February 19, 2024: ‘Hamas-Gaza is MIA’
US calls for cease-fire at UN; More on the Biden brand; Lula and Hitler
We hope our American readers are enjoying the long President’s Day weekend. Today’s edition is a brief news update; we’ll be back to the full version of The Scroll tomorrow.
→Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Sunday that Hamas’ leadership abroad is trying to replace Yahya Sinwar. Gallant said that Sinwar and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif have been largely out of contact since January, and that the group’s international leadership does not “trust” its commanders in Gaza. “Hamas-Gaza is MIA, there is no one to talk to among leadership on the ground,” Gallant said. The defense minister also said that Hamas has lost its “fighting spirit,” and that all that “stands between them and a complete collapse as a military system is a decision by the IDF.” Also on Sunday, the IDF announced that its special forces had discovered vehicles from the Nir Oz kibbutz and medicine with the names of Israeli hostages on it at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. As The Times of Israel reports:
The IDF said some of the terror operatives detained at the hospital were dressed up as hospital staff. Other suspects who were holed up at the hospital included many who participated in the October 7 massacre and have links to the hostages held by the terror group, it said.
→In what may be related news, Reuters reported Monday that the United States had proposed a draft UN Security Council Resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and opposing an Israeli ground operation in Rafah. According to Reuters, the draft text states that “a major ground offensive into Rafah would result in further harm to civilians” and have “serious implications for regional peace and security,” and therefore “should not proceed under current circumstances.” The draft text also condemns “any attempt at demographic or territorial changes in Gaza that would violate international law.”
→Jim Biden used his brother Joe’s name to promote a shady healthcare company, discussed obtaining equity and a board seat for Joe, and suggested to potential business partners that Joe could promote their companies in future political campaigns, before cutting ties to avoid embarrassing Joe politically, according to an investigation in Politico. The revelations come from Jim Biden’s involvement with Americore, a defunct healthcare company that is now under criminal investigation for Medicare fraud. Jim Biden also promised Americore executives (falsely, it turned out) that he could obtain foreign investment from Qatar, while Jim and Hunter Biden met with the company’s CEO to discuss securing investment from the Chinese energy company CEFC.
→In remarks on Sunday, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva called Israel’s Gaza war a “genocide” against “women and children” and said that its only historical precedent was “when Hitler decided to kill Jews.” Israel declared Lula persona non grata on Monday in protest.
On Presidents Day, Let Us Honor the ‘Little Magician’
Martin Van Buren created the machinery of mass political parties in America, opening the way for ordinary people to be heard—until so-called ‘reformers’ weakened the parties, inadvertently creating today’s plutocratic politics
By Michael Lind
This Presidents Day, I propose a toast to Martin Van Buren—a president who looms large in the history of American democracy, although historians far too often overlook his stature.
His metaphorical stature, that is. In height, “the Little Magician,” at 5 feet, 6 inches, is tied for our second-shortest president with Benjamin Harrison, standing above only James “Little Jemmy” Madison. But although the Little Magician was altitude-challenged compared to other Oval Officers, including the three tallest—Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Donald J. Trump—he helped to democratize American politics by developing the national political party as a mass organization that could promote the interests of ordinary citizens.
The son of a tavern owner, Van Buren, who spoke Dutch before he learned English, sided with small farmers against the Dutch “patroons” of the Hudson River Valley and thought of politics as democracy versus aristocracy. In the context of the time, when public works projects tended to enrich the already rich and well-connected, the opposition of small-government Jacksonians like Van Buren to the Second Bank of the United States and to ambitious national economic development schemes like Henry Clay’s American System made emotional if not economic sense.
Having used his skills to build a political machine in New York called the Albany Regency, “the careful Dutchman” created the national political coalition that elected Andrew Jackson in 1828. In 1832, “the Great Manager,” as he was now known, orchestrated the first national convention of the Democratic Party. While the Anti-Masonic and National Republican parties had held conventions before, the Democratic Party outlived them; it survived in name to this day. In 1848 Van Buren broke with his own Democrats over slavery and ran again for president as candidate for the Free Soil Party.
Van Buren succeeded John C. Calhoun as Andrew Jackson’s second vice president in 1832. In 1836, he became the second Democratic president of the United States. But it was downhill from there. “The American Talleyrand” proved less effective as a chief executive than a behind-the-scenes wire-puller, in a single term blighted by economic crisis, controversies over Canada and the Republic of Texas, and his continuation of Jackson’s brutal “Indian removal” policy in the South.
Both the presidential and post-presidential careers of “Martin Van Ruin” were failures. But the institution he helped to shape, the national party that selected presidential candidates in conventions, often after multiple ballots that filtered out all but the most electable candidates, meaning those who were agreeable to the most factions in the party, survived up until the 1970s.
The American political party system that Van Buren helped to create did not die of old age. It was murdered by well-meaning reformers, who promoted the use of state primaries or caucuses open to the public instead of conventions run by state politicians. The primaries and caucuses got rid of the corrupt bosses, all right—only to replace them with ideological zealots on both the left and the right who tend to be unrepresentative of the broader public and who are inclined to treat politics as an arena for self-expression or moral crusades, rather than compromise.
The result of the death of the party machines that Van Buren pioneered has been a kind of return to the elite factional politics of the early republic, with cabals forming around prominent politicians—Clinton World, Obama World—and hereditary dynasties like the Bushes, along with factions centered on billionaire donors, some of whom, like Michael Bloomberg and Donald Trump, decide to dispense with the intermediaries and run for public office themselves. Politics as a contest between dynastic families and demagogic rabble-rousers is familiar to citizens of Third World countries; now it is familiar to Americans, too. The parties were mere shells by 2016, when the son and brother of presidents, Jeb Bush, and the wife of another president, Hillary Clinton, were challenged by two outsiders leading their own personal mass movements—Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Like today’s decimated trade unions and declining churches, America’s political parties were once mass membership organizations that represented their constituents, however imperfectly. As we know all too well at this point in our history, even 10 million ordinary citizens are no match for one billionaire or celebrity or influence network unless they are organized and disciplined.
The national parties that “the Master Spirit” and others assembled from state parties weeded out demagogues, conciliated different party factions and allowed individuals from modest backgrounds like Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman to work their way up in national politics while helping build the wealthiest and most powerful country on the planet. So here’s to the Little Magician, who figured out how to empower the little people. America could use some of his magic today.
The Politico article is must reading-however-what are the chances of Jim and Sarah Biden actually testifying-it is at least a reasonable possibility that they will seek adjournments, refuse to produce documents and/or testify based on the Fifth Amendment based on their close relationship with the head of the Biden Crime Family who resides in the White House. One thing is sure-The C,lintons were trailer trash Kennedy wanna bes-the Bidens are wannabe Clintons