MAY 23, 2016
Labor’s Sell-Out and the Sanders Campaign
by PAUL BUHLE
Counterpunch

Early last Fall, I received a surprising circular email from a high union officer and erstwhile leader of SDS, way back in the early 1960s. It contained an urgent appeal: get behind Hillary, because this is an era for defensive struggles. The letter-writer had also been an early and articulate opponent of the US invasion of Vietnam. I puzzled at his conversion to the War Candidate. I winced, some months later, as his union staffers crossed the border from my own Wisconsin to work feverishly in Iowa against….the labor candidate, Bernie Sanders, who lost by a hair (perhaps a hair that did not exist!). And again back in Wisconsin, where the best or worst efforts of his union, joined to the purported idealists of the labor movement, SEIU, failed somehow to keep the state in line for Hillary. They could not carry the working class vote.

Echoes of 2011, the year of the great conflict in Wisconsin. Shortly before the occupation of the capitol building, setting off months of intense struggle, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (the earliest of unions to support Hillary and oppose Bernie in 2015) came to town to warn AFT members on campus against rash action. The AFT, whose pet Shanker Institute functionary was the union’s attack dog against opponents of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, could not act otherwise. It has been dominated in every respect by the New York affiliate, UFT, where Shankerism is never out of style, and where domestic reform demands, never be aimed seriously at prestigious neoliberal Democratic officials like Rahm Emanuel, takes second place or last place to the hawkish global agenda. Which is to say: war, war, war, Albert Shanker’s favorite subject as he urged the US on and on toward an elusive Victory in Vietnam. He could not accept the loss, and it troubled him to his last days, when his allies had been driven from AFL leadership and he devolved personally into a symbol of hawkery and of opposition to Affirmative Action within the labor movement. (All credit goes to the AFT membership at the grass roots, especially but not only in Chicago, which has resisted Command Central.) It is easy to imagine that Hillary Clinton channels his ghost, howling for victory in all the next Vietnams, at whatever loss of civilian blood and tax-payer treasure. ...

continued at http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/23/labors-sell-out-and-the-sanders-campaign/

Published on
Saturday, May 14, 2016
byNika Knight, staff writer

Venezuela Accuses US of Plotting Coup, Declares State of Emergency
'Washington is activating measures at the request of Venezuela's fascist right, who are emboldened by the coup in Brazil,' said the nation's president.

http://commondreams.org/news/2016/05/14/venezuela-accuses-us-plotting-coup-declares-state-emergency

"The DNC Joins Arms with America’s Most Hated Company to Host National Convention"

http://usuncut.com/politics/democratic-national-convention-comcast/

it wasn't a general discussion topic. I do not think it's a primary topic so not sure where to post it. Thought this was the safest place to post. Thought it was a thought provoking article.

MAY 6, 2016
Hillary Clinton and the End of the Democratic Party
by ROB URIE


... Liberal incredulity at Charles Koch’s (Koch Bros.) recent (soft) endorsement of Hillary Clinton — assertions that is was either a non-sequitur or a ploy to discredit her, was to dismiss the endorsement without answering the question: what about Mrs. Clinton’s policies, or those of any other establishment Democrat for that matter, could inheritance babies, oil and gas industry magnates and long-term supporters of the radical Right like Mr. Koch possibly object to? Mr. Koch was simply saying out loud what anyone paying attention to American politics in recent decades already knows: the Democratic Party is the Party of Wall Street and of corporate America....

[...]

.... The tactic of posing Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy as fait accompli via a rigged delegate count is to claim impermeability for the Democratic political establishment. In those historical moments when elections settle political matters this strategy ‘works’ to the extent that it de-legitimizes resistance. But with only a bit more than half of eligible voters voting in recent elections and well over half of those that do vote for ‘outsider’ candidates, claims of impermeability look a lot like the delusion of class privilege seen through a filter of self-sequestration. In terms of basic self-preservation for the ruling class, Bernie Sanders’ election would be the pressure-relief valve that might save the Washington establishment from itself.

Continued at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/06/hillary-clinton-and-the-end-of-the-democratic-party/

TPP, TTIP: Eliminating Nations, Turning over the World Economy To Mega-corporations. Obama’s Secret Trade Deals vs. Trump and Bernie

Jon Rappoport's blog

The press refuses to state the obvious: two US Presidential candidates who couldn’t be more different are on the same page when it comes to Globalist trade treaties.

Trump and Bernie—the gunslinger fast–talking cowboy and the programmatic socialist.

If the press did connect the dots, it would be admitting that millions of Americans from both candidates’ camps recognize the danger of these treaties—and pumping up that revelation would bring a major threat to the Globalist water-boy in the White House.

He is Barack Obama. When a preliminary vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) stalled in Congress last year, Obama and his team jumped on the phones and stayed there night and day trying to drum up support. And now, when the UK is considering an exit from the European Union, thus throwing a large monkey wrench in the US-EU Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), Obama flies to London, where, shockingly, he lowers the boom on the British government and the public, warning that an independent UK would have to stand at the back of the line when it comes to formulating a separate trade pact with the US.

Obama, as you might remember, was tutored on foreign policy, after his election in 2008, by Zbiggie Brzezinski, the intellectual water-boy for David Rockefeller, the king of Globalism, Planet Earth.

Brzezinski once wrote (1969):

“The nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative
force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far
in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”

These Globalist trade deals are, indeed, exercises in eliminating nations and turning over the economy of the world to mega-corporations.

Continued on: http://www.globalresearch.ca/tpp-ttip-eliminating-nations-turning-over-the-world-economy-to-mega-corporations-obamas-secret-trade-deals-vs-trump-and-bernie/5522947

(This is why I will vote for Bernie Sanders or no one.)

I know that the New York Post is a Rupert Murdoch tabloid but I thought the following article added an interesting twist. The article suggests that Diane Haslett-Rudiano, NYC Board of Elections top Brooklyn official, is actually the fall guy for Betty Ann Canizio, the BOE Deputy Clerk for Brooklyn. The goal in suspending Haslett-Rudiano instead of Canizio, apparently, is to protect the Democrat by shining the spotlight on the Republican. Is that just too ridiculous? Obviously better for public consumption that problems with a Democratic primary are laid at the doorstep of a Republican rather than a Democrat. Anyway, am fully prepared to hear that the source is pure BS and will be happy to delete if so!

http://nypost.com/2016/04/21/board-of-elections-official-scapegoated-for-voting-mess/

New York Daily News as a source of information. I found an interesting op-ed piece in that publication today and thought I would share it:

***
KING: Calls for Bernie Sanders to drop out after New York primary are just foolishness
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, April 20, 2016, 1:21 PM

Until Tuesday’s New York primary, Bernie Sanders had won seven states in a row (Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming) dating all the way back to March 22. Hillary then won her (latest) home state, where she was last elected and had a strong ground operation in place, and now people are saying it's time for Bernie Sanders to drop out? Bernie has won seven out of eight states, but he should drop out?

Foolishness! ...
***

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-calls-bernie-sanders-drop-foolishness-article-1.2608585

The HRC group just re-posted the tweet by TYT about the judge's decision tomorrow with regard to the disenfranchised voters and telling people who had their party affiliations switched to go vote by provisional ballot under a title exclaiming "The scum at TYT urge independents to commit vote fraud in NY state today!!" I just don't get it. Is such a post made for entertainment purposes?

Ray McGovern weighs in on one of the prominent subjects under discussion in this primary season (originally published by Consortium News):

"Hillary Clinton is clearly expecting the votes of many women who believe she is entitled to become President because “it is time.” While I agree that it is well past time for a woman to be President, I disagree that it should be Hillary Clinton. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us that people should not be judged by external factors (whether the color of their skin or, in this case, their gender) “but by the content of their character.”

Hillary Clinton’s record as Secretary of State makes it unmistakably clear that – like her hawkish predecessor Albright – she lacks the level-headedness, vision, and, yes, compassion without which the country’s top diplomat or (even more importantly) the commander in chief can be outright dangerous."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/18/hillary-clinton-and-the-gender-card/

In August 2015, at the Democratic Party convention in Minneapolis, 33 democratic state parties made deals with the Hillary Clinton campaign and a joint fundraising entity called The Hillary Victory Fund. The deal allowed many of her core billionaire and inner circle individual donors to run the maximum amounts of money allowed through those state parties to the Hillary Victory Fund in New York and the DNC in Washington...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/01/how-hillary-clinton-bought-the-loyalty-of-33-state-democratic-parties/