Should Progressives Back Sanders?
Though Bernie Sanders – as a “democratic socialist” – is the most progressive
presidential candidate in years, some progressives are rejecting his campaign
because he doesn’t go far enough, a stance that Rick Sterling rejects.
By Rick Sterling
In the past year, some progressives have explained why they are not supporting
Bernie Sanders. Last summer, Bruce Dixon from Black Agenda Report presented a
“sheepdog” theory suggesting that people who join the Bernie Sanders campaign
will eventually be herded into supporting Hillary Clinton. More recently, Chris
Hedges wrote “We must focus exclusively on revolt” and break with the
establishment parties. Steven Salaita criticized Sanders’s lack of a radically
different foreign policy, especially regarding Israel and Palestine.
While there is some truth in all these criticisms, I personally think it’s
important to support Bernie Sanders. In my view, here is why:
Sanders is not just a “lesser evil.” His proposals and policies are good on some
key issues such as economic inequality, health-care, education, and the
judicial/criminal system. His ideas on foreign policy suggest a substantial
shift away from interventionism and militarism.
In addition, Sanders seeks to change the current electoral process based on
money coming from corporations, political action committees and wealthy
individuals. Changing this system is the first step toward breaking the
strangle-hold of the military-industrial complex, Wall Street and reactionary
lobbies such as AIPAC and the NRA.
While some people will be led from supporting Sanders to supporting Clinton,
this is not a given. Many people pushing for Bernie now will not vote Hillary if
she is the Democratic Party nominee. Why? Because there is a huge difference in
policies and because campaigning for Bernie significantly involves criticizing
and exposing Hillary’s history and policies.
The Democratic Party establishment has not been encouraging Sanders, as
suggested by the “sheepdog” theory. On the contrary, it seems they have been
trying to diminish or undermine his campaign from the start. Sanders is rounding
up new voters and activists, but they are coming for his message which is
substantially different than that of the Democratic Party establishment.
Some people falsely assume one needs to commit to one candidate or one party.
Given the year-long-or-longer length of the U.S. presidential campaign (compared
to most countries where elections start and finish in less than three months),
there is time to campaign for the Green Party’s Jill Stein after the Democratic
Party Convention if Clinton becomes the nominee.
I personally support the campaigns of BOTH Bernie and Jill. But strategically,
right now, Bernie Sanders has a small but real chance to win the Presidency
which would result in a huge change. Even if he does not win the nomination,
millions of people are being educated and inspired by a message that directly
criticizes our current economic/political system. Many of these newly inspired
voters can and should be encouraged to vote for principles not party.
Though surely there are multiple reasons to criticize Sanders or any other
politician, following are specific reasons why I believe that Sanders is not
simply a “lesser evil” candidate:
–He is not part of the Democratic Party establishment. Sanders was elected to
Congress as an Independent.
–He has a long history as a left-liberal mayor, congressman and then senator
with principles.
–He is not afraid to buck the tide. Sanders did a one-person filibuster trying
to stop the Wall Street bailout.
–Unlike President Obama, Sanders was not vetted by Wall Street. On the contrary,
he is opposed by Wall Street.
–Sanders’ opposes the core U.S. foreign policy of aggression and “regime
change.” He opposed the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the Libyan
government. He opposes current calls for aggression via a “no fly zone” or “safe
zone” against Syria.
–He is one of the few in Congress who openly questions or criticizes Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the U.S. weapons trade to Israel. He is
the only major candidate who did not speak at the recent AIPAC convention. He is
the only candidate who says he wants to be a friend of Palestine, not just
Israel.
–Sanders’ calls for an audit of the Defense Department. This is the necessary
first step toward dramatic military budget cuts.
–Sanders has energized and educated young people about systemic inequality, the
domination of Wall Street and corruption in the U.S. political process. Sanders
explicitly calls for a “political revolution.”
–Sanders has called for working with Russia against the Islamic State and
terrorism instead of promoting division and rivalry as pushed by
neoconservatives such as the Clinton-appointed State Department bureaucrat
Victoria Nuland, who now serves as assistant secretary of state for European
Affairs.
–Sanders has consistently opposed “free trade” agreements which have been
disastrous for workers at home and abroad. He opposes the looming TPP (Trans
Pacific Partnership).
–Sanders opposes the demonization and pervasive expulsion of refugees.
–Sanders has a better chance of countering Donald Trump or whoever is the
Republican nominee because Sanders can increase voter turnout, especially among
the youth. In contrast, Hillary Clinton may well increase Republican voter
turnout because of her intense unpopularity among much of the U.S. population.
Sanders’s policies are closer to those advocated by Green Party candidate Jill
Stein than the policies of Hillary Clinton. But unlike Jill Stein, Sanders has a
remote but real chance of winning the presidency. And, it’s not only a question
of how much Sanders can turn American politics and policies in beneficial
directions; it’s also a question of how bad things will be with either Trump or
Clinton.
Clinton is the single person most responsible for the political and human rights
disasters in Honduras and Libya. If she becomes President, she will likely
continue her dangerous and aggressive policies against Iran and Russia, not to
mention Syria. As African-American academic Cornel West, campaigning for
Sanders, recently said: “Clinton is hawkish, right wing and imperial.”
Though time is running out – as Clinton builds a substantial delegate lead –
U.S. progressives have a chance to join a populist campaign reaching millions of
people. With enough grassroots effort, there is still a chance for an upset
victory. Some critics believe the contests have already been decided, but this
has been a year of surprises, as shown by the advances of both Trump and
Sanders.
It would seem to me to be a lost opportunity for progressives to sit on the
sidelines or give up without trying.
Rick Sterling has been an organizer and activist for about 45 years. He
currently works with Task Force on the Americas, Mt Diablo Peace & Justice
Center and Syria Solidarity Movement. The views expressed in this article are
his own. He can be contacted at [email protected]
US Intel Vets Warn Against Torture
Exclusive: Experienced intelligence professionals reaffirm that torture – while
popular with “tough” politicians – doesn’t work in getting accurate and
actionable information, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
To those living “outside the Beltway” it may seem counterintuitive that those of
us whose analysis has been correct on key issues that the U.S. government got
criminally wrong – like the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – would be blacklisted from
“mainstream” media and ostracized by the Smart People of the Establishment. But,
alas, that’s the way it is.
Forget the continuing carnage in which hundreds of thousands have been killed
and millions made refugees. Within the mainstream U.S. media and around
Washington’s major policy circles, there is little serious dialogue, much less
debate about what went so hideously wrong; and Americans still innocently wonder
– regarding the people on the receiving end of the blunderbuss violence – “why
they hate us.”
After more than 13 years of presenting thoughtful critiques to senior officials
– and having little discernible impact – we Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity are strongly tempted to take some solace in having made a good-faith
effort to spread some truth around – and, now, go play golf. But the stakes are
too high. We can’t in good conscience approach the first tee without having
tried one more time.
Accordingly, we repeat the offer we extended on Feb. 26 – this time to the
winnowed candidate roster of Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Bernie
Sanders and Donald Trump – to make our deep experience and proven expertise
available to those of you interested in the tell-it-like-it-is analysis that has
been our niche for so many years.
Given our 13-year record for accuracy and insight, we had hoped that at least
one or two of you would take us up on the offer, especially since a few of you
have faced criticism for a paucity of foreign policy and national security
experts.
Of more immediate importance to the nation and the world, statements by some of
you in reaction to the Monday bombings in Brussels, seem to betray:
A) Gross naiveté about how to counter terrorism;
B) Demagogic disregard for the civil liberty protections embodied in the U.S.
Constitution; or
C) Both of the above.
We can help round out your understanding of terrorism, its causes and its
possible cures – but with respect to “A” above, you may wish to begin by reading
VIPS memorandum #15 (of June 18, 2007), How Not to Counter Terrorism, drafted by
our VIPS colleague, former Special Agent Coleen Rowley, who was FBI Division
Counsel, Minneapolis, during 9/11. (Rowley later blew the whistle about the
ineptitude at FBI headquarters that thwarted the simple steps that would have
prevented those terrorist attacks.)
On Torture, Pols & Polls
Based on our lengthy experience in intelligence, we know that torture doesn’t
“work.” So we confess to a certain disgust with the “new normal,” fostered not
only by some presidential candidates but also by the media, that torture
techniques like waterboarding yield useful intelligence. They don’t.
This issue has come to the fore again in the immediate aftermath of the Brussels
bombings. We continue to be concerned that presidential candidates may be
unaware, not only that harsh interrogation techniques don’t “work,” but also
that they are a great fillip to the recruitment of more terrorists.
There are, of course, polls purporting to show that a majority of Americans
still think that torturing “bad guys” can be justified. That simply means that
many citizens have been seduced by artificially stoked fear into believing what
all independent investigations – including the detailed Senate study relying on
original CIA documents – have proven: that despite all the TV and Hollywood
propaganda “showing” that torture “works,” it doesn’t.
The sole exception is if your purpose is to obtain unreliable or false
“intelligence.” For instance, if you wish to coerce an Al Qaeda operative into
“confessing” that there were close ties between Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Al
Qaeda, well, then torture can work like a charm. A detainee will happily confirm
a lie to stop the pain.
As for those responsible for implementing torture – like former CIA directors
George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden – is it not clear that they have
strong incentive to “justify” their criminal behavior? Some other complicit CIA
officials and operatives, eager to protect themselves from the opprobrium that
comes from torturing, also continue to pretend that torture helps “keep us
safe.”
The opposite is the case, but these torture practitioners and their
accomplices continue to promote the lie that useful intelligence can be gotten
via abusive interrogation techniques (never mind that most such “enhanced”
techniques are clearly illegal, not to mention immoral and ineffective).
VIPS has spoken out strongly – most recently in a Sept. 14, 2015 memo – against
these crass attempts by former intelligence officials to exculpate themselves
and other perpetrators.
What the commanding general of U.S. Army intelligence has said about torture
bears repeating: On Sept. 6, 2006, the very day President George W. Bush
announced and applauded the effectiveness of “enhanced interrogation
techniques,” Gen. John Kimmons told a Pentagon press conference: “I am
absolutely convinced [that] no good intelligence is going to come from abusive
practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the
last five years, hard years, tell us that.”
Wise Advisers Needed
Some of today’s presidential candidates are brimming with what we’re told are
sage foreign policy advisers, even though many have been implicated in the
disastrous policies of recent decades; other candidates have relatively few
advisers – some of them unknown entities about whom little can be found even via
Goggle. As a collective, VIPS stands ready to help any and all candidates who
might be interested. It may now be time to insert some names into our offer.
The listing below contains only those members of VIPS who signed onto our
Memorandum of Sept. 14, 2015, addressing our former bosses’ transparent attempts
to cover up their role in torture:
VIPS Steering Group, Sept. 14, 2015
Fulton Armstrong, National Intelligence Officer for Latin America (ret.)
William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military
Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)
Tony Camerino, former Air Force and Air Force Reserves, senior interrogator in
Iraq and author of How to Break a Terrorist under pseudonym Matthew Alexander
Glenn L. Carle, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats,
CIA (ret.)
Thomas Drake, former Senior Executive, NSA
Daniel Ellsberg, former State Department and Defense Department Official (VIPS
Associate)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan
(associate VIPS)
Larry C Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)
Michael S. Kearns, Captain, USAF Intelligence Agency (Retired), ex Master SERE
Instructor
John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer
Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.)
Edward Loomis, NSA, Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
James Marcinkowski, Attorney, former CIA Operations Officer
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA
(ret.)
Todd Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Scott Ritter, former Maj., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq
Diane Roark, former professional staff, House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence
Coleen Rowley, Division Counsel & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)
Ali Soufan, former FBI Special Agent
Robert David Steele, former CIA Operations Officer
Greg Thielmann, U.S. Foreign Service Officer (ret.) and former Senate
Intelligence Committee
Peter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.)
(associate VIPS)
Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel (USA, ret.), Distinguished Visiting Professor,
College of William and Mary
Valerie Plame Wilson, CIA Operations Officer (ret.)
Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat
Ray McGovern served for 30 years as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and
then a CIA analyst. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity (VIPS).
Robert Parry Discusses the “AIPAC
‘Pander-off'”
Consortiumnews’ Assistant Editor Chelsea Gilmour interviewed Robert Parry
regarding his recently published article, The Clinton/Trump AIPAC ‘PanderOff’. The following video is a recording of their discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OktOl4MaKRE
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
andbarnesandnoble.com).
Sanders Tip-toes in Criticizing Israel
Exclusive: Sen. Sanders ventured hesitantly down the scary path of criticizing
Israel, but even his timid approach looked heroic compared to the pro-Israel
pandering from Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, says Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria
Bernie Sanders supporters appeared thrilled when they learned he’d turned down
an invitation to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
conference on Monday. By contrast, Donald Trump passed up a debate appearance
and Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and John Kasich cleared their schedules to speak
to 18,000 people inside Washington’s Verizon Center.
Snubbing AIPAC requires a degree of courage in American presidential politics
and almost no one dares do anything but pander to the hardest-line Israeli
partisans. But Sanders, who is fighting for his political life in the campaign,
hasn’t taken money from the kind of large donors that AIPAC coordinates. Plus,
he could never match the other candidates’ fervor for Israel.
So perhaps Sanders felt he could afford not to go to AIPAC’s gathering, which
sent a symbolic message to Americans who feel the U.S. government goes
overboard in its favoritism toward Israel. Sanders delivered his views (in a
speech in Salt Lake City, Utah) after the conference organizers wouldn’t allow a
video hook-up.
A Sanders supporter who is also critical of Israel’s occupation of Palestine
might have been disappointed in what the Vermont senator said. He wouldn’t even
bluntly call Israel’s presence on Palestinian land an occupation, instead
describing it as “what amounts to the occupation of Palestinian territory.”
What amounts to? In other words, Israel really doesn’t mean to occupy this land.
This just happened on its way to building ever-increasing settlements. Sanders
also takes the very safe line of calling for both an Israeli and a Palestinian
state, the so-called “two-state solution.”
Sanders castigated Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for threatening
to leave the Oslo Accords, which prescribes the two-state idea. Abbas made this
threat last September at the U.N. General Assembly, but no
serious analyst thinks Abbas meant it.
But the reality is that Oslo is already dead, as dead as the two-state solution.
It died in May 1999, when its five-year interim period ended, after which Israel
should have withdrawn and a Palestinian state should have been created.
The continuation of this interim period, having now lasted another 17 years, has
led to charges by Palestinians and others that Abbas and his Palestinian
Authority are mere collaborators with Israel’s continuing occupation.
Pulling out of Oslo now would blow up the Palestinian Authority, cost Abbas his
job and throw security fully into Israel’s hands. But such a move would be the
necessary first step toward creating a single, democratic state, which is the
only solution left. Everything else at this point, including defending Oslo and
the “two-state solution,” is hot air that supports the status quo allowing
Israel to continue the piecemeal conquest of the West Bank.
Sanders did call for an end to Israeli “disproportionate responses to being
attacked.” But he didn’t condemn the two massacres in Gaza in the past seven
years as he condemned Hamas rocket fire into Israel.
Syria and the Gulf
On Syria, Sanders appears to accept the Western claim that Russia wasn’t really
hitting the Islamic State, but only anti-Assad groups. (It should be noted that
Russian leaders never promised to strike only at ISIS, as the U.S. press corps
widely reported, but rather the Russians vowed to attack ISIS and other
terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front.)
Yes, Russia did hit other rebel groups, including some that fight
alongside Nusra, but did so to bolster the Syrian army as the major ground force
(with the Kurds) to defeat ISIS and Nusra.
Sanders repeated his refrain that the Gulf Arabs need to do more to defeat the
Islamic State. But somebody must have gotten to him because he added the line
that he’s not asking Saudi Arabia to “invade” Syria, which is exactly what
Sanders seemed to be advocating.
The reality is that Saudi Arabia has already been too involved in Syria, sending
in well-armed jihadists to overthrow the government which the Saudis view as
dominated by the Shiite and Alawite faiths whereas Saudi Arabia favors the
fanatical Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam. But military reversals by the Saudibacked rebels over the past several months prompted Saudi Arabia last month to
threaten an outright invasion of Syria, along with Turkey.
President Barack Obama reportedly tamped down the heated war threats from Saudi
Arabia and Turkey, heading off what would have threatened a much wider war.
But Sanders – for mildly supporting Palestinian rights and offering muted
criticism of Israel – would have been savaged by the feisty AIPAC crowd which
expects to hear only encouraging words and reciprocated with love toward Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump as they avoided any criticism of Israel and showed no
sympathy for the Palestinians.
The packed arena in downtown Washington had a circular stage set up in the
middle that appeared to purposely mimic the major parties’ nominating
conventions. It was as if AIPAC was saying that it was doing the real
nominating.
Pumping Up the Crowd
Both Trump and Clinton mounted the stage to express fierce loyalty to an Israel
that they essentially said could do no wrong. Their talking points could have
been written by Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Clinton lashed out at critics of Israel who promote boycotting Israeli goods as
a peaceful way to pressure Israel to make concessions. Instead, she promised to
increase military aid to Israel, which already stands at $3 billion a year and
more than $100 billion since 1962. She vowed to stop a U.N. Security Council
resolution that would set a deadline for the end of Israel’s West Bank
occupation — something the Oslo Accords already did.
In a half-hour speech, Clinton only uttered the word “Palestinian” ten times,
and mostly in connection with “terrorism.” She briefly called for a resumption
of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Clinton mentioned “settlements” only once, in a passing reference, saying,
“Everyone has to do their part by avoiding damaging actions, including with
respect to settlements.” Nothing more was said.
With his typical bombast, Trump said no one had studied the Iran nuclear deal as
he had, and that his “number one priority” would be to dismantle it. He also
said he would not allow the Security Council to impose a settlement in
Palestine.
“An agreement imposed by the United Nations would be a total and complete
disaster,” he said. “The United States must oppose this resolution and use the
power of our veto, which I will use as president 100 percent.”
Trump only used bellicose language toward Palestinians. He cited the killing
last week of an American in Israel by “a knife-wielding Palestinian.”
“You don’t reward behavior like that. You cannot do it,” he said. “There’s only
one way you treat that kind of behavior. You have to confront it.”
That sounds like a recipe for more bloodshed. Compared to this rhetoric,
Sanders’ speech was reasonable. He called on Israel, for instance, to stop
stealing Palestinian water. Perhaps Sanders is holding back his real views on
Israel and Palestine, fearful that he could not withstand the attacks of the
Israel Lobby and a pro-Israel corporate media.
But, in the meantime, his prescription for peace did go not far enough. Once
again AIPAC’s apparent stranglehold on U.S.-Middle East policy and on its
political candidates seems to snuff out any realistic dream for a resolution of
the conflict.
Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist based at the U.N. since 1990.
He has written for the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the
Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Wall Street Journal and other
newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter
at @unjoe.
The Clinton/Trump AIPAC ‘Pander-Off’
Exclusive: While Sen. Sanders stressed the need for a nuanced approach to the
Middle East, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump competed to see who could avow
their love for Israel more ardently, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
At the annual AIPAC convention, the Democratic and Republican front-runners
engaged in what might be called a “pander-off” as Hillary Clinton and Donald
Trump tried to outdo the other in declaring their love and devotion to Israel.
Yet, what was perhaps most troubling about the two dueling speeches was the
absence of any significant sympathy for the Palestinian people or any
substantive criticism of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu.
By contrast, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who did not attend the AIPAC convention,
delivered a foreign policy speech in Salt Lake City, Utah, that struck a more
balanced tone and placed part of the blame for the Mideast problems on the
policies of Netanyahu’s right-wing government.
However, in Washington before thousands of cheering attendees at the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee convention on Monday, Clinton, Trump and two
other Republican candidates, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, were
in full pander mode.
For instance, former Secretary of State Clinton depicted Israel as entirely an
innocent victim in the Mideast conflicts. “As we gather here, three evolving
threats — Iran’s continued aggression, a rising tide of extremism across a wide
arc of instability, and the growing effort to de-legitimize Israel on the world
stage — are converging to make the U.S.-Israel alliance more indispensable than
ever,” she declared.
“The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever and
more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries and to
advance our shared values. … This is especially true at a time when Israel faces
brutal terrorist stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks at home. Parents worry
about letting their children walk down the street. Families live in fear.”
Yet, Clinton made no reference to Palestinian parents who worry about their
children walking down the street or playing on a beach and facing the
possibility of sudden death from an Israeli drone or warplane. Instead, she
scolded Palestinian adults. “Palestinian leaders need to stop inciting violence,
stop celebrating terrorists as martyrs and stop paying rewards to their
families,” she said.
Then, Clinton promised to put her future administration at the service of the
Israeli government, asking: “The first choice is this: are we prepared to take
the U.S./Israel alliance to the next level?”
Clinton said, “One of the first things I’ll do in office is invite the Israeli
prime minister to visit the White House. And I will send a delegation from the
Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs to Israel for early consultations. Let’s also
expand our collaboration beyond security.”
Clinton lashed out at the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)
movement which has sought to convince Israel to respect the human and political
rights of Palestinians by applying economic and moral pressure on Israeli
businesses. Yet, instead of a non-violent movement to achieve change in the
Israeli-Palestinian dynamic, Clinton saw anti-Semitism.
“Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world,
especially in Europe, we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and
undermine Israel and the Jewish people,” she said, adding: “we have to be united
in fighting back against BDS.”
Clinton also indirectly criticized Trump for having said earlier in the campaign
that the United States should be “neutral” in its handling of peace talks
between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Yes, we need steady hands, not a president who says he’s neutral on Monday,
pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who knows what on Wednesday, because everything’s
negotiable,” Clinton declared.
Trump’s No-Pander Pander
Speaking after Clinton’s appearance, Trump asserted that “I didn’t come here
tonight to pander to you about Israel. That’s what politicians do: all talk, no
action. Believe me.”
Trump then took on the challenge of out-pandering Clinton. Trump pandered to
Israel’s hatred of Iran, vowing “to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran”
restraining its nuclear program. He also pandered about Iran’s role in
terrorism.
“They’ve got terror cells everywhere, including in the Western Hemisphere, very
close to home,” Trump said. “Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism around the
world. And we will work to dismantle that reach, believe me, believe me.”
However, in the real world, Iran has actually assisted the governments of Iraq
and Syria in battling the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, while Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Turkey and – to a lesser degree – Israel have provided help to Sunni jihadists,
especially in Syria, to counter what the Sunni-led states and Israel see as
excessive Shiite influence in the Middle East.
In his pandering, Trump also exposed his ignorance about Israeli-Palestinian
history. He asserted, “There is no moral equivalency [between the Israelis and
the Palestinians]. Israel does not name public squares after terrorists.”
But that’s not exactly true. The most revered Israeli leader, in terms of having
his name attached to streets, squares and parks, is Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder
and leader of the Irgun, a terror group that fought for the founding of Israel.
Jabotinsky has some 57 sites named for him.
One of his Irgun followers, Menachem Begin, has his name commemorated in at
least 43 communities. Similarly, Yitzhak Shamir, a leader of Lehi (also known as
the Stern Gang), a terror group that joined with the Irgun in carrying out
ethnic cleansing of Palestinians including the infamous Deir Yassin massacre,
has his name attached to a Jerusalem highway.
But more significant than the honorific naming of public sites is the fact that
Begin and Shamir were elected as Israeli prime ministers. In other words, Israel
doesn’t just honor its terrorists by naming public squares after them; it gave
them the power to direct military actions against Palestinians and other people
in the region, including Begin’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which led to the
Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinians.
But Trump’s pandering even extended to mentioning his and his family’s longtime
devotion to Israel, including a reference to his daughter marrying an Orthodox
Jew, converting to Judaism and now pregnant: “I love the people in this room. I
love Israel. I love Israel. I’ve been with Israel so long in terms of I’ve
received some of my greatest honors from Israel, my father before me,
incredible. My daughter, Ivanka, is about to have a beautiful Jewish baby.”
Respecting the Palestinians
By contrast, Sanders, the only Jewish candidate and someone who lived on an
Israeli kibbutz as a young man, did not attend the AIPAC conference, citing a
scheduling conflict for his campaign which was hoping to close Clinton’s
formidable delegate lead with strong showings in Utah, Idaho and Arizona.
Instead, Sanders gave a foreign policy speech that he claimed he would have
given if he had addressed the AIPAC convention. While critical of Iranian and
Palestinian leaders, Sanders offered a much more evenhanded assessment of the
reasons for the troubled Middle East.
Sanders stressed that his overall approach to the region would be to emphasize
diplomacy among the Mideast countries instead of concentrating on threats and
the use of force. He also called for a recognition of the legitimate rights of
the Palestinians.
“To be successful, we have also got to be a friend not only to Israel, but to
the Palestinian people, where in Gaza unemployment today is 44 percent and we
have there a poverty rate which is almost as high,” the Vermont senator said.
“You can’t have good policy that results in peace if you ignore one side.”
While insisting on security for Israel, Sanders said, “peace also means security
for every Palestinian. It means achieving self-determination, civil rights, and
economic well-being for the Palestinian people. Peace will mean ending what
amounts to the occupation of Palestinian territory, establishing mutually agreed
upon borders, and pulling back settlements in the West Bank. … It is absurd for
elements within the Netanyahu government to suggest that building more
settlements in the West Bank is the appropriate response to the most recent
violence.”
Sanders also touched on other sensitive issues that Clinton and Trump avoided.
Sanders said, “Peace will also mean ending the economic blockade of Gaza. And it
will mean a sustainable and equitable distribution of precious water resources
so that Israel and Palestine can both thrive as neighbors.
“Right now, Israel controls 80 percent of the water reserves in the West Bank.
Inadequate water supply has contributed to the degradation and desertification
of Palestinian land. A lasting peace will have to recognize Palestinians are
entitled to control their own lives and there is nothing human life needs more
than water.”
Sanders continued, “Peace will require strict adherence by both sides to the
tenets of international humanitarian law. This includes Israel ending
disproportionate responses to being attacked – even though any attack on Israel
is unacceptable.”
While condemning rocket fire from Gaza into Israel in 2014, Sanders added, “let
me also be very clear: I – along with many supporters of Israel – spoke out
strongly against the Israeli counter attacks that killed nearly 1,500 civilians
and wounded thousands more. I condemned the bombing of hospitals, schools and
refugee camps. Today, Gaza is still largely in ruins. The international
community must come together to help Gaza recover.”
Regarding his earlier comments about wealthy Sunni-led oil states taking on a
greater regional role in fighting jihadist extremism, such as Islamic State
terrorists, Sanders clarified, “Now, I am not suggesting that Saudi Arabia or
any other states in the region invade other countries, nor unilaterally
intervene in conflicts driven in part by sectarian tensions.
“What I am saying is that the major powers in the region – especially the Gulf
States – have to take greater responsibility for the future of the Middle East
and the defeat of ISIS. … What I am also saying is that other countries in the
region – like Saudi Arabia, which has the fourth largest defense budget in the
world – has to dedicate itself more fully to the destruction of ISIS, instead of
other military adventures like the one it is pursuing right now in Yemen.”
Sanders also distanced himself from Hillary Clinton who has urged a U.S.
military bombing campaign against the Syrian government, or as she tries to sell
the idea as a “safe zone” or a “no-fly zone” though U.S. military officials say
either idea would require a major aerial assault on Syria’s air force and air
defenses.
In contrast, Sanders said, “After five years of brutal conflict, the only
solution in Syria will be, in my view, a negotiated political settlement. Those
who advocate for stronger military involvement by the U.S. to oust Assad from
power have not paid close enough attention to history. That would simply prolong
the war and increase the chaos in Syria, not end it.”
Sanders even envisioned working with Russia and Iran to stabilize Syria, defeat
ISIS and arrange a transitional government, adding:
“I applaud Secretary Kerry and the Obama administration for negotiating a
partial ceasefire between the Assad regime and most opposition forces. The
ceasefire shows the value of American-led diplomacy, rather than escalating
violence. It may not seem like a lot, but it is. Diplomacy in this instance has
had some real success.”
Overall, Sanders advocated less reliance on “regime change” strategies that
require military force, saying: “In my view, the military option for a powerful
nation like ours – the most powerful nation in the world – should always be on
the table. That’s why we have the most powerful military in the world. But it
should always be the last resort not the first resort. …
“You know it is very easy for politicians to go before the people and talk about
how tough we are, and we want to wipe out everybody else. But I think if we have
learned anything from history is that we pursue every diplomatic option before
we resort to military intervention. And interestingly enough, more often than
not, diplomacy can achieve goals that military intervention cannot achieve.”
Sanders may have waited too long to give a detailed foreign policy speech,
letting Clinton mostly off the hook for her neoconservative tendencies and her
support for “regime change” wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Most political
analysts say he is too far behind in the delegate count to catch up even if his
campaign catches on fire in the later primary states, such as California and New
York.
Only now has Sanders explained in detail his more nuanced approach toward the
Israel-Palestine conflict and his more dovish attitude toward using American
military force, in contrast to Clinton’s one-sided attitude toward Israel and
her hawkish talk about exerting U.S. power.
Indeed, Clinton’s neocon-style speech to AIPAC could be the first sign of her
long-awaited “pivot to the center,” now that she has amassed such a strong lead
that she feels she no longer has to worry about the Democratic Party’s liberal
base.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com).
Start of a New World War
Propaganda about Russian and Chinese “aggression” has cloaked the reality of the
U.S. and the West moving aggressively to encircle both countries, the start of a
new world war, says John Pilger.
By John Pilger
I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in
the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they
ask, “Where is that?” If I offer a clue by referring to “Bikini,” they say, “You
mean the swimsuit.”
Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear
explosions that destroyed Bikini island. Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded
by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 — the
equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for 12 years.
Bikini is silent today, mutated and contaminated. Palm trees grow in a strange
grid formation. Nothing moves. There are no birds. The headstones in the old
cemetery are alive with radiation. My shoes registered “unsafe” on a Geiger
counter.
Standing on the beach, I watched the emerald green of the Pacific fall away into
a vast black hole. This was the crater left by the hydrogen bomb they called
“Bravo.” The explosion poisoned people and their environment for hundreds of
miles, perhaps forever.
On my return journey, I stopped at Honolulu airport and noticed an American
magazine called Women’s Health. On the cover was a smiling woman in a bikini
swimsuit, and the headline: “You, too, can have a bikini body.” A few days
earlier, in the Marshall Islands, I had interviewed women who had very different
“bikini bodies”; each had suffered thyroid cancer and other life-threatening
cancers.
Unlike the smiling woman in the magazine, all of them were impoverished: the
victims and guinea pigs of a rapacious superpower that is today more dangerous
than ever.
I relate this experience as a warning and to interrupt a distraction that has
consumed so many of us. The founder of modern propaganda, Edward Bernays,
described this phenomenon as “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the
habits and opinions” of democratic societies. He called it an “invisible
government”.
How many people are aware that a world war has begun? At present, it is a war of
propaganda, of lies and distraction, but this can change instantaneously with
the first mistaken order, the first missile.
In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague,
in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make “the world free from nuclear
weapons.” People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the
media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It was all fake. He
was lying.
The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads,
more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending
alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over
30 years is more than $1 trillion.
A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never
been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, “Going smaller [makes using this nuclear]
weapon more thinkable.”
In the last 18 months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War
Two — led by the United States — is taking place along Russia’s western
frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops
presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.
Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union – has become a CIA theme park. Having
orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is
next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally.
Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the
notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the
persecution and expulsion of the Russian-speaking minority.
This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth.
In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — next door to Russia — the U.S. military is
deploying combat troops, tanks, heavy weapons. This extreme provocation of the
world’s second nuclear power is met with silence in the West.
What makes the prospect of nuclear war even more dangerous is a parallel
campaign against China. Seldom a day passes when China is not elevated to the
status of a “threat.” According to Admiral Harry Harris, the U.S. Pacific
commander, China is “building a great wall of sand in the South China Sea.”
What he is referring to is China building airstrips in the Spratly Islands,
which are the subject of a dispute with the Philippines – a dispute without
priority until Washington pressured and bribed the government in Manila and the
Pentagon launched a propaganda campaign called “freedom of navigation.”
What does this really mean? It means freedom for American warships to patrol and
dominate the coastal waters of China. Try to imagine the American reaction if
Chinese warships did the same off the coast of California.
I made a film called The War You Don’t See, in which I interviewed distinguished
journalists in America and Britain: reporters such as Dan Rather of CBS, Rageh
Omar of the BBC, David Rose of the Observer.
All of them said that had journalists and broadcasters done their job and
questioned the propaganda that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass
destruction; had the lies of George W. Bush and Tony Blair not been amplified
and echoed by journalists, the 2003 invasion of Iraq might not have happened,
and
hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today.
The propaganda laying the ground for a war against Russia and/or China is no
different in principle. To my knowledge, no journalist in the Western
“mainstream” — a Dan Rather equivalent, say — asks why China is building
airstrips in the South China Sea.
The answer ought to be glaringly obvious. The United States is encircling China
with a network of bases, with ballistic missiles, battle groups, nuclear-armed
bombers.
This lethal arc extends from Australia to the islands of the Pacific, the
Marianas and the Marshalls and Guam, to the Philippines, Thailand, Okinawa,
Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. America has hung a noose
around the neck of China. This is not news. Silence by media; war by media.
In 2015, in high secrecy, the U.S. and Australia staged the biggest single airsea military exercise in recent history, known as Talisman Sabre. Its aim was to
rehearse an Air-Sea Battle Plan, blocking sea lanes, such as the Straits of
Malacca and the Lombok Straits, that cut off China’s access to oil, gas and
other vital raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.
In the circus known as the American presidential campaign, Donald Trump is being
presented as a lunatic, a fascist. He is certainly odious; but he is also a
media-hate figure. That alone should arouse our skepticism. Trump’s views on
migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than those of British Prime
Minister David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the
United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama.
According to one prodigious liberal commentator, Trump is “unleashing the dark
forces of violence” in the United States. Unleashing them?
This is the country where toddlers shoot their mothers and the police wage a
murderous war against black Americans. This is the country that has attacked and
sought to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democracies, and
bombed from Asia to the Middle East, causing the deaths and dispossession of
millions of people.
No country can equal this systemic record of violence. Most of America’s wars
(almost all of them against defenseless countries) have been launched not by
Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson,
Carter, Clinton, Obama.
In 1947, a series of National Security Council directives described the
paramount aim of American foreign policy as “a world substantially made over in
[America’s] own image.” The ideology was messianic Americanism. We were all
Americans. Or else. Heretics would be converted, subverted, bribed, smeared or
crushed.
Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says the
invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn’t want to go to war with Russia and
China. The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no
maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted
“exceptionalism” is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.
As presidential Election Day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first
female president, regardless of her crimes and lies – just as Barack Obama was
lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about
“hope.” And the drool goes on.
Described by the Guardian columnist Owen Jones as “funny, charming, with a
coolness that eludes practically every other politician,” Obama the other day
sent drones to slaughter 150 people in Somalia. He kills people usually on
Tuesdays, according to the New York Times, when he is handed a list of
candidates for death by drone. So cool.
In the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton threatened to “totally
obliterate” Iran with nuclear weapons. As Secretary of State under Obama, she
participated in the overthrow of the democratic government of Honduras. Her
contribution to the destruction of Libya in 2011 was almost gleeful. When the
Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, was publicly sodomized with a knife – a
murder made possible by American logistics – Clinton gloated over his death: “We
came, we saw, he died.”
One of Clinton’s closest allies is Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of
State, who has attacked young women for not supporting “Hillary.” This is the
same Madeleine Albright
who infamously celebrated on TV the death of half a
million Iraqi children as “worth it”.
Among Clinton’s biggest backers are the Israel lobby and the arms companies that
fuel the violence in the Middle East. She and her husband have received a
fortune from Wall Street. And yet, she is about to be ordained the women’s
candidate, to see off the evil Trump, the official demon. Her supporters include
distinguished feminists: the likes of Gloria Steinem in the U.S. and Anne
Summers in Australia.
A generation ago, a post-modern cult now known as “identity politics” stopped
many intelligent, liberal-minded people examining the causes and individuals
they supported — such as the fakery of Obama and Clinton; such as bogus
progressive movements like Syriza in Greece, which betrayed the people of that
country and allied with their enemies.
Self-absorption, a kind of “me-ism,” became the new Zeitgeist in privileged
Western societies and signaled the demise of great collective movements against
war, social injustice, inequality, racism and sexism.
Today, the long sleep may be over. The young are stirring again. Gradually. The
thousands in Britain who supported Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader are part of
this awakening – as are those who rallied to support Sen. Bernie Sanders.
In Britain last week, Jeremy Corbyn’s closest ally, his shadow treasurer John
McDonnell, committed a Labour government to pay off the debts of piratical banks
and, in effect, to continue so-called austerity.
In the U.S., Bernie Sanders has promised to support Clinton if or when she’s
nominated. He, too, has voted for America’s use of violence against countries
when he thinks it’s “right.” He says Obama has done “a great job.”
In Australia, there is a kind of mortuary politics, in which tedious
parliamentary games are played out in the media while refugees and Indigenous
people are persecuted and inequality grows, along with the danger of war. The
government of Malcolm Turnbull has just announced a so-called defense budget of
$195 billion that is a drive to war. There was no debate. Silence.
What has happened to the great tradition of popular direct action, unfettered to
parties? Where is the courage, the imagination and the commitment required to
begin the long journey to a better, just and peaceful world? Where are the
dissidents in art, film, the theatre, literature?
Where are those who will shatter the silence? Or do we wait until the first
nuclear missile is fired?
This is an edited version of an address by John Pilger at the University of
Sydney, entitled “A World War Has Begun.” JohnPilger.com – the films and
journalism of John Pilger.
Two Corrupt Establishments
Exclusive: The insurgent campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have
staggered Official Washington’s twin corrupt establishments on the Republican
and Democratic sides, but what happens next, asks Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
The United States is led by two corrupt establishments, one Democratic and one
Republican, both deeply dependent on special-interest money, both sharing a
similar perspective on world affairs, and both disdainful toward the American
people who are treated as objects to be manipulated, not citizens to be
respected.
There are, of course, differences. The Democrats are more liberal on social
policy and favor a somewhat larger role of government in addressing the nation’s
domestic problems. The Republicans embrace Ronald Reagan’s motto, “government is
the problem,” except when they want the government to intervene on “moral”
issues such as gay marriage and abortion.
But these two corrupt establishments are intertwined when it comes to important
issues of trade, economics and foreign policy. Both are true believers in neoliberal “free trade”; both coddle Wall Street (albeit seeking slightly different
levels of regulation); and both favor interventionist foreign policies (only
varying modestly in how the wars are sold to the public).
Because the two establishments have a chokehold on the mainstream media, they
escape any meaningful accountability when they are wrong. Thus, their corruption
is not just defined by the billions of special-interest dollars that they take
in but in their deviations from the real world. The two establishments have
created a fantasyland that all the Important People treat as real.
Which is why it has been somewhat amusing to watch establishment pundits
pontificate about what must be done in their make-believe world – stopping
“Russian aggression,” establishing “safe zones” in Syria, and fawning over noble
“allies” like Saudi Arabia and Turkey – while growing legions of Americans have
begun to see through these transparent fictions.
Though the candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have many flaws, there
is still something encouraging about Americans listening to some of straight
talk from both Trump and Sanders – and to watch the flailing reactions of their
establishment rivals.
While it’s true Trump has made comments that are offensive and stupid, he also
has dished out some truths that the GOP establishment simply won’t abide, such
as noting President George W. Bush’s failure to protect the country from the
9/11 attacks and Bush’s deceptive case for invading Iraq. Trump’s rivals were
flummoxed by his audacity, sputtering about his apostasy, but rank-and-file
Republicans were up to handling the truth.
Trump violated another Republican taboo when he advocated that the U.S.
government take an evenhanded position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and
even told pro-Israeli donors that they could not buy his support with donations.
By contrast, other Republicans, such as Sen. Marco Rubio, were groveling for the
handouts and advocating a U.S. foreign policy that could have been written by
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump’s Israel heresy brought the Republican foreign-policy elite, the likes of
William Kristol and other neoconservatives, to full battle stations. Kristol’s
fellow co-founder of the neocon Project for the New American Century, Robert
Kagan, was so apoplectic over Trump’s progress toward the GOP nomination that he
announced that he would vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Clinton’s Struggles
Clinton, however, has had her own struggles toward the nomination. Though her
imposing war chest and machine-driven sense of inevitability scared off several
potential big-name rivals, she has had her hands full with Sen. Bernie Sanders,
a 74-year-old “democratic socialist” from Vermont. Sanders pulled off a stunning
upset on Tuesday by narrowly winning Michigan.
While Sanders has largely finessed foreign policy issues – beyond noting that he
opposed the Iraq War and Clinton voted for it – Sanders apparently found a
winning issue in Michigan when he emphasized his rejection of trade deals while
Clinton has mostly supported them. The same issue has worked well for Trump as
he lambastes U.S. establishment leaders for negotiating bad deals.
What is notable about the “free trade” issue is that it has long been a
consensus position of both the Republican and Democratic establishments. For
years, anyone who questioned these deals was mocked as a know-nothing or a
protectionist. All the smart money was on “free trade,” a signature issue of
both the Bushes and the Clintons, praised by editorialists from The Wall Street
Journal through The New York Times.
The fact that “free trade” – over the past two decades – has become a major
factor in hollowing out of the middle class, especially across the industrial
heartland of Middle America, was of little concern to the financial and other
elites concentrated on the coasts. At election time, those “loser” Americans
could be kept in line with appeals to social issues and patriotism, even as many
faced borderline poverty, growing heroin addiction rates and shorter life spans.
Despite that suffering, the twin Republican/Democratic establishments romped
merrily along. The GOP elite called for evermore tax cuts to benefit the rich;
demanded “reform” of Social Security and Medicare, meaning reductions in
benefits; and proposed more military spending on more interventions overseas.
The Democrats were only slightly less unrealistic, negotiating a new trade deal
with Asia and seeking a new Cold War with Russia.
Early in Campaign 2016, the expectations were that Republican voters would again
get behind an establishment candidate like former Florida Jeb Bush or Wisconsin
Gov. Scott Walker, while the Democrats would get in line behind Hillary
Clinton’s coronation march.
TV pundits declared that there was no way that Donald Trump could win the GOP
race, that his high early poll numbers would fade like a summer romance. Bernie
Sanders was laughed at as a fringe “issue” candidate. But then something
unexpected happened.
On the Republican side, blue-collar whites finally recognized how the GOP
establishment had played them for suckers; they weren’t going to take it
anymore. On the Democratic side, young voters, in particular, recognized how
they had been dealt an extremely bad hand, stuck with massive student debt and
unappealing job prospects.
So, on the GOP side, disaffected blue-collar whites rallied to Trump’s selffinanced campaign and to his promises to renegotiate the trade deals and shut
down illegal immigration; on the Democratic side, young voters joined Sanders’s
call for a “political revolution.”
The two corrupt establishments were staggered. Yet, whether the populist antiestablishment insurrections can continue moving forward remains in doubt.
On the Democratic side, Clinton’s candidacy appears to have been saved because
African-American voters know her better than Sanders and associate her with
President Barack Obama. They’ve given her key support, especially in Southern
states, but the Michigan result suggests that Clinton may have to delay her
long-expected “pivot to the center” a bit longer.
On the Republican side, Trump’s brash style has driven many establishment
favorites out of the race and has put Rubio on the ropes. If Rubio is knocked
out – and if Ohio Gov. John Kasich remains an also-ran – then the
establishment’s only alternative would be Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a thoroughly
disliked figure in the U.S. Senate. It’s become increasingly plausible that
Trump could win the Republican nomination.
What a Trump victory would mean for the Republican Party is hard to assess. Is
it even possible for the GOP establishment with its laissez-faire orthodoxy of
tax cuts for the rich and trickle-down economics for everyone else to reconcile
with Trump’s populist agenda of protecting Social Security and demanding
revamped trade deals to restore American manufacturing?
Further, what would the neocons do? They now control the Republican Party’s
foreign policy apparatus, which is tied to unconditional support for Israel and
interventionism against Israel’s perceived enemies, from Syria’s Bashar alAssad, to Iran, to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Would they join Kagan in backing
Hillary Clinton and trusting that she would be a reliable vessel for neocon
desires?
And, if Clinton prevails against Sanders and does become the neocon “vessel,”
where might the growing ranks of Democratic and Independent non-interventionists
go? Will some side with Trump despite his ugly remarks about Mexicans and
Muslims? Or will they reject both major parties, either voting for a third
party or staying home?
Whatever happens, Official Washington’s twin corrupt establishments have been
dealt an unexpected and potentially lasting punch.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com).
Clinton Stalls on Goldman Sachs Speeches
Exclusive: Hillary Clinton has judged that she can wait out public calls for her
to release the transcripts of speeches to Goldman Sachs, which earned her
$675,000 in 2013, since she expects to soon wrap up the Democratic presidential
nomination, as Chelsea Gilmour describes.
By Chelsea Gilmour
One of Bernie Sander’s standard attack lines against Hillary Clinton has been to
call attention to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in paid-speaking fees and
donations that Clinton has received from Wall Street during her career,
including $675,000 for three paid speeches to Goldman Sachs (at $225,000 a
pop) after she left the State Department in 2013.
Sanders has even taken to keeping track of how long it’s been since Clinton
vowed to release the transcripts but hasn’t. Clinton now claims that she is
being held to a different standard than other candidates and will release the
speech transcripts only when others do the same, “if everybody does it, and that
includes Republicans.”
Sanders has responded by noting that he has given no paid speeches to Wall
Street banks and thus has no such transcripts to release. So, Clinton’s campaign
continues to scramble, trying to shield her from the impression that she is too
cozy with Wall Street while expecting that she will soon lock up the Democratic
presidential nomination and make Sanders’s criticism moot.
The backlash Clinton has received over the three Goldman Sachs speeches and her
ties to Wall Street has, however, forced Clinton to confront an issue which has
dogged her campaign from the outset: Namely, that she is an Establishment
candidate with close personal and political ties to Wall Street and Big
Business, which compromises her objectivity and accountability as a candidate
“for the people,” rather than for the corporations.
During a debate in New Hampshire, Clinton claimed Sanders’ innuendo amounted to
a “very artful smear.” Clinton’s press secretary Brian Fallon called
it “character assassination by insinuation,” by implying that Clinton would not
be tough on Wall Street because she has financially benefited from them in the
past.
So far, Clinton has responded to these criticisms rather unconvincingly.
Under
intense pressure to release the transcripts of the Goldman Sachs speeches, she
has said she would “look into it,” though the Wall Street Journal has reported
that Mrs. Clinton has the sole right to distribute the transcripts, with
Politico asserting, “One thing that is clear is that Clinton could release the
Goldman transcripts unilaterally if she chose to do so.”
Political Damage
The real danger in releasing the transcripts is the potential political fodder
it would provide Clinton’s opponents, who might seek to use the transcripts as
proof that Clinton is in the pocket of, not only Goldman Sachs, but Wall Street
as a whole.
But the negative insinuations are already there, as Politico related in the
story of an unnamed source who attended one of Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches
in Arizona. The source related the tone and content of Clinton’s speech that day
as a “rah-rah speech,” where Clinton came off sounding more like a “Goldman
Sachs managing director.”
Politico reported, “‘It was pretty glowing about us,’” one person who watched
the event said. “‘It’s so far from what she sounds like as a candidate now.’”
The Wall Street Journal summarized the speeches as such: “She didn’t often talk
about the financial crisis, but when she did, she almost always struck an
amicable tone, according to these people.
“In some cases, she thanked the audience for what they had done for the country,
the people said. One attendee said the warmth with which Mrs. Clinton greeted
guests bordered on ‘gushy.’ …
“She spoke sympathetically about the financial industry, according to an
attendee. Asked about the poisoned national mood toward Wall Street, Mrs.
Clinton didn’t single out bankers or any other group for causing the 2008
financial crisis.”
So far, Clinton seems to have judged that the damage from continuing to hide the
transcripts is preferable to the backlash she might experience if she released
them.
According to Politico, “The person who saw Clinton’s Arizona remarks to Goldman
said they thought there was no chance the campaign would ever release them.
“It would bury her against Sanders,” this person said. “It really makes her look
like an ally of the firm.”
In that case, releasing the transcripts could serve a severe blow to her
campaign. Sanders’ campaign would waste no time capitalizing on the opportunity
to call-out Clinton as a friend of Wall Street.
Republicans candidates could jump on the attack-train, too, although this would
be a bit like the Right holding up a mirror to itself, since every Republican
candidate except Trump has been the beneficiary of Wall Street’s financial
“generosity.” (And Trump is arguable. Although he may not receive direct
donations from Big Banks & Business, he is certainly an “Established” member of
that social circle, so there are questions to be raised of political influence.)
Whose Side Are You On?
Regardless, as it becomes clear that this campaign is breaking down to
“Establishment” vs. “Anti-Establishment” candidates, Clinton’s ties to her Wall
Street and Beltway-Insider past are harming her ability to cultivate broad
support amongst a population of voters resentful of Wall Street’s insidious
influence over Washington.
So what is Clinton saying about all this? Not much. And what she has said has
not diminished suspicions that she would be soft on Wall Street, if elected.
Besides vague promises to “look into releasing” her speech transcripts, Clinton
has defended her acceptance of the speaking fees in even vaguer terms. Anderson
Cooper pressed her at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, asking, “But did you
have to be paid $675,000 [for three speeches to Goldman Sachs]?” Clinton
responded to hearty laughter from the crowd, “Well, I don’t know. That’s what
they offered.”
She continued, saying she didn’t feel the fees represent a conflict of interest
since she came back to run for public office, because she had not yet committed
to running. She said further, “Anybody who knows me, who thinks that they can
influence me, name anything they’ve influenced me on, just name one thing. I’m
out here every day saying, I’m gonna shut them down, I’m going after them, I’m
going to jail them if they should be jailed, I’m going to break them up. I mean,
they’re not giving me very much money now, I can tell you that much. Fine with
me. I’m proud to have 90 percent of my donations from small donors and 60
percent, the highest ever, from women, which I’m really, really proud of.”
Cooper pushed, “So, just to be clear, that’s not something you regret, those
three speeches?”
“No, I don’t, because I don’t feel that I paid any price for it and I’m very
clear about what I will do and they’re on notice,” Clinton asserted.
Clinton has pushed back in other ways, too. For instance, during a New Hampshire
debate, Clinton called out what she saw as hypocrisy from Sanders’s campaign:
“Senator Sanders took about $200,000 from Wall Street firms. Not directly, but
through the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. There was nothing wrong
with that. It hasn’t changed his view! Well, it didn’t change my view or my vote
either!”
A Flip-Flop
But not everyone is buying it. In an often-cited incident, Sen. Elizabeth
Warren, D-Massachusetts, described in 2004 how Hillary Clinton flip-flopped on a
credit-card company-sponsored bankruptcy bill under pressure as a New York
Senator.
According to Warren, in the late-1990s, then-President Bill Clinton was pursuing
signing into law a bankruptcy bill which had been presented to Congress and
written by the credit card companies. President Clinton was eager to sign the
bill, in order to further promote his free-trade, neoliberal economic policies.
However, after a meeting between Warren and then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, in
which Warren explained how the bill would have disproportionately hurt single
mothers, Hillary vowed, “Professor Warren, we’ve got to stop that awful bill.”
Indeed, Hillary returned to the White House and convinced the President to veto
the bill as one of his last acts in office.
But then, once Hillary became Senator for New York, the bill was reintroduced to
Congress and she voted in favor of it. Warren explains, “As Senator Clinton, the
pressures are very different. It’s a well-financed industry. A lot of people
don’t realize that the industry that gave the most money to Washington over the
past few years was not the oil industry, was not pharmaceuticals, it was
consumer credit products. Those are the people, the credit card companies, [who]
have been giving money and they have influence. … [Hillary Clinton] has taken
money from the groups and more to the point, she worries about them as a
constituency.”
And what about her claim that 90 percent of her donations come from small
donors? According to 24/7 Wall Street, which conducted an investigation into
each candidate’s net worth, “While 69% of Sanders’ campaign contributions have
come from small individual donations, … only 17% of Clinton’s contributions have
come from small individual donations.”
Another interesting development from this hubbub about Clinton’s ties to Wall
Street has to do with whom Clinton would appoint as Treasury Secretary, if
elected. Sanders’s reference during the Jan. 17 debate to the two Goldman Sachs
executives who became Treasury Secretaries may have spurred Clinton to address
the issue.
At that debate Sanders said, “Goldman Sachs, paying a five billion dollar fine,
gives this country in recent history a Republican Secretary of Treasury, a
Democratic Secretary of Treasury.”
Sanders’s comment referenced the appointment of Robert Rubin, former Goldman
Sachs executive, to the position of Treasury Secretary by Bill Clinton after
Rubin opened doors to Wall Street donors during Clinton’s first Presidential
bid.
Rubin was instrumental in crafting “an economic policy — known as Rubinomics —
that was applauded by Wall Street but viewed critically by many on the left.
When then-first lady Hillary Clinton decided to run for the Senate in New York
in 2000, she turned to Rubin and Altman to introduce her to key players on Wall
Street,” reported the Washington Post.
Who to Name?
Hillary Clinton addressed the Treasury Secretary issue on “Meet the Press,”
saying, “You have to have a Treasury Secretary who understands the economy … I
think there are a lot more places where one can and should look for such a
Treasury Secretary.”
If Clinton were to make a clear promise not to appoint someone from Wall Street
as Treasury Secretary, she could quell some voters’ fears. But to be sure, this
was not such a promise. The Treasury Secretary issue may also have been
identified by the Clinton campaign as an opportunity to strike back at Sanders
for what Clinton perceives as his political naivety.
Bloomberg News reported, “On the show, Clinton said Sanders has been less
aggressive than she in pursuing abuses in the financial industry, adding that
her rival’s critique of the banking system and its role in the economy is
simplistic.”
But there is another issue regarding paid speeches that has yet to be fully
addressed by the media, which may prove to be a further thorn in Hillary’s side.
That is the question of Bill Clinton and the “two-for-one” aspect of the
Clinton’s political machine.
An article by the Wall Street Journal relates how Hillary Clinton, while
Secretary of State in 2009, helped Swiss bank USB with its IRS woes. “Total
donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through
2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according to
the foundation and the bank.
“The bank also joined the Clinton Foundation to launch entrepreneurship and
inner-city loan programs, through which it lent $32 million. And it paid former
president Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of question-andanswer sessions with UBS Wealth Management Chief Executive Bob McCann, making
UBS his biggest single corporate source of speech income disclosed since he left
the White House.”
While this still does not prove a direct link between favors by Hillary and
payments received, it further blurs the line of where the Clintons’ political
activities stop and their personal ventures start.
Earlier in the campaign, I wrote an article analyzing the sum of Hillary’s paid
speeches during the 14-month interim between Clinton leaving the State
Department and before announcing her candidacy for President. That interim
spanned January 2014 through March 2015, and resulted in Hillary making 53 paid
speeches to the tune of $11.8 million dollars in fees, all while it was widely
believed that Clinton would run again for President in 2016. That analysis,
however, did not include the $675,000 from Goldman Sachs, as those speeches were
delivered in 2013, meaning they occurred before the time period for which she
was obligated to publicly disclose her income.
Bill Clinton’s Speeches
Further investigation of Hillary Clinton’s financial disclosure form shows at
least 16 speeches made by Bill Clinton to banks or other financial service
industry companies during that 14-month period.
Besides three speeches to USB Wealth Management totaling $675,000 (the same
amount Hillary received for her Goldman speeches, by the way), Bill also gave
paid speeches to: Bank of America ($500,000), SCIP Capital Management
($250,000), Deutsche Bank AG ($270,000 + $280,000 to Hillary for her October 7,
2014 speech), Veritas Capital Fund Management ($250,000), Apollo Management
Holdings ($250,000), Texas-China Business Council ($265,000), Affiliated
Managers Group ($225,000), Experian ($225,000), Insurance Accounting and Systems
Association ($225,000), Centerview Partners ($225,000), Jefferies ($225,000),
Citadel ($250,000), and Thomas Lloyd Global Assets Management (Schweiz)
($200,000 via satellite).
That means that Bill Clinton was paid $4,035,000 by the financial sector for 16
appearances over the course of 14 months. Keep in mind, those 14 months
represent the interregnum between when Hillary Clinton left State Department and
before she officially announced her candidacy (but it was widely speculated she
would run).
Regardless of whether Hillary believes (or will admit) that her fees from the
financial industry have influenced her polices or not, the fact that campaign
finance law requires her to disclose her spouse’s income should be a guiding
indication of what the rest of us already know: that payments made to one’s
spouse or close family members can equally represent a conflict of interest,
just as if the candidate had been paid directly.
An incisive article by Walter Russell Mead explains how the Clintons have worked
this system to build the first “postmodern political machine.”
“The Clintons stand where money, influence, and celebrity form a nexus. When
Hillary Clinton was running the State Department and Bill Clinton was shaking
down contributors to the Foundation, the donors knew, or thought they knew, what
they were getting. Now that Hillary is running for President, the donors have an
even better idea of what good things might come to them — or what problems and
complications could develop if they cut the Clintons off.”
Mead calls it “honest graft,” quoting Tammany Hall’s George Washington Plunkett.
“The cash comes from donations and speaking fees. When the husband of the
Secretary of State or potential next President calls about a special charity
project, most people, even if they happen to be CEOs of major companies or
senior government officials, take the call. More than that, there will be times
when government and corporate officials will reach out and make the call
themselves, rather than waiting passively to hear that the Clinton machine has
an ask. The donor proposition is rock solid. … What donors buy, or think they
are buying, is influence and face time with two of the most powerful people in
the world and their political machine[.]”
One parting thought: Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, from the same Goldman
Sachs who paid Hillary $675,000 for three speeches and produced Bill Clinton’s
Treasury Secretary, has said Bernie Sanders’ critique of Wall Street “has the
potential to be a dangerous moment, not just for Wall Street, not just for the
people who are particularly targeted, but for anybody who is a little bit out of
line.”
Chelsea Gilmour is assistant editor of Consortiumnews.com.
Clinton Still Hides Her Speeches
After serving as Secretary of State and before starting her run for President,
Hillary Clinton amassed millions of dollars in speaking fees from big banks and
corporate interests with business before the federal government – and she won’t
say what she said, as Marjorie Cohn points out.
By Marjorie Cohn
Hillary Clinton refuses to make public the transcripts of her speeches to big
banks, three of which were worth a total of $675,000 to Goldman Sachs. She says
she would release the transcripts “if everybody does it, and that includes
Republicans.” After all, she complained, “Why is there one standard for me, and
not for everybody else?”
As the New York Times editorial board pointed out, “The only different standard
here is the one Mrs. Clinton set for herself, by personally earning $11 million
in 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 for 51 speeches to banks and other groups
and industries.”
Hillary Clinton is not running in the primaries against Republicans, who, the
Times noted, “make no bones about their commitment to Wall Street deregulation
and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.” She is running against Bernie
Sanders, “a decades-long critic of Wall Street excess who is hardly a hot ticket
on the industry speaking circuit,” according to the Times.
Why do voters need to know what Hillary told the banks? Because it was Wall
Street that was responsible for the 2008 recession, making life worse for most
Americans. We need to know what, if anything, she promised these behemoths.
There is an old saying: I Scratch Your Back, You Scratch Mine.
Clinton has several super PACs, which have recently donated $25 million to her
campaign, $15 million of which came from Wall Street. Big banks and large
contributors don’t give their money away for nothing. They expect that their
interests will be well served by those to whom they donate.
Clinton recently attended an expensive fundraiser at Franklin Square Capital, a
hedge fund that gives big bucks to the fracking industry. Two weeks later, her
campaign announced her continuing support for the production of natural gas,
which comes from fracking.
Sanders opposes fracking. He said, “Just as I believe you can’t take on Wall
Street while taking their money, I don’t believe you can take on climate change
effectively while taking money from those who would profit off the destruction
of the planet.”
Bernie’s “Political Revolution”
Sanders has no super PACs. His campaign has received 4 million individual
contributions, that average $27 each. Perhaps Rupert Murdoch multiplied that
amount by $100 in setting $2,700 a head as the entrance fee for Clinton’s latest
campaign gala?
Sanders has called for a “political revolution” that “takes on the fossil fuel
billionaires, accelerates our transition to clean energy, and finally puts
people before the profits of polluters.” He would retrain workers in the fossil
fuel industries for clean energy jobs.
Sanders reminds us that the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns nearly as much
wealth as the bottom 90 percent, and 99 percent of all new income goes to the
top 1 percent. Unlike Clinton, he says healthcare is a right – not a privilege –
and college and university tuition should be free.
Sanders and Congressman John Conyers introduced legislation to allocate $5.5
billion to states and communities to create employment programs for AfricanAmerican youth. They say, “instead of putting military style equipment into
police departments . . . we [should] start investing in jobs for the young
people there who desperately need them.”
How will we pay for all that? “If we cut military spending and corporate
welfare, we would have more than enough money to meet America’s needs,” Sanders
wrote in his 1997 book, Outsider in the House. “This nation currently spends
$260 billion a year on defense, even though the Cold War is over,” not counting
“$30 billion spent annually on intelligence or the $20 billion in defenserelated expenditures hidden away in our federal spending on energy,” he added.
Today, with all the wars our government is prosecuting, that figure is nearly
$600 billion.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former
president of the National Lawyers Guild. Her most recent book is Drones and
Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. Follow her on twitter
at @marjoriecohn.
Faulting Sanders for Lacking Experts
Frontrunner Hillary Clinton, who has the backing of nearly the entire Democratic
foreign policy establishment, taunts Bernie Sanders about his lack of a similar
roster, but ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar says what’s more important is the
judgment of the potential president.
By Paul R. Pillar
Bernie Sanders has become a primary focus of a common quadrennial subject for
foreign policy wonks and presidential campaign watchers: the “teams” of advisers
who affiliate with different campaigns. Ostensibly these advisers provide their
respective candidates with wisdom and expertise that are inputs to coherent
positions that the candidate takes on relevant issues during the campaign and,
if their candidate wins, to coherent and sound policies while in office.
Sanders has drawn criticism for being thin on foreign policy advisers. It is a
news item when he finally takes steps to assemble a foreign policy “team.”
Contrasts are drawn with the army of foreign policy advisers, numbering in the
hundreds, who are listed as affiliated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Sanders’s campaign may warrant criticism for thinness on foreign policy, but not
on any scale measured by the number of advisers who have been signed up. Rather,
it is a matter of relatively small attention to foreign policy in the
candidate’s own speeches in contrast to his heavy emphasis on the primarily
domestic economic matters that he has made into his leitmotif.
This relative inattention may be a matter of discomfort to many who like much of
what they hear from Sanders on those domestic issues but realize that foreign
policy is a very large and important part of any presidency. The situation may
also discomfort those who expect that a Sanders foreign policy probably would be
more to their liking (or at least less objectionable) than what any of the other
candidates in either party would be apt to offer but would like to hear more
from Sanders to be confident about that.
The American Conservative magazine, in a report card that grades all seven
remaining major party presidential candidates according to how much their stated
positions indicate they would follow a foreign policy of “realism and
restraint,” gives Sanders a higher overall grade (a B) than any of the other
six.
The teams or armies of advisers have more to do with other games being played
than with helping a candidate to espouse wise policies on the campaign trail or
to formulate wise policies while in office. For one thing, short-term politics
nearly always trumps wisdom, as indicated by, among much other evidence, flipflops that nominees execute between primary season, when they are appealing to a
party base, and the general election campaign, when they seek support from a
broader electorate.
Moreover, it is hard to believe that, for example, any one of those hundreds of
individuals on the Clinton campaign’s advisory roster can realistically hope to
have much influence on what comes out of the candidate’s mouth in a debate.
The main game being played with all of those advisory rosters is the game of
getting appointed to desirable jobs in the next administration. Although the
rosters do include some old hands who are no longer on the make, the campaign
advisory relationship has become the single most used channel for obtaining a
senior executive branch job.
Aspiring job-seekers have to exercise their political prediction skills in
trying to determine which horse will win the race and thus to which horse they
should hitch their wagon. Campaigns have been known to take advantage of this
situation by telling potential advisers that if they do not sign up with the
campaign early, well before the party’s nominee has been determined, they can
forget about thumbing through the Plum Book and getting an appointment in any
administration led by that candidate.
So who gets placed in senior policy-making jobs is in large part a matter of
election predictions and luck, as well as personal maneuvering and connections.
This is all an awful way to staff a government. Most other advanced democracies
do not staff their governments that way. Most of them, after an election results
in a change in political control from one party to another, have a far smaller
turnover of policy-makers at the top, with a professional bureaucracy already in
place to execute their policies; that is part of what a truly professional
bureaucracy does.
Meanwhile an advantage to a campaign of having a large roster of purported
advisers is that a large number of people who write op-eds and otherwise
participate in public discourse will be restrained about anything that could be
interpreted as criticism of the candidate. Good for the candidate; not so good
for free-wheeling and uninhibited public discourse about the issues.
Some concerns that have been expressed about the thin foreign policy advisory
roster of Sanders, that this raises doubts about the ability to staff a Sanders
administration and to hit the ground running once in office, are ill-founded.
Whoever is the next president, he or she will be supported by foreign policy
teams that are large, experienced, and well positioned to implement the new
president’s chosen policies. Those teams have names such as the Department of
State and Department of Defense.
It does behoove us, as a caveat to all of the above, to glance at those rosters
of campaign advisers to catch any patterns that may constitute a warning flag
about the direction the aspiring president would take. This is especially true
if there are patterns of signing up people associated with directions of the
past that are known failures.
Observers have noticed, for example, the strong pattern of Marco Rubio’s foreign
policy advisers being associated with past neoconservative policies, including
the disastrous Iraq War. In this case the candidate’s own statements seem to be
going in the same direction as those advisers’ predilections, a fact possibly
related to Rubio’s stick-to-the-talking-points campaign style that Chris
Christie so ruthlessly highlighted. The American Conservative‘s report card on
realism and restraint gives Rubio the lowest marks of any candidate: straight
Fs.
Apart from such warning flags, it is appropriate for American voters to focus
much more, as nearly all voters will, on the candidate rather than the advisers.
Even the tiny sliver of the electorate who might care about who will be
appointed assistant secretary of state or NSC senior director for some critical
region would have a hard time gaming out that consideration as a reason for
supporting one candidate rather than another.
The post-election maneuvering for appointments involves too many non-substantive
variables for the outcome to be predictable. Implied debts to donors may also
have as much to do with some aspects of an administration’s foreign policy as
the past positions of senior appointees. Intelligently choosing a presidential
candidate, even if the chooser focuses narrowly on some aspect of foreign
policy, is still far from an exact science and involves not only declared
positions on issues of most concern but also the demonstrated judgment,
temperament, and experience of the candidate.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be
one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown
University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at
The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)