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Carson Plummets in Polls Amid Reports He Did Not Stab Anyone |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Friday, 06 November 2015 14:30 |
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Borowitz writes: "New reports indicating that Ben Carson might not have actually stabbed anyone during his youth have sent the retired neurosurgeon plummeting in the latest Republican Presidential polls."
Ben Carson. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty)
Carson Plummets in Polls Amid Reports He Did Not Stab Anyone
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
06 November 15
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 ew reports indicating that Ben Carson might not have actually stabbed anyone during his youth have sent the retired neurosurgeon plummeting in the latest Republican Presidential polls.
Carson supporters, reeling from the news that their candidate’s past might have been devoid of stabbing, have deserted his candidacy in droves, suggesting that Republican voters viewed Carson’s stabbing as a key part of his résumé.
Indeed, a recent University of Minnesota poll showed that a full third of Carson supporters singled out “his stabbing experience” as a top reason for supporting him for the nation’s highest office.
In Iowa, where Carson was the front-runner before the non-stabbing bombshell hit, voters like Carol Foyler, of Des Moines, expressed dismay and disillusionment that the retired doctor might have fabricated his stabbing exploits to make himself more appealing to Republican voters.
“I was on the fence about Ben Carson, but the stabbing thing really won me over,” she said. “Now, I don’t know what to think.”
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How Occupy Wall Street Paved the Way for Black Lives Matter and Bernie Sanders |
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Friday, 06 November 2015 14:25 |
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Gupta writes: "Far from fizzling, the Occupy Wall Street movement has a legacy that continues to shape the political landscape."
Occupy Wall Street protest. (photo: Reuters)
How Occupy Wall Street Paved the Way for Black Lives Matter and Bernie Sanders
By Arun Gupta, teleSUR
06 November 15
Far from fizzling, the movement has a contested legacy that continues to shape the political landscape
 ne of the more puzzling aspects about Occupy Wall Street is not that there was a moment when millions of people hoped or feared it might overthrow the rule of the banks, but that so little is said about it four years on.
Its anniversaries come and go without comment: Occupy’s founding on September 17, 2011, the high-water mark of the Oakland general strike on November 2, the eviction of of the New York camp on November 15, the creation of Occupy Sandy after the superstorm walloped the Northeast on October 29, 2012.
Occupy lost its luster because most people concluded it was a failure. It failed to articulate demands, failed to create a lasting impact, failed to spark a revolution. The haters dismiss Occupy as the “Frenzy that Fizzled.” True believers maintain Occupy triumphed for shifting the conversation from economic austerity to inequality, while ignoring the lack of infrastructure to carry its work and ideas forward. Many who joined or were inspired by it would up feeling confused, bitter, or disappointed at losing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to upend the status quo. Others blame Occupy’s dissolution on police forces that aggressively swept out all the major encampments. But it’s defeatist to say Occupy was vanquished “by a concerted government effort to undo it.” State violence is a given, and some radical movements still succeed.
Occupiers tried repeatedly to resurrect the movement after the main bastions in Oakland and New York City were evicted in November 2011. But it never regained its footing despite the national May Day general strike, protests against a NATO summit in Chicago, the Occupy Our Homes anti-foreclosure movement, Occupy Sandy, and attempted re-occupations of parks, plazas, and buildings across the country.
No, Occupy Wall Street did not fizzle or fail. Its outsized ambitions were destined to crash as there are no left forces strong enough in the United States to keep a mass movement flying high. Occupy is as relevant as ever; the difficulty in coming to terms with it is because of its mixed legacy. When radicals lost the initiative against a bankrupt political system, liberals stepped in to divert energy back into the system.
Occupy’s birth in the shadow of and days after the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks was a rupture. As the first radical movement of the 21st century in the United States, Occupy revived confrontational politics squelched by the “war on terror.” Its use of direct action for wealth redistribution and against state power has been explicitly adopted by today’s immigrant-rights, low-wage worker, and climate-justice movements. Occupy popularized class lingo with “we are the 99%” and “the 1%,” putting the wealthy on the defensive ideologically. Without Occupy, neither the US$15-an-hour minimum wage movement nor Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign would have gained such traction.
Activists have tried to anoint successors to Occupy Wall Street, such as Occupy Sandy, the post-hurricane relief effort that was a hybrid of community organizing and charity. But none have matched the spirit or form of Occupy as closely as the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, there is no direct line between the two, as there is with Kshama Sawant. She came to prominence with Occupy, then won election to the Seattle City Council in 2013 on a “$15 Now” platform, and is running for re-election as a “voice for the 99%” against an opponent bankrolled by CEOs, landlords, and business interests.
Black Lives Matter is the true heir to Occupy because it uses militant protest, digital media, and fluid and opaque leadership structures to challenge state power. The difference is Black Lives Matter began by targeting state force rather than its economic power.
Ironically, by early 2012 some Occupy groups were squandering popular capital on “fuck the police” marches that drew only the hardcore. Black Lives Matter has gone the other way, from a cry against the routine killing of unarmed Blacks to connecting police violence to economic violence. Opal Tometi, a leader of Black Lives Matter, told The Nation that “violence that’s sanctioned by the state” is more than the police. It includes poverty, “?attacks on labor unions and what that has done to the standard of living, the employability of our people, the kind of wages that we are making, and the benefits.”
Black Lives Matter has had more staying power even as it has experienced growing pains, strategic splits, and conflicts over who is a leader given the ability to use social media to draw a following. Unlike Occupy, Black Lives Matter is rooted in a community. Black America is shaped as much by the violence that birthed this nation, and sustains it, as it as by the resistive creation that’s grown out of the soiled history.
But that doesn’t make Black Lives Matter immune to attempted co-optation, especially in the crucible of the 2016 election. Just as liberal groups like MoveOn, SEIU, and Rebuild the Dream tried to steal Occupy’s thunder with a “99% Spring” linked to their pro-Democratic Party agenda, so too have groups like the Justice League NYC pushed “establishment-friendly reformism” under the banner of Black Lives Matter.
Post-Occupy, the best organizing combines radical politics with leadership and organization. A few unions have waded into the breach created by Occupy. Public-school teacher campaigns in Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, and Seattle have tied contract negotiations to student education and community issues, while reviving the use of strikes, walkouts, and protests. The SEIU-backed “Fight for $15” first seized the issue of income inequality in November 2012, just as Occupy had faded, and now 63 percent of Americans support a $15 minimum wage by 2020. But the fast-food workers struggle is more a march on the media than a rank-and-file movement. Most recently, auto workers rebelled against a fossilized United Auto Workers leadership by rejecting a contract that would have extended a tiered wage system dividing workers.
The climate-justice movement is fractured by the same confrontation and cooptation divide. Blockades from below have slowed the construction of pipelines, the movement of coal trains, the development of natural-gas export terminals, and the sailing of oil-drilling ships to the Arctic. But the 2014 “People’s Climate March,” hyped as the next phase of Occupy, was defanged by well-funded liberals who turned it into a corporate P.R. march devoid of politics, instead of the initial vision of a Seattle-style blockade around the United Nations.
This, too, is the legacy of Occupy Wall Street. Amorphous, “leaderless” networks can respond quickly to a crisis but act as quicksand to movement building. Occupiers wound up butting their heads against the state even as they opened up new paths for their successors. These new movements have had more material success than Occupy Wall Street, but the age-old challenge that Occupy put into stark relief remains: will they settle for reform when they came to have a revolution.
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FOCUS: Netanyahu's Rhetoric |
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Friday, 06 November 2015 12:32 |
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Bronner writes: "Benjamin Netanyahu has actually promoted the very sort of political hysteria and rabble-rousing that helped introduce the totalitarian regime from which Jews suffered so terribly."
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (photo: EPA)
Netanyahu's Rhetoric
By Stephen Eric Bronner, Reader Supported News
06 November 15
 t has often been said that truth is the first victim of politics. But, looking backward, politicians have mostly tried to hide or veil or qualify their fabrications. Lying as an end unto itself was generally relegated to totalitarians and other ideological fanatics: Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. They explicitly used propaganda as forms of political education, information, and – above all – as mobilizing strategies for realizing various strategic purposes. The totalitarian monopoly on employing this kind of rhetorical consolidation seems to have reached its end. The strategy has now spread to the Western democracies, where truth is not so much irrelevant as lying has become almost acceptable (especially among insiders) as useful form of political provocation that will allow true believers and provincials to circle the wagons – and justify the lie as truth.
America has Trump and a host of rival demagogues in the Republican Party. France has Marine Le Pen, Germany has Lutz Bachmann, Greece is stuck with the fascist Golden Dawn, Jobbik’s partisans are busy in Hungary, Italy had Berlusconi, and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is surely also a member of the world community of demagogues. Each has his tradition of myths, stereotypes, and prejudices to inform a political rhetoric that targets seminal issues facing the nation.
Important is that their claims and vituperations are not products of simple ignorance or misspeaking. Constantly harping on the stupidity of leaders like Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin is a mistake. Ignorance is less the issue than cynicism and the attitude of a confidence man.
Truth is not so much becoming irrelevant as simply one “opinion” among others, and there are just too many spin doctors, too much infotainment, and too many sensationalist websites to inhibit a politician on the make from saying whatever comes to mind. Netanyahu is nothing special in that regard. He is simply continuing a trend that attempts to intimately associate Palestinians with Nazis in the public mind and, by implication, Israelis with Jews murdered in the Holocaust. But it was no less troubling to hear Netanyahu claim in late October 2015 that Nazis were ready to allow Jewish emigration to Palestine, or someplace else like Madagascar, had not the Grand Mufti al-Husseini of Jerusalem convinced Hitler in a meeting on November 28, 1941, that such a plan was impractical. It would be far better to “burn” the Jews and thereby “eliminate” the problem entirely.
Now, what is the political interest being served here? How important was this conversation? European anti-Semitism in the first decades of the 20th century had its (large and small) political parties, philosophers, artists, magazines, and academic curricula. It was one (albeit not particularly respectable) worldview among other worldviews. Anti-Semitism could be found almost anywhere, but especially in Vienna, where Hitler spent so much time prior to World War I. He knew the racist arguments generated by Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s popular “Foundations of the 19th Century” and Richard Wagner’s “The Jews and Modern Music,” and he listened to the anti-Semitic theories of his “court philosopher,” Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler already considered the Jew a form of “racial tuberculosis” as early as 1919. He was also enthusiastic about the “Protocols of Zion,” with its fabricated vision of a world Jewish conspiracy, and his Nazi party endorsed the psychotic Julius Streicher, editor of the anti-Semitic rag sheet Der Stuermer, who missed no opportunity to portray Jews as vermin and the incarnation of evil. Indeed, “Mein Kampf” explicitly made the case for the genocidal elimination of Jews.
All these works and theories basically treated Jews as an alien and inherently evil presence at worst or as a misfortune or burden to be born at best. Hitler had no need of the Grand Mufti, who was undoubtedly an anti-Semite, but whom he barely knew, to develop either his views or his policies on anti-Semitism. Hitler certainly did not look to Islam for practical assistance: it was obviously not the Palestinians who ran the trains, organized the delivery of inmates, constructed the ovens, or supervised the camps. Netanyahu knew that his statement about the Grand Mufti was nothing more than a symbolic provocation and, quickly enough, in the face of public outcry all over the world – with a knowing wink – he retracted his statement and admitted that the Nazis themselves were responsible for Auschwitz.
But this only begs the question concerning why Netanyahu said what he said in the first place. Amid growing international support for the Palestinians and the moral character of their struggle, of course, exaggerating the role of the Grand Mufti might provide a bit of inspiration for the Israeli right. Then, too, making the statement and then retracting it provided Netanyahu with a hint of moderation as yet another symbolic provocation took place. His ultra-right wing deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, said that she hoped the Israeli flag would soon fly over the holy sites of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, supposedly under pressure from her boss, she also immediately qualified her statement, saying that it was a personal opinion rather than an expression of policy.
This kind of provocative rhetoric has a mobilizing purpose. In the current context, it also expresses the genuine fear (whether conscious or unconscious) of a new intifada in the making, born of frustration over stalled peace negotiations and expanded Israeli settlement activity, which has gripped the imagination especially of the young in the West Bank and which has led to violence, mostly against settlers. Having lost the moral high-ground, sensing his growing isolation, Netanyahu must have thought that making reference to the Holocaust seemed a safe and traditional way to regain it – or, at least, deflect criticism – even while calling upon Israelis to circle the wagons, prepare for further militant action, and maintain the present expansionist strategy.
Netanyahu is just another demagogue who, in this case, is trying to please the more extreme religious and Zionist elements in his coalition. More should not be made of him than he is – something that holds for every demagogue. Yet his rhetoric, like that of other demagogues, provides insight into the deeper and ultimate aims of his policies. Netanyahu’s preoccupations with the past justify exaggerated nationalism, militarism, and imperialism in the present. These mark the traditional fascist vision of politics that targets an inflated and fabricated enemy whose nefarious activities justify abandoning democracy and suspending the liberal rule of law.
Demagogic rhetoric neither argues nor engages its critics. It rests on exigency and dispenses with serious argumentation. It also exhibits its own psychological dynamic. That Palestinians had virtually nothing to do with the Holocaust leaves intact the lingering prejudice that they would have participated if only given the chance. It is roughly the same argument employed by defenders of the “Protocols of Zion” when confronted with its fabrication and empirical falsehoods. Exaggeration, paranoia, and projection underpin the authoritarian style. Netanyahu was actually promoting the very sort of political hysteria and rabble-rousing that helped introduce the totalitarian regime from which Jews suffered so terribly. The real tragedy of this pathetic affair is the manner in which Israel, obsessed with the Nazi past, is becoming defined in the present by the very values it should be opposing. That is worth remembering as yet another political provocation disappears in the dustbin of history.
Stephen Eric Bronner is Board of Governors Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University. His writings include “The Bigot: Why Prejudice Persists” (Yale University Press) and “A Rumor about the Jews: Anti-Semitism, Conspiracy and the Protocols of Zion” (Oxford University Press).
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Fox Newsers Suddenly Quiet When Their 'Hero Cop' Revealed to Be Fraudster |
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Friday, 06 November 2015 09:50 |
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Kirell writes: "Several of the cable net's conservative commentators were quick to tie a cop's death to 'anti-cop violence,' but they've gone silent now that it's been proved otherwise."
Lieutenant Joe Gliniewicz. (photo: Facebook)
Fox Newsers Suddenly Quiet When Their 'Hero Cop' Revealed to Be Fraudster
By Andrew Kirell, The Daily Beast
06 November 15
Several of the cable net’s conservative commentators were quick to tie a cop’s death to ‘anti-cop violence,’ but they’ve gone silent now that it’s been proved otherwise.
t was a narrative perfectly suited for Fox News’s conservative commentariat. Too bad it was total bullshit.
Three assailants allegedly shot and killed Lt. Joe Gliniewicz, a wholesome small-town cop and Army vet known locally as “GI Joe”; a 30-year veteran of the force; a married father of four; a local hero.
His death had to be part of an ominous trend of societal menaces murdering law officers in cold blood, supposedly fueled by President Obama’s “anti-cop” rhetoric and the Black Lives Matter movement. Several Fox Newsers were quick to make that connection just as Fox Lake, Illinois, police set out to find the three perpetrators Gliniewicz mentioned over the radio just before he died.
While the news of GI Joe’s death broke nationwide on Tuesday, Sept. 1, Fox’s resident quack doctor Keith Ablow sat on the set of the network’s Outnumbered show and lamented how the president has “inflamed racial discord in this country and put a target on the backs of American police officers,” using the recent murder of a Texas deputy at a gas station as a jumping-off point.
“This is not the only incident of this,” conservative firebrand Andrea Tantaros interrupted, teeing up co-host Sandra Smith to introduce the Fox Lake incident. “This is happening time and time again,” Fox & Friends First’s Ainsley Earhardt chimed in. “This is a dangerous place for the country to be,” Liz MacDonald fretted before Tantaros pivoted back to the role of Black Lives Matter rhetoric in cop slayings.
Hours later, primetime star anchor Megyn Kelly interviewed Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke—an all-too-frequent Fox guest who seems to spend more time bashing black activists on TV than actually, you know… sheriffing. Clarke willfully linked Gliniewicz’s death to how President Obama has “breathed life into this anti-cop sentiment” with his “inflammatory rhetoric.”
That same evening, a cocksure Clarke told Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs that he has been to Fox Lake and knows that Gliniewicz is one of the town’s “finest,” gunned down while “engaged in self-initiative policing, the best policing there is.” He added: “War has been declared on the American police officer.” On Twitter, the lawman continued: “Time to take to the streets to counter Black LIES Matter. Fox Lake, Illinois.”
And on the morning of Saturday, Sept. 5, Eric Bolling used his weekly Cashin’ In monologue (titled “Wake Up, America!”) to connect Gliniewicz being “blown away in cold blood” to a “crisis” of law enforcement officers being killed, in part because President Obama has failed to publicly state that “Blue Lives Matter.”
Flash-forward to this Wednesday when Fox Lake police officials revealed that Gliniewicz’s death was actually a “carefully staged suicide.” As it turns out, the longtime lieutenant had been laundering thousands of dollars from his department’s youth program for his own personal spending on gym memberships, porn websites, and mortgage payments. There were no assailants; GI Joe shot himself rather than face the consequences.
Have any of these Fox pundits corrected the record or issued mea culpas for their rush to connect this twisted story to their political narrative? Wednesday’s edition of Outnumbered, with Tantaros among its hosts, went without a single mention of the news their own network aired just an hour before. (The show did, however, spend an entire segment bashing film director Quentin Tarantino for his remarks against police brutality.)
As for Sheriff Clarke, he spent all day Wednesday tweeting not about “best policing” Gliniewicz’s complete betrayal of his peers, but instead about, yep, “cop-hating” “prick” Quentin Tarantino.
And Eric Bolling? His daily talk show The Five—which frequently gripes about Black Lives Matter—made no mention of Gliniewicz. Don’t hold your breath for a correct-the-record monologue from him this Saturday either.
Of course, it should be noted that Fox’s straight-news reporters—namely Mike Tobin, Shepard Smith, Happening Now, and the network’s cut-in anchors—reported the story, from the start, as a continuing investigation, without tying it to racial tensions or anti-police violence. The way it should be done.
And when they reported the story’s bizarre developments on Wednesday morning, they did so with entirely straight language. But mum’s the word from the professional bloviators.
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hortly after the news broke of the U.S. attack on a Doctors without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, there was 
