Middleboro Review

RSN: Norman Solomon | Biden and Buttigieg Are Showing How Corporatism and 'the Madness of Militarism' Go Together

Pete Buttigieg speaks with Joe Biden during December's Democratic debate. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
Solomon writes: "There's nothing like an illegal and utterly reckless U.S. act of war to illuminate the political character of presidential candidates. In the days since the assassination of Iran's top military official, two of the highest-polling Democratic contenders have displayed the kind of moral cowardice that got the United States into - and kept it in - horrific wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq."

Eager to hedge their bets, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg have offered merely tactical critiques of President Trump’s decision to kill Qassim Suleimani. In sharp contrast to Elizabeth Warren and especially Bernie Sanders, the gist of the responses from Biden and Buttigieg amounted to criticizing the absence of a game plan for an atrocious game that should never be played in the first place.

Many journalists have noted that only in recent days has foreign policy become prominent in the race for the 2020 nomination. But what remains to be addressed is the confluence of how Biden and Buttigieg approach the roles of the U.S. government in class war at home and military war abroad — both for the benefit of corporate elites.

Let’s be clear: More than 50 years ago, when Martin Luther King Jr. bravely condemned “the madness of militarism,” he was directly challenging those who included the political ancestors of the likes of Buttigieg and Biden — Democratic politicians willing to wink and nod at vast death and destruction, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, equivocating while claiming that the war machinery would operate better in their hands.

On war-related issues, Buttigieg’s rhetorical mix offers something for just about anyone. “Mr. Buttigieg is campaigning as an antiwar veteran,” The New York Times oddly reported in a January 5 news article. Yet on the same day, during a CNN interview about the drone killing, Buttigieg functioned more as a war enabler than opponent.

In response to anchor Jake Tapper’s first question — “Are you saying that President Trump deserves some credit for the strike?” — Buttigieg equivocated: “No, not until we know whether this was a good decision and how this decision was made, and the president has failed to demonstrate that.” His elaborations were littered with statements like “we need answers on whether this is part of a meaningful strategy.”

As for Biden, in recent months his shameful war-enabling history has drawn more attention while he continues to lie about it. And — given how hugely profitable endless wars have been for military contractors — Biden’s chronic enabling should be put in a wider context of his longtime service to corporate profiteering on a massive scale.

Biden has no interest in discussing his actual five-decade history of serving corporate power, which can only discredit the renewed “Lunch Bucket Joe” pretenses of his campaign. Meanwhile, as Buttigieg gained in the polls amid a widening flood of donations from Wall Street and other bastions of wealth, he moved away from initial claims of supporting such progressive measures as Medicare for All.

The military-industrial complex, inherently corporate, needs politicians like Biden and Buttigieg. One generation after another, they claim special geopolitical (Biden) or technocratic (Buttigieg) expertise while striving to project warm personas in front of cameras. The equivalents, one might say, of happy-face stickers on corpses.

Such dedicated political services to militarism are also political services to the corporate power of oligarchy.

Political positions on class warfare don’t always run parallel to positions on military warfare. But they have now clearly aligned in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Days ago, Bernie Sanders summed up: “I know that it is rarely the children of the billionaire class who face the agony of reckless foreign policy, it is the children of working families.”

One of the many reasons I’m actively supporting Sanders for president is that (although hardly flawless) his track record on military spending, war, and foreign policy is much better than the records of his opponents.

Devastating impacts of nonstop war are all around us in the United States, from deadly federal budget priorities to traumatic effects of normalized violence. And it’s difficult to grasp the magnitude of harm to so many millions of human beings in other countries. Sometimes, while trying to clear away the fog of the USA’s political and media abstractions, I think of people I met in Baghdad and Kabul and Tehran, their lives no less precious than yours or mine.

Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a coordinator of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

December Was Not Great, January Donations Will Matter

Sunday, January 5, 2020

Stanley McChrystal | Iran's Deadly Puppet Master

05 January 20

We did a bit better in December than pervious months, but we were down significantly from previous years. We do not need a windfall in January but we need a good solid performance.

That alone will require quite a bit of resolve.

We’re up to the task.

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THE URGENCY TO AVOID DESPERATION - As a community supported organization we accept life without deep-pockets. The consequence is that when fundraising drives fail bad things happen. We find a strong start really helps to avoid high stress in finishing the drive. It’s better to be a little urgent early. With a hint of urgency. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Stanley McChrystal | Iran's Deadly Puppet Master

Qassem Suleimani in 2016. (photo: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)

Stanley McChrystal, Foreign Policy
McChrystal writes: "The decision not to act is often the hardest one to make-and it isn't always right."
READ MORE

Iranians in Tehran on Saturday protesting the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. (photo: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)

Trump's Decision to Kill Suleimani Stunned Defense Officials
Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt, Maggie Haberman and Rukmini Callimachi, The New York Times
Excerpt: "In the chaotic days leading to the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran's most powerful commander, top American military officials put the option of killing him - which they viewed as the most extreme response to recent Iranian-led violence in Iraq - on the menu they presented to President Trump."
READ MORE

The classified document drew criticism from Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Reuters)

The White House Has Formally Notified Congress of the Soleimani Strike
Seung Min Kim, The Washington Post
Kim writes: "The White House delivered a formal notification of the drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani to Capitol Hill on Saturday, as required under the War Powers Act, according to a senior Democratic aide and another official familiar with the matter."
READ MORE

The Institute of Supply Management's purchasing managers showed a contraction in 15 of 18 manufacturing industries in December. (photo: Bloomberg)

Trade Tensions Send US Factory Performance to 10-Year Low
Reade Pickert, Bloomberg
Pickert writes: "U.S. manufacturing closed out a tumultuous year with the weakest monthly performance since the end of the recession, with orders shrinking and factories continuing to dial back production."
READ MORE

Occupy Wall Street. (photo: Vanity Fair)

The Decade That Put Capitalism on Trial
Astra Taylor, In These Times
Taylor writes: "I can't say I'm convinced this decade has really just ended, especially since it didn't start Jan. 1, 2010. As far as I can tell, it actually began in 2007, with Wall Street's historic financial crisis."
READ MORE

People walk through the Orthodox Jewish section of a Brooklyn neighborhood last month. Tensions remain high in Jewish communities following a series of attacks and incidents in recent weeks. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

'It's Getting Very Scary': Hasidic Jews Change Routines Amid Anti-Semitic Attacks
Brian Mann, NPR
Mann writes: "The streets of Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood are usually busy with Hasidic families coming and going. The men and boys wear distinctive hats and beards and side curls known as peyots. Esther and Yehuda Weiss have lived here all their lives. They've been shaken by recent anti-Semitic harassment and violence."
READ MORE

(photo: Monique Jaques/National Geographic)

Logging Is Corrupting These Islands. One Village Fights Back-and Wins.
John Beck, National Geographic
Beck writes: "The Marasans knew what would happen next. The forests they relied on for food, water, and timber would be destroyed."

EXCERPT:

t was mid-February 2018 when villagers in the Solomon Islands community of Marasa noticed the rivers had begun to turn red. The wet season was almost over and heavy rain fell over the forested mountain ridge, which rises up from the coast to split Marasa from the rest of the island of Guadalcanal. Soon, the waters were a thick rust color that everyone recognized as the soil that started 650 feet up the slopes, but had never dissolved and flowed out to sea before.

The rivers burst their banks not long after, flooding the flatland where the coconuts, mangoes, and yams grew, and laying down impermeable clay that made the earth unusable.

So the villagers walked to the little patches of cell phone reception and called Philip Manakako, a son of Marasa who lived 30 miles across the mountains in Honiara, the capital. His father, Philip Senior, told him that there were no more fish in the rivers. The water was making children sick, an uncle said. A woman who lived nearby explained how her plants all died three days after the floods first came, and the ground around them smelled of petrol.

Up on the ridge, a Malaysian logging company named Gallego Resources had begun carving great scores through the forest— its men felling the tall, grey-barked kwila and the akwa strung with fruit, then dragging them off the slopes for export, leaving nothing to stop the rains from taking the topsoil.

Manakako felt stung when he found out. The mountains had been untouched and abundant, covered in trees that as a child, he thought of as having grown there since creation. Back then, he and his cousins would follow the cascading streams uphill for a few afternoon hours and come back with pounds of shrimp for dinner.

The Marasans knew what would happen next. The forests they relied on for food, water, and timber would be destroyed. And without the trees, they would have to eat imported rice and build their houses with lumber-yard wood bought with the tiny sums the logging firms paid communities for every exported shipment. Teenagers might take dangerous jobs and young women would be coerced into exploitative temporary marriages with foreign workers. There would probably be a spike in alcoholism too, and with it, violence. “The life,” as many of Manakako’s relatives described it, would be over.

They knew this because it had already happened most of the way along the Guadalcanal coast—and across nearly every other part of the archipelago since logging began soon after independence from the UK in 1978. Foreign companies, mostly Chinese and Malaysian, are now stripping trees at more than 19 times the sustainable rate, according to Global Witness, making Solomon Islands the second largest supplier of tropical logs to China.

RSN: Norman Solomon | Buttigieg and Biden Are Masters of Evasion

Friday, January 3, 2020

RSN: Norman Solomon | Buttigieg and Biden Are Masters of Evasion

02 January 19

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Pete Buttigieg. (photo: Logan Cyrus/Getty)

Norman Solomon, Reader Supportive News
Solomon writes: "In a recent New Yorker profile of Pete Buttigieg, one sentence stands out: 'Watch Buttigieg long enough and you notice that he uses abstraction as an escape hatch.'"

Evasive platitudes are also routine for Joe Biden, the other major Democratic presidential candidate running in what mainstream journalists call “the center lane.”

Jim Hightower has observed that “there’s nothing in the middle of the road except yellow lines and dead armadillos.” Or, we might say, party lines and deadening politics.

Like other so-called “moderate” politicians, Buttigieg and Biden dodge key questions by plunging into foggy rhetoric. They’re incapable of giving a coherent and truthful account of power in the United States because they’re beholden to corporate-aligned donors. Those donors want to hear doubletalk that protects their interests, not clear talk that could threaten them.

“Forty billionaires and their spouses have donated to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, according to an analysis of federal election filings, making the South Bend, Indiana mayor a favorite among America’s richest people,” Forbes reported last month.

The magazine added: “More than one third of Buttigieg’s wealthy benefactors got rich in finance and investments. That group includes seven who built their fortunes from hedge funds, including Bill Ackman, Philippe Laffont and Seth Klarman.”

Mega-money manipulators are bullish on Buttigieg. “The financial sector, blamed by progressives for spawning the 2008 economic collapse, is lining up behind Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign,” the Associated Press explained in late December. He “has collected more campaign cash from donors and political action committees tied to the financial, insurance and real estate sector than any other White House hopeful, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.”

AP added: “One top Wall Street law firm could pose particular challenges for Buttigieg with progressives. He’s the top recipient of cash this cycle from Sullivan & Cromwell, which has worked on some of the biggest corporate mergers in recent history, including Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods, AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner and Bayer’s merger with Monsanto. The firm also represented some of the largest financial institutions that received federal bailout money.”

Buttigieg is a very new darling of corporate America compared to his main centrist rival. Biden – who has a decades-long record of scarcely legal corruption while serving corporate interests in Washington – is also heavily reliant on wealthy donors and foggy abstractions.

But the basic contradiction – between serving enemies of working people and claiming to be a champion of working people – is an increasingly difficult circle to square. And a barrier to credibility with many voters.

“The mainstream Democratic storyline of victims without victimizers lacks both plausibility and passion,” said the report Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis, released in October 2017. “The idea that the Democrats can somehow convince Wall Street to work on behalf of Main Street through mild chiding, rather than acting as Main Street’s champion against the wealthy, no longer resonates.”

That report (written by a task force I was part of) anticipated that a continuing upsurge in populism “will be filled by some political force or other – either the cruel and demagogic forces of the far right and its billionaire backers, or a racially diverse and morally robust progressive vision that offers people a clear alternative to the ideological rot of Trumpism.”

Most of the Democrats running for president don’t want to acknowledge the actual power wielded by economic elites. Biden is the most experienced at blowing smoke to obscure those elite forces, as if no fundamental conflicts of interest exist between billionaires and the huge numbers of people badly harmed by extreme income inequality.

That was a subtext when Biden declared in May 2018: “I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we're in trouble … The folks at the top aren’t bad guys.” (At last count, 44 billionaires and their spouses have donated to Biden’s campaign.)

Abstractions and evasions of the sort practiced daily by Buttigieg and Biden amount to papering over class conflicts. In sharp contrast, Elizabeth Warren and even more so Bernie Sanders (whom I actively support) are willing to name the names of corporations and billionaires growing even wealthier in ways that undermine the lives of most Americans.

It’s understandable that corporate-backed candidates don’t want to be cornered by questions that touch on realities of political and economic power. They’d much rather take evasive action than be candid. It’s not enticing to name victimizers when they’re funding your campaign.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

RSN: Under Staffed, Under Funded and Fighting Back!

Monday, December 16, 2019

FOCUS: Robert Reich | Donald Trump Fears Only One Democrat: Warren Sanders

15 December 19

No fair! We have more than enough readers to sustain Reader Supported News, by orders of magnitude. It’s not even close and there should be no struggle.

We pay our staff, our contributors and our suppliers. We are stretched to the breaking point because 20,000 people will come each day and often fewer than 20 will contribute.

We love that you are here but we need your help to do this.

With significant urgency.

Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News

DECEMBER HAS BEEN A TRAIN-WRECK FOR DONATIONS, SO FAR - We’re down a good 40% from where we were at this time last year. That’s one thing we did not need and cannot sustain or survive. With less than a week to go it is nervous time for sure. Time and operating capital are running out. We need some support folks. Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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FOCUS: Robert Reich | Donald Trump Fears Only One Democrat: Warren Sanders

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)

Robert Reich, Guardian UK

Reich writes: "There aren't 20 Senate Republicans with enough integrity to remove the most corrupt president in American history, so we're going to have to get rid of Trump the old-fashioned way - by electing a Democrat next 3 November."

That Democrat will be Warren Sanders.

Although there are differences between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, I’m putting them together for the purpose of making a simple point.

These two have most of the grassroots energy in the 2020 campaign, most of the enthusiasm and most of the ideas critical for America’s future.

Together, they lead Joe Biden and every other so-called moderate Democrat by a wide margin in all polls.

That’s because the real political divide in America today is establishment versus anti-establishment – the comparatively few at the top who have siphoned off much of the wealth of the nation versus everyone else whose wages and prospects have gone nowhere.

Warren and Sanders know the system is rigged and that economic and political power must be reallocated from a corporate-Wall Street elite to the vast majority.

This is why both Warren and Sanders are hated by the Democratic establishment.

It’s also why much of the corporate press is ignoring the enthusiasm they’re generating. And why it’s picking apart their proposals, like a wealth tax and Medicare for All, as if they were specific pieces of legislation.

And why corporate and Wall Street Democrats are mounting a campaign to make Americans believe Warren and Sanders are “too far to the left” to beat Trump, and therefore “unelectable”.

This is total rubbish. Either of them has a better chance of beating Trump than does any other Democratic candidate.

Presidential elections are determined by turnout. More than a third of eligible voters in America don’t vote. They go to the polls only if they’re motivated. And what motivates people most is a candidate who stands for average people and against power and privilege.

Average Americans know they’re getting the scraps while corporate profits are at record highs and CEOs and Wall Street executives are pocketing unprecedented pay and bonuses.

They know big money has been flooding Washington and state capitals to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy; roll back health, safety, environment and labor protections; and allow big business to monopolize the economy, using its market power to keep prices high and wages low.

Most Americans want to elect someone who’s on their side.

In 2016 some voted for Trump because he conned them into believing he was that person.

But he’s given big corporations and Wall Street everything they’ve wanted: rollbacks of health, safety, and environmental protections, plus a giant $2tn tax cut that’s boosted stock prices and executive pay while nothing trickled down.

Trump is still fooling millions into thinking he’s on their side, and that their problems are due to immigrants, minorities, cultural elites and “deep state” bureaucrats, rather than a system that’s rigged for the benefit of those at the top.

But some of these Trump supporters would join with other Americans and vote for a candidate in 2020 who actually took on power and privilege.

This is where Warren and Sanders come in.

Their core proposals would make the system work for everyone and alter the power structure in America: Medicare for All based on a single-payer rather than private for-profit corporate insurance; a Green New Deal to create millions of good jobs fighting climate change; free public higher education; universal childcare.

All financed mainly by a tax on the super-rich.

They’d also get big money out of politics and rescue democracy from the corporate and Wall Street elites who now control it.

They’re the only candidates relying on small donations rather than trolling for big handouts from corporations, Wall Street and the wealthy – or rich enough to self-finance their own campaigns.

Only two things stand in their way of becoming president.

The first is the power structure itself, which is trying to persuade Democrats that they should put up a milquetoast moderate instead.

The second is the possibility that as the primary season heats up, supporters of Warren and Sanders will wage war on each other, taking both of them down.

It’s true that only one of them can be the nominee. But if the backers of both Sanders and Warren come together behind one of them, they’ll have the votes to take the White House and even flip the Senate.

President Warren Sanders can then start clearing the wreckage left by Trump, and make America decent again.