OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #223, APRIL 2, 2025. Compiled by Dick Bennett.
SEN. TOM COTTON, AR’S MCCARTHYITE RUSSOPHOBE
“Senate
Intelligence Committee hearing turns ugly with McCarthy-style lies about
CODEPINK: Women for Peace.”
Editor. mronline.org (3-30-25).
On
March 25, at the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats
with the five heads of intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, Senator
Tom Cotton, accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20
years, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of
China.
During the hearing CODEPINK activist Tighe
Barry stood up following the presentation of the Director of
National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about global threats to
U.S. national security and yelled “Stop Funding Israel.”
This was because neither Intelligence Committee Chair Tom
Cotton and Vice Chair Mark Warner had mentioned Israel in their opening
statement nor had Gabbard mentioned the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in
Gaza in her statement either.
Women of Code Pink protest yet another injustice and war
promoted on Capitol Hill. [Source: thehill.com]
As Capitol police were taking Barry out of the hearing
room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously
said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic that was funded by the
Communist party of China.”. . . . MORE
Democracy? America?
By Dick Bennett.
Some of our national labels, such as “democracy” and “America,” are often
illusions or fabrications, based upon ignorance or self-aggrandizement, used by
proponents of empire to deceive and dominate.
The label “America” to displace North America seems to be an obvious imperial
weapon. The people of Latin America
who resent the history North American domination don’t like it. This
country is not America; they say, it is North America. South America exists, thank you very
much, and is not grateful for the USA bullying. North of the Mexican border is the United
States of North America. Latin
Americans understand this geographical reality perfectly well.
More complicated perhaps, at least for North Americans, is their almost
universal label “democracy.”
The USA is not nor ever has been a democracy. Educated citizens know this, using the
label as convenient shorthand by which they understand each other to mean the
idea of democracy, especially electorally. To say that the USA is a democracy is to
say truthfully it is a 200 year old struggle to achieve the ideals of freedom
and equality as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. The US was a revolution against monarchy,
against single rule. But the US
Constitution expressed the revolution as a flawed republic in its earliest
stage, with large numbers of its citizens—Native Americans, Blacks, and
Women—disenfranchised. Knowing this, our
Founding Fathers, included in the Constitution provisions for amendments, which
have been employed to enfranchise these populations. We could say, then, the USA today, at least
electorally, is a less flawed, more authentic, more advanced democracy than it
was in 1789. That’s the idea of
democracy referred to as “democracy.”
But an educated citizen also understands that those gains are not
necessarily permanent, for the 200 year-old struggle for “democracy” continues. Those citizens know that a significant
minority of the US population doesn’t comprehend or even like the idea of
democracy, as the long history of increasing executive power and of demagogues demonstrate. Those citizens know also, that some of the
population exploit the label “democracy” for personal political advantage, as
in: We are a superior, an exceptional
nation—a Democracy—and can commit crimes with impunity because our values
are Exceptional.
America? Democracy?
Understanding these histories enable adherents of the idea of
democracy to understand the depth of the danger of Donald Trump’s
counter-revolution and to prepare for the struggle of their lives.
“The
Supreme Court's Presidential Immunity Ruling ...”
Brennan
Center for Justice https://www.brennancenter.org › analysis-opinion ›
sup...
Oct 1,
2024 — The ruling in Trump v. United States, forfeiting critical
checks on executive power,
is an affront to the idea of and struggle
for democracy and the rule of
law,
