Bernie — Don't Go To AIPAC: Thousands Call On Sanders To Reject Invite From Pro Israel Lobby

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters is among 4,000 who have signed petition.ink Floyd's Roger Waters is among 4,000 who have signed petition.

By Sarah Lazare
Thousands are urging 2016 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders to refuse an invitation from the right-wing American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to speak at its upcoming policy conference in Washington, DC.

“As the main arm of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, AIPAC has sworn to promote the racist, militaristic, and anti-democratic policies of the most right-wing government in Israel's history,” states a petition, which was created by AlterNet senior editor Max Blumenthal and has garnered 4,000 signatures in just four days. “Its conference this year will feature Islamophobes, anti-immigrant activists, and religious extremists.”

“With his promise to seek a 'level playing field' on Israel-Palestine, Bernie does not belong on the same stage as these figures,” continues the petition, whose prominent signatories include Roger Waters, well-known musician and co-founder of Pink Floyd. Israeli activist and author Miko Peled, Palestinian-American civil rights campaigner and commentator Linda Sarsour and scores of other leading campaigners for Palestinian human rights have lent their names to the initiative.

AIPAC invited every presidential candidate to speak at the conference, slated to take place March 20 through 22. Hillary Clinton was the first to confirm, with Donald Trump following closely behind her. Clinton has made her ardent support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a cornerstone of her campaign – and vowed in a letter to mega-donor media mogul Haim Saban to crush the grassroots BDS movement calling for the boycott, divestment and sanctioning of Israel.

A growing number of advocates for Palestinian rights are among Sanders’ supporters, including Waters, Sarsour, and writer Kumars Salehi, who recently registered his concern with Clinton, “who grinned from ear to ear in photo-ops with Netanyahu and claimed Palestinians in Gaza are not trapped by Israel’s blockade so much as they are “trapped by their leadership.”

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How Hillary Tells Us She Won't Fight Wall Street

Illustration by DonkeyHotey.

By Steve Weissman
Hillary Clinton has a stronger, more detailed plan to regulate Wall Street than does Bernie Sanders, says the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. But, adds journalist Ezra Klein, many are skeptical that she will do what she says.

“She has spoken out of both sides of her mouth on a number of issues,” agrees public banking campaigner Ellen Brown. “So it doesn’t seem like we can trust her.”

Between savants and skeptics, policy wonks and the politically wary, how can ordinary voters decide for themselves? It isn’t easy.

“Mr. Sanders has been focused on restoring Glass-Steagall, the rule that separated deposit-taking banks from riskier wheeling and dealing. And repealing Glass-Steagall was indeed a mistake,” Krugman wrote. “But it’s not what caused the financial crisis, which arose instead from ‘shadow banks’ like Lehman Brothers, which don’t take deposits but can nonetheless wreak havoc when they fail. Mrs. Clinton has laid out a plan to rein in shadow banks; so far, Mr. Sanders hasn’t.”

Krugman also finds that Wall Street prefers any Republican over either of the Democrats. Yet Wall Streeters are giving Hillary significant contributions, and their financial media does not view her as a major threat to their interests.

“As long as Hillary Clinton is in charge, they know that the Clintons historically have been enormously helpful to the banking industry,” explains former federal regulator William K. Black. “And in return the banking industry – not simply the banking industry, others as well – have made the Clintons very wealthy.”

No surprise, Hillary has little to say about her husband’s dealings with Wall Street, which will arguably define his place in history. I in no way hold Hillary accountable for the Big Dog’s transgressions, and certainly not for his carnal sins, which right-wingers delight in accusing her of enabling. But what does she think of his enabling Wall Street to bring the global economy to a thudding crash? How does she respond to Bill’s role in helping Wall Street gain such power and promote such glaring inequality?

Ask her. We need to know, and so far, her silence speaks volumes.

Remember that Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992 as an economic populist on a platform created largely by Robert Reich, who became his Secretary of Labor. But Bill brought in Robert Rubin, co-chair of Goldman Sachs, to serve first as his chief economic advisor and then as Secretary of the Treasury. The soft-spoken Rubin persuaded Clinton to pay off the budget deficit left to him by George H.W. Bush, a move that won Wall Street’s blessing and helped fuel the boom-and-bust prosperity of the 1990s. The alternative, as many people now understand, would have been to rebuild our already failing bridges, transportation systems, waterworks, and electrical grids.

Rubin also convinced Clinton to push Wall Street’s neo-liberal economics and its Washington Consensus worldwide, while making the North American Free Trade Agreement a top priority, without providing any safety net for American workers whose jobs went abroad.

But, most telling, Rubin and his understudy Larry Summers prevailed on Clinton to restrain financial regulators within the administration from doing their job, regulators like Bill Black and Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. (See her story at PBS Frontline.)

Clinton then went along with Texas senator Phil Gramm and the Republican-led Congress to massively deregulate financial markets, just as Rubin and his Wall Street friends wanted. Clinton fought for and signed the repeal of most of Glass-Steagall, the New Deal’s already porous wall between commercial and investment banking. Even worse, he fought for and signed the Commodities Future Modernization Act, which removed most federal regulation of credit default swaps and other over-the-counter-derivatives, the “financial weapons of mass destruction” that shadow banks like Lehman Brothers misused to bring down the global economy in 2008.

Enabling Wall Street in this way was Bill Clinton’s mortal sin, making him an accomplice to the economic crime of the century. He was a well-paid accomplice at that, “earning” some $250 million from going to work for the Wall Street mob after he left the Oval Office. Having shared royally in the pay-off, Hillary has never confronted either the economic crime or Bill’s complicity in it. Since she’s too smart – and too experienced – not to have seen them both, she’s telling us that she would be likely to do much the same.

Krugman misses this. The choice in the Democratic primaries, as he sees it, is between Bernie Sanders’ whole-loaf idealism, which Krugman calls self-indulgent, and Hillary’s half-a-loaf pragmatism, which he prefers. In reality, choosing Hillary comes down to giving the whole loaf to Wall Street while barely leaving crumbs for the rest of us. Except for the self-serving, where’s the pragmatism in that?

_____________________
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."

Reprinted with permission from Reader Supported News

Donald Trump Caught Pushing White Supremacy Again: Promoted a Nazi Twitter Account That Showed Him Gassing Bernie Sanders (A Jew)

There is something profoundly racist about Trump and his staff.

A photo tweeted by a Twitter account (@WhiteGenocideTM) promoted by Donald Trump. The photo
has since been taken down.

By Bethania Palma Markus
GOP front runner Donald Trump has been accused of racism in the past, but on Friday morning, Trump retweeted a white supremacist website promoting Adolf Hitler.

The tweet was a jab at rival, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and showed him looking down-and-out, holding a “Vote Trump” sign.

“@WhiteGenocideTM: @realDonaldTrump Poor Jeb. I could’ve sworn I saw him outside Trump Tower the other day! pic.twitter.com/e5uLRubqla“

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2016

The tweet originated from an account called @WhiteGenocideTM, which is promoting a pro-Hitler movie called, The Greatest Story Never Told. The trailer for the film calls Hitler the “saviour of Europe.” The website also includes an interview with Holocaust-denier Ursula Haverbeck.

One of the many troubling tweets from the account is an animated picture of Donald Trump dressed as a Nazi, about to gas potential Democratic rival Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders is Jewish.

@Perennialism @Ricky_Vaughn99 pic.twitter.com/C6PT2o1ex2

— Donald Trumpovitz (@WhiteGenocideTM) January 13, 2016

The Twitter account is littered with anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric and lists its location as “Jewmerica.” Its “pinned” or featured tweet shows a man saying he is Jewish, with a yellow Star of David with the word “Jude” added on.

Trump tweeted the image of Bush with the racist twitter handle to his nearly 6 million followers Friday morning. It’s not the first time Trump has been associated with the fascist leader of Nazi Germany who was responsible for genocide against millions of Jewish people and other groups.

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Racist Donald Trump Supporter Interrupts Bernie Sanders Rally - Holds Up Bigoted Poster (Video)

The heckler held up a sign that read, "Obama is as Christian as Bruce Jenner is a woman." Sanders' supporters chanted "Bernie, Bernie, Bernie" as the protester was escorted out of the rally. Unlike Trump's supporters, none of the Sander supporters yelled "kill him" or "Sieg Heil" or "White Power."

Loving The Bigot: Two Candidates Surge in 2016 Polling–But Only Trump, Not Sanders, Fascinates Media

The approximate ratio of Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders corporate media think you need in your campaign coverage. (Trump photo: Gage Skidmore)

By Jim Naureckas
The two big surprises of the 2016 presidential race so far are Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Two dark horse candidates opposed by party insiders, each began a substantial surge in campaign polls around the beginning of July. In Real Clear Politics‘ average of polls, Sanders has gone from 12.7 percent to 25.0 percent since July 1, while Trump has gone from 6 percent to 22 percent.

Yet corporate media show a fascination with just one of these characters. Is it the self-described socialist senator from Vermont, who has focused his campaign on combating the US’s rising inequality? Or is it the billionaire real-estate developer who blames America’s economic troubles on foreigners and calls for massive deportations?

Unsurprisingly, corporate media are mainly interested in Cinderella stories when they don’t question the wealth of the class that owns and advertises in media outlets.

We used the Nexis database to see how often various news outlets had mentioned Sanders and Trump since July 1. The biggest gap we found was in the medium that reaches the most voters: broadcast network TV. On average, ABC, CBS and NBC named Sanders in their news stories 17 percent as often as they named Trump–roughly one story that included the senator for every six with the developer.

Leading newspapers–the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, LA Times and USA Today–ran three times as many Trump stories as Sanders stories: Sanders was mentioned 34 percent as often as Trump in these papers. (The Journal‘s articles are available as abstracts, not full text, on Nexis.) The New York Times had the highest ratio of Sanders to Trump mentions, at 49 percent; the Journal had the lowest, with 22 percent.

All the cable news channels talked about Trump more often than Sanders–even MSNBC, which often caters to a progressive audience. MSNBC did come closest to parity of any outlet we looked at, however, with 67 percent as many Sanders as Trump stories. Fox News also had relatively frequent references to Sanders, 53 percent as many as its Trump references. CNN was the most Trump-heavy of the cable networks, mentioning Sanders only 33 percent as often. Overall, cable news referred to Sanders an average of 51 percent as often as Trump.

Public broadcasting didn’t pay more attention to Sanders than did for-profit cable. On NPR, Sanders came up 39 percent as often as Trump on NPR, and 56 percent as frequently on PBS NewsHour–averaging to 48 percent.

On average, the 13 outlets we surveyed had 36 percent as many references to Sanders as to Trump. While these candidates are backed by roughly as many voters in their own parties, among the general public Sanders is far more popular; in recent polls, 59 percent express a negative opinion of Trump, with about half as many liking him, whereas Sanders is one of the rare politicians who is viewed more often favorably than unfavorably. On the rare occasions when pollsters match up Republican hopefuls with anyone besides Clinton, Sanders trumps Trump.

So why should news outlets think voters need to hear about Trump about three times as often as they hear about Sanders?

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

Rand Paul Makes More Sense than the Democrats’ 'Left' Champion, Bernie Sanders — No, This is NOT an Endorsement

“Having pledged in advance to support Hillary after he drops out of the race, de facto Democrat Sanders cannot risk running a campaign that might reveal the sheer awesomeness of her evil.”

U.S. rulers have designated Hillary Clinton as the Democrats’ next front person, while Sen. Bernie Sanders has volunteered to be the loyal “lefty” opposition – who will step aside and endorse Clinton at the proper time. Sanders will refuse to indict Obama or Hillary for embarking “on a war against world order and civilization, itself, in which Salafist death cults are its frontline storm troopers.” But Rand Paul, the right-winger, will.




By Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
The whole world knows that the United States and its closest allies created the ISIS-al Qaida juggernaut in Syria, Iraq, Libya and proliferating points elsewhere in the Muslim world. Russian President Vladimir Putin knows it, and has now begun to denounce the crime against civilization on the world stage. Rand Paul knows it, and has made the fact central to his campaign for the U.S. presidency. Every world leader, whether a vassal of the Washington or part of the resistance to U.S. imperialism, is fully aware that the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan gave birth to the international jihadist network in the mountains of Afghanistan, and have nurtured, financed, trained and armed the monster ever since.

The trajectory of the Wahhabist horror show was both planned and predictable. Back in 2012, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency said bluntly that “Western countries, the Gulf States and Turkey” wanted an “Islamic state” to arise in eastern Syria, and foresaw that al Qaida would soon “return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi” in Iraq – all of which, and much more, has come to pass.

Muammar Gaddafi prophesized correctly that NATO’s transformation into a jihadist air force would turn Libya into “another Somalia” – a vortex of Salafist chaos that would destabilize the entire region. “We came, we saw, he died,” cackled Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who yearns to bring the same ghoulish statecraft to the Oval Office in 2017. Does any decent person actually consider this banshee a “lesser evil”?

Bernie Sanders does. The Vermont senator promises to endorse Clinton as soon as he drops out of the presidential race – thus nullifying whatever “message” he plans to deliver during the Democratic primary process. But of course, having pledged in advance to support Hillary, de facto Democrat Sanders cannot risk running a campaign that might reveal the sheer awesomeness of her evil. Therefore, there will be no Democratic Party discussion of U.S. and allied sponsorship of the Islamic State and al Qaida, in the same way that serious criticism of Israel is off-limits for Sanders and all national Democrats.

“Sanders will not acknowledge that U.S. governments of both parties deploy jihadists as foot soldiers for U.S. imperialism.”

The Party is a trap. Not that its strictures, alone, force Sanders to bite his tongue. He actually has nothing much to say about U.S. and allied sponsorship of jihadists. Instead, he buys into the lie that the Obama administration is eager to fight the Islamists – at least the Islamic State component – and puts his foot down at giving the president sweeping powers to do so. But, he will not acknowledge that U.S. governments of both parties deploy jihadists as foot soldiers for U.S. imperialism.

Rand Paul does. Just last week, the Tennessee Republican senator told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”:

“ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately. And most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS. These hawks also wanted to bomb [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad], which would have made ISIS's job even easier.

“They created these people. ISIS is all over Libya because these same hawks in my party loved -- they loved [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya. They just wanted more of it."

Democrats will not get the equivalent analysis from Sanders, or even from Dennis Kucinich, should he decide to re-enter the fray as a Democrat.

Paul speaks from a political space in the Republican Party that is deeply opposed to “internationalism,” which it equates with foreigners, people of color, socialists, and other folks that are anathema to “good white Americans.” Paul’s anti-interventionism strikes a chord with rightwing whites that oppose entanglements with people who don’t share their “values.” Their revulsion to the U.S. becoming polluted by foreign entanglements – a race-based reaction – moves them to oppose foreign wars.

“Paul’s anti-interventionism strikes a chord with right-wing whites that oppose entanglements with people who don’t share their ‘values.’”

Sen. Paul has been consistent in indicting the United States for the scourge of the Islamic State. Last June he told CNN:

"We have been fighting alongside al Qaeda, fighting alongside ISIS. ISIS is now emboldened and in two countries. But here's the anomaly. We're with ISIS in Syria. We're on the same side of the war. So, those who want to get involved to stop ISIS in Iraq are allied with ISIS in Syria. That is real contradiction to this whole policy."

Bernie Sanders, representing largely rural, whiter-than-white Vermont, also makes a kind of “American values” appeal. In an appearance on CNN, in September of last year, he said:

"I'm sitting here wondering where Saudi Arabia is, where Kuwait is, where Qatar is. I'll be damned if kids in the state of Vermont – or taxpayers in the state of Vermont – have to defend the royal Saudi family, which is worth hundreds of billions of dollars."

Sanders frames the conflict as Saudi Arabia’s war, absolving the United States, the Saudi’s senior partner in promoting jihadist war for generations. Besides, says Sanders, the war costs Americans too much money, which could be better spent on creating jobs at home. "While we focus all of our attention on ISIS, the middle class in this country continues to collapse," Sanders said.

Rand Paul’s position is far closer to Russian President Putin’s. Speaking to a meeting of the BRICS nations, Putin declared:

”We know what is going on in the Middle East and North Africa now. We see problems caused by a terrorist organization, which calls itself ‘The Islamic State.’ However, there was no terrorism in those states before the unacceptable interference from the outside took place without an approval of the UN Security Council. It is obvious that the consequences are tough. Everything that has happened in the international arena over the last couple of years needs to be re-adjusted.”

In the language of diplomacy – in which Putin is well versed, unlike the crude, cackling Hillary – these are very harsh words, reserved for times of crisis. Putin urged fellow BRICS leaders to take collective steps for their own security against the lawlessness that the U.S. and its allies have created.

The United States is embarked on a war against world order and civilization, itself, in which Salafist death cults are its frontline storm troopers. The fact that U.S. imperialism is now dependent on jihadists who must inevitably turn on their royal and western backers, is among the best evidence that the empire has arrived at a fatal stage.

The Democratic Party is no place or vehicle to engage such issues of planetary life and death. When a libertarian Republican is saner on international affairs than the Democratic Party’s “left” champion, it’s time to lower the curtain on that show.

P.S. Anyone that thinks this piece was an endorsement of Rand Paul or the Republicans – should not be reading BAR.

____________________
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Bernie Sanders' Sheep Dog Politics: Candidacy May Be Designed to Simply Herd Progressives Into Voting for Hillary in 2016

Vermont senator and ostensible socialist Bernie Sanders is playing the sheepdog candidate for Hillary Clinton this year. Bernie's job is to warm up the crowd for Hillary, herding activist energies and the disaffected left back into the Democratic fold one more time. Bernie aims to tie up activist energies and resources till the summer of 2016 when the only remaining choice will be the usual lesser of two evils.

By Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor
“The sheepdog is a card the Democratic party plays every presidential primary season when there's no White House Democrat running for re-election.”

Spoiler alert: we have seen the Bernie Sanders show before, and we know exactly how it ends. Bernie has zero likelihood of winning the Democratic nomination for president over Hillary Clinton. Bernie will lose, Hillary will win. When Bernie folds his tent in the summer of 2016, the money, the hopes and prayers, the year of activist zeal that folks put behind Bernie Sanders' either vanishes into thin air, or directly benefits the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Don't believe us? Then believe Bernie himself interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC News “This Week” May 3.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So if you lose in this nomination fight, will you support the Democratic nominee?

SANDERS: Yes. I have in the past.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Not going to run as an independent?

SANDERS: No, absolutely not. I've been very clear about that.

Bernie Sanders is this election's Democratic sheepdog. The sheepdog is a card the Democratic party plays every presidential primary season when there's no White House Democrat running for re-election. The sheepdog is a presidential candidate running ostensibly to the left of the establishment Democrat to whom the billionaires will award the nomination. Sheepdogs are herders, and the sheepdog candidate is charged with herding activists and voters back into the Democratic fold who might otherwise drift leftward and outside of the Democratic party, either staying home or trying to build something outside the two party box.

1984 and 88 the sheepdog candidate was Jesse Jackson. In 92 it was California governor Jerry Brown. In 2000 and 2004 the designated sheepdog was Al Sharpton, and in 2008 it was Dennis Kucinich. This year it's Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. The function of the sheepdog candidate is to give left activists and voters a reason, however illusory, to believe there's a place of influence for them inside the Democratic party, if and only if the eventual Democratic nominee can win in November.

Despite casting millions of voters for the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other sheepdogs, those leftish Democrat voters are always disregarded when Democrats actually win. Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA, a vicious “welfare reform,” no peace dividend or push for DC statehood, lowered unemployment but mostly in part time and low-wage jobs, and mass incarceration of black and brown people. President Obama doubled down on bailouts of banksters and GM, and immunized them from prosecution but failed to address the most catastrophic fall in black household wealth in history. We got health care for some instead of Medicare for All, the Patriot Act renewed instead of repealed, a race to privatize public education, drone wars and still more mass incarceration of black and brown people. And if President Obama gets his way, we may soon have a global job-destroying wage-lowering NAFTA on steroids, with the TTP and TTIP.

The sheepdog's job is to divert the energy and enthusiasm of activists a year, a year and a half out from a November election away from building an alternative to the Democratic party, and into his doomed effort. When the sheepdog inevitably folds in the late spring or early summer before a November election, there's no time remaining to win ballot access for alternative parties or candidates, no time to raise money or organize any effective challenge to the two capitalist parties.

At that point, with all the alternatives foreclosed, the narrative shifts to the familiar “lesser of two evils.” Every sheepdog candidate surrenders the shreds of his credibility to the Democratic nominee in time for the November election. This is how the Bernie Sanders show ends, as the left-leaning warm-up act for Hillary Clinton.

Intent on avoiding the two-party “lesser evil” trap this year, about two hundred activists gathered in Chicago last weekend to consider the future of electoral organizing outside the Democratic and Republican parties. Many of the participants were Greens, including former presidential and vice presidential candidates Jill Stein and Rosa Clemente, the former Green mayor of Richmond California, and many others. There were also representatives from Seattle, where Socialist Alternative's Kshama Sawant won election to Seattle's city council, as well as Angela Walker, a black socialist who received 67,000 votes for Milwaukee County sheriff in 2014, and many others, including some who took part in the recent Chicago mayoral election.

There was trans-partisan interest in a 50-state ballot access drive to put the Green Party's Jill Stein on the presidential ballot for 2016 presidential race. Currently the law keeps Greens and others off the ballot in more than half the states. Precise details vary according to state law, but if a third party candidate after obtaining one-time ballot access receives about 2% of total votes, a new ballot line is created, granting ballot access to any potential candidate from school board to sheriff to US congress who wants to run as something other than a Republican or Democrat. That, many participants agreed, would be a significant puncture in the legal thicket that now protects Democrats against competition on the ballot from their left. But a nationwide trans-partisan ballot access campaign to create a national alternative to the two capitalist parties is something left activists must begin serious work a good 18 months before a November election, essentially right now.

Whether or not a national ballot access campaign is undertaken by Greens and others, a Bernie Sanders candidacy is an invitation to do again what's been done in 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004 and 2008. Bernie's candidacy is a blast toward the past, an invitation to herd and be herded like sheep back into the Democratic fold, to fundraise and canvass and recruit and mobilize for Bernie, as he warms up the crowd for Hillary. Bernie is a sheepdog.

The question is, are we sheep?

____________
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a state committee member of the GA Green Party. He lives and works near Marietta GA and can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.