October | 2020 | dovdiv

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday called on Donald Trump to rescind his appointment of alt-right figurehead Stephen Bannon, vowing to hold the president-elect accountable for his campaign promises while fighting against “the expansion of bigotry.”

In a speech at George Washington University that was live-streamed for thousands of viewers, Sanders admitted that last Tuesday night was “a very, very depressing evening for me.” But he pivoted swiftly to optimism, citing the millions of people he met during his presidential primary campaign—”working people, young people”—and their inclusive vision for the United States.

“We are not going backwards in terms of bigotry, we’re going to go forward in creating a non-discriminatory society.”
—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

“Real change, and real politics, never takes place from top on down, it always occurs from the bottom on up,” said the senator from Vermont. “And what that means, in my view, is that when millions of people stand together and they refuse to allow demagoguery to divide us up—by race, by the country we were born in, by our sexual orientation—when we stand together by the millions, we can stop Mr. Trump and anyone else from doing bad things to this country.”

He rattled off a list of promises Trump made on the campaign trail, including his vows not to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; to invest a trillion dollars in U.S. infrastructure; to reinstate Glass-Steagall legislation; to ensure paid maternity leave; and to reject corporate-friendly trade deals.

“Mr. Trump, we have a list of everything you said and we are going to hold you to account,” declared Sanders, who joined other progressive senators earlier this week in blasting Trump’s seeming lack of follow-through on his pledge to “drain the swamp” of corporate lobbyists and Wall Street executives.

Meanwhile, he offered strong resistance to the strains of “bigotry, racism, [and] sexism” that were present during Trump’s campaign and have already marked his turbulent transition.

“I say to Mr. Trump, from the bottom of my heart…We are not going backwards in terms of bigotry, we’re going to go forward in creating a non-discriminatory society,” Sanders said.

To that end, he again criticized Trump’s appointment to “chief strategist” of former Breitbart executive chairman and white nationalist Bannon, saying “a president of the United States should not have a racist at his side.”

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The case that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer network and interfered with the 2016 U.S. elections—such as that laid out Tuesday by the New York Times—is plausible, but the American people deserve hard proof that has yet to be provided, The Intercept‘s Sam Biddle wrote Wednesday.

While calls for declassification of the evidence have thus far gone unanswered, “the refrain of Russian attribution has been repeated so regularly and so emphatically that it’s become easy to forget that no one has ever truly proven the claim,” according to Biddle, whose colleagues Jeremy Scahill and Jon Schwarz demanded such proof this week. (The Times‘s headline: “The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.”)

Biddle argued:

He went on to pick apart some of the “evidence” and assumptions put forth by the U.S. intelligence community and parroted by lawmakers and corporate media alike.

For instance, Biddle wondered of the so-called Russian intelligence units behind the DNC hack, codenamed APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) 28/Fancy Bear and APT 29/Cozy Bear: “[H]ow do we even know these oddly named groups are Russian?”

He wrote:

What’s more, Biddle noted, “one can’t be reminded enough that all of this evidence comes from private companies with a direct financial interest in making the internet seem as scary as possible, just as Lysol depends on making you believe your kitchen is crawling with E. Coli.”

And considering the stakes, this “proof” just isn’t enough, Biddle said.

“What we’re looking at now is the distinct possibility that the United States will consider military retaliation (digital or otherwise) against Russia, based on nothing but private sector consultants and secret intelligence agency notes,” he wrote. “If you care about the country enough to be angry at the prospect of election-meddling, you should be terrified of the prospect of military tensions with Russia based on hidden evidence. You need not look too far back in recent history to find an example of when wrongly blaming a foreign government for sponsoring an attack on the U.S. has tremendously backfired.”

As Scahill and Schwarz said Tuesday: “Let’s have the proof.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reported Tuesday that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) “has not endorsed” the CIA’s claim of Russian hacking to benefit Trump “because of a lack of conclusive evidence.”

Edited to clarify the nature of the ODNI’s non-endorsement.

Given what is known about his cabinet picks and plans for fossil fuel extraction and executive actions, the former reality TV star who became the 45th President of the United States on Friday appears poised to kick off a “deregulatory agenda” and take actions to fast-track climate catastrophe.

Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, predicts the new administration to continue its shock therapy strategy:

And given the corporate cabinet, a climate-denying transition team, and a dearth of debate on appointees, Halpern expects “significant industry influence over the role of science in government decisions.”

Such decisions could be moments away, as it appears Trump is ready to make swift use of his executive pen. Bloomberg reports Friday that his

Reuters adds:

Trump himself laid out after Election Day what he’d do on his first day in office, including allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to move forward; lifting restrictions on fossil fuel production; and canceling “billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs.”

Echoing those promises, billionaire fracking taycoon Harold Hamm told CNBC Thursday that getting rid of the Obama administration’s energy regulations would be a day-one priority, saying, “I think it’ll be immediate.” He added: “[Overregulation] is hurting everybody.”

As the Washington Post wrote, scientists were quick to see the anti-science gauntlet being laid down and quickly mobilized. From its reporting in December:

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Also among their efforts was a race to archive government climate data before Jan. 20—a Herculean task Wired delved into on Thursday—and earlier this month outgoing Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced a new “scientific integrity policy” to protect at-risk policies, as Common Dreams wrote.

As Michael Slezak wrote Friday at the Guardian, “regardless of what climate deniers (yes, deniers) like Trump may say about the science, the stark reality is that it is happening now.”

“We are no longer fighting to stop climate change, but fighting to stop a runaway catastrophe,” he added.

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Monthly Archives: October 2020

Sanders Warns President-Elect Trump: 'We Are Not Going Backwards'

Despite Being Taken as Fact, 'Case Against Russia' Rests on Insufficient Proof

Trump vs. The Planet: Climate in Crosshairs of Executive Pen