TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Jan 14, 2017 5:00 pm

Mac can not abide

brekin » Sat Jan 14, 2017 3:58 pm wrote:
MacCruiskeen » Sat Jan 14, 2017 3:37 pm wrote:What part of Rigorous Intuition do I not understand?


Well, since you asked.
You have a pattern of bemoaning the state of RI, diminishing returns, lax moderation, users styles and approach, etc.
You get more and more strident about this.
And then it builds to a pitch.
And the result is.
You get banned.
Usually taking a few posters with you.
I think this has happened 3-4 times.

Image






In total there are 117 users online :: 3 registered, 6 hidden and 108 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby MacCruiskeen » Sat Jan 14, 2017 6:00 pm

brekin wrote:You get more and more strident about this.


No. Calling it so don't make it so. Stridency is something else. Like slad, you have a habit of just flinging words out at random. You also tend to take disagreement as a personal insult (again, calling it so don't make it so) and then you often respond with digs, prods, repetitions, etc., sometimes building to a pitch of real stridency, especially if you can't present your argument convincingly, and most especially if you're longing to provoke an angry response or get in a zinger of a last word. NB: Anyone is capable of this behavior, of course. Except me.

Admittedly, you never get as strident as this (from yesterday):

seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 13, 2017 5:19 pm wrote:JUST FUKING STOP IT

JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT AN AMERICAN CITIZEN DOESN'T GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO ADVOCATE THE KILLING ANY AMERICAN BY ANOTHER AMERICAN

FUCKIN STUPID SHIT

DON'T POST THAT CRAP ON THIS BOARD


... or as sweary, or as wildly insulting, or as bizarrely inaccurate. (Of course I never advocated the killing of anyone. All I ever advocated was giving Anderson Cooper a Chinese Burn.)

But, y'know what? Trump. The subject is Donald Trump and therefore Vladimir Putin too. Trumputin. Putrump. What else could the subject possibly be? There can only be one topic; Donald Putintool. Red Don. Dodimir McKremlin. Trump the Secret Commie. No doubt there'll be a strident cacophony of DISINFO in the media, so we're gonna need all the rigour we can muster to sort out the good stuff from the un-American activity. Probably the best plan is just to re-post everything we can find on the web, from Breitbarts to Dagens Nyheter to the Hindustan Times, and then let it all ferment slowly on this board without saying a word for or against any of it. Let's not harrass the news, because that would only spoil it.

Worth a try, surely? I think it's what Jeff would have wanted anyway. If there's one he couldn't stand it was paying close attention and making careful distinctions. Two things, I mean.

Anyway: Goodnight.
Last edited by MacCruiskeen on Sat Jan 14, 2017 6:28 pm, edited 3 times in total.
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

TESTDEMIC ➝ "CASE"DEMIC
User avatar
MacCruiskeen
 
Posts: 10558
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:47 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby Iamwhomiam » Sat Jan 14, 2017 6:10 pm

Image
User avatar
Iamwhomiam
 
Posts: 6572
Joined: Thu Sep 27, 2007 2:47 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Jan 14, 2017 7:44 pm

Protests derail UC Davis event with Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos, ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli
By Kristine Guerra January 14 at 5:33 PM

Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative columnist and Internet personality, holds a news conference down the street from the Pulse nightclub in Orlando on June 15. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
A college campus event hosting Milo Yiannopoulos and Martin Shkreli, two controversial and polarizing figures who have both been banned on Twitter, was canceled because of heated protests Friday night.

Yiannopoulos, editor of the right-wing website Breitbart News, and Shkreli, a former pharmaceutical executive charged with securities fraud, were supposed to speak Friday at the University of California at Davis at an event hosted by the Davis College Republicans, a student-run group. But the university visit, which Breitbart promoted by using #SHKRELOPOULOS, was abruptly canceled after a mass of protesters opposing Yiannopoulos’s appearance on campus showed up outside the building where it was supposed to take place.

University officials said in a statement that the Republican student group canceled it after consulting with campus police and student affairs officials, adding that “it was no longer feasible to continue with the event safely.”


Yiannopoulos, along with members of the student organization, fired back on Saturday by marching on campus as a way to show their dismay over the event’s cancellation. Standing on a bench in front of a large crowd of supporters, a megaphone in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in another, Yiannopoulos criticized what he described as violent and intolerant actions of the protesters — people he referred to as the left.

He said police and campus officials “heavily pressured” the student organizers to cancel his event, telling them they’d be held responsible for any property damage or injuries.

“We will show the university they cannot shut you up because you have a different political opinion,” Yiannopoulos said.

Shkreli, who was on campus Friday night, was not at the march Saturday.

Reports of smashed windows and other property damage from Friday’s protest have surfaced online. But university officials have dismissed those as rumors. University police also said that one student was arrested.


[Twitter bans conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos for good, while cracking down on abuse]

Yiannopoulos, a conservative writer, was supposed to speak at UC Davis as part of his tour of universities across the country, dubbed “The Dangerous Faggot Tour.” He later announced that Shkreli, former chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, will join him as a guest speaker.

To promote the event, Yiannopoulos posted a picture of him and Shkreli side by side, with the title “A Twitter Villain Extravaganza,” on his Instagram page.


Hundreds of students and graduates wrote a public letter condemning the event, saying it “serves as a direct threat toward traditionally marginalized groups on campus” and called Yiannopoulos “a champion of hate speech against people of color and women.”

“The university’s commitment to free speech is not an obligation to provide a formal podium for every form on nonacademic, hateful rhetoric that student groups wish to bring to campus,” according to the letter addressed to campus officials and the Davis College Republicans.


Officials initially declined to cancel the event, saying the university should be open to all ideas.

“As a public university, we remain true to our obligation to uphold everyone’s First Amendment freedoms,” Ralph Hexter, the interim chancellor, said in a statement. “This commitment includes fostering an environment that avoids censorship and allows space for differing points of view.”

On Friday night, police barricaded the venue entrance as protesters and supporters of Yiannopoulos clashed outside.

“There’s a big difference between free speech and giving up platform to someone that’s openly hateful,” Elly Oltersdorf, a protester, told NBC affiliate KCRA.

[‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli arrested for securities fraud]

Zareen Nayyar, a Yiannopoulos supporter, was in tears when she spoke with KCRA.

“I’m being told to leave,” she said. “I have just as much of a right to be here.”

The event was canceled about a half-hour before it was supposed to start. Andrew Mendoza, executive director of the Davis College Republicans, cited security concerns.

“The decision was made initially because the lives of the officers were threatened,” Mendoza told KCRA. “The lives of the students were threatened as well as the property of the school.”

Shkreli later came out of the venue and walked toward the crowd of demonstrators. Footage shows him backing away and walking back to the building.

When asked by a reporter how he feels about the event being canceled, he said, “I think it’s reasonable.”

[Milo speech at U-Md. canceled because security fee was too high; supporters call it censorship]


Yiannopoulos and Shkreli have both been banned on Twitter because of harassment.

Yiannopoulos, who writes for Breitbart Tech, was banned from the social media platform after harassing “Ghostbusters” actress Leslie Jones. A self-proclaimed “free-speech fundamentalist” fighting against political correctness, he has also described himself as “a chronicler of, and occasional fellow traveler with, the alt-right,” a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state.

Shkreli, once named in Forbes’ “30 Under 30 in Finance,” and also known by the nickname “Pharma Bro,” was banned on Twitter after harassing a female journalist. He was notorious for jacking up the price of a critical drug and was arrested in 2015 on securities fraud charges.

In October, Yiannopoulos was supposed to give a speech at the University of Maryland, but the event was canceled because the student group organizing it was unable to raise enough money to cover fees the university required, including more than $2,000 in security.

Yiannopoulos blasted university officials, saying he doesn’t charge for speaking fees and brings his own security.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/gra ... 980923e63a
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Jan 14, 2017 7:54 pm

JANUARY 12, 2017 11:45PM EST
World Report 2017: Demagogues Threaten Human Rights

(Washington, DC) – The rise of populist leaders in the United States and Europe poses a dangerous threat to basic rights protections while encouraging abuse by autocrats around the world, Human Rights Watch said today in launching its World Report 2017. Donald Trump’s election as US president after a campaign fomenting hatred and intolerance, and the rising influence of political parties in Europe that reject universal rights, have put the postwar human rights system at risk.

World Report Cover 2017
EXPAND World Report 2017. Cover: Men carrying babies make their way through the rubble of destroyed buildings after an airstrike on the rebel-held Salihin neighborhood of Syria’s northern city of Aleppo, September 2016.
© 2016 Ameer Alhalbi/Agence France Presse/Getty Images
Meanwhile, strongman leaders in Russia, Turkey, the Philippines, and China have substituted their own authority, rather than accountable government and the rule of law, as a guarantor of prosperity and security. These converging trends, bolstered by propaganda operations that denigrate legal standards and disdain factual analysis, directly challenge the laws and institutions that promote dignity, tolerance, and equality, Human Rights Watch said.

In the 687-page World Report, its 27th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth writes that a new generation of authoritarian populists seeks to overturn the concept of human rights protections, treating rights not as an essential check on official power but as an impediment to the majority will.

“The rise of populism poses a profound threat to human rights,” Roth said. “Trump and various politicians in Europe seek power through appeals to racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and nativism. They all claim that the public accepts violations of human rights as supposedly necessary to secure jobs, avoid cultural change, or prevent terrorist attacks. In fact, disregard for human rights offers the likeliest route to tyranny.”

Roth cited Trump’s presidential campaign in the US as a vivid illustration of the politics of intolerance. He said that Trump responded to those discontented with their economic situation and an increasingly multicultural society with rhetoric that rejected basic principles of dignity and equality. His campaign floated proposals that would harm millions of people, including plans to engage in massive deportations of immigrants, to curtail women’s rights and media freedoms, and to use torture. Unless Trump repudiates these proposals, his administration risks committing massive rights violations in the US and shirking a longstanding, bipartisan belief, however imperfectly applied, in a rights-based foreign policy agenda.


The rise of populist leaders in the United States and Europe poses a dangerous threat to basic rights protections while encouraging abuse by autocrats around the world.
In Europe, a similar populism sought to blame economic dislocation on migration. The campaign for Brexit was perhaps the most prominent illustration, Roth said.

Instead of scapegoating those fleeing persecution, torture, and war, governments should invest to help immigrant communities integrate and fully participate in society, Roth said. Public officials also have a duty to reject the hatred and intolerance of the populists while supporting independent and impartial courts as a bulwark against the targeting of vulnerable minorities, Roth said.

The populist-fueled passions of the moment tend to obscure the longer-term dangers to a society of strongman rule, Roth said. In Russia, Vladimir Putin responded to popular discontent in 2011 with a repressive agenda, including draconian restrictions on free speech and assembly, unprecedented sanctions for online dissent, and laws severely restricting independent groups. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, concerned about the slowdown in economic growth, has embarked on the most intense crackdown on dissent since the Tiananmen era.

In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, has honed a war-crime strategy of targeting civilians in opposition areas, flouting the most fundamental requirements of the laws of war. Forces of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, also known as ISIS, have also routinely attacked civilians and executed people in custody while encouraging and carrying out attacks on civilian populations around the globe.

More than 5 million Syrians fleeing the conflict have faced daunting obstacles in finding safety. Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon are hosting millions of Syrian refugees but have largely closed their borders to new arrivals. European Union leaders have failed to share responsibility fairly for asylum seekers or to create safe routes for refugees. Despite years of US leadership on refugee resettlement, the US resettled only 12,000 Syrian refugees last year, and Trump has threatened to end the program.


2016 in Numbers
In Africa, a disconcerting number of leaders have removed or extended term limits – the “constitutional coup” – to stay in office, while others have used violent crackdowns to suppress protests over unfair elections or corrupt or predatory rule. Several African leaders, feeling vulnerable to prosecution, harshly criticized the International Criminal Court and three countries announced their withdrawal.

This global attack needs a vigorous reaffirmation and defense of the human rights values underpinning the system, Roth said. Yet too many public officials seem to have their heads in the sand, hoping the winds of populism will blow over. Others emulate the populists, hoping to pre-empt their message but instead reinforcing it, Roth said. Governments ostensibly committed to human rights should defend these principles far more vigorously and consistently, Roth said, including democracies in Latin America, Africa, and Asia that support broad initiatives at the United Nations but rarely take the lead in responding to particular countries in crisis.

Ultimately, responsibility lies with the public, Roth said. Demagogues build popular support by proffering false explanations and cheap solutions to genuine ills. The antidote is for voters to demand a politics based on truth and the values on which rights-respecting democracy is built. A strong popular reaction, using every means available – civic groups, political parties, traditional and social media – is the best defense of the values that so many still cherish.

“We forget at our peril the demagogues of the past: the fascists, communists, and their ilk who claimed privileged insight into the majority’s interest but ended up crushing the individual,” Roth said. “When populists treat rights as obstacles to their vision of the majority will, it is only a matter of time before they turn on those who disagree with their agenda.”
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/12/wor ... man-rights
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Jan 14, 2017 10:35 pm

Donald Trump Really Means What He Says—and Plans to Silence and Intimidate Dissenters
Any hope he'd be a terrible president who kept our democracy intact has sailed out the window.
By Amanda Marcotte / Salon January 14, 2017

For liberals, and anyone with a fundamental love of our democracy, the two months since the election have been one long anxiety attack. Like most really bad anxiety attacks, this one has been fueled not just by fear, but also uncertainty. We know Donald Trump is bad, but the question is, how bad? Was Trump’s bringing-fascism-to-America act just a campaign ploy, one that he will drop in favor of being a bog-standard Republican when he steps into office? Or are we really looking down the barrel of an authoritarian regime that suppresses dissent and has no regard for the norms of democracy?

Unfortunately, the past week’s events suggest Trump is going with Door #2: Authoritarian regime that shows strong indicators of sliding into fascism. Doubly disturbing is that there appears to be no resistance from the Republican ranks on Capitol Hill. In fact, at least one Republican congressman, House Oversight chair Jason Chaffetz, is taking the initiative to instigate authoritarian crackdowns of his own.

Trump’s first press conference since his election was a three-ring circus that only helped cement his reputation as an unhinged liar, but he did make disturbing amounts of progress on intimidating the press.

Trump took a divide-and-conquer strategy during that press conference. He zeroed in on CNN and BuzzFeed, attacking them as “fake news” for printing reports — reports that are 100 percent true — that a dossier implicating Trump in Russian espionage efforts was presented by intelligence officials to both Trump and President Obama. He then praised other outlets for not running with the story (though some did), a rather unsubtle effort to turn journalists against one another.

The information in the dossier is not verified, but then again, CNN and BuzzFeed never said it was, just that it was considered credible enough to be included in a security briefing. Not that the details really matter; it’s all pretext for Trump to play an authoritarian game as old as time: single out a victim out from the herd to attack, as a warning to other journalists who have thoughts of publishing unflattering news stories.

These middle school bully-style tactics worked, Will Oremus at Slate reports:

BuzzFeed was so anathematized that by presser’s end, fellow journalists were picking up their lunch trays and moving to the other side of the cafeteria.“I can understand why President-elect Trump would be upset” with BuzzFeed, said CNN’s Jake Tapper, a co-author of the very story that had just been impugned in the press conference. “I would be upset about it, too.”

To put my fellow journalists on blast for a moment: You should be ashamed of yourselves, letting this doofus whose rhetoric literally sounds like that of a mustache-twirling comic book villain manipulate you, using the same tactics as some schoolyard bully.

Aren’t journalists supposed to be skeptical, independent-minded and brave? Stop being so goddamn gullible and cowardly. Trump wants to intimidate and silence the media, and he’s using a screamingly obvious divide-and-conquer strategy. Quivering in your boots and hiding in the back in hopes he doesn’t pick on you next is not the behavior of an honorable Fourth Estate. Stand up for your colleagues, even if they work for competitors.

Speaking of pants-wetting quisling hacks: Chaffetz made it clear this week that not only is he unlikely to investigate the myriad of likely conflicts of interest that Trump brings with him to office, he will instead lick Dear Leader’s boots, by using his power as the chair of the House Oversight Committee to harass and intimidate critics of the Trump administration.

Chaffetz is threatening to subpoena Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics, because Shaub correctly described Trump’s efforts to reduce his conflicts of interest as “meaningless.” That opinion was issued after Trump’s lawyer Sheri Dillon gave a lengthy rundown of Trump’s plan, so any fool who was listening learned plenty enough to realize that the Trump plan to end conflicts of interest is to talk a lot and do nothing that actually divests him of the conflicts.

But even though Shaub heard the same lengthy description everyone else heard, Chaffetz claimed, ““He seems to be acting prematurely at best, without doing investigations or thorough looks.”

“We need the Office of Government Ethics to act ethically. Ironically, that’s not what they’re doing,” Chaffetz said in a statement that is so devoid of any relationship to honesty that it once again makes you wonder if the Republican Party is in fact a comic book-style international supervillain organization like Hydra.

The real irony here is that Chaffetz is supposed to be heading a committee that roots out corruption in government. Rather than lift a finger to investigate Trump’s business interests or his purported links to Russian espionage or his involvement in the scam Trump University or the bribery scandal involving former Florida attorney general and soon-to-be White House employee Pam Bondi, Chaffetz is using his power to intimidate a public official for offering a reasonable comment based on publicly available evidence that Chaffetz himself is free to look at, if he had a moment’s interest in actually rooting out government corruption.

Trump isn’t even in office yet, and already he and his supporters in Congress are making moves to silence dissent through intimidation. Any hope that he was simply going to be a terrible president who still leaves our democracy mostly intact, like George W. Bush, is flying out the window.

As the last institution standing that has any real power to resist Trump’s authoritarian agenda, the media must not give in to these scare tactics. Journalists need to stand up for each other and for anyone, including federal officials, who uses their right to express dissent or criticism of the Trump administration. It’s a cliché, but one that matters now: Stand together or we fall separately.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... dissenters
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Jan 14, 2017 10:57 pm

Jason Chaffetz Doesn’t Care About Ethics

The Republican in charge of government oversight wants to prohibit criticism of Trump’s ethical violations.

By Dahlia Lithwick
House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Jason Chaffetz questions Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen during a hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill September 21, 2016 in Washington, DC.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Sept. 21 in Washington, D.C. This is a man who cannot be shamed.


It is going to be practically impossible for Donald Trump to take office next Friday and stay on the right side of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause without divesting and placing his businesses in a blind trust. This fact is—with a clutch of dissenters—not in dispute. Ethics experts across the political spectrum have explained carefully what needed to be done to avoid the appearance that the president was benefiting financially from foreign gifts, payments, or favors. But Trump announced this week that he has no intention of creating a blind trust, arguing that voters don’t care about the issue and declaring that he would donate any hotel profits from foreign governments to the Treasury and let his sons manage his business for the duration of his presidency.

Dahlia Lithwick
DAHLIA LITHWICK
Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate, and hosts the podcast Amicus.
At his Wednesday announcement, Trump’s lawyer, Sheri Dillon, disputed claims that he even has any such constitutional obligations: “These people are wrong. This is not what the Constitution says, paying for a hotel is not a gift or present and has nothing to do with an office. It is not an emolument,” she said. She added that “President-elect Trump should not be expected to destroy the company he built,” meaning, I suppose, that the normal rules don’t apply to rich presidents. (Mitt Romney was willing to divest in 2012, so maybe it’s just that the normal rules don’t apply to Trump).

The director of the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, immediately dismissed the president-elect’s dramatic nonplan as “meaningless.” He was quoted this week as saying at an unprecedented press conference at the Brookings Institution, “It’s important to understand that the president is now entering the world of public service. He’s going to be asking our men and women in uniform to risk their lives in conflicts around the world. So, no, I don’t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the president.”

Most ethics experts have agreed with Shaub that the arrangement announced Wednesday is inadequate to address the conflict rules. Trump’s expectation and hope seems to be that—since the only fix for an Emoluments Clause violation is impeachment—Republicans will do as Trump has instructed and stop caring and that Democrats won’t have the nerve to raise the point that the president will—every day after next Friday—be violating the Constitution in a way that risks putting him in thrall to foreign powers. Republicans seem happy to oblige.

Indeed, to the extent that the GOP has a new mantra it’s that violations of ethics rules are not legal problems but political ones. That is code for the proposition that so long as Trump and the GOP are in alignment about what is legal or unconstitutional, there will be no such thing as illegal or unconstitutional anymore.

Of course, Republicans could have left it at that. But Jason Chaffetz, the head of the House Oversight Committee, has decided that not only are blatant ethics and constitutional violations now OK but also that criticizing blatant ethics and constitutional violations is not OK.

Of course, there is no shaming Jason Chaffetz.
On Thursday, Chaffetz opted to go full Salem on the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics, attacking Shaub for having done his job. The Republican threatened to subpoena Shaub if he refuses to participate in an official transcribed behind-closed doors interview. The calculus here seems to be that if nobody sees this crooked behavior by supposed ethics guardians like Chaffetz, then it didn’t happen.

OGE, set up post-Watergate, is nonpartisan and advises executive branch officials on avoiding conflicts. Shaub’s five-year term expires in January 2018.

Chaffetz demanded in a letter that he appear before lawmakers in the aforementioned closed-door, transcribed interview, to answer questions in a deposition-style setting. Richard Painter, who served as the ethics lawyer for George W. Bush, told the New York Times that this was “political retaliation” by Republicans against nonpartisan ethics officers for doing their basic duty.

This comes just weeks after a massive public outcry led House Republicans to reverse an attempt to gut their own watchdog, the Office of Congressional Ethics. The attack on OGE has happened with a similar stealth move, accompanied by threats and bullying. Among other things, Chaffetz’s letter objects to a series of tweets by the OGE under Shaub’s direction in November. In the tweets, Shaub was sarcastically congratulating Trump for agreeing to divest from his business, which Trump has not done and will not be doing.

In an interview with me on Friday, Norm Eisen—who led ethics initiatives during President Obama’s first term—agreed with Painter’s assessment that this is simply retaliation:

Democrats and Republicans alike, Richard Painter and myself included, are outraged by the chairman’s demand for a closed, Star Chamber–style interrogation of Director Shaub simply because he said exactly what bipartisan experts agree upon: that Trump’s proposed conflicts solution is woefully inadequate. An even more chilling aspect of the chairman’s letter is the not-so-veiled threat to cut OGE’s funding. All of this is merely the latest salvo in all-out attack on ethics oversight. The effort to shut down OCE, the four [Cabinet] nominees who had no ethics vetting who the majority tried to ram through confirmation hearings, Trump’s flouting precedent and the Constitution in his own [conflicts of interest] plan, and now this bullying of Shaub and threat to close OGE.
“It’s open season on ethics in D.C.,” Eisen added.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a statement Friday morning that “the Oversight Committee is supposed to protect whistleblowers and independent government watchdogs like the Office of Government Ethics instead of retaliating against them for political reasons.” In a letter to Chaffetz, Cummings called for a public hearing with Shaub as the main witness, as opposed to the closed-door meeting Chaffetz is seeking.


I can do nothing more than shake my head, especially when on other sites the arguments I read are that The Clinton Foundation got "gifts" in the form of donations while she was Secretary of State, this is why she... More...


But of course, there is no shaming Chaffetz, the guy who announced that he could never again look his daughter in the eye if he endorsed Trump in October, subsequently promised to vote for Trump, and now feels the need to carry Trump’s top secret manila folders around.

Eisen emphasized to me that OGE is not a partisan office and that for Republicans to turn this into a partisan fight would carry risks:

Walt is a talented, nonpartisan, career professional and he has been applying the same fair treatment to the Trump nominees he did to the Obama ones. Indeed, he praised [secretary of state nominee Rex] Tillerson and [senior adviser appointee and Trump son-in-law Jared] Kushner in his speech. He has cleared over 50 percent of the Trump [Cabinet] nominees who have presented paperwork at this point, versus 20 percent at this point in the Obama transition. He worked beautifully with Richard Painter and others in the Bush years, just as the Republican director of the office, Ric Cusick, worked beautifully with me when we came in.
Whether it meant attempting to dismantle the congressional watchdog or gunning for the independent ethics chief, it’s now clear that working in a nonpartisan fashion to try to uphold ethical norms is now prohibited in Republican-controlled Washington. You can be sure that so long as it’s ethically bankrupt individuals like Chaffetz in charge of enforcing these norms and laws, then our system will be as rife with corruption as our incoming president wants it to be.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... krupt.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Jan 15, 2017 12:15 pm

Israeli spies: Trump ‘golden showers’ dossier only one of many troubling reports being investigated
Eric W. Dolan ERIC W. DOLAN
14 JAN 2017 AT 17:14 ET

Intelligence agencies from around the world are investigating multiple reports that allege some connection between President-elect Donald Trump and the Russian government, according to Israeli intelligence officers who spoke to BuzzFeed.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/israeli ... estigated/



Donald Trump: Kremlin Employee of the Month?
Nicholas Kristof
Nicholas Kristof JAN. 14, 2017

Red Square, with the Kremlin at right. Some people wonder why Donald Trump seems quick to favor people who work there. Credit Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The humor writer Andy Borowitz recently joked that Donald Trump had been named the Kremlin’s “employee of the month.” I giggled at that, and then winced. It’s painful even to joke about.

Some of the most explosive reports about America in the last few days appeared in Israeli newspapers. They suggested that American intelligence officials had warned Israel to “be careful” about sharing classified information with the Trump White House, for fear that it would be given to Russia.

American intelligence officials reportedly cautioned that Vladimir Putin might have “leverages of pressure” to extort Trump. That presumably was a reference to the hanky-panky recounted in the dossier alleging that Moscow compromised Trump by filming him cavorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel.

Perhaps more troubling are suggestions of collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

Trump strongly denies all this, the dossier has zero public evidence behind it, and it should be treated with skepticism. But it reflects an unprecedented uncertainty: There is a disorienting kernel of doubt about whether we can fully trust the man who will occupy the Oval Office.

So is our new president a Russian poodle?

Here’s what we know. The dossier was gathered by a former British MI6 spy, Christopher Steele. A onetime British ambassador to Russia described Steele as a “very competent professional operator” who would not make things up.

Still, the dossier began as opposition research funded by people looking for dirt on Trump, and for weeks it has been in the hands of news organizations (including The Times), the F.B.I., politicians and others, and no one has been able to prove its allegations. Perhaps the closest: The BBC suggested that the “head of an East European intelligence agency” was aware of the material and that C.I.A. officers investigating the issue provided details including that there was “more than one tape.”

Look, it’s poetic justice that Donald Trump, who for years falsely bellowed that President Obama was born abroad, is now caught in similarly unsubstantiated rumors. So Democrats have a right to chortle. But they should remain skeptical.

This isn’t “fake news” of the kind fabricated by Macedonian websites, but it’s both plausible and completely unsubstantiated. Unlike Trump’s claims that Obama was foreign-born, even after the president produced his birth certificate, this hasn’t been disproved or discredited, and it was regarded as credible enough to brief the president and president-elect about. This occupies a murky middle ground: Maybe it’s true and maybe not.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has announced an investigation of Russian election meddling, and other Senate Republicans seem intent on pursuing the issue as well. That’s good: Democrats have little credibility investigating Trump, so it makes sense for Republicans to lead on this.

In the meantime, let’s put aside sexual blackmail and focus on what is undisputed: Trump praises Putin, criticizes NATO and downplays Russian war crimes and its attempts to steal our election.

In contrast, Trump compares the American intelligence community to Nazis, suggesting it was behind the leaking of the dossier. It’s astonishing to see a president-elect in effect hug the Russians while giving his own team the finger, creating a chasm between the White House and the intelligence community.

“It’s extraordinarily serious,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a former general counsel to the C.I.A. “I’ve never seen anything like this.” He said that the C.I.A. was buoyed by the nomination of Mike Pompeo to lead it, but that morale and effectiveness would suffer if the rift with the Trump White House continued.

It’s also indisputable that Trump has appointed people soft on Russia. Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the new national security adviser, took money in 2015 from RT, the Russian propaganda front, and sat next to Putin at an RT dinner. Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state nominee, is one of the American executives friendliest to Putin.

For months, there have been indications of bizarre ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow, including the Russian government’s assertion in November that it maintained contacts with Trump’s “immediate entourage.” The F.B.I. investigated Trump’s Russia ties over the summer and fall, and reportedly sought approval to monitor his aides suspected of improper contacts with Russian officials.

So what’s going on?

The most important question is simply why our president-elect has been so determined to side with Russia — undermining his own intelligence community as he does so. Perhaps it’s a genuine if naïve attempt to “reset” relations. But, oops, new presidents have tried that before, and it fails each time.

The Trump view is so far from the foreign policy mainstream that inevitably there will be darker theories offered for the softness toward Russia. These involve financial ties with Moscow, since Trump refuses to release his tax statements, or the kind of sordid blackmail alleged in the dossier.

Such rumors may well be wrong and unfair — but they persist. They damage Trump, the intelligence community and the United States itself, and the best disinfectant will be transparency. That means congressional inquiries, led by Republicans, and a continued F.B.I. investigation.

We can’t afford even the perception that our president is the Kremlin’s man in Washington.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/14/opin ... .html?_r=0




In total there are 121 users online :: 2 registered, 2 hidden and 117 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Jan 15, 2017 1:20 pm

FEC is after Trump and his JFCs for anonymous donations, other violations
by Ashley Balcerzak on January 11, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump and his joint fundraising committees received stern letters from the FEC for accepting anonymous contributions, donations higher than the legal limit and other violations. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The Federal Election Commission on Tuesday sent its harshest letter yet to Donald Trump’s campaign committee, outlining violations that include accepting large donations from anonymous sources, taking contributions above the legal limits, failing to file reports of last-minute contributions and more.

It wasn’t the first such admonishment of the Trump campaign by the agency; he has been warned about similar matters in the past. This letter refers to Trump’s campaign finance report covering the period from Oct. 20-Nov. 28, 2016.

Both of Trump’s joint fundraising committees were called out by the FEC for some of the same kinds of transgressions in separate letters.

Besides that, Trump’s campaign, which reported raising $328 million for the 2016 election (including $66 million from Trump himself) has been noting refunds to donors who give more than is permissible in an unusual way that inflates his actual fundraising total.

Thanks for your donation, Anonymous D Mr. H27!

Anonymous donations of more than $50 are prohibited. Trump’s joint fundraising committee with the RNC, Trump Make America Great Again Committee, accepted more than $16,000 in such contributions, according to the letter. A Center for Responsive Politics analysis of the filing found 30 pages of donations from donors named “Refused, Refused.” (As in first name: Refused; last name: Refused.)

Refused
The letter doesn’t make clear how much of that anonymous money rolled into Trump’s campaign, but the Center for Responsive Politics found $1,300 transferred from the MAGA joint fundraiser coming from a donor literally named “Anonymous.” (Check out page 5,477 to see for yourself.)

We at the Center for Responsive Politics conducted our own analysis, examining contributions to the president-elect for the entire election cycle, pulling out any name that included a number, symbol or email address, as well as names that included the word “Anonymous” or “Refused.” Using these parameters, we found $22,500 through Nov. 28 from these kinds of questionable sources. Some of these doting donors include Anonymous D Mr H27, Nancy MO5 and Anon Mr H40.

anonymous
Trump’s campaign accepted a $300 donation from Anonymous D Mr H27.

Interestingly, Anonymous D Mr. H27 and Anon Mr. H40 share an address: 725 Fifth Avenue, or Trump Tower.

Using this same analysis with Trump Make America Great Again Committee, we found about $19,000 in such strange donor names, mostly from our friend Mr. Refused.

The Trump campaign and the JFC’s must respond to the FEC by Valentine’s Day (probably not with a box of chocolates), and must make refunds or other adjustments within 60 days of receiving the agency’s letter.

The FEC also devoted more than 240 pages of its missive to Trump to pointing out contributions over the legal limit, $2,700 for individuals and $5,000 for PACs per election. Last November, the FEC had similarly identified 47 pages in excessive payments.

That’s not an uncommon mistake; campaigns on both sides this year have had to make refunds to overzealous givers. Last April, the FEC similarly scolded Bernie Sanders with a 645-page letter detailing more than 1,500 questionable donations.

What is unusual is how Trump’s campaign has been dealing with over-the-limit donations once it is aware of them. The right way: If someone gives a campaign $2,950 for the general election, the excess $250 should be reported as a negative amount, with a minus sign, so the amount is subtracted when the campaign’s contributions are tallied.Cruz

Here’s what it should look like, from Ted Cruz’s Febrary 2016 filing.

In Trump’s FEC report covering the first 19 days of October, he simply listed the full amount given by a donor and put a note next to it saying “excess to be refunded.” The excess — in the case below, $4,300 ($7,000 minus $2,700) — isn’t subtracted in the tally; that would only happen if the excess amount was listed, with a minus sign in front of it. Thus the campaign’s total receipts are inflated by the amounts that are supposed to be subtracted.

excess
Here’s what Trump’s reporting looks like.

In an amended filing for the same period, Trump used the same method, but included the date when the campaign gave the refund back, such as “excess chargeback on 12/1” above the positive amount. But without a negative number being listed, the campaign gets credit for the full amount.

His attempt to fix it wasn’t much better. Trump’s campaign did report the negative number, as it should, but instead of just stopping there, like the rules say, it added in the original too-big contribution as well.

It’s impossible to determine the amount by which Trump’s totals were inflated without going through every report and doing the math.

“This skewing of the numbers shows the committee’s accountants are quite inexperienced and not all that interested in ensuring adequate disclosure is going on,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen.

In addition, in the closing days of the campaign, Trump’s committee received contributions from 56 limited liability corporations, or LLCs. Those can be legal, depending on whether their owners treat them as partnerships or corporations for tax purposes. The FEC wants the campaign to clarify their status.

And the campaign appears to have accepted contributions from corporations, which is clearly verboten; those included Buch’s Truck Stop, Eklessia Long Island Center Ministries, Klae Construction Inc. and Van’s Deer Processing.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/0 ... iolations/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Jan 15, 2017 5:07 pm

The British spy, Donald Trump and the bombshell dossier
Think tank says Russia would have targeted US president-elect due to links with oligarchs

Fri, Jan 13, 2017, 19:00 Updated: Fri, Jan 13, 2017, 19:44
Denis Staunton

Former MI6 officer Christopher Steele was still in hiding on Friday night, as the storm over his dossier about Donald Trump’s alleged links to Russia continued to rage on both sides of the Atlantic. While Trump fumed about what he called “fake news”, former colleagues portrayed Steele (53) as a serious, diligent intelligence analyst who would not invent material for a client.
Andrew Wood, Britain’s former ambassador to Moscow, where Steele served as an intelligence officer under diplomatic cover in the 1990s, said he knew the former spy as “a very competent, professional” operator.
“I do not think he would make things up. I don’t think he would necessarily always draw the correct judgment but that’s not the same thing at all,” he told the BBC.
Steele’s 35-page report details compromising material Russian intelligence services are alleged to have on the American president-elect, including a recording of an encounter with two prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. It also outlines alleged contacts during the election campaign between members of Trump’s team and Russian intelligence operatives, including the exchange of information about the hacking of Democratic Party emails.
Trump allegations
Jonathan Eyal, associate director at the Royal United Services Institute, believes that, regardless of the veracity of the claims in Steele’s dossier, it is almost certain that Russian intelligence targeted Trump.
“The allegations against president-elect Trump are not merely unproven but they are unprovable. There is really no way one can recreate some of the allegations. It would be inconceivable that the Russian intelligence services would not have shown an interest in Mr Trump and that’s not because anyone predicted that Mr Trump would become America’s president, but rather because men of money and influence are always interesting for Russia’s intelligence services, especially since Mr Trump has admitted to having had some dealings with some of the oligarchs,” he said.

“It’s not necessarily that Trump would have been followed for the purposes of interference with American elections but he would have been followed because of his association with Russian oligarchs. Whether that amounts ultimately to the availability of material which allegedly could be used to blackmail the president-elect remains to be seen.”
Steele in Moscow
A Cambridge graduate who was known while a student as a “confirmed socialist”, Steele joined MI6 when he left the university. He was posted to Moscow in late 1990, just ahead of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Boris Yeltsin’s election as the first president of the Russian Federation.
After three years in Moscow and stints in London and Paris, Steele returned to MI6 headquarters in 2002, becoming head of the service’s Russian desk. He was reported to be the first British intelligence officer to conclude that Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who died in 2006, was assassinated by poison in a Russian state-sponsored killing.

Steele left MI6 in 2009 and set up Orbis Business Intelligence, a “corporate intelligence consultancy” based in Belgravia, just a few blocks from the Irish Embassy in London. Britain has a substantial corporate intelligence industry, much of which is based in Mayfair and staffed by former intelligence officers like Steele.
In a global industry which made an estimated $19 billion last year, where the biggest British names are Control Risks, Hakluyt, Kroll and GPW, Orbis is a small player.
“We provide senior decision-makers with strategic insight, intelligence and investigative services. We then work with clients to develop and implement strategies which protect their interests worldwide,” it says on its website.
Fifa corruption
In 2010, Britain’s Football Association hired Orbis to find out what rival countries such as Russia were doing to secure the World Cup in 2018. Steele’s discoveries about corruption within Fifa brought him into contact with the FBI, burnishing his reputation in the US as a reliable operator.
Both MI6 and Downing Street have declined to comment on Steele’s dossier this week, not least because of its potential damage to relations with the incoming administration in Washington. The Russian embassy in London was quick to blame British intelligence for the report, tweeting: “MI6 officers are never ex”.
The incident highlights a potential diplomatic dilemma for Britain, which has been hawkish towards Russia, blaming Vladimir Putin for Litvinenko’s murder and backing sanctions against Moscow after its annexation of Crimea. London is determined to maintain its “special relationship” with Washington under Trump but will struggle to align itself with the president-elect’s conciliatory approach to Moscow.
Steele’s dossier has done nothing to improve London’s relationship with either Washington or Moscow but Wood, Britain’s former ambassador to Moscow , on Friday played down the extent of the likely damage.
“I don’t think an effort to get at the truth can ever be damaging,” he said.
“It is much better to know things and to be open about them than to pretend they don’t exist.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk ... -1.2936578
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby Morty » Sun Jan 15, 2017 6:55 pm

User avatar
Morty
 
Posts: 422
Joined: Sat Jan 04, 2014 10:53 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby Morty » Mon Jan 16, 2017 12:05 am

John Podhoretz ‏@jpodhoretz 42m42 minutes ago

So the Republican president is for making nice with Putin and single payer. You Dems and liberals don't know how good you got it.


Trump promises 'insurance for everybody' in Obamacare replacement plan: Washington Post


U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has pledged to provide "insurance to everybody" under his plan to replace President Barack Obama's health-care law, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Trump's plan is nearing completion although the president-elect declined to provide specific details, the newspaper reported.

In an interview with the newspaper, Trump also promised to force pharmaceutical companies to directly negotiate drug prices with the government for Medicare and Medicaid.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/15/donald-t ... acare.html
User avatar
Morty
 
Posts: 422
Joined: Sat Jan 04, 2014 10:53 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:33 am

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2004. The award recognized Podhoretz's intellectual contributions as editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine and as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Norman Podhoretz was one of the original signatories of the "Statement of Principles" of the Project for the New American Century founded in 1997.

Podhoretz received the Guardian of Zion Award from Bar-Ilan University on May 24, 2007


war is already opened on four fronts: Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iran.
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01082007.html

....

Neoconservatives have called for World War IV against Islam. In Commentary magazine Norman Podhoretz called for the cultural genocide of Islamic peoples. The war is already opened on four fronts: Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iran.

The Bush administration has used its Ethiopian proxies to overthrow the Somalian Muslims who overthrew the warlords who drove the US from Somalia. The US Navy and US intelligence are actively engaged with the Ethiopian troops in efforts to hunt down and capture or kill the Somalian Muslims. US Embasy spokesman Robert Kerr in Nairobi said that the US has the right to pursue Somalia's Islamists as part of the war on terror.

For at least a year the Bush administration has been fomenting and financing terrorist groups within Iran. Seymour Hersh and former CIA officials have exposed the Bush administration's support of ethnic-minority groups within Iran that are on the US State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Last April US Representative Dennis Kucinich wrote a detailed letter to President Bush about US interference in Iran's internal affairs. He received no reply.


We're At War With Somalia?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 89x1026383

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=27622&p=327138&hilit=Podhoretz#p327138


Opponents of military action were further alarmed last week when it emerged that Norman Podhoretz, one of the godfathers of neo-conservatism, used a 45-minute meeting with Mr Bush at the White House to lobby for the bombing of Iran's nuclear plants.

Mr Podhoretz disclosed that, when he said Mr Bush was just "giving futility its chance" by pursuing diplomacy, the president and his former aide Karl Rove had burst out laughing. "It struck me," Mr Podhoretz added, "that if they really believed that there was a chance for these negotiations and sanctions to work, they would not have laughed. They would have got their backs up and said, 'No, no, it's not futile, there's a very good chance'." He said he believed "Bush is going to hit" Iran before his presidency ends.

Mr Podhoretz is highly influential. His son-in-law is Elliott Abrams, Mr Bush's deputy national security adviser, who is regarded by US officials as a key advocate of bombing Iran. He was found guilty of withholding evidence from Congress over the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13576&p=132987&hilit=Podhoretz#p132987


The prototype here is 1979, after the Empire “lost” Iran and Nicaragua on Carter’s watch. Henry Kissinger made passionate speeches about US ingratitude to the Shah as he flew around the world seeking sanctuary (before he finally took up residence in Egypt.) The intellectual – albeit too flattering a word -- case was made by Jeane Kirkpatrick in an article in the November, 1979 edition of Norman Podhoretz’s Commentqry, at that time published under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee.
Kirkpatrick’s trick was to have two different words for their dictators and ours. Their guys were “totalitarian”; our guys were “authoritarian, ” a fine distinction that was swiftly seized upon by the Commentariat in general and hailed as a marvel of intellectual perspicacity. Pro-western “authoritarian” regimes were always preferable and more susceptible of reform than the “totalitarian” regimes that might succeed them.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31125&p=381861&hilit=Podhoretz#p381861
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 16, 2017 10:26 am

JANUARY 16, 2017
The Terrifying Parallels Between Trump and Erdogan
by PATRICK COCKBURN

As Donald Trump prepares for his inauguration, he is struggling with opposition from the US media, intelligence agencies, government apparatus, parts of the Republican Party and a significant portion of the American population. Impressive obstacles appear to prevent him exercising arbitrary power.

He should take heart: much the same was said in Turkey of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2002 when he led his Justice and Development Party (AKP) to the first of four election victories. He faced an army that, through coups and the threat of coups, was the ultimate source of power in the country, and a secular establishment suspicious of his Islamist beliefs. But over the years he has outmanoeuvred or eliminated his enemies and – using a failed military coup on 15 July last year as an excuse – is suppressing and punishing all signs of dissent as “terrorism”.

As Trump enters the White House, the AKP and far right nationalist super majority in the Turkish parliament is this month stripping the assembly of its powers and transferring them wholesale to the presidency. President Erdogan will become an elected dictator able to dissolve parliament, veto legislation, decide the budget, appoint ministers who do not have to be MPs along with senior officials and heads of universities.

All power will be concentrated in Erdogan’s hands as the office of prime minister is abolished and the president, who can serve three five year terms, takes direct control of the intelligence services. He will appoint senior judges and the head of state institutions including the education system.

These far-reaching constitutional changes are reinforcing an ever-expanding purge begun after the failed military coup last year, in which more than 100,000 civil servants have been detained or dismissed. This purge is now reaching into every walk of life, from liberal journalists to businessmen who have seen $10bn in assets confiscated by the state.

The similarities between Erdogan and Trump are greater than they might seem, despite the very different political traditions in the US and Turkey.

The parallel lies primarily in the methods by which both men have gained power and seek to enhance it. They are populists and nationalists who demonise their enemies and see themselves as surrounded by conspiracies. Success does not sate their pursuit of more authority.

Hopes in the US that, after Trump’s election in November, he would shift from aggressive campaign mode to a more conciliatory approach have dissipated over the last two months. Towards the media his open hostility has escalated, as was shown by his abuse of reporters at his press conference this week.

Manic sensitivity to criticism is a hallmark of both men. In Trump’s case this is exemplified by his tweeted denunciation of critics such as Meryl Streep, while in Turkey 2,000 people have been charged with insulting the president. One man was tried for posting on Facebook three pictures of Gollum, the character in The Lord of the Rings, with similar facial features to pictures of Erdogan posted alongside. Of the 259 journalists in jail around the world, no less than 81 are in Turkey. American reporters may not yet face similar penalties, but they can expect intense pressure on the institutions for which they work to mute their criticisms.

Turkey and the US may have very different political landscapes, but there is a surprising degree of uniformity in the behaviour of Trump and Erdogan. The same is true of populist, nationalist, authoritarian leaders who are taking power in many different parts of the world from Hungary and Poland to the Philippines. Commentators have struggled for a phrase to describe this phenomenon, such as “the age of demagoguery”, but this refers only to one method – and that not the least important – by which such leaders gain power.

This type of political leadership is not new: the most compelling account of it was written 70 years ago in 1947 by the great British historian Sir Lewis Namier, in an essay reflecting on what he termed “Caesarian democracy”, which over the previous century had produced Napoleon III in France, Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany. His list of the most important aspects of this toxic brand of politics is as relevant today as it was when first written, since all the items apply to Trump, Erdogan and their like.

Namier described “Caesarian democracy” as typified by “its direct appeal to the masses: demagogical slogans; disregard of legality despite a professed guardianship of law and order; contempt of political parties and the parliamentary system, of the educated classes and their values; blandishments and vague, contradictory promises to all and sundry; militarism; gigantic blatant displays and shady corruption. Panem et circenses [bread and circuses] once more – and at the end of the road, disaster.”

Disaster comes in different forms. One disability of elected dictators or strongmen is that, impelled by an exaggerated idea of their own capacity, they undertake foreign military adventures beyond their country’s strength. As an isolationist Trump might steer clear of such quagmires, but most of his senior security appointments show a far more aggressive and interventionist streak.

A strength of President Obama was that he had a realistic sense of what was attainable by the US in the Middle East without starting unwinnable wars as President George W Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the presidential election campaign, Trump showed signs of grasping – as Hillary Clinton did not – that Americans do not want to fight another ground war in the Middle East or anywhere else. But this naturally limits US influence in the world and will be at odds with Trump’s slogan about “making America great again.”

The disaster that Namier predicted was the natural end of elected dictators has already begun to happen in Turkey. The Turkish leader may have succeeded in monopolising power at home, but at the price of provoking crises and deepening divisions within Turkish society. The country is embroiled in the war in Syria, thanks to Erdogan’s ill-judged intervention there since 2011. This led to the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) establishing a de facto state in northern Syria and Isis doing the same in Syria and Iraq. At home, Erdogan restarted the war with the Turkish Kurds for electoral reasons in 2015 and the conflict is now more intractable than ever.

Every few weeks in Turkey there is another terrorist attack which is usually the work of Isis or a faction of the PKK – although the government sometimes blames atrocities on the followers of Fethullah Gulen, who are alleged to have carried out the attempted military coup last July. In addition to this, there is an escalating financial crisis, which has seen the Turkish lira lose 12 per cent of its value over the last two weeks. Foreign and domestic investment is drying up as investors become increasingly convinced that Turkey has become chronically unstable.

Erdogan and Trump have a further point in common: both have an unquenchable appetite for power and achieve it by exploiting and exacerbating divisions within their own countries.

They declare they will make their countries great again, but in practise make them weaker.

They are forever sawing through the branch on which they – and everybody else – are sitting.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/16/ ... d-erdogan/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 16, 2017 12:30 pm

Czechoslovakia spied on Donald and Ivana Trump, communist-era files show
1977 report said Trump was ‘completely tax-exempt for the next 30 years’
Trump was convinced in 1988 he could win presidency, informant wrote


Donald and Ivana Trump wave to reporters as they board their luxury yacht The Trump Princess in New York City on 4 July 1988.
Donald and Ivana Trump wave from their luxury yacht The Trump Princess in New York in 1988. Czechoslovak authorities took a keen interest in the tycoon and his Czech-born wife. Photograph: Marty Lederhandler/AP
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Thursday 15 December 2016 12.00 EST Last modified on Friday 13 January 2017 17.20 EST

The secret service of communist-era Czechoslovakia spied extensively on Donald Trump, it has emerged, with one informant alleging in 1977 that the future US president-elect “is completely tax-exempt for the next 30 years”.

The Státní bezpečnost or StB – the then communist state’s intelligence agency which dealt with any activity considered dangerous to the state or of western influence – spied on Trump and his Czechoslovak-born wife, Ivana, in the 1970s and 80s when she made regular trips back to visit her father, Miloš Zelníček.

Stamped “top secret” and bearing the code names “Slusovice”, “America” and “Capital”, the files detail the obsession Czech spies had in gathering as much information about the US property tycoon as possible.

Uncovered by Czech television and the German tabloid Bild, the dossiers include one that concentrates solely on the pre-nuptial agreement made between the Trumps. In the case of a marriage breakdown, he agreed to pay her $1m, according to the StB file.

An informant with the cover name “Lubos” reported to his superiors in 1977 how Ivana had begun work at a petrol station in Austria, where she had met her first husband in 1968. She had then emigrated to Canada, where she married Trump.

Another spy reported in 1977 that Trump’s businesses were “absolutely safe” because they received commissions from the state. The informant added: “Another advantage is the personal relationship [he has] with the American president [presumably Jimmy Carter] and the fact that he is completely tax-exempt for the next 30 years.”

During this year’s election campaign, the New York Times obtained tax records that the paper said showed Trump could have used a $916m loss reported on his 1995 tax return to avoid paying income tax for up to 18 years. Asked about the story during one of the presidential debates, Trump acknowledged that this was accurate.

In 1988 a further informant working under the cover name “Milos” reported that Trump was being put under considerable pressure to run for the US presidency. The Czech authorities should be made aware, he said, that Ivana was under pressure herself to not put a step wrong during visits to Czechoslovakia, or else she risked putting her husband’s potential candidacy in jeopardy.

“Any false step of hers will have incalculable consequences for the position of her husband who intends to run for president in 1996,” Milos wrote. He added that Trump was convinced he could win the presidency.

An earlier report on the 1988 US election campaign noted that Trump had donated two payments of $10,000 each to the Democrats and the Republicans. Ivana Trump had been convinced that George HW Bush would win and had been proved right, the report added.

The StB went so far as to send a spy to the US to monitor Trump, believing that if he was to succeed in becoming US president it could have a significant impact on Czechoslovak-US relations. A note by an StB spy named “Al Jarda” of 10 October 1989 details a visit made to Trump by a delegation from a communist agricultural production cooperative from Slusovice, the village where Ivana Trump’s father lived.


“They were given a welcome by one of the richest men in New York, Mister Donald Trump. He got them to explain to him extensively about the work of the cooperative and its further plans in the field of trade,” Al Jarda wrote. At the end of the visit Trump was invited to visit Slusovice. It is not believed that he ever took them up on the offer.

Details of how the Trumps were to be spied on are also held in the StB’s archives. One order dated 1979 states that the phone calls between Ivana and her father are to be tapped at least once a year and their mail is to be constantly monitored. It is noted that Ivana speaks to her children in Czech even when she is in the US as well as detailing the friends and acquaintances of the Czech branch of her family.

A Czech historian said the fact that Ivana’s father was registered as an “StB confidant” did not mean he worked as an agent for them. “Rather the CSSR authorities forced him to talk to them because of his journeys to the US to see his daughter. If he hadn’t spoken to them he would not have been given permission to fly,” Tomáš Vilímek told Bild.

Donald and Ivana Trump were married in 1977 and divorced in 1992. They have three children.

The StB was dissolved following the collapse of communism in 1990.

The Trump transition team has been contacted for comment.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... dApp_Email
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

PreviousNext

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 43 guests