Mainstream Media in Panic to Stop Tulsi
Renee Parsons
In case you had not noticed, there is an existential crisis going on within both the MSM and Democratic party that has been on full display during the June and July DNC sponsored presidential debates – and today the DNC and its media sycophants are lock-step in panic mode.
In the aftermath of the July debate when Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hi) shined a light on her campaign and took Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Cal) to task for her misleading record on criminal justice as California Attorney General, the MSM and its Democratic flunkies have pummeled Gabbard about an unplanned meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017 just as they have done since Gabbard first announced her candidacy.
Let’s be clear: Is the MSM accusing Gabbard of treason? If they are suggesting that a Major in the US Army National Guard and a combat veteran who served in a medical unit in Iraq for one year committed a treasonous act, they need to make the facts immediately available to the Pentagon and make their factual case to the American public.
If they do not present any facts to support their allegation, then they have once again proven to be no more than vengeful ideological toadies who march to the Deep State’s agenda of sabotaging Gabbard’s campaign.
Immediately after announcing her candidacy, Gabbard and her anti-regime change war message have been systematically dismissed as a Russian/Putin/Assad apologist and delegitimized by both the DNC and MSM. Given limitations to media access that other candidates have been afforded, she has been forced to deal with hostility and disrespect rather than speak to the issue of peace. To her credit, Gabbard has learned to push back and stand her ground as the debate platform has provided a perfect setting for her to standout.
As long as Gabbard made few waves with her foreign policy pronouncements and continued to poll at 1%, she represented no threat to anyone. Now that Gabbard has rocked the debate stage a second time as the top trending candidate on Google with her challenge to Rep. Tim Ryan and now to Sen. Kamala Harris with her disputed record as a ‘progressive prosecutor,” the powers that be have sharpened their knives to question Gabbard’s patriotism and destroy her credibility.
With a growing self confidence that the American public is responding to her agenda, Gabbard, who has been overly-cautious about stepping outside her signature issue, is spreading her wings to show a depth and strength as she easily qualified for the September debate.
Immediately after the debate, Harris had no factual rebuttal to Gabbard’s points as she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper:
This is going to sound immodest but I am obviously a top tier candidate so I did expect to take the hits tonight because a lot of them are trying to make the stage for the next debate.”
Adding his support, Cooper added “for a lot of them, it’s do or die” as Harris continued
…coming from someone who has been an apologist for an individual Assad who has murdered the people of his country like cock-a-roaches, she who has embraced and been an apologist for him in a way that she refuses to call him a war criminal I can only take what she says and her opinion so seriously. I’m prepared to move on.”
Is Sen Harris accusing a Major in the Army National Guard of treason? If so, let’s hear her facts and if not, Harris needs to clean up her act. It is an old political trick: when you don’t have the facts, bring out the personal attack and then ‘move on’.
It was those early media kerfuffles with pro-war, pro-establishmentarians that tempered Gabbard to stay focused and maintain her cool as in her interview with former CIA intern Cooper who now masquerades as a CNN ‘journalist.’ In a post debate interview, Cooper was persistent, if not relentlessly dogged, in his pursuit by displaying a new aggressive media strategy as no other candidate is experiencing.
Tulsi Gabbrd: I’ve seen the cost of war first hand. In Iraq, serving in a medical unit. I would never apologize for doing all that I can to fight counter productive regime change wars. If that means meeting with a dictator or meeting with an adversary, absolutely. I would do it.
Anderson Cooper: Do you consider him [Assad] a torturer or a murderer?
TG:That’s not what this is about. I don’t defend or apologize or have anything to do with what he has done to his people.
AC: But if you’re president of the United States, there’s traditionally a role for a US President to call out human abuses overseas…
TG: Here’s the way I look at it, an example of the kind of leadership that I follow is one where Kennedy met with and worked with Khrushchev to forge a deal to keep the American people safe, Reagan met with Gorbachev, Roosevelt met with Stalin, worked with Stalin, Nixon met with Mao; these are the kinds of leaders who think about things that are very practical and real level about how to keep our country and people safe.
AC: …but Stalin killed 20 million people.
TG: That’s my point exactly. Roosevelt not only met with him but allied with him to bring about an end to that war.
AC:…but I’m sure Roosevelt would have acknowledged Stalin murdered millions of people, but you don’t want to…
TG: I don’t dispute that.
AC: …but you won’t say anything about Bashar Al-assad.
TG: I’ve been very outspoken about this before. These are things that are being used to distract from the central issue which is that we are still waging a regime change war in Syria, we still have troops in Syria, troops who are dying, that’s why I’m running, to bring about this sea change…
AC: Just on a factual basis, Assad is a murderer and a torturer, do you not agree with that?
TG: I don’t dispute that.
It is apparent that Cooper had his marching orders to entrap Gabbard at all cost, to use his weasel words to wear her down, drain her concentration and energy as he manipulated her into agreeing to something that could later be used against her. One wonders how Cooper might have dealt with the news that it could be claimed that the last three US presidents would qualify as murderers, torturers and war criminals.
The morning after the debate, MSNBC anchor Yasmin Vossoughian of Iranian ethnicity went on the attack in another display of the new antagonistic media strategy on how to handle Gabbard.
One can assume that Vossoughian was hoping to increase her ratings and impress the higher ups at MSN with her raw aggressiveness as she consistently interrupted Gabbard (nine times) and persisted beyond the point of how a professional journalist conducts an interview. Gabbard pushed back, demanding to be heard without interruption and calling out MSNBC:
I want to break this down to what we are talking about…You’re talking about a meeting that took place three years ago and every time I come back here on MSNBC you have got to talk to me about these issues…every single time for three years? This is where the propaganda comes in because I have talked about this A LOT for the last three years.”
Vossoughian’s interruptions continued declaring that a meeting with Assad is ‘very controversial meeting to take’ has no understanding that there should be nothing controversial about meeting with any foreign leader: it is called diplomacy.
Was Vossoughian implying that Gabbard as an officer in the US Army National Guard has conducted treason? If so, she needs to ‘put up or shut up.’ Gabbard’s response:
I will not apologize to you or to anyone, let me finish, let me finish, for doing all that I can to, all that I can to prevent our country from continuing to make these perpetual wrong decisions, I will continue to do all that I can to make sure that we end these wasteful regime change wars that have taken such a toll on all of us and made our country less safe. And if that means having a meeting with a dictator, if that means trying to meet with Kim Jong-un in North Korea to de-escalate tensions and remove this nuclear threat from our country and our people whatever the crisis is, we’ve got to have a leader with the courage to do the right thing for the American people, putting their interests ahead of everything else. That is what I am focused on and that is at the center of my foreign policy…”
With that, Vossoughian ended the interview.
Obviously, there is a distinct difference between diplomacy and treason as the MSM and its partisan rubes can be expected to continue to badger and persecute Gabbard without regard to the truth, honesty or professionalism.
It is worth noting that being a network ‘anchor’ or a television personality with a multi million dollar salary in no way implies that one has ‘felt’ the egalitarian calling to be a journalist.
Editor’s Note – since receiving this article from Renee Vox has run an article claiming the second Democratic debate was too close to call, and that claims “Tulsi destroyed Kamala” were being boosted by “the Russians”, while the Jewish Insider reported that Tulsi was only there at all because she’s supported by neo-Nazis. Interesting developments.
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What gets me about the hypocrisy, outright lies, and dissembling of MSM is perfectly capsulized in Anderson Cooper’s insistence that Tulsi acknowledge that Assad is a torturer and murderer. How about the fact that torture was standard practice, water-boarding, what have you, by the US forces in Iraq? Or the thousands and thousands of people killed, ‘murdered’, most of whom non-combatants, from America’s incessant ‘war on terror’. Certainly the commander in chief, the President, both Bush and Obama, could be more accurately characterized as a torturer and murderer, but this is never brought up. Of course, but ‘Assad was gassing his own people’, according to the White Helmets, who worked hand in hand with ISIS, or whatever the people trying to turn Syria into another Libya are called. There is no definite evidence that Assad gassed his own people (and why would he do that anyway?).
It is the sheer repetitiveness and stupidity of the propaganda that makes it so implausible. But, people do believe it just because it is said over and over again. Proof is never offered. It is only those who don’t parrot the accusations that asked to provide proof that the accusations aren’t true. Shouldn’t the burden of proof be on the accusers, not the accused?
The MSM news is just brainwashing as most of us are aware. It is screened exclusively in convenient bite size packages at our busiest times of day such as getting ready for, and returning from work. Whilst we may not hear the whole article, we do hear the soundbites, “Russia is bad, Brexit is a terrible idea that we must abandon, Iran are bad, EU is utopia, highly likely Russia was behind it” ad nauseam.
MSM is great for conveniently informing us of what or how we should think in a concise, convenient, news formula. It never states that what they are telling you is not the truth, or blatant propaganda. Hiding behind swishy graphics and cutting edge presentations and banners, one is not meant to question or challenge its false narrative.
Want to look into it further? Challenge or disagree with the narrative, must be one of those “conspiracy theorists”
MSM is as big a problem as the evil acts it covers up and those behind them. And to think the actual fake news are cracking down on the real news that they deliberately mislabel as fake news.
I’ll stick with news I choose, peace brothers and sisters.
AC should do a 360º swivel on ‘it’; he’d enjoy that bit, at least: and if we could just get AOC to lend a hand … 🙂
I believe the correct term for Cooper et al is Traitor. These are traitors to the American people. And it does appear that the American population is waking up to this truth.
Just in time though, the US regime has declared dissenters ‘domestic terrorists’. Anybody that opposes the ‘official stories by the regime is now subject to pre-emptive incarceration without trial. Also, any form of criticism of Israel for its crimes is considered ‘anti-semitic’ by the real anti-Semites. Comparing the crimes of the apartheid state with previous totalitarian slaughter houses is now grounds for incarceration.
While this is not an endorsement of Paul Craig Roberts, I recommend to read his article about An Open Invitation To Tyranny
One typo in my comment, which was unfortunate, because it is the opposite of what I wanted to say. I meant to say, ‘it is only those who don’t parrot the accusations that ARE asked to provide proof that the accusations aren’t true’. Amazing how the omission of one word can so great alter meaning!
Your missing the main point of thought in someone like Cooper.
He believes that there is justifiable torture and murder. It depends which side of the coin your on , and its a fairly large coin.
what sort of oddball dimwit wrote this noisome ball of nonsense????
Gabbard is lacking any real support or any real worth.
she’s no more than a self-promoting gobbet of gristle and a weaslel-like strumpet who took money from Assad
If only Americans accepted the fact that A.Cooper is a farcical entertainment figure – not worthy of any intellectual thought. Who cares what he says – stop discussing him and his interviews – it lends creed to the man. Hes not worthy of the time given to such …a man – or is he the woman ? does not matter anyway.
Similarly with political figures like the non black Harris – who likes to play the black race card – which in turn shows the type of evil bitch she truly is. Again not worthy of discussing.
If Americans only concentrated on what matters and ignored the rest. Please tell us, the World, what matters to Americans so that we can perhaps understand better. We stopped watching Cooper long ago. We stopped noticing the colour of ones skin long ago, its just that you simply can’t.
That’s not to say we do not discriminate – we do – but we do it on the basis of human dignity and intellect. We discriminate on that and we call you out on that.
My Dream Team at this juncture: Sanders/Warren (Warren/Sanders good too?),l Tulsi at SoS, Kamala for AG.
The key skill of effective Generals (Eisenhower quote?) is building a General Staff, dedicated people whose skills match the job, trusting them to take care of the tasks.
I learned a new(-to-me) word in the last two years; [kakistocracy], that I thought I’d never hear.
It is interesting to read this. From my own personal experience in verbal debate with ANY US citizen it seems their solution to a losing point of view is personal insults and volume of voice – the more they seem to think they’re not going change your view even though you may understand their view but beg to differ the louder they get.
Well, well, well ……. can’t imagine any of the other Democrat war apologists saying this.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/15/tulsi-gabbard-says-she-would-pardon-snowden-and-drop-all-us-charges-against-assange?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=twitter
What about Pelosi meeting Assad in 2007? What was that about?
Are you idiots so buried in your Assadist comfort zone that you have no idea that Gabbard was a keynote speaker at a Christian Zionist conference led by John Hagee who believes that Adolph Hitler was part of a biblical prophecy intended to gather the Jews into Israel? She is a chum of For people so hung up on the lies of the bourgeois press, you make the Guardian look principled by comparison. Even Mint Press has her number: “Gabbard has spoken at a conference of Christians United for Israel, which has defended Israel’s settlement enterprise; has backed legislation that slashes funding to the Palestinians, and has cultivated ties with Boteach as well as with major GOP donor casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. She also attended the controversial address to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March 2015, which many progressive Democrats boycotted.”
At whom is this stream of spittle-stained invective directed, Louis? At OffG as a whole or the author of the piece? They aren’t synonymous. We give space to many shades of opinion we may not wholly share but can respect, in a bid to revive the concept of open debate and an exchange of ideas.
If you’d like to put your observations (sans raving ad hom) into an article we’d be happy to consider it providing you could sufficiently source your claims.
Yes, Louis, I knew that. And it’s one reason why I’m not an unalloyed supporter of Tulsi, even if she doesn’t reek as bad as the other people in our political system. But now, having graciously answered your question, let me ask you this: honestly, which bothers you more? The fact that she’s a Zionist? Or the fact that she’s an ‘Assadist’?
Touche!
As Goebbels is reported as saying,’Tell the lie enough times, and people believe it eventually’…
Churchill wanted to gas Kurds in the ’30s, and sent many men to their deaths in Gallipoli, Norway, etc.
No leader is innocent, as the buck stops with them.
Gabbard , or any other candidate with an anti-regime-change policy will fail.
And Trump will go for broke with a coup against Venezuela to rescue his re-election as the economy tanks…
when will a non US journalist ask these mentally subnormal US MSM ‘anchors’ which US Presidents have NOT committed genocide, torture etc etc in foreign wars?
Obama: yes. Bush Jnr: yes. Clinton: yes. Bush Snr: yes. Reagan: yes. Carter: ? Nixon: yes. Johnson: yes.
The biggest murderer since 1946 is the USA. Never ending murdering, all over the globe. Full scale wars, endless false flags, endless funding of terrorists. Continual funding of coups. Continuous support for murdering regimes.
Why is any foreign politician or diplomat meeting with the most murderous nation on earth?
Since 1946?
The evidence does tend to suggest WW1 & 2 weren’t at all forgone conclusions, & WW2 most certainly was prolonged by the west, if not deliberately provoked to weaken its imperialist rivals.
All kneel for the neo-liberals (that’s sarcasm).
Gabbard may turn out to be a phony, Corbyn may be a huge disappointment – who knows?
But surely the point of this recent spate of Off-G articles is actually about the way the MSM deal with perceived threats from ANY candidate who is not sufficiently pro-war, pro-banking, or pro-corporation?
The MSM’s group-think, extreme bias, selective blindness, and sheer fucking stupidity (manifested in idiotic lines of questioning, such as ‘are you, or have you ever been a member of the communist party’) tells you there is simply no chance of any politician who is not pro-war, pro-banking, pro-corporation ever getting fair hearing on platforms owned and controlled by predatory capitalists.
Corbyn the antisemite (lol) Gabbard the Assad apologist (lol) – what sort of cretins can’t see through this sort of rubbish (leaving aside the Guardian, of course)
The MSM are judge & jury: that’s the whole problem in a nutshell, although it does afford opportunities for glorious take-downs like this.
@Mucho
This is an Amazon review of a Bollyn book : 9/11, the Deception that Changed the World
@Admin. Why have you disabled the reply button to Mucho response to me? It’s almost as if you are favouring one opinion over another, even though you’ve had your own say ATL.
1. The reply button is not disabled.
2. We would broadly agree with your distinction between Truthers and theorists (no need to use the CIA-promoted propagandist term when simple ‘theorist’ does just as well).
This is why we tend to promote the scientific and other fact-based studies that show clearly the deficiencies of the NIST and 911 Commission reports over and above any too-specific claims about the how and why.
Admin i think you have wrinkles in your website. The reply button is missing below! Sometimes articles appear & disappear in the headline page, I always have to manually refresh my browser tab to see updated comments & replies, and when I use your html buttons or paste code into the text box more often than not half the code goes missing, leaving a mess of text/code.
Some of this i put down to ad/script blockers installed into my browser. I see you still have the dreaded google cookie monsters on your site.
This is constructive criticism to be helpful, not a complaint.
Yes I too am missing “reply” buttons. I also received a cryptic response from WHB in my email but can’t trace it to my comment since the WHB reseponse doesn’t seem to be on the page I was directed to.
‘A conspiracy theorist starts with a theory and goes around looking for evidence to support his theory. That’s what Dr. Philip Zelikow did as Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, writing a complete outline of 9/11 Commission Report before the investigation even started, and then subverting and directing the investigation to fit his thesis that al Qaeda (but not Bush’s Saudi friends–heavens, no!) did it.’ – this is the bit you need to focus on: criminals pretending to investigate their crimes.
Imagine a police investigation in which 3 bodies were reported yet only contained details on two of them – in what sort of parrallel universe would this be acceptable?
To answer my own rhetorical question – one in which blind faith in murderous leaders trumps the evidence in front of your very eyes.
This is a response to a William HBonney comment further down but, once again, I seem to be unable to respond in the relevant place. Can Off-G please fix this problem:
“the idea that corporate America can never be a victim of forces beyond its control.”
No – the idea is that corporate America’s narrative can never be trusted.
“It requires looking at event that has never happened before, and using notional ‘expertise` purloined from the Internet, on civil aviation, or civil engineering, to declare’ it wouldn’t happen that way’”
Ah – “never happened before”. I can sense that the claim that nothing can possibly make any sense at all is just around the corner. Ah yes – here it is:
“Sometimes, the world makes no sense, ….”
But what is this?:
“and conspiracy theories accentuate the senselessness.”
Actually conspiracy theories are the only thing which, in this case, make sense.
WHB is a compulsive or paid contrarian who gets a kick out of splurging fact-free mainstream propaganda here in hopes people bother to correct him. The mods can fact-check his misinformation when necessary, we advise everyone commenting here to ignore him.
Thanks Off-G, will do.
You’re posting Amazon reviews now? And without supplying links. I did a google of a line from your review and it listed only two items: this site and an Amazon page under the heading “trending in reviews” – and which doesn’t actually contain that review. Why don’t you just use your own words and keep quotes to a minimum?
This is all nonsense, another pathetic, weak response, full of 24 carat horse shit, I can’t be bothered to address any of the numerous problems in this umm, book review. You really have nothing of substance to bring to the table to backup your version of what happened on 9/11, because you are invested in a pack of lies, total made-up crap which falls flat on its face when people of integrity scrutinise it. Its good that you post though, because it serves well in terms of exposing how shallow the mainstream version of events is and how no-one should trust anything the authorities say. Thanks
IMO, Gabard is just another portion of the ‘coalitioning’ the dems have used since time immemorial to appear to be all things to all people, yet when the time comes the brass ring is always handed to just another worthless zionist neolib.
Maybe in 2 or 3 more electiion cycles Gabbard will get the big tick & get to run for veep where she will be indoctrinated into the complex deceitful art of talking ‘peace’ whilst waging war. (a la Barack Oblamblam who personally murdered more innocents than Bush yet copped the Nobel peace prize.)
If Gabbard is such a peacenik who fights for the underdogs within amerika and without, why didn’t she join with those congresspeople who were trying to get something useful outta the dem takeover of the house by jettisoning that warmonger, zionist and corporate shill Nancy Pelosi as house speaker?
Gabbard didn’t do that, she backed the Pelosi scum right from the get go, thereby ensuring that any of her attempts to stop regime change wars wouldn’t get into committee, let alone out of it and onto the floor of Congress.
Backing Pelosi guaranteed that her bill to block sales of arms to Saudi Arabia would be watered down to the point of being worthless.
Nothing illustrates that Gabbard is just another show pony trying to make dems appear to be what they are not, than her dedicated support for the Pelosi monster.
Imagining that any of the current dem candidates will do anything other than more of the same ‘boost the empire, back the corporations and f++K the ordinary citizens’ which dems have been about since the year dot, is delusional thinking of the worst kind. I strongly suggest anyone permitted to vote for the amerikan prez (which does not include all citizens, as the people of Puerto Rico know only too well) quit wasting time studying the tiny differences between each of the fork tongued silver tails running for prez, and instead read some objective amerikan history and study the true nature of the totally corrupt and unfit for purpose democrat party machine.
The quadrennial prez farce exists solely to distract and entertain, believing the process could create any change is the insanity that twelve steppers witter on about when they say “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome.”
The democrat party is the worst example of a right wing political movement posing as some peculiar flavour of leftist humanism the world has witnessed. There is absolutely zero chance of any worthwhile change happening via the ballot box as long as the dem/rethug duopoly is the only game in amerika.
How many people did the Vietnam War murder? How many people still die from unexploded ordnance in Laos – EACH DAY!
The war in Syria, fertilized by the Obama administration, killed more people and did more damage than Assad did. Pinochet killed his own people …… and he was the darling of the free world. What about ‘Democracy Leader’ Aung San Suu Khy in Myanmar?
The killings have to stop and US troops staying home would be a very efficient start.
Yes but the razzmatazz extravaganza of the US Exceptionalism Show must be maintained at all costs. The media paper hearts bleed for a tyrannized foreign population – but only for that of a specific country – by some strange coincidence, a country standing in the way of US corporate domination. The moment the US has whipped up enough fever in the US populace to justify another bombing and is then found out for having told another pack of lies, you can expect media sympathy for the poor foreign population they were recently weeping over to suddenly dry up, as they briefly say, “Oops a daisy” and then move on to express sympathy for the population of the next target.
If a government doesn’t even serve its own people, one has to ask, who does it serve?
The system serves itself, what was once a good idea (centralized government) has now turned into an all devouring monster! The system is corrupt beyond repair………
I have a feeling no matter what anyone says you will always defend the system.
‘The system’ is awfully vague, but luckily we can compare systems of governance in different countries via the ‘Corruption Perception Index’. (one may baulk at the caveat ‘perception’, but what do you express, if not a perception?)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
I’ve helpfully noted some hero/villain countries of my fellow OG commentators, from most to least corrupt . No. 178, out of 180, is Syria. Venezuela 168, Russia 138, Israel 34, United States 22, UK joint 11th (with Germany), with Denmark taking the no. 1 spot.
I won’t labour the obvious conclusion.
This “Corruption Perceptions Index” is an index published annually by “Transparency International”.And the obvious conclusion Billy boy is a question: How corrupt is “Transparency International”?
Plus we need to emphasise, it doesn’t claim to be an index of corruption. As its name makes clear, it’s an index of subjectively perceived corruption, which may have no basis at all in veridical reality, as no data is offered in corroboration.
It’s just a fact-free meme-generator designed as a fake citation source for fake news sites such as the Guardian.
EDIT: Kit wrote about this in one of his earliest articles here:
Or you can read it in TI’s own words here.
Well, OffG, if you don’t agree with this measure of national governance, feel free to cite a better one.
As Off-G said this Crappy Palputation Index is not a “measure of national governance” but a measure of “perception” – which can mean anything you want it to mean.
From the Wikipedia page:
Give it up, Billy. Even you don’t think that latest piece of neolib pseudo- science has any value. Poorly defined unquantifiable values correlated to other poorly defined unquantifiable values. Made up stuff correlated to other made up stuff! GIGA designed – as we said – to provide superficial ‘sources’ for fake news sites to cite. No more OT garbage like this please.
Thanks Admin. You also made me laugh there. Got it in one.
Even the subject of this piece doesn’t support your counter-culture hero, Assad.
You should make your mind up, OffG, whether you want commentators to back up their opinions with evidence, or not. You will recall your displeasure and the subsequent ad hominem you used in the Corbyn/antisemitism article (incidentally, Corbyn now accepts that the evidence overwhelmingly points towards Russian involvement in Salisbury)
If you don’t like the CPI, then debunk it properly. Which is the least corrupt country, and the most? I eagerly await your alternative ranking with Israel at the bottom, and Iran/Venezuela/Syria and North Korea all joint top….
The way to win a debate is not to be so invested in the result.
Well, George-baby, if that spanner doesn’t work, pass me one that does.
My advice Billy-baby is simply to reject “spanners” that are clearly bent.
Sorry Billy – which government do you have in mind? Ours – which definitely doesn’t serve its people but the rich? Or “theirs” – whoever “they” happen to be at the moment? If the latter then there’s an insurmountable problem i.e. the tyranny we hear about comes from our own media who have already proven to be so ludicrously servile to the ruling class interests that there is no point in even listening to them – especially when they suggest we liberate those poor foreigners by annihilating them.
More interesting is where NATO and the Western powers didn’t intervene, not where they did.
The Rwandans managed to massacre 800000 in 100 days. Kofi Annan ordered UN peacekeepers not to intervene, a decision that probably prevents him resting easy in his grave.
At the time it happened, Rwanda had been independent 32 years, way too late to blame colonialism.
If you think it’s about MSM exaggerating the brutality of some of the world’s worst regimes, then go to the Genocide memorial in Kigali. It won’t be the pile of skulls that gets you, either the hillside with a quarter of a million people buried, and birds never land. It’s the room full of photographs of happy smiling people who don’t exist anymore.
NATO and the Western powers didn’t intervene in Rwanda (preluded by the customary paper heart media tears) because they had nothing to gain materially or geopolitically from it.
They did contemporarily, in Bosnia, and Bosnia isn’t an oil state.
It was simple geography. Rwanda is landlocked, difficult to get to. The US Navy with there expensive carriers are useless in this situation.
And doesn’t that prove my point?
No
Like all the rest of the would be wanna be candidates, she fails the litmus test of our time by refusing to even question the official fairy tale concerning 9/11. It’s all rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic until the most shocking truth hiding in plain sight is brought to light. Even then though, the vacuous, cud-chewing masses would perhaps look up from their phones just a split second more than usual if the truth was disclosed. Have fun with those deck chairs, all you good folks.
I imagine there isn’t much mileage in the ‘conspiracy theorist’ vote, for a candidate with ambitions for the White House.
It takes a strange type of person to look upon an event such as this, and then add an extra layer of conspiracy, for no better reason than the idea that corporate America can never be a victim of forces beyond its control. It requires looking at event that has never happened before, and using notional ‘expertise` purloined from the Internet, on civil aviation, or civil engineering, to declare’ it wouldn’t happen that way’
The only possible ‘fairy tale’, regarding 9/11 is that it happened at all, the trouble then being accounting for 3000 dead people, 3 skyscrapers, four airliners, and a big 757 shaped hole in the pentagon.
Sometimes, the world makes no sense, and conspiracy theories accentuate the senselessness.
Notice how William H Bonney’s version of 9/11 pretty much mirrors what flaxgirl says? Do the math.
Real 9/11 truth http://www.bollyn.com
Just how many times are people going to fall for the same BS?
Just how many times can you spit in people’s faces before they realise it AIN’T raining?
Dubya was the great “peace” candidate who was going to avoid the stupid foreign wars.
Then Obomber was the great “peace” candidate.
Simultaneous wars in 7 countries.
Victims being crossed off the weekly Killer Robot Hit Lists.
$2 trillion for new WMD.
But hey, he’s a real cool black dude, so give that darkie a Nobel Peace Prize and a big slice of water melon!
Then the Orange Baboon himself was the next “peace” candidate.
No more crazy wars for Talmudistan. Get out of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Then he got his marching orders from Adelson and AIPAC.
Must keep the Chosen Folk happy. Start a little war with Eye-ran.
Military budget of $1,134 billion.
And economic warfare against the whole planet.
Now we have another “peace” candidate.
But this time it really, really, really, really will be different.
Honest, guv. On my baby’s life.
Wow, look at that really cute flying pig!
Isn’t that a really nice little Potemkin village?
Isn’t this kabuki theatre really exciting?
Aren’t the organ grinders really great giving us all these trained monkeys to fight furious mock battles to entertain us?
Mark rejects all US presidential candidates: is simply anti USA?
Fair point. There does seem a lot of anger & animosity toward Amerikans in Mark, i’m just saying cos its so evident, its not an invitation to a duel.
If you want to distinguish between Tweedledum and Tweedledummer, feel free to do so.
No just anti trained monkeys and BS artists pretending to be something different.
Gramophone needle stuck in the same old groove.
You are not actually taking into consideration that Trump has not started any new wars. By the third year of Obama’s presidency, he signed onto the Libyan war, which is still going on today.
Just using negative labels, such as ‘Orange Baboon’, doesn’t make your case stronger, but actually weaker. Trump’s hair color has nothing to do with anything, in my view. We are all entitled to do with our hair what we want, in my view.
No hes killing people by stealth, ‘sanctions’.
>Iran
>Venezuela
>China
>Russia
etc etc…….
Actually sanctions are an act of war!
New wars with Venezuela and Iran and DPRK.
40,000 dead so far in Venezuela.
I don’t know how many have died in Iran and DPRK so far.
Tillerson was crowing over the deaths of DPRK fishermen.
Under the circumstances, calling that piece of subhuman filth Orange Baboon strikes me as extremely charitable, if a bit unfair to the baboons.
Deeply cynical yet oh so shockingly real. To be fair-I know why be fair?- but saying one thing and doing the opposite is endemic in the political class.
The MSM were joined by some here on Off Guardian: https://off-guardian.org/2019/07/31/kamala-or-tulsi/
Ah yes, Anderson Cooper – to use the odious Kamala Harris’s term – another – “cock-a-roach” indeed!
I posted this on a thread earlier but it also addresses this piece and explains the millionair presstitutes working for their billionaire media bosses or just being DS plants in the msm.
Elected politicians are ‘vetted’ and then promoted through the wheels of ‘government’ – committees and shadow front benches for example so they will still dance from the same string that the party political pantomime is sold to the populace as ‘free democratic choice’.
They maintain and move the parameters of the ‘Overton’ window like this. It is a work of decades and generations. The plans are 50 – 100 years hence. The current Empire is centuries old.
Within that context occasional ‘throwbacks’ appear.
Gabbard possibly. Corbyn certainly. Merkel probably.
But they are constrained by their access to confidential information.
They have to play by the rules, unless they can get to the levers of power and even then these levers are ‘the perma state’ so it is never going to be easy.
Proof of that is the failure to hold a general election in the UK while pretending that the Corbynite Labour party is sure to lose; and that Gabbard is ignored by the msm and despised by her Democrat hierarchy (same as the PLP Blairite rump did to JC); and that Merkel having survived the putsch to remove her through the fabricated alt-rightist movements, managed to form a coalition that secured her term, thus blowing the usurper plant Macrons chance of taking over the EU policies on Syria, Ukraine, Russia and now Iran.
While we can still throw up such spanners in the works at the centre of the Empire, ones which are not so easy to dispatch by bullets, imprisonment, or physical election rigging, we the common humans are winning.
I wrote a while ago that a Gabbard /Paul independent run would actually change the political landscape as much as the Corbynite Labour is doing here.
Seriously – there is time for them to do it – a classic David and Goliath scenario.
One may believe economic sanctions and boycott are wrong and unjust, because innocent and especially poor, suffer immensely. If that one has integrity and principles, he/she should not be selective to what country it applies.
What is her stand on Venezuela?
Here is an excellent article from Stephen Lendman. I’ll quote the answer to your question, and link the article:
“To her credit, Gabbard opposes interventionist US wars for regime change, wanting money for belligerence spent for infrastructure, education, healthcare, and other social programs.
She opposes Trump and “neocon war hawks that surround (him).” They “have made no secret about what their intentions are to further this regime change effort both in Venezuela as well as in Iran. So we are hearing these war drums beating,” she said, adding:
Trump “is acting not with our interest in mind, not with the American people’s interest in mind and moving forward with something that’ll prove to be very, very costly.”
“We do have a situation with a cabinet full of neocon war hawks whose history is very well-known in leading our country into one regime change war after the other and to great expense in American lives, to trillions of dollars coming out of our tax payer’s pockets as well as the lives and the suffering at the devastation of the people in the countries where we waged these wars.”
“The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders. So we have to stop trying to choose theirs.””
“Tulsi Gabbard v. Bernie Sanders on Iran and Venezuela”
https://stephenlendman.org/2019/04/tulsi-gabbard-v-bernie-sanders-on-iran-and-venezuela/
No ones claiming she doesn’t have some good policies & ideas, ( i particularly like her position on prison reform) just saying beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing. This Trojan horse has been used before to gain the popular vote & no i’m not referring to Trump.
Shes not an honest politician, that animal became extinct long ago, the rules of the game don’t allow honesty & integrity anymore. When push comes to shove she plays the other side for her own political fortune.
If a gun were held to my head & i was told to vote for an American politician i would probably vote for Gabbard over Sanders, but not because i believe what she says, shes very good, a very good liar!
I’m a Green Party voter. Perhaps we’ll never get through to the war party voters how horrible war is, how the selections are rigged, how our history is nothing to be proud of. But Tulsi Gabbard is the best thing the war parties have seen this century, besides Cynthia McKinney. I feel it my duty to defend her as best as I am capable of:)
Kamela Harris has an apparently spotty record as a prosecutor and attorney general because she’s working in the real world, a world where you get more done by quietly working with all interested parties behind the scenes rather than just grandstanding for media attention. It doesn’t necessarily produce the ideal result because it necessitates compromise but it gets things done. Ms. Harris is a bit like Barrack Obama in this respect — its a recognition that there are limits to power and that change will not come overnight.
This doesn’t mean that I’m an enthusiastic cheerleader for Kamela, just a recognition that sometimes you just can’t get what you want. I personally would like a government that’s closer to what’s advocated by Sanders, Warren and the like but I’ve lived through enough governments to recognize that to get there from where we are at the moment is going to take a lot of time — we are far too committed to radical right wing policies, we have far too much entrenched power and far too many vested interests to implement change by fiat, its got to be a process that gradually convinces a majority of stakeholders that their long term interests are best served by this change. (So, taking health care as an example — how are you going to change the industry given the amount of money washing around in it and the sheer number of people employed by it? Do people honestly expect insurance companies to just fold up and disappear? Or is the ACA the first step along a road, one taken in the face of implacable opposition that gradually gets people used to the idea of universal coverage? You choose — figure out the one that’s mostly likely to work in the US…..)
A rationalisation for eternal comprise on the part of the progressive forces, which in the past has led to few, if any, gains. Very similar to the excuses that are being offered for the current defeatist stance of the Labor Party “opposition” in Australia.
BTW, according an opinion poll cited by Jimmy Dore, a clear majority of Americans want Medicare for all, free college tuition, the military to be deployed only in extreme circumstances, etc.
It appears that majority public opinion is ahead of the political class.
An unusually sensible comment, on this forum.
Usually, commentators here are of a type, a hatred of the American military industrial complex allied to a tacit admiration for the work of the Werhmacht, which they just about manage to keep hidden, most of the time.
Virtually every mention of the Nazi’s on this site I’ve ever seen has been by you.
Another article by Renee Parsons cheering on Tulsi Gabbard….Don’t get me wrong, I despise ALL the other candidates with the exception of Bernie and possibly, Elizabeth Warren….I equally loathe CNN, MSNBC, FOX and the rest of the MSM….However, for Parsons to portray Tulsi’s time as “a Major in the US Army National Guard and a combat veteran” in a positive light, is equally appalling…..My guess is that nobody would voluntarily go to Iraq to fight GWB’s war, unless they believed his Weapons of Mass Destruction lies….And what does that say about her?….And Parsons goes on to describe this as being “patriotic”!!….A real Right-Wing talking point.
Meanwhile, her beloved Right-Wing fascist leader of India, Modi, who has already been responsible for a Muslim massacre, is at this very moment pushing his Hindu government to take over Kashmir and cause more violence against Muslims.
But I guess all of this is perfectly OK with Renee Parsons.
“My guess is that nobody would voluntarily go to Iraq to fight GWB’s war, unless they believed his Weapons of Mass Destruction lies….And what does that say about her?”
It says that she was wrong when she was younger? You know, like just about everyone on earth who make mistakes when they’re young. Did you escape making errors? Just thank goodness her mistake was signing up as a medic instead of signing up as a killer;)
My dear, your understanding of how the army operates is poor. Once you are in, you have no choice.You just follow the orders. Then if you learn it is not for you, only thing you can do is try to get out.
The question really is, why would anyone voluntarily join a known killing machine in the first place.
Come on, she wasn’t THAT young….And sure I made many personal blunders when I was young….But none so stupid as to believe the words of an obviously unintelligent and sadistic oil-worshiper intent on murdering other human beings for his own selfish purposes….Sorry, I find it difficult to shrug off such an egregious “error”….And again, what about her support of the malevolent Modi?….Certainly not another youthful indiscretion!
You’re lucky, I was dumb as rocks when I was in my early twenties. I believed all kinds of silliness. Try not to be so hard on us;)
Chiu is dead silent about Xi Jinping’s treatment of Uygurs in Xinjang, only 600 km to the south,typical of communists in China and the West -Comintern echoes. When was Xi freely elected?
Hundreds of thousands Hindus were violently ethnically cleansed from Kashmir 30 years ago by your internationalist friends the street mob Islamists for their Ummah.
Not to mention Pakistan, where terrorism and ethnic cleansing is part of their army strategy, while having Chinese nukes planes and rockets.
She’s also silent about the genocide of the Palestinians, the Vietnamese, the Indians by the Moslems, and Uncle Tom Cobley And All.
Neither did I mention Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin or George Bush….Indeed, you’re insistence that my NOT mentioning every atrocity in world history makes Modi a good guy in spite of his own barbarity”, is an extremely common diversionary technique….And I’m afraid that a discussion of every historical barbarity would take forever.
In addition, your ad hominem message that MY “friends” are “street mob Islamists” is more than ridiculous.
Both regarding Muslims in the Himalayas at the exact same time and date, 600 km apart. Calls elected Modi a rightwing facist leader, while silent on Xi Jinping.
Not to mention thousands of surpressed Muslims in Pakistan or Afghanistan next door.
Selective indignation.
You are not allowed to criticise Israel, unless you have first:-
1. Ended world hunger.
2. Saved the planet from global warming.
3. Criticised every other country on the planet.
And then, only with a signed permit from the Board of Deputies.
I like this account of the debate by Kim Iverson for those who haven’t seen it:
“The Battle Rages On Between Kamala Harris and Tulsi Gabbard”
here’s the thing: a huge percentage of ordinary americans on both “sides” couldn’t give a flying fuck about what assad did or didn’t do. that’s the battle the dnc doesn’t realise its already lost
Tulsi Gabbard is a phoney radical. She’s a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and she is being lined up as Obama 2. The flak she gets makes her look good as a radical who wants peace and an end to foreign adventures. What about her anti-BDS vote?
After all that, after ALL that, this is what you have? A damned if you do damned if you don’t referendum that does NOTHING either way? It takes a special kind of delusion to think that way.
I agree with you. Shes a professional career politician, carving a niche for future elections, shes not a serious candidate for 2020. She has some good views on prisons & anti war, she has some really bad views on India’s Modi & Israel. The latter seriously out weighs & contradicts the former.
Shes maybe best of the lot but the bars set very low, they are all liberal democrats. Murderous Obomber promised to close gitmo! I would also say she sometimes shows poor judgment but everyone’s entitled to make mistakes, grow & learn from them, but shes shown a tendency to change direction very quickly. And lets not pretend Assad is an angel anymore than his adversaries.
Anyone who goes on TV and talks about ending “regime change wars” isn’t thinking about their political career. That idea is as moronic as they come. Making genuine leftist statements is not the easy option, career-wise, for a US politician.
When you consider the last two morons in the white house got there on a ticket of anti-war I’d say not all Americans are moronic enough to vote for war, there again as they believed the war mongering morons, I suppose you could say they are just as moronic as your reply to my comment.
No one that is pro-Israel could be anti-war & i’m not that moronic enough to fall for it.
Trump was elected on a whole conflicting load of nonsense. Obama wasn’t making clear statements like Tulsi to end the perpetual wars of US foreign policy. The US public aren’t capable of reading between lines. Tulsi is giving it to them straight. This is very different
I’ve been around a while i’ve heard this before. next you’ll be telling me shes an honest politician LOL.
No, Tulsi isn’t being entirely straight either. As I noted above in another comment, she claims to be against régime change only because it interferes with the war on terror. Doesn’t she know that that latter is just a psy-op to justify/enable the former? If she doesn’t know that, then she’s being stupid. If she does know it, then she’s lying to somebody.
Incredibly you get 7 up votes for your moronic comment. Please explain how wanting to end regime change wars is moronic. Regime change wars are wars of aggression, defined under the Geneva conventions as the supreme war crime, as it contains within it all the elements of all the other war crimes. Are you saying that the conventions and the framers are moronic? Do you think it’s ok to overthrow the government’s if sovereign nations? Genuine questions, what in the name of whatever you worship do you mean?
Wrong end of the stick, man. My comment was to QT above for this comment “Shes a professional career politician, carving a niche for future elections”. I’m against regime change wars, as would be any sane person
Sorry it’s early where I am, also to M Sharon apologies for misreading your comment.
No problems, Antipropo:)
Apparently her membership to the CFR has expired, according to wikipedia:
“She is a former member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard
She tries to explain her position on the anti-BDS vote by citing this part of HR246:
“(3) affirms the Constitutional right of United States citizens to free speech, including the right to protest or criticize the policies of the United States or foreign governments”
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/246/text
Criticism of her vote can be found here at Electronic Intifada:
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/tulsi-gabbard-tries-defend-anti-palestinian-vote
The BDS movement is obviously a great thing, but I would like to question proponents of the movement who don’t do the same with the U.S. It’s hypocrisy to go around the world asking for everyone to boycott Israel, while not boycotting Britain and the U.S.–Israel’s greatest enablers. Roger Waters for example, asks everyone to avoid playing in Israel, while he plays here in the U.S., a country which makes Israel look like a mouse to a lion as far as massacres, wars, bigotry, etc.
Whilst I agree with your assertions that UK/US act as enablers for the Israeli government it is Israeli citizens , directed by Israeli politicians who drive the bulldozers and squeeze the snipers triggers. BDS is not in my opinion hypocritical in singling out Israel as the primary perpetrator of this disgusting behaviour.
I didn’t say anything is wrong with BDS. But don’t claim that Israel acts entirely on it’s own. It’s enabled to do so. Britain and the U.S. created Israel with the zionists. Israel acts as a U.S. base in the Middle East. You can’t divorce Israel from the U.S., they’re both the same warmongering right wing regimes.
The old solve world hunger and find a cure for childhood leukaemia diversion THEN criticise Israel.
Huh?
It’s an attempt to claim that Israel is “singled out” for criticism when many other matters are much more serious. Another way to put it really fails: “what about that lot over there, they’re much worse”. As if that makes what Israel has been doing since BEFORE there was an Israel not so bad. If the person who posted the comment should want to refute what I say then do so. Until then I think he/she doesn’t give a damn about “UK and US enablers”,just wants to divert from Israel.
No, the U.S. enables Israel to do all the horrific acts. You have to be blind not to see it. We have emergency weapons funding going to Israel when they run out of weapons to kill palestinians. Billions a year go to Israel from our tax dollars–we’re funding them. Our right wing regime is married to theirs. We had Netanyahu address congress like he was in our own government. The Lobby is allowed to exist in our country as if it’s an approval agency of our own government.
Y’all can act like Israel exists and does horrible things in spite of our own government’s wishes, but that’s false.
There is no right or left in US politics. Only Zionist Corporate Lives Matter. Our only choice is between the false binary corporate funded political parties of Republican or Democrat. Regardless of the party affiliation of the chief executive, the Empire continues to ignore the People to serve Zionism and defend the Petrodollar and Profits.
I think you meant to say there is no true left in American politics, because our regime is certainly right wing;)
There are no wings at the top of the bird; just a head. And it’s the same head flapping both wings. In the case of the US Govt., it’s a Zionist head.
Uh, oh. Sounds like ‘Antipropo’ is a pro-Zio.
Misread his comments and jumped to the wrong conclusion and have apologised for doing so. As to me being a “zio” that is so ludicrous it’s hard to know where to start. There’s mention on here somewhere if a “Flaxgirl” I have posted comments outing it as an obvious hasbara troll. This article is not really its(it’s deliberately, not convinced it’s a she or even one person) meat and potatoes since it’s not a direct attack on Israel. It’s possible though that it’s on leave from hasbara central, or on a reeducation course since it regularly takes a hammering when commenting. Long winded I admit so let me make it clear. Personally I would like to live long enough to see the filthy, murdering land stealing- olive tree stealing for Christ’s sake- entity known as Israel disappear from the world to be replaced by a truly democractic multi ethnic state. In a truly just world this would necessarily be majority Palestinian with a non Palestinian minority once the universally accepted right of return for refugees was enabled. Further, the “Israelis” who only became so because they are Jews would need to go back to their country of birth then apply to emigrate to the state of Palestine. Convinced yet?
What makes you think people that boycott Israel don’t boycott the UK & US?
I make it clear that I’m questioning those who don’t.
Actually, Roger Waters is just being smart and diplomatic. If really he wants to affect a positive change in US policy, then deliberately alienating American voters by boycotting their country would be the dumbest thing imaginable.
‘Phoney radical” haha!! You think that wins mainstream votes in the US? Why does she face the same questions on Assad, over and over again, thus hijacking the interview and wasting time? The same happens with Corbyn in UK, nuclear weapons, over and over. Same question 5 or 6 times. Trump met Kim. Bush was a torturer. Why isn’t Trump just grilled about pussy grabbing everytime he is interviewed, on and on and on. After all that is true. At least in the sense of he either; actually did it, or as a 59 year old grandad, lied about it to impress some dickhead, or thought that it would be somehow impressive to sexually assault women.
Its about shutting down genuine progessive change. Gabbard, Corbyn – smears, smears, smears, and the old timers and the dumb still dont get it
Because its the neo-liberal MSM. I’ve seen no one here attacking her for talking to Assad.
I’ve also seen no one here that’s so pro-gabbard, explain her horrendous support for Modi or her horrendous support for Israel.
Shes either a liar & claiming to be something shes not, i.e. anti-war (both Modi & Israel are war mongers) or shes an ass kisser & a liar who voted down BDS to keep the pro Israeli lobby happy.
Shes just another professional liar (politician) playing both sides. Will you never learn, they never change, there are no honest politicians. Shes more of the same.
Now, why do you think that is? Because he’s a unilateral, but doesn’t want to pay the electoral price by coming right out and saying so. It’s the same with Europe, where he is a leaver, desperately trying not to lose the remainer vote.
The only change you’re going to get out of Gabbard or any of the other 30 shekel whores, is chump change.
Like Obomber and his hopey changey thing.
My two biggest problems with Tulsi are:
1.) her Zionism
2.) the fact that she seems to think that the ‘War on Terra’ is an actual thing, as opposed to a Washington/Riad/TelAviv psy-op. While she claims to be against ‘régime change’ (which is a good thing), she ostensibly opposes it because, in her opinion, it just gets in the way of more effectively waging–you guessed it!–the war on terror. Doesn’t she understand that the latter only exists to facilitate/justify the former? And if she does, then who’s she lying to? Us? The Establishment? Does she really believe the official fairy tale regarding 9/11? That–get this!–two planes somehow brought down three buildings?
Those are the main reasons I have reservations about Tulsi. I, too, am leery of being swindled again as we were by O’Bomber, so I’m very reluctant to pour my heart out for her. But what if she ends up getting the nomination? What if it’s her versus Trump? Whom do I vote for? I don’t know … that’d be a tough one for me.