Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Why Clinton Must Be Opposed |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2016-06-04
A commenter on another blog has not unreasonably said: Why would anyone care about the hypocritical slogans of this base woman (Clinton)? She is shallow like a dead oyster shell. Between her, and the hateful knucklehead Trump, America has no real choice. This country is doomed. It seems to me that, if this commenter is right, then the Middle East is also doomed. That is an aspect of the increasingly clear importance of the Sanders effort and the thoughts of many Sanders supporters about a continuing revolution. People who espouse humane values (may I say “progressives”?) need not only to support Sanders today, but to work during the Democratic Party convention for him as candidate and for his values and policy proposals. We must push the Democratic Party from the “left”. This is not just about economics, as FDR-economic-similarities with Sanders might suggest. It is about a safe and secure and peaceful and just world. It is about maximum effort to curtail global warming / climate change. It is about an end to Clinton’s well-beloved war-war-war, as Jeffrey Sachs tweeted: Donald Trump is “dangerously incoherent” says HRC. HRC is dangerously coherent, for war, war, war. The choice is obvious. Bernie.quoted in Sanders to Clinton: Yes, Trump’s Foreign Policy Ideas Are Scary. But So Are Yours. Clinton is a creature of the military-industrial-imperialist-interventionist-complex. She doesn’t know and cannot imagine another way to “be”. And if she somehow wanted (in her well-hidden heart) to be otherwise, she couldn’t imagine a way to break out. She is trapped in her “past”, by her fund-raising, and probably by her lack of imagination (and apparent lack of humane principles). Taking her at face value, she believes that America is “great” (and “safe”) when it is pulverizing other countries, usually in a push for cheap natural resources and monocultured produce—coffee, bananas, etc., produced by large commercial “farmers” in “third-world” countries where poor people are (as also increasingly in the USA itself these days) disposable, countries with the authoritarian governments that the USA has typically imposed and supported. And the coming brou-ha-ha about Israel and Palestine is significant of this. Clinton is inseparably intertwined with the American “deep security state run by the military and the CIA” that Sachs mentions. I call this “Big-Military”, the military-interventionist wing of the American oligarchy, the oligarchy being of course the Big Money behind-the-scenes folks—including Big-Military, Big-Banks, Big-Pharma, Big-Oil, Big-Agri, and so forth—which pretty much control American governance on “money” matters and military matters. Nor is the American oligarchy merely American: it is global, based on multinational corporations. As we read here Like a mythical sea monster, the true nature of a Wall Street-London centered global corporatocracy is often talked about but rarely seen. However, on rare occasions, a tentacle breaks the surface and affords the public an opportunity to examine and assess its true, gargantuan dimensions. Do Israel and the USA share core values, as Clinton and many other establishment politicians of both parties so tirelessly asseverate? Read the Clinton speech at AIPAC; AIPAC, of course, as a part of America’s Big-Money oligarchy which funds politicians of both major parties, may reasonably be called Big-Zion. Clinton tells AIPAC: The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries and to advance our shared values. Well, Israel is clearly an imperialist state, created in 1945-50 by terrorism, first against the British and then against the Palestinian Arabs, and maintained after 1950 by making war on its neighbors without ever giving a sign of a willingness to curtail its expansive territorial ambitions—that is, giving no sign of desiring an ultimate well-defined Israeli territory smaller than all of Mandatory Palestine. And this is exactly in line with the foreign policy of America’s “deep security state” except that the USA does not use its military to seize territory. But Americans (I mean the people, not the “deep state” or oligarchy or establishment) do not see imperialism as a “core American value”—the way Big-Military does. They are mostly ignorant of the USA’s constant war-fighting and constant interventions in foreign countries. So Americans, I believe, will respond to a message of support for Palestinian human rights and national rights, and for a policy that supports Israel’s “security” but does not, any longer, support Israel’s post-1967 occupation of Palestinian (and Syrian) lands. This is part of Sanders’s message. It is overwhelmingly not part of Clinton’s. I have been a proponent of the Palestinian cause since about 1980. This blog is largely about Israel/Palestine. It has been my most important political involvement since then—until recently. Recently I have come to believe that global warming / climate change (GWCC) is more important than my beloved Palestine, and that the effort to curtail GWCC can only be maximally effective if the environmentally-unfriendly power of Big-Oil, Big-Military, and other elements of the American oligarchy is first reduced. And the Sanders “platform” sees this too. The oligarchy (Big-Money) must have its wings clipped, starting with Big-Banks but not ending there. GWCC must be seriously addressed urgently as the crisis it is. But Clinton is part of the oligarchy. She lives, breathes, luxuriates (and is funded both politically and personally by) the oligarchy. Electing Clinton is no way to defeat or even to reduce the power of the oligarchy. Clinton belongs to Big-Money. Sanders belongs to no-one. Sanders believes in an American foreign policy which espouses cooperation and downplays war. Clinton believes the exact opposite. Under a Sanders presidency (or even a presidency greatly influenced by Sanders’s proposals), America might seek an end to Israel’s post-1967 military (“belligerent”) occupations and other elements of its efforts, since 1948, to erase Palestine from the map and make the world forget Palestinian human, territorial, and national rights. The reasons behind Israel’s long-continued occupation are addressed here: see “What’s behind the US media’s special relationship with Israel?” It was not always the case that US media were so one-sided, the filmmakers note. For a brief period following Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, mainstream media began to question if a new “imperial Israel” had arisen. Thus a concern for the restoration of Palestinian rights is another reason for progressives to work as hard as they can for Sanders the candidate and for his revolutionary efforts to remake the Democratic Party and the nation. And to abhor Clinton. |
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