BY Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

In both countries, only candidates who are approved-of by the dictatorship are allowed for their names to appear on the ballot to be voted on (selected from) by the public. This pre-approval process is just as much of a dictatorship as is any other type of dictatorship.

A series of legal cases concerning whether donors to the 2016 U.S. Democratic Party Presidential primaries campaigns of Bernie Sanders had been cheated when the Democratic National Committee (DNC) violated its public verbal commitments and rigged the delegate-allocations etc., so that Hillary Clinton would win the Party’s nomination in 2016 regardless of what the Party’s voters wanted (“Bernie v. DNC” on 18 December 2015, and “Beck v. DNC” on 28 June 2016, which turned into the ultimate ruling, “Wilding v. DNC”, on 28 October 2019). That final ruling stated (p. 19):

The named plaintiffs representing the DNC donor class made their donations directly to the DNC [false: it was instead to that and (probably mainly) “donors to the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, and voters affiliated with the Democratic Party in various states” but the ruling pretended that this case wasn’t about rigging the Democratic primaries against Sanders], which [DNC] is a non-profit corporation. Because there are no allegations that any of them purchased or received any consumer goods or services, they are not “consumers” under the CPPA.  … the DNC is not subject to liability under the CPPA for the conduct set out in the complaint. As the plaintiffs alleged, the DNC is a nonprofit entity [a private non-profit corporation], and the CPPA limits the liability of non-profit organizations: “An action brought … against a non-profit organization shall not be based on membership in such organization, membership services, training or credentialing services, … or any other transaction, interaction, or dispute not arising from the purchase or sale of consumer goods or services in the ordinary course of business.” In the words of the D.C. Circuit, “the available evidence suggests that the D.C. Council [which is where the DNC’s corporate Charter is filed] acted specifically to shield non-profit organizations from statutory liability for membership-related disputes.” 

This is true also for the Republican Party. The primary elections are controlled by this charity, the Party, which has no obligation to the voters or to any candidate’s donors but only to the billionaires who virtually own and do control that corporation. But the Party itself can’t be sued even by them, because it has no governmental obligation, even to those few people — not even to its own members.

The members of the DNC and of the RNC control that Party, and all of the political campaigns are merely theater in order to present the appearance of ‘democracy’ — which the scientific studies that have been done have proven to be instead an aristocracy, a government by and for only the super-rich. If a donor to a candidate’s campaign does not have representation among the few “members” of that corporation, then any donation merely to a candidate’s campaign is wasted, but the Party’s fraud against such donors — and against all voters — is not legally actionable in the United States. As regards the voters, they are merely to be fooled — not to be served. The members of the DNC represent only their own patrons, and those patrons are the individuals who control the organizations (profit and non-profit corporations) that fund these politicians’ careers.

On 28 November 2020, The Real News Network headlined “2020 and the Fight Within the Democratic Party” and provided a good list of various billionaires’ corporations’ lobbyists who had recently been appointed to DNC membership.

Independent Voter News was right on 2 May 2017 when it headlined “DNC to Court: We Are a Private Corporation With No Obligation to Follow Our Rules”. Sanders had only two options then: either run an independent campaign against both Clinton and Trump, or do what the DNC tells him to do as a Senator; and he chose the latter course because — perhaps unlike this year’s RFK Jr. — Sanders found out too late to be able to meet the required deadlines in order for him to be able to get onto all of the 50 states’ Presidential ballots.

On 28 September 2023, the People’s Party analyzed the latest polls, and argued that the Democratic Party’s nominating RFK Jr. would far likelier defeat the Republican nominee than re-running Joe Biden would, and documented that, “The party would rather lose with an establishment candidate who keeps the corporate money flowing than win with a populist.” The DNC’s and RNC’s members, who are mainly corrupt politicians and big-corporate lobbyists, serve their billionaires, not the public.

Israel is also an aristocracy, which is controlled by billionaires, in the U.S. and in Israel. It’s an apartheid nation, and no apartheid nation can even possibly be a democracy. The subterfuges that Israels regime applies in order to fool its suckers to believe that Israel is a ‘democracy’ are different from the U.S. regime’s (which was summarized above):

On 5 November 2022, B’Tsalem headlined at Relief Web, “Not a ‘vibrant democracy’. This is apartheid” and explained how they do this:

Palestinian subjects living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip cannot participate in elections. … None of them are allowed to vote or run for Knesset, and they have no representation in the political institutions that dictate their lives. … Israel cites … to support its argument that residents of the Occupied Territories can influence their future through other political systems – the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. Yet this claim is detached from reality. … The Palestinian Authority can only govern very limited aspects of life in Palestinian urban centers, and usually requires Israel’s permission even for that, while Israel retains control over all major aspects of life – including the use of force, incarceration, the justice system, planning and building, freedom of movement (to and from Israel, Jordan and Gaza, as well as within the West Bank), resources, the population registry and many more. Regardless of whether elections for the Palestinian Authority are held – there have been none in many years – the true control remains in Israeli hands. … 

The message to Palestinians and their candidates is clear: Do not seek full equality and recognition of collective national rights. Demanding equality on matters such as land, immigration and national emblems is perceived as repudiating Israel’s constitutional principles, as it undermines the country’s definition as a Jewish state. Prime Minister Yair Lapid recently spelled out this principle, saying: “Twenty percent of the population are Arabs. We can and should give them civil equality… On the other hand, we will not give them national equality, because this is the only state the Jews have.”

Palestinian citizens who choose to participate in the electoral process have no choice but to enter the political playing field with their hands tied. The parties representing them are barred from challenging the fundamental principles of the regime that is dispossessing and oppressing them. They cannot seek to abolish the laws and systems that harm them, which are considered defining features of the Jewish state. They cannot fight for a core democratic tenet: full equality for all those living under the same regime. …

The perception that there are two separate regimes in this territory – a democracy on one side of the Green Line, within Israel’s sovereign borders, and a temporary military occupation on the other – is divorced from reality.

All of us, Jews and Palestinians alike, live in this area in a binational reality, under a single regime. However, not everyone will be permitted to vote in the coming elections, which will determine the government and our lives in the coming years. About half of the population – all the Palestinians who live in this area, whether they are citizens, permanent residents or subjects – are either fully or partially excluded from this decision-making process.

Here is an explanation (documented by links to its sources) of “Apartheid Laws in Israel – The Art of The Obfuscatory Formulation”.

https://theduran.com/america-and-israel-are-not-democracies/

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«Putin ist der Retter Russlands, der Westen wird von Teenagern regiert, und die Schweiz muss neutral bleiben»: Der frühere Marine-Offizier und UNO-Waffeninspektor Scott Ritter im großen Weltwoche-Gespräch.

(“Putin is the savior of Russia, the West is ruled by teenagers, and Switzerland must remain neutral”: Former naval officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter in a major Weltwoche conversation.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryZRXnqR5u8

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The Swiss weekly magazine Die Weltwoche claims it has obtained a confidential document from the Swiss Intelligence Service (NDB), said to be proof it was spied on by the authorities.

The bombshell revelation was made by the outlet on Wednesday. The two-page document claims the magazine “provides a platform for a Russian influence actor,” as NDB described former US intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter. The magazine hosted Ritter for a lengthy interview in late September.

Among other things, the NDB raised concerns over Ritter’s contributions to RT as well as other local media in which he discussed the benefits of Swiss neutrality, which some would argue the country has laid aside amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

According to the Swiss intel service, the articles penned by the former American military officer are designed to influence the “Western information space.” The NDB claimed Ritter has been spreading “Russian propaganda and disinformation,” as well as “hate speech.” The former US officer also attended a public event in Switzerland in late September, which the spy agency characterized as dedicated to dissemination of “Russian propaganda.”

The NDB assessment concludes that Switzerland has been subjected to complex Russian influence activities, with Moscow allegedly making use of Swiss “media, opinion leaders, politicians, and topics like neutrality” to exert pressure on the country and influence local opinions in favor of Russia.

The document did not go into any specifics about how exactly media and local opinion leaders allegedly ended up under the sway of Russia, the magazine noted. The publication itself was targeted by the service simply “because it stands for neutrality rather than taking sides in the Ukraine conflict,” Die Weltwoche suggested.

The outlet questioned how “surveillance of a media organization aligns with constitutional press freedom” as well as how an apparent intervention into domestic politics ended up within the competence of the NDB.

“Apparently, the Ukraine conflict has transformed our country back into a surveillance state, which was supposedly overcome with a significant effort in the early 1990s,” Die Weltwoche concluded.

https://www.rt.com/news/584920-ritter-swiss-magazine-spying/

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BY Jacob Heilbrunn

Gateway to Statesmanship: Selections From Xenophon to Churchill, Edited and with an introduction by John A. Burtka IV, Gateway Editions, 344 pages 

In 2022, Henry Kissinger published his final book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy. In it, Kissinger profiled six outstanding leaders, ranging from the first post-war German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom he had known and admired. Kissinger’s aim was to recount their skill and dexterity as statesmen, both at home and abroad, as representative men and women worthy of emulation. Yet in his conclusion, Kissinger confessed to some anxiety about the future of the West. “The West’s secondary schools and universities,” he wrote, “remain very good at educating activists and technicians; they have wandered from their mission of forming citizens—among them, potential statesmen.”

John A. Burtka IV, a former Executive Director of The American Conservative, does not mention Kissinger in his new book, Statesmanship, but it seems unlikely that he would quarrel with his somber verdict. Burtka is the president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an organization founded in 1953 that is dedicated to promoting conservative thought and whose first president was William F. Buckley, Jr. Whether many of the authors that Burtka excerpts in his comprehensive volume should be considered conservative is dubious. But Burtka has not set out to produce an ideological tract; rather, he offers a grand tour of thinkers ranging from Aristotle to al-Farabi, from Aquinas to Winston Churchill. The result is a highly stimulating book.

In his introduction, Burtka observes that something of a crisis of faith about elites has developed in Western societies. He notes that this phenomenon is not unprecedented and that “most individuals in leadership positions in most countries for most of the time have been quite mediocre or even terrible.” Rather than submit passively, however, to this melancholy state of affairs, Burtka suggests that a literary tradition designed to cultivate new leaders, called “mirrors-for-princes,” is ripe for rehabilitation. Burtka points to the texts written by Xenophon, Cicero, Han Fei, Machiavelli, and Erasmus, among others, as guides for the perplexed. 

These intellectual worthies weren’t engaged in esoteric writings, but sought to influence leading figures such as Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. Burtka quite rightly complains that this tradition has fallen into abeyance as the contemporary educational system privileges, to purloin the newly fashionable term, secondary literature over primary sources and a fortiori the social sciences over moral philosophy and theology. The mental impoverishment about which Kissinger complained can be traced directly to this development. Today’s academic epigones, in other words, do not want the source to be with you.

Burtka does. He divides the mirror-for-princes tradition into four periods—ancient, medieval, renaissance, and modern. He sees three texts as of fundamental importance from the ancient world: Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and Cicero’s On Moral Duties. According to Burtka, Xenophon does not romanticize Cyrus: “His portrait of Cyrus is strikingly honest about what it takes to lead and what tactics can be deployed by leaders to win men and women to themselves.” Burtka is similarly charitable in his account of Aristotle’s ideal leader, arguing that the true statesman is not a study in arrogance but understands how to reconcile the demands of magnanimity and honor. “When the statesman is acting on behalf of the public or the national interest,” he writes, “the Churchillian qualities described by Aristotle can serve to command respect and inspire others toward greatness.” 

All this is a warm-up for Cicero’s On Moral Duties. “Looking beyond his impending demise,” Burtka explains, “Cicero wrote the book to his son, staking his hopes on future generations that might heed his advice on manners and morals.”

The high-water mark for the “mirrors-to-princes” tradition that Burtka so fervently extols arrived with the Renaissance, when thinkers such as Machiavelli and Erasmus propounded new doctrines for statesmen to follow. Did Machiavelli go astray in lowering the sights of man, as the famous Straussian phrase had it? Or was he a prudent realist who simply acknowledged new modes and orders? Burtka usefully contrasts the Florentine diplomat and philosopher with the humanist Erasmus. Burtka’s Machiavelli is relentlessly practical, disdainful of philosophers who lack the ability to deal with the quotidian realities of establishing and maintaining political rule. For Machiavelli, character matters less than cunning. Erasmus took a different view. He lauded Cicero in his book The Education of a Christian Prince, emphasizing the importance of such precepts as duty, discipline and order. He pointed to the tuition that Emperor Charles V received as a prince from the future Pope Adrian VI as emblematic of the humanistic principles that it was imperative to transmit.

Burtka fast-forwards to modernity, noting that, while the popularity of the mirrors-for-princes tradition may have declined as democracies supplanted monarchies, it’s useful to turn to several modern texts that offer wise counsel for aspiring statesmen, including George Washington’s “Farewell Address,” Theodore Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic,” Winston Churchill’s “Consistency in Politics,” and Charles de Gaulle’s Edge of the Sword. 

According to Burtka, Washington struck the right balance between self-assertion and hubris. He warned against entangling alliances and called for “liberal intercourse with all Nations.” His moral probity and accomplishments, Burtka avers, “place him among a handful of statesmen at the pinnacle of political leadership in the. West, and his ‘Farewell Address’ deserves to be included in the pantheon of the mirrors-for-princes tradition.”

By the twentieth century, the moral virtues that Washington exemplified were eclipsed by less self-effacing qualities—charisma, personality, will. Burtka suggests that Roosevelt, Churchill, and de Gaulle, who embodied both reform-minded and conservative tendencies, produced writings on statesmanship that carry a “personalized tone and individuality characteristic of their age, even if their observations are rooted in permanent realities.” All shared the belief that the great statesman could leave a permanent impression upon history rather than merely serving as the playthings of broader historical forces. 

What explains the contemporary neglect of, if not hostility toward, the study of statesmanship? One reason is the precipitous decline of diplomatic history and an overemphasis on materialism as the moving force in history. Another is the urge to cut the great and mighty down to size, a phenomenon that was bolstered by Lytton Strachey’s mischievous study Eminent Victorians, which almost overnight transformed figures of pious veneration into hypocritical objects of raillery. Published in 1918, the final year of the Great War, it set the stage for successive waves of revisionist history written from what Strachey had called “a slightly cynical standpoint.” 

In depicting various British grandees as humbugs and frauds, he helped to undermine the unquestioning faith in the nobility that had prevailed during the nineteenth century and suffered a battering during World War I. Gone was the complacent self-assurance expressed by great Victorians such as Lord Macaulay during a speech at Glasgow College in April 1847: “Ever since I began to make observations on the state of my country, I have been seeing nothing but growth, and hearing of nothing but decay.”

Still, Macaulay’s remark provides a useful reminder that too much gloom about a nation’s prospects can devolve into a stale exercise in alarmism. Yet at a moment when American elites are increasingly coming into bad odor, Burtka’s call for a return to time-tested principles of leadership merits a wide readership. His collation of great texts from the past offers aspiring statesmen, or at least those who do not shy from, let alone revile, the term, a valuable guide for the present.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-mirror-to-citizens/

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