The people like Jeremy and Aaron who left Democdracy Now, did so, most likely,
because Democracy Now was changing. It had developed a reputation as an
alternative to mainstream media and every one of the fine journalists whom I
hear on podcasts now, who are continuing that tradition, have, at one time or
another on these podcasts, expressed disappointment and sadness and
disenchantment with what has happened to Democracy Now. It continues its
tradition in a few limited areas of the news like Israel/Palestine and the fate
of black people in America. It has been barely credible on Venezuela, slightly
better on Bolivia. It remains loyal to a few good people like Noam Chomsky,
Jeremy Scahill, and Glen Greenwald. But it has turned its back on the real
investigative reporting that it used to do. Yes, I still listen to it each day.
It does well on non controversial topics like that lovely program on Eleanor
Roosevelt. It is not doing well on holding the Democratic Party accountable for
its sins. Remember that Democracy Now, also, depends on donors and most
probably, many of them are supporters of the Democratic Party leadership. For
all we know, it now receives money from Northop Grumman, although Amy says that
it does not receive money from military contractors.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2020 11:57 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: With Suleimani Assassination, Trump Is Doing the
Bidding of Washington's Most Vile Cabal
From the time he left Democracy Now, I have been concerned for the well being
of Jeremy Scahill.
I am also concerned regarding the Media's misrepresentation of Congress as
being "weak kneed". The problem with our Congress is not in the knees. The
problem is in a Congress that has promised the voters that it would do all in
its power to promote peace and keep the American people safe, and then that
same Congress turned around, once in office, and sold out to the American
Corporate Empire(ACE).
This Empire has always believed in "Divine Destiny". It is the same belief
that encouraged the Colonies to break with England and to roll roughshod over
the inhabitants already occupying the Continent, and taking lands away from
Spain and Mexico, and once reaching the Pacific Ocean it encouraged moving
South and West to take control of Central and South America and the Pacific Rim
Nations.
But we Americans simply love thinking of ourselves as Peace Keepers, spreading
democracy around the Globe.
As long as we continue to play Pollyanna, and keep our Rose Colored Glasses
firmly on our noses, we will continue to see a reenactment of a performance
conducted by every Empire since the beginning of history. And in the final Act
of that eternal performance, each Empire comes crashing down.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/4/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jeremy will end up on the Grayzon some day. He, like Aaron Mate,
worked at Democracy Now for years.
With Suleimani Assassination, Trump Is Doing the Bidding of
Washington's Most Vile Cabal
By Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept
03 January 19
While the media focus for three years of the Trump presidency has
centered around "Russia collusion" and impeachment, the most dangerous
collusion of all was happening right out in the open - the
Trump/Saudi/Israel/UAE drive to war with Iran.
On August 3, 2016 - just three months before Donald Trump would win
the Electoral College vote and ascend to power - Blackwater founder
Erik Prince arranged a meeting at Trump Tower. For decades, Prince had
been agitating for a war with Iran and, as early as 2010, had
developed a fantastical proposal for using mercenaries to wage it.
At this meeting was George Nader, an American citizen who had a long
history of being a quiet emissary for the United States in the Middle
East. Nader, who had also worked for Blackwater and Prince, was a
convicted pedophile in the Czech Republic and is facing similar
allegations in the United States.
Nader worked as an adviser for the Emirati royals and has close ties
to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince.
There was also an Israeli at the Trump Tower meeting: Joel Zamel. He
was there supposedly pitching a multimillion-dollar social media
manipulation campaign to the Trump team. Zamel's company, Psy-Group,
boasts of employing former Israeli intelligence operatives. Nader and
Zamel were joined by Donald Trump Jr. According to the New York Times,
the purpose of the meeting was "primarily to offer help to the Trump
team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders
that would develop over the coming months, past the election and well
into President Trump's first year in office."
One major common goal ran through the agendas of all the participants
in this Trump Tower meeting: regime change in Iran. Trump campaigned
on belligerence toward Iran and trashing the Obama-led Iran nuclear
deal, and he has followed through on those threats, filling his
administration with the most vile, hawkish figures in the U.S. national
security establishment.
After appointing notorious warmonger John Bolton as national security
adviser, Trump fired him last September. But despite reports that
Trump had soured on Bolton because of his interventionist posture
toward Iran, Bolton's firing merely opened the door for the equally
belligerent Mike Pompeo to take over the administration's Iran policy
at the State Department. Now Pompeo is the public face of the
Suleimani assassination, while for his part, the fired Bolton didn't
want to be left out of the gruesome victory lap:
Congratulations to all involved in eliminating Qassem Soleimani. Long
in the making, this was a decisive blow against Iran's malign Quds
Force activities worldwide. Hope this is the first step to regime
change in Tehran.
- John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) January 3, 2020 Trump, who had no idea
who Qassim Suleimani was until it was explained to him live on the
radio by conservative journalist Hugh Hewitt in 2015, didn't seem to
need many details to know that he wanted to crush the Iranian state.
Much as the neoconservatives came to power in 2001 after the election
of George W. Bush with the goal of regime change in Iraq, Trump in his
bumbling way assembled a team of extremists who viewed him as their
best chance of wiping the Islamic Republic of Iran off the map.
While Barack Obama provided crucial military and intelligence support
for Saudi Arabia's scorched earth campaign in Yemen, which killed
untold numbers of civilians, Trump escalated that mass murder in a
blatant effort to draw Iran militarily into a conflict. That was the
agenda of the gulf monarchies and Israel, and it coincided neatly with
the neoconservative dreams of overthrowing the Iranian government. As
the U.S. and Saudi Arabia intensified their military attacks in Yemen,
Iran began to insert itself more and more forcefully into Yemeni
affairs, though Tehran was careful not to be tricked into offering
this Trump/Saudi/UAE/Israel coalition a justification for wider war.
The assassination of Suleimani - a popular figure in Iran who is
viewed as one of the major drivers of ISIS's defeat in Iraq - was one
of only a handful of actions that the U.S. could have taken that would
almost certainly lead to a war with Iran. This assassination,
reportedly ordered directly by Trump, was advocated by the most
dangerous and extreme players in the U.S. foreign policy establishment with
that exact intent.
Assassination has been a central component of U.S. policy for many
decades, though it has been whitewashed and normalized throughout
history, most recently with Obama's favored term, "targeted killings."
The U.S. Congress has intentionally never legislated the issue of
assassination. Lawmakers have avoided even defining the word
"assassination." While every president since Gerald Ford has upheld an
executive order banning assassinations by U.S. personnel, they have
each carried out assassinations with little to no congressional outcry.
In 1976, following Church Committee recommendations regarding
allegations of assassination plots carried out by U.S. intelligence
agencies, Ford signed an executive order banning "political
assassination." Jimmy Carter subsequently issued a new order
strengthening the prohibition by dropping the word "political" and
extending it to include persons "employed by or acting on behalf of
the United States." In 1981, Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order
12333, which remains in effect today. The language seems clear enough:
"No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States
Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination."
As I wrote in August 2017, reflecting on our Drone Papers series from
two years earlier, "The Obama administration, by institutionalizing a
policy of drone-based killings of individuals judged to pose a threat
to national security - without indictment or trial, through secret
processes - bequeathed to our political culture, and thus to Donald
Trump, a policy of assassination, in direct violation of Executive
Order 12333 and, moreover, the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. To
date, at least seven U.S.
citizens are known to have been killed under this policy, including a
16-year-old boy. Only one American, the radical preacher Anwar
al-Awlaki, was said to have been the 'intended target' of a strike."
While many Democratic politicians are offering their concerns about
the consequences of Suleimani's assassination, they are prefacing it
with remarks about how atrocious Suleimani was. Framing his
assassination that way ultimately benefits the extremist cabal of
foreign policy hawks who agitated for this very moment to arrive.
There's no justification for assassinating foreign officials,
including Suleimani. This is an aggressive act of war, an offensive
act committed by the U.S. on the sovereign territory of a third
country, Iraq. This assassination and the potential for a war it
raises are, unfortunately, consistent with more than half a century of
U.S. aggression against Iran and Iraq.
For three years, many Democrats have told the country that Trump is
the gravest threat to a democratic system we have faced. And yet many
leading Democrats have voted consistently to give Trump unprecedented
military budgets and surveillance powers.
Five months ago, California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna offered an
amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have
prohibited this very type of action, but it was removed from the final
bill. "Any member who voted for the NDAA - a blank check - can't now
express dismay that Trump may have launched another war in the Middle
East," Khanna wrote on Twitter after Suleimani's assassination. "My
Amendment, which was stripped, would have cut off $$ for any offensive
attack against Iran including against officials like Soleimani."
Trump is responsible for whatever comes next. But time and again, the
worst foreign policy atrocities of his presidency have been enabled by
the very politicians who claim to want him removed from office.
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