Another run-in with a US Senate (hopeful)

 

Costello (USAID) crossing the Mekong River in Cambodia following an election coordination meeting in Kampong Cham (1993). Bringing democracy to the Cambodian people - American style.

 

Yesterday while entering the post office in Brunswick, Maine I saw a man outside gathering petition signatures. The post office is a popular spot for such petitioning as Maine allows citizen referendums on any issue once thousands of signatures are secured.

I asked the man what he was petitioning for and he said to get on the US Senate primary election ballot as a Democrat. I told him I was not a Dem and went into to check my mail.

When I came out he was gone.

I had time on my hands before my chiropractor appointment downtown (I slipped on the ice last week landing on my back and have a sprain/strain according to my doc) so I walked the big loop thru downtown before my scheduled appointment.

As I approached the health food store I noticed the guy was standing there with his petition in hand. I stopped (mostly out of political curiosity) and asked, 'What is your thing?'

He quickly replied, 'Change. We need systemic change.' 

I knew right away I was going to have to dig deeper to get anything out of him. He was gauging to see if I was a novice.

I then asked, 'What is your position on our two current wars?'

He jumped in with, 'We need to stop Russia and Israel has the right to defend themselves, except they've gone too far.'

Very safe traditional Democratic party answers.

But I was not going to leave it there. I responded with these facts: the US orchestrated coup in Ukraine in 2014, the eight years of US funded, trained, equipped and CIA directed Nazi attacks on the Russian-ethnics in the Donbass.

His response (with a sly grin): 'There was no coup. I know because I worked in the government.'

By now my blood pressure was rising a bit. I needed more info about his 'government job'. So I asked him.

'US AID' he replied. Then he threw in Nancy Pelosi's latest refrain - 'Are you a Russian?'

Once home I tracked down his website and discovered his name is David Costello and he proudly proclaims at the top of his campaign home page - 'Join Us In Fighting For Real Change and Progress.'

On his bio page he shares - 'A Career of Service: David has more than twenty-five years of senior-level state, local, and federal government experience.' 

He also states, 'Between 1993 and 2001, David worked primarily abroad for the U.S. government, responding to political, humanitarian, and economic crises in conflict-torn Cambodia, Haiti, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Kosovo.'

Note that he does not mention the very unpopular USAID which is a CIA-front using humanitarian issues to do the soft intervention work on behalf of Washington.

My parting words to him were, 'Oh yeah, Samantha Powers (the current head of USAID and promoter of humanitarian intervention). She wrote a book about genocide in Africa and now supports genocide in Palestine'.

After that I moved on.

My first thought was how in recent years the Democrats and Republicans are flooding their campaigns with former military personnel, intelligence and spy types, and other functionaries of outfits like USAID. It's a complete takeover of American politics by the national security state.

Mr. Costello, if he wins the Democratic party nomination in the primary, would be matched up against the incumbent Sen. Angus King (Independent) who has been endorsed by AIPAC.

One could say it is a rigged game.

Bruce