This is from a very important article that Mr. Michael Parenti published back in 1996:
Let us focus on just a small part of the immense brief that has been assembled by investigators. Consider the background of Lee Harvey Oswald. During the week of the thirtieth anniversary of the JFK assassination, one repeatedly heard on television that Oswald was an incompetent "loner" and not very bright. Gerald Posner, transforming himself into an instant psychiatric expert, announced that Oswald "had a very disturbed childhood, and he was a passive-aggressive." A passive-aggressive assassin? He was also repeatedly labeled a "loner" and a "leftist." The truth is something else.
Lee Harvey Oswald spent most of his adult life not as a lone drifter but directly linked to the U.S. intelligence community. All of his IQ tests show that he was above average in intelligence and a quick learner. At the age of eighteen in the U.S. Marines he had secret security clearance and was working at Marine Air Control in Atsugi Air Force Base in Japan, a top secret location from which the CIA launched U2 flights and performed other kinds of covert operations in China. The next year he was assigned to El Toro Air Station in California with security clearance to work radar.
Strange things began to happen. While at El Toro, Oswald emerged as a babbling Russophile and a "communist." He started playing Russian language records at blast level in his barracks and addressing his fellow Marines in Russian, calling them "comrade." He read Russian books and hailed Soviet Communism as "the best system in the world." If Oswald was a Soviet or a Cuban spy, as some people now claim, he certainly had a novel way of building a cover. Philip Melanson, author of Spy Saga, a book about Oswald's links to intelligence, reminds us that the U.S. Marine Corps in 1958 was not exactly a bastion of liberal tolerance and freethinking. But in this instance, for some strange reason, Oswald's Marine commanders did not seem to mind having a ranting commie sympathizer in their midst. He kept his security clearance and retained access to a wealth of sensitive radar information and classified data from secret facilities.
Other odd things happened. In February 1959, he failed the Marine Corps proficiency test in Russian. Six months later he had developed some fluency in that language. In 1974, a document classified by the Warren Commission--and dislodged mostly by Harold Weisberg's legal efforts--revealed that Oswald had attended the U.S. Army's School of Languages at Monterey. Monterey is not open to anyone who just happens to have a language hobby. One is sent by the government, for training in a specific language pertaining to a specific assignment. Oswald learned Russian at Monterey.
Another curious thing: Oswald applied for an early dependency discharge from the Marines because his mother had injured her foot--the accident had occurred a year earlier. He was released one week after putting in his request, a decision so swift as to astonish his fellow Marines.
Oswald then "defected" to the USSR, but how? Melanson notes that such a trip would have cost at least $1,500 in those days, but Oswald's bank account showed a balance of $203. And how did he get from London to Helsinki on October 11, 1959, when no available commercial flight could have made it in one day? He must have had some kind of private transportation to Helsinki.
Once in Russia, he went to the U.S. embassy and openly renounced his U.S. citizenship, declaring that he was going to give military secrets to the Soviets. Embassy officials made no effort to detain him. As the KGB files opened in 1991 show, the Soviets kept him under constant surveillance. KGB defector Yuri Nosenko, who had been responsible for investigating every contact Oswald made in the USSR, reported that the young American had never been associated with Soviet intelligence and that the KGB suspected he was connected with U.S. intelligence.
While in Russia Oswald belonged to a gun club at the factory in which he worked, though he showed no interest in guns. He reportedly used to join in rabbit shoots but could never score a hit. Someone would have to stand behind him and shoot the rabbit while he was firing. His performance became something of a joke among his co-workers. His marksmanship in the U.S. Marines had been no better.
U.S. intelligence mysteriously departed from normal procedure and made no damage assessment of Oswald's "defection," or so they claimed. Another odd thing: after two-and-a-half years, Oswald's sudden request to return to the United States was immediately granted by U.S. officials--all this after he had threatened to give away state secrets to the Soviets. Instead of being arrested for treason, Oswald was accepted with open arms by U.S. authorities.
The CIA claimed it had no record of debriefing him and was never near him. Their explanation before the Warren Commission was that there were so many tourists coming in and out and there was nothing particularly unusual about Oswald that would have caught their attention. One might wonder what was needed to catch the CIA's attention.
Yet, CIA officials claimed they had suspected all along that he was a Soviet spy--which makes it even more curious that they did not debrief him. In fact, they did debrief him in Holland. But being so eager to cover up any association with Oswald, they could not recognize how in this instance the truth would have been a less suspicious cover than the improbable lie they told about never noticing his return.
State Department officials also behaved strangely. They paid all travel and moving expenses back to the United States for Oswald and his wife. Without a moment's delay they gave him back his passport with full rights to travel anywhere in the world. Another curious thing: his wife was exempted from the usual immigration quotas and granted immediate entry. Years before she had belonged to the Soviet Komsomol, the Communist youth organization, which automatically would have barred her from the United States. Yet in violation of U.S. immigration laws, she was allowed into the country.
In Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald settled under the wing of White Russian emigré and former cavalry officer George de Mohrenschildt, an associate of oil millionaires H. L. Hunt and Clint Murchinson and other Dallas economic elites. In de Mohrenschildt's telephone book was found the name of George "Pappy" Bush. A correspondence existed between Bush and de Mohrenschildt indicating that they were personal acquaintances.
De Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne were identified by the Warren Commission as the people closest to Oswald just before the assassination. An investigator for the House Select Committee, Gaeton Fonzi, noted, "Given his background, it seemed strange that de Mohrenschildt would have spontaneously befriended someone with the look of a working-class drifter like Lee Harvey Oswald." That was not the only strange thing about de Mohrenschildt. He also was part of a network of ex-Nazis contracted by the CIA.
A CIA memorandum written not long after Oswald returned from Russia advised de Mohrenschildt on how to handle the young "defector." De Mohrenschildt also had a close friendship with J. Walter Moore, who was an agent of the CIA's Domestic Contacts Division. As de Mohrenschildt told one investigator just before his sudden death, it was Moore who encouraged him to see Oswald. Investigator Jim Marrs observes in his book Crossfire: "The CIA memos, Moore's closeness, and de Mohrenschildt's own testimony all confirm that a certain relationship existed between the CIA and the man closest to Oswald in early 1963. While this does not necessarily involve the Agency in a plot to kill Kennedy, it raises questions about what Agency officials might have known regarding such a plot."
Oswald embarked on a series of short-lived public forays as a "leftist." He started a one-person Fair Play for Cuba chapter in New Orleans, without ever bothering to recruit another member. He never met with a single member of the Communist Party or any other left organization, although he wrote friendly letters to the Communist Party and to the Socialist Workers Party--two groups that were not even talking to each other--supposedly asking for instructions. Again, all this was a novel way for a Soviet agent and would-be assassin to act.
He blazed a highly visible trail as a "leftist" agitator: managing to get exposure on local T.V. in New Orleans after getting involved in some fistfights while leafleting. One of the leaflets he distributed showed that his organization was on Camp Street in the very same building that a former FBI bureau chief, Guy Banister, had his office. Banister retained close working relations with emigré Cuban right-wing groups and with Lee Harvey Oswald.
When he wasn't playing the communist agitator, Oswald spent most of his time with rabid anti-communists, including emigré Cubans and CIA operatives. Besides Banister and de Mohrenschildt, there was David Ferrie. (In his book First Hand Knowledge, Robert Morrow, a conservative businessman and CIA operative, tells how he served as a pilot on CIA missions with Ferrie.) Oswald also knew businessman Clay Shaw who was CIA, as later confirmed by the agency's director Richard Helms. These were hardly the sort of friends we would expect for a loudmouthed "Marxist revolutionary" just returned from giving away classified secrets in the USSR.
The attorney general of Texas, Waggoner Carr, told the Warren Commission that Oswald was an FBI informant or contract agent, with assigned number S-172 or S-179. For his services, Oswald was paid two hundred dollars a month by the FBI. Orest Pena, a Cuban emigré and FBI informant, told Mark Lane that Oswald worked for the FBI and met with FBI personnel from time to time.
If not paid by security agencies, how did Oswald support himself during his forays into New Orleans and Dallas? He was employed for a brief time in 1962 by a printing company in Dallas that specialized in highly classified government work, including the making of secret maps of the Soviet Union for U.S. Army Intelligence--again hardly the sort of job to assign an openly Russophilic communist agitator. Oswald's overall employment record and income sources remain something of a mystery. To this day, the government refuses to release his tax returns, with no explanation as to what issue of national security is at stake.
We are asked to believe that Oswald just happened to get a job at the Texas School Book Depository five weeks before the assassination, when it had not yet been publicized that Kennedy's limousine was going to pass in front of that building. In fact, George de Morenschildt got him the job.
We are asked to believe that Oswald, who could not hit the side of a barn, chose a Mannlicher-Carcano to kill the president, a cheap, poor performance Italian rifle that the Italians said never killed anyone on purpose and caused them to lose World War II. Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade initially announced that the murder weapon was a German Mauser. Later informed that Oswald owned a Manlincher-Carcano, Wade declared that the murder weapon was an "Italian carbine."
We are asked to believe that Oswald would forgo shooting President Kennedy when he had a perfect target of him as he rode right down Houston Street directly toward the Texas School Book Depository. Instead he supposedly waited until the car had turned down Elm Street and was a half-block away. With the President's head and shoulders barely visible through a tree, Oswald supposedly fired rapidly, getting off three shots in record time, one missing the limousine by twenty-five feet and the other two hitting their target with devastating accuracy and record rapid succession, a feat the best marksmen in the country found impossible to emulate even after much practice and after the sights on the Mannlicher-Carcano were properly reset in a laboratory.
We are asked to believe that Oswald then left his rifle at the window, complete with a perfect palm print and, they now say, his fingerprints (but no fingerprints on the clip or handloaded cartridges), along with three spent shells placed on the floor neatly in a row, in a manner no spent shells would fall.
We are asked to believe that a bullet would go through John Kennedy, pause in mid-air, change direction, and wound Governor Connally in several places--something Connally never believed--and reappear perfectly intact wedged into the flap of a stretcher in Parkland Hospital, supposedly having fallen out of Connally's body but obviously pushed into the flap by hand.
We are asked to believe that only three shots were fired when in fact six bullets were noted: one that entered the president's throat and remained in his body; the second extracted from Governor Connally's thigh; a third discovered on the stretcher; a fourth found in fragments in the limousine; a fifth that missed the president's car by a wide margin, hitting the curb according to several witnesses, and wounding onlooker James Thomas Tague on his face; a sixth found in the grass by Dallas police directly across from where the president's vehicle had passed.
The Secret Service took possession of the presidential limousine, ignored reports in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (12/1/63) that there was a bullet hole in the windshield, and rejected all requests to inspect the vehicle. We are asked to believe that the inside of limousine, a trove of physical evidence, was then quickly torn out and rebuilt, with no thought of covering up anything.
We are asked to believe that Kennedy's autopsy was innocently botched and his brain just accidentally disappeared. The X-ray purporting to be Kennedy's head now shows a rear entry wound, different from the rear exit wound all the pathologists saw. Someone cropped the jaw out of the picture, so there is no opportunity to determine by dental identification if the X-ray really is the president's.
We are asked by people like Max Holland, writing in the Nation, to believe that the "infamous picture of Oswald posing with rifle in hand" is not a forgery. Actually there are two pictures, both proven composites, with bodies of different sizes but with the identical head that matches neither body, and with shadows going in incongruous directions. Who fabricated these photos?
"The lone leftist assassin" Oswald was a friend of Jack Ruby, a gangster with links to Cuban exiles and the FBI. Ruby once worked for Congressman Richard Nixon and the House Un-American Activities Committee in Chicago when his name was still Jack Rubenstein. He also worked for the FBI in Dallas during the years before the JFK assassination. Ruby claimed he was just an ordinary private citizen, moved to kill Oswald in order to avenge the suffering Oswald had inflicted upon the Kennedy family.
While in prison Ruby pleaded with the Warren Commission to be taken to Washington where he could tell the whole story. He feared for his life and claimed "they are killing me here." Indeed, he died in jail, supposedly of natural causes.
We are asked to believe that when twenty-four persons who had information related to the case met violent deaths, this was a colossal coincidence. In 1978, after the House Select Committee investigation got underway, Anthony Summers records that another sixteen connected to the case died violently. This too supposedly was just a coincidence. This latter group included George de Mohrenschildt, killed by a gun blast to the head three hours after a House Assassinations Committee Investigator had tried to contact him. De Mohrenschildt had been worried that he would be murdered. His daughter Kressy Keardon believes it "impossible" that he shot himself. The sheriff's office in Palm County, Florida, found the shooting "very strange." But it was ruled a suicide. Generally, people who voice fears that they might be killed do not then kill themselves.
William Sullivan, number three man in the FBI, was secretly on the CIA payroll, according to CIA operative Robert Morrow. He was scheduled to appear before the House Select Committee but before he could do so, he was shot outside his home by a man who claimed to have mistaken him for a deer. The killer was charged with a misdemeanor and released in custody of his father, a state policeman.
So many lies are told and so few ever try to counter them. Mr. Parenti is a hero.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Friday, April 17, 2020. Biden Bullies are getting desperate in their attempts to silence and ignore Tara Reade.
Joseph Kishore is running for the presidency of the United States. He is representing the SEP. At WSWS, he notes:
In the days after formally ending his campaign and endorsing Joe Biden, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has intensified his efforts to dragoon his supporters into backing the right-wing standard bearer of the Democratic Party establishment.
In an interview with the Associated Press published on Tuesday, Sanders slandered as “irresponsible” any of his supporters who do not campaign for Biden. “Do we be as active as we can in electing Joe Biden and doing everything we can to move Joe and his campaign in a more progressive direction?” he asked. “Or do we choose to sit out and allow the most dangerous president in modern American history to get reelected?”
There is widespread anger and opposition among workers and youth to Sanders’ craven capitulation to Biden in a livestreamed eventon Monday. Sanders’ response is to declare: “I believe that it’s irresponsible for anybody to say, ‘Well, I disagree with Joe Biden—I disagree with Joe Biden!—and therefore I’m not going to be involved.’”
As he did in 2016, but now under much more explosive social and political conditions, Sanders is exchanging his “political revolution against the establishment” for the thin gruel of “lesser evil” politics.
A few points in reply to Senator Sanders.
First, support for Biden means support for the social interests that he represents and the program that he is advancing. Biden, who was first elected to the US Senate from the state of Delaware in 1972, has spent nearly four decades as a faithful servant of the ruling class. He has an extensive record of support for war, austerity, capital punishment, and mass incarceration.
The present catastrophe caused by the coronavirus pandemic is the consequence of policies pursued by the ruling class and its representatives, Democratic and Republican alike, for decades, with Biden playing a critical role. Endless resources have been funneled into the stock markets and the military, while social infrastructure has been dismantled and inequality driven to record highs.
As a member and then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden was one of the principal proponents of the US bombing of Yugoslavia (1999) under Clinton, and the US invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) under Bush. He voted for the Patriot Act and the expansion of illegal domestic spying after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, boasting that the legislation was modeled off a bill he had drafted in 1995.
Biden also voted for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a milestone in the deregulation of the banks, vastly increasing the ability of giant financial institutions to engage in speculation and plunder. In 2005, Biden aggressively campaigned for the overhaul of consumer bankruptcy laws, making it much harder for working class families to escape debt burdens.
As vice president under Obama, Biden oversaw the bailout of the banks in 2008-09 as well as the wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen. This was in addition to the continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the vast expansion of drone assassinations as an instrument of US foreign policy.
Amidst all of this, nothing was done to prepare for a pandemic, despite repeated warnings from scientists and epidemiologists. The Democrats, no less than the Republicans, are responsible for the destruction of health care infrastructure and the criminal lack of stockpiles of ventilators, face masks and other critical equipment.
No wonder Bernie lost. What a loser. What an idiot and fool. No one worshiped Bernie. Those who supported him were supporting him because of the issues. Now with Joe Biden doing nothing to address issues such as Medicare For All or ending endless wars, Bernie comes along to hector. No one cares. He's a betrayer and he has no one to 'command.' The notion that he can lead sailed long ago and everyone knows he endorsed a man accused of rape. Yes, on CBS NEWS, he did note that Tara needs to be heard.
But apparently, she doesn't need to be heard before Bernie endorses Joe.
Tara spoke out weeks ago. Asked by CBS NEWS, Bernie has no opinion and states he doesn't know enough to weigh the accusation. So a man is accused of rape and Bernie doesn't know whether the allegation is accurate or not? Wasn't he required to make some sort of determination before endorsing Joe?
And does he get how offensive and out of it he looks when he says Tara deserves to be heard but -- by golly, by gum -- everyone better fall in line behind Joe Biden.
Sorry, Bernie, some of us care about issues like rape. By that, I don't mean some of us write rape fantasies down and publish them the way Bernie did, I mean that some of us believe you take a firm stand in support of survivors or nothing ever changes.
I'm also getting tired of the bully boys insisting that we must vote for Joe Biden -- you must do what you must do, you can't tell anyone what they must do -- and we have to because, well, look at Donald Trump. They want you to know that families are being destroyed by Donald separating families via his deportation policies.
Donald still hasn't deported as many people in his time as president as Barack Obama did at the same time in his presidency. There's a reason Barack was dubbed "the deporter in chief." I'm sorry that so many whores think we're going to be tricked and conned.
But let's set the deportation issue aside.
Families destroyed under Trump so we need Biden?
Barack and Joe bombed Muslims repeatedly.
What the you-must-vote-for-Joe group is really saying is: We need a president who kills people but does so over there, away from home, so we can pretend it's not happening.
That's what so many disgusting people have done, ignoring The Drone War, ignoring everything.
A Ruth Marcus is a disgusting, middle-aged to elderly type person who has accepted a world in which corruption and murder are the norm and they are carried out by whomever occupies the Oval Office. She's a tired hag who whored out any sense of responsibility long ago and wants to whore everyone else out.
But everyone else isn't an empty shell or waiting to take orders from bullies.
In an editorial, THE COLLEGIAN notes:
It's Michigan's oldest college newspaper and, as we've repeatedly noted over the last weeks, college newspapers have led on the Tara Reade story. There's a reason for that. They're not dead inside like Ruth Marcus. They didn't sell or whore their souls years ago. They still have integrity and the belief in a better world.
That's what the Ruth Marcus-Joan Walsh-Jessie Valenti-Michelle Goldberg crowd never gets. They didn't get in 2016 and they don't get it now. They don't speak to college students, they have no idea what's going on. In March, we had to move our talks to online encounters but we're still speaking to groups -- including college students -- and the Tara Reade issues is not going away. No matter how many paid whores show up to try to dismiss it.
Let's note another student paper, Boston's THE DAILY FREE PRESS, where Gabriella Aponte observes:
Dear mainstream media, are you playing favorites?
Let’s be clear. The media was absolutely right to report and verify the allegations against Kavanaugh and Trump and anyone else accused of raping and assaulting innocent women.
The problem, here, is that the mainstream media seems to have a way of prioritizing certain victims over others. Ford’s allegations instantaneously dominated the headlines for weeks, but what about Reade?
Reade’s allegations have barely made a dent in the news cycle and even the Time’s Up organization, formed to aid women in this kind of situation, wouldn’t help her. Time’s Up reportedly turned Reade away, not for a lack of evidence, but because she was accusing a public official, something that could impact the nonprofit’s tax-exempt status.
Once Reade was finally able to come forward with her full story, it took 19 days for the mainstream media to report on it. And when they did, they made it very clear whose side they were really on.
In its article entitled “Examining Tara Reade’s Sexual Assault Allegation Against Joe Biden,” The New York Times reported they “found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.” The Times later deleted that portion of the paragraph, admittedly at the request of the Biden campaign.
Did they delete or edit any portion of their story at Reade’s request? No, I didn’t think so.
If that sly edit doesn’t convince you of favorable bias towards the Biden camp, just take a look at the article’s subheading.
“Ms. Reade, a former Senate aide, has accused Mr. Biden of assaulting her in 1993 and says she told others about it. A Biden spokeswoman said the allegation is false, and former Senate office staff members do not recall such an incident,” it reads.
Why would former staff members recall an incident they were never party to or never told about? Reade never claimed to tell those specific staffers about the incident and she admits there were no eyewitnesses to the assault. So why include this information — information that proves absolutely nothing — in the subheading, if not to undermine Reade’s story from the get-go?
Ruth Marcus and her unethical kindred have no idea of the conversations taking place across this country. Let's go back to the corporate media. At REAL CLEAR POLITICS, Mark Hemingway takes on NYT's Dean Baquet:
Of the press attacks on Tara Reade, Carl Beijer argues:
In January, various members of Iraq's government were condemning foreign interference in Iraq. For some of the flakes in the US, it was time for applause. They took off from screaming that war on Iran was going to start in days -- still hasn't, by the way -- to applaud this condemnation of the US presence in Iraq. What they chose to ignore was that it was not just the US. Many politicians in Iraq were echoing what the protesters had been saying for weeks, that Iran also needed to stop interfering in Iraq. Is that part of the message why CodeStink, Margaret Kimberley and so many others elected to ignore the brave protesters who risked death and injury on a daily basis?
At any rate, Iraq's national sovereignty has long been undermined and it goes beyond just the US and Iran to include others -- like Turkey. Nouri al-Maliki was in his first term as prime minister -- that's how long this has been going on -- when he slammed Turkey for bombing northern Iraq. These bombings continue and they have expanded to also include Turkish troops on the ground in Iraq.
AP notes:
Turkish airstrikes targeting members of an outlawed Kurdish rebel group struck a refugee camp in northern Iraq and killed two refugee women, Iraqi authorities said Thursday.
The strikes, which took place Wednesday, were a violation of Iraq's sovereignty, Iraq's Foreign Affairs Ministry said.
The strikes on the Makhmour refugee camp were carried out by a Turkish military drone that was detected by Iraq's air defense, a statement from the ministry said. It expressed "condemnation in the strongest possible terms over these Turkish attacks" and said they also "constituted a serious violation of international humanitarian law."
Two refugee women dead because the government of Turkey thinks they can act as terrorists and bomb northern Iraq. They always insist that they are battling the PKK -- they insist this as they kill and wound civilians.
The PKK is one of many Kurdish groups which supports and fights for a Kurdish homeland. Aaron Hess (International Socialist Review) described them in 2008, "The PKK emerged in 1984 as a major force in response to Turkey's oppression of its Kurdish population. Since the late 1970s, Turkey has waged a relentless war of attrition that has killed tens of thousands of Kurds and driven millions from their homes. The Kurds are the world's largest stateless population -- whose main population concentration straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria -- and have been the victims of imperialist wars and manipulation since the colonial period. While Turkey has granted limited rights to the Kurds in recent years in order to accommodate the European Union, which it seeks to join, even these are now at risk." The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq has been a concern to Turkey because they fear that if it ever moves from semi-autonomous to fully independent -- such as if Iraq was to break up into three regions -- then that would encourage the Kurdish population in Turkey. For that reason, Turkey is overly interested in all things Iraq. So much so that they signed an agreement with the US government in 2007 to share intelligence which the Turkish military has been using when launching bomb raids. However, this has not prevented the loss of civilian life in northern Iraq. Aaron Hess noted, "The Turkish establishment sees growing Kurdish power in Iraq as one step down the road to a mass separatist movement of Kurds within Turkey itself, fighting to unify a greater Kurdistan. In late October 2007, Turkey's daily newspaper Hurriyet accused the prime minister of the KRG, Massoud Barzani, of turning the 'Kurdish dream' into a 'Turkish nightmare'."
The following sites updated:
Joseph Kishore is running for the presidency of the United States. He is representing the SEP. At WSWS, he notes:
In the days after formally ending his campaign and endorsing Joe Biden, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has intensified his efforts to dragoon his supporters into backing the right-wing standard bearer of the Democratic Party establishment.
In an interview with the Associated Press published on Tuesday, Sanders slandered as “irresponsible” any of his supporters who do not campaign for Biden. “Do we be as active as we can in electing Joe Biden and doing everything we can to move Joe and his campaign in a more progressive direction?” he asked. “Or do we choose to sit out and allow the most dangerous president in modern American history to get reelected?”
There is widespread anger and opposition among workers and youth to Sanders’ craven capitulation to Biden in a livestreamed eventon Monday. Sanders’ response is to declare: “I believe that it’s irresponsible for anybody to say, ‘Well, I disagree with Joe Biden—I disagree with Joe Biden!—and therefore I’m not going to be involved.’”
As he did in 2016, but now under much more explosive social and political conditions, Sanders is exchanging his “political revolution against the establishment” for the thin gruel of “lesser evil” politics.
A few points in reply to Senator Sanders.
First, support for Biden means support for the social interests that he represents and the program that he is advancing. Biden, who was first elected to the US Senate from the state of Delaware in 1972, has spent nearly four decades as a faithful servant of the ruling class. He has an extensive record of support for war, austerity, capital punishment, and mass incarceration.
The present catastrophe caused by the coronavirus pandemic is the consequence of policies pursued by the ruling class and its representatives, Democratic and Republican alike, for decades, with Biden playing a critical role. Endless resources have been funneled into the stock markets and the military, while social infrastructure has been dismantled and inequality driven to record highs.
As a member and then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden was one of the principal proponents of the US bombing of Yugoslavia (1999) under Clinton, and the US invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) under Bush. He voted for the Patriot Act and the expansion of illegal domestic spying after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, boasting that the legislation was modeled off a bill he had drafted in 1995.
Biden also voted for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a milestone in the deregulation of the banks, vastly increasing the ability of giant financial institutions to engage in speculation and plunder. In 2005, Biden aggressively campaigned for the overhaul of consumer bankruptcy laws, making it much harder for working class families to escape debt burdens.
As vice president under Obama, Biden oversaw the bailout of the banks in 2008-09 as well as the wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen. This was in addition to the continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the vast expansion of drone assassinations as an instrument of US foreign policy.
Amidst all of this, nothing was done to prepare for a pandemic, despite repeated warnings from scientists and epidemiologists. The Democrats, no less than the Republicans, are responsible for the destruction of health care infrastructure and the criminal lack of stockpiles of ventilators, face masks and other critical equipment.
No wonder Bernie lost. What a loser. What an idiot and fool. No one worshiped Bernie. Those who supported him were supporting him because of the issues. Now with Joe Biden doing nothing to address issues such as Medicare For All or ending endless wars, Bernie comes along to hector. No one cares. He's a betrayer and he has no one to 'command.' The notion that he can lead sailed long ago and everyone knows he endorsed a man accused of rape. Yes, on CBS NEWS, he did note that Tara needs to be heard.
But apparently, she doesn't need to be heard before Bernie endorses Joe.
Tara spoke out weeks ago. Asked by CBS NEWS, Bernie has no opinion and states he doesn't know enough to weigh the accusation. So a man is accused of rape and Bernie doesn't know whether the allegation is accurate or not? Wasn't he required to make some sort of determination before endorsing Joe?
And does he get how offensive and out of it he looks when he says Tara deserves to be heard but -- by golly, by gum -- everyone better fall in line behind Joe Biden.
Sorry, Bernie, some of us care about issues like rape. By that, I don't mean some of us write rape fantasies down and publish them the way Bernie did, I mean that some of us believe you take a firm stand in support of survivors or nothing ever changes.
I'm also getting tired of the bully boys insisting that we must vote for Joe Biden -- you must do what you must do, you can't tell anyone what they must do -- and we have to because, well, look at Donald Trump. They want you to know that families are being destroyed by Donald separating families via his deportation policies.
Donald still hasn't deported as many people in his time as president as Barack Obama did at the same time in his presidency. There's a reason Barack was dubbed "the deporter in chief." I'm sorry that so many whores think we're going to be tricked and conned.
But let's set the deportation issue aside.
Families destroyed under Trump so we need Biden?
Barack and Joe bombed Muslims repeatedly.
What the you-must-vote-for-Joe group is really saying is: We need a president who kills people but does so over there, away from home, so we can pretend it's not happening.
That's what so many disgusting people have done, ignoring The Drone War, ignoring everything.
A Ruth Marcus is a disgusting, middle-aged to elderly type person who has accepted a world in which corruption and murder are the norm and they are carried out by whomever occupies the Oval Office. She's a tired hag who whored out any sense of responsibility long ago and wants to whore everyone else out.
But everyone else isn't an empty shell or waiting to take orders from bullies.
In an editorial, THE COLLEGIAN notes:
When The
New York Times finally did report Reade’s allegations on April 12, the
paper tweeted this: “We found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Biden,
beyond hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them
uncomfortable.” But they quickly edited the sentence, removing “beyond
hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them
uncomfortable,” because the Biden campaign told them to do so.
Any individual who is accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. But these cases — just like those of Blasey Ford, Ramirez, and Swetnick — should be respected, taken seriously, and investigated properly.
Last April, eight women, including Reade, publicly claimed that Biden assaulted them. But then, and now, the media has remained mostly silent.
In a Q&A, New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet said that the paper’s reporting on Kavanaugh was different than their treatment of Biden because Kavanaugh “was already in the public forum in a large way.”
Right, because being a presidential candidate, former vice president, and former senator is not “in the public forum in a large way.”
The media is choosing to silence Reade and protect Biden.
Maybe Biden and his supporters in the media should take his own advice: When a woman alleges sexual assault, presume she is telling the truth. If we’re going to #BelieveAllWomen, let’s believe Lucy Flores, Amy Lappos, D.J. Hill, Cailtyn Caruso, Ally Coll, Sofie Karasek, Vail Kohnert-Yount, and Tara Reade.
Any individual who is accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. But these cases — just like those of Blasey Ford, Ramirez, and Swetnick — should be respected, taken seriously, and investigated properly.
Last April, eight women, including Reade, publicly claimed that Biden assaulted them. But then, and now, the media has remained mostly silent.
In a Q&A, New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet said that the paper’s reporting on Kavanaugh was different than their treatment of Biden because Kavanaugh “was already in the public forum in a large way.”
Right, because being a presidential candidate, former vice president, and former senator is not “in the public forum in a large way.”
The media is choosing to silence Reade and protect Biden.
Maybe Biden and his supporters in the media should take his own advice: When a woman alleges sexual assault, presume she is telling the truth. If we’re going to #BelieveAllWomen, let’s believe Lucy Flores, Amy Lappos, D.J. Hill, Cailtyn Caruso, Ally Coll, Sofie Karasek, Vail Kohnert-Yount, and Tara Reade.
It's Michigan's oldest college newspaper and, as we've repeatedly noted over the last weeks, college newspapers have led on the Tara Reade story. There's a reason for that. They're not dead inside like Ruth Marcus. They didn't sell or whore their souls years ago. They still have integrity and the belief in a better world.
That's what the Ruth Marcus-Joan Walsh-Jessie Valenti-Michelle Goldberg crowd never gets. They didn't get in 2016 and they don't get it now. They don't speak to college students, they have no idea what's going on. In March, we had to move our talks to online encounters but we're still speaking to groups -- including college students -- and the Tara Reade issues is not going away. No matter how many paid whores show up to try to dismiss it.
Let's note another student paper, Boston's THE DAILY FREE PRESS, where Gabriella Aponte observes:
Dear mainstream media, are you playing favorites?
Let’s be clear. The media was absolutely right to report and verify the allegations against Kavanaugh and Trump and anyone else accused of raping and assaulting innocent women.
The problem, here, is that the mainstream media seems to have a way of prioritizing certain victims over others. Ford’s allegations instantaneously dominated the headlines for weeks, but what about Reade?
Reade’s allegations have barely made a dent in the news cycle and even the Time’s Up organization, formed to aid women in this kind of situation, wouldn’t help her. Time’s Up reportedly turned Reade away, not for a lack of evidence, but because she was accusing a public official, something that could impact the nonprofit’s tax-exempt status.
Once Reade was finally able to come forward with her full story, it took 19 days for the mainstream media to report on it. And when they did, they made it very clear whose side they were really on.
In its article entitled “Examining Tara Reade’s Sexual Assault Allegation Against Joe Biden,” The New York Times reported they “found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.” The Times later deleted that portion of the paragraph, admittedly at the request of the Biden campaign.
Did they delete or edit any portion of their story at Reade’s request? No, I didn’t think so.
If that sly edit doesn’t convince you of favorable bias towards the Biden camp, just take a look at the article’s subheading.
“Ms. Reade, a former Senate aide, has accused Mr. Biden of assaulting her in 1993 and says she told others about it. A Biden spokeswoman said the allegation is false, and former Senate office staff members do not recall such an incident,” it reads.
Why would former staff members recall an incident they were never party to or never told about? Reade never claimed to tell those specific staffers about the incident and she admits there were no eyewitnesses to the assault. So why include this information — information that proves absolutely nothing — in the subheading, if not to undermine Reade’s story from the get-go?
Ruth Marcus and her unethical kindred have no idea of the conversations taking place across this country. Let's go back to the corporate media. At REAL CLEAR POLITICS, Mark Hemingway takes on NYT's Dean Baquet:
The allegations have been all over the Internet since March 25. Tara
Reade, who worked for Biden when he was a senator, alleges in 1993 Biden
pushed her up against a wall and digitally penetrated her without her
consent, while telling her, “Come on man, I thought you liked me.”
To address the growing criticism that the Times sat on the story for political reasons, the Times also published an interview with Baquet under the headline: “The Times Took 19 Days to Report an Accusation Against Biden. Here’s Why.” The headline promised an explanation, but the only thing the story delivered was humiliation for Baquet and his newspaper.
The Times’ recently hired media critic, former BuzzFeed Editor Ben Smith, asked Baquet some obvious questions about the paper’s coverage, including why the paper never hesitated to report on the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Here’s Baquet’s answer to that question in full:
His further equivocating didn’t help. Baquet stated that “Kavanaugh’s status as a Supreme Court justice was in question because of a very serious allegation.” But what constitutes a serious allegation when it comes to sexual assault? By almost any standard, Reade’s accusations against Biden are far more “serious,” not to mention more credible, than the accusations brought against Kavanaugh just a year and a half ago. For instance, no one disputes that Reade worked for Biden and had some contact with him. To this day, no one has presented any outside evidence Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, ever even met.
The four witnesses Blasey Ford named as being present at the party where Kavanaugh allegedly tried to assault her all refused to corroborate her story. Yet, The Washington Post, lacking any corroboration, rushed to print with Blasey Ford’s accusations, touching off a national firestorm.
The Times, at Baquet’s direction, quickly joined the frenzy. In the
interview on the Biden accusations, Ben Smith specifically asked Baquet
to justify the Times’ treatment of Kavanaugh. To his credit, Smith noted
that the Times also regurgitated additional -- and truly absurd --
claims that as a young man Kavanaugh had regularly participated in
suburban gang rape parties.
These lurid tales were spun by Julie Swetnick, who has history of being party to dubious lawsuits, and her now-disbarred lawyer Michael Avenatti, who at the time had been accused of numerous instances of fraud and has since been convicted of extortion. Yet, the Times reported the Swetnick allegations the same day they were made, even though their report noted “none of Ms. Swetnick’s claims could be independently corroborated.”
Baquet is probably correct when he asserted, “If you ask the average person in America, they didn’t know about the Tara Reade case.” But why is that? Although her allegations were aired extensively by conservative media and among the Bernie Sanders-supporting left, for weeks there was a near total blackout of the story by the legacy media, including the Times.
As the Washington Free Beacon recently noted, “Joe Biden has been asked 81 questions in over two hours' worth of media interviews since a former staffer in his U.S. Senate office accused him of sexual assault three weeks ago. He hasn't fielded a single question about the allegation.” If the average person doesn’t know about Reade’s allegations, it’s because gatekeepers such as Dean Baquet chose not to inform them.
To address the growing criticism that the Times sat on the story for political reasons, the Times also published an interview with Baquet under the headline: “The Times Took 19 Days to Report an Accusation Against Biden. Here’s Why.” The headline promised an explanation, but the only thing the story delivered was humiliation for Baquet and his newspaper.
The Times’ recently hired media critic, former BuzzFeed Editor Ben Smith, asked Baquet some obvious questions about the paper’s coverage, including why the paper never hesitated to report on the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Here’s Baquet’s answer to that question in full:
"Kavanaugh was already in a public forum in a large way. Kavanaugh’s status as a Supreme Court justice was in question because of a very serious allegation. And when I say in a public way, I don’t mean in the public way of Tara Reade’s. If you ask the average person in America, they didn’t know about the Tara Reade case. So I thought in that case, if The New York Times was going to introduce this to readers, we needed to introduce it with some reporting and perspective. Kavanaugh was in a very different situation. It was a live, ongoing story that had become the biggest political story in the country. It was just a different news judgment moment."The executive editor of the of the New York Times is actually arguing that Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination meant he was already subject to scrutiny, but Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is not a “public forum in a large way.” This is absurd.
His further equivocating didn’t help. Baquet stated that “Kavanaugh’s status as a Supreme Court justice was in question because of a very serious allegation.” But what constitutes a serious allegation when it comes to sexual assault? By almost any standard, Reade’s accusations against Biden are far more “serious,” not to mention more credible, than the accusations brought against Kavanaugh just a year and a half ago. For instance, no one disputes that Reade worked for Biden and had some contact with him. To this day, no one has presented any outside evidence Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, ever even met.
The four witnesses Blasey Ford named as being present at the party where Kavanaugh allegedly tried to assault her all refused to corroborate her story. Yet, The Washington Post, lacking any corroboration, rushed to print with Blasey Ford’s accusations, touching off a national firestorm.
These lurid tales were spun by Julie Swetnick, who has history of being party to dubious lawsuits, and her now-disbarred lawyer Michael Avenatti, who at the time had been accused of numerous instances of fraud and has since been convicted of extortion. Yet, the Times reported the Swetnick allegations the same day they were made, even though their report noted “none of Ms. Swetnick’s claims could be independently corroborated.”
Baquet is probably correct when he asserted, “If you ask the average person in America, they didn’t know about the Tara Reade case.” But why is that? Although her allegations were aired extensively by conservative media and among the Bernie Sanders-supporting left, for weeks there was a near total blackout of the story by the legacy media, including the Times.
As the Washington Free Beacon recently noted, “Joe Biden has been asked 81 questions in over two hours' worth of media interviews since a former staffer in his U.S. Senate office accused him of sexual assault three weeks ago. He hasn't fielded a single question about the allegation.” If the average person doesn’t know about Reade’s allegations, it’s because gatekeepers such as Dean Baquet chose not to inform them.
Of the press attacks on Tara Reade, Carl Beijer argues:
It’s at least worth noting, I think, how the Biden campaign has been working behind the scenes to
shape media coverage of the allegation. It’s worth noting how the last
few weeks of silence from these pundits could be read, to the cynical,
as a comms team saying “now’s not the right time” or “let’s see if this
blows over.” It’s worth noting how the timing of these articles,
released one after the other over three days starting on Monday, look a
whole lot like a messaging rollout. It’s worth noting that in 2016, Jessica Valenti was caught coordinating her coverage with the Clinton campaign, while Goldberg flat-out admitted it.
And it’s worth noting, in passing, how all three pieces are curiously
on-message: “we can’t know for sure what happened, but many of the
critics have bad motives, and [Valenti and Walsh assure us] we’ll vote
for Biden regardless.”
To my eye, the timing, the
messaging, and the actors all make this look a whole lot like a comms
operation — particularly since we know that Biden’s team has been working to shape the coverage.
In January, various members of Iraq's government were condemning foreign interference in Iraq. For some of the flakes in the US, it was time for applause. They took off from screaming that war on Iran was going to start in days -- still hasn't, by the way -- to applaud this condemnation of the US presence in Iraq. What they chose to ignore was that it was not just the US. Many politicians in Iraq were echoing what the protesters had been saying for weeks, that Iran also needed to stop interfering in Iraq. Is that part of the message why CodeStink, Margaret Kimberley and so many others elected to ignore the brave protesters who risked death and injury on a daily basis?
At any rate, Iraq's national sovereignty has long been undermined and it goes beyond just the US and Iran to include others -- like Turkey. Nouri al-Maliki was in his first term as prime minister -- that's how long this has been going on -- when he slammed Turkey for bombing northern Iraq. These bombings continue and they have expanded to also include Turkish troops on the ground in Iraq.
AP notes:
Turkish airstrikes targeting members of an outlawed Kurdish rebel group struck a refugee camp in northern Iraq and killed two refugee women, Iraqi authorities said Thursday.
The strikes, which took place Wednesday, were a violation of Iraq's sovereignty, Iraq's Foreign Affairs Ministry said.
The strikes on the Makhmour refugee camp were carried out by a Turkish military drone that was detected by Iraq's air defense, a statement from the ministry said. It expressed "condemnation in the strongest possible terms over these Turkish attacks" and said they also "constituted a serious violation of international humanitarian law."
Two refugee women dead because the government of Turkey thinks they can act as terrorists and bomb northern Iraq. They always insist that they are battling the PKK -- they insist this as they kill and wound civilians.
The PKK is one of many Kurdish groups which supports and fights for a Kurdish homeland. Aaron Hess (International Socialist Review) described them in 2008, "The PKK emerged in 1984 as a major force in response to Turkey's oppression of its Kurdish population. Since the late 1970s, Turkey has waged a relentless war of attrition that has killed tens of thousands of Kurds and driven millions from their homes. The Kurds are the world's largest stateless population -- whose main population concentration straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria -- and have been the victims of imperialist wars and manipulation since the colonial period. While Turkey has granted limited rights to the Kurds in recent years in order to accommodate the European Union, which it seeks to join, even these are now at risk." The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq has been a concern to Turkey because they fear that if it ever moves from semi-autonomous to fully independent -- such as if Iraq was to break up into three regions -- then that would encourage the Kurdish population in Turkey. For that reason, Turkey is overly interested in all things Iraq. So much so that they signed an agreement with the US government in 2007 to share intelligence which the Turkish military has been using when launching bomb raids. However, this has not prevented the loss of civilian life in northern Iraq. Aaron Hess noted, "The Turkish establishment sees growing Kurdish power in Iraq as one step down the road to a mass separatist movement of Kurds within Turkey itself, fighting to unify a greater Kurdistan. In late October 2007, Turkey's daily newspaper Hurriyet accused the prime minister of the KRG, Massoud Barzani, of turning the 'Kurdish dream' into a 'Turkish nightmare'."
The following sites updated:
