Ever since Tulsi Gabbard was first elected to Congress in 2012, she has been assertively independent, heterodox, unpredictable, and polarizing. Viewed at first as a loyal Democrat and guaranteed future star by party leaders — due to her status as an Iraq War veteran, a telegenic and dynamic young woman, and the first Hindu and Samoan American ever elected to Congress — she has instead become a thorn in the side, and frequent critic, of those same party leaders that quickly anointed her as the future face of the party. Gabbard’s transformation from cherished party asset to party critic and outcast was rapid, and was due almost entirely to her insistence on following her own belief system and evolving ideology rather than party dogma and the long-standing rules for Washington advancement.
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Why Joining The Communist Movement Is The Most Sensible Option For Those On The Left
22 minutes readRAINER SHEA—The political role of the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democratic Party, as the socialist columnist Genevieve Leigh has assessed, is to “attack the wealth of the rich without attacking the social system upon which this wealth is based.” This social system is capitalism, which social democrats like Sanders do not want to get rid of. No one can honestly say that they’re socialists, because they very much embrace a continuation of capitalism. They explicitly promise that their economic model is not based off of history’s existing socialist states, but off of the Scandinavian capitalist welfare states.
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May the Fourth Estate Rise Again: Occupy the NYTimes
15 minutes readJOSH MITTELDORF—There is indeed a crisis, but not as it has been characterized. The crisis is not that we have alternative accounts of reality, but rather that some of these contain truths that our mainstream “free press” has kept hidden from us. The crisis is that the version of the world that the mainstream media presents to us no longer passes the smell test. The lies have gotten ever bigger, the topics swept under the carpet have created a bulge we cannot ignore, and meanwhile the Internet has provided compelling alternative narratives for anyone who cares to look. The NYTimes version of some key events has diverged so far from the truth that no one with an independent mind can fail to notice. The fake emergency of “fake news” is a desperate ploy on behalf of those who are losing their grip on the mainstream narrative.
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ERIC ZUESSE—Vargas, one of Venezuela’s poorest regions, was predominantly socialist, so Guaido had pretended to be socialist, and he won office on that fraudulent basis, but once in office he became immediately fascist. He was behaving in accord with his being a perfect CIA asset to take over a democratic socialist country that the dictatorial capitalist U.S. regime wants to control. He is acting as a traitor to Venezuela, and certainly outside of and violating Venezuela’s Constitution.
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May 1st: French police attack and lock up protesters indiscriminately in a regular shop. Outrageous.
12 minutes read“I am 64-years-old, I was at the demonstration of May 1st 2019 with my 45-year-old son, his father, and some friends. We waited quietly near the Vavin subway for the departure of the procession in order to join it when we saw in the distance the fumes of tear gas and the movements of crowds.
Wanting to seek shelter, we went away as far as we could and suddenly a violent police charge pushed the crowd and we found ourselves stuck in the middle of a cloud of tear gas, the canisters flying all over.
My son went to an open shop, a tobacconist, where a few people had taken refuge, thus removing us from the trap of the crowd and passing behind the cordon of police officers who were in full charge and pushed the protesters…”