Bernie vs Tulsi: On the Issues

Bernie vs Tulsi: How to Identify Controlled Opposition Part 2

Bernie vs Tulsi: How to Identify Controlled Opposition Part 2

On the Issues

Big Tech

Tulsi: Tulsi sued Google for $50 million. She attacked big tech censorship and interference. Twitter constantly removes likes from her tweets, including every one she has made in support of Assange.

But Big Tech interference doesn’t just threaten to suppress her voice, but the voices of any supporter who the company deems worthy of censorship. I, along with many Tulsi supporters I interact with, have had to re-like her “Queen of warmongerers” tweet countless times as have many others. If a presidential candidate can be censored, anybody can.

When CEO Jack Dorsey gave a max donation to Gabbard after the first debate (which she won) and people were criticizing Dorsey for the donation, Michael Tracey joked that Jack was an “Assad-loving white nationalist compromised by Putin”. It is worth noting this was Tulsi’s only billionaire donor. Trace would go on to say

Bernie:

In the first debate, after Warren presented and defended the idea of “breaking up Big Tech”, Sander’s had called for anti-trust regulators to “take on these huge monopolies”… but he doesn’t seem to be willing to take them on himself. As The Hill reported, “Even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a fellow progressive who has made opposition to concentrated corporate power a centerpiece of his campaign, did not explicitly say he is behind Warren’s plan.”. Sander’s partial support of Warren in calling for the break up of Big Tech shouldn’t hold much weight when Warren would later tweet,

“The stakes of this election are too high. We need to fight the spread of false information that disempowers voters and undermines democracy. I’ll do my part — and I’m calling on my fellow candidates and big tech companies to do their part, too.”

Sanders has specifically called for Facebook to do more to combat “Russian misinformation”. In his statement, Bernie said the following:

“The 2020 election is likely to be the most consequential election in modern American history, and I am alarmed by new reports that Russia recently hacked into the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the impeachment trial, as well as Russia’s plans to once again meddle in our elections and in our democracy,”

“After our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, including with thousands of paid ads on Facebook, the New York Times now reports that Russia likely represents the biggest threat of election meddling in 2020, including through disinformation campaigns, promoting hatred, hacking into voting systems, and by exploiting the political divisions sewn by Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has shown again and again his total disinterest in taking even basic steps to stand up to Russian interference.”

“It is nothing short of reckless for Facebook to continue enabling and profiting from election interference done through advertising that contains lies, falsehoods, and misleading information.”

Really Bernie? You trust the intelligence agencies? And the reports by the New York Times which are echoes of the intel community and mostly rely on anonymous sources with no supporting evidence?

Ro Khanna, who Bernie appointed as top advisor to his campaign in February of 2019, would go on to tweet:

We should “Trust our intelligence agencies, and tech companies?” to “Prevent disinformation and propaganda campaigns”? Not only that, but they “must” prevent “misinformation”? Misinformation.. Who determines what that is? — Oh right, the intelligence community. Not as if they have ever lied to us before, or multiple times into multiple wars. They are the natural arbiters of truth in this world. Silly me for not putting it together.

This is either ignorant incompetence or malicious manipulation. We should trust the CIA and other intelligence agencies with a long history of lies and propaganda campaigns of their own, to exert control over the flow of information on the media platforms used by the mass majority of the public? Why are Bernie and his surrogates normalizing and encouraging such Orwellian measures?

Sure, he has not condemned the big tech community for censorship as Tulsi has. He certainly wouldn’t sue Google for 50 million. But the worst part is that he and his campaign did not keep to neutral apathy to censorship, which is bad enough, but Sanders and his surrogates literally advocated and called on Big Tech companies to do more, in cooperation with our intelligence agencies, as if they were not interfering enough already. Again, being silent on such an important issue to our democracy is bad enough as a democratic candidate, but quite actually pushing for the issue to be normalized and open to greater abuse is in stark contrast to Gabbard.

Assange

Tulsi: The day Assange was arrested she would tell CNN’s Jake taper,

“I think what’s happening here is, unfortunately, it is some form of retaliation coming from the government saying, ‘Hey, this is what happens when you release information that we don’t want you to release,’ ” Gabbard said on The Lead “And I think that’s why this is such a dangerous and slippery slope, not only for journalists, not only for those in the media, but also for every American that our government can and has the power to kind of lay down the hammer to say, ‘Be careful, be quiet and fall in line, otherwise we have the means to come after you.’ “

That same day she would also tweet out,

Other (censored) tweets on Assange would include

Assange is a critical issue for first amendment rights, with the government having outright asserted that first amendment rights don’t apply to foreigners in defense of Assange’s prosecution, admitting that it IS an issue of freedom of press. More than that, it is a human rights violation. Censoring, intimidating, or jailing journalists for publishing factual information that is in the public’s interest to know is an issue of freedom of press. Yet Bernie cant even say Assange’s name, avoiding it like the plague.

Psychopathically manufacturing consent by defamation and slander in order to get away with caging someone, mentally torturing them for telling truths about the government that the government doesn’t like…this is an issue of freedom for all of the “free world” along with everyone else. While Assange was an Australian citizen, he is being tried for breaking an American law, but as referenced below, the US government argued in court for his extradition case that the freedom of press doesn’t extend to him because he is a foreigner, admitting it is an issue of freedom of press.

“WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson gave a brief statement to the press after the latest court hearing for Julian Assange’s extradition case in London today, saying the Trump administration is arguing that the First Amendment of the US Constitution doesn’t provide press freedom protection to foreign nationals like Assange.”

‘We have now learned from submissions and affidavits presented by the United States to this court that they do not consider foreign nationals to have a First Amendment protection,’ Hrafnsson said.

‘Now let that sink in for a second,’ Hrafnsson continued. ‘At the same time that the US government is chasing journalists all over the world, they claim they have extra-territorial reach, they have decided that all foreign journalists which include many of you here, have no protection under the First Amendment of the United States. So that goes to show the gravity of this case. This is not about Julian Assange, it’s about press freedom.’ ”

This is another way of the US government saying,

“Yes, while our jurisdiction spreads globally and American laws are defacto international laws, only our citizens can have rights to attempt to protect themselves from such massive overreach. And even then… these rights are essentially just privileges, and we are constantly working on convincing the majority to give consent to these rights being stripped. Sometimes we just say %&@# it and call the information surrounding an issue classified and tell the public its in the interest of “national security” to prevent them from knowing that their rights are being infringed, or their taxes are funding unabated war crimes. If it weren’t for those damn meddling kids like Assange and Snowden then we would have gotten away with it too. No, but seriously, they will be punished and made an example of, American citizen or not.”

If governmental agencies can turn heroes into a villians and get away with slowly torturing him for years, they can get away with anything — especially with mainstream media and big tech at their disposal to help manufacture consent. We need systems such as Wikileaks to bring the truth to light on these corruptible institutions, for without them, there would be no medium for whistleblowers to safely share information that is in the public’s best interest to be public. We would be in the dark. And as the CIA post likes to say, democracy dies in darkness. Transparency between the government and the people is essential for a functioning, healthy democracy.

Assange’s prosecution is a precedent being set that anyone who serves as a medium for sources to leak information, a crucial aspect of journalism, can be deprived of their human rights and liberty for reporting the truth. When you boil it down, it is as simple as that. Assange is being made an example of, and his prosecution represents more than just one man. There is a reason Assange supporters will be heard to say “We are all Assange”.

“Now what does Bernie have to say on Assange?” > — a democratic voter might have asked during the primary season.

Bernie: *Crickets Chirp * … and *Chirp * … and *Chirp*…cont. indef.

The Hill would publish an articled titled, “Sanders’ Snowden Response Proves He Doesn’t Want a ‘Revolution’”. The author, Evan Greer would write:

“Last night at the Democratic presidential debate, leftist favorite Bernie Sanders clarified his feelings about National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

‘I think Snowden played a very important role in educating the American public … he did break the law, and I think there should be a penalty to that,’ Sanders said…

… To read between the lines: Bernie thinks Edward Snowden did the right thing, but hey, laws are laws. If elected, though, it sounds like he’ll make sure Snowden gets a really nice jail cell.

… Instead of calling for stronger legal protections for whistleblowers, or offering to pardon Snowden if elected, he called for the former NSA contractor to come home and face trial in a country with a dodgy record of imprisoning and prosecuting whistleblowers, dissidents, activists and journalists. …

… Sanders has based his campaign on the premise that the United States’ political and economic systems are so flawed that we need a “revolution,” but when a thorny question like Snowden comes up it becomes clear that what he’s really calling for is a changing of the guard.

Prominent Assange advocacy group, Action4Assange, would publish a piece titled “Bernie Sanders’ Silence On Assange Raises Serious Questions”. Steve Poikonen, who authored the piece, wrote that “Bernie, to the casual observer, is THE candidate for the average American who has long suffered under unfettered capitalism and a media complicit in perpetuating false narratives in support of the status quo.

So why the hell won’t Sanders say Julian Assange’s name out loud? “

“Action 4 Assange’s own Taylor Hudak published the first and only complete list of presidential candidate statements on Julian Assange. The totality of Bernie’s remarks are contained within this tweet, written 44 days after Julian was dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London”

Poikonen would strongly conclude the piece by writing, “Bernie Sanders has made Medicare For All a cornerstone of his campaign. His apparent refusal to comment on Assange leaves a deeply concerning question to fill that silent space. Are you willing to trade press freedom for health care? “

One last piece before moving on to the next section, lets look at how Sanders has treated Chelsea Manning. Andre Damon would publish a piece for WSWS titled, “The guilty silence over the jailing of Chelsea Manning”. Damon would write:

“It has been ten days since a federal judge imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning for refusing to testify before the secret grand jury in Virginia, which is preparing an indictment against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.

None of the dozens of professional moralists employed by the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal who make it their business to publicize ‘human rights’ violations to promote US imperialist interests have written a single column protesting the imprisonment of Manning.

The Democratic Party has likewise said nothing. There has been no protest from any significant Democratic politician, including from the party’s so-called “progressive” wing. Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have not spoken in Manning’s defense. Phone calls and emails by the WSWS asking for clarification to the offices of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez were not returned.

The complicity of the Democratic Party in the jailing of Manning is bound up with its pro-imperialist politics. The Democrats have waged their opposition to Trump on the most right-wing basis possible, criticizing the administration for not taking a hard enough position against Russia, denouncing any retreat from war in the Middle East, and elevating the intelligence agencies into supposed paragons of democracy.” ….

Damon would tie the Manning issue in with censorship, circling back

“In the name of fighting ‘fake news,’ dominant sections of the political establishment — led by the intelligence agencies and the Democratic Party — have demanded the suppression of left-wing, critical and independent online media. The technology monopolies have been enlisted by the state to police and censor oppositional statements and political viewpoints.

Sanders’ silence on the jailing of Manning — and his silence on the continued persecution of Assange — is of particular significance, as the Senator has ample cause to defend Wikileaks, given that the organization exposed the fact that the Democratic National Committee sought to rig the 2016 primary and disenfranchise his supporters within the Democratic Party.”

The point is that Sanders has not only been disgustingly silent on the issue of whistleblower protection, but he’s even played a proactive role in the Russagate narrative used to smear not only Assange, Snowden, and Manning… but his own campaign and movement. When the “Russia is boosting the Sanders campaign” narrative ran though the new cycle, he didn’t defend the integrity of his movement and campaign, he ran with it and told Putin to stay out. Maybe it was smart tactically, I’m not an expert political strategist. But it felt wrong.

He has even promoted the idea of Big Tech™ censoring in the name of battling “Russian disinformation campaigns”, which ultimately winds up hurting information and activist campaigns on a plethora of issues including the persecution of whistleblowers that Sanders is so frustratingly silent on. Hell, that same censorship would come for his own supporter base, make no mistake about it — after all the Russians are boosting Sanders’ campaign right?

So no, Bernie voters, Tulsi supporters who valued freedom of speech and press didn’t owe you or your candidate a vote. You and Bernie were expected to earn it by taking up the right side of history and defending our freedoms of press and speech.

Now lets move on to foreign policy. You know, the area of policy that the president has virtually total control over, and little to no checks and balance on anymore? Progressives need to be reminded that the president can have all bills stopped by congress, and executive orders only go so far constitutionally. But nobody can tell the president that he cannot, lets say, end sanctions, or withdraw troops. The Commander in Chief is almost indisputably the most important role of the president. So lets take a look at the differences between Gabbard and Sanders on how they approach foreign policy.

Venezuela

Tulsi:

Now lets see what Bernie tweeted the same exact day Gabbard tweeted the tweet above.

Bernie:

The thread continues:

Now let it be said that while the last tweet in the Sanders thread above sounds anti-interventionist, the first two certainly didn’t and sought to be complicit in the “Maduro is an evil dictator” narrative. Likewise he has done nothing to condemn against the starvation sanctions waged against Venezuela’s economy, particularly the oil industry, which compromised more than 95% of the country’s exports at the time — the lifeline of the entire country’s economy and its ability to import food and medicine. Now lets go back to what Gabbard has said on Venezuela.

Meanwhile Bernie’s foreign policy was…highly condemnable…accusing Trump of not doing enough. As if throwing sanctions on the entire country and contributing to the extreme economic despair and poverty there isn’t enough. Not a very progressive position.

Apparently massive sanctions turned to full blown embargo and seizing all of the Venezuelan government’s assets they have control over, including CITGO, wasn’t enough. Starving the country of oil exports that they rely on for foreign reserves, while they have an economic crisis due to a lack of foreign reserves for importation…and this is helping Putin? I know who it isn’t helping, the Venezuelan people.

What does Sanders have to say about sanctions in general? Lets ask his twitter account.

In the short history of his twitter account’s usage of the word “sanctions”, he mostly is supporting their use against Russia and North Korea. While he has made statements against their use on Iran, he has said nothing on Venezuelan or Syrian sanctions. Not a word. And while twitter isn’t the only medium used to make statements, I have not once heard or seen Bernie condemn sanctions, in all my years of asking Sanders supporter’s for a case of such and looking for it myself. Condemning their use on a country’s general economy on a humanitarian basis, and acknowledging they are designed to target the civilian populations…regardless, if it’s that hard to dig up…. Now, here is what Gabbard has said on sanctions.

In the context of Venezuela, she tweeted:

Regarding sanctions in general, she has also tweeted:

She has more tweets condemning sanctions but I think the point has been reiterated enough for now. It is worth noting, its not just twitter where she speaks strongly against sanctions. Sanctions often came up in her dialogue and rhetoric during her campaign, attacking the premise of them as ethical — sometimes calling them draconian. She was very vocal on the issue. Sanders, in contrast, was not. To wrap up this comparison between the two and their tones on Venezuela, lets look at one more tweet from Sanders and look at a a few more from Gabbard, who has more statements to draw from.

Sanders:

Let it be reminded that the whole shortage crisis and “need for aid” had arisen from a constrained ability to import foreign goods due to oil prices crashing- as Venezuela relied almost entirely on oil exports to fund imports. So instead of calling for the US to halt sanctions on Venezuela’s entire economy including oil, Bernie was co-opted in to the narrative of chastising Maduro for not accepting the scrap aid from the oh-so merciful and generous benefactors and saviors — the US. Halting sanctions on the PDVSA would have a positive impact orders of magnitude above that of the humanitarian aid.

Tulsi:

To conclude, Bernie was silent on condemning sanctions and while he said he didn’t support interventionism, at the same time he supported the interventionist narrative used to justify intervention and was silent on calling out economic warfare via sanctions as a form of intervention. Gabbard, on the other hand, was straightforward in condemning all forms of interference in Venezuela’s democracy.

When Tulsi says stay out of Venezuela, she doesn’t just mean militarily, but also refraining from seeking to influence regime change through economic warfare, mostly crippling sanctions, which many have appropriately been referred to as economic terrorism, as they undeniably target and starve the general population, not the high-ranking bureaucrats the establishment is seeking to oust. As Caitlin Johnstone points out in her article, “Starvation Sanctions are Worse Than Overt Warfare”, there is little accountability and sympathy for the tragedies brought on by economic Warfare,

“Yet these deaths have received virtually no mainstream media coverage, and Americans, while they strongly oppose attacking Iran militarily, have had very little to say about Trump’s attacks on the nation’s economy. The economy which people use to feed their children, to care for their elderly and their sick.

I am not saying that starvation sanctions are more destructive or deadly than overt military force in and of themselves; what I am saying is that the overall effect is worse, because there’s no public accountability for them and because they deliberately target civilians.

When economic warfare is waged against a population, it is almost always due to a high level of support for the government, which Western powers are trying to erode, so they enact sanctions intending to put the population into such a state of desperation that they feel they have no choice but to submit to the will of US imperialism and overthrow their own government in order to put an end to, or even just alleviate, the country’s suffering.

Syria

Tulsi

I have already comprehensively covered Tulsi’s position on Syria, in an article titled “How and Why Tulsi Gabbard is Held to a Higher Standard (Part One)”.

To briefly showcase Tulsi’s position, let me reference some “key points” from her official website’s page on Syria.

Bernie:

Now let us take a rough look at Bernie’s stance on Syria, starting with an official statement on his website.

His call for the international community to do something about the crisis we as a country have facilitated by funding jihadi insurgents for years is in stark contrast to Gabbard’s reminders that we had been funding Jihadi rebels linked to Al-Qaeda and other groups for years and that it would be better to do nothing than to further fuel the civil war. Hell, she even proposed a bill called the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act” which has 14 cosponsors backing it at the moment of writing. To Ro Khanna’s credit, he is a cosponsor. The squad didn’t want to touch it.

The point, ultimately, of this part is to say that Bernie is not only a weak anti-interventionist, but he seems to be effectively acting as an interventionist posing as an anti interventionist.

Here is Senate resolution 85 of the 112th congress, sponsored on March 1st, 2011. The same day, it would be cosponsored by Bernie Sanders along with 9 other senators, and go on to pass the senate. This bill would be the formal initiation of the overthrow of Ghaddafi.

Gabbard Supporter’s, many of which are disenfranchised ex-Bernie supporters, have made numerous graphics to give a visual representation of what could be called Bernie’s “98%” effect, where Bernie and his supporters focus on the few times he got it right, but neglect to acknowledge the many times he procedurally voted with the establishment on regime change. Two of these graphics can be seen below.

If Bernie could not assimilate Tulsi’s progressive stances into his own platform, why should Tulsi supporters have assimilated into Bernie’s camp when Bernie refused to fight for us and the issues we care about? While Tulsi was on par with Bernie’s domestic issues regarding healthcare and education, Bernie failed to meet her on advocating for freedom of speech on social media by challenging big tech censorship, or for freedom of press by supporting Assange, or challenging intervention and sanctions in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran…just to name a few key issues.

Tulsi also had wider appealability amongst independents. For starters, she didn’t feed into Russiagate. She won over the respect of Ron Paul’s following and many libertarians with her audit the Fed Bill.

Federal Reserve

Tulsi: Tulsi Gabbard is a cosponsor of the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2019 — which seeks to audit the Federal Reserve.

Ron Paul expressed support for Tulsi Gabbard, saying that she was the “very best” democrat running

“Tulsi Gabbard by far is the very, very best” 
 “She is very liberal when it comes to economics. We probably wouldn’t agree with too much on economics.”
 “She is good on foreign policy. She does not want these engagements, which is an economic issue. We’d save a lot of money by not being engaged like this.”

“She’s the most intelligent and would be the best, If we had to pick one of them to be our president, I think she would be giving us the best chance as for bringing about peace.”

This is certainly one of the policies that inspired Ron Paul’s endorsement, aside from her foreign policy. Now lets take a look at where Ron Paul puts Bernie on this issue, largely for the sake of recognizing the boundaries of Bernie’s appealability.

Bernie: The Hill published a piece titled, “Ron Paul says Bernie Sanders ‘sold out’ on Fed amendment””

..I am just going to leave it at that.

Bernie Sanders and his movement need to realize that to truly have a political revolution needed to overthrow the deep-rooted corporate establishment, they need to appeal to more demographics by addressing their grievances instead of being silent on them. Moreover, one should not be assisting the corporate establishment’s approach to tackling those grievances, like political censorship by big tech virtual monopolies taking measures against “disinformation” and “Russian interference”. Maybe that’s why twitter removes my likes from all of Tulsi’s famous tweets? Because she is a Russian agent — no, asset-, right? Oh, no wonder Bernie doesn’t touch her. Plus, that would be bad for his career!

The most power the President has is bestowed through their role of being the Commander in Chief, this is arguably the most important role of the president, as Congress has little to no say in the area ever since the war on terror began, whereas Bernie’s most popular platforms depend on legislation getting passed through Congress and brought to his desk.

Many Tulsi supporters were not confident in Bernie standing up to the military industrial complex. To put it bluntly. He has complied with the war machine’s agenda many times since 2016, and before then. Unless he changed his tune drastically, telling Tulsi supporters or Tulsi herself that they are obliged to throw their support behind Bernie was a gigantic insult, not just to Tulsi and her supporters, but to everyone affected by issues she speaks up for that Bernie refused to give a voice to— whether it be Assange rotting in prison or the children of Venezuela, Iran, and Syria starving as a result of the sanctions and propaganda that Bernie is complicit in supporting and propagating.

On top of all the policy differences, and after Bernie’s surrogates have relentlessly smeared Tulsi, it was extremely entitled to have tried to shame Tulsi voters into voting for Bernie in the primaries. Many have countered by shaming Bernie himself, along with his surrogates —not just for vote shaming, but the surrogates attacks on Tulsi, and Bernie’s complicity in her capaign’s erasure by the establishment.

Take this tweet by one of Bernie’s surrogates: Linda Sarsour

A surrogate of Tulsi, Niko, would reply:

A Tulsi supporter add to the discussion:

Some would take the “Gabbard should drop out and stop hurting Bernie’s chances” argument and flipped it around.

She isn’t wrong, Sanders has alienated many from his movement, where as Tulsi has successfully reached out across the spectrum.

Despite running on a progressive platform, she earned an endorsement from Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate in 2016, going into the New Hampshire Primary.

Gabbard builds bridges outside of the progressive movement better than Bernie, but she also burns bridges better than Bernie — bridges that need to be burnt. ie: DNC establishment, intelligence community, military-industrial complex, etc

Bernie supporters were vote shaming Tulsi supporters and telling Tulsi to drop out as Bernie’s campaign was complicit in her erasure and said nothing when CNN excluded her from the debates she was more qualified for than half the other candidates invited, according to the polls. Nor did Bernie and Co say anything when she was excluded from the other debates, even when the DNC changed their rules of a debate last minute when Gabbard indisputably hit their normal, previously stated criteria.

As shown in the last tweet, for the sake of hammering in the point, Bernie’s surrogates had attacked Tulsi with pathetic smears but Tulsi never got an apology, meanwhile Bernie apologizes to Joe Biden for a surrogate writing that he has a corruption problem.

Gabbard’s calling out of the nomination process and the overseers of it as corrupt and pointing out the “rigging” of the process drew attention from independents and those fed up with the political establishment on both sides of the aisle. This drew a lot of hate from the democratic establishment. Not only was Tulsi focused more on differentiating herself from the other candidates on the issues during the primary rather than only focusing on beating Donald Trump, but she was better poised to just that, to actually beat him in a general, more so than any other candidate, with huge crossover appeal from independents.

Gary Johnson, the previous libertarian nominee, endorsed her before the NH primary. Shortly after Tulsi’s presidential bid, Libertarian Investments published a piece titled, “Would Tulsi Gabbard Make a Good President?”

“The main reason she stands out is because she is anti-establishment, particularly when it comes to the issue of war and foreign intervention.

Some would say that Gabbard is the left-wing version of Ron Paul. But we have to get a bit more specific. On cultural and economic issues, Gabbard is certainly mostly on the political left. On the issue of foreign policy, Tulsi Gabbard and Ron Paul are basically in the same camp.

Gabbard will be 39 years old when the 2020 election is held. She would be the youngest president in the history of the United States. She would obviously also become the first female president.

The establishment has already taken their digs at Gabbard. I suspect that the establishment media will try to ignore her as much as possible. They will give her the Ron Paul treatment to a certain extent. If she starts to gain significant support, then she is going to start to experience the Donald Trump treatment by the media.”

Libertarians and independents would be willing to set aside differences on economics and accept her progressive platform that includes free healthcare, UBI, and other progressive initiatives, because she represents them in other areas that they feel are important — and doesn’t alienate and disrespect them.

Presidential powers are limited in most areas, but since the war on terrorism, the president can initiate acts of war without congressional approval, and this has happened before. Even before this precedent was set post 9/11, the president has always faced the the least restraint, and most power in the area of foreign policy. This is why many claim the most important role of the president is the commander-in-chief, and it is why the foreign policy differences between Bernie and Tulsi are so crucial.

Another smear on Gabbard that Bernie supporters were found to frequently echo was that she was a GOP Trojan horse. I want to address this to highlight that she was tough on Trump where everyone else was easy on him.

Smear: Tulsi is a GOP Trojan horse and is easy on Trump

Reality: Tulsi opposed his foreign policy while democrats thought he wasn’t doing enough and wAs wOrKiNg fOr pUtIn

Tulsi said in May of 2019 that Trump and Bolton were pushing us to the brink of war with Iran. To Bernie’s credit, he did oppose Trump’s actions on Iran, but on Venezuela and Syria, where Tulsi was hard on Trump, Bernie and establishment democrats were weak.

11 months later and here we are, in a near state of war after Trump assassinated Iran’s second-in-command, Soleimani, outside an Iraqi international airport.

Iran’s second-in-command was extrajudicially assassinated by President Trump, a clear pretext for war. The reasons given by the White House amounted to Soleimani being a “terrorist” being responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of American soldiers”, and that taking him out was preventing an “imminent attack”.

Mike pence, the second-in-command of our country as Soleimani was to his, stated on Friday that Soleimani “was actively plotting in the region to take actions, the big action as he described it, that would have put dozens if not hundreds of American lives at risk, We know it was imminent.”

Of course, the evidence used to support the White House’s claims is highly suspect, brought to you by the same intelligence community that lied its way into the Iraq War (among many other post-2000 lies such as the Dhouma attacks, not to mention the Afghanistan papers).

Eric Boehm noted in his article, ”Without Evidence of ‘Imminent’ Attack on Americans, the White House’s Justification for Killing Iranian General Seems Hollow” that, “Citing two unnamed U.S. intelligence officials who have been briefed on the Soleimani assassination, Rukmini Callimachi, the New York Times’ top correspondent covering ISIS and the War on Terror, reports that ‘evidence suggesting there was to be an imminent attack on American targets is ‘razor thin’’ and that the Trump administration made an ‘illogical leap’ in deciding to kill Soleimani.’ ”

The Business Insider would report that Trump told associates that “he assassinated Iran’s top military leader last week in part to appease Republican senators who will play a crucial role in his Senate impeachment trial”.

Marc Rubio responded to the media’s demands for evidence with a statement that comes straight from the empire’s manufacturing consent/propaganda manual, ending his statement with, “And easy for media to say no proof that these threats were different, because its highly classified intelligence that can’t be disclosed without putting sources & methods used at risk”…Well…now isn’t that convenient?

The reasons given by the White House shifted as their narrative collapsed was concisely portrayed by Ditz in an article titled “As ‘Four Embassy’ Allegation Falls Apart, Trump Says It Doesn’t Matter”:

“So with all those lies behind us, President Trump now is taking the position that “it doesn’t really matter” if the four embassy thing was made up, or that the “imminent threat” claim was untrue.

Trump now says that Soleimani deserved to die whether or not anything he said about him was true, because of his “horrible past.” Soleimani’s history as a top military leader for a country the US doesn’t get along with would in essence cover this.

And yet despite Trump’s claims, US law has made clear that political assassinations are illegal. Claims of “imminent threats” are so common by the military specifically because it offers them some vague legal pretext to circumvent the law against assassination for policy’s sake. Having lost that, Trump’s claim that it “doesn’t matter” seems to fly in the face of American legal standards.”

While many would defend Trump’s action by accusing Iran of supporting terrorism, they would simultaneously neglect to acknowledge that Soleimani was widely recognized as being crucial in the war on ISIS, even by western media and military. US forces had worked with Soleimani in anti-terrorism operations as he was a major participant in the war on ISIS.

They also fail to acknowledge the fact that this brings us closer to war. We turned Soleimani into a martyr. Ben Norton would comment on Soleimani’s funeral alongside a videoclip of the crowds from a moving helicopter

As Caitlin Johnstone wrote in “ The US Government Lies Constantly and the Burden of Proof is on the Accuser”,

“The US government has a very extensively documented history of lying to advance pre-existing military agendas. This is an entirely indisputable fact. It’s been universally true from generation to generation, from administration to administration, and from political party to political party. The Afghanistan Papers came out just a few weeks ago further documenting this already conclusively established fact. Anyone who just accepts US government assertions about the need for military force without a mountain of independently verifiable proof is, to put it nicely, a complete fucking idiot.

The demand for proof would be normal even if the entity in question didn’t have an extensive history of lying about these things, because, as anyone with even a cursory understanding of logic already knows, the burden of proof is always on the party making the claim. When it comes to incalculably important matters like life and death, demanding that the burden of proof be met is just being a sensible human being.

Add in the fact that the US government is known to lie constantly about these matters, and believing its current claims about Soleimani makes as much sense as believing a known compulsive liar who has deceived you many times when he tells you it’s urgent that you go murder your neighbor right this instant.”

Now how does this relate to democrats and Bernie? It’ll make sense soon.

Here is what John Bolton, key architect of the Iraq war had to say following the assassination.

And to demonstrate the hivemind of left, even after all his war-mongering, weeks after after he made the tweet above cheering outright regime change, John Bolton would go on to be a hero of the left for testifying against Trump, as if all of his previous war crimes had been forgiven and even forgotten.

Another Iraq war architect, David Wurmser, was made one of Trump’s chief advisors on Iran. While democrats were unusually silent on condemning trump for surrounding himself with Neocons like Bolton and Wurmser, Tulsi was pointing out Trump’s hypocrisy in his declaration claiming intent to prevent a war rather than start one.

Trump would then go on to announce a fresh round of sanctions, which Ilhan Omar would do a good job of condemning.

Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission to reply to Saudi Arabia using Iraq as an intermediary. Iraq’s parliament would vote to expel US troops from the country. Trump responded by asking them to pay billions of dollars for the American airbase, and as Zerohedge reported,

“That, however, wasn’t enough, and Trump also made it clear that in addition to billions in reimbursements, unless the US left on a ‘very friendly basis’, the US would hit Iraq with ‘very big’ sanctions like ‘they’ve never seen before ever.’

‘If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis. We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.’ ”

The US would partake in its largest military exercise with NATO in decades. As if assassinating the 2nd-in-command on Iraq’s soil and refusing to respect Iraq’s sovereignty and demands to withdraw wasn’t bad enough, NATO began expanding its coalition-operations in Iraq to appease Trump’s demand for NATO to “do more” in the middle east.

While Gabbard was warning of the steps towards war with Iran, democrats were screaming about Russia. Sure, Bernie made a few tweets, but when she proposed the “No More Presidential Wars” resolution, which sought to make using war powers without congressional approval an impeachable offense, Gabbard found no support. Her resolution, which still has no cosponsors, is summarized in the header of the congressional website that reads –

“Defining Presidential wars not declared by Congress under article I, section 8, clause 11 (Declare War Clause) as impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors” within the meaning of article II, section 4 of the Constitution and defining the meanings of war and cobelligerency for purposes of the Declare War Clause and Impeachment provisions.”

“The Squad” — often idolized as the driving progressive influence in Washington — not only repeatedly fails to defend Gabbard through smears, even some partaking in them some, they treat her like a disease. Gabbard will propose positive legislation and she finds no support from progressives whom she should be able to gather some from. To Representative Omar’s credit, she was the only cosponsor of H.R 897 by Gabbard — a resolution calling for 1000 dollars a month for every adult American.

And while the democrats allowed Gabbard to be further shamed for her present vote on impeachment, many see the overall efforts by democrats as “political theatre” to simply score political brownie-points from Trump-hating voters. The democrats, “progressive” or not, refused to acknowledge the corruption of their own party while they prosecuted Trump for corruption, and it did not go unnoticed.

This was immediately after the Iowa Caucus behavior. She didn’t have much to say on that. Nothing at all on twitter. She called it a “hot mess” and that quote ran the MSM news cycle, so that’s nice.

Trump’s 2016 campaign had anti-imperialism undertones in his foreign policy rhetoric, including condemnations of Saudi Arabia, but he would go on to flip-flop on many of his talking points, many of these regarding foreign policy.’

Most of the democrats who attack him and are so fixated on him cheer his draconian sanctions, or do little to oppose them and turn a blind eye. Many democrats even condemned him for not doing enough when he started to withdraw troops from Syria, including Sanders. And indeed there is some merit there, but…

Again, Tulsi Gabbard’s “No More Presidential Wars” resolution does not have one single cosponsor. If others were serious about preventing war and impeaching Trump, they would have supported Tulsi’s legislation, and if passed, Trump would have been removed from office if he were to have assassinated Soleimani without congressional approval — which he did. The legislation, if enacted, would have restored constitutional balance and discouraged and prevented the extrajudicial-assassination, as the law is meant to do, or Trump would already be gone.

If the democrats really wanted Trump gone, they woul passed Gabbard’s resolution restoring the constitutional check on Presidential war powers. It’s as if democrats were more focused on looking like they are impeaching Trump than actually impeaching him.

Gabbard has been harder on Trump than every democrat concerning his foreign policy. The notion that she is “easy on trump” for her very sensible and justified present vote is just a product of the collective delusion brought on by the Russiagate narrative.

Many democrats did attack Trump for the assassination, after all, it is election season. But most of those same democrats attacking passed the military budget raise for him, and propagated much of the propaganda leading up to it — While Tulsi could not pass the annual defense spending bill in “good conscience” and was frequently putting pressure on Trump to refrain from both militaristic and economic imperialism. Imperialism that both endangers our national security and civilians in the countries we have tensions with.

“As a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, I fought hard to get many provisions in this year’s defense bill to protect Hawai‘i and our country, improve the lives of servicemembers and military families, provide transparency of the devastating humanitarian impact of U.S. sanctions, and address environmental threats. But at a time when many Americans are struggling and suffering, the massive cost of this defense bill at $740.1 billion disproportionately benefits the military industrial complex, continues to escalate the new Cold War and nuclear arms race, and needlessly puts more of our troops’ lives at risk by continuing our decades-long war in Afghanistan. I could not in good conscience vote to pass it,” said Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

Meanwhile this is how Trump was reacting,

Dore, hitting the nail on the head.

If Trump is a fascist nazi dictator you want to impeach, why would you give him a $750,000,000,000 military budget and ignore [Tulsi’s] legislation to restore the pre 9/11 constitutional norm of needing congress to approve acts of war?

Jimmy Dore uploaded a great video yesterday titled “AOC Gaslights For Democrats Over COVID Bail-Out.” where he does a good job of putting the squad, particularly AOC, in a critical light. He even calls Tulsi Gabbard out for having supported it and that is awesome because the whole point to takeaway from this article is that we need to hold our elected officials under scrutiny and ensure accountability. Not even mattering whether Tulsi was wrong or right for supporting what Dore called the largest upwards transfer of wealth in history, she very well could have been wrong, the point is that we need to hold out politicians accountable and vote for who we like the best, based not just on their current rhetoric, but history of action and voting record.

If I want to vote for Jessie Ventura, or even Gabbard again, as a 2024 people’s party candidate in a hypothetical future with the Biden2024 crew or the AOC2024 crew or whoever shaming everyone to rally behind them to defeat a Trump 2024 campaign…it is well within my ethical rights and I should feel no shame for voting with the candidate that bet represents me.

The lesser of two evils dynamic has ironically fostered the continuation of evil. It functions because of the argument “Well this person has a better shot, we need to defeat this other evil” and so the masses are always choosing from people with high amounts of power…in a corrupted system…Remember, voting evil, lesser or not, is still voting evil. Likewise, shaming people who are voting for the person who best reflects how they would ideally be represented is wrong, and its replicating the same dynamic that brought us the current corrupt duopoly where important issues demanding urgent reform don’t see any as the years drag by.