes. Democrats try to placate the oligarchs who Biden promised, “Nothing will fundamentally change,” while also pretending to be the harm reduction that voters came to expect. Having failed to do what the people want, Biden then made a phony effort to pass voting rights legislation. That bill is dead on arrival but Black voters are still seen as the group that is easiest to fool and that can be silenced with a stirring speech instead of action. The trap of seeing Black politics as little more than keeping republicans at bay always ends in defeat and humiliation.

“Progressives” in congress join in giving Biden cover. Pramila Jayapal said, “I give him an A,” and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced that Biden, “Exceeded expectations.” At the end of the day sleight of hand and Trumpophobia were supposed to silence people who turned out in droves to put Biden in office.

Biden is nothing if not consistent and transparent. He does see himself as the boss who tells Black people that they shouldn’t complain. As he famously said in the December 2020 meeting, “If it doesn’t count for y’all to hell with y’all!”

But now the bloom is truly off the rose. The campaign lies and the failure to address the covid pandemic make it difficult for all but the dead enders to support Biden and vice president Kamala Harris. The Black political class will fulfill their role and continue to put lipstick on the pig. The people aren’t fooled though and they won’t turn out in the numbers needed to keep democrats in control of congress. Although democratic control means very little. The military industrial complex gets $770 billion in funding regardless of who is in control. Biden has pledged not to provide medicare for all and he didn’t even present a public option for health care. As for claims that the democrats are more environmentally friendly, Biden has approved more oil and gas drilling permits on public land than the Trump administration did.

Biden is hoisted on his own petard of obedience to the ruling class. Black voters get little more than improved twitter posts. Then again, when Kamala Harris writes drivel such as, “Because of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, America is moving again. That's what infrastructure is all about: getting people moving,” one wonders if even that is true.

Biden isn’t predisposed to do what Black people need. All the platitudes and promises are inevitably hollow. In any case, there is no harm reduction in a system dedicated to neo-liberalism and austerity. At the end of the day, millions of people have nothing except hope that the plantation master of the moment will somehow be kinder.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/biden-plantation

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

The Biden-Harris Administration is a Political Expression of the Empire’s Crisis of Legitimacy
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor 19 Jan 2022

Image
The crisis of legitimacy is becoming more and more obvious. Joe Biden exemplifies oligarchic rule and a system in decline.

COVID-19 continues to spread with rapid ferocity across the United States. On January 14th, the U.S. surpassed 850,000 COVID-19 deaths. More deaths from the pandemic have accumulated under President Joe Biden than his predecessor, Donald Trump. Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s lack of competence in addressing the pandemic has damaged the credibility of the administration. The Biden administration’s approval rating has fallen to 33 percent , a 22 percent decrease from a year ago.

Biden and Harris are political expressions of the American Empire’s crisis of legitimacy. The crisis has reached an acute stage that neither Biden nor Harris is capable of managing without significant political consequences. This has led to a number of cringe-worthy public relations moments for the administration. In an NBC News interview , Kamala Harris expressed that the administration would not change course on its COVID-19 strategy. “It is time for us to do what we have been doing and that time is every day,” said Harris. When Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the myriad of problems facing the Biden administration, she responded with the following : “I think that having worked in the White House before, you do hard things in White Houses . . . and could certainly propose legislation to see if people support bunny rabbits and ice cream, but that wouldn't be very rewarding for the American people.”

Such rhetoric does not exactly exude confidence from an administration that claimed it would “Build Back Better” out of the Donald Trump administration. The truth is that Biden’s promise to “Build Back Better” was always a branding exercise. Biden’s ineptness is a reflection of the historic decay of the Democratic Party. After eight years of Obamamania, Democratic Party elites gambled their political capital on the sale of non-stop fear of Donald Trump to their constituents in order to soothe their wounded psyches following the embarrassment that was the 2016 election. Biden struggled to gain credibility in the 2020 primary from the outset but was finally given the elite’s blessing to take the reins of the Democratic Party’s sinking ship.

The Biden administration entered the White House amid a myriad of crises facing the Empire. COVID-19 had already taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Another economic crisis was afoot that had only built upon the immiseration from the 2007-08 “Great Recession.” Support had grown among Democrat voters for Medicare for All , climate change policy , and significant reforms to policing in the U.S. following the massive Black Lives Matter upsurge in the summer of 2020. While Biden ran a typical neoliberal campaign, he was forced to promise something to the masses in the way of pandemic relief and economic recovery. The hope for Democratic Party strategists was that “liberals” and “progressives” would support Biden under a “never Trump” mandate and relinquish any expectation that the administration would follow through with concrete policies upon winning the presidency.

Such political stagnation is exactly what has transpired in Biden’s first year as commander-in-chief. Biden never had any intention of forgiving student loan debt or expanding healthcare during a pandemic. So-called Build Back Better legislation has stalled in Congress due to resistance from the rotating villains of senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, but Biden’s deference to the corporate donor class has played a significant role as well. Biden boasts of an “economic recovery” despite intense spikes in the cost of living . American capitalism, however, is fully open for business and that means the working class is fully free to die from a pandemic while being super exploited in low wage work.

The situation is no better when it comes to the American Empire’s dealings abroad. Tensions with Russia have worsened as the U.S.-NATO alliance saber rattles over a mythical “Russian invasion” of Ukraine. Biden has failed to repair relations with China despite his willingness to sign onto modest statements of cooperation around climate change and nuclear conflict . Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” remains a staple of U.S. foreign policy and the propaganda war against China is fueling racist hysteria in an effort to revive Cold War-era politics in service of the military industrial complex. Deadly U.S.-backed “color revolutions” and sanctions have only caused further instability across the globe. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the American Empire has nothing to offer the world but war and austerity, leaving China and a growing number of partners with the responsibility of building a multipolar world amid the chaos.

A major principle of Marxism is that the contradictions of capitalist society have a tendency of becoming antagonisms which cause tectonic shifts in political and economic relations. The loss of confidence in the Biden administration is part and parcel of the sharpening contradiction between its public relations image as the U.S.’s savior from the so-called evils of Donald Trump and the fact that Biden and company are functionaries of the very ruling elite that produced Trump in the first place. Said differently, Trump is a byproduct of the general crisis of capitalism that Biden’s long career of service to the ruling class helped produce. The capitalist, imperialist, and white supremacist roots of the American Empire are rotting from within. Capitalism is at a dead-end and is faced with an impossible choice: either accept reforms that cut into finance capital’s ill-gotten profits or terrorize workers and oppressed people for everything they have.

For the ruling class, this really isn’t a choice at all. When faced with economic and political crisis, capital always chooses to reproduce itself over the needs and interests of society. The Biden administration’s arrogance in the face of crisis represents a breakdown in the state’s capacity to govern an empire in decay. Capital is banking on the fact that no mass movement yet exists that is mature enough to confront the contradictions of duopoly rule. Any genuine revolutionary must take up this task as Biden moves sluggishly past his first year as president of the United States. American exceptionalism is dead, and the time is now to build revolutionary movements and leaders who are ready to bury the American Empire with it.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/biden ... legitimacy

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

The 700,000 Club: Joe Biden’s Deportation Frenzy
Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Contributor 19 Jan 2022

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Tijuana, Mexico: migrants waiting for US asylum processing. Photo: Pedro Rios

In under a year, the Biden regime has detained and deported more asylum seekers than his predecessor, demonstrating that there is an alignment among the US political elites – of both parties – when it comes to creating and enforcing racist, inhumane laws.

In the year since he was elected US president, Joe Biden has greedily seized Barack Obama’s mantle as “deporter-in-chief.” His administration’s policy towards Haitians and other asylum seekers has been notable for a racist callousness of a stunning scale. The Quixote Center reported that on January 12, 2022 – the mournful, twelfth anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and killed 200,000 people – the US celebrated by expelling 443 Haitian asylum seekers, sending them on three flights to Haiti.

From mid-September 2021, to January 12, 2022, the Biden regime deported 14,800 Haitian asylum seekers, a large percentage of whom were minors. As Natasha Lennard pointed out for the Intercept, this is a “deportation operation of scale and speed not seen in decades. And it gives lie to any notion that President Joe Biden’s border regime is kinder than that of former President Donald Trump.” Biden has certainly outperformed Trump’s blatantly white supremacist dog whistles about foreign “hordes” invading the U.S. were loudly maligned by Democrats and their supporters, but his policies are no better.

The Biden regime has ramped up deportations via Trump-era “Title 42” expulsions, as well as the “expedited removal” law, which dates back to 1996 and was expanded under the Trump regime. Title 42 is an obscure health law from 1944 that grants the US government the ability to take emergency action to prevent the “introduction of communicable diseases.” Even though the US has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world, the Trump regime revived Title 42 in 2020 as a measure to strip asylum seekers at the US borders of due process. During his four-year term, Trump used Title 42 to remove 500,000 asylum seekers. In under a year, Biden has deported almost 700,000 migrants.

The “expedited removal” process is one where asylum seekers are quickly denied entry based on a brief interview process with Border Patrol officers who have the final say on whether a migrant has a “credible fear” of returning to their countries of origin. With “expedited removal,” migrants are deported without a hearing or appearance before a judge – in effect, without due process.

Then, there is the “Remain in Mexico” policy, formally known as “Migrant Protection Protocols,” which was instituted by the Trump regime. In violation of international law, this policy forced those seeking asylum in the U.S. at the southwestern borders to remain in Mexico while their cases are being processed. This has led to thousands of migrants stranded in Mexico. Many liberals covering for Biden have argued that he attempted to end the program, but were forced by the courts to keep it. But Biden actually resumed the program after a short hiatus, arguing that it has instituted checks in the program to make it more humane. This is how Democratic leadership works in this country: the same draconian policies, but dressed up in the language of care.

It is important to note here that while the scale of the deportation to Haiti is great, and while antiBlackness is a key feature of US migration policy, the majority of deportations under Title 42 expulsions are of migrants from Mexico and Central America. Spanish-language journal Política, reports that in 2021, the Biden regime deported almost 20,000 minors to Mexico. They were from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

In addition to deportations, U.S. government policies denying asylum seekers due process has resulted in record number of detentions by the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). An October 2021 report in the Texas Tribune noted that “the number of undocumented immigrants in detention centers has increased by more than 50% since Biden took office.” It also pointed out that, “75% of ICE detainees have no criminal record.”

And while the numbers of detained unaccompanied migrant children have been reduced under Biden, more than 10,000 remain in cages.

We shouldn’t be surprised. US policies hardly change under Democratic leadership. If anything, migrants fare worse under Democratic presidents. We only need to remember the policies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Most importantly, there is an alignment among the US political elites – of both parties – when it comes to creating and enforcing racist, inhumane laws, nationally and globally. We know that both parties push US imperial policies, creating conditions that directly result in desperate attempts of people to escape their homes.

While many Democrats were outraged at Trump’s border wall, the large number of migrant “children in cages,” and lambasted his regime for it’s racist and inhumane treatment of some of the world’s most vulnerable people, they have been generally silent on Biden.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/70000 ... ion-frenzy

Meanwhile in the foul bowels of wherever the Democratic Party power brokers squat a sophisticated strategy is being formulated for the upcoming elections:
No Trump! No Trump! No Trump! No Trump! No Trump! No Trump! No Trump!

It's all they got and after a year we can see how little difference that makes.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:49 pm

Biden’s first year: Did anything fundamentally change?

Responding to pressure from people’s movements, Biden set lofty goals for his administration. How many of these promises has the administration fulfilled?

January 22, 2022 by Natalia Marques

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Was Biden able to enact any of the promised and seemingly necessary changes in his first year (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

While campaigning for the presidency in 2019, Joe Biden assured his wealthy donors that if he were to be elected, “nothing will fundamentally change.” This statement came shortly after Biden attended an event hosted by the Poor People’s Campaign, where he had claimed that poverty is “the one thing that can bring this country down.” A day later, he would go on to promise to the ultra-rich that “no one’s standard of living will change” under a Biden presidency.

The United States has the world’s largest prison population, wealth inequality in the nation has doubled from 1989 to 2016, and shortly after Biden’s comments in 2019, the people of the United States would be plunged into one of the worst public health crises in history.

The people of the United States largely agree that there is a need for fundamental change. Reforms such as Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, and government regulation of medicine costs have majority support, and the recent mass movements such as the uprisings against racism in 2020 and the recent wave of strikes are powerful indicators of public opinion.

Was Biden able to enact any of the promised and necessary changes in his first year? Let’s take a look:

1.Mismanagement deepens pandemic crisis

The US entered the Biden presidency with almost 200,000 new cases of COVID-19 per day, around 122,000 hospitalizations per day, and a positivity rate of around 11.3%. As of today, as the country continues to suffer the effects of the Omicron surge, there are around 740,000 new cases per day, over 150,000 hospitalizations per day, and a positivity rate of 46.8%.

A closer look at Biden’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, especially in comparison to other nations, indicates that these numbers could have been avoided. An example: while the United States suffered 415,000 deaths last year. China suffered two.


What went wrong? The Omicron variant surge has resulted in the largest wave of COVID-19 cases to date in the nation, and has exposed key systemic failures of Biden’s pandemic policy. Those failures existed far before the surge. An important case study is the unchecked growth of a dangerous, far-right anti-vaccine movement, in part due to misinformation spread rapidly online and by far-right groups such as the Proud Boys. The costs of this movement are deadly. Unvaccinated people die of COVID-19 at far higher rates than the vaccinated. In June and November of last year alone, a study estimated that 163,000 COVID-19 deaths in the US could have been prevented by vaccination.

Biden’s administration has not taken any real steps to address this movement: no massive public education campaign, no large-scale filtering of misinformation. However, comparisons to other countries such as Cuba, show that transformative policies could severely weaken the anti-vax movement, if not eliminate it entirely. The Cuban government has not enforced a vaccine mandate on the island, and yet the vaccination rate is around 90%, compared to the US vaccination rate, which hovers around 60%. Cuba has built a robust public health and education system, which maintains the people’s trust by constant outreach in the community.

The Biden administration has fallen short of its stated goal of increasing popular trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC, bowing to pressure from corporations that want workers back at their workplaces, has decreased recommended isolation time after contracting COVID from ten to five days. Most recently, each household is eligible for only four free COVID tests from the government, a reactive policy coming only after the peak of the Omicron surge and after White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki laughing off the proposal and insisting this was not possible.

In a recent gaffe, Vice-President Kamala Harris told those looking for free testing sites to simply use Google.


2.Inaction widens gap between campaign promises and reality

In his first 100 days, Biden signed a slew of executive orders, many reversing Donald Trump’s overtly racist policies. These included lifting the ban on transgender people joining the military, rejoining the Paris Climate Accords, revoking the permit on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, and halting construction on Trump’s border wall. These were not insignificant reforms.

The Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats also signed into law the American Rescue Plan, which enacted crucial but temporary relief measures such as direct cash payments, an extension of federal unemployment, and a temporary child tax credit (which has since expired).

However, there were more than a few promises which Biden simply did not invest the necessary energy and time to fight to make reality. At the COP26 summit, Biden pledged that the United States would reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Days later, he auctioned off 80 million acres to fossil fuel companies in what became the largest federal offshore drilling lease in US history. Biden campaigned on raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and had planned to include the measure in his American Rescue Plan. However, once the senate parliamentarian (an unelected position that most people in the US know little about) ruled that the $15 minimum wage provision could not be included, Biden backed down immediately, despite the fact that legally, Vice-President Kamala Harris could overrule the parliamentarian.

When Biden appeared unwilling to fight for the extension of a nationwide eviction moratorium that would keep millions of Americans in their homes, newly-elected Representative and activist Cori Bush joined others in camping outside the entrance to Congress. The moratorium was extended, but was struck down shortly after by the Supreme Court, leaving millions of people behind on their rent due to the pandemic to fend for themselves.

Regarding Biden’s immigration policy, many were shocked to see the pictures of Haitian refugees trying to cross the border, only to be physically beaten back by Border Patrol agents. The images were such a visceral example of a racist immigration policy, exemplified by Biden’s continued denial of asylum rights to these migrants. Later in the year, Vice-President Harris explicitly told Guatemalan refugees to “not come” to the United States. To many, this was a remarkable about-face for an administration that promised to break away from Trump-era immigration doctrine.


3.Manchin & Sinema: No fightback, only appeasement

And what of the policies and promises that the Biden administration has spent more time working towards? Many of Biden’s policy goals were consolidated into one mammoth social spending bill: Build Back Better. Build Back Better is a multi-trillion dollar piece of legislation that would introduce reforms that could change the lives of working class people: free pre-school education, regulation of out-of-control drug prices, and monetary relief for childcare and the elderly, among others.

Unfortunately for working people in the United States, Build Back Better is currently stalled in the Senate and appears dead in the water. Why? Right-wing Democratic Senator Joe Manchin opposes the bill, and with the Democrats holding only a slim majority in the Senate and all Republicans staunchly opposing the bill, it will not pass. Just like that, $1.75 trillion dollars of relief for the working class in the midst of a pandemic is abandoned, leaving many unable to get by.

This turn of events has played out many times this year: Biden proposes pivotal reforms for the working class, right-wing Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin oppose those reforms, and the Biden administration concedes without putting up much of a fight.

What has been surprising to many is Biden’s willingness to appease these Senators. Regarding Build Back Better, Biden sunk massive amounts of time into backroom negotiations with Manchin, whittling down the bill from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion, gutting key elements such as paid family and sick leave for workers. Despite months of back and forth, Manchin ultimately decided to pass on the bill anyways.

Most recently, Biden attempted to pass what would have been a historic voting rights bill, that would reactivate elements of the Civil Rights Act to protect Black voters from suppression, and would open up voting to millions of working people by making Election Day a holiday, among other provisions. However, right-wing Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema dealt the bill a death blow when she refused to support eliminating the filibuster, an archaic rule that enables a minority party like the GOP to stall legislation indefinitely. Her reasoning? According to her, eliminating the filibuster would be too “partisan”.

Both Manchin and Sinema receive donations from interests such as large pharmaceutical companies, fossil fuel companies, and conservative donors. Manchin himself has made millions off of the coal industry. Each of these interests would be jeopardized by progressive legislation, and many point to this as an unspoken reason why Manchin and Sinema are shutting down these bills.

Biden and Democratic Party leadership seem unwilling to truly fight back against these Senators, despite having numerous ways to do so, such as withholding campaign money or presenting a primary challenge during election season.

4.Money for imperialist wars never runs out

Although Biden and the US Congress seem unwilling to fight for social spending, the support for funding for war and occupation never runs out. Last month, the Senate passed a defense budget of $768 billion, roughly $24 billion more than Biden had initially requested. Only 11 Senators out of 100 voted no on this bill.

The Biden administration has continued performing military exercises in Chinese territory in the South China Sea, bombing West Asia, particularly Iraq and Syria for supposed collaboration with Iran, and has upheld devastating sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela.

Trump’s hawkish policies towards China have continued under Biden, at times even escalating tensions even further. Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has focused energies on reestablishing relationships with traditional allies and even created new military pacts and security agreements with countries such as Australia, Japan, India, and South Korea in order to form a united front against China.

Biden, along with other leaders, especially those of former colonizer countries such as the participants of the G7 summit, has fomented unfounded conspiracies such at the theory that COVID-19 originated from a lab in China, or that the Chinese government is carrying out a genocide of Uyghur muslims in Xinjiang. Most recently, the Biden administration escalated tensions with another superpower, Russia, by attempting to expand NATO influence into Crimea.


Biden has not attempted to adopt the Obama administration’s softer approach towards Cuba. Instead, Biden tightened sanctions on the island nation after a one-day protest in Cuba in response to the economic problems created by the US blockade. Despite Cuban Miguel Díaz-Canel meeting with protesters himself, Biden took it upon himself to call for the overthrow of the Cuban government.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration oversaw the disastrous withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan following the takeover by the ultra-conservative Taliban whose rule poses a threat to rights of Afghans across social sectors. In response to this, the Biden administration led a global initiative to freeze Afghanistan’s currency reserves, depriving the current government of the ability to feed Afghan people or provide basic services and plunging the fragile country into a humanitarian crisis.



After one year, the Biden administration has enacted very few major reforms. Despite hope for a reprieve after the presidency of the far-right demagogue Donald Trump, many people in the US are losing faith, plunging Biden’s approval rating below his disapproval rating around the middle of last year.

The people of the US, who have faced wave after wave of pandemic crisis, wait with bated breath for necessary reforms. However, even if Biden seems unwilling to “fundamentally change” things or to fight back, this has not stopped them leading their own struggles for change. In the absence of a push for change from above, there are growing movements applying steady pressure from below, whether it be on issues of labor, voting rights, immigration, or anti-imperialism.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/01/22/ ... ly-change/

What happened during the withdrawal from Afghanistan was disastrous only in the lives lost due to the US air attack at the airport and the over-all loss of imperial face. Otherwise it was all inevitable. And yes, women's rights in Afghanistan are for shit, again. Perhaps Carter(D) and Brezinsky might have thought of that before raising a gang of religious fanatics to imperial proxies to overthrow a government. (which had made women's right a priority, btw) Guess they had other priorities, huh? But now they must be punished for their defiance and the 'collateral damage' incurred by the populace is of no concern to Joe.

Biden takes up his own contribution to the "Great Game' with his aggressive posture towards Russia. 'Crimea' is an thin excuse as anyone conversant in the history of the region(does Biden even know someone like that?) knows that Crimea had been part of Russia for hundreds of years and it's assignment to the Ukraine SSR a bureaucratic shuffling by Khrushchev. No one envisioned the dismemberment of the USSR at that time. The real target is China but China's strategic alliance with Russia and Russia's nuclear arsenal gives pause to US aggression against China. Which is intolerable to the warmongers in Washington. Funny where Biden expends his leadership and where he doesn't.....

To blame the legislative impasse on two right wing senators is another case of mistaking the symptom for the disease. A good question might be "What were those two shitheads doing in the Democratic Party anyway?" It seems that a plurality the rank&file might be loosely described as 'progressive', yet they have no real say in governance or policy. Well, it's a big tent, doncha know, and if it doesn't function in a truly democratic manner mebbe it's because the tent is too big to allow a democratic consensus or an ideology. And you don't hear anybody complaining about that. It is also noticeable that it is never the party's putative left that jams up the works, they always back down.(Right, Bernie?)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 27, 2022 3:32 pm

Image

Biden Says Latin America is US ‘Front Yard’, Trump Says ‘Back Yard’ — Pick Your Flavor of Neocolonialism
January 25, 2022
By Ben Norton – Jan 22, 2022

When we look past all of the superficial Culture War battles they wage to distract the US public, we can clearly see that the two ruling-class parties share 95% of the same policies.

What is the difference between Republicans and Democrats? Trump says backyard and Biden says front yard. Otherwise, they share 95% of the same warmongering, capitalist, imperialist policies.

People in Latin America often ask me, “What is the difference between Republicans and Democrats?” For those outside of the United States, the two hegemonic parties seem so similar that they’re difficult to tell apart.

The reality, of course, is that the Republican and Democratic Parties are indeed nearly identical. When we look past all of the superficial Culture War battles they wage to distract the US public, we can clearly see that the two ruling-class parties share 95% of the same policies — and are funded by the same billionaire capitalist oligarchs and exploitative mega-corporations to obediently serve their economic interests.

The Joe Biden administration has made this undeniable. The Democratic President campaigned on promises to reverse the Republican Trump’s disastrous policies, only to continue the vast majority of them.

At a press conference on January 19, the current President accidentally revealed what the real difference between him and the former head-of-state is: Trump thinks that Latin America is the US empire’s “backyard”, while Biden insists it is Washington’s “front yard”.

You can see Biden’s comments in the official transcript published at the White House: “We used to talk about, when I was a kid in college, about ‘America’s backyard,’” he said in the presser. “It’s not America’s backyard. Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard.”

I repeat: “Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard.”

So now, when people in Latin America ask me to describe the differences between Republicans and Democrats, I have the perfect answer: Republicans think you are their ‘backyard’, whereas Democrats think you are their ‘front yard’.

Pick your favorite flavor of neocolonialism.

Biden has been in power for exactly one year as of this January 20, and he has failed to accomplish anything significant. (His long-overdue withdrawal from Afghanistan does deserve an honorable mention, but it is greatly overshadowed by Biden’s hawkish policies against the rest of the world — not to mention the devastating sanctions his administration has imposed on Afghanistan, which are starving millions of civilians.)

Far from breaking with Trump, Biden has doubled down on the far-right former President’s worst policies:

• Biden still recognizes coup puppet Juan Guaidó as fake “President” of Venezuela, and has maintained Trump’s murderous sanctions.
• Not only has Biden not removed any of the hundreds of crippling sanctions that Trump imposed on Cuba; he has in fact further expanded the US economic warfare against the Caribbean nation, to such a degree that the New York Times wrote that “Biden is taking an even harder line on Cuba” than Trump.
• Biden has continued the borderline genocidal, scorched-earth war on Yemen, which was expanded by Trump and started by Joe’s running mate Obama.
• After Trump unilaterally tore up the Iran nuclear deal, the Biden administration has refused to return to it, demanding Tehran’s agreement to a series of unreasonable new demands.
• Biden has kept US troops illegally occupying Iraq (where the democratically elected Parliament voted overwhelmingly to expel them) and Syria (where they are preventing the central government from accessing its own oil and wheat reserves as it suffers under a suffocating Western sanctions regime).
• Biden has maintained the witch hunt that Trump’s Justice Department launched against WikiLeaks journalist and political prisoner Julian Assange, who is being tortured in a maximum-security British prison as he awaits extradition to the Land of the Free for a show trial.
• Biden fulfilled the Trump administration’s plans to extradite — that is, kidnap — Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab, who was detained and held in horrific conditions for the supposed “crime” of circumventing illegal US sanctions to buy food for the Venezuelan people.
• As more than 850,000 North Americans have died, Biden’s Covid-19 policies (or lack thereof) have for the most part been identical to those of Trump. The bipartisan strategy is to put profits over people’s lives and let corporations quite literally dictate “public health” policies.
• Biden has accelerated the new cold war on both China and Russia while imposing more and more sanctions around the globe.
• Heck, Biden has even managed to deport more migrant children than the inveterate racist Trump.

Meanwhile, inside the United States, Biden’s own party has blocked all attempts at passing significant legislation.

The US government is so thoroughly undemocratic, so entirely beholden to capital, it has become a dysfunctional basket case. Its “democratic” window dressing has melted away, and all that is left is a stone-cold authoritarian regime controlled by billionaire oligarchs, a textbook dictatorship of the capitalist class.

The only thing the US empire can do is do what it has always done: escalate its imperial aggression abroad, endlessly pour money into the gaping maw of the Military-Industrial Complex, try to tame the voracious appetite of the death cult of capitalism — use war abroad to distract from the mass death, skyrocketing inequality, growing poverty, dire homelessness, police brutality, and mass incarceration inside the United States.

Featured image: File photo

(Al Mayadeen – English)

https://orinocotribune.com/biden-says-l ... lonialism/

Ben Norton, being a Brit, perhaps cannot fathom the superficiality of retail US politics and the reason that his laundry list of facts is irrelevant to US voters of either stripe. As things stand all that matters is 'Trump/not Trump'. If for whatever reason Trump does not run things could get very interesting . Given Biden's pathetic effort only Trump can get him elected, otherwise he ain't got nothing to show, unless he can claim a phony victory in his phony Ukraine 'war' and perhaps not even then. A non-Trump Republican would draw the so-called independents like flies to spoiled meat even as the MAGAs stay home. But mebbe everybody stays home and we get the lowest voter turnout in history. That would be a proper plebiscite on bourgeois democracy.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 29, 2022 3:03 pm

Biden wants Chevron lawyer who helped jail Steven Donziger to stay on as federal judge
Claudia DrdulJanuary 28, 2022
Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... sts/101606

In a flagrant insult to climate and Indigenous rights activists, President Biden has renominated Jennifer Rearden, a lawyer for multi-billion dollar polluter Chevron, for a federal judgeship.

Rearden worked at the firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP when they took Chevron on as a client in their notorious legal campaign against environmental lawyer Steven Donziger after he challenged the company’s destruction of the Ecuadorian rainforest.

In 1993, Donziger joined the Frente de Defensa de la Amazonia, an organization of Indigenous and farmer communities throughout Sucumnbios, Ecuador, in filing a class action lawsuit against Chevron – formerly Texaco – for making their land uninhabitable. Between 1967 and 1992, Chevron spilled more than 18.5 billion gallons of polluted water into the Amazon rainforest, causing destruction over two million acres of land.

Although the case was initially filed in the United States, Chevron successfully lobbied to have it moved to an Ecuadorian court in search of a more favorable ruling. However, Donziger and his clients won the lawsuit in 2011, as the Ecuadorian Federal court ruled that Chevron was at fault and must pay $18.2 billion to the litigants.

This ruling was met with major backlash from Chevron, and smear campaigns were launched against both Donziger and the Ecuadorian legal system. Chevron claimed that the 2011 ruling by Judge Nicholas Zambrano was instead ghost written by former Judge Alberto Guerrera after he was bribed by Donziger and his clients. However, when this claim was looked into by Ecuadorian officials and an international tribunal, Guererra admitted he had been bribed with $20,000 and relocation to the U.S. by Chevron to say he wrote the decision.

Even with Chevron’s tireless defamation campaign, the decision of the 2011 ruling was upheld by the Ecuadorian High Court in 2012, and eventually by the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court in 2018. Instead of simply paying the litigants the settlement they were legally entitled to, Chevron instead used their exorbitant means and political connections to file new charges against Donziger in the United States after threatening him and the victimized indigenious communities with a “lifetime of litigation”.

In 2014, Chevron used Rearden’s law firm to stage a bogus racketeering case against Donziger, in which Judge Lewis Kaplan not only ruled in Chevron’s favor, but also committed what 37 legal organizations claim to be judicial misconduct. In a complaint against Kaplan, these organizations as well as 200 lawyers detail how he denied Donziger a jury, restricted his ability to have a coherent defense and allowed him to be prosecuted by a private law firm for criminal charges after the case was denied by the U.S. attorney’s office. These decisions by Kaplan have resulted in Donziger being arrested in 2019, and remaining on house arrest since, a ruling which both Donziger and the United Nations have called illegal.

Kaplan is a prime example of how so often corporate lawyers are inserted into positions of authority in the so-called justice system. He previously worked as a tobacco industry lawyer for years to absolve companies from responsibility for mass death, and has repeatedly ruled in favor of corporations and the wealthy. While he prosecuted Donziger, he was actually invested in Chevron through three JP Morgan funds.

Kaplan’s clear bias is incredibly similar to that of recently nominated Rearden, who has worked for Gibson Dunn for almost 20 years on a plethora of cases on behalf of corporations. In 2010 Rearden represented Lehman Brothers in one of their many cases after they filed for bankruptcy following their central role in the 2008 financial collapse. She has also argued in favor of accused discriminants in a 2018 case against Uber for refusing a requirement to expand accessibility and in 2013 in favor of property company LeFrak after they discriminated against tenants who have AIDS.

A Senate questionnaire obtained by the intercept also shows that Rearden has investments with the Blackstone group, which ironically has also been accused of contributing to Amazonian deforestation through its subsidiary, Hidrovias do Brasil. Reardon, like Kaplan, has proven her dedication to upholding corporate supremacy within the legal system.

Despite Biden’s posturing as a defender of the environment, his decision to renominate Rearden signals that in reality he is prepared to place profits over the planet – business as usual under the capitalist system.

https://www.liberationnews.org/biden-wa ... ral-judge/

Another bit of info I don't expect to see in the MSM.

A lot of folks voted for Biden because of Trump's cavalier anti-environmental policy and rhetoric. Biden gives them the rhetoric they crave and then shits all over the planet like any other corporate tool. Will these folks yet again hold their noses and pull the donkey dick in the next round of elections cause 'Not Trump!'?

Hey you environmentalists, 'lesser evilism' is killing the planet just like the supposed 'greater evil' and in a more insidious manner. Ain't it time to stop being chumps?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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