Here I laugh at Hillary Clinton's new position on banks and the financial crisis

As Hillary Clinton has shown during her 2016 Presidential campaign, as well as her 2008 campaign and every move in her political life, everything is calculated to follow public opinion.  If she was a real leader she wouldn't have to wait to make these decisions.

Recent examples include TPP, Keystone XL, and Black Lives Matter, where after a second meeting she decried racism as America's original sin and vowed (after Bernie Sanders issued his policy) to ban private for-profit prison corporations.  Here is me laughing about that!

Before I learned that private prison corporations are funding her campaign

Clinton will always follow causes for her own benefit--I'll vote for candidate who wants to abolish all prisons https://t.co/1m2oi3FUPR

— BiasedReporter (@biasedreporter) October 9, 2015

and after

I already didn't trust Clinton's call to end private prisons, now I see they fund her campaign http://t.co/AD9RJpFMkP @antloewenstein

— BiasedReporter (@biasedreporter) October 9, 2015

Hillary: I want to end private prisons Private prisons: Hold up, we help fund your campaign. https://t.co/K875w6RHN1

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) October 9, 2015

July 29 Hillary Clinton won't answer Keystone XL pipeline question

Hillary Clinton on Tuesday declined to say whether she supported the Keystone XL pipeline expansion, telling a New Hampshire voter that if the matter is still undecided by the time she becomes president, she will give him an answer then.

The question came from Bruce Blodgett, a software developer from Amherst, New Hampshire, who told CNN he identifies as a Republican and supports building the pipeline, the 1,179-mile-long project that would move oil from Canada to refineries in the United States.

During a town hall in Nashua, Blodgett asked, "As president, would you sign a bill, yes or no please, in favor of allowing the Keystone XL pipeline?"

"I thought she avoided the question completely. Her excuse was she didn't want to step on President Obama while he was still in office," he said. "I just thought that was a very weak answer. I just wanted to know where she stands on it one way or another."

Then in September after Clinton finally decided to answer the question Chris Cillizza wrote well in The Fix about why this hedge was wrong, especially when she has come out strongly on other issues still up for debate, like the Iran Nuclear Agreement, which was her excuse on Keystone.

Look. When you are running for president -- whether or not you served in the current administration -- you are going to be asked to take positions on issues that the current president is dealing with. As long as we hold elections that begin two years (or more) before the current president is set to leave office, that's going to be a thing candidates need to contend with.

just because it's politically disadvantageous to take a position doesn't mean Clinton should be allowed to avoid doing just that.

This was pure politics by Clinton. It was a gamble based on the idea that the disgust over her failure to answer a direct question would be far less damaging than the fallout if she did offer her opinion.

McKibben, as Bernie surrogate, dings Hillary. "Bernie Sanders came out against the Keystone pipeline in September [pause] September of 2011"

— DENALI (@timothypmurphy) October 3, 2015

Now this week, it's banks and the 2008 financial crisis. Remember that it was Bill Clinton's 1999 repeal of Glass–Steagall that lead to the "too big to fail" phenomenon.  Otherwise the banks would have simply failed for making bad bets.

Clinton courts left with promise to break up risky banks

Hillary Clinton lets big banks off the hook for financial crisis

So, if you want to, Go Ahead, Back Hillary Clinton and Forget All About Her Record

While Bernie Sanders is not perfect, Jill Stein is not allowed in the debates, let alone is she or Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb or Lincoln Chaffee getting any media coverage.

I forgot that Jim Webb was running for President until I saw an ad for the debate on CNN.

Black Lives Matter more than being polite even to our so called allies

It's now been one year since the killing of Michael Brown brought #BlackLivesMatter into the national spotlight almost a year after it was created following the Trayvon Martin killing and trial and acquittal of George Zimmerman.  (who enjoys gloating about his freedom while waiting for "karma")

While it has brought needed attention to a national audience about the issue of police brutality that the black community has known about since slavery, recently #BlackLivesMatter has upset it's allies in the Democratic party by interrupting Bernie Sanders at an event in Seattle celebrating the anniversary of Medicare and Social Security (and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley at Netroots Nation and Bernie Sanders' response--I thought Jose Antonio Vargas' questions were tough until I heard Tia Oso!)

But it is the fact that Black Lives Matter interrupted Sanders that has gotten the most press.

Here is Daunasia Yancey of BLM Boston speaking about Hillary Clinton's record and why BLM activists are interrupting Democratic "allies" first instead of the criticism heard about why they are not going after Republicans

AMY GOODMAN: And in what capacity was she responsible? Talk about her history, how you hold her responsible.

DAUNASIA YANCEY: Well, she advocated for, as FLOTUS and as senator, for policies that have increased the penalties for minor drug offenses and things like that. Back in '94, there was $17 billion divested from HUD, from public housing, and $19 billion put into prison construction. And so, with situations like that, that we've seen her publicly support, we really wanted to hear from her what has changed in her that she would not continue to promote practices like that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how do you respond to folks who say that, well, the Black Lives Matter now has been confronting several Democratic candidates, but the Republican candidates, of which there are many more, have largely been so far unscathed on the question of answering their policy issues in terms of the black community and of police violence and on mass incarceration?

DAUNASIA YANCEY: Yeah. But, well, every presidential candidate should expect to hear from us and expect to be held accountable. It’s actually a practice called "power mapping," where it’s similar to lobbying, where you actually map who’s closest to you on the issue and go to those folks first in order to force them to articulate their stance and then hold them accountable to it. So this movement is very strategic, and that’s what we’ve been doing.

Here is a discussion of Black Lives Matter from Left Forum. It is an important discussion.  (Sorry I cannot embed it)


What seems to be forgotten is the history of protest in the fight for civil rights.

Today, the March on Washington is remembered as a historic event where people gathered peacefully and heard speeches about civil rights.  Martin Luther King is almost entirely remembered for his "I Have a Dream" speech.

MLK's #IHaveADream speech was a turning point in the fight for civil rights, bringing us closer to equality for all. pic.twitter.com/beaS8Fqyx4

— Sen. Debbie Stabenow (@SenStabenow) August 28, 2015

But what has not been a legacy of the march is the correlation to Black Lives Matter interrupting their "allies" today, considering that the March as well was aimed at the Democratic President who had spoken favorably for civil rights in June of that year, sent federal troops to protect James Meredith as he faced rioters at the University of Mississippi.  Two people were killed and more than 300 wounded, including 1/3 of the US Marshals.  So Kennedy's actions on civil rights, while not enough and certainly criticized by many, was to an extent an ally of the cause and it was seen as impolite to lead a march in Washington calling for him to do more.

LBJ, who actually got the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Acts passed, was angry when Martin Luther King turned against the Vietnam War in 1967.  King gave the speech against the war in Vietnam twice that I know of and have heard, April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church, and April 30, 1967 as a Sunday sermon (audio).

His friends advised him against giving the speech and antagonizing an ally in the fight for civil rights, President Johnson

One of his great advisers and great admirers, Stanley Levison, who was always with Dr. King in his corner, was against Martin giving this speech. So practically everybody in his inner circle was against him giving it - one, because they knew the kind of pushback he was going to get. And secondly, so many civil rights leaders were opposed to him giving it because LBJ had been the best president to black people on civil rights. He passed the Voting Rights Act. He passed the Civil Rights Act. And so the question was, Martin, why would you antagonize the president who has been our friend?

Martin Luther King brilliantly linked civil rights, economic justice and fighting imperialism and war as 3 parts of the same fight.  The fight for civil rights was useless without fixing the economic inequality that was a legacy of institutional racism as King famously asked

“What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?”

“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums”

The mainstream press viciously attacked King for speaking out against the war, and said he tarnished his role as a civil rights leader.  The New York Times, Washington Post and more than 160 other papers wrote against King's speech against the war.

Speaking on April 30, 1967 here was King's response to the media that attacked him for his April 4th speech against the Vietnam War

They applauded us in the sit-in movement--we non-violently decided to sit in at lunch counters. The applauded us on the Freedom Rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause, and so noble in its praise when I was saying, Be non-violent toward Bull Connor;when I was saying, Be non-violent toward [Selma, Alabama segregationist sheriff] Jim Clark. There's something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say, "Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children. There's something wrong with that press!

The media attacked his speech against the war in Vietnam just as fellow preachers had told King to wait to fight for civil rights.  King responded with A Letter from Birmingham Jail

A Call for Unity

Just as we formerly pointed out that "hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions," we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham.

continued

We urge the public to continue to show restraint should the demonstrations continue, and the law enforcement official to remain calm and continue to protect our city from violence.

We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham.

A Letter from Birmingham Jail

I think I should indicate why I am here In Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.

continued

I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place In Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through an these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

continued

As in so many past experiences, our hopes bad been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community.

continued

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society

continued

when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" – then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may won ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Malcolm X was even tougher on the civil rights leaders and on politicians and the March on Washington which he criticized as tamed down by white leaders

Malcolm X

delivering his "Message to the Grass Roots" speech in November of 1963, less than three months after the March on Washington. In that same speech, he goes on to criticize the, quote, "Big Six," the six leading civil rights organizers at the time: Martin Luther King, James Farmer, John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young.

continued

This is what they did with the March on Washington. They joined it. They didn’t integrate it; they infiltrated it. They joined it, became a part of it, took it over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. They ceased to be angry. They ceased to be hot. They ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic

Black Agenda Report wrote about how Malcolm X would denounce those black leaders today who have sided with capitalist "bloodsuckers" and has asked where Black Lives Matter criticism of our current leaders, just like Malcolm X would do, is.

Last month folks whom Alicia Garza described as “part of our team” disrupted two minor white male candidates at NetRootsNation, the annual networking event for paid and wannabe paid Democratic party activists, embarrassing them with demands over structural racism and “say her name”. If they were positioning themselves for careers inside the far-flung Democratic party apparatus, it was a smart move, because Hillary wasn't there. Hence they got noticed in that crowd of Democrat operatives without antagonizing the people with the real money and connections.

still, the protests worked 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-lives-matter-policy-demands_55d7392ae4b0a40aa3aa9443

This was Bernie Sanders after Black Lives Matter interrupted him.

Statement on Racial Justice

Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Samuel DuBose. We know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. The chants are growing louder. People are angry and they have a right to be angry.

BLM Seattle statement on Bernie protest

Today BLM Seattle, with the support of other Black organizers and non-Black allies and accomplices, held Bernie Sanders publicly accountable for his lack of support for the Black Lives Matter movement and his blatantly silencing response to the ‪#‎SayHerName‬ ‪#‎IfIDieInPoliceCustody‬ action that took place at Netroots this year.

Bernie’s arrival in Seattle is largely significant in the context of the state of emergency Black lives are in locally as well as across America. The Seattle Police Department has been under federal consent decree for the last three years and has been continually plagued by use-of-force violations and racist scandals amongst their rank and file. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has refused to push any reform measures for police accountability, not even the numerous recommendations of his self-appointed Community Police Commission. The Seattle School District suspends Black students at a rate six times higher than their white counterparts, feeding Black children into the school-to-prison pipeline. King County has fought hard to push through a plan to build a $210 million new youth jail to imprison these children, amid intense community criticism and dissent. The Central District, a historically Black neighborhood in Seattle, has undergone rapid gentrification over the past few decades, with Black people being displaced from the only neighborhood that we could legally live in until just years ago. While white men profit off of the legalization of marijuana, our prisons are still filled with Black people who are over-incarcerated for drug offenses.

This city is filled with white progressives, which is why Bernie Sanders’ camp was obviously expecting a friendly and consenting audience for today’s campaign visit. The problem with Sanders’, and with white Seattle progressives in general, is that they are utterly and totally useless (when not outright harmful) in terms of the fight for Black lives. While we are drowning in their liberal rhetoric, we have yet to see them support Black grassroots movements or take on any measure of risk and responsibility for ending the tyranny of white supremacy in our country and in our city. This willful passivity while claiming solidarity with the‪ #‎BlackLivesMatter‬ movement in an effort to be relevant is over. White progressive Seattle and Bernie Sanders cannot call themselves liberals while they participate in the racist system that claims Black lives. Bernie Sanders will not continue to call himself a man of the people, while ignoring the plight of Black people.

Keep up the protests, and don't forget the leaders in power, even when they do what we want.  If we let the pressure fade they will go back to ignoring us. 

Black Lives Matter Seattle protests timeline



A few articles discussing the Bernie Sanders/Hillary Clinton protests

https://news.yahoo.com/did-bernie-sanders-become-target-black-lives-matter-173555218.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc_trk=tw

http://www.thenation.com/article/why-the-netroots-blacklivesmatter-protest-is-long-overdue/


Black Agenda Report on BLM and Hillary Clinton
http://www.blackagendareport.com/blacklivesmatter_humiliated_by_Clinton

BAR on Bernie and Netroots
http://www.blackagendareport.com/netroots-nation-confrontation

BAR on disruption and collaboration
http://www.blackagendareport.com/blm_and_democrats_disruption_to_collaboration

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/prominent-blm-activists-unveil-comprehensive-demands-for-stricter-us-policing-laws-as-political-reach-grows/

self determination
http://www.blackagendareport.com/black_self_determination_matters

Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and Caribbean Bananas

While many are discussing Hillary Clinton's role in the 1990's "tough on crime" laws thanks to Black Lives Matter protests, few know about a small trade issue in the Caribbean when Bill Clinton was President.  It was referred to as the Banana Wars. (all puns aside for the moment)

Newsweek

Brawl Over Bananas
BY NEWSWEEK STAFF 4/27/97

WHEN A UNITED STATES trade delegation arrived on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia two weeks ago, the visit seemed like a perfect escape from Washington: no more snow, no more scandals, no more tales of shadowy quid pro quos. But the Americans walked into an enemy camp in the middle of an all-out banana war. When they stopped at the rickety, dockside offices of the St. Lucia Banana Growers Association, its managing director, Rupert Gajadhar, lashed out at the Clinton administration's "diabolical" campaign to abolish European preferences that have kept the Caribbean banana trade--and the islands that depend on it--from going bust. "You are conducting the worst kind of economic warfare against a defenseless people," he said. "You take away our bananas and leave us with no alternative but misery, strife, suffering." After a 30-minute tirade, Gajadhar abruptly ended the meeting. The Americans filed out in stunned silence.

So much for a warm Caribbean welcome. When Bill Clinton arrives in Barbados the week after next to meet with Caribbean leaders, his reception will surely be more diplomatic. But throughout the Caribbean, there is a strong undercurrent of resentment against the United States. After years of nourishing democracies in the islands, economic assistance is drying up even as walls of protective tariffs come tumbling down. U.S. economic aid to the Caribbean has fallen by 90 percent, from $226 million in 1985 to $22 million in 1995. Even more damage has been done to the region by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The "great sucking sound" that Ross Perot warned about has been loudest in the Caribbean, which has lost jobs, markets and investment to Mexico. Clinton promised the islands benefits similar to those of NAFTA, but Congress has quashed his proposal twice, and its prospects look dim. Suddenly the region feels neglected. As Vaughn Lewis, St. Lucia's prime minister, told NEWSWEEK: "We have dropped off the geopolitical map."

The banana war is the latest, and most worrisome, sign of a relationship on the skids. The dispute began in 1993, when the European Union (EU) implemented a policy that favored the small banana growers of its former colonies in the Caribbean. It imposed trade barriers on the cheaper bananas grown in Latin America by Dole, Chiquita and Del Monte. Those U.S. companies control some two thirds of the world banana market, compared to just 3 percent for the Caribbean growers. Last year, after heavy lobbying from the Cincinnati-based Chiquita Brands International, which claimed the restrictions cost the company $400 million in lost revenues, Washington took the case to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The United States had little direct interest in the issue: it does not export bananas, and only a handful of U.S. jobs were at stake. Could there be another reason the White House pursued the case? Between 1993 and 1996 Chiquita and its chairman, Carl Lindner, donated more than $1.1 million to the Democratic Party--enough, evidently, to earn him a night in the White House in early 1995. The contributions were legal, and both sides deny there was any quid pro quo. But Chiquita will soon get at least part of what it wanted: next week the WTO is expected to issue a final report striking down the European preferences, which could have disastrous consequences for the eastern Caribbean.

Washington has a history of protecting American fruit companies. In 1954 the CIA helped overthrow a socialist government in Guatemala, partly to defend United Fruit Co. plantations. Today United Fruit, reincarnated as Chiquita, still exerts influence in Washington. The company lodged its complaint about Europe's banana preferences with the United States Trade Representative (USTR) in September 1994. Lindner, who contributes to the GOP as well (more than $1.4 million since '92), also contacted Bob Dole, who flew in a Lindner-owned plane during his presidential campaign. USTR records reviewed by NEWSWEEK show that Mickey Kantor, Clinton's trade rep at the time, met Lindner on three occasions to discuss the banana issue. The first two were breakfast sessions at the Watergate hotel, hosted by Dole. "Dole was just rabid on the issue," says a former USTR official.

"Lindner wanted the administration to do a lot more than we did," Kantor said last week. Instead of imposing sanctions on the Europeans, as Lindner requested, Washington filed a complaint with the WTO. USTR spokesman Jay Ziegler said his office has a "legal obligation" to protest unfair trade practices "whenever there are U.S. corporate interests at stake." Kantor said the case was based on recommendations by USTR civil servants, not Lindner's contributions to the Democratic Nation- al Committee. Says Chiquita spokesman Joseph Hagin: "The charge that Carl's contributions were linked to policy changes simply does not reflect reality."

The WTO's interim report, which would require the EU to dismantle its preferences, leaked last month. Caribbean growers and their U.S. supporters were outraged. Last week a dozen protesters led by Randall Robinson of TransAfrica, a lobbyist for Third World causes, dumped a ton of bananas in front of the USTR office near the White House. (Bemused passersby took advantage of one of the town's truly free lunches.) "After the fall of communism, we are all dispensable now," says John Mederick, who works for the growers' association on St. Lucia. "For the sake of a single company, the U.S. is threatening to destroy the fabric of a society. Chaos will be the result."

Some Caribbean leaders warn that if the banana business goes bust, the drug trade may increase. Already about 40 percent of the cocaine and heroin sold in the United States comes through the Caribbean, according to U.S. figures, and the eastern steppingstone islands are the fastest-growing conduit for traffickers. "If no alternative is found for bananas, these islands are going to have some big problems with drugs," says St. Lucia police commissioner Vernon Augustine.

Finding viable alternatives to bananas will take time and money. But a short-term disaster may still be averted. Despite a year of heated rhetoric and cold shoulders, U.S. and Caribbean officials say in private that they want to reach a compromise to keep the banana trade afloat. That, in fact, was what the U.S. trade delegation wanted to explore in St. Lucia two weeks ago--if only Gajadhar hadn't gone bananas.

Here is Randall Robinson talking about his book The Debt on Democracy Now

I think it’s unforgivable that Clinton, who has enjoyed more support in the black community than Jesse Jackson and Colin Powell, according to polls done in the early nineties, would do what he has done to Caribbean banana-based economies. Democratic-friendly countries to the United States have been devastated by Clinton, who sold the administration to Chiquita Bananas for a campaign contribution.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that further. I don’t think people really understand what this is about.

RANDALL ROBINSON: Countries like Dominica, St. Vincent, Grenada, St. Lucia, depend on the export of bananas for 70%, 80%, 85% of their foreign exchange earnings. They’re small economies, and so they can’t diversify. These are small islands, and they’re volcanic islands, and so economies of scale mean that it takes a little more to grow a banana in those places per banana per unit than it does on the vast acreages of Central America, where Chiquita and the large fruit growers grow bananas.

And so, because of this, the former colonial powers — the English in this case — have carved out a tiny share of the European market. These countries don’t sell any bananas in the United States, and so they depend on this European market, which is just 3% of the world market, 6% of the European market, to buy their bananas on a preferential basis to sustain these democratic economies.

AMY GOODMAN: Is it a kind of reparations for these countries because they’re former colonies?

RANDALL ROBINSON: It’s an acknowledgment of what the metropol country owes to these countries. And, of course, Carl Lindner of Chiquita Bananas wants that market share. And so he made an enormous contribution to the Democratic Party, to the Republican Party, as well, slept in the Lincoln bedroom, flew on Air Force One.

Clinton went to the WTO, after Mickey Kantor told us that we would do nothing that would be harmful to the interest of these democratic friendly countries — went to the WTO and got a ruling, which means that these countries will find their economies destroyed, making them more vulnerable to the drug trafficking, the drug traffic that comes from the countries of supply in Latin America to the market in the United States, because these countries have become more vulnerable, because of the economic policies of the US. And so, we’ve got farmers now in St. Vincent ingesting insecticide, committing suicide, because of what the Clinton administration has done. And this is the reward we get from a president who was elected, one could argue, by the black community. 

FOX News upset over "False Talking Points" on Benghazi while.....

Tuesday June 17, 2014

The breaking news is that Obama is sending 275 troops to protect the Embassy in Baghdad, and the US captured Ahmed Abu Khatalla, one of the suspects in the attack on the US diplomatic mission (it was NOT an embassy) in Benghazi, Libya that killed 4 Americans.

• US Ambassador Christopher Stevens
• Tyrone Woods
• Glen Doherty
• Sean Smith

The media MUST stop calling this "the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and 3 other Americans.

Jamie McIntyre of NPR DID name all 4 victims, and I appreciate that.

Over on FOX News, the theme of the day is that the "government's decision" in announcing the capture of Ahmed Abu Khatalla today was "a little too convenient" since Hillary Clinton would be interviewed later on today on FOX News.

Now go read the title of this post again--are you LOLing yet??

The "reporters" were saying that the US government knew since day one who the suspects were, that the suspects themselves were not scared and did not go into hiding.  So why did it take so long to finally capture Ahmed Abu Khatalla? The theory on FOX is that since he had given interviews to journalists before, out in the open, announcing the capture today was "to help Hillary Clinton become President."

Meanwhile FOX News screams about Susan Rice's "fake talking points" on Benghazi.


This from the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on  Benghazi, regarding the talking points

Regarding the protests in reaction to the anti Muslim video, it is important to remember (as no one reports) that there were in fact protests WORLDWIDE in reaction to the video--not only in Muslim and Arab countries, but in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Nigeria, India, Kenya, Australia, Belgium.

See the full list here.

Remember this larger context when you hear this next time.