20th century Civil Rights movement and 21st century Human Rights movement come together as Fair Food tour lands in Atlanta!
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Thursday, March 14, 2019
20th century Civil Rights movement and 21st century Human Rights movement come together as Fair Food tour lands in Atlanta! Coalition of Immokalee Workers
She's challenging the horror of returning veteran violence in the home RootsAction Education Fund
She's challenging the horror of returning veteran violence in the home
Via info=rootsaction.org <info=rootsaction.org@mail.salsalabs.net>
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'This Is Historic': US Senate Passes War Powers Resolution to End Complicity in World's Worst Humanitarian Crisis "Millions of grassroots activists, who helped make this vote a reality, want their lawmakers to end this unconscionable war." by Jake Johnson, staff writer
Published on
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
by
'This Is Historic': US Senate Passes War Powers Resolution to End Complicity in World's Worst Humanitarian Crisis
"Millions of grassroots activists, who helped make this vote a reality, want their lawmakers to end this unconscionable war."
by
 |
"This Senate vote moves us one step closer to ending U.S. support for the catastrophic war in Yemen, a war that makes America complicit in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,"
Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, said in a statement. (Image: Win Without War)
In a major step toward ending U.S. complicity in the world's worst humanitarian crisis, the Senate on Wednesday passed a War Powers resolution to cut off American military support for the Saudi-led coalition's assault on Yemen.
"This Senate vote moves us one step closer to ending U.S. support for the catastrophic war in Yemen, a war that makes America complicit in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world."
—Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action
—Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action
The final vote count was 54-46.
"This is historic. For the first time in 45 years, Congress is one step closer to withdrawing U.S. forces from an unauthorized war," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the lead sponsor of the resolution, declared following the vote. "We must end the war in Yemen."
Kate Gould, legislative director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, applauded the grassroots activists who have been working tirelessly to end America's disastrous role in Yemen.
"The Senate has now taken a decisive step in ending the American facilitation of the Yemen war and the world’s largest humanitarian crises," Gould said. "Millions of grassroots activists, who helped make this vote a reality, want their lawmakers to end this unconscionable war."
Passage of the resolution comes as the Saudis continue to launch deadly airstrikes in Yemen with U.S. backing, worsening a crisis that has already resulted in mass suffering and tens of thousands of deaths. Earlier this week, dozens of civilians—including women and young children—were killed by Saudi airstrikes in Yemen's Kushar district.
According to the United Nations, 14 million Yemenis could soon be on the brink of starvation if the bombing continues. Save the Children, a London-based human rights organization, estimated in a report last November that 85,000 Yemenis under the age of five have starved to death since the Saudi-led coalition began bombing the country.
"The fact is that the United States, with little media attention, has been Saudi Arabia's partner in this horrific war. We have been providing the bombs the Saudi-led coalition is using, refueling their planes before they drop those bombs and assisting with intelligence," Sanders said during a speech on the Senate floor ahead of the vote. "The bottom line is the United States should not be supporting a catastrophic war led by a despotic regime with a dangerous and irresponsible foreign policy."
Watch the full speech:
"This Senate vote moves us one step closer to ending U.S. support for the catastrophic war in Yemen, a war that makes America complicit in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, said in a statement.
In addition to putting an end to America's role in the slaughter of Yemeni civilians, supporters said the resolution also reasserts Congress' constitutional authority over war.
"Congressional authority over war was designed to avoid the type of situation that’s been unfolding in Yemen, where unauthorized U.S. military support began without public debate or scrutiny," Martin said. "The Senate's vote to end the U.S. role in Yemen is also a vote to re-democratize our nation's foreign policy."
The Yemen War Powers resolution will now head back to the House of Representatives, the final roadblock before the measure reaches President Donald Trump's desk.
In a statement before Wednesday's vote, the White House said it "strongly opposes" the resolution and suggested Trump will veto the measure if it passes the House. A two-thirds majority vote by both chambers of Congress would be needed to override a possible Trump veto.
"Ending U.S. support will put even more pressure on Saudi Arabia and the UAE to change their tactics and finally negotiate an end to the war," Martin concluded. "Now that the new Senate has passed the resolution, the House needs to pass the same clean version of the resolution to finally send it to the president’s desk."
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Giving the Bomb to Saudi Arabia’s Dr. Strangelove Chris Hedges Columnist Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers…
Giving the Bomb to Saudi Arabia’s Dr. Strangelove
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers…
The most dangerous foreign policy decision of the Trump administration—and I know this is saying a lot—is its decision to share sensitive nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia and authorize U.S. companies to build nuclear reactors in that country. I spent seven years in the Middle East. I covered the despotic, repressive kingdom as the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. And I, along with most Arabists in the United States, have little doubt that giving a nuclear capability to Saudi Arabia under the leadership of the ruthless and amoral Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would see it embark on a nuclear weapons program and eventually share weaponized technology with Saudi allies and proxies that include an array of radical jihadists and mortal enemies of America. A nuclearized Saudi Arabia is a grave existential threat to the Middle East and ultimately the United States.
The drive to build nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia is led by the half-wit son-in-law of the president, Jared Kushner, who met Tuesday with Salman in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to discuss “ways to improve the condition of the entire region through economic investment,” according to the White House. Prominently involved in that economic program are corporations such as IP3 International, a consortium of U.S. companies led by several retired generalsand admirals and others who stand to make millions from the deal.
The Saudi government, which is soliciting bids for the nuclear reactors, reportedly spent more than $450,000 over a one-month period to lobby the Trump administration to approve its purchase of the equipment and services from U.S. sources. Westinghouse Electric Co. and other American companies are preparing to construct the facilities, which would allow Saudi Arabia to enrich and reprocess uranium. The secretive effort to give Saudi Arabia a nuclear capability is not only colossally stupid, but has been done without being reviewed by Congress, as required by law, and violates the Atomic Energy Act.
Salman, whose psychopathic traits remind me of Saddam Hussein, is widely believed to have ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. He has imprisoned dissidents, brutally ousted rivals, seized over $100 billion in extortion money from kidnapped and tortured members of the royal family and instilled a level of fear and terror inside the kingdom, always a repressive society, unrivaled in its modern history.
Donald Trump and Kushner, by shamelessly defending Salman, even in the face of CIA declarations that the agency has “high confidence” the prince ordered the killing and dismemberment of the Washington Post journalist, are accessories to murder. Not surprisingly, the White House ignored a deadline this month that the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations set for making a report on Khashoggi’s assassination. Kushner, whom the Saudi leader reportedly claimed to have “in his pocket,” did not appear to have raised the Khashoggi murder in last week’s meeting, the first face-to-face encounter he has had with Salman since the assassination.
Salman has not ruled out weaponizing any nuclear facilities. He stated in 2018: “Without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.” He has also refused to accept any restrictions on enriching uranium and processing plutonium.
Nuclear weapons can be made from uranium or plutonium. The uranium-235 isotope is used in nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs. However, it is less than 1 percent of the naturally occurring element and must be increased—the process is called enrichment—to about 5 percent to work in nuclear reactors. To make nuclear bombs it must be enriched to about 90 percent. Enrichment is carried out by using high-speed centrifuges. This means that the machines that produce nuclear reactor fuel for civilian use can also be used to produce nuclear bombs. It is for this reason that nuclear material in civilian enrichment facilities in nations that do not have nuclear weapons, or have promised not to produce nuclear weapons, such as Iran, is closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
An enrichment plant used to fuel one nuclear reactor has the potential to produce 20 nuclear bombs a year by using some 300 centrifuges to enrich uranium-235 to the 90 percent level. A nuclear bomb requires about 55 pounds of highly enriched uranium. The more high-speed centrifuges a country has, the faster weapons-grade uranium can be produced.
Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insist there is a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program, despite all intelligence reports, including Israeli intelligence reports, to the contrary. So, given their unique version of reality, the time to start a weapons program in Saudi Arabia is now. Israel has a nuclear arsenal with hundreds of weapons.
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, has issued an interim staff report giving testimonies of multiple whistleblowers who warn about the impending transfer of nuclear technology. It lays out in chronological detail the secretive and blatantly illegal efforts by the Trump White House to facilitate Saudi Arabia’s purchase and construction of the nuclear reactors.
The efforts by Saudis and Americans began before Trump took office. Saudi officials, including Khalid Al-Falih, the minister of energy, met with Kushner in New York before the inauguration. The Saudi delegation held out the promise of spending $50 billion on American defense contracts over four years.
IP3 executives Gen. Keith Alexander, Gen. Jack Keane, Bud McFarlane and Rear Adm. Michael Hewitt, as well as the chief executives of six other companies—Exelon, Toshiba America Energy Systems, Bechtel, Centrus Energy, GE Energy Infrastructure and Siemens USA—sent a letter to Salman three weeks before the Trump inauguration that presented a plan to build nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia. They called it “the Iron Bridge Program,” the report states, and characterized it as “a 21st Century Marshall Plan for the Middle East.”
Michael Flynn, then the incoming national security adviser and one of the former business partners in the venture, sent a text to Alex Copson of ACU Strategic Partners on Inauguration Day assuring him that the nuclear project was “good to go” and suggested that Copson contact his colleagues to “let them know to put things in place,” the report reads.
On Jan. 27, 2017, a week after the inauguration, Derek Harvey, who from January to July 2017 was the senior director for Middle East and North African affairs at the National Security Council, met at the White House with a group of IP3 leaders whom he had invited.
“Immediately after the meeting, Mr. Harvey directed the NSC staff to add information about IP3’s ‘plan for 40 nuclear power plants’ to the briefing package for President Trump’s [planned phone] call with King Salman [the prince’s father and the prime minister of Saudi Arabia],” the report reads. “Mr. Harvey also stated that General Flynn wanted President Trump to raise the ‘plan for 40 nuclear power plants’ with King Salman and that this was the ‘energy plan’ that had been developed and approved by General Flynn during the presidential transition.”
When the NSC staff informed Harvey that the transference of nuclear technology to a foreign country had to comply with the Atomic Energy Act, he dismissed the complaint, saying, in the words of the report, that “the decision to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia had already been made during the presidential transition and that General Flynn wanted President Trump to raise ‘the nuclear power plants’ with King Salman.”
On Jan. 28, 2017, the report reads, “General Flynn and Deputy National Security Advisor K.T. McFarland received two documents in their official White House email accounts in a message entitled, ‘Launching the Marshall Plan for the Middle East’ from Mr. McFarlane, a co-founder and Director of IP3 and a former national security advisor to President Reagan who pleaded guilty to participating in the Iran-Contra cover-up in 1988.”
The documents included a draft cover memorandum from Flynn to Trump and a draft memorandum “for the President to sign” directing agency heads to lend support to Thomas Barrack—who managed Trump’s inaugural committee and raised funds for Trump and whose investment firm, Colony NorthStar, would profit from the nuclear deal—for the implementation of the IP3 plan.
“The second document was formatted as a Cabinet Memorandum from the President to the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, and Energy; the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” the report reads. “It stated that President Trump had assigned Mr. Barrack as a special representative to oversee implementation of the Middle East Marshall Plan: ‘I have assigned a special representative, Tom Barrack, to lead this important initiative and I am requesting him to engage each of you over the next 30 days to gain your input and support for our Middle East Marshal [sic] Plan.’ ”
On March 14, 2017, Trump, along with Kushner, met with Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office. They discussed “a new United States-Saudi program . . . in energy, industry, infrastructure, and technology worth potentially more than $200 billion in direct and indirect investments within the next four years.”
Frances Townsend, a director on IP3’s board, a national security analyst for CBS and a homeland security adviser under President George W. Bush, “contacted White House Homeland Security Advisor Thomas Bossert about the Middle East Marshall Plan” on March 28, 2017, the report reads.
“Ms. Townsend subsequently sent NSC staff several documents: (1) an overview of the Middle East Marshall Plan that appeared to be produced by IP3; (2) a document entitled ‘The Trump Middle East Marshall Plan (White Paper by Tom Barrack)’ dated March 10, 2017; (3) the letter that IP3 leaders Mr. McFarlane, General Keane, Rear Admiral Hewitt, and General Alexander addressed to Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on March 17, 2017; and (4) the January 1, 2017, letter to Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed by IP3 leaders General Alexander, General Keane, Bud McFarlane, and Rear Admiral Hewitt, as well as the chief executives of six companies: Exelon Corporation, Toshiba Energy, Bechtel Corporation, Centrus, GE Power, and Siemens USA.”
Barrack’s white paper read: “The President will appoint a special representative for the Trump Middle East Marshall Plan with the diplomatic rank of ambassador or special advisor [to] the President.” It also stated, the report reads, that the special envoy should “coordinate and work hand-in-hand” with government officials, including Kushner.
“The white paper stated that the President should implement the Middle East Marshall Plan through an executive order,” the report reads. “It described the Special Envoy as building ‘long-line relationships with U.S. private sector leaders acting as their expediter in clearing the traditional regional and regulatory hurdles to their participation’ and ‘trusted relationships with top leaders of GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq.’ ”
The House committee staff report says most of the whistleblowers who spoke to the committee were able to document developments only during the early months of the administration. There have been few recent leaks from inside the White House on the nuclear deal. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, Kushner and IP3 executives are currently overseeing the project.
“In January 2018, Brookfield Business Partners, a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, announced its plans to acquire Westinghouse Electric for $4.6 billion,” the report notes. “Westinghouse Electric is the bankrupt nuclear services company that is part of IP3’s proposed consortium to build nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia, and which stands to benefit from the Middle East Marshall Plan. In August 2018, Brookfield Asset Management purchased a partnership stake in 666 Fifth Avenue, a building owned by Jared Kushner’s family company.”
“On February 27, 2018, Goldman Sachs announced that former Deputy National Security Advisor Dina Powell, who had helped manage Jared Kushner’s relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and plan President Trump’s 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia, would be joining the Goldman Sachs’ sovereign wealth group,” the report reads. “Goldman Sachs wrote in an internal memorandum that ‘Dina will focus on enhancing the firm’s relationships with sovereign clients around the world.’ Ms. Powell reportedly ‘is especially close to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the country’s ruling family.’ ”
“In March 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman undertook a ‘last-minute visit to New York,’ where he housed his entourage at the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan for five days, a stay that reportedly ‘was enough to boost the hotel’s revenue’ by 13 percent ‘for the entire quarter,’ ” the report reads.
On Feb. 12, 2019, Trump met in the White House with several private nuclear power developers. The meeting, the report states, was “initiated by IP3 International.”
“The meeting was reported to include discussions about U.S. efforts ‘to secure agreements to share U.S. nuclear technology with Middle East nations, including Jordan and Saudi Arabia,’ ” the report reads.
There is little time left to halt the transfer of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. Iran, a mortal enemy of Saudi Arabia, will have no choice but to begin a nuclear weapons program if the Saudis build nuclear reactors. The thought of nuclear weapons being in the hands of Salman, an updated version of Saddam Hussein, and ultimately in the hands of nonstate radical jihadists who are supported and funded by powerful elements within Saudi Arabia, is terrifying.
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Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Channeling Bobby Kennedy 2019 - From The Archives The Night When The World Came Down Upon Peter Paul Markin’s Head-With Roy Lichtenstein’s 1968 Time Magazine Cover Of Bobby Kennedy In Mind
The Night When The World
Came Down Upon Peter Paul Markin’s Head-With Roy Lichtenstein’s 1968 Time Magazine Cover Of Bobby Kennedy In
Mind
By Bart Webber (with the
ghost hand of Sam Lowell on his shoulder)
The ghost of the late
sorely lamented Peter Paul Markin has hovered over this publication long after
his early, too early demise back in the 1970s (and in its sister publications
as well as a quick recent glance indicated starkly to me upon investigation).
Maybe it because we have begun reaching a milestone, 50th anniversary
commemorations of various youth-defining events, maybe arbitrary, maybe as the
late scientist Steven Jay Gould was fond of saying mere man-made constructs and
no more but which has infested a number of us older writers some of who knew
Markin personally and others who have been influenced by the hairy tales of his
existence. (The younger writers mostly, as one told me, could give a fuck about
an old junkie has been who didn’t have sense enough to not try some crazy
scheme to get rich quick in the cocaine trade against the growing Columbian
cartels so what could he expect.) Almost every event during this commemoration
period had Markin’s imprint on it. (We always called him Scribe but I will
stick with his surname here.)
Therefore it does not take
much to flicker a flame if something going back to those days jumpstarts
renewed thoughts of Markin. That happened one afternoon recently when Si Lannon
was on assignment to do an article on the Cezanne
Portraits exhibition at the National Gallery and as is his wont (and Sam
Lowell’s too especially if Laura Perkins is along) he runs up to the National
Portrait Gallery to see what is up there. Not much since the last time he was
there except on a wall on the first floor under the title Remembrance there was Roy Lichtenstein’s famous Time magazine cover
of Robert Kennedy done in the spring of 1968 shortly before his assassination
in California after his primary victory over Eugene in June of that year. Si
was so shaken by that picture that he immediately called me and I thereafter
called a few other guys and the mere mention of that cover got us back to
Markin square one.
See Markin, beyond being
the guy who in our circle named the fresh breeze coming through the land for
what would be called by others the Generation of ’68 and which we thanks to
Markin we were card-carrying members was also far and away the most political
of us all. Saw that any dreams of that newer world he was always hassling us
about was going to require serious changes in the political winds. Moreover
Markin had from I don’t remember how early on but as long as I had known him
tied his fate to becoming some kind of politician, some kind of mover and
shaker in that newer world. As for me I could have given a damn about politics
then since I was starting up my printing business and, truth, was busy trying
to get into my girlfriend’s pants. Not Markin though he had spent that whole
spring working his ass off for Robert Kennedy, had gone up and down the East
Coast trying to recruit resistant students not only to vote for Bobby but get
out on the trail. That student resistance factored in by the fact that Bobby
had not gotten into the presidential contest until after Lyndon Baines Johnson
the sitting President and odds on favored in 1968 to win the election decided
after the debacle of Vietnam, of Tet, not to run and the previously “Clean for
Gene” crowd was reluctant to go with Bobby. Saw him as an interloper.
Here is the beauty, maybe
treachery now that I think about the matter, of that bloody bastard Markin
before Lyndon blew himself up and Bobby entered the fray he was sitting on his
freaking hands perfectly willing to
give Johnson a pass as vile
as Vietnam was against the expected contest against Richard Nixon. Didn’t think
whatever lukewarm and ill-formed sympathy he had for McCarthy’s anti-war
positions he could beat Nixon (or anybody else he once mentioned after the New
Hampshire primary upended politics for good that year with McCarthy’s better
than expected showing-wasn’t Bobby-like ruthless enough). Two minutes after
Bobby announced he called up some Bobby operatives he knew from the Boston
mayor’s fight in 1967 and was on his way.
When Bobby went down I
think, and this is only speculation on my part since I didn’t see him much
after he went into the Army and then afterward headed out to California to
start “a new life,” something went out of Markin, some sense that the whole
thing had been a mirage and that he was doomed. He always thought of himself as
doomed, spoke of it sometimes when he was depressed, or things were tough at home.
So as the ghost of Bobby Kennedy showed up on that Lichtenstein cover know this
the ghost of Markin is right there too.
Bernie is no Bobby from looks to style. Also as far as I know he never had nor now has that ruthlessness Bobby had combined with that that “seek a newer world” drive which I have always loved in a politician (and with Jack and Bobby Irish politicians, those who wrote the book on ruthlessness and vision). But Bernie has the kids eating out of his hand and that is exactly what we need right now. So for better or worse I am with Bernie, willing to work like seven dervishes to get him over the finish line. Channeling Bobby Kennedy every misty-eyed moment.
The Fire This Time-The Cold
Civil War Cometh-Who Will Go Down In The Mud (And Win) Against The Trump Machine-Channeling
Bobby Kennedy, 1968-The Times Call For A Street Fighter-Bernie Sanders’ Time Has
Come
By Frank Jackman
Last year well before the presidential
candidates as least publicly started putting their eggs in their respective
baskets I made a big deal, a big splash out of commemorating the 50th
anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, our beloved Bobby who I have
shed more than one cyber-tear over just saying his name (and some misty moments
off computer). Like many past events in this publication that death required
some commentary as a watershed moment not just for me personally but as a point
where things could have gone the other way in a perhaps dramatic fashion. So
beyond a tear for my (and Bobby’s) youthful idealism gone awry it was also a “what
might have been” moment. History in the conditional is always problematic but there
you have it.
A great part of why I, a
senior in college who had basically completed his course work, worked like seven
dervishes as a youth organizer all along the Eastern part of the country for
Bobby was that I feared for the fate of the country if one Richard Milhous
Nixon had been elected POTUS (Twitter speak). That prospect in the wake of the disastrous
Goldwater campaign in 1964 against Lyndon Baines Johnson which had opened the
floodgates to get the Republican back somewhere off the edge of the cliff made
Nixon and his henchmen the “chosen” choice early on. As it turned out my “prophecy”
turned out to be correct as Nixon’s presidency brought us to the brink of the
breakdown of republican rule (small “r” let’s be clear).
Bobby Kennedy’s assassination
and the subsequent Nixon victory over Humbert H. Humphrey also had personal
consequences since I had projected, not without reason, that if Bobby had gone
on to be nominated by the Democrats (which seemed more certain after the fateful
California primary victory over tough opponent Senator Eugene McCarthy, the Irish
poet-politician) and finished off Nixon’s so crooked he needed a corkscrew for
his valet to fit him into his pants every morning I would be in line for a political
job most likely in Washington which would have gone a long way toward my childhood
dream of being a political make and shaker in the traditional sense. Without a
doubt part of that whirling dervish Spring of 1968 was the threat of the draft
hanging over my head without some kind of political pull. (I have come to
realize through many, many conversations with the male segment of my “Generation
of ‘68” that every guy had that Vietnam War decision with no good choices hanging
over his head one way or another).
The lasting memory though
was of fear for the fate of the country for a man who truly believed in a modern-day
version of the “divine right of kings,” that he was above the law. You can see
where this is leading. As I have written and others like my old friend Seth
Garth from my growing up Acre neighborhood in North Adamsville I was drafted,
was trained as an 11 Bravo, an infantryman, at a time when the only place that
skill was needed just then was in Vietnam. After much anguish and confusion, I would
refuse the orders to go and wound up in an Army stockade and a long legal
battle to get my freedom. The long and short of that experience was that my personal
political perspective changed from concern over becoming a maker and shaker to
being concerned more about issues like war and peace, social justice and being
a thorn in the side of whatever government was in power. From the outside. I
have kept that perspective for the past fifty years being involved in many
issue campaigns, some successful others like the struggle against the endless
wars and bloated military budgets not so.
Back to Bobby Kennedy.
Everybody knows what trouble, serious trouble, what I have called in the title
to this piece and elsewhere for the past few years “the cold civil war” we are
in now (this predated the Trump presidency which has only put the push toward
hot civil war on steroids). Now when another POTUS, Donald J. Trump, really
believes in the modern-day version of the “divine right of kings” and has upped
the ante some old-time feelings have reemerged. In other words, conditions
(although I would not have called it cold civil war then) looked very much like
what drove me to “seek a newer world” Bobby Kennedy’s camp.
Naturally, or maybe not so
naturally, but out of necessity that means at this time “stooping” (and I used
that expression in a jovial way) to get involved in presidential politics, to
get “down in the mud,” to join what will be come 2020 an old-fashioned take no
prisoners “street fight.” To be part of what was called in the early stages of
Senator McCarthy’s seemingly quixotic challenge to a sitting president a “children’s
crusade.” To support someone who can speak to the better angels of our natures and
WIN. That candidate for many reasons, but mainly because he has been down in
the mud many times and can keep pace with the treacherous stuff that will come out
of the Trump campaign is Bernie Sanders.
Bernie is no Bobby from looks to style. Also as far as I know he never had nor now has that ruthlessness Bobby had combined with that that “seek a newer world” drive which I have always loved in a politician (and with Jack and Bobby Irish politicians, those who wrote the book on ruthlessness and vision). But Bernie has the kids eating out of his hand and that is exactly what we need right now. So for better or worse I am with Bernie, willing to work like seven dervishes to get him over the finish line. Channeling Bobby Kennedy every misty-eyed moment.
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