Wednesday, March 30, 2016

The Trump Challenge

The candidacy of Donald J. Trump has upended American politics, and, indeed, has changed the political landscape in ways our liberal and conservative elites never expected and clearly abhor. He talks like an ordinary person, for one thing – a rarity in a realm where politicians routinely speak as if they are giving a speech before the Peoria Rotary Club. Unrehearsed and raw, he doesn’t do  “talking points” – and this, I think, more than his controversial proposal to deport millions of illegal immigrants, has provoked the policy wonks and the “intellectuals” into paroxysms of contempt. It’s also what’s endears him to ordinary people, and makes them listen – perhaps for the first time – to what a candidate for the highest office in the land is saying about where America is today and where he wants the country to go.

Trump’s domestic platform, such as it is, doesn’t really interest me: his proposal to “temporarily” ban Muslims from entering the US is unenforceable and downright silly. (How can you know if someone is a Muslim?) The issue that catapulted him to national attention – immigration – has already been settled, for better or worse: with millions of illegal immigrants already here, largely as a result of US laxity in maintaining border security, the immigration restrictionists are about forty years too late. His plan to deport illegals will never happen.

It’s in the realm of international affairs that Trump has really made a significant and lasting contribution to the discourse. As Bill Schneider writes in a Reuters opinion piece: “Trump is repudiating the entire framework of US foreign policy since 1947.” That dramatic and unmistakable fact is being lost amid the theatrics of a campaign season that often resembles an episode of the Jerry Springer Show.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Trump explicates his consensus-busting view of America’s proper role in the world:

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Monday, March 28, 2016

Lessons of Brussels

The vicious attack on the Brussels airport and metro underscores the futility of focusing on the Syrian “Caliphate” as the epicenter of terrorism: as I’ve been saying in this space since 2001, the snake has no head. Both al-Qaeda and now ISIS are protean entities with a vast geographical spread, and what the Brussels attack – and, before it, the Paris attack – show is that they have successfully colonized Europe.

If the “Islamic State” proclaimed by ISIS was defeated and eliminated tomorrow, the terrorist and criminal networks that pulled off the Brussels attacks would still exist.

The population of Brussels is nearly 25 percent immigrants from Muslim countries, primarily Morocco and Algeria. And as it turns out the two brothers who were the core of the ISIS cell were habitués of the now notorious Molenbeek neighborhood, which consists primarily of the descendants of immigrants who settled there decades ago. Poor, and beset by petty crime, it is a pool in which terrorist recruiters fish with much success. The Syrian civil war has become a cause that attracts young toughs with no prospects, who are looking for some sense of meaning – and a way to express their alienation from the larger society in which they live. Molenbeek was also the base for those who planned and carried out the Paris attacks – it is, in effect, a general headquarters for ISIS to carry out its European operations. Salah Abdeslam, the chief planner of the Paris attacks, fled there and found sanctuary for four months before being caught.

In short, the problem of terrorism in Europe is an internal phenomenon, not something that comes from the outside. The Europeans imported it – and, as Germany’s welcoming of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war-torn Middle East dramatizes, they are continuing to import it. Now they are living with the consequences.

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Thursday, March 24, 2016

TTIP “Trade” Regime Would Let EU Meddle in U.S. Policy

In addition to imposing an expanded transnational regulatory and judicial regime that would further erode U.S. national sovereignty and self-government, the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would give Big Business cronies even more power over U.S. and European Union policy. If approved, it would also allow the European Union to meddle in U.S. governance, and vice versa. That is according to an explosive section from the negotiating TTIP agreement that was leaked last week obtained by an establishment-funded anti-cronyism organization. It has since been released by the EU. Outrage quickly ensued.

Virtually all of the press so far has focused on the implications for Europe. However, the scheming will have major effects on the U.S. regulatory regime as well. Among other changes, the relevant section of the agreement would force the EU to consult the U.S. government before adopting “legislative” or regulatory proposals. It would also commit U.S. authorities to consulting with Brussels before moving forward on legislation or regulatory schemes across a wide array of subject areas. The U.S. Congress and elected European bodies would then be further sidelined as the two executive branches increasingly rule Americans and Europeans by lobbyist-influenced decree.   

Under the scheme, the insatiable regulatory bureaucracies of the EU and the U.S. government agree to “aim at achieving common or compatible regulatory measures." "To this end, regulatory authorities of either side will have the opportunity to propose to the regulatory authorities of the other side particular steps to deepen existing cooperation or to start new cooperation,” the draft scheme explains. When it comes to providing notice of new decrees and providing “cooperation opportunities,” U.S. regulatory bodies would have to alert European bureaucrats, also known as “eurocrats,” before even alerting the American people.

When either side is amending existing policies or making new ones that might affect the cooperation between Washington, D.C., and Brussels, they must “provide each other opportunities for cooperation and information exchange, at the earliest possible stage to allow for the responsible regulatory authorities of both parties to discuss regulatory objectives and options and any other related issue.” The document also purports to commit both sides to taking into account the other party's regulatory schemes when adopting or planning their own. In the EU, eurocrats regulate everything from the shape of agricultural produce and your table at a restaurant to the steps at your apartment and the content of your speech.

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Tuesday, March 22, 2016

If Hillary Isn't Indicted, the Rule of Law and the Republic Are Dead

Once the Oligarchy is above the law, the Republic is already dead.

To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway: How did you lose your Republic? Two ways, gradually and then suddenly. The Romans experienced this when their Republic was extinguished by Empire.

The erosion of the Republic was gradual: slowly but surely, the lower classes' representation in governance was curtailed; the Oligarchy of the wealthy and powerful cemented their privileges at the expense of the many; Oligarchs rose above the laws that were supposed to apply to all, and executive power was consolidated in top administrators and the wealthy at the expense of the Senate.

When Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army to seize control of Rome, the Roman Republic ceased to exist. Gradually and then suddenly: this is how Republics become Empires.

We find ourselves in a parallel moment in history: the American Republic has been hollowed into a shell that is maintained for PR purposes. Beneath the propaganda, the Establishment runs the nation for its own benefit. The people are ignored, because they are powerless in this hollow shell of democracy: their only role is to provide bodies, talent and blood for the Imperial armed forces, pay taxes if they have any money, and be content with their food stamps if they don't.

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Friday, March 18, 2016

Money, Power and Oil. Exposing the Libyan Agenda: A Closer Look at Hillary’s Emails

Critics have long questioned why violent intervention was necessary in Libya. Hillary Clinton’s recently published emails confirm that it was less about protecting the people from a dictator than about money, banking, and preventing African economic sovereignty.

The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a “victory lap.” “We came, we saw, he died!” she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.

But the victory lap, write Scott Shane and Jo Becker in the New York Times, was premature. Libya was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, “as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain.”

US-NATO intervention was allegedly undertaken on humanitarian grounds, after reports of mass atrocities; but human rights organizations questioned the claims after finding alack of evidence. Today, however, verifiable atrocities are occurring. As Dan Kovalik wrote in the Huffington Post, “the human rights situation in Libya is a disaster, as ‘thousands of detainees [including children] languish in prisons without proper judicial review,’ and ‘kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant’.”

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Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Moscow Announces “Mission Accomplished”. Russian Forces Withdraw from Syria?

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in a meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (see image below) confirmed the following:

“I believe that the task put before the defense ministry and Russian armed forces has, on the whole, been fulfilled. With the participation of the Russian military … the Syrian armed forces and patriotic Syrian forces have been able to achieve a fundamental turnaround in the fight against international terrorism and have taken the initiative in almost all respects, …

I am therefore ordering the defense minister, from tomorrow, to start the withdrawal of the main part of our military contingent from the Syrian Arab Republic.” (quoted by Reuters, March 14, 2016)

Emphasis will be put on establishing a diplomatic solution:

“The President of Russia also instructed the Foreign Ministry to intensify the Russian Federation’s participation in organising the peace process to resolve the Syrian problem.” (text of official communiqué, Russian presidency, March 14, 2016)

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Friday, March 11, 2016

DOJ Considering Legal Action Against 'Climate Deniers'

Well, this doesn't come as a surprise considering the Orwellian state in which we now all live. Attorney General Loretta Lynch ceded Wednesday that the Department of Justice is considering pursuing legal action against "climate deniers."

To read between the lines, climate-deniers, to the administration, are scientists whose research data on climate change contradicts what the president wants that data to say. CNSNews reports  

“This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on,” Lynch said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Justice Department operations.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat, brought up the issue, comparing it to the type of civil action taken by the Clinton administration against the tobacco industry: 

“The similarities between the mischief of the tobacco industry pretending that the science of tobacco’s dangers was unsettled and the fossil fuel industry pretending that the science of carbon emissions’ dangers is unsettled has been remarked on widely, particularly by those who study the climate denial apparatus that the fossil fuel industry has erected,” Whitehouse said.

“Under President Clinton, the Department of Justice brought and won a civil RICO action against the tobacco industry for its fraud. Under President Obama, the Department of Justice has done nothing so far about the climate denial scheme,” Whitehouse added.

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Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Hating on Trump

Now we all know that many of those who are hating on Donald Trump are doing so because he is threatening the cozy-crony-politico-predatory-capitalist system that has made so many of them fat and rich. He is intending to break their rice bowls as the Chinese would put it or, in a more American vernacular, the gravy train might be ending. To be sure The Donald is warning that he will do just that, even if he will find in practice, if elected, that turning the ship of state around might well be a task beyond the ability of any aspirant to the presidency.

But while pure self-interest might well be driving many of the chattering nonentities that populate our congress and the senior political appointee ranks in government there is something nevertheless extraordinary in the level of venom and sheer hatred that is being spewed at random about a potential Trump administration. It is not uncommon to read or hear that Trump is seeking to overturn the Constitution of the United States and establish a dictatorship that will promote his allegedly warped views of what must be done to correct America’s domestic and foreign policies, suggesting that our form of government is so fragile that it can be subverted by one man.

The anger directed against Trump is unique, one might note, as it also includes demands to somehow overturn the popular will expressed in primaries and caucuses to obtain a candidate that is more in tune with what the Republican establishment is seeking to promote as the “national consensus.” That Trump is voicing an overwhelming American middle class perspective on the evils of mass illegal immigration matters not a whit to the Mandarins whose only concerns on that issue center on the availability of a supply of cheap labor to clean their McMansions and swimming pools.

The anti-Trump effort is being well funded, has included notable defections to the Democratic Party, has led to lists of Republican politicians who will not accept a Trump nomination or support a President Trump, and has even produced calls for a third party neo-Republican entity to run against him. Some other reactions are stupid, including Canadian neocon Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, calling for even more immigrants to the U.S., while talk radio extremist Glenn Beck has tweeted that if he had a knife and were able to get close to Trump he would have to keep on stabbing him.

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Monday, March 7, 2016

Bush Family Links to Nazi Germany: “A Famous American Family” Made its Fortune from the Nazis

“A  famous American family” made its fortune from the Nazis, according to John Loftus’ documented historical analysis.    

The Bush family links to Nazi Germany’s war economy were first brought to light at the Nuremberg trials in the testimony of Nazi Germany’s steel magnate Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen was a partner of George W. Bush’s grandfather Prescott Bush: 

From 1945 until 1949 in Nuremberg, one of the lengthiest and, it now appears, most futile interrogations of a Nazi war crimes suspect began in the American Zone of Occupied Germany.

Multibillionaire steel magnate Fritz Thyssen-the man whose steel combine was the cold heart of the Nazi war machine-talked and talked and talked to a joint US-UK interrogation team.

… What the Allied investigators never understood was that they were not asking Thyssen the right question. Thyssen did not need any foreign bank accounts because his family secretly owned an entire chain of banks.

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Thursday, March 3, 2016

The Saudi-Israeli Alliance: Saudi FM Secretly Visits Israel after Israeli Officials Visit Riyadh to Counter Iran

Alwaght- Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir [pictured left] accompanied by the Saudi intelligence chief Khaled al-Hamidan made a secret visit to Israel during the past few days.

Elsewhere other reports indicate that the visit was meant to discuss joint Israeli-Saudi military operations against Syria and Lebanon. During the clandestine visit, Adel al-Jubeir met with officials of the Israeli regime’s spy agency Mossad.

He also met with the regime’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu and urged Tel Avivi regime to intensify military operations against Syria with the aim of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad.

Elsewhere, high-ranking Israeli regime officials visited the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in the last few weeks to plot against Iran.

In a report, Israeli regime’s channel 10 added that said that the delegation was headed by a prominent Israeli official.

The visit was not the first one to the Kingdom, but the Israeli regime’s Military Censor prohibits the reports talking about such visits, according to Channel 10.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Former CIA director: Military may refuse to follow Trump’s orders if he becomes president

Former CIA director Michael Hayden believes there is a legitimate possibility that the U.S. military would refuse to follow orders given by Donald Trump if the Republican front-runner becomes president and decides to make good on certain campaign pledges.

Hayden, who also headed the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005, made the provocative statement on Friday during an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” Trump, fresh off a string of primary victories, has yet to secure his party’s nomination, but Hayden said the candidate’s rhetoric already raises troubling questions.

“I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the language that candidate Trump expressed during the campaign,” Hayden said during the interview with Maher.

Earlier this month, Trump told a South Carolina retirement community that he supports waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques because “torture works” when it comes to extracting vital information from terrorists.

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