An Open Letter to Bernie
An Open Letter to Bernie Sanders: ‘No Bernie, It Wasn’t the Russians’
“Instead of defending yourself and standing up for your supporters, you choose to play along with the scam accept this most outrageous narrative and in the process give credence to the lie that people spoke against the establishment in 2016 because they were gullible guppies who were manipulated by Russia.”
I write this article on behalf of Bernie’s legions of supporters and the millions of Americans who put their faith in someone who spoke against the iniquities that are ravaging our nation and our planet as a whole.
Bernie, it was your decision to speak against this consolidated graft that is cratering society that captured the imagination of the disaffected and gave people hope that their voices could be heard above the cash extortion that dominates our government.
Instead of continuing your rebellion against the establishment and speaking against the corrosive nature of our politics, you are charting a course towards irrelevance by jumping on this cockamamie #Russiagate narrative. Here is what I don’t get about your decision to glom on to this most ridiculous assertion that 12 Russians had more impact on our elections than the billions of dollars that are spent by corporations and plutocrats to bend elected officials like pretzels. The insinuation the punditry is making is that Americans were duped to vote against their own self-interests because they refused to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Never mind that Hillary was one of the most divisive and disliked politician to run for president in modern American history. Never mind that the DNC essentially
cheatedrigged the primaries to ensure her victory at your expense. Instead of focusing on the structural and systematic flaws that render our votes irrelevant, fingers are pointed at a manufactured villain halfway around the world in order to distract from the fact that our elections have been hijacked by moneyed interests and entrenched leeches who are sucking the citizenry dry
....You had the following and the prominence to make a dent in this wall of malfeasance that is drowning our governance and exacerbating social inequalities in the process. Sadly, instead of leading a revolution against a most insidious duopoly that has monopolized the ballot boxes and commandeered our government, you chose to cast your lot with the cackling warmonger from Chappaqua who loves Wall Street as much as she craves power.
....
Instead of defending yourself and standing up for your supporters, you choose to accept this most outrageous narrative and in the process give credence to the lie that people spoke against the establishment in 2016 because they were gullible guppies who were manipulated by Russia.
The ending is brilliant!
In the process, you tarnish your own legacy by insinuating that your supporters chose you not because they believed in your message but because they were deluded by Russians.
This comes from The Way of the Bern
Comments
lol. the whole diary or just my comment above your reply?
or...john tudell's brilliant song?
just the comment
I am surrounded by some who never used the internet or a mobile phone. They watch German TV and are not formally educated in anything political, financial, legal or historical. I like to test if they would understand your comments and style of writing. They don't. Still they get something sometimes right, their guts tell them.
https://www.euronews.com/live
i'd meant that as a second reply to can't stop the m signal,
but i have a couple additions: the wikileaks account er...challenged the newsweek 'leaks' piece, and along the way...emma best's cache. i don't see anywhere near 11,00o, but she may be on it as 'emmy b'. if you click the tweet, you're able to see the subtweets, or whatever they're called, below. i'll paste in a few below the treet.
@jaraparilla 6h6 hours ago
“These chatlogs were published by @NatSecGeek whose main claim to fame was publishing private data of Turkish women, which has wrongly been blamed on @wikileaks for years. The tweet accepting blame has now been deleted! Hmmn!
(@natsecgeek was michael best at the time.)
@schestowitz 23h23 hours ago “What many people now call #wikileaks “DMs” are not DMs and aren’t from staff of Wikileaks but some random people in a chat. But never let negative spin go to waste or facts get in the way. I’ve seen things like that done before. #assange stigma manufacturing in progress."
but she does seem to be quite a piece of work. her twit account, second try. mica lee, xeni jordan, emma best, luke harding, spencer ackerman...quituplets separated at birth.
but triple sigh, even though the empire is making yet another case for either executing him, or throwing him in solitary until his voice dies with him, this from mike head at wsws.org:
“In an interview Monday with the Spanish daily El País, during an official visit in Madrid, Moreno said Assange would have to accept that, as soon as he steps outside the embassy, he will be jailed for supposedly skipping bail when he was granted asylum in 2012.
According to a translation of another part of the interview by the London-based, Murdoch-owned Times, Moreno told El País: “Mr Assange has been in this situation for more than five years and we have to find a way out … that defends his rights, mainly his right to life, and at the same time can give Ecuador the possibility of not having what undoubtedly represents a problem for our country.”
By “right to life,” Moreno evidently means just a US promise not to execute Assange. Seemingly, Moreno has no qualms about Assange being thrown into solitary confinement, possibly for life, which would be an effective political death penalty.
Moreover, any assurance against execution would be worthless given the brutal record of US imperialism. When Mike Pompeo, now the US secretary of state, was CIA director last year, he directly accused WikiLeaks of being a “hostile intelligence service.” Under the US Espionage Act such activity can be subject to the death penalty."
mike head had mentioned the telesur coverage, and it came in w/ the popular resistance newsletter this morning:
“Ideally, we would debate with Mr. Assange and his lawyer whether he would be willing to accept the conditions that the United Kingdom is submitting for the possibility of an exit,” he said during an interview with Spanish daily El Pais, during an official visit in Madrid.
“If this happens, we believe there would be a sentence he would have to complete for having violated the principle of presenting himself formally before the British law. And once this would be done, he could right after this enjoy the right to be extradited to a country where he does not run any risk,” added Moreno.
where is that, pray tell, as you have taken away his ecuadorian citizenship as it was given by correa's foreign minister, and may doesn't recognize it? not that he'd want to live under YOUR rule. surely you jest if you consider that malcolm turnbull will repatriate him. so which is it, you monster: you know that theresa may will extradite him to amerika so he can be tried in a kangaroo court and hung for espionage, or that you trust may and friends will simply put a stamp on him and send him to...iceland?
the progression >>>> as far as i can replay it
is rather more convoluted than that. allow me to give it a try, although i just had a cheap scotch and soda for pain relief, so i may have to edit, amend later, okay?
first, for many, trump’s election had created a ‘constitutional crisis’, but the first mcResistance was the million pussyhats marches in deecee, in what degenerated into the only other things the D’s had to offer: the mcCarthyite #MeToo movement that (ha) even nato by way of angelina jolie joined (by way of the Guardian).
oh, the police were soooo polite (friend of the café jason overheard as he watched from the sidelines in deecee. my sister-in-law and her daughter said they’d ‘never felt so empowered’. asking ‘how’ gleaned no coherent answers, save for oh, that crass pussy grabber!. but given the CIA and MIC were favoring the red queen, why wouldn’t the po-po have orders to be polite to the McResistance? not issues based, of course, butt cult of personality based, imo.
but at the center was the russian ‘hacks’ of the dnc and podesta emails, which of course the veterans for sanity had proven was an insider ‘leak’ (download speeds, etc. see: craig murray, consortium news, etc. but at the base of it was: wikiLeaks, and trump’s shoutouts to wikiLeaks, etc. to give more!, but proving how corrupt the DNC was/is to burning bernie and more w/ leaks of debate Qs/donna bazille, iirc, etc. also that clinton had urged her friend trump to run, as a humorous con, i reckon. and yet...here he was...elected to the oval, wtf?
now the dems hated assange/wikileaks for outing their corruption, and outing the grotesqueries of duopoly approved war (collateral murder video) of course, but they also wanted trump impeached, and his cronies tagged with any malfeasance both in the US and among T’s ‘russian cronies’ imaginable. the insane levels of moment-by-moment mueller investigation partisan scrutiny are breath-taking to me. (what this means, what’s next, yada yada. yeah marcy wheeler covered ‘libby gate’ at firedoglake too, (yes she’d brilliant, and her friend and neighbor in MI, rayne (who also blogs at emptywheel.net) had told me that marcy has a holographic memory which helps) and old timers at fdl hated us newbie unDemocrats and made the point that they were there ‘before libby-gate, so fuck off’, srsly.
but yes, they hate assange not only for publishing ‘russian hacks’ of the emails, but also for publishing CIA vaults 7 and 8: UNPATRIOTIC! which theme has kinda led to the CIA dems running for office, cheers for the fibbies from libruls, and former head of the CIA pompeo being after us head, as many dems have been. sorry if i digresed to far, but...that’s the best can do for now. got chores now, and a hegg-ache.
Bernie has no coherent foreign policy
He goes along with the dims, the MSM and the mic on this. He is also protecting military contracts in Burlington vt, especially the F35, biggest boondoggle ever. It's now dem boilerplate - Russia bad, owns Trump. All the dims must run on this. Too bad, because it's utter hogwash and the dims are continuing to spoil an already very tarnished brand. Will Trump help the voting public to be aware of this? Does the bear...?
I wrote Bernie an email recommending that he get a foreign policy. No response yet. He really is a strange bird. It's too bad that he became the voice of Democratic Socialism.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Sanders is a disappointment
Sanders is a disappointment of huge proportions.
Just like in 2008, Obama had 1 of 3 paths: Hoover, FDR, or Debs. He chose Hoover.
And in 2016, again, Sanders had a choice and he choose the powerful, not the powerless.
In the end, he campaigned for everything he was supposedly against.
He was against Wall Street, but told you to vote for the Queen of Wall Street herself.
He was for single payer, but told you to vote for Clinton whom said it will never, ever come to pass.
He was against fracking, but told you to vote for more fracking.
He was against Iraq, but voted for bloodthirsty Clinton.
And on and on.
But, just for the sake of argument, let's just say he totally super-duper had to stop Trump and get Clinton in.
What is he doing now?
To get a "revolution" inside a counter-revolutionary, pro-capitalist, pro-war, pro-torture, pro-slavery party. Yikes.
He's an "independent". Pfft, please. He's a Democratic party company man.
He has railed against both parties for decades but now that he is one of the most powerful politicians in the country he suddenly wants to keep the Dems alive. What a pathetic joke.
Debs would walk into his office and tear down the poster of him in Sander's office.
When the Dems rig the election again in 2020, what will have Sanders built? Nothing.
Well said!
Both Bernie and Leahy are Independents because of the way Vermont has its party registration set up. There is no way for either of them to register as democrats. Leahy though just says that he's a democrat.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Strife Delivery,
your comments are the best summary of Bernie Sanders' accomplishments I've seen anywhere. Absolutely great.
Even this person put the words
"I don't deny that Putin tried to influence the election" into his otherwise excellent letter.
You know propaganda is strong when even critics feel the need to genuflect to the dominant narrative.
He does follow it up by saying that this is business as usual, and that "they call it geopolitics for a reason," but the fact is that Russiagate has shoved the Overton window in an ugly direction on this issue.
Taking out ads on the Internet for or against politicians in other countries has never been described as the President of another country exercising improper influence over a foreign election before. It's just people endorsing foreign politicians that they believe will support their interests or decrying those who won't. You know, like Americans talked about Fidel Castro for fifty years, or like we're talking about the Maduro government now. Did Obama exercise undue influence over Venezuelan elections when Americans bitched nonstop about Hugo Chavez? Were people saying "I don't deny Obama tried to influence the Venezuelan election?" Has anyone ever said that? Will anyone ever say it?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@Cant Stop the Macedonian SignalDid Obama exercise undue
How about Brexit? Obama went there and basically threatened the UK saying that there would be consequences if they left the EU.
my starrs, i'd totally breezed by that sentence;
and thank you for 'genuflecting to the conventional narrative'. and for turning the issue on its head:
"Did Obama exercise undue influence over Venezuelan elections when Americans bitched nonstop about Hugo Chavez? Were people saying "I don't deny Obama tried to influence the Venezuelan election?" Has anyone ever said that? Will anyone ever say it?"
a commenter at the café brought this 'memphis spying on activists' link to my 'overwhelmingly bipartisan support for the (seriously) #war on the Police' diary
"The joint intelligence briefings the Memphis police created not only included photographs of people involved in protests (or even “those who posted about the possibility of protest action,” according to court documents) but also sensitive information such as drivers’ license details, juvenile arrest records, and mental health histories. Agents used a tool called the i2 Analyst’s Notebook to construct a matrix or “map of associations” between the various activists they were watching—basically, a Facebook of protesters used by police to track their movements."
but similarly as above:
"This is the kind of misfortune that black activists can’t afford in a climate where Russian hackers have posed as online provocateurs to stir up racial polarization and discord to sway elections.
i'd teased him about in email when he'd sent it to me wondering where to put it, but 'yeah, go ahead, put it up, even so'.
since i'm already over-represented on this thread, i'll park this here if you don't mind. the air here is dark and chokingly acrid w/ smoke again today, so i went and grabbed the active fire map. just look at the western US and alaska! yesterday stars and stripe said that 12,000 firefighters are battling 17 fires in california. that state has its own fire system they control.
the red Type One incident teams are the big ones, and one can hover your cursor over the locations to find out the fire name and size.
formidable.
Carr Fire
Just west of Redding, 100,000(!) acres/5% contained. Anything less than 10% means crews are on site and fighting. Pretty much that's it.
I actually Watched the pyrocumulus Blow Up when it started(from 75miles away). A friend thought it was a thunderhead forming, nope! Now THATS a Fire! Frieakin' scary.
The wife has to roll to Lake County to find all her people in shelters and check if they're able to get services. Not good with the Mendo Complex Fires.
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
Utah's air is full of smoke too
some from the fires around the state, but mostly from the ones in CA. Ogden is surrounded by mountains on 3 sides and the western mountains are invisible, and the one less that 30 miles north comes and goes throughout the day. Our normally beautiful sunsets over the Great Salt lake have been nonexistent and the sun is just barely visible as a red ball.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
wiki says ogden's at the foot of the wasatch mountains, cool
photos there. big red ball sun. well, since it's your thread, you might like this tune from lucinda williams. but do read what i stuck in about moreno and assange via wsws.org and telesur up yonder....somewhere. sounds like nothin's left than transporting him. fuck them all, including 'emma best'.
yep, type I incident teams have hotshot crews,
sometimes helitack crews (brrrrr), that looks scary biscuits business. our son was a hotshot for four years, and my stars, what they are asked to do! so you're in northern california, then? yes on the crazines of pyrocumulous clouds. one summer when a zillion acres burned in mesa verde national park, the pyrocumulos clouds literally made their own lightning storms.
we were made to evacuate in 2012 (iirc), warn't no fun at all. but the mountain to our east has burned three times now, can't be a hella lot left to burn, except in the neighborhood, where some new neighbors seriously don't understand 'burning slash' and 'fireworks'.
and you call your wife: 'the wife'? i'd smack ya one if i were she, lol.
(on edit): ain'tcha go no repeck for 'the litle woman'?
the smoke's cleared a bit here today, but let's check the US drought monitor and compare maps. well, the four corners is worse that california, but...will they need to create another level soon? existential, perhaps?
Sorry,
that should have read the Wife. Bumble thumbs sometimes. And you should hear what she calls Me! Mule and a Wallet, indeed.
HotShot, huh. All balls with a lotta brains(some of 'em) to be doing That. Right now we got favorable winds bit the smoke is all Over the sky: Oregon, Redding, Lassen, Mendo-what Ain't burning(not me). Two more months. Maybe.
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
Did Bernie debase himself himself, really debase himself?
Bernie put forward the Resolution to Protect American Democracy from Russian Meddling Resolution which Rand Paul stopped. In stepping back it is clear that the national and state democratic parties conspired to outright cheat Sanders. This is not up for debate. In fact the level of cheating is still not fully exposed.
And now Bernie gets up in the Senate and wants a resolution that basically affirms that the Russians cheated Hillary. Bernie has gone through a "re-education process". Part of that process of re-education is a public debasement. The guy who Hillary cheated is now forced to attack those who cheated Hillary.
Bernie could have just made some perfunctory statement about Russia and never mention it while going along pushing his domestic agenda. But no. Sanders has gone out of his way to repeat with vigor talking points that could have been written by Adman Schiff and even taking up a leadership role against Russia.
The thing about what Bernie did is to create support for the consequences of Russiagate which includes massive defense build up and aggressive militarism toward Russia, outright McCarthyism with all its smears, the criminalization of diplomacy, demands for both private and government censorship.
Bingo!
Why would he have done that if he wasn't on board with this scam? This was his baby that he tried to get passed, not one that he just signed on to.
If he did that because he is being threatened or something then I'd just quit and go home and play with my grandkids and enjoy what's left of my life. Or does that hypothetical threat make him have to stay on congress?
I wish I'd had included this in the essay, but I thought I was close going over fair use and hoped that people would read the whole letter.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Yeah, me too
That last part seems so unlikely to me. This is the problem I have with the whole “Bernie was blackmailed” line of thought. Aside from the fact that it gives him a pass when we don’t really know the truth, if it was true, why would “they” not insist he retires from public life, full stop? Sanders still seems to be giving them enough of the red ass, if you’re going to in on extortion, why would you go with “help us sell Russiagate?” Honestly, they don’t need the help. They’ve got plenty.
I don’t claim to understand his motives, but I find blackmail the least likely explanation.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
What matters
the reason, he's Jumped onto pushing ww3 on us. Anybody here think roosya will back down if these numbfucks push too hard?
I don't.
For this alone now he's lost me-he coulda been a contedah(!)-so I thought. Anyway.
The ideas he pushed, yes. Forever grateful.
What he's doing now, fuck him.
And a neuron sparkles-these crazy fuckers don't think nuclear winter will cancel out global warming, do they? The weather chaos that would induce would be-wow.
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
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