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Vol. 82/No. 2 January 15, 2018
Senate probe of Green Party is threat to
workers’ rights
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
The Senate Intelligence Committee announced Dec. 18 that it’s opening an
investigation into the campaign of Jill Stein, who ran as Green Party
candidate for U.S. president in 2016, claiming the move is part of its
witch hunt into whether “collusion with Russians” determined the outcome
of the election.
The attack on the Green Party comes as the fishing expedition being led
by special counsel Robert Mueller goes on and on. Mueller, a former head
of Washington’s FBI political police, has been given far-reaching powers
to target President Donald Trump and those around him, looking for
evidence of “collusion” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Stein was a thorn in the side of Democratic Party presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton, who claimed Stein was taking votes away from her. The
Green Party, a so-called independent smaller capitalist party, was on
the ballot in 44 states in 2016. Stein, a Massachusetts physician,
received 1 percent of the vote.
The Senate committee said it’s investigating Stein because she attended
and spoke at a 2015 dinner in Moscow to celebrate Russia Today, a
state-owned media company. Stein was seated at the head table with Putin
and Michael Flynn, who was Trump’s first White House national security
adviser until being ousted from his job after 24 days. Flynn recently
pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with the Russian
ambassador as part of the transition team after Trump had won the
election and is now cooperating with prosecutor Mueller.
RT, which has operated in the U.S. since 2005, does slavishly slant its
“news” to fit Moscow’s political needs. But that isn’t the reason the
U.S. Justice Department ordered it to register as an agent of a foreign
power in November. That attack on freedom of the press and workers’
rights was engineered for Washington’s own political reasons.
“Miss Stein did attend that infamous dinner,” Virginia Democrat Mark
Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN, in
motivating this harassment probe. “We have seen reports that Stein …
[was] very complimentary of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, which we know
was one of the pawns being used by the Russians.”
The Democrats would like to see Stein take a hit. They believe that all
those that stood against Clinton as well as Trump should have been
prevented from doing so — including the Socialist Workers Party. The
editors of the New York Times ran a piece in the Oct. 29, 2016, issue, a
few days before the election, urging readers disgusted with both the
Democratic and Republican candidates not to vote for the SWP, “at least
this time,” and to hold their nose and vote for Clinton.
In announcing the investigation of Stein’s campaign, Republican Richard
Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters Dec.
18 that the committee was “just starting” to dig into Stein.
It’s hard to figure why Stein decided to fly to Moscow to speak at a
love-fest for RT, but any charge that her campaign was a secret plot by
Putin is a canard.
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