Right To Left

You forgot to mention that Richard Nixon also proposed a minimum income for poor people...but didn't follow through on it. 1972 was a different time, and it'x not useful to judge any political leaders back then by today's definitions of right and left. Nixon also brought in the FDA, FCC, the EPA and the first "Earth Day." No doubt a lot of that was not stuff he wanted to do, but that was a time when the pendulum was moving to the left on a number of issues.....besides war! Certainly Eagleton shouldn''t have tried to keep his medical history secret. As I recall, the electroshock treatments were supposedly to alleviate depression. It wasn't like he was schizophrenic and stuck in an institution. A similiar case today, he would have been prescribed antidepressants and that would be the end of the story.

#7 We seem to be following all of America's bad examples, so I would suspect we're about 20 years behind the US mess as it's reported now that 80% of counties across America do not have one single abortion clinic. This is a process of denying reproductive choice first to women in the lower end of the economic spectrum, who cannot take time off and travel just to have an abortion! It has also been reported that Kentucky has passed a law requiring doctors to implant ectopic pregnancies within the womb of the pregnant woman, and if he fails to do so or the woman refuses both can be charged with murder if the embryo/fetus dies.....what a world! Taking this with the zealous fundie District Attorneys investigating women who have miscarriages and threaten murder charges, it's pretty obvious the abortion issue never had anything to do with "life'. It's all about control. About #9, the religious right may be anti-Muslim, but the CIA and State Dept. like the English colonialists before them certainly were not! They invariably sided with the most extreme, reactionary Salafist Muslim sects like the Wahabbi's. They first went from being an isolated cult to spiritual leaders when the Saud formed a partnership with them and put them in charge of religious education. And because the Saudis were patriarchal, autocratic fascists with no funny notions about democracy or Arab nationalism, the British and then the Americans did what they could to help Saud's forces take over the Arabian Peninsula. Maybe it was so that future generations of Anglo/American patriarchal religious conservatives could point fingers at someone else and condemn them for being extremists! And the British patronage of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was pretty much the same story. Whenever clowns like Robert Spencer yammer on about "no Islamic reformation," he needs to be confronted by a real historian who can point out the Muslim World was much more reformed until the Americans and Brits needed a way to free up large oil deposits that were just sitting there underground......not doing anything!

Okay, is colonialism, especially settler colonialism a crime caused by an ideology of Christian supremacy? Well, whenever I want to understand a major conflict, I want to know the history and contributing circumstances, including outside interference. And western conservatives share the same contempt for women and gays, but think pointing fingers at Muslim conservatives deflects attention and makes them look better.

Well look what England has This Week in Christendom: a 12 year old boy died after being run over by a car that mounted the curb in Essex and also hit several children and adults in the incident causing a range of injuries. CAR CRASH PROBE Man, 51, arrested on suspicion of murder after boy, 12, killed in hit-and-run crash outside his school It seems the driver's name is Terry Glover, and he appears to be white...so this story is in the back pages and whether or not it was deliberate vehicular manslaughter, being white and not being Muslim means no talk of terrorist attack and no international story repeated for three days on every newscast!

Define "McGovernism" then! Because from what I remember of George McGovern's winning campaign for the Democratic nomination in 72 ......the last time it was a truly democratic party..... and disastrous loss to incumbent President - Richard Nixon, was that McGovern's focus and the media's focus also, was on his pledge to pull US troops out of the Vietnam War. There was little else that received much focus. And as a harbinger of what would likely happen if Bernie some way/somehow won the nomination, George McGovern was knee-capped by his own Party....who decided they would rather lose and have a 2nd Nixon term in the White House, than win with an anti-war candidate who would ruin the highly profitable war and armaments business. As for Bernie again...I couldn't give a crap where he went on his honeymoon, and he qualifies his socialism as 'democratic' socialist....and has elaborated a number of times since he first ran 4 years ago, that his socialist model is the Euro social democrats....like Sweden/not the Soviet Union or whatever you're hysterical about!

If you live in a Muslim country...especially one like Saudi Arabia...which could not exist or function without US support, that is your choice! But in the mid-sized city here in Canada with a large and growing Muslim population, I don't see very many women wearing burqas nor are there very many differences in the ways Muslim immigrants interact compared with other immigrants.

Note that with all the talk of a Muslim guy with a beard going on a knifing attack on London Bridge, apparently he couldn't get a real suicide vest either! And yet this is story was overrunning the MSM while other shootings and knife attacks in England have gone without more than a notice in local media....and why is that?

Naturally, you don't consider European colonization of almost the entire world (joined and superseded by the American Empire) to be a barrage of Christian violence throughout the world, even though religion was one of the justifications...along with inherent racial supremacy over "backward" people who can't or don't deserve to rule themselves. Islamophobia would be more credible if not for the many religious and ethnic non-Arab minorities who lived in their own villages mostly undisturbed until the 20th century. And what really blows apart your case is that when the US and Euro colonialists choose sides in the Arab and Muslim realms, they pick the most extreme theocrats who also believe in strict ruling hierarchies. I don't know how familiar you are with Mid-East history of the past century, but after a mass Arab uprising against the Ottoman Turks was unleashed during the first world war.....catalyzed to some extent by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), the leader of most of the Arab tribes (Hussein) was stabbed in the back, not only by the French and British....who had already decided how to divide up the former Ottoman Empire, but also favoured ruthless desert dictator - Ibn Saud over Hussein, with the British giving the Saud clan cannons and other heavy guns to fight and drive out Hussein's forces. All this mostly because the Brits and Americans decided that Hussein was too much of a nationalist...and would not have just handed over tracts of land for oil development and he was too progressive as well. Like today, after all the crapping about savage Arabs and/or Muslims, the western opportunists seek out and enable the extremists, because they have the same motivations to accumulate money and power! As a side note, many rightwing Christo-fascist Americans are shocked to discover that there is a dwindling Christian Palestinian population which is persecuted by the State of Israel that these Christian Zionists loudly support and want more and more money given to. US Forces did nothing to protect the estimated one million Iraqi Christians after they unleashed anarchy in Iraq when they overthrew Saddam and completely obliterated the Baath Party Administration, rather than using these government structures to set up a new government.........."mistakes were made" as Dubya later said!

Sanders offers what used to be mainstream Democrat ideas 40 or 50 years ago, but you and so many others who've been marinating in rightwing pro-biz propaganda since Reagan, call it extreme left! That is only because the Republicans have kept pushing the line of scrimmage further and further to the right, while corporate-funded Democrat traitors allow themselves to get pushed on issues they don't really believe in and aren't willing to defend! I've told more than a few Obama loyalists who have kept repeating the mantra that 'Obama had no choice.....Republican congress blah blah blah" that certain issues like TransPacific Partnership (where he no doubt had some IOU's riding on) he was willing to fight for them and fight hard! His well compensated Wall Street and Big Pharma speeches along with his two new mansions since leaving the White House are the trail of evidence that he was a fraud going in and that the Democrat leadership knew this and that's why they got behind him in 08 rather than expected standard-bearer - Hillary. And don't put Warren in the same box as Bernie Sanders! She is also a fraud....which was obvious at her debate performance when she could be seen smirking whenever Bernie was thumping away about public healthcare....an issue that she claims to believe in.....NOW! I think Bernie would be a weak leader....like Jeremy Corbyn has turned out to be for Labour, but he does have core principles and things he believes in.....other than personal advancement!

Make that "health" and I'll agree with you. I try to follow the basics (proper diet/avoiding the obviously bad stuff: smoking, alcohol, drugs....including prescription drugs doctors try to push even for marginal benefits if any/ strength training+ aerobic exercise/ and getting enough sleep is very important....that about covers it). Most medical conditions are self-inflicted...."lifestyle illnesses" today. Though many of the root causes of these are external conditions imposed from outside that raise stress and anxiety levels of more and more working people today. I have to deal with the natural aging and slowing down of the body....which is very obvious if you run....and compare how long it takes you to run a mile at a comfortable pace today compared to 10, 20, 30 years ago. In the gym, I had to give up "muscle building" workouts in my 40's (or do serious damage to connective tissues) and re-focus on slowing down the loss of muscle mass and increase in body fat that comes with aging.....so I guess if you're active for a long time, you can't deny the passage of time, but just make the necessary adjustments I went from the "right" (especially when all the 9-11 bs was going on and turning right wing bloggers into millionaire celebrities) but it didn't take me long to decide that liberalism is too vague and unwilling to examine root causes of so many economic and geopolitical problems and dilemmas today....so I kept moving 'left", but aside from being anti-capitalist, I'm not sure what sort of socialist model would lead to a saner and sustainable world. Liberalism is too short-sighted it seems, to focus on long term problems. Lot's here to pull apart! Very true that Muslims do not all think alike or vote alike....even in Muslim majority countries! Terrorism is essentially irregular warfare and today's terrorist groups can't be separated from past terrorist groups, which have been mostly anarchists, left and right political movements, ethnic groups fighting colonialism or state oppression. And in our time, the Al Qaeda's and ISIS even, have been utilize by the CIA, MI-6 or Mossad, when it suited their objectives....I'm thinking here of the "terrorist" threats facing the US's Kurdish allies that were employed to attack Syrian Government forces and cities held by the Government back when it seemed they could eliminate Assad. MSM lost all credibility back then when no one asked exactly who these "moderate" rebels were or what they represented. But as soon as they are threaten western interests, they're back to being terrorists again! I used to go to Robert Spencer's Jihadwatch and satellite sites he spawned back after 9-11 for daily updates. But, it has to be noted that at the time, many of us who were trying to look a little deeper than Bush's buzzwords: "War On Terror", "Islam is a peaceful religion" or "Tiny minority of extremists" didn't find these answers satisfying.....even from 9-12. So Spencer and similar cranks like instant multimilionaire - Pamela Geller, filled the gap for a lot of people. BUT what disturbs me is that most people who went to Jihadwatch for answers or frequented the assortment of rightwing sites at the time, never looked for contrary opinions or looked into faults in Spencer ideology. The primary one the people here who promulgate the notion that one and only one of the world's major religions has mind control properties that turn all Muslims into bloodthirsty killers of non-Muslims is that they can't explain why or how Muslim extremist groups arose or why some of them turned to terrorist attacks. Nor do they comment on all of the other religions that are connected with suicide terrorism - like Hindu Tamils living in predominantly Buddhist and Muslim Sri Lanka! Why did suicide bombings start and why did they stop? Same question for the anarchist terrorists of the 19th century to Palestinian terrorists fighting Israeli occupation! My theory is that religious justifications come in afterwards to sanctify political motivations. Thanks! I'll have to think about that one as I've been off Facebook for a number of years now! I didn't really need it and found it an annoyance when I deactivated my account, and what I hear later is that it just keeps getting worse!

I mentioned in another post that most of the people who view Muslim immigrants as a particular threat are not living in areas where they are going to live or work with any Muslims. It's a fear of the unknown......a fear of outsiders who are so foreign and detached, they can regarded as non-human. Those who do live in cities with relatively high numbers of recent immigrants may notice what they have in common, and be less likely to fall for whipped up hysteria and trying to ban sharia law. They likely haven't looked up what sharia law means either, but I guess that could be another topic! For my part, even though I'm in my 60's now, I'm still changing and trying to sort through what I believe on a range of subjects and what I consider important today. So, I'm going to try to make my case for what I believe in, but I'm not really trying to change other people's beliefs.

In 2016, Sanders was polling better against Trump than Hillary Clinton was. He was offering a lot of things that middle class and lower people wanted: Medicare for all and a $15. min wage. I'm not sure about free tuition for state universities and writing off student loan debts. But, no doubt that drew in a lot of the youth support Sanders was receiving. What Trump offered the working class was a combination of divisive (border walls, attacking immigrants) with some appealing ideas like a big public infrastructure spending program and trying to keep manufacturing in America by raising tariffs and duties on imports (which used to be conservative policies in a bygone era). When the rigged candidate - HIllary Clinton launched her $Billion Fall Campaign after the Convention, she promised NOTHING!! Which may have been honest....since she had no intentions of helping working class Americans any more than Obama. But still, it was a competition between a candidate offering nothing to working people vs another who had a history of lies and deceit....but at least was promising something rather than nothing! Some of my American cousins from my mother's side of the family, living in states like New York and California, say they usually register as Democrats just to vote in the damn primaries every four years...because those states run closed primaries, where only registered Democrats can vote. If it wasn't for all of these games, there would likely be many more registered independents.

"Legal"/"Illegal" immigrants is just a canard...a bunch of arbitrary excuses created to regulate entry into a country. And when we're talking Europe, most of them came from the colonies......remember that? England, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Holland, all thought entitled to go sailing out across the oceans in their wooden gunboats a few centuries ago to exploit any resources they could find, and enslave locals to produce cash crops on their plantations. Since the Euros didn't feel that they should have to stay 'where they belonged', eventually some of the darker people of the south decided they should have the opportunity to see what life would be like in the land of their colonizers. The rest of your diatribe doesn't acknowledge the fact that most of Europe has birth rates below replacement level, and aging populations. They need immigrants from somewhere to try to fix bad demographics. So, why isn't that happening over here? My town has a lot of first and second generation immigrants. Why aren't they all living in their own self-contained clusters like they do in England, France or Sweden? Just maybe they cluster together there because western Europe has a facade of liberalism and tolerance that it doesn't actually live up to! They can pretend to be multicultural all they want, but as long as they also proclaim national identities of shared lineage and history going back centuries...well that's something that no immigrant can have regardless of how much they try to fit in! My father's ancestry is mostly Scotch/Irish, but the last thing I want to force onto others is the old British Canada cultural values! First off, it was never accepted by Quebeckers, nor the Indigenous nations here who were promised that their land and water rights would be respected by the four British colonies who later turned into Canada.....and then shredded those treaty rights once they had the numbers to impose their will and claim the whole goddammed country for themselves! Tell that to Don Cherry! Well, since Hamilton is less than an hour's drive from Toronto (discounting traffic congestion), we seem to have a substantial number of Muslims among our large and growing immigrant population. No sign of sharia law being imposed on us yet! My own experience tells me that those who fear Muslims and non-white immigrants in general the most, live in white suburbs or rural areas of the Country, where they never see, let alone talk to anyone who comes from these places.

Most of what I am told by Muslims over here, who came from places turned into war zones --- like Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria, is that life was better before the wars started.......no surprise! When the US went into Iraq, they destroyed all of their civic institutions except for the mosques. So should it be any surprise that post-Saddam Iraq is a fight between competing Sunni and Shia theocracies in most of the country! When it comes to gays and adopting western culture (clothes, music etc. which is also extremely dangerous there now) before the Invasion, gays in cities like Baghdad could go about their lives as long as they didn't appear too gay! And get beaten up by thugs. But they didn't have to deal with Islamic courts seeking them out, looking for their clubs and executing them after show trials as they have been doing ever since US "liberation" in both the Shia and Sunni-controlled zones. Over here, depending on where they are from and how conservative their families are, most gay Muslims I've ever talked to say they don't fear retribution from their families, but don't feel fully accepted...usually the men are the problem! Mothers and sisters often take their sides and argue against male family members........which sounds a lot like it was over here for gays years ago.

Look up "White Genocide" and you'll find your motive for most white nationalist terrorist attacks. Most Of America’s Terrorists Are White, And Not Muslim Looking at both plots and attacks carried out, the group tracked 201 terrorist incidents on U.S. soil from January 2008 to the end of 2016. The database shows 115 cases by right-wing extremists ― from white supremacists to militias to “sovereign citizens” ― compared to 63 cases by Islamist extremists. Incidents from left-wing extremists, which include ecoterrorists and animal rights militants, were comparatively rare, with 19 incidents. While the database makes a point of distinguishing between different groups within right-wing extremism, lead reporter David Neiwert told HuffPost that “those are all gradations of white supremacy, variations on the same thing.” When it comes to right-wing extremism, attackers are also “mostly men” and “almost purely white,” Neiwert said. Attacks by right-wing extremists were also more often deadly, with nearly a third of right-wing extremist incidents resulting in deaths compared with 13 percent of Islamist extremist cases resulting in deaths. However, the sheer number of people killed by Islamist extremists ― a total of 90 people killed ― was higher than the death toll at the hands of right-wing extremists ― 79 people killed.

You watch CNN too much! A lot of average Americans have become completely turned off by the glib, well rehearsed candidates both D's And R's have served up for them to choose from. In 2016, Hillary Clinton offered......more of the same! So, if you were part of the more privileged minority who's wealth was increasing, she was your candidate. But the majority of Americans were worried about their future prospects and didn't want a candidate promising to shut down the coal industry/but failing to offer any equivalent replacement jobs plan for coal and declining manufacturing in states like West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio or Wisconsin. Team Hillary at first blamed Comey for her loss, and then whined about the Electoral College....but still has no alternative proposal for electoral reform, and then the strategy was find a foreign enemy to blame our loss on and keep those incriminating emails from resurfacing for discussion.....I know, how about Russia? And CNN and MSNBC has been offering nothing else for the past four years...but still call themselves a news channel!

Indeed, and why is that? I'd say it's because the business-friendly elites who run the party are competing with the Republicans for the same big money donors, and therefore, when all is said and done, they would rather a weak, mediocre centrist like Biden lose to Trump, than have a progressive candidate (Bernie) who can fill arenas and large halls win the nomination. Because he's talking to the have-nots/not the haves, and his message is the one that resonates with struggling working class people who aren't seeing any prosperity promised by Obama or Trump. *worth noting that in a Florida class action fraud lawsuit filed against the DNC by a number of pissed off Sanders delegates in 2016, the case was dismissed because it was ruled that the DNC is under no obligation to provide fair elections, since it is a private organization. So, for the life of me, I don't know why Sanders and anyone on the left bothers to waste their time with the Democratic Party anyway! Sanders says a third party run for president isn't feasible and state election rules preserve the Duopoly, making alternatives like the Green Party and the Libertarians go through the arduous and expensive task of fighting to get on the ballot every four years. But, if that's true, it means it's time for more people to take the streets and disrupt the system for both fraudulent parties, whose policy objectives serve millionaires and billionaires, not working people!

Now that sounds like as cryptic a message as I'm likely to see today! If we define terrorism as the desperate use of force or violence against perceived enemies that are perceived as existential threats, then it seems obvious that a lot of other conditions have to be set in place before we start seeing the first terrorist attacks. Yet, no thought or discussion is being made here about why any religious affiliation would trigger some people to commit terrorist attacks ...even going on suicide attacks. The whole purpose of this thread seems to have been to try to leave an impression that terrorism is inextricably linked with Muslims, and suppressing Muslims in the Middle East and preventing them from immigrating to the west will solve the problem. The rebuttals have to go further than "Most Muslim immigrants are nice people!"

Aside from Hong Kong......for some reason, what ongoing uprisings where military and police forces are killing demonstrators, are being mentioned by Amnesty or the MSM? Last I heard, the death toll in Iraq demonstrations is higher than Iran. More modest killing zones like Chile and Bolivia (in the 20's or 30's so far) are only being followed by independent alternative media like The Grayzone

On the contrary, I know the level of violence and coercion needed to make global capitalism function.

The greatest terrorist threat in America today is white christian men. They may be inspired by racial supremacist theory, but if we're going to use religious affiliation as the yardstick, there's something wrong with Christianity. Or, what if religious teaching of any kinds are not the inspiration for killing or going to war, but instead are the excuses applied afterwards.

You can always count on the Murdoch Press for fair and balanced news that does not fan the flames of racism and fascism! And I guess the British quandary is the same s our's over here.......except that it's not! England, like the rest of so called liberal, enlightened Europe, just wants immigrants to try to balance out bad demographics of an aging population. They need more worker bees to take care of aging boomers and do other necessary jobs. But, England, like France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and others, seem to have uncanny ways of red-lining the immigrants away from white native neighborhoods. And thanks to Mr. Third Way - Tony Blair, jumping into charter schooling (privatizing public schools and giving the school tax dollars to religious and other community groups that want to run the school system, should anyone be surprised that the Muslims in East London have used the money to set up their own Muslim schools where kids never interact with a non-Muslim until they grow up and are looking for work. Yet, the Murdoch-inspired fascists want to gin up fear and loathing of Muslims in England because of integration problems they've created themselves by their policies of keeping immigrants at arms length. Are relations with Muslim immigrants in England really worse than with Jamaicans and other Caribbean immigrants? And this propaganda originally from the National Review in 06, doesn't shine any light on the issue either! How about if, here in Canada at least, we keep doing most of what we are already doing regarding immigration and naturalization issues! It's not perfect, but we haven't created the isolated ethnic ghettos found over there. Instead, we have public schools where children meet and interact with other kids from all over the world and from much different backgrounds. It may not be perfect, but it's better than the way they are handling immigration!

Conservative Queen - Margaret Thatcher declared 40 years ago right in the British Parliament: "there is no such thing as society!" And that sums up the radical individualist message of the new conservatism that arrived in the 70's and gave "free trade" a full embrace, as they tried to demolish all social institutions except for the mythologized family...that would exist as an oasis in the midst of the dog eat dog economies they've created. Most of these types of conservatives I know or have known, have built their success upon piles of inherited wealth and like the rich throughout history, are tone deaf to the suffering, concerns and misery they've helped to create around them. I'd like to believe that most of us....regardless of how or if we think our predicaments can be solved, are well aware that the numbers of homeless are growing each year in our cities. It doesn't seem to be quite as bad as the neoliberal paradises south of the border....yet, but we're heading in that direction, as more and more fall through the cracks and more and more are out panhandling on city streets and intersections.

Yeah right, most working people know what "the market" will decide! Those of us who work in the last remaining union shops are the only workers left earning decent wages and benefits. Because 'the market' decided at the start of the age of neoliberalism to try to kick all of the profits up to the top and use the threats of outsourcing as blackmail to make wages fall further and further behind the real cost of living. But, all we need to do is take a look at the brave new world being created by Jeff Bezos! The time and motion man's dream come true! If you conservatives, and the more deceptive liberals doing the same shit, think that you can keep fooling working people forever with this pro-capitalist bullshit, you'll probably find out too late! The owners of highly profitable fast food and retail companies are invariably the last to "show appreciation!"

Compared to most US presidents, Ike was one of the few.....maybe the only one who had the gravitas and the inside knowledge to stand up to what he later termed - The Military-Industrial Complex. He was worried about the growing power and the corruption involved in expanding Pentagon departments and making arms production a permanent fixture in US manufacturing.....rather than a sideline industry mostly for wartime. Regarding Iran, Eisenhower was trying to be pragmatic, since the US still needed the much weakened Great Britain as a military ally, and that was jeopardized after Mossadegh was elected and nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company....later called BP. Iran was the only source of oil that England had left, and if they couldn't switch from coal, then they were done as a naval power in the post-war era. Doesn't justify changing Iran's government so England could keep extracting cheap oil, but by 1953, Churchill didn't have any clout to bargain with. Worth noting, the US has engineered many other coups since the end of WWII also: Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. (* indicates successful ouster of a government) And this list by William Blum was compiled in 2013....and there have been many more coups to add to in the last 6 years: China 1949 to early 1960s Albania 1949-53 East Germany 1950s Iran 1953 * Guatemala 1954 * Costa Rica mid-1950s Syria 1956-7 Egypt 1957 Indonesia 1957-8 British Guiana 1953-64 * Iraq 1963 * North Vietnam 1945-73 Cambodia 1955-70 * Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 * Ecuador 1960-63 * Congo 1960 * France 1965 Brazil 1962-64 * Dominican Republic 1963 * Cuba 1959 to present Bolivia 1964 * Indonesia 1965 * Ghana 1966 * Chile 1964-73 * Greece 1967 * Costa Rica 1970-71 Bolivia 1971 * Australia 1973-75 * Angola 1975, 1980s Zaire 1975 Portugal 1974-76 * Jamaica 1976-80 * Seychelles 1979-81 Chad 1981-82 * Grenada 1983 * South Yemen 1982-84 Suriname 1982-84 Fiji 1987 * Libya 1980s Nicaragua 1981-90 * Panama 1989 * Bulgaria 1990 * Albania 1991 * Iraq 1991 Afghanistan 1980s * Somalia 1993 Yugoslavia 1999-2000 * Ecuador 2000 * Afghanistan 2001 * Venezuela 2002 * Iraq 2003 * Haiti 2004 * Somalia 2007 to present Libya 2011* Syria 2012 Q: Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington? A: Because there’s no American embassy there.