Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are not quite progressive…

• • https://youtu.be/87fI8zwsfQI?list=RD87fI8zwsfQI

    Clockwise from top left: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders

    ISRAEL’S OPERATION Protective Edge has killed almost 2,000 people in Gaza, the vast majority of them civilians, and laid waste to schools, hospitals, mosques and factories.

    The savagery of the slaughter was met by growing international opposition to Israel and solidarity with Palestine. Even in the U.S., recent opinion polls showed a growing minority of Americans, including Jews, rejecting Israel’s war on Gaza. That minority includes a strong majority of people aged 18 to 29.

    This global shift in opinion has been underway for some years. People are being swayed to support Palestine by Israel’s apartheid-like behavior:  building an illegal separation wall in the West Bank, turning Gaza into an open-air concentration camp and conducting regular military assaults on the occupied territories.

    Thanks to the international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign—called for by Palestinians and mobilized by solidarity activists around the world–more and more people understand the reality that Israel is an apartheid state, and the cause of Palestinian liberation is simple justice.

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    But one political institution in the U.S. has stood completely unswayed by this evolving consciousness of the oppression of the Palestinians by Israel, with the support of its main international sponsor, the U.S. government.

    That institution is the Democratic Party–including its liberal wing.
    Like their counterparts in the two-party U.S. corporate political system, the Republicans and the Democrats never hesitated during the massacres in Gaza to reaffirm their unwavering support for Israel’s colonialism…

    …The behavior of both parties during “Operation Protective Edge” has proven the rule.

    The darlings of progressive activists, from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (a nominal independent who campaigns for Democrats and caucuses with them in the Senate), have made their commitments to wars about extraction clear. In the Senate vote on the pro-Israel resolution, none of the liberal stalwarts like Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders, made a peep in opposition. The same was true in the House.

    Warren’s position shocked her progressive supporters, who either had ignored or didn’t know about her support of Israel. Despite her Native American roots, she sides not with Palestine’s indigenous population, but with Israeli colonization.

    On her Senate campaign website, for example, she said:

    “As a United States Senator, I will work to ensure Israel’s security and success. I believe Israel must maintain a qualitative military edge and defensible borders. The United States must continue to ensure that Israel can defend itself from terrorist organizations and hostile states, including Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others.”

    

    The Democrats’ other new liberal lion, Bill de Blasio, outdoes Warren in pro-war  proclamations.

    During his election campaign, De Blasio promised, “City Hall will always be open to AIPAC.”

    In a radio interview, he boasted that he opposed the “very, very wrongheaded movement to boycott, and dis-invest from Israel. I’ve led the charge against that, whether you’re talking about the Park Slope Food Co-op or at Brooklyn College, I’ve stood against that divestment movement.” During the current war on Gaza, he announced, “I consider it my responsibility to stand up for Israel.”

    Just as disappointing has been the traditionally progressive Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).Bruce Dixon of the Black Agenda Report reported on how CBC members in the House and Senate betrayed Palestine in AIPAC-backed resolutions. As Dixon wrote:

    Not a single member of the CBC, despite their much heralded brand of standing for civil rights and against apartheid here and around the world, bothered to publicly question the racist ethnocracy that is the Israeli state. After signing the blank check with the rest of their colleagues, CBC members Conyers (MI), Lee (CA), Johnson (GA) and Ellison (MN) tried to cover their shame with a letter to Secretary of State Kerry urging a cease-fire, something which Kerry claims to have been doing anyway.

    The self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders has done little better.
    As left-wing Vermont writer Ron Jacobs noted, “Senator Sanders has voted for “grants and loans to Israel, even after Israel bombed Gaza, attacked the Mavi Marmara and supported illegal settlements in the West Bank.” When asked by reporters for his view of the current war on Gaza, Sanders evaded the question, stating, “That’s not where my mind is right now.”

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    http://socialistworker.org/2014/08/13/liberal-champions-of-apartheid

    

    Despite his own claims, Sanders has not been an antiwar leader. Ever since he won election to the House, he has taken either equivocal positions on U.S. wars or outright supported them.

    His hawkish positions — especially his decision to support Bill Clinton’s 1999 Kosovo War — drove one of his key advisers, Jeremy Brecher, to resign from his staff. Brecher wrote in his resignation letter, “Is there a moral limit to the military violence you are willing to participate in or support?”

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    So outraged were peace activists over Sanders’ support of the Kosovo War that they occupied his office in 1999. Sanders had them arrested. Under the Bush regime, Sanders’ militarism has only grown worse. While he called for alternative approaches to the war on Afghanistan, he failed to join the sole Democrat, Barbara Lee, to vote against Congress’ resolution that gave George Bush a blank check to launch war on any country he deemed connected to the September 11 attacks.

    Ever since, he has voted for appropriations bills to fund the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, despite their horrific toll on the occupied peoples as well as U.S. soldiers.

    Sanders has been critical of the war on Iraq, but he has supported pro-war measures — such as a March 21, 2003, resolution stating,

    “Congress expresses the unequivocal support and appreciation of the nation to the President as Commander-in-Chief for his firm leadership and decisive action in the conduct of military operations in Iraq as part of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism.”
    

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    Sanders also opposes immediate withdrawal from Iraq, despite the fact that a majority of residents in his home city of Burlington voted for such a position in a town meeting resolution in February 2005.

    

    
    … Sanders scuttled any action on a wave of Bush impeachment resolutions that swept Vermont towns in 2006. Like House Majority Leader-to-be Nancy Pelosi, who has promised not to impeach Bush, Sanders argued that impeachment was impractical, and that activists should put energy into electing Democrats.

    This summer, Sanders voted for House Resolution 921, which gave full support to Israel’s murderous war on Lebanon. He also voted for HR 4681 that imposed sanctions on the Palestinian Authority with the aim of removing the democratically elected Hamas government.

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    In response, longtime War Resisters League leader, David McReynolds sent a public letter to Sanders, stating, “Because of your vote of support for the Israeli actions, I would hope any friends and contacts of mine would not send you funds, nor give you their votes.” Indeed, Sanders has consistently defended Israel through it worst crimes against Palestinians and Arabs. Unsurprisingly, some Sanders staffers have also worked with the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) — including David Sirota, now a Democratic Party strategist, and Sanders’ former communications director Joel Barkin.

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  • Finally, in perhaps his worst betrayal yet, Sanders joined a host of liberal Democrats including Barbara Lee and John Conyers to vote for HR 282:the Iran Freedom Support Act — …Democrat Dennis Kucinich voted against the act and denounced it as a “stepping stone to war.”
    

    http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov06/Smith15.htm

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    Dear Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Al Franken,

    This is a break-up letter, I’m sorry to tell you.  I am done with each and every one of you.  Don’t come knocking at my door or my inbox.  Don’t look for my support.

    Elizabeth, I am a Massachusetts resident at this time, although I spent 14 years in Israel where I was an activist in the peace movement you should have been allying yourself with, instead of going along with the Senate’s unanimous consent to back Israel’s murderous invasion of Gaza. Shame on you. I will be explaining to everyone I know that you can no longer be trusted to do the right thing, even in a situation where one of the strongest armies in the world is pounding a crowded, impoverished Gaza.

    
    Bernie, I have had a strong connection with Vermont since my college crowd founded a hippy farm in Vermont. They are still there, pillars of their communities now, some grandparents, and all of them supporters of yours. I will be talking to them about how you have compromised every principle that you say guides you, how you failed to reject the disgusting AIPAC and its resolution calling this Israeli barbarism “self-defense.”

    Al, you are considered a national treasure, a person who transformed himself from an entertainer to a serious progressive politician. You have transformed yourself once again into a man willing to pass a resolution that does not even mention that over 350 Gazans have been killed, so far, in this horrific invasion – the vast majority unarmed, poor, and cowering in their own homes. Fifty of those are children.

    I could do an ABC of brutal Occupation, but you ought to already understand what is being done by a country to which you vote billions of dollars in military and other support. You three are members of one of the most powerful political bodies in the world and you should be as ashamed of yourselves as I am of you.

    Revolted,

    Sue Katz
    Arlington, MA

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    http://suekatz.typepad.com/sue_katz_consenting_adult/2014/07/dear-elizabeth-warren-bernie-sanders-and-al-franken.html

    Sanders not only defends military contracts that benefit his constituents in Vermont, he also joined the 100 to 0 vote in the Senate to give unalloyed moral and political support to the state of Israel during its most recent bombing campaign against Gaza.  …Let’s not be fooled by “progressives” who can’t find their spines when the colonial regime in Israel bombs the crowded ghetto of Gaza.

    While Sanders voted against the original authorization to use military force against Iraq, he followed that vote with several subsequent votes authorizing funding of that war and the debacle in Afghanistan. The other piece of legislation passed that long ago September was the PATRIOT Act. Like the vote that sent troops to Afghanistan, that legislation changed the US forever.

    https://www.popularresistance.org/lets-not-be-fooled-by-bernie-sanders/

    To his credit, Sanders voted against the original PATRIOT Act legislation and attempted to curtail its effect in subsequent votes. However, in 2006, he voted Yea on legislation that made the remaining fourteen provisions of the Patriot Act permanent and extended the authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct “roving wiretaps” and access certain business records through December 31, 2009. In a similar vein, Sanders voted against the original legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security, but by 2006 he had joined the majority of Congress in passing continued funding of that agency.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/27/bernie-sanders-cannot-save-us/

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    Here are a few things you did not know about Bernie Sanders

    Voted NO on end offshore tax havens and promote small business.
    (Oct 2004)
    

  • Voted NO on raising 401(k) limits &
    making pension plans more portable.
    (May 2001) 
  • Voted NO on reducing tax payments
    on Social Security benefits. (Jul 2000) 
  • Voted YES on authorizing states to collect Internet sales taxes. (May 2013) 
  • Voted YES on continuing intelligence gathering without civil oversight. (Apr 2006) 
  • Voted YES on Congressional pay raise. (Jul 2009) 
  • Voted NO on limiting attorney’s fees in class action lawsuits. (Feb 2005) 
  • Voted NO on banning soft money
    donations to national political parties.
    (Jul 2001) 
  • Voted NO on allowing tribal Indians
    to opt out of federal healthcare. (Feb 2008) 
  • Voted NO on establishing tax-exempt Medical Savings Accounts. (Oct 1999) 
  • Voted NO on adopting the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. (Oct 2004) 

  Voted YES on $2 billion more for Cash for Clunkers program. (Aug 2009)

  • Voted NO on establishing nationwide AMBER alert system for missing kids. (Apr 2003) 
  • Voted NO on reducing Marriage Tax by $399B over 10 years. (Mar 2001) 
  • Voted NO on comprehensive immigration reform. (Jun 2007)
    

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