Compiled by Dick Bennett. https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2025/04/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-223-april-2.html
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,