Jammer
dat het hieronder opgenomen artikel van CounterPunch niet al
voor de Democratische voorverkiezingen werd gepubliceerd, grote kans
dat oorlogsmisdadiger Joe Biden dan niet door de Democratische Partij zou zijn gekozen als kandidaat voor het
presidentschap Hoewel de grote opzet was om Bernie Sanders de gang
naar het Witte Huis te belemmeren, daar hij te links was en wel eens
werkelijke verandering had kunnen brengen (in tegenstelling tot de
meer dan valse belofte van Barack Obama)……..
Jack
Delaney heeft een uitgebreid artikel geschreven waarin hij Joe Biden neerzet
als een racist en dat al meer dan 40 jaar lang……
Zo was
Biden tegen het federale schoolbusproject waarmee men de integratie
van zwarte en anders gekleurde kinderen op witte scholen wilde
bevorderen…… Uiteraard was dit niet de enige manier waarop Biden
zich inzette om integratie van gekleurde kinderen op witte scholen
te voorkomen, op alle mogelijke (politieke) manieren heeft Biden
zich daartegen verzet……
Biden
heeft zich onder de administratie van oorlogsmisdadiger Bill Clinton
ingezet voor de ‘three strikes out’ wetgeving, waarmee zelfs met
kleine vergrijpen, je na drie van die vergrijpen ‘levenslang’
gevangen kon worden gezet en uiteraard waren het vooral de gekleurden
die hier in verhouding het hardst onder hebben geleden….. Zo werd
het gebruik van crack (cocaïne) t.o.v. gewone cocaïne (een heel
stuk duurder) veel zwaarder gestraft en je raadt het al: vooral de
gekleurden gebruikten crack, daar ze altijd tot het armste deel van
de VS behoorden en behoren…….
Overigens
was het ‘three strikes out’ het gevolg van de inzet van Biden al onder de
totale mafketel en oorlogsmisdadiger (en C-acteur) Ronald Reagan, de
neoliberale republikeinse president in de 80er jaren van de vorige
eeuw….. (die begon met het opschroeven van de VS schulden tot
onaanvaardbaar grote hoogte) Het is zelfs zo dat Biden Reagan heeft
gepord om hardere straffen te zetten op drugsovertredingen. Het
uiteindelijke gevolg van de inzet die Biden liet zien was dat in veel
staten 90% van de veroordeelden door drugsgebruik en andere
drugsgerelateerde zaken gekleurd waren…….
Onder
Clinton was Biden één van de hoofdverantwoordelijken voor het
verhogen van straffen en hij was er trots op dat de Democraten
verantwoordelijk waren voor 60 meer doodstraffen en de verhoging van
straffen. Verder was de Democratische administratie van Clinton
verantwoordelijk voor het aannemen van 100.000 meer politieagenten en het bouwen van 125.000 extra
gevangeniscellen…… Gevolg was dat tegen het jaar 2000 de VS met
5% van de wereldbevolking, de VS een gevangenispopulatie had die 25%
vertegenwoordigde van het totale aantal gevangenen over de wereld……. Gekleurden liepen 5 keer meer kans in de gevangenis te
belanden dan hun witte medeburgers………
Biden
heeft zich van 1984 tot 2018 ingezet voor het snijden in de sociale
bijstand, terwijl juist de gekleurde bevolking daar het meest op was aangewezen…… Voorts was Biden verantwoordelijk voor het opschroeven
van schulden voor studeren en zoals je kan uittekenen, ook hier waren
m.n. de gekleurden het slachtoffer van (hoewel deze schuldenlast nu
zo groot is dat dezelfde schoft nu heeft beloofd daar wat aan te gaan
doen, echter denk daarbij aan de beloften van Obama, die voor het
grootste deel in het ‘grote archief’ verdwenen……)
Over
Obama’s beloften gesproken: ondanks een gekleurde president en een
aantal gekleurden op sleutelposities, is het zijn administratie niet
gelukt om de positie van gekleurden te verbeteren en ook hiervoor was
Biden deels verantwoordelijk…… Sterker nog Black Lives Matter
(BLM) ontstond onder de Obama/Biden administratie…..
Ook de
buitenlandpolitiek van de VS onder Obama en vicepresident Biden was
het ‘business as usual…’ De Obama/Biden administratie was
verantwoordelijk voor het destabiliseren van landen als Jemen,
Honduras (een door de CIA en Hillary Clinton georganiseerde coup),
Syrië, Somalië en Libië (het eens rijkste land van Afrika werd 60
jaar terug in de tijd gebombardeerd en behoort nu tot de armste
landen van dat continent, terwijl er nog steeds oorlog wordt
gevoerd….). Intussen vervolgde deze administratie het bloedige
beleid die de erfenis vormde van het Bush tijdperk: de illegale
oorlogsoperaties in Afghanistan, Pakistan en Irak……
Het
moorden middels drones kreeg ook al een extra duw in de rug van
de Obama/Biden administratie, terwijl zo’n 90% van de vermoorde slachtoffers
niet eens werden verdacht, dus veelal vrouwen en kinderen…….
Biden was ook voor die moorden de tweede
hoofdverantwoordelijke…….
Wat
betreft vluchtelingen uit Latijns-Amerika (o.a. door de coup van 2009
in Honduras) heeft de Obama administratie meer dan 2,5 miljoen
vluchtelingen gedeporteerd en werd er geen onderzoek gedaan naar
massagraven met vluchtelingen uit dat deel van de 3 Amerika’s…….
Tijdens
zijn verkiezingscampagne heeft Biden herhaaldelijk gelogen dat hij
Nelson Mandela ontmoette in Zuid-Afrika en dat hij daarvoor werd
gearresteerd….. Terwijl hij zoals eerder gemeld ronduit een racist
was en eigenlijk nog is (en dan ben je m.i. niets anders dat een fascist)….. Deze fascist
ging zelfs zover om het volk voor te houden dat wanneer ze een
probleem hadden om op hem te stemmen, deze kiezers niet zwart waren,
waarvoor hij later dan wel zijn excuus aanbood…….
Met
Biden zal er niets ten goede veranderen voor de gekleurde bevolking
van de VS en ook het imperialistische buitenlandbeleid van de VS zal niet
veranderen, sterker nog: de kans is groot dat de VS weer nieuwe
oorlogen zal aangaan, zeker als je in gedachten neemt dat Biden al
heeft gesteld dat dit beleid onder Trump slap was als het gaat om
de landen Iran en Venezuela……. Ook de agressieve buitenlandpolitiek t.a.v. China zal niet veranderen, zo heeft Bidens vicepresident Kamala Harris laten weten……. Door de sancties van Trump alleen al tegen
Venezuela, zijn meer dan 50.000 mensen om het leven gekomen, als je
dat slap vindt kan er maar één stap straffer zijn: weer een (illegale)
oorlog……. (overigens ook in Iran moeten grote aantallen mensen, inclusief veel kinderen, zijn overleden als gevolg van de illegale VS sancties……)
December
6, 2020
Biden’s Record
On Race
by Jack
Delaney
Photograph
Source: Chuck Kennedy – CC
BY 2.0
It was the days of purple haze and
the post-civil rights movement that President-elect Joe Biden
cemented his political legacy, yet he was rarely on the right side of
history. The era was marked by assassinations of political leaders,
spurred a coalition opposing the Vietnam war, and produced police
violence carried out on demonstrators. The unrest set the stage for
Richard Nixon and advisor Lee Atwater’s southern
strategy.
Nixon’s ‘68 campaign strategy
relied on polished racist dog whistles and rhetoric promising law and
order, which delivered the southern vote along with the White House.
With a political realignment — where segregationist southern
Democrats found refuge within the GOP — political newcomer, Joe
Biden found opportunity.
Delaware’s Dixiecrat
Before the 1972 elections, then a
city government official, Biden launched a bid for the U.S. Senate.
In his campaign against Delaware’s Republican incumbent, J. Caleb
Boggs, Biden set himself apart from his opponent and supported the
integration of schools through federally mandated busing. Yet in a
few years following his first Senatorial win, he would reverse his
stance and sharpen his words.
After a deciding vote that nixed a
1974
anti-busing amendment, the freshman Senator faced backlash and
pressure from constituents. Biden’s vote against the ‘74
amendment would stand as his sole exception of supporting school
desegregation through federally mandated busing. After his
controversial vote, constituent outrage ensued. Parents began to
heckle the Senator at a town
hall meeting and he would promptly change his position to match
his base’s sentiments.
Through 1972 until the end of
federally mandated busing, Biden would join staunch segregationists —
Senators Strom Thurmond, James O. Eastland, Herman E. Talmadge, and
others — backing bills that would prevent the federal government
from enforcing school integration.
After the 1975 white anti-busing
riots in Boston, Biden joined with former Dixiecrat — North
Carolina Republican Jesse Helms — to introduce an anti-busing
amendment a year later. The proposal’s aim was to handcuff the
enforcement of school desegregation by limiting the federal
government from collecting data on integration. As reported by NPR,
Biden later said in a 1975
interview he supported a Constitutional amendment to end the
busing mandate.
In support of Helms’s amendment,
Biden would rise on the Senate floor stating,
“I have become convinced that busing is a bankrupt concept.”
Helms’s measure failed but Biden introduced a similar and more
bipartisan amendment
that barred funding for local governments assigning teachers to
schools based on race. Later that year, Biden issued a statement on
busing in an interview, calling
the policy, “[an] asinine concept, the utility of which has never
been proven to me.”
The New
York Times notes that
Biden proposed a 1976
measure that would block the Department of Justice (DOJ) from
treating busing as a form of desegregation. A year later the Senator
cosponsored an amendment
that limited federal funding from busing oversight while leading
legislation
that would limit court-ordered busing enforcement.
A year later, in 1977, Biden
remarked that some federal desegregation policies would “cause
his children to grow up in a racialized jungle.” Biden
continued with rhetoric that echoed Congress’s segregationists,
haranguing against “forced
busing” and arguing for states’
rights.
By 1982, Biden joined former
Dixiecrats to vote for a DOJ appropriations amendment that included a
section labeled
“the toughest anti-busing rider ever approved by either chamber of
Congress.” He then voted in favor of an amendment
that granted DOJ the ability “to remove or reduce the requirement
of busing in existing court decrees or judgments.”
A 1991 Supreme
Court decision would lead to a series of cases that would
ultimately end federally mandated busing. Almost 30 years later, a
2019
report released by Penn State and UCLA showed that classrooms
are overly segregated today.
New Jim Crow Joe
From the early 1980s up until
present day, racialized mass incarceration took hold — sponsored
by the war on drugs, heightened sentencing, and through the
empowerment of prosecutors and law enforcement. The
New Jim Crow author
Michelle Alexander writes, “Ninety percent of those admitted to
prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino, yet the
mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in
race-neutral terms, an adaptation to the needs and demands of the
current political climate. The New Jim Crow was born.”
Biden’s role in the genesis of
the New Jim Crow began during the Reagan years. As reported by The
Intercept, Biden
lobbied the Reagan administration to beef up law enforcement and
adopt harsher sentences. While courting Reagan, the Senator reached
across the aisle to find common ground with an old
friend.
Biden teamed up with Strom Thurmond
to introduce the Comprehensive
Control Act of 1984. The bill expanded penalties for marijuana
production and trafficking, permitted punitive legal strategies, and
included a civil
asset forfeiture clause. By 1986
and 1988
he would support and partly author two Anti-Drug Abuse Acts that
imposed stricter sentencing on crack compared to powder cocaine and
bolstered prison sentences for drug offenders.
During Biden’s first bid for the
White House, a 1987 Philadelphia
Inquirer piece reports
that he gloated about receiving
an award from Alabama’s former segregationist governor George
Wallace in 1973. Shortly thereafter, Biden delivered a stump
speech in Alabama, stating, “we [Delawareans] were on the
south’s side in the Civil War.” Continuing on the campaign trail,
he further remarked that he participated as a civil
rights activist in the 60s, yet the claim was unfounded.
After the Reagan-era, a 1991
peak in national crime escalated calls for law and order and was
followed by a media frenzy. In the ‘92 Presidential campaign, Bill
Clinton rebranded the Democratic Party as tough on crime, which paid
off and delivered the White House. Shortly after the Clinton victory,
Biden introduced The
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, also known as the
‘94 crime bill.
Biden was a substantial contributor
to the legislation and shepherded it through, rising on the Senate
floor boasting
that the liberal wing of the Democratic Party was responsible for 60
new death penalties, 70 enhanced penalties, 100,000 more cops, and
125,000 new prison cells. The Senator continued the next year,
standing
in support of the bill, “We have predators on our streets who
are beyond the pale….We have no other choice but to take them out
of society.”
The bill passed and was signed into
law by Clinton, imposing mandatory
minimum sentences, the “three
strikes you’re out rule”, and increased federal spending for
newly militarized law enforcement and prisons nationwide.
As the policies took shape, the war
on drugs and mass incarceration exploded, delivering the U.S. the
world’s largest prison population. No secret — by the 2000s, with
only 5 percent of the globe’s population, the U.S. had 25
percent of the world’s prison population. Data from the U.S.
Census shows that black people are five
times more likely to face incarceration than white people, while
a study
published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine showed
police murders skew excessively towards people of color.
Late Senate and Obama Years
Towards the twilight of Biden’s
Senate career, he pursued neoliberal
economic reforms and championed financial deregulations. For over
40 years — from 1984 until 2018 — Biden would support proposed
freezes and cuts to Social
Security spending, while people of color are disproportionately
served by Social Security income benefits.
He continued with deregulation
through the ‘90s and ‘00s. In 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
was introduced and proposed to eliminate Great Depression-era
financial regulations formed through the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.
The sweeping deregulatory bill paved the way and further incentivized
finance capital to pursue predatory lending, redlining,
and fiscal trickery which disproportionately
disadvantaged people of color. Biden supported and voted for the
bill.
Following the erasure of
Glass-Steagall, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer
Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), known as the bankruptcy bill, was
introduced. Through BAPCPA’s time in the legislative process, Biden
would offer three
amendments that hallowed existing statutes. The law would
unequally
impact people of color, and down the road, exacerbated the
student
debt crisis, impacting people of color at more
costly levels.
During the Obama-Biden years,
videos and reports of police murders of black people would surface.
Ferguson and Baltimore became centers of the uprisings that ensued in
2014 and 2015, respectively, and were precursors to the current Black
Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Yet the two-term administration didn’t
deliver the change that was promised in the ‘08 campaign.
Abroad it was also business as
usual for the Obama-Biden White House. The foreign policy apparatus
during the administration actively destabilized
regions, causing crises in Yemen,
Honduras,
Syria,
Somalia,
and Libya,
while continuing W. Bush-era operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and
Iraq.
The drone program would also surge
under Biden’s White House years. Since the drone warfare-era, the
administration amassed the highest number of civilian drone strike
casualties. As reported by the Bureau
of Investigative Journalism,
at least 380 to 801 civilians in the Middle East and Africa were
killed by drone strikes during Obama and Biden’s tenure.
For Latin Americans, the White
House also managed one of the largest
deportation efforts in U.S. history, while mass
graves of Latin American migrants went unchecked by the
administration. Over
two and half million migrants were deported and the
infrastructure
was left for Trump to inherit and bolster.
A May 2020 CNN
interview with Harvard professor, Dr. Cornel West, succinctly
summed
up the Obama-Biden years. “The system cannot reform itself.
We’ve tried black faces in high places. Too often our black
politicians, professional class, middle class become too accommodated
to the capitalist economy.” West continued, “The Black Lives
Matter movement emerged under a black President, a black Attorney
General, and a black Homeland Security, and they couldn’t deliver.”
On The Campaign Trail
Biden didn’t launch his campaign
with much
backing from the Democratic base, bundlers, or much of a vision.
The core of Biden’s messaging appealed to white
suburbanites, offering nothing more than a return to normalcy and
an alternative to Trump. Top Democrats, much like the base and
donors, were also initially skeptical of Biden’s path to victory.
According to Politico,
Biden’s former running mate Barack Obama allegedly remarked, “Don’t
underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” Obama then
supposedly told one Democratic candidate in Iowa, “And
you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden.”
Before Biden was thrusted into the
Democratic front runner spotlight, the former Vice President clashed
with future running mate, Kamala Harris, regarding his record on
busing during the debates. While Vice President-elect Harris has her
own controversial
record on criminal justice, the Biden camp deflected and muddied
the waters.
During the campaign, Biden would
falsely
and repeatedly claim that he was arrested after meeting with
Nelson Mandela while protesting apartheid in South Africa. He would
also state in an interview, “If you have a problem figuring out
whether you’re for me or Trump, then
you ain’t black,” which he later apologized for.
Peculiar phrases and malarkey
aside, it didn’t matter for the Biden coalition. The centrist
candidates dropped out and consolidated to crush an insurgent Bernie
Sanders challenge, delivering Biden key wins and the nomination.
Surrounding his primary victory
were potentially the
largest uprisings and movement in U.S. history. Following the
police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, mass rebellions
stormed nationwide — continuing ever since. The majority
of Americans support the BLM movement and the rebellions
against U.S. institutions.
With popular support behind BLM,
Biden didn’t seize the moment like during the post-civil rights
political realignment. Nonetheless, the black vote turned out to
deliver
him the White House. With that said, recent indications show a Biden
administration will take the black vote and the energy around BLM for
granted.
Following the police murder of
Walter
Wallace Jr. — a young black man experiencing a mental health
episode in Philadelphia — the then Presidential nominee condemned
the uprisings. Biden would then appear for remarks on the campaign
trail to address the hopelessly frustrated crowds, “There is no
excuse whatsoever for the looting and the violence. None whatsoever.”
The campaign also issued a written
statement in response, adding in a qualifying “but at the
same.”
The President-elect previously
denounced demonstrators in Portland,
Oregon and elsewhere. Prior to issuing statements, Biden has also
called for police to “shoot
‘em in the leg” and doubled down on that remark during a town
hall when asked about police de-escalation techniques.
The Biden transition team was also
considering former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for a top
cabinet slot but walked his appointment back after criticism. In
2014, Emanuel attempted to cover
up the police killing of black Chicagoan, Laquan McDonald, along
with gutting
the city’s social infrastructure for vulnerable communities.
Biden’s “Tranquilizing
Drug Of Gradualism”
Two years before Malcolm X was
assassinated, he delivered
a speech skewering white liberals, “The white liberal differs
from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more
deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical
than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the
one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and
benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of
the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or
tool in this political “football game” that is constantly raging
between the white liberals and white conservatives.”
Martin Luther King Jr. would share
similar sentiments on white centrists in his letter
from the Birmingham jailhouse, writing, “I must confess that
over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the
white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that
the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is
not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the
white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice;
who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a
positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
The warnings issued by X and King
ring true today.
Opposing full school integration
and using rhetorical pitches reminiscent of Atwater’s southern
strategy gave Biden the political capital he needed to rise through
the ranks and develop bipartisan favor. The racist war on drugs, mass
incarceration, rampant
disenfranchisement, the prison industrial complex, exploited
labor, and militarized
police forces didn’t magically appear.
Austerity and financial
deregulation further empowered conservatives and incentivized debt
profiteers to prey on vulnerable people. The continuation of endless
wars and coup d’états, building a mass deportation system, and
failing to leverage power to yield change had someone behind those
policies and inactions.
The policy failures that have
perpetuated a white supremacist society weren’t just lazily passed
and implemented — they were championed and safe-guarded. Biden’s
career has been built on working for white supremacy.
While securing the election by
placating voters of color and appealing to comfortable white
suburbanites — like his strategy in the early throes of his career
— has proven he will not build long-overdue and necessary
systematic justice. Rather than championing a popular and righteous
cause, he has countlessly gone out of his way to support and pay
homage to white supremacist notions and institutions, twisting his
record to the public. Though Biden’s record and words are clear,
“nothing
will fundamentally change.”
Like Biden, the U.S. has yet to
repent for its past and present. For any significant change to occur
in the Biden years and beyond, it will take a sustained mass movement
constantly agitating institutions. During the Biden years and
throughout Democratic strongholds, there will still be brutality,
police murders, and white supremacy. The only possible way for
meaningful change to occur — not symbolic victories — is for all
decent people to continuously take to the streets and, by any means
necessary, demand justice and freedom.
As put by Martin Luther King Jr.,
“this is no time to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”
Jack Delaney
is a former policy analyst. He worked on issues relating to health
care, disability, and labor policy, and is a member of the National
Writers Union.
=================================
Zie ook: ‘Nepnieuws en nep media? Hoe de VS echte journalistiek het zwijgen oplegt……….‘
