Author: jlpagano

News show “Democracy Now!” does exactly what it says on the tin for US VP debate

~ jlpagano

On Tuesday evening the Vice Presidential candidates in the US election, Senator Tim Kaine (D) and Governor Mike Pence (R) squared off in a debate at Longwood University in Virginia, which is curiously Kaine’s home state.

There are two other candidates running for President who are on the ballot in enough states to have a “realistic” chance of winning the election outright – Jill Stein of the Green Party and Gary Johnson of the Libertaians, but their VP choices were excluded from the debate.

For three election cycles up until 1984, the series of debates was organised by the totally non-partisan League of Women Voters but when they started to insist on “third-party candidates” being included in the process, the duopoly of Republicans and Democrats came together and forced them out, setting up instead their own organisation called the Commission for Presidential Debates that has rules which virtually guarantee just the two participants in each debate.

One of our top sources for “non-mainstream” media coverage of US affairs is Democracy Now!, hosted by Amy Goodman which has been running for around 20 years.  As the two VP candidates slugged it out during the debate, Goodman had Green Party VP nominee Ajamu Baraka in studio to offer real time responses to the questions as though he were in fact part of the debate.  Libertarian nominee William Weld was also invited but apparently they offered no response.

The show recently did something similar for the first Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Secretary Hillary Clinton, with the Green Party’s Jill Stein giving her responses, also in “real time” as the feed from the main debate was paused.

What Baraka proceeds to do is highlight the similarities between the two on-stage combatants, like on the subject of war where both Republicans and Democrats come from a position of war as an inevitable option  – he presents the Greens as the party of peace.  Whether or not you agree with this stance, true believers in democracy have to appreciate the opportunity to know the option is there on their ballot paper.

Here at FPP we would love to see this method employed during the course of an Irish election campaign given our ever-expanding selection of parties and platforms.  We too have a duopoly that very much needs breaking…only in our case they are pretty much indistinguishable from each other in terms of political outlook.

 

MLK quote gets perfectly applied to #blacklivesmatter but also can be used for other struggles against injustice

~ jlpagano

In the latest Best of the Left podcast there is a segment taken from Dave Zirin’s “The Edge of Sports” where he deals with the reaction to American football player Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the US national anthem in support of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Zirin uses a quote from Martin Luther King to describe the reaction of several influential people from the sport’s community to the protest, whereby they essentially say “I support the ends but not the means”.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the white citizen’s Councillor or Ku Klux Klan-er, but the “white moderate”, who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

Who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”.

Who paternalistically believes they can set the timetable for another man’s freedom, who lives by a mythical concept of time. And who constantly advises the negro to wait for a more convenient season.

Personally I have more respect for someone who bravely stands up for what he believes in than I do for someone who blindly stands up for a song and a waving piece of cloth.

But I also believe the quote is significant for wider issues around the world.  Take what we have here in Ireland, like #RepealThe8th #Right2Water and #StopTTIP.  Please understand that I appreciate the many differences between those struggles and those of the African American community in the US.

What I do mean is that such struggles should not be fought against the extremists at the far end of any ideological argument.  It should instead be directed at those in between who stand with their backs to the resistance because while they do appreciate the injustice, they don’t see the point in resisting…at least not right now.  “Maybe that day will come, but it is not today”, is essentially their argument.

They should be shown that not only can it be today, but it can also be done peacefully.  If enough people believe, it can be so.

 

 

The First Presidential Debate – what the candidates weren’t asked #IssuesNotEgos

~ jlpagano

So we’ve finally seen the two candidates on the same stage at the same time – how did they get on?

It’s quite simple…Trump got in some shots and had his opponent under pressure in the early stages but Hillary came storming back, easily got under his skin and forced him into some ramblings which I doubt even he could translate into understandable English now.

But amid all the rhetoric and back-and-forth on tax returns, emails, calling women Miss Piggy and bringing up Bill’s affairs by saying you won’t bring them up, was there much actual talk about, oh I don’t know, what they’d do as President?

Sure, there was a bit about jobs, a bit about trade and a bit about secret plans to beat ISIS, but even then it was more about how bad the opponent was rather than what each candidate would do themselves.

Yet the American mainstream media lapped up the verbal mud wrestling and proceeded to make the focus of the post-game all about “who won”.

Thankfully we have the good folks at FAIR.org to give an alternative take in their piece “Lester Holt Asks Zero Questions About Poverty, Abortion, Climate Change” by Adam Johnson.

A week before the debate,Comcast-owned NBC announced the topics, and one could already tell we weren’t going to be in for a substantive evening: “Achieving prosperity,” “America’s direction” and “securing America.” This generic approach lead to a generic debate that focused mostly on horserace disputes and vague, open-ended questions about taxes and jobs.

What I find amusing is how Americans can be so bent out of shape about their media making it all about personalities when they have over 300 millions people, just two main parties (well actually there’s four but they keep the Greens and Libertarians away from these debates), and election campaigns that last well over a year.

Here in Ireland, with a humble 5 million people, we have an ever-growing amount of political parties and campaigns squeezed into just under a month, so while the “Yanks” have plenty of time to talk about issues and seem to choose not to, here our media has so little time all they get to focus on is what would the inevitable coalition look like after the unnecessarily over-complicated voting process is done.

Democratically held elections for government should be about issues not egos, but as a general public we seem content to have them portrayed like “reality” TV shows.

 

March For Choice passes off peacefully & powerfully #RepealThe8th

~ jlpagano

I regretted being unable to attend the March for Choice on Saturday – having gone on the #Right2Water march a week before I was all set to go again but in the end it wasn’t even the bus strike nor the bad weather that held me back just personal circumstances.

But it’s not about me and thankfully there were tens of thousands who did make it in and by all accounts there were also demonstrations of sympathy around the world according to the Irish Times.

Pro-choice campaigners among the Irish diaspora are holding parallel demonstrations in a number of cities including London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, New York, San Francisco, Toronto and Melbourne.

Of course to be seen as “balanced” they had to include a response from the so-called “Pro-Life” side of the discussion (a student in this case) and it’s not surprising to hear them resort to the “Pro-Lifers as oppressed minority” argument…

“I think there is an imbalance. I am in UCD and the students union there is very much in your face pro-choice. That is very unfair to the students who are pro-life.”

It never ceases to amuse me how someone can make the argument their views aren’t being expressed at the very moment they are being given the chance to express their views.  It demonstrasted a distinct lack of an actual overall argument.

Next up for the #RepealThe8th movement is the Citizens Assembly, and naturally all eyes will be on its composition.  If they go by opinion polls, there should be only around a one-in-five representation for those who feel the amendment should be kept in place.  We’ll see how that is reflected in the selection of assemblyfolk.

 

Bank CEO calls it “building relationships” – Senator Warren calls it what it is…a scam

~ jlpagano

If the above video doesn’t load for you, please follow this link and set aside under ten minutes to watch…it will be well worth it.

Senate committee hearings are meant to be an opportunity for high-profile people to be held accountable for their actions when they affect the wider public but as we all know, more often than not they are reduced to mere “love-ins” due to the fact that the bulk of politicians are “bought” thus making their levels of scrutiny extremely low.

When it comes to Wall Street and the American banking industry, you certainly could not accuse Senator Elizabeth Warren of going easy when she performed her duties on the Senate’s Banking Committee.

Should you be based in Ireland you may not know too much about Wells Fargo Bank but they have been in the US news quite a bit recently on account (pun intended) of their recently publicised practice of “cross-selling”.

The senator from Massachusetts in her extremely direct and properly forceful questioning of CEO Bill Stumpf (who couldn’t look more like a classic bank head honcho if he tried)  not only ignores all the media spin churned out by the company of late but it also leaves you in no doubt as to exactly what has been going on.

“Here’s what really gets me about this, Mr. Stumpf. If one of your tellers took a handful of $20 bills out of the crash drawer, they’d probably be looking at criminal charges for theft. They could end up in prison.

“But you squeezed your employees to the breaking point so they would cheat customers and you could drive up the value of your stock and put hundreds of millions of dollars in your own pocket.

Now I know these committees don’t have a whole lot of legal “teeth”.  I know that Mr Stumpf will continue to draw his massive salaries and bonuses.  And I know the establishment will redouble their efforts to silence Elizabeth Warren by fair means or foul, probably the latter (by finding ways to discredit her name most likely).

But there is a lot to be said for public representatives asking such people the real, sensible questions – that’s supposedly what we elect them to do.

Do you think it may be possible an Irish bank or two deserves a similar public grilling?

 

Protecting not protesting & Crushing the Black Snake #NoDAPL

~ jlpagano

It may be happening thousands of miles away but there is much about the Dakota Access pipeline controversy that is of interest to Irish readers.

Two things I’d like to focus on here…first, the coverage by The Guardian.  It may be a British paper but there is so much mistrust towards national media in the US that now many are turning to them for some semblance of truth in their reporting, and they are certainly working hard to provide it.

I listen to several US progressive podcasts like Best of the Left, The Young Turks, Democracy Now etc and all have quoted the publication often affectionately known as “The Guarniad” because if its supposed reputation for frequent typos.

Back in August a piece by Iyuskin American Horse in Canyon Ball, North Dakota was published titled “‘We are protectors, not protesters’: why I’m fighting the North Dakota pipeline“.  It offers the native Americans’ side of the story.

The fact that Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the pipeline, would use the word “Dakota”, which means “friend” or “ally”, in the name of its project is disrespectful. This pipeline is a direct threat to all Dakota, Lakota and Nakota people, especially our future generations. And we are not the only ones. We know that burning this oil is changing our climate and Indigenous people all over the world are bearing the brunt of the catastrophes that causes.

The other interesting aspect of this story is that of the black snake.

Our elders have told us that if the zuzeca sape, the black snake, comes across our land, our world will end. Zuzeca has come – in the form of the Dakota Access pipeline – and so I must fight.

I have absolutely no reason not to believe that American Indians have a legend of a black snake that was going to cross their land.  But it would certainly not surprise me if the oil barons and their sympathisers who would be keen to push this pipeline through raised doubts as to the validity of the folklore.

Well all I can say is that even if they did make it up, it’s nothing compared to the amount of shite big oil corporations fabricate to get past environmental studies and judicial processes in order to get the profits flowing in their direction as quickly as possible.

Best of luck to Iyuskin American Horse and his people.  May the Black Snake be driven away from their sacred land for all eternity.

Meanwhile, we could probably do with an external journalists source focusing on Irish affairs in a similar fashion to that of the Guardian.

One thing you need to know about this Indo article titled “Five things you need to know about today’s #Right2Water demonstration”

~ jlpagano

“Look, we’re being balanced and we’re covering today’s demonstration!”, implies the Irish Independent in this minimalist article.

Never mind the fact that they want you to believe there will only be 3,000 people there.

Never mind the fact that they highlight the delays to city centre, in other words – making the cost to downtown business folk more important than people’s right to show their frustration with government policy.

Some of the comments beneath the article…

So, is it about water, EU, Taxes, or whatever takes your fancy?

It must be so confusing being ‘agin’ everything – reality keeps getting in the way.

Best approach: when what you are saying makes no sense, just reduce it to a short slogan, and scream it louder. Drowns out all the facts nicely, but shows the march up as a large gathering with very low total IQ.

I bet some of them even think that water is already paid for. Even Paul Murphy agrees it is underfunded.

Where to go? Oh I’d love to tell these wasters where to go!!!

More pointless disruption.

IF YOU WANT REAL INFO ON THE PROTEST CLICK HERE

 

 

 

“I do not feel Irish in the slightest” : Newton Emerson on being part of The Troubles generation in Northern Ireland

~ jlpagano

My “political awakening” came when I read about the Unionists in History class leading up to my Leaving Cert.

Having moved to Ireland from the USA in 1977 and spent about 10 years in Dublin, my only knowledge of what was happening in the North came from reports on the Troubles and casual gossip among “grownups” which invariably was of a “Catholic/Southern” slant.

Somehow I knew that wasn’t the whole story and when the other side of the story was presented to me in school I was fascinated…it was in fact my topic of choice in the Leaving Cert History exam.  I went to the hall with the express intention of belting out my well-rehearsed Unionism essay to get me settled…thankfully the question was there for me.

But that was all very well for me living in Dublin…what could it have been like for someone of a similar age actually growing up on the “protestant side” of the North during those times?

In today’s Irish Times I got my answer in a piece by Newton Emerson titled “I do not feel Irish in the slightest“.

…if you were a respectable person, as the “head-down” mentality of the Troubles encouraged most of us to be, you looked to the mainland for anything more important than collecting the bins.

Do give it a read.

Trump’s Tirade of Two-faced Tactics

~ jlpagano

They say in sporting circles that attack is the best form of defence.  In politics, more often than not from the “right”, they tend to take it one step further…not only should you defend yourself by going on the attack, you should also do so by accusing your opponent of doing exactly what it is that you are known to do.  Donald Trump has been a master of this in his presidential campaign.

He attacks Hillary on her health…not only in recent days when she actually had some issues in that area, but also well before she was confirmed as the Democratic nominee, giving out about her arriving late on stage when debating Bernie Sanders.  Since then there have been a string of ridiculous conspiracy theories from the extreme right suggesting everything from using body doubles to actually having mental problems.

And all of this when Trump himself has only produced a medical report from a quack who offered this ridiculous claim:

If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency

Next up we have his childish name-calling…a supposedly serious candidate for President resorting to calling his opponent “Crooked Hillary” or “Hillary Rotten Clinton” in numerous speeches.

Well if she’s crooked, Donald, why don’t you show us your tax returns so we can be sure that you aren’t?

My personal favourite has been his attacks on the Clinton Foundation.   It ties in to the the “crooked” theme I know, but the persistent questions raised by Trump and his campaign which centred on the charitable organisation so much that you could only assume that the entity known as The Trump Foundation HAD to be beyond reproach.  Not the case at all.  In fact, if anything, the allegations on his side of the fence are far worse.

And they keep on coming.  The Clinton Foundation was accused of accepting charitable donations in return for access to Hillary as Secretary of State.  In Trump’s case, at first he was apparently using funds to help Republican politicians’ campaign in order to keep them sweet.

Now, Washington DC political blog the Hill suggests he was also using the charity money AGAINST people…

While New York’s attorney general was investigating Trump University in 2014, Donald Trump’s foundation donated $100,000 to a conservative group that sued that same attorney general, according to a Yahoo News report Friday.
It all seems to lead to a simple Rule of Trump – if he accuses you of something, be sure and investigate him for that very same thing…you are bound to strike gold.