#schanfraude

Hezbollah's Nasrallah hails 'Trump's humiliating defeat'

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Lebanon on 8 February 2002

 [Courtney Kealy/Getty Images]

November 12, 2020

Secretary-General of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said in a televised speech yesterday that he was pleased about the "humiliating defeat" of US President Donald Trump in the presidential elections but urged regional allies to be on alert for any US or Israeli "folly" during the remainder of his term in office.

The speech coincided with Hezbollah's Martry Day which commemorated in particular the martyrdom operation of Ahmad Kassir who detonated his explosives-rigged car at an Israeli occupation headquarters in Tyre in 1982.

However Nasrallah also commented on the outcome of the contested US presidential elections stating: "I ask those who brag about US democracy to look at this example and assess whether we should emulate it. Look at the living situation in large US cities, people living in tents, without social safety net, huge COVID cases, psychological diseases, addiction, huge numbers of people in jail, unbridled racism." Adding: "This is America they hold up to us as an example!"

READ: Lebanon's Bassil rejects US sanctions as unjust and politically motivated

American regional policy, he continued, would not change regardless of whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican, both remain concerned with the "security and supremacy of Israel". "They all race to strengthen and empower Israel, so from our position there's no difference."

Nevertheless, the Hezbollah leader stated that Trump's administration was "the worst or one of the worst in American history"

"I feel happy with Trump's humiliating defeat because of his blatant crime against Martry Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis" he added in reference to Trump's authorised targeted assassination drone strike at the beginning of the year.

Nasrallah also used the opportunity to reiterate that the movement does not get involved in border demarcation, whether maritime or land as it's not its job to define borders.

"This is rather the responsibility of the state and it falls within its constitutional mechanisms," he said.

Kuwait scholar calls for boycott of Arab companies profiting from ties with Israel


Prominent Kuwaiti scholar Tareq Al-Suwaidan, 15 April 2016

November 12, 2020 

Prominent Kuwaiti scholar Tareq Al-Suwaidan has called for a boycott of Arab companies that deal with the Israeli occupation during a seminar organised by the UAE anti-normalisation group.

Speaking on the "necessity of boycotting the products of the Zionist entity and their supporters" Al-Suwaidan said that the global campaign against Israeli products should be expanded to Arab companies that will profit from the normalisation with the occupying state.

The 66-year-old is a popular figure in the Middle East with a large social media following of nearly ten million on Twitter followers and 8.4 million on Facebook.

Al-Suwaidan urged for divestment from companies from the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain or any other country in the region that cooperates with Israel whether it be in banking, aeronautics, or any other sector. Likewise, products from companies that profit from Israel should be boycotted, he continued.

The Arab people is a powerful force, explained Al-Suwaidan, pointing to the MENA regions' 578 million population. If the Arab peoples boycott companies profiting from the Zionist state, this could lead to a huge loss of some 300 million people including non-Muslim Arabs who will participate around the world in the boycott.

"The Islamic nation as a whole rejects normalisation," claimed Al-Suwaidan "and it is the duty of the people to confront normalisation by inflicting the greatest loss on it by participating in the boycott of the enemy's products."

Timeline: International attempts to boycott BDS

Hollywood star: Concept of Israel is 'antiquated', I was 'fed lies' about it
SETH ROGEN CANADIAN ACTOR

Seth Rogen speaks onstage at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on 8 November 2019 in California, US [Frazer Harrison/Getty Images]

July 29, 2020 

Hollywood's Seth Rogen on Monday said he was fed a "huge amount" of lies about Israel, as Palestinians were left out of the narrative.

In the podcast WTF with Marc Maron, Rogen, who is Jewish himself, sat down with Marc Maron to promote his new film An American Pickle and discuss their shared Jewish heritage, which was described as the "Jewiest talk with Marc that two Jews ever had on this show" and included a trigger warning for anti-Semites. The talk turned to the subject of Israel and the Jewish diaspora.

Rogen said:

I also think as a Jewish person I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life. They never tell you that 'oh by the way there were people there', they make it seem like it was just some land sitting there. Like the fucking doors were open.

To which Maron agreed, chiming in: "Ours for the taking."

"Yeah, they literally forget to include the fact to every young Jewish person basically, like, 'oh by the way, there were people there'."

Maron said: "They just want to make sure you were frightened for your own survival to the point that when you get old enough, you will make sure that money goes to Israel, and that trees are planted, and that you always speak highly of Israel, and Israel must survive no matter what."

Rogen replied. "Yeah, and I don't understand it at all. I think for Jewish people especially, who view themselves as progressive, and who view themselves as analytical, people who ask a lot of questions, and really challenge the status quo, like – what are we doing?"

READ: Bella Hadid says 'proud to be Palestinian' after Instagram deletes story showing her father's birthplace

Rogen further expressed support for spreading the Jewish people throughout the world, rather than form the state of Israel, joking that they shouldn't put "all their Jews in one basket".

Maron asked Rogen: "Could you imagine living in Israel? Would you ever go live in Israel?" to which Rogen answered no.

Maron laughed and continued to say that he believed the same.

Rogen went on to describe the concept of Israel as an "antiquated thought process".

He said: "If it's for religious reasons, I don't agree with it, because I think religion is silly, if it for the preservation of Jewish people, it makes no sense, because you don't keep something you're trying to preserve all in one place, especially when that place has proven to be pretty volatile."

READ: Right-wing NGO wants singer banned for criticising Israeli soldiers

"I'm trying to keep all these things safe, I'm going to put them in my blender. That'll do it."

Seth Rogen rose to fame for his role in the film Knocked Up. He has gone on to write, direct, star in, and produce award winning films.

Rogen's film An American Pickle, which follows the story of Jewish immigrant and struggling labourer Herschel Greenbaum who falls into a vat of pickles in 1920 then wakes up 100 years later in modern day New York, having been perfectly preserved by the pickle brine, is released on 6 August.

Bella Hadid expresses love for Palestine in birthday wishes to father

Palestinian-American supermodel Bella Hadid

November 9, 2020 

Bella Hadid shared a series of photos with her father to mark his 72nd birthday on her Instagram story post, with captions paying tribute to her Palestinian heritage.

"Happy birthday to my baba," she said. "I always loved to be with you."

The heartfelt Instagram post consisted of an image showing the American real estate mogul, Palestinian-born Mohammed Hadid with Bella in the kitchen, cooking a selection of Arab dishes such as fatayer and falafel.

Mohamed is outspoken about embracing his Palestinian heritage as well as instilling a sense of Palestinian identity in his children.

"I love learning how to cook Palestinian food with you," wrote Bella. "Thank you for teaching me about our culture. I love Palestine and you so much.£

She added, "Your roots will forever be intertwined within our family line. It's my favorite part about us."

Bella Hadid, along with siblings Gigi, Anwar, have been vocal advocates of Palestinian rights for years, using their platforms to promote the cause.

More recently, 24-year-old supermodel Bella hit out at Instagram after the site deleted a Story post of her father's expired passport, which listed his place of birth as Palestine, saying she's "proud to be Palestinian".

In December 2017, she reportedly spontaneously joined a Palestinian solidarity march in London. While, in the same month, the supermodel condemned the US' recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, writing on Instagram: "Watching the news and seeing the pain of the Palestinian people makes me cry for the many many generations of Palestine… the treatment of the Palestinian people is unfair, one-sided and should not be tolerated. I stand with Palestine."

                                              https://www.instagram.com/p/CHTxVHpAsRX/

The Arab League and regional leaders will forget Arafat's warning at their peril

Palestinians gather at the tomb of Yasser Arafat, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, to commemorate the anniversary of his death, on 11 November 2018 [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency]

yvonneridley October 26, 2020 

I miss Yasser Arafat. Like many revolutionary leaders he was flawed but he had guts, determination and a courage that reflected the Palestinians he served so well. When challenged by him, the members of the Arab League were either in awe, fear or a combination of both, which led the Palestine Liberation Organisation to be treated as "the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."

As the anniversary of his death approaches, it has become increasingly obvious that such respect is not commanded by the current Palestinian leader and PLO chair, Mahmoud Abbas. At 85 years old, and having frittered away the goodwill and respect built up by Arafat, he is a pale imitation of his former boss who has led the Palestinian people into a cul-de-sac of despair from which it will be difficult to return. His betrayal of the people he is supposed to serve has come about through a toxic fusion of corruption, incompetence and cowardice. This, I believe, has led to the normalisation deals being agreed between Israel and some members of the Arab League, of which Sudan is the latest, but won't be the last.

The UAE, Bahrain and the supposedly "transitional" government in Khartoum would never have dared to even consider going down the path of normalisation with Israel if Arafat had still been alive. The Palestinian leadership in Ramallah can't even summon an emergency meeting of the Arab League or pull together a condemnatory statement about normalisation, so pitiful is the regard in which it is held by other Arab States.

It's a far cry from March 1979 when Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in Washington; the League moved swiftly to move its headquarters from Cairo as a punishment to Egypt for signing the agreement with the Zionist State. Arafat is no longer with us, and that is reflected in the lamentable state of affairs whereby some Arab leaders can so easily have their arms twisted by a desperate US President who needs to camouflage his disastrous foreign policy failures in the Middle East ahead of the presidential election on 3 November.

What's even more damning for Abbas and his leadership is that we even have Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Kingdom's former ambassador in Washington, recycling and inventing history to demonise the Palestinian people and Arafat's legacy. Moreover, he wouldn't have had the guts to do that when Arafat was alive. It is quite clear to anyone who knows Palestinian history that Bin Sultan's unwelcome intervention is simply paving the way for Riyadh's own normalisation with the occupation state.

His claim that the Palestinians rejected the Clinton Parameters proposal, which were guidelines for a permanent peace agreement proposed by US President Bill Clinton in December 2000, is a blatant lie. Arafat accepted the parameters with a few reservations. The shameless Saudi royal also lied when he said that the Palestinians rejected King Fahd's 1982 peace initiative; Yasser Arafat, in fact, accepted it, and it was Israel which rejected and condemned it as "a plan to destroy the Jewish state in stages." Israel subsequently invaded Lebanon to uproot the PLO from its base there.

Those who tell such blatant lies are the same people who justify the occupation and the ongoing persecution and oppression of the Palestinian people. Arafat would turn on anyone who tried to undermine the heroic resistance and legitimate struggle of his people, no matter who it was.

READ: Reconciliation really is the only option for the Palestinians

My abiding memory of the late Palestinian leader is from April 2002 when his compound in Ramallah was under siege and surrounded by Israeli tanks. Defiant as ever, and with a pistol lying on his desk, his message to the world was clear: he was going nowhere and neither were the Palestinians.

In stark contrast. His successor as President, Mahmoud Abbas grovels before members of the Arab League, often expressing his gratitude for their support for the Palestinians. Almost without exception he emphasises his thanks to Saudi Arabia. With Riyadh fast-tracking Sudan's normalisation while contemplating its own, Abbas's obsequiousness has obviously not worked.

Meanwhile, the propaganda and lies spewing out of UAE- and Saudi-run TV stations fool no one. The leaders in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have betrayed the Palestinians and the legacy of their predecessors who gave unqualified support to the people of occupied Palestine. Ordinary people across the region recognise this treachery, even though many are too afraid to challenge it.

The liars who are slandering and demonising the Palestinians while whitewashing the brutal Israeli occupation will never succeed. Deep down, they probably know that, but they have sold their soul to the Zionist devils in Tel Aviv and Washington and history will judge them severely.

READ: It's time to tear up the Oslo Accords

The legitimate rights of the Palestinians to resist Israel's odious occupation and return to their land are accepted around the world. There is still massive support for Palestine in the UN General Assembly, and ordinary citizens are more prepared than ever before to endorse the peaceful resistance promoted by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

As for the Arab League, its craven membership would do well to remember what Arafat told Time magazine after addressing 18 Arab Kings, Presidents, Emirs and other leaders gathered in Morocco in November 1974: "Palestine is the cement that holds the Arab world together, or it is the explosive that blows it apart." The organisation and the Arab capitals considering normalisation ignore the late Palestinian leader's words at their peril.

Yvonne Ridley

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Has Fatah betrayed the Palestinian revolution?


Palestinians gather to support the Palestinian Fatah movement in Gaza City, Gaza on 1 January 2020 [Mohammed Asad-Middle East Monitor]

abujomaaGaza October 16, 2020 

When it was launched on 1 January 1965, the Palestine National Liberation Movement, Fatah, declared that it intended to fight the Israeli occupation until the liberation of the last piece of Palestine's soil. According to a study by Dr Mohsen Saleh, most of the movement's founders were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, but they decided to identify Fatah as a secular movement in order to avoid the complications of the Brotherhood's relations with Arab governments.

Fatah's leadership succeeded in mobilising support for the Palestinian revolution against the Israeli occupation. Training camps were established by revolutionaries around the world, mainly in the then communist countries.

Fatah also made its way into the hearts of the Arab regimes, including those in Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and forged good relations with revolutionary forces in non-Arab countries such as Vietnam, which dispatched senior officials to Fatah training camps to give advice and share their expertise.

The regimes which had suppressed the Arab revolutions against the Zionist expansion in Palestine during the time of the British Mandate sought to domesticate the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) led by Ahmed Al-Shukeiri, which stood up to fight the Israeli occupation. When their efforts failed, they did their best to domesticate Fatah. They succeeded, and thereby helped Fatah's leader Yasser Arafat to oust Al-Shukeiri and take up the leadership of the PLO, of which Fatah became the main component.

READ: Elections or a referendum?

Arab regimes supported the PLO and gradually paved the way for it to tone down its resistance against Israel and the occupation. The current Fatah, PLO and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas said in a documentary aired by Al Jazeera 15 years ago that Arafat ordered him to start looking for a peaceful way to solve the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. That was the first step of the betrayal of the Palestinian revolution.

In November 1974, Arafat and his senior military aide Hassan Salameh — "the Red Prince" —met with CIA officials and agreed to tone down the movement's revolutionary approach. Salameh had founded Fatah's Black September armed group that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Caught between money and politics, though, the Palestinian revolution started to fade out. In the 1970s, Arafat went to the UN bearing an olive branch and the PLO joined the Arab League, which has never served Arab interests.

General Vo Nguyen Giap from Vietnam once visited training camps and the headquarters of the Palestinian revolutionaries. He was shocked by the privileges that the Palestinian leaders had and the opulence of their lifestyle.

The so-called Red Prince, for example, was in love with Georgina Rizk, a Lebanese model and winner of the Miss Universe contest in 1971; they married in 1977 and spent their honeymoon in Hawaii and Disneyland, Florida, on a trip that was apparently partially facilitated and funded by the CIA. Their Vietnamese visitor told the PLO and Fatah leaders that their revolution would never bear fruit because, "Revolution and wealth do not go together." It seems that he was right.

Wealth and politics really led Arafat to enter the UN General Assembly on 13 November 1974 saying: "Today, I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat, do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."

Gradually and through secret meetings, the PLO conceded a large part of historic Palestine in favour of the Israeli occupation state. In 1988, the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the PLO's parliament-in-exile, endorsed UN Resolutions 242 and 338, which recognise the right of all states in the Middle East to exist within secure borders. The PNC did not name Israel.

READ: Reconciliation really is the only option for the Palestinians

When Arafat was asked by a journalist about the shocking stance of the PLO and Fatah, his reply made it clear that quite apart from recognising Israel, he recognised it to be a Jewish state: ″This was clear in resolutions adopted in the last session of [the PNC] where we said clearly there are two states in Palestine, the Palestinian state and the Jewish state, Israel."

In 1993, the PLO agreed on a Declaration of Principles which established a timetable for the Middle East peace process and planned for an interim Palestinian government in the occupied Gaza Strip and Jericho in the occupied West Bank. The Oslo Peace Accords led to Arafat shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the White House following dozens of secret meetings between PLO and Fatah officials and Israeli officials.

Rabin and Arafat exchanged letters of recognition, and the PLO recognised Israel's right to exist in return for Israel's recognition of the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. This meant that any Palestinian body, group or movement claiming to be struggling for the rights of the people would be illegitimate and the PLO, on behalf of Israel, would fight it through its military wing, the Oslo-created Palestinian Authority security services.

Arafat, Shimon Peres, the then Israeli Foreign Minister, and Rabin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. There was no peace on the ground, though, and Israel's colonial expansion continued unabated.

According to the Oslo Accords, "Israel" refers to the Palestinian lands occupied by Zionist terror gangs in 1948, amounting to over 78 per cent of Palestine. The Accords divided the remaining 22 per cent into three areas: Area A is made up of 18 per cent of the occupied West Bank, and is nominally controlled by the PA, which is dominated by Fatah; area B constitutes 21 per cent, and is partially controlled by the PA; and area C, at 61 per cent, is completely controlled by Israel.

READ: Fatah: No agreement with Hamas on joint electoral list

Simple mathematics reveals that the PA actually only controls five per cent of historic Palestine, which is the besieged Gaza Strip and the canton-style cities and towns of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The PA has no authority to build a seaport or an airport, or even control a border crossing. Additions to the Oslo Accords signed in 1995 restricted the PA's power over its own economy and income and entitled Israel to collect taxes on its behalf.

Fatah and the PLO did not consult the Palestinians about making peace with Israel and have always been reluctant about recognising any Palestinian faction which happens to oppose their approach to the occupation state. They acknowledge that there are strong factions on the ground aside from Fatah and other PLO-affiliated groups, but they have never agreed to partner them.

When Hamas agreed to run for the parliamentary elections in 2006 under pressure from the Arab states, and won convincingly, Fatah did not recognise its victory and refused to hand over the PA to it. When Hamas insisted on its right to run the PA, Fatah sought Israel's help in the West Bank and pushed Hamas out of the PA institutions. Hamas was left with the Gaza Strip, its main power base, but the PA led by Abbas cut the salaries of public sector employees and stopped almost all services to the coastal territory despite the strict Israel-led blockade. Abbas imposed his own additional sanctions on Gaza in 2018, making him complicit in the siege.

The Palestinians are now celebrating a positive atmosphere and the potential end of the split between Fatah and Hamas. However, there are signs that Fatah is misleading everyone. For a start, it has denied that there was an agreement in Istanbul to hold elections, as announced by a senior Hamas official. Moreover, the PA security forces — controlled by Fatah — cracked down on popular protests at three offices of the International Red Cross across the West Bank in solidarity with a Palestinian prisoner on his 81st day of a hunger strike inside an Israeli prison.

The PA Prime Minister said that he does not accept Israel's oppression of the Palestinian hunger striker, Maher Al-Akhras, but his security services crackdown violently on protests held in solidarity with him. What kind of double standards are being used here?

Fatah has not only abandoned the armed struggle against the Zionist occupation of Palestine, but it has also thrown itself into the arms of the Zionist state. Has it betrayed the revolution? How can anyone doubt it?

Motasem A Dalloul

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Reason of Arafat's death remains unknown 16 years later


Palestinians hold posters and light candles as they commemorate the death of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on 11 November 2016 [Saeed Qaq/Apaimages ]

November 12, 2020 

Sixteen years have now passed since PLO, Fatah and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat died and the reason behind his death remains unknown.

Born on 4 August 1929, Arafat passed away in a French hospital on 11 November 2004 after suffering symptoms of an unknown disease likely a result of poisoning while he was besieged inside his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

In a report, Arabi21 asked member of Fatah's International Relations Commissioner, Abdullah Abdullah, about the leader's death. Abdullah accused the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of being behind his death but claimed: "There is no clear evidence."

Regarding who served Arafat the poison, Abdullah claimed: "So far, we have not found clear evidence that indicts the real criminal."

Abdullah noted that Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia sent professional investigation teams who carried out tests. While Swiss and French teams exhumed Arafat's body and tested it and his clothes, "but we have not reached a clear-cut answer so far."

Meanwhile, Political Sciences Professor Hani Al-Basous accused the PA of not showing enough interest in the investigations.

READ: The Arab League and regional leaders will forget Arafat's warning at their peril

"It is possible that there is a kind of cooperation among PA officials in order not to reveal the outcomes of the investigations," stressing that PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his senior aide Tawfiq Al-Tirawi are behind this decision.

At the same time, he stated that Abbas threatened to identify Arafat's assassins. "This is a proof that he has information, but he is hiding this information from people," he said, stressing: "This is a big disaster because it hints that senior PA or Fatah officials, or political opponents are involved in the issue."

For his part, the political analyst Naji Shurrab told Arabi21 that there are pieces of information known by the French hospital and Palestinian officials, but nothing happened in this regard.

"This means that there is a conspiracy involving many components and revealing these components would shake the image of the Fatah movement," he said. "The anniversary [of Arafat's death] hides a compound crisis for Fatah, leadership and legitimacy," he said.

Former President Barack Obama Reveals What He Really Wanted to Do When A GOP Congressman Heckled Him During a Speech

by Roger Friedman - November 13, 2020 


You wonder where the incivility in politics began, when the Republicans first started allowing rudeness and bigotry to enter their realm. It wasn’t with Donald Trump. He just saw that it was already there.

Maybe it was in September 2009, when Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to explain universal health care. Obama writes about the moment in his new book, “A Promised Land,” out next Tuesday.

He recalls:

“…less than thirty minutes into the speech…as I debunked the phony claim that the bill would insure undocumented immigrants—a relatively obscure five-term Republican congressman from South Carolina named Joe Wilson leaned forward in his seat, pointed in my direction, and shouted, his face flushed with fury, “You lie!”

“For the briefest moment, a stunned silence fell over the chamber. I turned to look for the heckler (as did Speaker Pelosi and Joe Biden, Nancy aghast and Joe shaking his head). I was tempted to exit my perch, make my way down the aisle, and smack the guy in the head. Instead, I simply responded by saying, “It’s not true,” and then carried on with my speech as Democrats hurled boos in Wilson’s direction.

“As far as anyone could remember, nothing like that had ever happened before a joint-session address—at least, not in modern times. Congressional criticism was swift and bipartisan, and, by the next morning, Wilson had apologized publicly for the breach of decorum, calling Rahm and asking that his regrets get passed on to me as well. I downplayed the matter, telling a reporter that I appreciated the apology and was a big believer that we all make mistakes.

“And yet I couldn’t help noticing the news reports saying that online contributions to Wilson’s reëlection campaign spiked sharply in the week following his outburst.

“Apparently, for many Republican voters out there, he was a hero, speaking truth to power. It was an indication that the Tea Party and its media allies had accomplished more than just their goal of demonizing the health-care bill. They had demonized me and, in doing so, had delivered a message to all Republican office-holders: when it came to opposing my Administration, the old rules no longer applied.”

Here’s the video of how it went down. Now we know what Obama was thinking:

Obama’s sense of humor in the book is exceptional. You see how he was able to tolerate fools and rise above. He recalls how one of his advisers was worried about getting the health care bill passed.

The adviser, Phil Schiliro, asks, “I guess the question for you, Mr. President, is, Do you feel lucky?”

Obama remembers: “I looked at him. “Where are we, Phil?”

Phil hesitated, wondering if it was a trick question. “The Oval Office?”

“And what’s my name?”

“Barack Obama.”

I smiled. “Barack Hussein Obama. And I’m here with you in the Oval Office. Brother, I always feel lucky.”

AOC asks if it’s ‘too socialist’ to want more stimulus relief for Americans

The New York congresswoman called for stimulus checks, mortgage relief, rent forgiveness and small business support among other items

Matthew Allen
November 14, 2020

As the country struggles with a second coronavirus wave, families are grappling with the likelihood that restrictions on public life and business closures will go into effect.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington remain at a standstill on additional stimulus spending to prop up workers and the economy, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) of New York isn’t happy about it.

The Democratic representative took to Twitter to plead that Americans are in need of another stimulus check, rent forgiveness and mortgage relief, among other requests, to address the ongoing health crisis and offset an unstable economic environment.

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attends the 2019 Athena Film Festival

(Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for The Athena Film Festival)

“Can we please get people stimulus checks and mortgage relief and rent forgiveness and small business support and free testing and hazard pay and healthcare for the uninsured (& underinsured) in the middle of a pandemic or is that too socialist too?” AOC wrote.

Republicans, and some Democrats, have slammed members of the left-wing of the Democratic Party for promoting ideas they say are cloaked in socialism. “Medicare for All,” a universal health care proposal championed by Bernie Sanders, the independent senator of Vermont who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in the last two election cycles, has been criticized for its potential to eliminate the private care industry.

President Donald Trump on the campaign trail accused now President-elect Joe Biden of allowing party members to incorporate socialism into policy during an October rally in Iowa.

“Biden has made a corrupt bargain in exchange for his party’s nomination,” Trump said. “He has handed control to the socialists and Marxists and left-wing extremists like his vice-presidential candidate.”


On Saturday, Trump called for Congress to put together a coronavirus relief bill saying in a tweet that it “Needs Democrats support. Make it big and focused.”


Many citizens received coronavirus relief checks of up to $1,200 earlier this year after Trump signed the CARES Act, a $2.2 trillion emergency spending package intended to blunt the economic downturn spurred by stay-at-home and lockdown orders at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. The stimulus measure included aid for non-essential businesses that were ordered to temporarily limit or shut down operations. This threw the country into a recession and the unemployment rate from record low levels into the double digits after tens of millions of workers were laid off.

Lawmakers have spent months negotiating another stimulus bill, though negotiators were not able to overcome disagreements before the November election. Both sides remain at a deadlock on what to include in another spending package as coronavirus case counts climb to record levels.

In addition, theGrio reported in April that 95% of Black business owners were denied aid for small businesses.

According to Newsweek, Congress has until Dec. 11 to approve a spending bill for the next federal budget, otherwise their will be another government shutdown.

INFORMED DISSENT by Jeffrey Billman

Trump might be gone, but Trumpism isn’t 

Our long national nightmare isn’t over yet.

"How American conservatism dies is the most important story, by far, of this moment," Matthew Sheffield, a co-founder of the right-wing media-criticism site NewsBusters, wrote in a mea culpa Twitter thread on Friday night. "Conventional media will never tell this story because their business is built on the lie that [Donald] Trump is an aberration rather than apotheosis."

Sheffield's thread bemoaned the right's susceptibility to bullshit — specifically, Trump's lies about voter fraud — following decades of conservative propaganda. But here he touched on two ideas central to understanding modern American politics that warrant further exploration: (1) Conservatism is dead. (2) Trump is a symptom of conservatism's collapse, not its cause. Trumpism lives on.

By rights, Joe Biden won a decisive victory. Historically, defeating an incumbent first-term president is hard. It's only happened three times in a century. Defeating right-wing populism is also hard. Biden won more than 300 electoral votes. When all is said and done, he'll receive the support of the largest share of the voting-age population since Richard Nixon in 1972. Democrats kept the House, and, in January's runoff elections in Georgia, they'll have a chance to retake the Senate.

Yet Tuesday night felt like a disappointment. In part, it was the order in which votes were counted and the uncertainty it produced. In part, it owed to polls foretelling a blue wave that never materialized. But mostly, it was because the goal wasn't just to defeat Trump. It was to repudiate him and the spineless quislings who spent the last four years goose-stepping to his every utterance.

The 230,000 dead from COVID demanded a landslide. The children locked in cages demanded a landslide. The wanton corruption demanded a landslide.

It didn't happen. Instead, Democrats lost seats in Congress and state legislatures. And had the vote swung just a point in the other direction, the GOP would've likely had a governing trifecta in Washington.

Such a close shave with illiberalism should prompt introspection. Dems juiced urban turnout, but Trump matched it in the exurbs and rural towns. He even made gains among Hispanics and African Americans. In some cases, there's a ready explanation: In South Florida, the Trump campaign fear-mongered relentlessly — and effectively — about socialism on Spanish-language media. In other cases, Democrats simply got outhustled.

Had the vote swung just a point in the other direction, the GOP would’ve likely had a governing trifecta in Washington.tweet this

To be sure, Biden overwhelmingly won BIPOC votes. He also offset Trump's gains by winning white suburbs. But the returns made clear that Democrats have a messaging problem with some working-class voters — mostly lower-education whites, yes, but also with some people of color who bought Trump's promises of economic prosperity.

Arguments about the soul of the nation and the dangers of authoritarianism resonated among college-educated Americans. Among everyone else, not so much.

Within 48 hours of the election, introspection morphed into full recrimination. Moderates blamed progressives for Democrats' lackluster showing, claiming that words like "socialism" and "defund" cost them seats. Progressives countered that Black voters had secured Biden's wins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona; forsaking their needs to chase white suburbanites is counterproductive.

In a way, this exemplifies Democrats' dilemma. They comprise a coalition party, drawing from disparate factions with little resemblance to each other. Only in the U.S. would Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Manchin call the same party home.

Republicans, meanwhile, are ideologically sorted and much more orthodox. They don't need coalitions, and they have little use for those outside of their base. In 2016, when Trump careened into office despite earning 2.9 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, Republicans governed not as a minority that drew its power from constitutional anachronisms but as if they had a mandate from God to put partisan hacks on the federal bench and cut taxes for the rich.

Implicitly, Trump's votes were more legitimate than Clinton's — more reflective of the "Real America" — an idea buttressed by countless New York Times features on MAGA types in Midwestern diners. This year, the implicit became explicit: Biden's (ahem, urban) votes must be fraudulent, even if they can't prove it. (As one Pennsylvania state representative tweeted, "It remains to be proven but it appears Dems in Philly did not let a good crisis in COVID go to waste and ruined the integrity of our election process.") The party's radicalization is both a product and cause of its epistemic closure: Facts that deviate from its worldview must be discarded.

For those of us outside the bubble, the results border on hilarity. On Saturday, for instance, Trump consigliore Rudy Giuliani held an amazing press conference outside of a Philadelphia landscaping shop (which was — chef's kiss — next to a porn store) to insist there was a massive conspiracy to steal the election (evidence to come, pinky-swear!).

But there are real-life consequences. The thin-gruel legal challenges will fail, but Trump is nonetheless refusing to turn over the keys to the Biden transition team, hampering an incoming administration that will inherit myriad crises. Trump, meanwhile, wants to host a series of MAGA rallies to complain that the election was fraudulent and Biden's presidency is illegitimate — actions that could have dangerous consequences. Few prominent Republicans will get in his way; their devolution into mush-brained quislings who quake at the thought of a Trump tweet is complete.

Trump's shadow will linger for years, maybe decades after he's gone. For the immediate future, he'll be a kingmaker. It's possible he'll run again in 2024, or that Ivanka or Don Jr. will. It would be foolish to count them out. Consider this: More than 70 million people, after witnessing four years of The Trump Show, wanted to do it again. Whoever the next GOP nominee is, they'll sing from Trump's hymnal.

Conservatism is dead. Trumpism remains. We'll get a reprieve, a chance to inhale — and if Democrats prevail in the Senate runoffs in Georgia in January, an opportunity to inch forward on climate change and health care policy. But our long national nightmare isn't over yet.