Yellow and Orange

THE ABSURD TIMES

I wonder who first said "the fat is in the fire".  Nobody knows.  It's a secret that nobody will care about, so we'll just say that it is and leave it at that.  At the same time, Trump proclaimed that all the pleas deals with his Russia connections had no "smocking gun" [sic.].  That's right, there is no smocking gun.  Are we back to "cofeffe" time?

The French know how to conduct a riot and we don't.  In 1968, our police stage a riot, swing and beating on skinny kids who had seen John Kennedy, Martin luther King, and Bobby Kennedy killed – all well-know people, establishment type people, who didn't think going over to this once French occupied oriental country to kill a bunch of the people there and to bee targets of people who had been fighting occupation for at least a thousand years.  Yes, the police rioted at the command of Dick Daley.  On the other hand, the French kids demonstrated violently and overthrew the government. 

After individual number one, Donald Trump, a (pardon the expression, Republican) had been exposed as a felonious thug who gave thugs a bad name, there are perhaps a few demonstrations, but then these days with a (pardon the expression, Republican) congress little will be done until January.  Meanwhile, in France, everybody that drives an automobile or truck started wearing yellow jackets and now duck tear gas and their President went back on the tax increase (the yellow of the jackets is a result, apparently, of a law requiring anybody driving a vehilcle to have one with them) and is even more under seige.  They want him to resign.  He had to shut down the Louve, the Eiffle Tower, and the famous arc with their tomb of the unknown soldier where all the real rioting is taking place. 

We can understand the French this time as we faced the same situation back in the 1964 election.  The (pardon the expression) Republican Party put Barry Goldwater, supported by the John Birch Society, up against Lyndon Johnson.  That group was the precursor to the Tea party and both were the products of the Koch family.  John Birch was some sort of right-wing Jesus freak who went to China and tried to force feed the people there.  The tea party was a protest against English taxes.  The modern versions of these were simply neo-fascist groups supported by the over-rich and the under-educated.  Macron was the alternative to a populist neo-fascist party.  Pick one, you people.  Well, the result was 1968. 

The new take on Trump – there was no collusion as he has been saying all along.  What there was we call "synergy"!  Yes, Synergy Now!  That's the Russian term for it, so we have to adopt it, I suppose.  To be more precise, no "political synergy," which means no smocking gun.  Nope. 

Our networks here have finally caught on and put the emphasis on what we have been saying all along – don't worry about "voter fraud" (maybe 4 case) but let's look at Election fraud.  The (pardon the expression) Republican party has been systematic on this, particularly in the south, but also in other places such as Wisconsin and Michigan.  Right now, the Wisconsin (pardon the expression) Republican Party is holed up in an emergency session to limit the authority of all statewide elected officials as they all are democrats, elected by a majority.  It will be worth watching to see what happens in January when Democrats take power in so many places.  Another example in North Carolina which was so bad that the official body has started investigation one race and may hold another election to take it's place.  We haven't even started on the voter suppression laws passed in many (pardon the expression) Republican states and we also hove investigations into the Georgia where the (pardon the expression) Republican candidate also supervised his own election.  Not surprisingly, he won. 

It seems that the bitter and frustrated Hillary fans are still at it which is why Bernie should not run for office as it will alienate these people.  After all, she listed among her qualifications for office that she was a Grandmother.  Beat that!  Of course, say anything negative about her is a sure way to incur wrath.  For her sake, of course, she should not run for anything either, but stay in Germany where she has some sort of house.  Bernie, on the other hand, is too busy with his work in the Senate and in advising other worthwhile political fugures to really consider running again.  He just put together a bill along with a right-wing Senator, Lee, for Utah to stop our part in the Saudi war against children in Yemen. 

Well, the Saudis, especially the weirdo called MBS (not the Mutual Broadcasting System) like the Zionist state continue to have the sympathies of the Trumps.  It is worth pointing out that, if you play with the accent on the vowel in Arabic, the name is pronounced "Tramp," not "Trump" and a newscaster, entirely by sloth, used that pronunciation recently.

Well, that's enough of this crap. 

George SR.

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration:  A popularly elected leader of Chile murdered on 9/11

We have been hearing nothing but maudlin nostalgia for Bush I, and it is only the idiocy and blatant foolery of Donald Trump who twitters things away like a madman that he looks good. It dominates our news and nothing else gets through.  One must look even to the BBC, let alone RT, France24, and other international services to find out what is going on.  Below we have a reporter from Al-Jazerra, a mid-eastern service that Bush I and then Bush II bombed.  Quatar, which hosts the station, is boycotted by Saudi Arabia -- It tried to work in the U.S., but finally had to close up.

Back to Bush I.  The truth is that his perfidry is greatly underestimated.  He started as head of the CIA, his father was head of the OSS (the ancestor of the CIA) and all along he maintained the same underground self-importance and greed of the "old elite" classes, the bulwark of greed and aggression of the U.S.  During the Iran-Contra dealings he claimed he was "out of the loop" when he may very well have been the loop itself.  He was instrumental in setting up the Bay of Pigs fiasco for which the Kennedy administration is still blamed (although Dulles had set it up).  Right after that, JFK fired Alan Dulles, then the CIA director and a year later. Almost to the day, JFK was eliminated.  He was there when Alliende was overthrown by Kissinger and the CIA and much more to overcome the "Vietnam Syndrome", (which is another word for a free press).  He finally managed to pretty much wipe it out with Panama, but his real work was done in Iraq.  The Mideast is still in turmoil as a result.  Others who followed him merely improvised on it, until his son managed to wipe out the entire thing.  Then the fall of Gaddafi in Libya contributed, leading to the immigration crisis in Europe and to the various citizens turning to a populist form of fascism – which is how Hitler started and now Trump has made well known.

There is more evidence than provided below, but here it is for a start:

George H.W. Bush died in Houston on Friday night at the age of 94. Bush was elected the 41st president of the United States in 1988, becoming the first and only former CIA director to lead the country. He served as Ronald Reagan's vice president from 1981 to 1989. Since Bush's death, the media has honored the former president by focusing on his years of service and his call as president for a kinder, gentler America. But the headlines have largely glossed over and ignored other parts of Bush's legacy. We look at the 1991 Gulf War, Bush's pardoning of six Reagan officials involved in the Iran-Contra scandal and how a racist election ad helped him become president. We speak with Intercept columnist Mehdi Hasan. His latest piece is titled "The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice."

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to look at the life and legacy of George H.W. Bush, the nation's 41st president, the father of the 43rd president. President Bush died in Houston on Friday night at the age of 94. His body will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda from tonight until Wednesday. He'll be buried later this week in Houston. There will be two memorial services: one at the National Cathedral on Wednesday and then one in Houston. Bush was elected president in 1988, becoming the first and only former CIA director to lead the country. From 1981 to 1989, he served as Ronald Reagan's vice president.

Over the weekend, the media honored Bush and his legacy, focusing on Bush's years of service, from his time in the Navy during World War II to his call as president for a kinder, gentler America. But the focus of the media's coverage has largely glossed over, or even ignored, other parts of Bush's legacy, from his expansion of the racist so-called war on drugs to his reluctance to tackle climate change, famously saying, quote, "The American way of life is not up for negotiation," unquote. It was also George H.W. Bush who nominated and continued supporting future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas even after Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill. Internationally, the ramifications of Bush's foreign policy in the Middle East are still being felt. In 1991, Bush launched the Gulf War in Iraq.

PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: Our objectives are clear: Saddam Hussein's forces will leave Kuwait, will be restored to its rightful place, and Kuwait will once again the free. Iraq will eventually comply with all relevant United Nations resolutions. And then, when peace is restored, it is our hope that Iraq will live as a peaceful and cooperative member of the family of nations, thus enhancing the security and stability of the Gulf. Some may ask, "Why act now? Why not wait?" The answer is clear: The world could wait no longer.

AMY GOODMAN: Over the next 42 days, U.S. forces devastated the Iraqi civilian infrastructure and killed an unknown number of Iraqi civilians. On February 13, 1991, the U.S. bombed an air-raid shelter in the Amiriyah neighborhood of Baghdad. Four hundred eight civilians were killed. Some Iraqi relatives of the dead later sued Bush and his defense secretary, Dick Cheney, for war crimes. While the Gulf War technically ended in February of 1991, the U.S. war on Iraq would continue for decades, first in the form of devastating sanctions, then in the 2003 invasion launched by George H.W. Bush's son, President George W. Bush, the 43rd president. Thousands of U.S. troops and contractors remain in Iraq today.

President Bush's invasion of Iraq came just over a year after he sent tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of aircraft into Panama to execute an arrest warrant against its leader, Manuel Noriega, on charges of drug trafficking. General Noriega was once a close ally to Washington and on the CIA payroll. During the attack, the U.S. unleashed a force of 24,000 troops equipped with highly sophisticated weaponry and aircraft against a country with an army smaller than the New York City Police Department. An estimated 3,000 Panamanians died in the attack. Last month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on Washington to pay reparations to Panama over what was widely seen as an illegal invasion.

In one of his last acts in office, President George H.W. Bush granted pardons to six former Reagan officials who were involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, when the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran to help raise money for the Nicaraguan Contras despite a congressional ban on providing aid to the Contras in Nicaragua. Bush was never held liable for his role in the scandal. The ex-CIA director claimed he was, quote, "out of the loop," even though other participants and a paper trail suggested otherwise.

Bush's time in office coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union. He termed the post-Soviet era the New World Order and was a key architect of neoliberal globalization, setting the stage for, among other things, NAFTA and the WTO.

To talk more about the legacy of George H.W. Bush, we're joined by Mehdi Hasan. He's a columnist for The Intercept, host of their Deconstructed podcast. He's also host of UpFront at Al Jazeera English. His most recent piece for The Intercept, "The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice."

Mehdi, we want to thank you for being with us. Of course, when someone dies, people—and certainly in the media, when it comes to a U.S. leader—they focus on what they feel was the important praiseworthy accomplishments of a person. And it's the instinct of all not to speak ill of the dead. But, Mehdi Hasan, if you can talk about the significance of the presidency of George H.W. Bush?

MEHDI HASAN: I mean, huge significance, Amy. And you're right. You know, not speaking ill of the dead is true, and it's a basic—you know, basic courtesy and decency. But this is not about speaking ill of the dead. This is about evaluating the record of a president of the United States, the 41st president of the United States, and one of the most important human beings of the 20th century, technically.

And, yes, a lot happened on his, you know, 4-year watch. You mentioned a great deal of it in your introduction there. And I think the problem is—I find it astonishing, as a Briton living in Washington, D.C., watching cable news on Saturday and seeing this hagiography masquerading as journalism, just talking about what a great guy he was, what a great president he was, what a civil and decent human being he was, ending the Cold War, and many achievements. You know, he stood up to the NRA. He stood up to AIPAC. He did do some good things. But the idea that you only focus on the positive and you ignore the negatives, especially when the negatives involve the loss of huge amounts of human life—in Iraq, for example, in Panama—I think, is absurd. It's a dereliction of journalistic duty for a president to die and journalists to act as if they're cheerleaders and put, you know, their own, whatever, patriotism or nationalism ahead of their duty to really give a full set of facts to the viewers, you know, a first draft of history, Amy.

A president is dead. We should look back on George Bush Sr. and say, "Hold on." You know, this is a president who is being described now as the anti-Trump, right? And yet he did some things which were similar to Trump. You mentioned in your intro the pardoning of the Iran-Contra perpetrators. He pardoned Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on the eve of his trial. And the independent special counsel at that time—the independent special counsel at that time said this was misconduct. He said this was helping cover up the crimes. And today we get all worked up when Trump says, "Oh, I might pardon Paul Manafort." I think we should hold him to the same account we hold other people. The fact that, you know, he was nicer than Trump or less aggressive than his son doesn't change the fact that he has a lot to answer for.

AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, and then we're going to come back and look at his record, from the Iraq War to the so-called war on drugs, the Willie Horton ad that became so famous, that one of his top aides, Lee Atwater, who really devised the scheme, apologized for on his deathbed. Mehdi Hasan is a columnist for The Intercept. We'll be back with him in a moment.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: "Rockin' in the Free World," Neil Young. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Mehdi Hasan is our guest, a columnist for The Intercept, host of the Deconstructed podcast, also is host of UpFront for Al Jazeera English. You mentioned the Iran-Contra scandal. If you can explain what the Iran-Contra scandal was?

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah. So, in the 1980s, there was congressional ban on the United States government supporting the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, which were trying to bring down a communist government in South America. And you had this issue where the Reagan administration decided to sell weapons to Iran, which was supposedly an enemy country at that time, fighting Iraq, and use the proceeds from that money to fund the Contras, in violation of a congressional ban.

There was a massive investigation. It was a huge scandal—think Russiagate times 10—at the time, in the 1980s. Reagan obviously left office without being punished for it. There was a special counsel, Bob Mueller-style, which was tasked to look into this: Lawrence Walsh, a former deputy attorney general under Eisenhower, I think it was. And when he tried to look into this, he found resistance from Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush. We're now being told what an honest and transparent man he was; he followed the rule of law, unlike Donald Trump today. And yet, at the time, he refused to hand over his diary. He refused to cooperate with the special counsel. He refused to give an interview. Sounds familiar, doesn't it, Amy? And then he pardoned the six top perpetrators—Elliott Abrams, the neocon; Caspar Weinberger, Reagan's defense secretary.

And the special counsel report, which is online—you can go and look at it now—very, very clearly says that Bush helped perpetrate the cover-up. Bush did not cooperate. And he says, I think, it's the first time a president pardoned someone on the eve of a trial that the president would have had to testify in. That's what Bush Sr. did. So when we're told today, "Oh, look at the difference between George Bush Sr. and Donald Trump," well, when it comes to obstruction of justice, when it comes to cover-ups, actually they were more similar than some of the media and some of the journalists would have you believe.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let's turn to the Gulf War. In January of 1991, George H.W. Bush addressed the nation on the invasion of Iraq.

PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: As I report to you, air attacks are underway against military targets in Iraq. We are determined to knock out Saddam Hussein's nuclear bomb potential. … Some may ask, "Why act now? Why not wait?" The answer is clear: The world could wait no longer.

AMY GOODMAN: That's President George H.W. Bush in January of 1991. Of course, flags were at half-mast in Washington this weekend, as they were in Kuwait. Mehdi Hasan, you remind us of a very important part of the story, the lead-up to what took place and how it was the U.S. responded the way they did to Iraq and Kuwait.

MEHDI HASAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell that story.

MEHDI HASAN: So, you heard the statement from George Bush Sr. Look, let's be very clear. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait illegally, in violation of international law. It was a brutal occupation of Kuwait. No one is denying any of that. But what Bush Sr. told the country was that this came without any warning, without any provocation, when in actual fact his own ambassador at that time in Iraq, the U.S. ambassador, April Glaspie, had told Saddam, just weeks before the invasion, that we in America have no opinion on your border dispute with Kuwait. It was interpreted as a green light. Historians—many historians have suggested that was a green light to Saddam from the Bush administration to invade. After Saddam invaded, we were also told by Bush Sr. that America had to go in to protect Saudi Arabia, because that was coming next. Saddam was about to invade Saudi, as well. There were Iraqi troops massing on the border. In fact, one reporter—I think her name is Jean Heller, if I remember correctly—went and bought some private commercial satellite data and found there were no Iraqi troops massing on the border to invade Saudi Arabia. It was another lie, like his son told in the run-up to the 2003 invasion. So, it was a war built on half-truths, evasions, lies. No one is denying Saddam invaded. But what George Bush told the nation was not the full truth.

And even after he went to war, as you mentioned in your introduction, how many civilians were killed? The United States government bombed an air-raid shelter in Baghdad, the Amiriyah shelter, killed more than 400 civilians. Human Rights Watch called it a serious violation of the laws of war, because the U.S. knew—the U.S. had been told beforehand—the U.S. intel knew that that was a place where civilians were congregating. They didn't just bomb an air-raid shelter, Amy. They bombed power stations, electricity-generating facilities, food-processing plants, flour mills—the civilian infrastructure of Iraq. And this was not collateral damage. Planners from the United States government told The Washington Post, told Barton Gellman, in 1991, that they were doing this on purpose so that they would have leverage with a postwar Iraq which would be forced to supplicate in the international arena for foreign assistance. And we know what happened next, with the sanctions, with the devastation that came in the '90s and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi kids who died. That all started on George Bush Sr.'s watch.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to go back to the election of George H.W. Bush.

MEHDI HASAN: Oh, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: During his 1988 presidential bid, his campaign released a now-notorious television ad called "Weekend Passes."

NATIONAL SECURITY PAC AD: Bush and Dukakis on crime. Bush supports the death penalty for first-degree murderers. Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times. Despite a life sentence, Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend. Weekend prison passes: Dukakis on crime.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the ad that Lee Atwater—Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater, top aides to George Bush at the time—

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —would apologize for on his deathbed. Explain how significant this was.

MEHDI HASAN: Hugely significant, Amy. And even today, in media journalism classes across the country, that ad is taught, that ad is studied. Until Donald Trump came along, until the migrant caravan ad came along, it was considered to be the most racist ad in modern American political history. It was the 1988 election, and George Bush Sr. and his team decided that they were going to tie Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts liberal, to this black rapist who had been released on a weekend furlough program. I think Atwater—there's a quote from Atwater where he said, "We're going to talk about Willie Horton so much that people are going to think he's Michael Dukakis's running mate." And this was—Bush Sr. approved of this campaign ad. Bush Sr. talked about Willie Horton in press conferences.

And he never apologized. He never—you know, Atwater, on his deathbed, apologized. Bush Sr. never apologized. Roger Stone, Amy, one of the most vile political operatives of our time, close adviser to Donald Trump, former adviser to Richard Nixon, he went up to Atwater and the Bush campaign and said, "You will regret this, because this is a clearly racist ad." When Roger Stone is telling you that you're too racist, you know you've gone too far. And yet, on Saturday, on Sunday, I heard former Bush aides and advisers going on cable news saying, "He was a thoroughly decent man. He believed in civility. He didn't believe in rancor. He wanted, you know, to unify Americans." And I have two words in response to that: "Willie Horton."

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, as you quote, Lee Atwater bragged at the time, "By the time we're finished, they're going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis's running mate."

MEHDI HASAN: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: And he was talking about a policy that was actually a law in a number of states—

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —including California.

MEHDI HASAN: Yes, indeed. I think Reagan had signed off on a similar thing, if I'm not correct. But, you know, it was a deliberate attempt to stoke racial division, to scare white voters into thinking that Michael Dukakis was going to release a bunch of black murderers and rapists who were going to come and kill and rape them. It was vicious. And even recently, Amy, what's so ironic is the same cable news hosts who have been kind of, you know, praising George Bush Sr. to the hilt since Saturday morning, a few weeks ago they were all referring to Willie Horton when they were condemning Donald Trump's migrant caravan ad, you know, the ad that came out during the midterms about the Democrats let in this murderer, cop killer. We were all reminded of Willie Horton back then, but it seems like we won't make the logical collection which says that Willie Horton, that ad, came from the Bush Sr. campaign, this guy who was supposed to be a throwback to an era of civility and decency, yet he had no problem running this racist election campaign. Nor did he have a problem escalating a racist drug war.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about that drug war and what George H.W. Bush did, especially around the issue of crack.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah. So, he sat in the White House, in the Oval Office, in 1989, and he held up a bag of crack cocaine, which he said, famously, "Well, this was found just outside the White House, in a park across from the White House. That's how bad the drug problem is." It was a great dramatic visual prop. And yet, we discovered, thanks to reporting from The Washington Post, that that drug dealer, the drug seller, had been arrested by federal agents, yes, in Lafayette Square, but he had been "lured" there, to quote The Washington Post, by those federal agents. He was told to come and sell his—by an undercover operative. And he's even heard on tape, I believe, saying, "Well, where is the White House? What's the address? I have no idea how to get there."

This was—I mean, this is pure cynicism, Amy, to use this prop in this fake stunt basically to mislead the nation, from this supposedly honest Republican president, which then led to a $1.5 billion increase in spending, which is what Bush Sr. called for. He called for more prosecutors, more jails, more prison, more courts. And we know how that story ends, Amy: mass incarceration, the imprisonment, disproportionately, of young black men, lives lost, thousands of innocent lives lost in the so-called drug war both at home and abroad. And today you have people like Rand Paul, a Republican senator, who will admit, Republican senators who will admit—Chris Christie—will say this was a failed and racist drug war.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Mehdi Hasan, I want to thank you for being with us, columnist for The Intercept, host of the Deconstructed podcast. Most recent piece for The Intercept, we'll link to, "The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice." Tomorrow we'll look at what happened in Panama, George H.W. Bush's invasion of Panama, and the thousands of people who died there, as this week we continue to honor the dead.

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Truth About Bush, Trump, Sanders

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: George in one of his last appearances before he became a danger.

[Editor's note:  what you see below is an aborted attempt to put all of this insanity into context, and then it is blown away by George the First's death.  We are not speaking ill of the dead, but at least we can accurately assess his effect on our lives and the life of the planet.  Those who think it is speaking ill of the dead, simply do not understand or will not admit reality.  This includes most major news outlets, especially in the United States.  Media all over the world is being more accurate.  So, we are simply going to show what we started to do, an immediate response to the death praise, and then a speech by Bernie Sanders that was given before the death.  We will present an interview after the death in subsequent issues.]

The problem with network coverage of new is that they are only covering what is happening right now – no sense of history or context.  This is why we really get no coverage of what Trump is really doing to out country.  We need to start with a wider example, first.

Let us take the weather.  Weather is covered constantly, especially disasters such as hurricanes and blizzards.  They will tell you where the snow has been, where it is going, and what it will do next.  They may even cover some politician talking about snow and scoffing at "Global Warming".  But there is no real coverage of climatologic change.

[Now this is what I mean.  While trying to put the insanity of this administration in perspective, George Bush dies and nothing but sycophants blathering about what a great man he was.  He was Captain of the baseball team in college – which mean he played fairly well and was able to be buddies with all the rest of the members of the team.  Then, things became fulsome.  The war against Iraq, number one, after April Gillespie told Saddam than it was ok.  After all, we wouldn't interfere, the borders were clearly arbitrary and no interest to anyone since a general Kassim took over from the monarch installed by Britain and applauded by the U.N.  Well, so we pushed him back from Kuwait in the midst of a real charade carried on by the daughter of a Kuwaiti minister about babies in incubators (never happened and they didn't know she was a ringer), and U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.  Remember,  Bin Laden acted to retaliate against the King of Saudi Arabia for letting U.S. troops on "Holy soil".  We also gladly used him to attack Russia earlier in Afghanistan, and he loathed Saddam Hussein as "sacrilegious".  The Willie Horton ad? How about Dan Quayle who thought he was another JFK?  Well, never mind, anyone looks good after Trump).  Much more is possible, but it is the interruption that is important.  Even the press conference by Putin after the G20 summit about Ukraine was ignored.]

 So, yes, the weather.  Never mind.  Plenty next week anyway.

Sanders Interview

Hundreds of international progressive leaders have traveled to Burlington, Vermont for a gathering hosted by the Sanders Institute. Last night, former presidential candidate and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders kicked the event off with a keynote speech on healthcare, raising the minimum wage and his bipartisan resolution to end military support for the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led bombing of Yemen. He was introduced by Harvard professor Cornel West.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, "Democracynow.org":https://www.democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. We are broadcasting from Colchester, Vermont, just outside Burlington, where hundreds of international progressive leaders have traveled for a gathering hosted by The Sanders Institute. Last night, former presidential candidate, Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, kicked off the event with a keynote speech. He was introduced by Harvard University Professor Cornel West.

CORNEL WEST: It is highly appropriate that the rich legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dorothy Day and the Edward Saids and others, all of them trying to keep a focus on poor and working people in the midst of the American empire and in the midst of the American democratic experiment, then here comes a brother from Brooklyn—

AUDIENCE: [cheers and applause]

CORNEL WEST: —Mediated in Vermont—

AUDIENCE: [laughter]

CORNEL WEST: —Who becomes the great political figure in the context of such truncated electoral politics in this nation, that raises the banner of working people and says, "Wall Street, you're too greedy. What about working people and poor people? Neoliberal capitalism, you got greed running amok." I might start with two percent of even—two percent of folks knowing even who I am for the most part because I am popular in this John Dewey-dominated Vermont state—

AUDIENCE: [laughter and applause]

CORNEL WEST: —But that they might know you in Arizona, in Nevada, in California. But once they hear your voice—this is what we're talking about. We are here because there's too many folks suffering. And when our dear brother Bernie Sanders stepped forward and I heard his voice and I looked in his eyes, I saw the window of his soul. I said, "He's for real." He is not one of those simulacrum semblances who want to use the language but not want to bear the burden and engage in the service to working people.

AUDIENCE: [applause]

CORNEL WEST: So I am blessed tonight to introduce to you one of those who, when the history is written of those who raised their voices for poor and working people, Bernie Sanders will be one of those voices. My dear brother, Bernie, come and share your voice, my brother. Come and share your voice.

BERNIE SANDERS: My news today is good news and bad news.

UNKNOWN: Bernie 2020?

BERNIE SANDERS: [laugh] The good news, and Cornel just mentioned this, and it tells you what all of you know. This is a group of people who work in progressive politics every day. And all of you know that change always comes from the bottom, not from the top. And all of you know—and what this Institute is exactly about is to try to educate, go beyond the corporate media to talk about the real issues facing real people. And just the other day, we had a real example of what could happen.

It turns out that even—Cornel used the word "truncated"—Congress—man, I'll give you some better words next time, all right? It might be a corporately owned Congress or might be other things. But even there, even there, it turns out that when you explain what the American people really did not hear much about, that in this terribly poor country of Yemen, very poor country, turns out that in the last three years, because of the Saudi-led invasion and intervention in that Civil War, 85,000 children have died of starvation. According to the United Nations, millions of people are on the brink of starvation. Ten thousand new cases of cholera break out every single week because the Saudi military has bombed the water infrastructure in Yemen so there is no clean water available. You are looking at the destruction of a very poor country. Nobody in America knew that.

But it turns out that when you start talking about that issue—and Cornel is right; everyone's worried about one journalist—what a terrible tragedy that was, but what about the 85,000 children who starved to death? Maybe that's a tragedy as well. So it turned out when you're able to raise the issue, kind of break through things, that we were able, just yesterday, to win a significant vote. And I think in the Senate on Tuesday or Wednesday, we're going to win that resolution that says the United States has got to end its relationship with the Saudi despotic regime there and get out of Yemen.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: But it raises a profound question, and that is, how the hell did we ever get into a relationship with a government like that? And once again, everybody says, "Oh, my God, they killed Jamal Khashoggi." It was a terrible, brutal—the guy walks into—imagine—walks into a consulate, a safe haven, they kill him and they cut him up. How horrible is that? But that is just one example of what that regime is about. Our long-time ally, where if a woman is going to get a job in Saudi Arabia, she has to get the permission of some male to allow her to get the job or to go to school. Where you've got a handful of corrupt billionaires who run that country. If anyone protests, stands up and protests, they get jailed. So maybe as a nation, we should be rethinking our relationships with governments like Saudi Arabia.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: And that we have a president who thinks—and of course he lied on this issue as well—thinks selling them $100 billion of arms makes it all very well and good. Of course, he didn't even get the $100 billion. That was a lie as well.

What we're here to discuss is the fact that we are living in very, very difficult times, and you guys are struggling with all of these issues. And I know that during this conference, there is going to be some serious discussion about issues like economic justice. And economic justice means that maybe, just maybe, we will be able to begin a discussion in this country on a word that is never seen on television, not read in the newspapers too often. It's called poverty.

We've got 40 million people, including more than a few in this beautiful state, who are struggling every single day to keep their heads above water. In this state and all over this country, people are working at two or three jobs. And everybody in this room knows that while unemployment today is relatively low, that does not mean that tens of millions of families do not continue to struggle.

And that is why, because of the work that people in this room have done, and others of course who are not here, people like Fight for $15, the very good news is that issues that we talked about—Nina [sp] will remember this, and Cornel will remember this and Jane will remember this—all of us who were on the campaign trail together, the ideas that we raised where every day the editorial pages would say, "These are extreme, these are radical, the American people don't want it"—it turns out that that is exactly what the American people wanted.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: Not shockingly, it turns out that the American people believe that if you work 40 hours a week in America, you should not be living in poverty. And I want you all to think—and this is where I am hopeful—is that just a few years ago, when we talked about $15 an hour as a minimum wage, we were thought to be extremists and fringe people. But in three years, a lot has happened. We have cities and towns all over and states all over this country passing $15 an hour minimum wage. We forced Amazon and Disney to go to $15 an hour.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: And I am absolutely confident that when the grassroots continues to mobilize and stand up and fight for economic justice, we are going to pass a $15-an-hour minimum wage bill.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: And when we talk about economic justice, we as progressives have the guts to talk about issues that you're not going to see on the television or hear in the Congress. And that is the moral issue. The moral issue. And Cornel and others put morality into the political debate. Is it appropriate that three billionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of the American people?

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No!

BERNIE SANDERS: Is it appropriate that the top one tenth of one percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, and that we have in this wealthy country the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major nation on earth?

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No!

BERNIE SANDERS: Now the TV folks may not like it, and the establishment may not like it and Wall Street may not like it, but this is a profound issue. This issue of income and wealth inequality is a profound issue, it is a moral issue, it is an economic issue and it is a political issue. Because we have got to stand up, as all of you know, to a corrupt campaign finance system where these very same billionaires are buying elections. And I know that's an issue you will be talking about this weekend.

AUDIENCE: [applause]

BERNIE SANDERS: I saw Jane Kim—where is Jane? Yeah, when I was out in San Francisco., we were talking about the crisis in affordable housing. And I thought, "Well, it's a San Francisco issue." Or maybe a Seattle issue. Guess what? It is an issue all across this country, including this city that you're in right now, and that people, young people often, working people cannot find decent housing. Maybe it's time we started talking about building the millions of units of affordable housing that we need in this country.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: And when we talk about—one of the things that—the role that we can play and that you are playing and that we are all playing is forcing discussion about issues that the establishment does not want discussed. And it is not only that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth. You've got working people today in Vermont, all over this country, they're going to work. It is not too much to ask that they have affordable quality child care for their children.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: This is not a radical idea. It is not a radical idea. Other countries are doing it. Every psychologist who studies human behavior understands that the ages of zero through four are the most important years of a human being's development. How in god's earth can we turn our backs on those little children and not provide them with the nurturing and the intellectual life that they need as little children? So one of our jobs is to force discussion on issues that are not only right, but in fact, what the American people want.

I will give you another example. And I see RoseAnn DeMoro here. Many of you. A few years ago, we raised the issue, hey maybe—oh, this is a really radical idea, my God, not to be discussed on television for sure, not to be discussed in the halls of Congress— maybe the wealthiest country in the history of the world, 50 miles away from the Canadian border, maybe, just maybe, we might want to do what every other major country on earth does—guarantee healthcare to all people as a right, not a privilege.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: Oh my God! Did we get attacked for that idea! Oh, "How are you going to pay for that?" How are you going to pay for that? We're spending now twice as much as the folks 50 miles away from us spend. They manage to guarantee healthcare to all of their people. Yeah, I think we can figure out a way to pay for it. And I guess that's something you're going to be discussing this weekend. But here is my point. We began that so-called radical discussion, and three years came and gone. The last two polls that I saw on the issue of healthcare had 70 percent of the American people supporting Medicare for All, single-payer system.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: And there are more people in the freshman class in the United States Congress who support Medicare for All than ever before.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: We are here not just to talk about economic issues. We are here this weekend to be talking about racial and social justice. We are here to be talking about ending, in all of its many and varied forms, institutional racism.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: And that is not—when we think about that, everyone says, "Well, we've got a criminal justice system that's really broken. In many ways, it's racist. Terrible, terrible, terrible." Yeah, that's true. And we have to address why we have more people in jail in any other country. Why tonight, as we are here, hundreds of thousands of Americans are behind bars. Do you know why they are behind bars? They're behind bars because they cannot afford bail to get out of jail.

And we've got to talk about this incredibly destructive, so-called War on Drugs and the horror that that has done to millions of people who were arrested for the crime of possessing marijuana. And again, this is an area—and I want you to appreciate this—we are making real progress. You are now in a state, one of a growing number of states, that has legalized possession of marijuana. All right?

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: And there is serious discussion now all over the country because of groups like the ACLU, Black Lives Matter and others about fundamental reforms of the criminal justice system. But when you talk about racial disparities, it is not just criminal justice. It is health disparities. It is housing disparities. It is wealth disparities. It is education disparities.

And when we stand together and begin addressing these issues, not only are we doing the work of justice; in many ways, we are creating jobs, we're bringing our people together. I know this is an issue that you will be discussing over the weekend. And we're here to talk about sexism, we're here to talk about homophobia, we're here to talk about religious bigotry. And I know we are also going to be talking about this war on undocumented immigrants.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: But even here, even here, despite Trump's demagoguery on this issue, I want everybody here to know that poll after poll shows that the American people are in a very different place than Donald Trump. Eighty—eight percent of the American people think we should provide legal protection to the 1.8 million young people in the DACA program or eligible for DACA.

AUDIENCE: [applause]

BERNIE SANDERS: A majority of the American people believe in comprehensive immigration reform and a path toward citizenship. The overwhelming majority of the American people do not support the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, and people want us to move toward public funding of elections, and we're seeing progress in that area. We are seeing some progress in taking on the outrageous level of voter suppression and gerrymandering. But clearly, if we're going to create the country we know we have to create, we have to take on not only a corrupt campaign finance system, but a corrupt election system as well.

AUDIENCE: [applause]

BERNIE SANDERS: We just came through a campaign of which I, and I know many of you, worked very, very hard on. We didn't get everything we wanted. I would have loved to become chairman of the budget committee. Unless Mitch McConnell does something very, very strange, I think that is not going to happen.

AUDIENCE: [laugh]

BERNIE SANDERS: But on the other hand, our brothers and sisters in the House did well. They won some 40 seats.

AUDIENCE: [applause and cheers]

BERNIE SANDERS: And let me tell you why it is extremely important that the Democrats now control the House. And it is not only for the very important reason of providing oversight to a president and an administration which is essentially out of control in many areas. So some questions are going to be asked, I believe, and I'm quite sure, about is Trump's relationship to Putin and Saudi Arabia just based on his governmental judgment regarding governmental policy, or is there something more there regarding financial interest as well? The president thinks that his administration did a brilliant job in Puerto Rico after the terrible hurricane there. I think his administration will start answering some questions about a not-so-wonderful job that they did there, and other questions.

But here is what is even more important. For the last two years, you have had a Senate that was bad and a House that was even worse, so many of the issues that we will be discussing this evening and this weekend never even surfaced. What is going to start happening now is legislation—and I hope there will be strong legislation—is going to start passing the House and come to the Senate. And it is a very different situation when you don't have to deal with anything, when you don't have to vote against raising the minimum wage because you don't have a bill on your desk, than when that bill comes over. Then you're going to have to explain to the folks back home why you voted no.

I hope very much—we worked on a four-year Medicare for All single-payer program. The first year was pretty simple. It said lower the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 55, cover all of the children, lower the cost of prescription drugs. I hope our colleagues in the House bring that bill over to the Senate. And my guess is that 80 percent of the American people support that, and if the senators want to vote against it, they are going to have to explain that to the folks back home.

So let me conclude by saying this. There are enormous problems facing this country. All of you are familiar with the two reports that have come out in the last month regarding climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, probably the most comprehensive study ever done, talks about the fact that we have 12 years, which is no time at all, to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel or we are going to see irreparable harm done to this planet.

What we have seen, the tragedy that we have seen in California, 85 people dead, 14,000 housing units destroyed. What they are telling us is if we do not get our act together, that is going to become commonplace, not just in the United States, but all over the world. Rising sea levels. Flooding. The acidification of the ocean. Et cetera, et cetera.

So we have got a whole lot of issues out there that we have got to address, but the point that I want to leave you with, the main point that I want to leave you with as somebody who has traveled all across this country, is that on issue after issue, whether it's common sense gun safety legislation, whether it is making sure that our kids can afford to go to college and not leave school $50,000 or $100,000 in debt, whether it is immigration reform, whether it is criminal justice reform, whether it is telling the billionaires that they are not going to get a tax break but in fact they're going to start paying their fair share of taxes, whether it is any of those issues and even more, I want you all to know that the American people are with us on those issues.

The Republicans did not run any 30-second ads which said, "Vote for candidate X so we can give a tax break to the rich and cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid." I don't think they ran those ads because nobody supports that agenda, which is their agenda. But people do believe in our ideas. So what do we do? First of all, we have got to make sure that the Democratic Party is not just a party of the East Coast and the West Coast, it is a party of every state in this country.

AUDIENCE: [applause]

BERNIE SANDERS: Our job is to make sure that the issues that we deal with, that people understand they impact black families in New York City, they impact white families in Kansas and Latino families in Los Angeles. Our job is to do exactly the opposite of what Trump is trying to do. He is trying to divide us up based on the color of our skin, our sexual orientation, our religion, where we were born. Our job is to bring our people together around a strong, progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of all and not just the one percent.

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Bernie Sanders speaking at the opening of The Sanders Institute gathering here in Burlington, Vermont. Among those attending are Native American leader Winona LaDuke who will join us on Monday's broadcast, and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis will be on Tuesday's show.

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