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Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Where is @DrJillStein's Green Party now?

an August exchange on a Marxist list-serve:
On 8/19/16 12:17 PM, Clay Claiborne wrote:
Louis,

Just to be clear. If Trump would win because Clinton was one vote short, would you still refuse to vote for her?

I don't deal in hypotheticals.

More to the point, I am for a left party in the USA. I have been ever since I left the Trotskyist movement in 1979.

Finally, isn't it time to recognize that the Trump campaign is toast? The numbers are devastating.


2016 was a very successful year for the "anti-imperialist" Left. In 2016, more Left energy was focused on denying Hillary Clinton the presidency than any other issue, and they had a big win!

Of course, that didn't work out so well for the Stand Rock Sioux tribe, Muslim refugees, undocumented immigrants, and the world as a whole, because it meant Donald Trump became president.

These Leftists did this by giving vent to their hatred of Hillary.  They eagerly promoted every Russian hacked, Wiki-leak of DNC embarrassment and wrong doing, while deferring any investigation or exposure of Trump's Alt-Right white supremacist ties until after the election.

Many rallied around the Green Party, and the candidacy of Dr. Jill Stein. They argued that Hillary Clinton was as bad, or worse, than Donald Trump. They argued Trump has some good ideas, and compared to Hillary Clinton, was the "Peace Candidate."
The Left campaigned against voting for the lesser of two evils and barely enough people followed their counsel to put Donald Trump over the top.

This data is from Politico [updated 22 Nov. 2016 - PA updated 2 Dec from http://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/ ] :
Candidate Count % Michigan [16] Wisconsin [10] Pennsylvania [20]
Donald Trump 61,201,031 47% 2,279,805 1,409,467 2,955,671
Hillary Clinton 62,523,126 48% 2,268,193 1,382,210 2,906,128
Difference 11,612 27,257 49,543
Jill Stein 802,119 0.7% 50,700 30,980 49,678

cartoon by Pia Guerra
As you can see from the numbers above, if the Jill Stein voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had voted for Hillary Clinton instead, white supremacist Steve Bannon won't be running our country now.

Green Party's 2016 Strategy

Many on the Left argued that what really mattered in 2016 was building the Green Party into a truly progressive party with a mass base that could seriously contend for the presidency in the future. They counseled that we keep our eye on that prize and not fret about who would ultimately be sworn in on 20 January 2017.

The Green Party knew it had absolutely no chance of putting its own candidates, Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka into the White House. It told anyone who would listen that it really didn't matter whether it was Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton that would be closely followed by the nuclear football after January. To make their case, they downplayed the significance of white supremacy in this election, ignored the pleas of minorities to make this election a fight against it, and even went so far as to claim Donald Trump might be the lesser of the two evils.

They were so focused on defeating Hillary Clinton that even Sean Spicer, Trump's Press Secretary, could be found campaigning for Jill Stein:
Check out all the Trump supporters re-tweeting him. Think they didn't know
what they were doing? Think the Jill Stein didn't know what she was doing?

Mirri Maz Duur
They said progressives should be willing to sacrifice this election cycle to build the Green Party into a powerful mass third party that could oneday put a really progressive president, like Jill Stein, in the White House. Well, now the sacrifice has been made, Jill Stein voters could have stopped the white supremacist victory, but they didn't, and the terrible consequences of Trump in power are only beginning to unfold, and I am feeling very much like Daenerys Targaryen, after she discovered that Mirri Maz Duur had tricked her into sacrificing her baby in Blood Magic that was suppose to save Khal Drogo's life. She cried "Where is Khal Drogo? Show him to me, godswife, maegi, bloodmage, whatever you are. Show me Khal Drogo. Show me what I bought with my son's life." So I feel entitled to ask "Where is the Green Party now?"

Now it is clear to most, if not Jill, that not only is Donald Trump the greater of the two evils, he is far and away the most dangerous US president in living memory. His election is undoubtably a great tragedy but what heartens the soul is the way people in the United States and around the world have turned out in massive numbers to oppose his assault on democracy. Starting with the unprecedented numbers at the massive women's marches the day after the inauguration, on to protests against his Muslim ban so massive that they shut down the nations biggest airports, and now in the fight against this new wave of Trump initiated deportations, the progressive mass movement has shown a scope, spirit and vitality not seen since the sixties.

So where is the Green Party in all of this?

Green Party of Atlantic County 
I have no doubt that thousands of Green Party members have been active in this post-inaugural uprising but they didn't need a party to do that. My question is: Where is this renewed, invigorated, Green Party for which so many on the Left waived their right to weigh-in on the choice of the next president.

If Ohio is an indication, they haven't had great success in turning their election "victory" into the massive invigorated Green Party that was promised. Although 44,310 Ohioans voted for Jill Stein on 8 Nov 2016, they only had about 40 Ohio Greens at the first full statewide meeting of 2017 on 21 Jan 2017, where "Another high point was the very few criticisms of Donald Trump..." [???] according to the State Committee.

What I found on US Green Party website is even more depressing. Very little has been updated since before the election. The Election Day and Beyond page still says:
It's GOTV time! Make sure all your friends, family, neighbors, and others who've expressed support for Green candidates get to the polls and vote Green. Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka won't get 5% or more without that last-minute push.
They should be embarrassed by that page enough to have removed it by now. Jill Stein never stood a chance of getting even 5% of the vote. She got less than 1%, all that "last-minute push" did was put Trump in the Oval Office.


I felt like I was revisiting the now empty warehouse in which I had been previously "big store" scammed.

The reason I feel scammed is because the whole lot of "anti-imperialist" Left representatives, the Green Party, Democracy Now, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, etc., etc, all those who made it their mission in 2016 to defeat neo-liberalism and Hillary Clinton "by any means necessary," even if that meant putting a white supremacist regime in power and moving from neoliberalism to fascism. Now that The Sting has gone down, their mood is "Don't Look Back." They have no criticisms of their pre-election positions. Instead they quickly orphaned them. Pretended not to know them. Act like they had been fighting Trump all along when really they were very sure Clinton would still win no matter how much they railed against her. That is why the Standing Rock movement had no trouble with calling out Hillary Clinton's silence on their cause even if it would cost votes. That is why they said little about Donald Trump's DAPL investments. Now they face a regime that will show no hesitation and no consideration in crushing all opposition and moving forward with dangerous pipeline construction.

Dakota Access pipeline protesters ceremoniously burn structures in their main camp in southern North Dakota near Cannon Ball, N.D., on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017, as authorities prepare to shut down the camp. (AP/James MacPherson)
I've heard many say everybody was sure Clinton was going to win and that nobody saw this coming, but I did. This email to the Marxism list-serve a Green Party member ran and banned me from foretold the future we are now facing:

********************  POSTING RULES & NOTES  ********************
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*****************************************************************
Now Paul Manafort is out and the new leadership of the Trump campaign comes
from the Atl Right white supremacist gang, backed not only by Trump's money
but now also the much richer Robert Mercer. This now represents an attempt
by open fascists and white supremacists to take power in the US.

The main task of all progressive people in the United States has to be
denying the White House to this criminal gang.

What will the Green's do? Will they win votes from Trump? Will they try? If
they win progressive votes for Jill Stein, which is clearly their focus,
they effectively become a part of their racist "Defeat Crooked Hillary"
campaign.

All the Greens really have to do to support white supremacists taking the
White House in 2016 is to essentially repeat their 2012 campaign and act as
if Donald Trump is really no different than Mitt Romney.

Will the white Left's treachery with regards the people of Libya and Syria,
be repeated with regards to colored peoples in the United States?

I fear it is already happening!

Clay
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/17/alt-right-
rejoices-at-trump-s-steve-bannon-hire.html

By the time I posted that, I had been fighting to keep Trump out of power for many months. I first warned Bourgeois media resorting to sleight-of-hand to put Trump in the White House in December 2015. I ended that post with this:
If this is an example of the presidential election year that is coming, we have a big problem. As ridiculous as it seems, it looks like a rather large section of the US bourgeois wants Donald Trump to be our next president.

Full disclosure: I have opposed Donald Trump for a long time. I'm from Atlantic City
Now there will be plenty of time to do what the Left failed to do in 2016, namely fight Donald Trump. Of course, it going to be just a little bit harder now that he holds state power.

Vladimir Putin, Michael Flynn and Dr. Jill Stein back in the day
Meanwhile, a congressional enquiry forced Michael Flynn to admit Moscow paid for him to sit at this table with Putin, and thankfully, his Putin connections have now forced him out. So who paid for Jill Stein's trip? So far she has been silent on that score, and she has a lot to answer for.

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

Click here for my posts on the 2016 US Election and Aftermath
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Friday, February 17, 2017

Classic Racism at Trump Presser

Putting the task of correcting the problem on the back of the minority raising the problem is a classic racist tactic and chauvinist deflection with a long history. That is exactly what President Donald Trump did at his press conference when he responded to a question from April Ryan, an African American White House correspondent, about when we might meet with the Congressional Black Caucus. He suggested that if she wanted such a meeting she should take the responsibility for setting it up. He also cut her off before she could finish her sentence, another classic racist move. You can read Jordan Sargent's ,"The Video of Donald Trump Badgering a Black Reporter Needs to Be Watched", Spin.com, 16 Feb 2017, for the ugly details, or watch the video below.
Any minority activist that has worked in white dominated Left and liberal groups is very familiar with this tactic. I have personally seen this "peculiar" response to criticism played out countless times in my half century as an African American activist working in all manner of white-dominated Left groups from Students for a Democratic Society to the CPML and Veterans for Peace. Often when members of color raised the need for the group to address its "whiteness," they were abruptly cutoff, and then told it was their responsibility to fix the problem. Like I said, this was a classic move. Donald Trump could have learned it in any number of "Left" organizations let alone the GOP .

There was another example of classic racism by Donald Trump when a reporter asked him about anti-Semitism among some of his supporters:
Here is the transcript you can't get from the New York Times "Full Transcript and Video: Trump News Conference":
TRUMP: Are you a friendly reporter? Watch how friendly he is. Wait. Wait. Watch how friendly he is. Go ahead.

TURX: I've been good to you the entire campaign, Mr. President.

TRUMP: Go ahead.

TURX: So first of all, my name is Jake Turx from Ami Magazine and despite what some of my colleagues may have been reporting, I haven’t seen anybody in my community accuse either yourself or anyone on your staff of being anti-Semitic. We understand that you have Jewish grandchildren, You are their Zaidy.

TRUMP: Thank You

TURX: However, what we are concerned about, and what we haven't really heard being addressed, is an uptick in anti-Semitism and how the government is planning to take care of it. There's been a report out that 48 bomb threats have been made against Jewish centers all across the country in the last couple of weeks. There are people who are committing anti-Semitic acts, or threatening to...

[Note: Notice not only that Trump cuts him off but when he cut him off. The anti-terrorism president is being told about bomb threats but clearly he's not listening. He only hears a charge of anti-Semitism - CLASSIC!]

TRUMP: You see, he said he was gonna ask a very simple, easy question. And it’s not, its not, not — not a simple question, not a fair question. OK sit down, I understand the rest of your question.

So here’s the story, folks. Number one, I am the least anti- Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism, the least racist person. In fact, we did very well relative to other people running as a Republican — quiet, quiet, quiet.

See, he lied about — he was gonna get up and ask a very straight, simple question, so you know, welcome to the world of the media. But let me just tell you something, that I hate the charge, I find it repulsive.

I hate even the question because people that know me and you heard the prime minister, you heard Ben Netanyahu (ph) yesterday, did you hear him, Bibi? He said, I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time and then he said, forget it.

So you should take that instead of having to get up and ask a very insulting question like that.
It like Trump isn't even listening to what Turx is saying. As soon a Turx suggests there is an issue of racism that Trump maybe could be doing more about, he jumps to the defensive with "I am the least anti- Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism, the least racist person."

It reminded me of the response of some Los Angeles Veterans for Peace members to suggestions that their Arlington West Memorial project do more to reflect the "Cost of War" to the Iraqi people. They interrupted and shouted out "We're not racists!" as though somebody had said they were, but more importantly, as though that was suppose to put the whole matter to rest.



I took the time to transcribe Jake Turx part before going to work today because the New York Times couldn't seem to get it right, even his name. Instead the "paper of record" presented us with this:
QUESTION: So first of all, my name is (Inaudible) from (Inaudible) Magazine. I (inaudible). I haven’t seen anybody in my community, including yourself or any of the — anyone on your staff of being (OFF-MIKE).

Because (OFF-MIKE). However, what we’ve already heard about and what we (OFF-MIKE) is (OFF-MIKE) so you’re general forecast (ph) like 48 (OFF-MIKE). There are people who are everything (ph) happens through their packs (ph) is one of the (OFF-MIKE)...
I don't know what their problem was. While the captions on the above video made transcribing it easy, I really have no trouble understanding what Turx is saying. It would seem that the NYT and Trump have similar problems in that regard.

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

Click here for my posts on the 2016 US Election
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Trump claims Muslin ban protesters bussed in

There was one sentence buried in the ramblings of a madman that passed for a presidential news conference today that told us Donald Trump's opinion of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people that came out to airports, and other places, to protest his Muslim ban, new deportations, and other racist policies.

I spent the Sunday after the ban was announced with thousands of others protesting at Los Angeles International Airport. I reported on it here. It was one of the most spontaneous, organic demonstrations I have ever seen in my life. Yet, this is how Trump dismissed us. He was blaming everyone but himself for the problems with the Muslim ban. I quote two paragraphs for context:
That’s the other thing that was wrong with the travel ban. You had Delta with a massive problem with their computer system at the airports. You had some people that were put out there, brought by very nice busses, and they were put out at various locations.

Despite that the only problem that we had is we had a bad court. We had a court that gave us what I consider to be, with great respect, a very bad decision. Very bad for the safety and security of our country. The rollout was perfect.
LAX Protest
Unfortunately, none of the press corp seemed to catch the import of the sentence enlarged above. If they had, may be they could have ask him if these were the same busses that he said brought the invisible illegal voters from  Massachusetts to New Hampshire. The protesters at the airports were not only quite visible, they got everybody's attention because in many cases they shut the airports down!

I know the courts always claim that their decisions are independent of popular opinion, but I think these massive protests had a lot to do with three federal courts having the courage to refuse Trump, and his administration lacking the will to violate the courts' orders.

Santa Monica Big Blue Bus
Now since I have already reported in the above referenced piece that I did indeed take a very nice bus to the airport, a #3 Santa Monica Big Blue Bus down Lincoln, $0.50 senior fare, I may not be the best one to point out that The Donald is living in a Conspiracy Theory fantasy world if he thinks the millions that have been protesting his misogynistic and white supremacist policies have been put up to it by whoever he thinks is sending fleets of busses to defeat him.

This notion of blaming the people's uprising on the machinations of some 3rd party is not a Donald Trump original. In this regard he is merely imitating the propaganda practices of Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi and many other "anti-imperialists," including many on the US Left, who can never allow the people their own agency.

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

Click here for my posts on the 2016 US Election and Aftermath
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

With Flynn out, will @DrJillStein explain her Putin ties?

Michael Flynn, dines next to Vladimir Putin and across from Jill Stein in Moscow 
Pictures like this have been in the news a lot lately. The scene is a dinner Party in Moscow in October 2015. The occasion is the 10th Anniversary celebration for Russia's main international propaganda outlet, RT.com. General Michael Flynn was there. He has just been forced to resign as Trump's National Security Advisor because of the growing scandal over his, and Trump's, connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even before this, Flynn had to admit that he was "compensated" by Russia for his trip to Moscow and appearance at this dinner. These pictures have been in the news a lot lately because they show Flynn and Putin together, but there is another American at this table, and in those pictures, that the media hasn't taken much notice of. The silver-haired lady in the foreground with her back to the camera is Jill Stein, who would become the Green Party candidate for president of the United States.

Both Mike Flynn and Jill Stein have long standing connections to the Putin propaganda outlet. Flynn had a regular show on RT.com, and they strongly promoted the Stein candidacy knowing it had no chance of winning. As Stein supporter Louis Proyect noted in his blog "it [RT.com] has published 105 articles in praise of Jill Stein." That was as of August, about the same time we published Meet Green Party's Jill Stein, Putin sock-puppet & Assad apologist, 10 August 2016. Google finds another 85 mentions of Jill Stein on RT.com after the 1st of August but before election day.

From what has come out already, it is becoming increasingly clear that in 2016, Vladimir Putin pursued a policy of intervention in US politics with an aim of putting Donald Trump in the White House. Jill Stein played an indispensable role in its execution. So did the WikiLeak DNC email dumps. It's no accident that they came too late to help Bernie Sanders, but just in time to help Trump. Julian Assange had a virtual seat at this table. He made a video appearance at the dinner.

Putin is the devious type who likes to play both ends against the middle. His main play was to put a friendly white nationalist, right-wing authoritarian regime in the White House, but to do this, he also needed the US Left to stand down from the fight against Trump until after the election. Jill Stein was central to his plans for getting that to happen. That is why she had a seat at this table.

Her campaign was against Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, as her "Jill not Hill" campaign slogan made crystal clear. It was a campaign designed to get US progressives to sit out this election by either voting for her or staying at home. In the face of the tremendous evil we were facing, and will now have to endure, she counseled "Don't Vote for the Lesser of Two Evils." In the end, less than a hundred thousand votes in three states separated Donald Trump from Hillary Clinton, and just enough progressives followed Jill Stein's advice to put Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

This data is from Politico [updated 22 Nov. 2016 - PA updated 2 Dec from http://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/ ]:
Candidate Count % Michigan [16] Wisconsin [10] Pennsylvania [20]
Donald Trump 61,201,031 47% 2,279,805 1,409,467 2,955,671
Hillary Clinton 62,523,126 48% 2,268,193 1,382,210 2,906,128
Difference 11,612 27,257 49,543
Jill Stein 802,119 0.7% 50,700 30,980 49,678

Jill Stein has never made it clear who paid for her trip to Moscow. She needs to come clean about that and, I suspect, much more.


Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

Click here for my posts on the 2016 US Election and Aftermath
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Monday, February 13, 2017

Look for a false-flag attack

There are a number of clues in recent events that point to the strong possibility that the Trump cabal will commit a fake terrorist attack on US soil as the most expeditious way of getting what they want, which is the ability to rule the United States as a dictatorship and impose draconian measures on the people. The attack will appear to be the work of one or more ISIS terrorists, disguised as Syrian refugees who got into the US because the courts blocked Trump's Muslim ban. This will then be used by Trump/Bannon to justify ignoring any ruling from the judicial branch and making sure the Republican controlled legislative branch stays in line.

My focus on the Syrian conflict since 2012 has taught me a few things about false flag "terrorist attacks," how they are conducted, and how they are used. It has been said that just about every "terrorist" bomb that went off in the secure areas of Damascus in the early days of the revolution had been placed there by the Assad regime. This was long before they helped to invent ISIS. Their real opposition was democratic, but their claim was that they were fighting terrorists, so even before they helped the jihadists form up, they created "terrorist attacks" out of whole cloth. We found out that these were false-flag attacks from Syrian defectors who had foreknowledge of them.

The Russian leader Trump so admires, Vladimir Putin is also alleged to have a history of using false flag "terrorist attacks" to get what he wants. In September 1999, there was a series of bomb attacks carried out on four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk. Two-hundred-ninety-three people were killed, Putin blamed Islamic terrorists and used the attacks as the excuse to start the Second Chechen War. Thirty-six hours after one attack, local police arrested the three FSB agents who had planted the device. The incident was declared to be a "training accident" and two motions for a parliamentary investigation were quashed.

The release of a fake video about the Yemen raid gives us a clear indication of how rapidly the Trump cabal is moving towards the Putin/Assad model of governance. The raid itself was a big failure by most reports. The main target wasn't even there and released a mocking video afterwards. They killed between 16 and 25 civilians, including 8 children, and the jihadists they did kill were gunts, not "high level" operatives. One US Navy seal also lost his life. As part of their attempt justify the raid, the Pentagon posted a video online that they said was part of the "take." Then they pulled it down when it was exposed as a 10 year old video from another website.

This is straight out of the Putin/Assad playbook. For example, a Linux Beach post date 26 December 2013 documented seven cases in which Syrian or Russian news sources had been caught and called out for putting out fake videos and pictures that they claimed represented current terrorist activity before the "prior art" was found.

This is the proper context to view Donald Trump's response to Bill O'Reilly's point that "Putin's a killer." When Trump countered "There are a lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?" He was doing something more sinister than merely admitting that US presidents kill, he was endorsing Putin's manner of using murder, which is many times meaner than what we've seen from any US president in living memory.

Now we can consider the warning issued by Stephen Miller yesterday, who like Steve Bannon, and Kellyanne Conway, is part of Trump's emerging inter circle or cabal. He was telling us how that cabal is planning to respond to the resistance they are getting from the people, local politicians, and the courts:
The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.
What did he mean by that?

I hope I am wrong about this. Very much so. But if there should be some kind of terrible ISIS attack in the US perpetrated by a Syrian refugee who got in because the courts blocked Trump's Muslim ban, don't panic and think Cui Bono - Who Benefits?

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

Click here for my posts on the 2016 US Election and Aftermath
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Veterans for What?

Since Veterans for Peace has thrown it's support behind the worst mass murderer of the 21st century, I respectfully ask them to remove "Peace" from their name.

Veterans for Peace marching with Assad supporters and his flag

When Assad used chemical weapons, including sarin and chlorine, to murder his civilian opposition and their children, Veterans for Peace remained silence, except for the massive sarin attack of 21 August 2013. That attack got so much attention in the United Nations and the mainstream media, that Veterans for Peace was forced to speak out - in defense of Assad.




My past posts on Veterans for Peace:

VIPS to rescue as Dissenting Diplomats oppose Obama's courtship of Assad, 28 July 2016
Andy Berman, long time member bids farewell to Veterans for Peace, 12 May 2016
Ray McGovern shows the arrogance of the "anti-imperialists" knows no bounds!
An Open Letter to the Authors of the UNAC Statement, "We are NOT Charlie Hebdo!", 23 Sept 2015
Report on Convention: Veterans for Peace gives Assad & ISIS a new tool, 19 Aug 2015
Booth & Banner @ Veterans for Peace National Convention, 8 Aug 2015
Critique of Proposed VFP Resolution 2015-3 Stop All Foreign Intervention In Syria, 5 Aug 2015
Response to Veterans for Peace on Syria, 25 May 2015
Dozens Of Anti-War Protesters March Through Hollywood, 3 May 2015
The "Left's" Crime Against Humanity, 27 2015
The Response of Veterans for Peace to the Syrian Conflict | a time-line, 11 Aug 2013
* Some Exceptions Apply, 3 Aug 2013
Assad Regime Thanks US Peace Movement for its Support!, 21 July 2013

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

Click here for my posts on the 2016 US Election and Aftermath
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya