Marianne Williamson, vote uncommitted, and the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primary

Media-disappeared progressive candidate Marianne Williamson suspended her campaign in the Democratic Party's presidential primary February 7th, but then unsuspended it on the 28th.  The North Carolina Democratic Party and others denied voters a choice – the only options were Joe Biden and uncommitted (were they required by law to allow even an uncommitted option?).  I think the Florida Democrats aren't even having a primary.  In 2024 it becomes surprising that Bernie Sanders was even given a chance in past years.  I've never experienced a Democratic Party presidential primary without even a longshot option to vote for, someone other than a Biden, Obama, or Clinton-type neoliberal warmonger, though there was that time NC had a "caucus" or something.  I don't think it was like a real Iowa-type caucus, but I participated for Dennis J Kucinich, and when a warmonger won the nomination I voted for the Green Party candidate, which I anticipate doing again in 2024.  Dean Phillips suspended his campaign and endorsed Biden March 6th.  

Maybe I should have voted uncommitted (what are the uncommitted delegates going to vote for at the DNC this summer?), but I just didn't vote on the presidential candidate.  There wasn't a write-in option in the NC primary.  I supported the campaign to vote uncommitted in Michigan, etc., but on NPR it was portrayed as merely a way to send a message to the Biden administration, that it needs to shape up for the general election, to literally save the administration and people in Congress from voter anger, highlighting Arab-American, Muslim, and Black voters (the "suburban voters" are just so reactionary?).  At least one campaigner in Michigan was even described as or claimed to be a longtime and continuing Biden supporter.  Only a few people, maybe just regular citizens, came across as seriously angry, potential 'Dump Biden,' "Anyone But Biden," #NeverBiden voters.  Trump might be more pro-Israel even than Biden, but Biden has presided over and abetted the killing of somewhere over 31,000 Palestinians (the number is being kept quiet now, and how does it compare to the war in Ukraine?  The Ukraine figures are also rarely mentioned here.), the majority not combatants, with daily allegations of torture, execution of POWs or prisoners Israel takes for whatever reason (just working in a hospital, being a non-combatant nurse or doctor?), ethnic cleansing, targeting civilian property, assassinating journalists, blowing up ambulances (and their crews) and medical facilities, and other crimes; Biden bombs and threatens Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and other countries in the region, etc., and voters are supposed to reward this administration, so reminiscent now of Bush-Cheney, with a second term?   And what further damage would Biden do if given another four years?  Start or 'get into' a war in East Asia, Africa, or Latin America?  Yemen?  Haiti?  Trump is bad, but Biden is the president who presided over all of this, and not as an international bystander; he does everything he can to funnel money and weapons to Israel (bloody, armed to the teeth Israel can't fight ragtag guerilla Hamas et al. on its own???  Really??); Biden whole-heartedly affirms and repeats Israel's propaganda about beheadings, etc.; he has his ambassador to the UN shield Israel; and no doubt he encourages the rest of the "West" to likewise back and abet Israel.  Biden has the US military threatening and bombing the region so Israel can focus on making Palestine run red with mostly civilian blood.  I think there was something about Aaron Bushnell alleging that US personnel are directly involved in the fighting in Palestine, and there are the increasing stories about NATO forces being directly involved in the fighting in Ukraine. The majority of the fighting and starvation in Palestine is in the Gaza Strip, but there isn't peace in the West Bank, where there are even airstrikes and mass raids by settlers going on, and both Jewish Israeli and Israeli-Arab peace actions are being repressed.  Biden has also set the stage for a second Trump administration in the Middle East.  No "two-state solution;" little or no easing of tensions with Iran and others; and there are still US bases in Iraq and an occupation force in Syria.  The board is set if Trump decides to increase bombing or go to outright war with Syria or Iran.  Maybe something could happen in the Horn of Africa, Haiti, or Latin America soon, and there was talk of invading Mexico, like  "Western" governments often did 100-200 years ago.  Trump is a heinous warmonger – but the Democrats have done all of this, and there is the bipartisan interest in a war over Taiwan and repressing free speech, though the targets vary somewhat between the two warmonger parties. 

To me "defeat Trump" implies 'vote for Biden,' but on Palestine protest and direct action like blocking weapon shipments is the only option, barring something like a Green Jill Stein win or protest of such magnitude that it drives out the occupant of the White House.  Do to Biden what he and Obama did in Ukraine and Honduras.  And Trump probably had a hand in driving out Evo Morales in Bolivia and the attempted coups in Venezuela, etc. (and apparently Morales is in the running for 2025).

Someone connected to the Israeli government (advising the Ministry of Security – on what?) was on the BBC just now, saying that the al-Shifa Hospital is something along the lines of a 'terrorist compound during this war, full of hundreds of terrorists who beheaded babies, and the war will end sooner if the international media gets in line and uses this language.'  I'm surprised he didn't just say 'terror hospital.'  Is the al-Shifa Hospital still in use as a hospital?  I don't know what international law would say about military use of a ruined hospital, left by Israel after earlier attacks on a medical facility.  This is what Biden can't seem to even distance himself from, and he is directly involved in what Israel does, and therefore all Americans are pulled into it.  Even Republican presidents didn't give Israel everything it wanted in the 20th century.

Speaking of international law, what about the stationing of Ukrainian soldiers in apartment blocks inhabited by civilians, openly talked about recently?  I don't know, is that permitted?  And then if Russia were to target the soldiers it might also harm the civilians.  Americans are allowed to be anti-war on Palestine, and NPR covers and even advertises protests here, but opposition to the other war Biden promotes has to be covered up in the mainstream media.  For whatever reason there seems to be less opposition to the US role in Ukraine, though the media still promotes it heavily.  There was supposed to have been a protest in February in DC, for the second year in a row.  The media focuses on the stiffling of anti-war sentiment in Russia, when they are doing the same thing here, and back in the "War on Terror," now being copied by Israel.

I think Marianne Williamson voiced a soft line on the war in Palestine, but it would probably be an improvement over what Biden and Trump are offering.  RFK Jr seems to be following Biden regarding the war, really putting a gaping hole in his status on the left.  Regular citizen war opponents seemed soft on a recent NPR call-in show – and are there fewer of those in recent years, because people might argue for prohibited viewpoints?  Williamson is still running and seeking donations (see her campaign store), but 2024 is now set as a repeat of Biden versus Trump, though they are both old and maybe something will happen to remove one or both of them by January.  I think Biden represents bad policy regardless of age.  I thought Biden wanted to avoid more regime change wars, and "pivot" to a great East Asian cold or hot conflict, but now his administration is beset by wars, and would Trump focus on domestic repression, as before?

I'm surprised that the media coverage isn't as lurid as it was regarding January 6, 2021, but now the lurid news reminiscent of fascism is coming out of the war in Palestine.  I missed most of the State of the Union speech and found a previous one by Biden unseemly, besides the warmongering.  Vote for Biden for abortion, "Bidenomics," and because the Republicans are so awful and 'icky,' even fascistic – but the Middle East and Europe will bleed and free speech here will be targeted, etc.  Climate change, surging immigration (related to US economic warfare), and the wealth gap continue as well.  I ended up overshadowing:

In 2020 Williamson ended her campaign January 10th and endorsed Sanders February 23rd that year. 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Williamson_2024_presidential_campaign

There are also videos associated with these emails:

February 28th – UNSUSPENDING

Dear [ ],

 

As of today, I am unsuspending my Presidential campaign.
All of us have noticed America’s political dynamics are moving in a disturbing direction. Donald Trump’s power is on the incline, and President Biden’s is on the decline. More and more people are saying the quiet part out loud: that despite the fact that the President deserves credit for many of his accomplishments, he is clearly a weak candidate to defeat Donald Trump in 2024.

I, however, am not. My ability to arouse in Americans the angels of our better nature is the most powerful antidote to Trump’s dark and authoritarian vision.

I suspended my campaign because we were losing the horse race. But there is something much bigger than the horse race that’s at stake here. In the words of Mohammed Ali, ‘When the mission is right, the odds don’t matter.”

We cannot sit idly by while the D.C. political class sleepwalks this country into disaster. Too many have followed the directives of the status quo for too long, but we are awakening now. We are ready to act, to take the wheel of history into our hands and turn it in another direction.

We need a President who stands for a new beginning in America, and whether I can help do that as President or in some other way, unsuspending the campaign is a necessary next step.

We will win on the promise of restoring America’s middle class and waging peace both domestically and internationally. From #MedicareForAll to #CeasefireNow in exchange for the hostages, from tuition free college and tech school to a guaranteed living wage, from waging peace to repudiating America’s forever war machine, from subsidized child care to ending America’s War on Drugs, our platform is the winning one.

 

I will respond to the cult-like personality of Donald Trump with a light-filled vision of hope and possibility. We will become once again a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” at a time when corporate interests have taken Washington hostage.

 

I hope you are as moved by this vision as I am. You have supported the campaign before, and I hope you feel moved to support it again.

 

We must rise to the occasion like never before; so much is riding on what we do now. Even if the most I can do is influence the President, that in itself is a goal worth striving for. For those of us who are deeply committed to Trump not returning to the White House, it’s imperative that we do everything possible to help mount a winning campaign in 2024.

With gratitude and conviction,

P.S. Stand with me for an Economic Bill of Rights and a New Chapter in American history...   Donate now to help share our message and keep Trump out of the White House! February 7th  – Much to be Grateful For Dear [ ],   First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you don’t win :)…   I appreciate greatly all the incredible people who accompanied me on our political journey over the last ten months. While the level of our failure is obvious to all, a level of success is real nonetheless. We articulated deeper, more authentic truths than those regularly acknowledged by the political establishment. And I’m not only glad we did that; I’m proud of it. We spoke for those most ignored in America today and whose wounds are most in need of healing. I wish I could have reached them. I know we would have provided hope.   I will never be able to fully express my gratitude to those who supported the campaign — as donors, as volunteers, as team members, and more. I hope the blessings you have shown me will be reflected in your life many times over. There are memories of support and kindness that I cherish, carrying an emotional fragrance that will linger in my heart forever.   In the final analysis I think the only real failure in life is that which we fail to learn from. I have learned so much already and I know that I will learn more. Processing this experience will itself be an ongoing journey, and forgiveness will guide me as I move through it. I will not allow the mental torment of all the woulda shoulda couldas to tie me to the past, but rather I will keep my eye on the larger story. In ways I cannot yet see, none of this will have been in vain. There are hidden gifts that have only just begun to reveal themselves.   Among those gifts are seeds I know we dropped into the hearts of many — those who will in their own time, in their own way, carry our ideas forward. Although as of today we are suspending our campaign, our platform — with its deep dive into many issues — will remain on Marianne2024.com. I hope future candidates will take what works for them, drinking from the well of information we prepared. My team and I brought to the table some great ideas, and I will take pleasure when I see them live on in campaigns and candidates yet to be created.   I wish I could give a personal hug to every person who encouraged me on this journey. So many had faith and believed in what was possible. While we did not succeed at running a winning political campaign, I know in my heart that we impacted the political ethers. As with every other aspect of my career over the last forty years, I know how ideas float through the air forming ever new designs. I will see and hear things in different situations and through different voices, and I will smile a small internal smile knowing in my heart where that came from.    I am wishing you all the love in the world, with a thanks more sincere than you can possibly imagine. May love yet prevail, in our hearts and in the world.    With endless gratitude, P.S. All donations from this point forward will go toward campaign debt retirement... Thank you for your support. 🙏

March issue of Towards ML Unity published

A new issue of Towards Marxist-Leninist Unity was published March 16th, with apologies from the editor for it being delayed and shorter than usual (it is?), and it will be posted at:  www.mltranslations.net   Content for the next issue, to come out in May, should be sent during April; comments and criticism of the are also welcome.  

Contents:

As Israel Continues Its Genocidal Attacks on the Palestinians,
Biden Widens the War in the Middle East

Preliminary Remarks:
The Decline of US Imperialism and the Rise of Trump’s “Make America Great Again

Again on the Rip-Off of Medicare by the Pharmaceutical Companies

Proposal for U.S. Presidential Election: Vote a Blank Ballot

U.S. rice, widely consumed in Haiti, is polluted with heavy metals, study finds

Short: Congestion Pricing to be Implemented this June

Short: The Majority of People in New York City are Living at or Near the Poverty Line

Women's Emancipation and Socialism, Part I

Women's Emancipation and Socialism, Part II

Sección en español

La emancipación de la mujer y el socialismo, Parte I

La emancipación de la mujer y el socialismo, Parte II

From "In a Dark Time:" The words of a US nuclear test observer

This is an excerpt from With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush, and Nuclear War, by Robert Scheer, New York:  Random House, Inc., 1982, London:  Martin Secker and Warburg, Ltd., 1983, excerpted in In a Dark Time  (Images for Survival), edited by Robert Jay Lifton and Nicholas Humphrey, Harvard University Press, 1984 (pages 75-76).  

An account from a "U.S. atom test observer, Christmas Island:"

"The birds were the things we could see all the time.  They were superb specimens of life...really quite exquisite...phenomenal creatures.  Albatrosses will fly for days, skimming a few inches above the surface of the water.  These birds have tremendously long wings and tails, and beaks that are as if fashioned for another purpose.  You don't see what these birds are about from their design, they are just beautiful creatures.  Watching them is a wonder.  That is what I didn't expect...

We were standing around waiting for this bomb to go off, which we had been told was a very small one, so no one was particularly upset.  Even though I'd never seen one, I figured, well, these guys know what is going to happen.  They know what the dangers are and we've been adequately briefed and we all have our radiation meters on... No worry....

Anyway, we were standing around, and the countdown comes in over the radio.  And we knew roughly where the designated ground zero would be and about how high.

And suddenly I could see all these birds, I could see the birds that I'd been watching for days before.  They were now suddenly visible through the opaque visor of my helmet.  And they were smoking. Their feathers were on fire.  And they were doing cartwheels.  And the light persisted for some time.  It was instantaneously bright, but wasn't instantaneous, because it stayed and it changed its composition slightly.  Several seconds, it seemed like, long enough for me to see birds crash into the water. They were sizzling, smoking.  They weren't vaporized, it's just that they were absorbing such intense radiation that they were being consumed by the heat.  Their feathers were on fire.  They were blinded.  And so far there was no shock, none of the blast damage we talk about when we discuss the effects of nuclear weapons.  Instead there were just these smoking, twisting, hideously contorted birds crashing into things.  And then I could see vapor rising from the inner lagoon as the surface of the water was heated by this intense flash."

I also have possibly misremembered images in my mind of blackened but hopping sparrows in Hiroshima (depicted in Barefoot Gen / Hadashi no Gen?) and one or more blinded eagles after a Soviet (?) nuclear test that survived the explosions but would probably die anyway 'off camera.'  It seems like the albatrosses were dying or injured dangerously close to the observers.  Were they actually killed by the nuclear flash and/or radiation in the immediate explosion, or only burned and blinded, presumably dying from their injuries or radiation poisoning later?  Maybe it's like an oil spill.  There might be predatory fish, but there is also the image of river fish swimming into the ruins of Hiroshima around August 1945 and immediately turning over dead [dramatization?][an autobiographical work, but there could be artistic license].  I've wondered how radiation in the water could kill that fast.  I think other Pacific nuclear tests threw up bits of radioactive sea life, but this one evidently exploded in the air.  One or more albatross species, though probably different from those in the Pacific Ocean, forage in the Atlantic off of  North Carolina. 

How far do Biden, Putin, and Xi intend to go?  In a Dark Time, a book of excerpts relating to nuclear war, shows how much people both here and in Europe feared and expected nuclear war in the early 80's, under Reagan, and now it is very much out of mind, but the weapons still exist and are being updated and improved, though there have been the recent scandals with US personnel and Britain's hardware.  Are nuclear weapons just for theatre, so the government and the military-industrial complex can scare the American public and other countries, though with extreme expense and danger, or have people foolishly looked away for three decades?  The book quotes Mao saying to Anna Louise Strong in August 1960 that "The atomic bomb is a paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people.  It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't."  The Cuban government is supposed to have been ready, like the US, to go nuclear in late October 1962.  NATO might have wanted to send a message to the world in the 80's, and today, that nuclear war can be limited and "winnable," and the "West" is preparing for a direct war with Russia and/or China today and is already fighting a proxy war with Russia and preparing the ground around China.  There are also other disputes that could become nuclear wars, in theory without US input.  Governments often bring up the threat of their nuclear weapons, recently in Israel and Russia.  We might find out the degree of terribleness in the 21st century.  I would like to have a bomb shelter, though it might not be of much use in an actual nuclear war.  There are or were at least two historic public fallout shelters with radiation signs in downtown Durham, and an abandoned communication facility hardened for nuclear war in Chatham County.  How sure are we about what would happen to the environment in a nuclear war? 

I thought of this passage with the anniversary of Castle Bravo, the largest US nuclear test, March 1, 1954, at Bikini Atoll (in the Republic of the Marshall Islands), unexpectedly large and resulting in one human death outright and illnesses later on, but this incident seems to be from Kritimati (Christmas Island) in the Republic of Kiribati, where the UK and US conducted nuclear tests (November 8, 1957 to September 23, 1958 and April 25 to July 11, 1962 respectively).  Perhaps this incident is from one of the US tests in the spring or summer of 1962 [See:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiritimati and  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo ].  There is an apparently unrelated Australian Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean [ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Island ].

[Patrick Blackett, president of the Royal Society (UK?)  in 1956 (?) claimed that "Once a nation bases its security on an absolute weapon, such as the atom bomb, it becomes psychologically necessary to believe in an absolute enemy." (page 27)

n

Speaking to the war in Palestine – Philip Payne, County Inspector of Schools, wrote to the The Times of London, May 22, 1981:  "Even if the worst does not happen, at least until our present children are grown up, we must still take into account the effect of living one's most formative years under the "protection" of the nuclear deterrent"... 

"What may our children learn from this?  They learn that a community may call itself civilised and yet possess weapons which would once have been regarded as barbarous beyond belief.  The middle-aged and old can perhaps preserve their innate sense of what it means to be civilised, having been brought up at a time when an attack on a field ambulance or an unarmed village provoked feelings of indignation.  How will it be for our children, brought up to regard the infliction of widespread devastation on civilians as something we, in certain circumstances, may be forced to do?  Surely, in deploying such weapons, we erode the moral base of what we are out to defend.  

On several occasions I have sat in on discussions lessons when school children have brought up the question of the Bomb.  Many have come to accept that they may not live out their lives in full; they have also learned (from their elders) that nothing can be done.  Some, quite literally, smile about it.  Perhaps they confuse..." (page 87)

Turkish poet Nâzim Hikmet ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nâzım_Hikmet ) "Of Life," 1950: 

This life is not a joke

You must take it seriously,

Seriously enough to find yourself

Up against a wall, maybe, with your wrists bound.   

(page 120) 

Quotes from Erich Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1974), regarding life without life; Martin EP Seligman's Helplessness (1975), regarding US POWs held during the Vietnam War; US poet Robert Lowell on an Ahab?  Churchill's July 6, 1944 secret memorandum on the possible use of chemical weapons against Germany; the 1950 Report of the US Hoover Commission, "Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply" (and in 2024); Stanley Loomis on the September Massacres in Paris in 1792 (accurate?), Orwell in the Spanish Civil War, Galway Kinnell, Rose Shapiro, Franz Jaggerstatter (an Austrian farmer executed for refusing to serve in the German military in 1943), Joel Kovel, Ernest Crosby, Thomas Merton, the 1939 "Ballad for Americans" by Robeson and Robinson, Alia Johnson "Why We Should Drop the Bombs" (1981 poem), historical examples of war, descriptions of nuclear explosions, literature, poets, [futurism, Revelation, William Blake, Milton, Shakespeare, Omar Bradley,] etc.  

TE Lawrence once wrote to someone that "Perhaps in determinism complete lies the perfect peace I have so longed for.  Free-will, I've tried, and rejected it."

Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, in 1914:  "Even if we are destroyed, England will at least lose India."

NSC-68 in 1950:  "The only deterrent we can present"..."is evidence that we can make any of the critical points which we cannot hold the occasion for a global war of annihilation."

A US soldier who killed a soldier of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, with a knife, speaking in 1974 (?):  "I felt sorry.  I don't know why I felt sorry.  John Wayne never felt sorry."