Communism will win

The Six Senate Democrats Who Voted Yes to Confim Gina Haspel as CIA Director

(Most of the whom are up for re-election this November in states Trump won easily in 2016)




Six Democrats who helped Republicans in confirming Haspel:

• Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia,
• Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana,
• Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida,
• Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota,
• Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and
• Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia

West’s Failure to Act Will be Cause of the Next Gaza Massacre

MAY 17, 2018

by JONATHAN COOK

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/17/wests-failure-to-act-will-be-cause-of-the-next-gaza-massacre/

Nazareth.

The contrasting images coming out of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories on Monday could not have been starker – or more disturbing.

Faced with protests at the perimeter fence in Gaza, Israeli snipers killed dozens of unarmed Palestinians and wounded more than 2,000 others, including children, women, journalists and paramedics, in a hail of live fire. Amnesty, the international human rights organisation, rightly called it a “horror show”.

Such horror is now so routine that TV anchors could only headline the news as the worst day of bloodshed in Gaza in four years, when Israel massacred civilians in its last major military assault.

Already gasping from the chokehold of Israel’s decade-long blockade of Gaza, local hospitals are now collapsing from the weight of casualties.

A few kilometres away, meanwhile, Israelis were partying.

So-called “liberal” Tel Aviv was busy “chicken dancing” with Netta, who had just won the Eurovision Song Contest and gave a free open-air performance to celebrate.

And in Jerusalem, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was glad-handing a bevy of US officials, including Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and policy adviser. They were there to beam for the cameras as the US opened its embassy in the occupied city.

The move pre-empts negotiations over the city’s fate and sabotages Palestinian ambitions for East Jerusalem to become the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Netanyahu’s grin said it all. As he mouthed platitudes about “Middle Eastern peace”, he finally had Washington’s blessing for all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. And next year Europe will give its implicit blessing too by hosting the Eurovision Song Contest there.

But amid the euphoria, a few Israeli commentators understood that politics is about more than power – it’s about imagery too. The champagne-quaffing in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem while Gaza drowned in blood left a profoundly sour taste in the mouth.

There was more than a whiff of hypocrisy too in statements about “defending borders” from a state that has refused to declare its borders since its creation exactly 70 years ago – as well as from a Netanyahu government currently trying to establish a Greater Israel over the Palestinian territories.

But the hypocrisy was not restricted to Israel and Washington, which parroted Mr. Netanyahu’s talking points.

There was an ugly equivocation from other western leaders. They spoke of “regret”, “tragedy” and “concern at the loss of life”, as though an act of God had struck Gaza, not an order from Israeli commanders to quell the Palestinian urge for freedom with live ammunition.

Equally dishonest was talk of the “need for restraint from both sides” and “clashes”, as though the protesters had been tussling with Israeli soldiers in hand-to-hand combat rather than being coldly picked off through telescopic sights.

Israeli politicians and media have desperately searched for a moral justification for these executions. They have talked of “kite terrorism” and a supposed stone-throwing threat to soldiers positioned hundreds of yards away.

While thousands of Palestinians have been executed or maimed, how many Israelis have been harmed in the past six weeks of Gaza’s protests? Precisely none.

This is a strange kind of terror.

The reality is that tiny Gaza is becoming rapidly uninhabitable, as the United Nations has repeatedly warned. For more than a decade Israel has blockaded it from land, air and sea, while intermittently pummelling the enclave with missiles and military invasions.

A senior New York Times correspondent tweeted on Monday that Gaza’s Palestinians looked as though they had a “death wish”. But two million Palestinians – a population rapidly growing – are inmates in what is effectively a shrinking prison, whose store rooms are almost bare.

Tens of thousands of them have shown they are prepared to risk their lives not for some death cult but to win freedom, the most precious human impulse of all.

And they have preferred confrontational, non-violent resistance as a way to shame Israel and the world into recognising their plight.

And yet instead, Israel has stripped them of all agency by falsely claiming that they are pawns in a game by Hamas to pressure Israel.

But in so far as Hamas is trying to influence Israel, what is its aim?

Last week, a gloating Israeli media reported that Hamas was quietly appealing for a long-term truce with Israel, effectively renouncing the Palestinians’ right to violently resist Israel’s occupation.

It would not be the first time. But whereas once Hamas sought a truce in return for a two-state solution, now it is said to have requested simply an end to the blockade and a chance to rebuild Gaza.

Even this minimal concession is rejected by Israel. Instead an Israeli minister responded to Monday’s slaughter by proposing that Israel assassinate the Hamas leadership.

Israel may be without remorse, but are western leaders feeling shamed?

Apart from South Africa and Turkey, none has so far withdrawn an ambassador. There are no calls for embargos on sales of arms, no demands for war crimes investigations, no threats of trade sanctions.

And no plans, of course, for the kind of “humanitarian intervention” western governments have keenly promoted in other parts of the Middle East where civilians are under threat.

For seven decades, the west has pampered Israel at every turn. The lack of any meaningful punishment for violating Palestinian rights led directly to Monday’s massacre.

And the failure to inflict a price on Israel for this massacre – in fact, the reverse: visible rewards with a relocated US embassy and the chance to host the Eurovision Song Contest – will lead to the next massacre, and the one after.

Handwringing is not enough. It is time for anyone with a conscience to act.

The Bolton Administration Has Already Begun

The hard-right national security adviser successfully tanked the Iran deal. His next target? The North Korea talks.

By John Feffer, May 16, 2018

https://fpif.org/the-bolton-administration-has-already-begun/

For a man with a reputation for venting spleen and flying off the handle, John Bolton bided his time before finally rising to the position of power he now occupies.

The former U.S. ambassador to the UN spent much of the last decade consolidating his political base through stints at right-wing institutes like the American Enterprise Institute, media appearances on Fox, and the occasional reckless op-ed. He considered running for president in 2012 and 2016 but chose not to take the risk. Instead, he raised large amounts of money for extreme right-wing Republican candidates like Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR).

When Donald Trump appeared on the political scene, Bolton eagerly endorsed the candidate in the presidential race and offered himself up as a potential secretary of state. Trump won, but Bolton didn’t get the call. A similarity in temperament and a difference in ideology seemed to doom his appointment. The White House, after all, couldn’t possibly accommodate two filterless hotheads.

Moreover, Bolton’s continued support for the Iraq War and a more interventionist U.S. foreign policy seemed to put him forever at odds with the new president. “Bolton’s lambasting of global aristocrats aside, there isn’t much in the man’s worldview that rings consonant with President Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy,” wrote Daniel DePetris in The American Conservative.

That was then. Now John Bolton is Trump’s national security advisor.

After a steady diet of levelheaded corporate execs and restrained military men, Trump clearly wanted a little more hot sauce in the Oval Office. As for the differences in ideology, those were largely fictitious. Trump has no ideology, and Bolton is smart enough to tailor his message to his audience.

Trump is a very powerful boat with no rudder. Unfortunately, Bolton is now his rudder. Which effectively means, when it comes to foreign policy, that it’s Bolton’s administration now.

Bolton’s Impact

National security advisor is the perfect position for Bolton. He didn’t have to go through any messy confirmation hearings. He doesn’t have to perform any of the ceremonial tasks of a secretary of state.

He can instead focus on what he does best: steering government policy far to the right. Only a few weeks into his job, he can already put one notch in his gun for helping to steer the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal.

This should have been an easy task, since Trump had already made clear his distaste for the agreement. But there was still significant disagreement within the administration. Bolton, it appears, tilted the balance away from those, like Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who preferred to remain within the agreement. Writes Mark Langler in The New York Times:

Even if Mr. Mattis had wanted to fight for the deal, it is not clear how much he would have been heard. Mr. Bolton, officials said, never convened a high-level meeting of the National Security Council to air the debate. He advised Mr. Trump in smaller sessions, otherwise keeping the door to his West Wing office closed. Mr. Bolton has forged a comfortable relationship with the president, several people said, channeling his “America First” vocabulary.

Now that he has this comfortable relationship, Bolton will move on to more challenging assignments. “By working in the West Wing, the national security adviser spends more time with the president than the secretaries of State or Defense, and so can always get the last word,” writes Jonathan Swan in Axios. “But Bolton is signaling restraint until Trump makes a decision.”

So, for instance, with the Iran deal decision made, Bolton has been coy about whether he’s still pushing a regime-change strategy toward Iran. In public, of course, he must defer to the president. In private, Bolton would never keep his ideas to himself. As one of the biggest boosters of the militant, cult-like People’s Mujahedin of Iran (or MEK), Bolton is no doubt whispering into Trump’s ear at every possible opportunity that Iran is on the verge of regime collapse and a cadre of Ahmed Chalabisare ready to take over. All it needs is a tightening economic noose and a military nudge from Israel.

Meanwhile, as the president’s enforcer, it’s Bolton’s job to play the bad cop. He’s already done so with Europe, raising the possibility of sanctioning European businesses that continue to work with Iran. Bolton must love the opportunity to kill two multilateral birds with one unilateral stone.

However, the test of Bolton’s impact shouldn’t be Iran, where his views intersect with Trump’s. The real challenge will be on issues where Bolton’s stated preferences are diametrically opposed to current policy.

From Regime Change to Rapprochement?

John Bolton has never concealed his desire to see the collapse of the current government in North Korea. In February, even after the two Koreas had cooperated in the Winter Olympics, Bolton continued to argue in the Wall Street Journal that the United States should launch a preemptive military attack on Pyongyang and its nuclear facilities.

The Journal piece featured a bizarre, legalistic argument based on his interpretation of a British attack on a Canadian steamboat in U.S. territory in 1837. (No, I’m not making this up). Bolton didn’t bother to devote any space to the likely consequences of a preemptive attack on North Korea that, unlike the British example, could escalate to an exchange of nuclear weapons and involve the deaths of more than a million people.

It was pure Bolton: a legal intellect plus an instinct for bombast — and minus any acknowledgement of real-world consequences.

Now, as national security advisor, Bolton must wrap his mind around the reality of the potential summit between his boss and Kim Jong Un, scheduled for June 12 in Singapore. This might seem to put Bolton in a bind, forcing him to make arguments that run counter to his long-held preferences.

But remember: Bolton knows how to bide his time. He knows that the track record of U.S.-North Korean negotiations isn’t very good. He knows that a failed summit could easily push Donald Trump to the other side of the spectrum — or perhaps, given North Korea’s reaction to the recent U.S.-South Korean military exercises, the summit might not happen at all. A Trump scorned will likely find regime-change arguments more compelling.

In the meantime, Bolton is doing what he can to subtly undermine the upcoming summit. He’s ratcheted down expectations by saying that the Trump administration isn’t “starry-eyed” about the meeting. He’s loaded the summit agenda by adding “their ballistic missile programs, their biological and chemical weapons programs, their keeping of American hostages, the abduction of innocent Japanese and South Korean citizens over the years.” It would be hard enough to negotiate a nuclear agreement even without adding these other elements (though North Korea has already released the “American hostages”).

But perhaps the most sinister tactic Bolton has deployed involves his references to Libya. In interviews, he has said that Libya’s denuclearization in the 2000s can serve as a model for the North Korea talks.

Libya? The country that gave up its nuclear weapons program and then, within a few years, experienced civil war, foreign intervention, and regime collapse? Is that really the kind of model you want to highlight with a country like North Korea, which is worried about precisely such a scenario?

An anonymous source in the Trump administration told Abigail Tracy of Vanity Fair that Bolton is sending his own message to the North Koreans: “I mean, there is only one reason you would ever bring up Libya to the North Koreans, and that is to tell them, ‘Warning: don’t go any further because we are going to screw you’… So yeah, I completely agree that that is a dog whistle to the North Koreans, telling them, ‘don’t trust us.’”

Of course, Bolton’s mere presence in the administration, even if he just stands quietly in the corner and scowls, sends the message that this government is not to be trusted. Perhaps that’s the real reason for North Korea’s sudden summit skepticism.

War at the Top?

John Bolton isn’t stupid enough to contradict his boss, at least not directly. He’s a sycophant to his superiors and a sunvabitch to his subordinates. The interesting part comes with his relations to his equals. The most interesting part will be his relationship with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Thomas Wright, in Politico, argues that Bolton and Pompeo are cruising for a mutual bruising. He argues that it’s not hawks versus doves in the Trump administration, but “litigators versus planners.”

The litigators, led by Trump and deputized to Bolton, see national security policy as a way of settling scores with enemies, foreign and domestic, and closing the file. They will torpedo multilateral deals, pull out of international commitments and demonstrate American power before moving on to the next target.

Planners, on the other hand, are worried about the day after — for instance, how the United States addresses Chinese economic power in the wake of a pullout from the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal.

It’s not yet clear whether Pompeo is a litigator or a planner, and thus whether he’ll team up with Bolton or side with the quintessential planner, Jim Mattis, to challenge the national security advisor’s blow-‘em-all-up philosophy. Wright expects a showdown.

I’m not sure. I expect tactical alliances between Bolton and Pompeo (on Iran) and tactical disagreements (on China). Where they disagree, Bolton probably will gain the upper hand, if not immediately then eventually, because he knows better how to manipulate the levers of power.

But on the general direction of Trump’s foreign policy, Bolton and Pompeo are in agreement. The faux-isolationism of Trump during his presidential campaign fooled a number of neoconservatives into voicing their opposition. But it didn’t fool either Bolton or Pompeo.

Let’s be clear: There is no American “retreat” from the world. Under the rubric of “America First,” the Trump administration has created a new kind of multilateral engagement — aligned with the hard right in Israel and Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, allied with authoritarian and far-right leaders like Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Viktor Orban in Hungary, and in support of a range of plutocratic interests over and above the wellbeing of the majority and the planet as a whole. (I long for Angela Merkel to just come out and say it: “Gott in Himmel, we must oppose this new Axis of Autocracy!)

So, not a retreat from the world but a retort to the world: Move this way, not that. As the Washington Examiner recently editorialized, “Trump’s foreign policy record is one of America continuing its role as global leader — even if we’re leading in a direction that displeases John Kerry.”

But please, let’s not talk about Trump’s “foreign policy record.” This is not the world of Donald Trump. The world of Trump is Mar-a-Lago, Fox News, and his Twitter account. His worldview is limited by his over-inflated ego and bank account.

No, this is the world of John Bolton. And, for a limited time before he blows it up, we’re just living in it.

Defenders of Open Internet Deliver 'Historic Win' as Senate Votes to Restore Net Neutrality

"The fight ahead is not going to be easy, but victory is within reach."

Jake Johnson, staff writer

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/05/16/defenders-open-internet-deliver-historic-win-senate-votes-restore-net-neutrality

The open internet scored a huge victory on Wednesday, but you wouldn't know it by watching America's major corporate television networks.

Thanks to weeks of sustained grassroots pressure in the form of 16 million emails, over a million phone calls, and nationwide demonstrations both online and off, three Republicans voted with the Senate Democratic caucus on Wednesday to block the GOP-controlled FCC's net neutrality repeal, clearing a crucial hurdle on the path to saving the web from the greed of the telecom industry.

In a statement applauding the 52-47 vote, Free Press Action Fund president Craig Aaron said the Senate's passage of the so-called resolution of disapproval is "a historic win for supporters of net neutrality and a stinging rebuke to the army of phone-and cable-company lobbyists and lackeys trying to take away our internet freedom."

"Today the Senate has taken a giant step toward unwinding the least-popular policy decision in the history of the FCC," Aaron added.

Despite those and similar pronouncements by organizers about the significance of the victory, the news was virtually, if not completely, ignored by major cable outlets like MSNBC and CNN, respectively owned by Comcast and Time Warner—two of the major corporate powers lobbying against the CRA's passage.

Meanwhile, as activists emphasized the importance of celebrating this crucial win given the tireless grassroots effort that produced it, open internet advocates and pro-net neutrality lawmakers noted that the same level of grassroots pressure—and likely even more—will be necessary to carry the resolution through the House of Representatives.

"The fight ahead is not going to be easy, but victory is within reach," declared Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future.

"In the House, we'll need 218 lawmakers to sign on to a 'discharge petition' in order to force a vote past leadership to the floor," Greer observed. "That means we'll need to convince all the Democrats, and about 25 Republicans, to support the CRA. And the clock is ticking — if the CRA resolution doesn't get a vote this year, it dies when the new Congress comes into session."

Just minutes after the final Senate vote was cast, advocacy groups began encouraging Americans to pressure their representatives to back net neutrality by signing on to the discharge petition Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) plans to file Thursday morning. The measure currently has the support of 161 House Democrats.

Michael Copps, former FCC Commissioner and special adviser for Common Cause, said the House must "hear the strong voice of the American people demanding an open internet and saying 'No!' to the telecom and cable monopolies" and follow in the Senate's footsteps.

"Voters are watching and they will remember come November how their representatives voted," Copps said. "We urge the House of Representatives to do its job and pass this resolution to restore net neutrality."

Big Primary Wins for Socialists and Progressives Who Ran on 'Popular Demands That Were Deemed Impossible'

Jake Johnson, staff writer

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/05/16/big-primary-wins-socialists-and-progressives-who-ran-popular-demands-were-deemed

"We're just getting started."

Defying national and state-level Democratic establishment forces that have worked to crowd out left-wing candidates and demonstrating that there is a deep hunger among the American electorate for a bold progressive agenda, candidates running on platforms of Medicare for All, free college, and a living wage emerged victorious in several state primaries on Tuesday and tore through the boundaries of what is conventionally considered politically feasible.

"It feels like a monumental shift," Arielle Cohen, co-chair of Pittsburgh Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), told the Huffington Post after four DSA-backed candidates defeated establishment Democrats in Pennsylvania. "We won on popular demands that were deemed impossible. We won on healthcare for all; we won on free education."

Running in Pennsylvania's State House Districts 34 and 21 respectively, Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato—both running on platforms consisting of Medicare for All, strong environmental protection, and campaign finance reform—toppled what local news outlets described as a "political dynasty" by trouncing Democratic cousins Paul Costa and Dom Costa by a wide margin.

"They said it wasn't possible without institutional support. That we couldn't talk about Medicare for All, a living wage, about ending corruption in Harrisburg," Innamorato said during her victory party Tuesday night. "And you know what we did instead? We built something."

"The establishment's scared," Pittsburgh DSA wrote on Twitter in response to the upset victories, which also included wins by Elizabeth Fiedler and Kristin Seale over their establishment counterparts. "When we fight, we win."

Signs of the grassroots progressive wave that some predicted will ultimately sweep across the country could also be seen in Idaho on Tuesday, where progressive Paulette Jordan handily defeated her establishment-backed Democratic opponent A.J. Balukoff in a bid to become the nation's first Native American governor.

If she wins in November, Jordan—who ran on protecting public land from corporate plunder and criminal justice reform—would be Idaho's first Democratic governor in over 20 years.

"Today's elections prove movement politics candidates, who rely on people power, can win, and win powerfully," Ryan Greenwood, director of Movement Politics for People's Action, said in a statement on Wednesday. "Candidates for public office who commit to a racial and gender justice agenda that puts people and our planet before profits are winning."

Palestine shrinking, expanding Israel

http://progressive.org/dispatches/what-israel-fears-most-peaceful-resistance-Nakba-180515/