By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders granted an extensive interview to a journalist from The Washington Post. He discussed the perspectives of the Democratic Party in the upcoming US mid-term elections, the possibility that he will run for the presidency again in 2020 and, if he is elected to the presidency, remains steadfast in his decision to be non-military in the Democratic ranks.
According to the interviewer, James Hohmann, Sanders has polished his image a lot since he launched his presidential campaign three years ago. His answers are now clearer and stronger. “According to the surveys I’ve seen, today there are more people who consider themselves independent than those who call themselves Democrats or Republicans,” said Sanders answering a question.
“Frankly, there’s not a lot of love for the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party, and a lot people are disappointed in both of us. That’s why I don’t think it’s a bad idea to declare that I am independent, but that I want my followers, as independents, to enter the Democratic primaries to transform that party.”
When asked if he will run in 2020, the 76-year-old politician responds that he or she is most likely to run as a candidate to the presidency but he will take that decision at the appropriate time.
His name will then appear on the Democratic primary ballot in that state’s primary. But when he wins, he’ll formally turn down the nomination and will run as an independent in the general elections. That’s how he ensures he’ll not have any Democratic competition.
He says he mistrusts billionaires like industrialist Charles Koch and casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson who incites leaders Republicans to embrace Sanders’ agenda. He is also concerned about the number of Democratic billionaires who are entering the United States. and who push the party towards more plutocratic policies that tend to entrench what he already considers to be “an oligarchy that exercises control of the country.”
Several super-rich people have come forward, either on their own or through political representatives who have inserted them in their pay slips as potential presidential candidates for 2020, such as Howard Schultz, Mike Bloomberg, Mark Cuban, Tom Steyer, Bob Iger, Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey.
“Look, there are billionaires out there who are very decent people, who are smart people, who are well-meaning people,” Sanders said. “But they should have no better right to run for office than an equally decent and brilliant worker, but who cannot afford to raise the millions needed for a campaign.
“If you look at what’s going on in the Senate or the House of Representatives. Representatives, one finds that virtually every piece important piece of legislation that arrives there is funded by interests of the rich and powerful,” he said.
Sanders believes that many politicians from both parties do not criticize Israel for mistreating the Palestinians because they fear missing out on campaign money from big donors’ pockets. “Look, here’s the reality: I’m Jewish. I lived in Israel for a while when I was young. I believe in the need for Israel to be independent, free, safe and secure from attack by terrorists. But I also think it’s unacceptable that almost two of them millions of people live in Gaza, where the water is dirty, the youth unemployment is 60% and people can’t even get out of it. that area.”
“The reality is that, for many decades, Republicans and Democrats allowed this country to sign trade agreements that would benefit the major U.S. corporations, the industry, and the pharmaceutical company and Wall Street, but which were disastrous for the workers.”
In the interview, Senator Sanders urges the candidates in the mid-term elections to “have the courage to face the challenge of oligarchy.”
Sanders said that even candidates he doesn’t support or who aren’t aligned with him, are embracing the ideas he has presented, they are embracing him. which he values as a positive development. “The most important thing, and what we do our best to attract millions more people to the political process.”
“That’s why I think it’s important to talk to Trump’s supporters and say: Let’s face it, some of Trump’s supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic, but I don’t think most of them are. I think in many cases it’s about people who feel that the establishment has ignored them. And you know what? It’s true that the establishment has ignored them! Both political parties have ignored them!”
August 20, 2018.
By Marylín Luis Grillo
digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Posted: Monday 20 August 2018 | 09:11:00 PM
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
This August 20, the Palestinian cause has lost one of its greatest defenders. Uri Avnery – a journalist, intellectual, former member of parliament, a man of the left and of peace – died at the age of 94, ten days after suffering a stroke, in a hospital in Tel Aviv.
As a Jew in Nazi Germany, he had to flee in 1933 to Palestine, then a British colony. He saw Israel born, and, at the dawn of a mad youth, he was a Zionist guerrilla against the Arabs and fought with the Israeli army. However, his whole subsequent life was spent trying to create a stable territory in the Middle East and he strongly advocated the two-state solution within his own country.
“There were less than a hundred of us in the world who defended this idea in 1949,” he said in 2011, referring to the proposal to create a Palestinian state that would coexist with Israel, “but today the whole world supports it, as do the majority of Israelis.
“No fear, no prejudice.” With this slogan and from the strength of journalism, Avnery broke the taboos of Israeli society with his weekly Haolam Haze (This World), in which he defended peaceful coexistence with Palestinians and Arabs.
For his country’s own government, its lyrics were “public enemy number one”, as the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, put it. The newsroom suffered several attacks with firebombs and explosives, and was the victim of censorship and personal attacks.
In 1965 he established the left-wing political movement Haolam Hazeh-Koah Hadash, known as Meri, with whom he became a member of the Knesset (Parliament) from 1969, and in 1979 he regained a seat as a founding member of the left-wing Sheli party.
His political activities defended religious freedom in the Jewish state, civil marriage, appealed for the denuclearization of the Middle East and the rights of homosexuals, who were then forced to conceal their identity. He advocated a formal constitution.
Then, with the Oslo Peace Accords, he created Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc) in 1993, which distinguished itself from other Israeli peace movements by demanding the return of Palestinians expelled during the creation of Israel in 1948.
As a politician and journalist he was a person who took risks. Therefore, in these days when many remember him, Uri Avnery will be particularly remembered for his interview with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in 1982, in Lebanon, during the Israeli siege of Beirut.
Avnery went through his own ranks to talk to Arafat for about two hours. They would meet on other occasions. It would be a clear sign that peace knows no ethnicity, religion or nationality. Avnery would defend him (Arafat) as a companion, it would even be willing to give his life for him, in 2003, when he did not hesitate to serve him together with another compatriot as a human shield in the face of the imminent danger of an attack on the Palestinian leader.
His struggle, that of the man of letters and strength, was the struggle of a discontent with injustice and, above all, of a convinced “optimist”, the title he would give to his autobiography. He published a dozen books and received many international awards. He was also beaten up by his own country, which he criticised with the conviction of believing in “the capacity of these people to change course”.
He laid the foundations for critical journalism in Israel, for political dissent, the Tel Aviv press has had to acknowledge. “Ideological rivalries are disappearing in the face of their will to build a free and strong society,” said Israeli President Reuven Rivlin of the conservative Likud party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While Ayman Odeh, leader of the Joint Arab List party in Israel, honored the memory of “a man who dedicated his life to peace and the creation of a Palestinian state”.
His death occurs in dark moments of heavy repression in Gaza and the West Bank, of apartheid and extermination. It may seem like goodbye, but Uri Avnery was an eternal optimist and his struggle continues on both sides of the wall.
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