Trump administration 4

I must say, I'm rather shocked to see a stalwart anti-imperialist like WWWTT defending a government that publishes RACIST propaganda!

Check out this disgusting headline...

https://tinyurl.com/y9rglndk

Thanks for the link NDPP, and happy new year!

I pulled this out of your latest link

The Pentagon has said he played a critical role in developing the strategy, which singled out China and Russia as top threats, saying they wanted to “shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model.”

shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model???? Here we go again, the top imperialist power in the world is now trying to get the so called "progressives" all teary eyed over the "brutal regimes" in China and Russia.

Don't worry progressives, Justin Trudeau Bernie Sanders and Democracy now are going to save you from something that you really don't want to be saved from because you believe those crumbs the imperialists toss you are actually a victory that justifies the progressive movement.

Ralph Nader: Democrats May Be Surrendering the Rule of Law

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ralph-nader-democrats-may-be-surrender...

"Many Senate Democrats are throwing in the towel on the nomination of William Barr for Trump's attorney general...See why I've called the Republican and Democratic parties an inbred duopoly?"

That parody basically sums up my dilemma about Trump. Assuming "America's role in a hard world" means they're accusing him of rolling back American power, as currently used, I'd be all for that.

They're totally on-spot about his domestic shit, though as I've said before, I think most of that is just the standard GOP menu, not specifically attributable to Trump.   

Thanks for that important info.

Best headline ever...

https://tinyurl.com/y6ku7f6d

U.S. Banks Made $28 Billion in Additional Profit, Thanks to Trump Tax Code

New government data shows U.S. banks made $28 billion in additional profit last year, thanks to President Trump’s new tax code. All told, U.S. banks made a record $237 billion in 2018. According to The Wall Street Journal, 2018 would have been a record-setting year for banks even without the additional boost from the tax bill. Meanwhile, the IRS reports the average tax refund for individual taxpayers has shrunk nearly 9 percent, thanks to Trump’s tax code.

Pepe Escobar: War on Iran and Calling America's Bluff

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/24/pepe-escobar-war-on-iran-calling-a...

"The Trump administration once again has graphically demonstrated that in the young, turbulent 21st century, 'international law', and 'national sovereignty' already belong to the Realm of the Walking Dead. As if a deluge of sanctions against a great deal of the planet was not enough, the latest 'offer you can't refuse' conveyed by a gangster posing as diplomat, Consul Minimus Mike Pompeo, now essentially orders the whole planet to submit to the one and only arbiter of world trade: Washington..."

US Anti-Semitism Envoy: We May Reconsider Ties With Countries Deemed Anti-Israel

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-anti-semitism-envoy-we-may-reconsider-t...

"Elan Carr announces 'ground-breaking' move to equate anti-Zionism with Jew-hatred. Israeli researchers found that anti-Semitism was promoted actively by government officials in countries on three continents, singling out officials in Venezuela, Turkey, Poland and Ukraine as promoters of hatred of Jews."

Trump 'Good For Israel' Bad For Jews: Ilan Pappe

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190503-trump-good-for-israel-bad-for...

"US President Donald Trump's Middle East policies, especially his unbridled support for Israel, are likely to hurt Jews worldwide, Israeli historian Illan Pappe told Anadolu Agency in an exclusive interview. 'Outside Israel, the only people who are pro-Israel are those who stand against justice and support racism,' said Pappe, director of the European Center for Palestine Studies at the UK's Exeter University.

Regarding last month's elections in Israel in which Benjamin Netanyahu secured a second term as prime minister and leftist parties performed worse than expected, Pappe said: 'You cannot be a leftist and a Zionist.' [Are you listening NDP?] He added: 'This is the inevitable outcome of the Zionist idea. You can't be a leftist and a Zionist; you can't be a leftist and a colonizer. You're either an oppressor and colonizer  or you're not.'

Pappe believes the recent ascension of right-wing extremist parties in Israel has revealed the true face of the Zionist project embraced by the majority of Israeli Jews. Unfortunately, most of them believe it's better to be a racist state than a democratic one. We no longer hear anything about 'liberal Zionists' or 'Jewish democracy' which don't really exist,' the historian added."

Perhaps this memo hasn't reached Canada yet..

Trump Isn't Special. All US Presidents Support White Supremacy

https://www.blackagendareport.com/trump-isnt-special-all-us-presidents-s...

"It misses the point to say things like, 'Trump is disrespecting the office or lowering the standard of the presidency,' said Anderson, 'when this has always been a white supremacist position..."

Bolton Out

https://on.rt.com/a1i8

"Trump ditches hawkish adviser he kept for 18 months..."

Stephen Miller.  White Nationalist.

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/11/12/stephen-millers-affinity-white-nationalism-revealed-leaked-emails

epaulo13 wrote:

U.S. Recognition of Israeli Settlements Is “Entrenchment of an Apartheid Regime”

quote:

AMY GOODMAN: Soon after Mike Pompeo announced the new U.S. policy, the U.S. Embassy in Israel issued a travel warning to Americans in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

We’re joined now by Noura Erakat, Palestinian human rights attorney and legal scholar, assistant professor at Rutgers University. Her latest book, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.

This is an abrupt reversal, Noura Erakat. Can you talk about the significance of it?

NOURA ERAKAT: I would actually temper that a little bit: This is not necessarily a reversal in U.S. policy, only in its stated policy. For 50 — for more than five decades, since 1967, all U.S. administrations have talked out of both sides of their mouth. On the one hand, they have condemned settlements as counterproductive to peace and as a contravention of international law, and, on the other hand, have provided Israel with the unequivocal diplomatic, military and financial aid in order to entrench their settlements.

Even the Obama administration, as it was abstaining on U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning the settlements as a flagrant violation, has been part of the problem. They issued that abstention only two weeks before they left office. Simultaneously, the Obama administration increased aid from $3 billion to $3.8 billion a year. And in 2012, that same administration used its first veto at the Security Council to condemn a resolution, a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning settlements using exact U.S. foreign policy language on settlements.

So, what we’re seeing now is not a sharp reversal of U.S. foreign policy on the question of settlements and Palestine, but instead the culmination of it. For us to blame this on Trump is basically to exculpate ourselves and to create a revisionist history. Instead, we should be accountable and actually take responsibility for how we have been part of this problem.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk about the timing of this announcement in the midst of an essential stalemate in Israel in terms of a new government, and Benny Gantz has a deadline this week of forming a new government, or there may — or Israel may be forced to a third election?

NOURA ERAKAT: Yeah. This is what’s so tragic about all of this. What we’re talking about right now, in the West Bank is about 700,000 settlers living in the midst of a population of 3 million Palestinians, who, because of those 700,000 settlers, who are living in exclusive colonial settlements, surrounded by military and civilian Israeli infrastructure — cuts up Palestinian life into 20 noncontiguous Bantustans, where they can’t reach one another. We’re talking about the subjugation of a Palestinian population at the whim of these illegal colonial settlements.

And now we’re seeing this discussion — we’re seeing the U.S. recognize this as not a violation of international law, which actually has no basis because they can’t change that status; they can only be in violation of it. But the tragic part is that the U.S. administration is doing this in order to support Netanyahu in his own bid to consolidate power in Israel. Palestinians are pawns, are pawns to be moved around in order to shape U.S. domestic policy.

And the other thing that should be highlighted is, although Netanyahu, who represents the right, is celebrating this as a culmination of his own vision, Benny Gantz and the Blue and White party supports it and welcomes the Trump administration announcement, as well. There is no daylight between the so-called Israeli left and the so-called Israeli right. What we’re seeing is a consolidation of their settler-colonial takings.

We want to frame this as a contravention of the peace process and not acknowledging the fact that what’s ongoing is a violation of human rights, the entrenchment of an apartheid regime, and that the reversion to the peace process is precisely the problem. It was the Oslo Accords that put settlements on the back burner and made it part of the final status negotiations that we’re not getting to, and so that what we’re seeing now in terms of what the U.S. administration is doing is forcing Palestinians to accept every new incremental territorial taking as new facts on the ground, that are then presented to Palestinian negotiators, who have to accept those facts on the ground, which are war crimes, as previously stated, and when the Palestinians protest, they are told that they are the obstacle to peace.

So, the reversion to the peace process here, the reversion to the U.S. status quo ante on how to handle the situation, is the reversion into a straight dead end and back to where we are. We have to think about this radically anew about how to transcend the situation. This isn’t about the peace process. This isn’t about two states. These are about flagrant human rights violations. We are witnessing the entrenchment of an apartheid regime and the U.S. at the helm of that process.

Privately I am hearing many okay with the US taking this position. The reason is that this is an admission of something that has been going on for a long time and the dropping of an infuriating pretence. It exposes the state as what it is and reomves cover. It exposes the US position for what it is. It offers more hope for pushback than decades of retreat in the fase of a lie.

I do understand this. Trust me, I am hearing this from people who truly hate the Israel occupation and the US role. But like the 12-steppers say, if you cannot speak your problem you cannot begin to confront it.

It could be that the nakedness in this is because it is too late and nobody can do anything about it -- we are onto the next phase of the operation or it is possible that this admission publicly of what everyone knew was US policy is a mistaken honesty for a change that might bring new opposition among people who have found ways to ignore it despite the clarity of what is happening.

Clearly among quite a few people this announcement is generating mixed feelings and dismay at the shock others are showing.

Trump's State of the Union 2020: 'America's Future is Blazing Bright!'

https://youtu.be/mugF3mB6NvE

"...As the world bears witness tonight, America is a land of heroes. It is a place where greatness is born, where destinies are forged and legends come to life...This is the country where children learn names like Wyatt Earp, Davey Crockett and Annie Oakley. This is the place where the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth and where Texas patriots made their last stand at the Alamo - the beautiful, beautiful Alamo. The American nation was carved out of the vast frontier by the toughest, strongest, fiercest and most determined men and women ever to walk on the face of the earth. Our ancestors braved the unknown, tamed the wilderness, settled the wild west, lifted millions up from poverty, disease and hunger, vanquished tyranny and fascism...ushered the world to new heights. And, ladies and gentlemen, our ancestors built the most exceptional republic ever to exist in all of human history. And we are making it greater than ever before..."

Robinson Jeffers: Shine Perishing Republic

https://www.antiwar.com/orig/jeffers1.html

"While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire

And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens..."

Helmer: John Bolton Strikes at the British Over the Skripal Affair

http://johnhelmer.net/john-bolton-strikes-at-the-british-over-the-skripa...

"A politician becomes a psychopath when he or she acts without calculating the consequences for approval rating and voter support. The same thing goes for ministers and their advisers who urge military operations which make voters feel unsafe at home. Fear and insecurity aren't good for incumbents, at least not the ones who can't rig elections. In the case of John Bolton, he took the National Security Advisor's post from President Donald Trump in order to make as many wars outside the US as he could. He has now published a book about all the wars he wanted when he got his best chance to make them; and about those who got in the way to stop him, especially Trump..."

Steve Bannon, Former Senior Trump Advisor, Arrested for Defrauding Trump Voters

https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55480.htm

"It is likely that US President Donald Trump will soon say that he hardly knew his former campaign manager and senior advisor Steve Bannon and that he always supposed that Bannon was a crook. Today the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York announced an indictment against Bannon and others.

Bannon had recently worked with the Chinese crook Guo Wengui to build up a media company. Miles Kwok aka Guo Wengui is a disgruntled Chinese oligarch who finances the Hong Kong protests. Together with Bannon Guo ran a strong anti-China campaign. How that was or is related to Trump's anti-China campaign is not yet known."

'Make Hong Kong Great Again'

https://youtu.be/OVV5ov0y5HM

"Mr President, please liberate Hong Kong!'

Centuries ago, woodland animal creatures in England composed a song appropriate to the occasion, having to deal with their own orange-haired bad-tempered tyrant ruler.

Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are 'Losers' and 'Suckers'*

https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1301684849380556801

"Amazingly ironic that the reporter who broke the Belleau Woods story on Trump's anti-patriotism, Jeffrey Goldberg, was so patriotic he left the US as a young man to join the Israeli military and become a jailer of Palestinians..."

* 'See also 'War is a Racket' - Smedley Butler

The Jimmy Dore Show

https://youtu.be/dVjUMcizPjY

"CNN pushes shamless pro-war propaganda."

Against 'a premature withdrawal from Afghanistan'.

Trump has pardoned four former U.S. service members who were convicted of killing Iraqi civilians while working as Blackwater contractors in 2007.

Latest reminder that the four men convicted of killing 14 Iraqis in Baghdad worked for #Blackwater, which was owned by Erik Prince, who is the brother of the US Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos.

I agree. This too...

Wolff Responds: Congress' Shameful Relief Bill (and vid)

https://twitter.com/prowolff/status/1341441119083581440

"This new relief bill, just passed by the US congress, pushed by the Republicans and accepted by the Democratic establishment is an awful betrayal of a huge number of Americans who are suffering because of this system's level of greed for the few. 'Screw the poor..The system is unravelling.'

Each US Citizen will get a $600 check, while Billions are Spent on Foreign Interventions

https://twitter.com/JebSprague/status/1341477178870030339

"The US Congress' $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill was packaged with $1.4 trillion in omnibus spending that includes tens of billions for war, weapons and regime change abroad."

Worst President Ever

No matter how much money Americans get under stimulus bill, it's not enough to deal with their financial problems - Prof Wolff (and vid)

https://on.rt.com/axzw

"...Here is the irony of it all...The lost jobs, the lost income, the used up savings mean that whether you give people a one-shot $600 or whether you give them a one-shot $1200 - it's not adequate to deal with the economic problems we have. That's shameful here, that the real solution is not even in discussion by the two parties that control our politics..."