Politics & Stuff

[Fernando 6,464]

1 hour ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Not surprising Blinken is a Zionist his Grandad was one of the first Isaraeli settlers

and the 'peacemaker' sent by the US for Israel/Lebanon used to be in the IDF - you couldnt make it up

Bottom line the US could stop the Ukraine and Middle east slaughter tomorrow - but there's money in thar them weapons....

I think Trump will end the war. 

He said and everything he said he has done. 

[Fulham Broadway 16,858]

3 minutes ago, Fernando said:

I think Trump will end the war. 

He said and everything he said he has done. 

He's certainly set himself up for that, saying he would end it in a day - maybe that's a bit optimistic., but if he could would be good - apparently hes jealous that Obama got a Nobel Peace prize so he'll give it a go.

 

[Vesper 28,844]

3 minutes ago, Fernando said:

He said and everything he said he has done. 

How is that Mexico-paid-for wall working out?

How are all those Trump infrastructure projects doing?

How about that new Trump healthcare plan that replaced the ACA (Obamacare) after the ACA was repealed?

How about Covid, as Trump said it would 'just disappear' in a few weeks?

 

Oh, yes, NONE of those things happened.

 

[Fulham Broadway 16,858]

2 minutes ago, Vesper said:

How is that Mexico-paid-for wall working out?

When he said ''its a very high wall, very high, no one can get over it'' ..pause ''unless you had a very long ladder'' 🤪

he could have a 90 minute Netflix comedy slot

[Fulham Broadway 16,858]

Trump, his team, his allies, and his supporters in the right-wing media have been calling his presidential win “historic,” and a “landslide,” while using those provably false claims to declare a mandate. The voting from the election earlier this month is still not complete but Trump’s slim margin of victory is likely to shrink even further.

As The New York Times reports, the results prove Trump’s election claims are false.

Calling it, “The ‘Landslide’ That Wasn’t,” The Times’ Peter Baker reports the “latest vote count shows that Donald J. Trump won the popular vote by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century. But Mr. Trump claims a ‘powerful mandate.'”

[Vesper 28,844]

2 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

When he said ''its a very high wall, very high, no one can get over it'' ..pause ''unless you had a very long ladder'' 🤪

he could have a 90 minute Netflix comedy slot

there were so many late night telly comedy videos about it

[Vesper 28,844]

MAGAts think Trump will build this:

[Vesper 28,844]

Amsterdam Mayor Admits She Was Wrong About Violence

 

[Vesper 28,844]

[Vesper 28,844]

here's Piers Morgan repeatedly lying that "babies were killed in their cribs" as "verified by photo evidence". This is the genocidal atrocity propaganda he and others in the Western media deliberately spread to justify and launder the actual mass killing of Palestinian babies

in the same segment Piers Morgan of course also threw in the rape hoax, and then he was confronted with the obvious point: all genocidal Zionist scum like him always cover for their actual pedophile rapist buddies, or are actual rapists themselves. "Why are you stuttering?"

 

Edited Sunday at 13:12 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,844]

 

[Fulham Broadway 16,858]

The power of AIPAC to control the US...

The ICC was set up after Nuremberg to stop any country behaving like that again -seems the US and Israel are exempt- when it suits them....

Lindsay Graham tweeted: “Any nation or organization that aids or abets this outrage (The ICC) should expect to meet firm resistance from the United States, and I look forward to working with President Trump, his team, and my colleagues in Congress to come up with a powerful response.”

The South Carolina senator later told Fox News: “If you are going to help the ICC as a nation and force the arrest warrant against Bibi and Gallant…I will put sanctions on you as a nation.

You’re gonna have to pick the rogue ICC versus America. I’m working with [another US senator] Tom Cotton to have legislation passed as soon as we can to sanction any country that aids and abets the arrest of any politician in Israel. What they’re doing in Israel is trying to prevent a second Holocaust. So, to any ally, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, if you try to help the ICC, we’re gonna sanction you.”

In March 2023, Mr Lindsey supported the ICC arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin, praising the organisation. He said: “The decision by the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin is a giant step in the right direction for the international community. It is more than justified by the evidence. I hope the international community will continue to support the ICC in their endeavors to hold Putin accountable for the brutal invasion of Ukraine.”

[Vesper 28,844]

12 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

The power of AIPAC to control the US...

The ICC was set up after Nuremberg to stop any country behaving like that again -seems the US and Israel are exempt- when it suits them....

Lindsay Graham tweeted: “Any nation or organization that aids or abets this outrage (The ICC) should expect to meet firm resistance from the United States, and I look forward to working with President Trump, his team, and my colleagues in Congress to come up with a powerful response.”

The South Carolina senator later told Fox News: “If you are going to help the ICC as a nation and force the arrest warrant against Bibi and Gallant…I will put sanctions on you as a nation.

You’re gonna have to pick the rogue ICC versus America. I’m working with [another US senator] Tom Cotton to have legislation passed as soon as we can to sanction any country that aids and abets the arrest of any politician in Israel. What they’re doing in Israel is trying to prevent a second Holocaust. So, to any ally, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, if you try to help the ICC, we’re gonna sanction you.”

In March 2023, Mr Lindsey supported the ICC arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin, praising the organisation. He said: “The decision by the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin is a giant step in the right direction for the international community. It is more than justified by the evidence. I hope the international community will continue to support the ICC in their endeavors to hold Putin accountable for the brutal invasion of Ukraine.”

the Mossad likely have massive proof and pics/videos of closet case Graham getting a BBC up the batty crease and down his throat

[cosmicway 1,324]

ARE YOU A COMMIE, OR A CITIZEN ?
-------------------------------------------
I mean to broaden the horizon of this age old question.
To make you understand let's first look who are the patriotic citizens and who are the commies.
The patriotic citizans are the majority and they also include -by and large- the establishment, the jet sets.
The commies are the minority and they are stereotyped as working class individuals, though that is n't necessary.

So this makes you say "hello, I had better be a citizen".
Not for moral reasons, apart from any moral reasons, this seems to be the best in crowd to belong.

Well if you are jet set it's ok.
But if you are not ?
The mistake you are making is that by being a patriotic citizen you are a pin in the haystack.

Suppose you open a cafeteteria in a smallish but not too small a town.
Say West Brom whose population is about 100,000.
If you open it in one of the tourist spots of the town that's fine.
But that's expensive even if you find such a spot.
So you open it in one of the backstreets ?
But then bliahhh, it will close in three months.
So what do you do ?
You name it "Karl Marx cafeteria" - you attract all the town's commies and you become rich.
You even have a margin to survive with one or two antagonists.
If someone opens another cafeteria called "cafeteria of the proletariat" at half a mile distance from you it's no problem.

So that's why some clever blokes become commies.
This can be enlarged of course to others, neofascists for example, Putin's admirers.
Cafeteria "Benito Mussolini" and cafeteria "tero nero".

Those who are scared of the CIA, FBI, MI6 and such entities are dummies - they stay out of the money.
 

Edited Sunday at 17:19 by cosmicway

[Fulham Broadway 16,858]

3 hours ago, Vesper said:

the Mossad likely have massive proof and pics/videos of closet case Graham getting a BBC up the batty crease and down his throat

But hes not gay 😁

Lindsey Graham's 10 gayest moments - LGBTQ Nation

[Fulham Broadway 16,858]

 

[Vesper 28,844]

How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world

In the wake of Trump’s unnerving appointees, the investigative journalist and veteran of the libel court offers pointers on coping in an age of surveillance

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/17/how-to-survive-the-broligarchy-20-lessons-for-the-post-truth-world-donald-trump

1 When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Last week Donald Trump appointed a director of intelligence who spouts Russian propaganda, a Christian nationalist crusader as secretary of defence, and a secretary of health who is a vaccine sceptic. If Trump was seeking to destroy American democracy, the American state and American values, this is how he’d do it.

2 Journalists are first, but everyone else is next. Trump has announced multibillion-dollar lawsuits against “the enemy camp”: newspapers and publishers. His proposed FBI director is on record as wanting to prosecute certain journalists. Journalists, publishers, writers, academics are always in the first wave. Doctors, teachers, accountants will be next. Authoritarianism is as predictable as a Swiss train. It’s already later than you think.

3 To name is to understand. This is McMuskism: it’s McCarthyism on steroids, political persecution + Trump + Musk + Silicon Valley surveillance tools. It’s the dawn of a new age of political witch-hunts, where burning at the stake meets data harvesting and online mobs.

4 If that sounds scary, it’s because that’s the plan.  Trump’s administration will be incompetent and reckless but individuals will be targeted, institutions will cower, organisations will crumble. Fast. The chilling will be real and immediate.

5 You have more power than you think. We’re supposed to feel powerless. That’s the strategy. But we’re not. If you’re a US institution or organisation, form an emergency committee. Bring in experts. Learn from people who have lived under authoritarianism. Ask advice.

6 Do not kiss the ring. Do not bend to power. Power will come to you, anyway. Don’t make it easy. Not everyone can stand and fight. But nobody needs to bend the knee until there’s an actual memo to that effect. WAIT FOR THE MEMO.

7 Know who you are. This list is a homage to Yale historian, Timothy Snyder. His On Tyranny, published in 2017, is the essential guide to the age of authoritarianism. His first command, “Do not obey in advance”, is what has been ringing, like tinnitus, in my ears ever since the Washington Post refused to endorse Kamala Harris. In some weird celestial stroke of luck, he calls me as I’m writing this and I ask for his updated advice: “Know what you stand for and what you think is good.”

8 Protect your private life. The broligarchy doesn’t want you to have one. Read Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: they need to know exactly who you are to sell you more shit. We’re now beyond that. Surveillance Authoritarianism is next. Watch The Lives of Others, the beautifully told film about surveillance in 80s east Berlin. Act as if you are now living in East Germany and Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp is the Stasi. It is.

9 Throw up the Kool-Aid. You drank it. That’s OK. We all did. But now is the time to stick your fingers down your throat and get that sick tech bro poison out of your system. Phones were – still are – a magic portal into a psychedelic fun house of possibility. They’re also tracking and surveilling you even as you sleep while a Silicon Valley edgelord plots ways to tear up the federal government.

10 Listen to women of colour. Everything bad that happened on the internet happened to them first. The history of technology is that it is only when it affects white men that it’s considered a problem. Look at how technology is already being used to profile and target immigrants. Know that you’re next.

11 Think of your personal data as nude selfies. A veteran technology journalist told me this in 2017 and it’s never left me. My experience of “discovery” – handing over 40,000 emails, messages, documents to the legal team of the Brexit donor I’d investigated – left me paralysed and terrified. Think what a hostile legal team would make of your message history. This can and will happen.

12 Don’t buy the bullshit. A Securities and Exchange judgment found Facebook had lied to two journalists – one of them was me – and Facebook agreed to pay a $100m penalty. If you are a journalist, refuse off the record briefings. Don’t chat on the phone; email. Refuse access interviews. Bullshit exclusives from Goebbels 2.0 will be a stain on your publication for ever.

13 Even dickheads love their dogs. Find a way to connect to those you disagree with. “The obvious mistakes of those who find themselves in opposition are to break off relations with those who disagree with you,” texts Vera Krichevskaya, the co-founder of TV Rain, Russia’s last independent TV station. “You cannot allow anger and narrow your circle.”

14 Pay in cash. Ask yourself what an international drug trafficker would do, and do that. They’re not going to the dead drop by Uber or putting 20kg of crack cocaine on a credit card. In the broligarchy, every data point is a weapon. Download Signal, the encrypted messaging app. Turn on disappearing messages.

15 Remember. Writer Rebecca Solnit, an essential US liberal voice, emails: “If they try to normalize, let us try to denormalize. Let us hold on to facts, truths, values, norms, arrangements that are going to be under siege. Let us not forget what happened and why.”

16 Find allies in unlikely places. One of my most surprising sources of support during my trial(s) was hard-right Brexiter David Davis. Find threads of connection and work from there.

17 There is such a thing as truth. There are facts and we can know them. From Tamsin Shaw, professor in philosophy at New York University: “‘Can the sceptic resist the tyrant?’ is one of the oldest questions in political philosophy. We can’t even fully recognise what tyranny is if we let the ruling powers get away with lying to us all.”

18 Plan. Silicon Valley doesn’t think in four-year election cycles. Elon Musk isn’t worrying about the midterms. He’s thinking about flying a SpaceX rocket to Mars and raping and pillaging its rare earth minerals before anyone else can get there. We need a 30-year road map out of this.

19 Take the piss. Humour is a weapon. Any man who feels the need to build a rocket is not overconfident about his masculinity. Work with that.

20 They are not gods. Tech billionaires are over-entitled nerds with the extraordinary historical luck of being born at the exact right moment in history. Treat them accordingly.

Edited Sunday at 20:40 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,844]

The ideology of Donald J. Trump

Trump’s ideology blends mercantilism, profit-driven capitalism, anti-immigration stances, and nationalist anti-imperialism—offering a unique lens on how he views America’s role at home and abroad.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-ideology-of-donald-j-trump

 

Does Donald J. Trump have an ideology, and what it is? The first part of the question is redundant: every individual has an ideology and if we believe that they do not have it, it is because it might represent an amalgam of pieces collected from various ideological frameworks that are rearranged, and thus hard to put a name on. But that does not mean that there is no ideology. The second part is a million-dollar question because if we could piece together Donald J, Trump’s ideology, we would be able to forecast, or guess (the element of volatility is high), how his rule over the next four years might look like.

The reason why most people are unable to make a coherent argument about Trump’s ideology is because they are either blinded by hatred or adulation, or because they cannot bring what they observe in him into an ideological framework, with a name attached to it, and to which they are accustomed.

Before I try to answer the question, let me dismiss two, in my opinion, entirely wrong epithets attached to Trump: fascist and populist. If fascist is used as a term of abuse, this is okay, and we can use it freely. Nobody cares. But as a term in a rational discussion of Trump’s beliefs, it is wrong. Fascism as an ideology implies (i) exclusivist nationalism, (ii) glorification of the leader, (iii) emphasis on the power of the state as opposed to private individuals and the private sector, (iv) rejection of the multi-party system, (v) corporatist rule, (vi) replacement of the class structure of society with unitary nationalism, and (vii) quasi religious adulation of the Party, the state, and the leader. I do not need to discuss each of these elements individually to show that they have almost no relationship to what Trump believes or what he wants to impose.

Likewise, the term “populist” has of late become a term of abuse, and despite some (in my opinion rather unsuccessful) attempts to define it better, it really stands for the leaders who win elections but do so on a platform that “we” do not like. Then, the term becomes meaningless.

What are the constituent parts of Trump’s ideology as we might have glimpsed during the previous four years of his rule?

Mercantilism. Mercantilism is an old and hallowed doctrine that regards economic activity, and especially trade in goods and services between the states, as a zero-sum game. Historically, it went together with a world where wealth was gold and silver. If you take the amount of gold and silver to be limited, then clearly the state and its leader who possesses more gold and silver (regardless of all other goods) is more powerful. The world has evolved since the 17^th century, but many people still believe in the mercantilist doctrine. Moreover, if one believes that trade is just a war by other means and that the main rival or antagonist of the United States is China, mercantilist policy towards China becomes a very natural response. When Trump initiated such policies against China in 2017, they were not a part of the mainstream discourse, but have since moved to the centre. Biden’s administration followed and expanded them significantly. We can expect that Trump will double-down on them. But mercantilists are, and Trump will be, transactional: if China agrees to sell less and buy more, he will be content. Unlike Biden, Trump will not try to undermine or overthrow the Chinese regime. Thus, unlike what many people believe, I think that Trump is good for China (that is, given the alternatives).

Profit-making. Like all Republicans, Trump believes in the private sector. The private sector, in his view, is unreasonably hampered by regulations, rules, and taxes. He was a capitalist who never paid taxes, which, in his view, simply shows that he was a good entrepreneur. But for others, lesser capitalists, regulations should be simplified or gotten rid of, and taxation should be reduced. Consistent with that view is the belief that taxes on capital should be lower than taxes on labour. Entrepreneurs and capitalists are job-creators, others are, in Ayn Rand’s words, “moochers”. There is nothing new there in Trump. It is the same doctrine that was held from Reagan onwards, including by Bill Clinton. Trump may be just more vocal and open about low taxes on capital, but he would do the same thing that Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. did. And that liberal icon Alan Greenspan deeply believed in.

Anti-immigrant “nationalism”. This a really difficult part. The term “nationalist” only awkwardly applies to American politicians because people are used to “exclusive” (not inclusive) European and Asian nationalisms. When we speak of (say) Japanese nationalism, we mean that such Japanese would like to expel ethnically non-Japanese either from decision-making or presence in the country, or both. The same is true for Serbian, Estonian, French, or Castellan nationalisms. American nationalism, by its very nature, cannot be ethnic or blood-related because of the enormous heterogeneity of people who compose the United States. Commentators have thus invented a new term, “white nationalism”. It is a bizarre term because it combines colour of the skin with ethnic (blood) relations. In reality, I think that the defining feature of Trump’s “nationalism” is neither ethnic nor racial, but simply the dislike of new migrants. It is in essence not different from anti-migrant policies applied today in the heart of the socio-democratic world, in Nordic and North Western European countries where the right-wing parties in Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, and Denmark believe (in the famous expression of the Dutch right-wing leader Geert Wilders) that their countries are “full” and cannot accept more immigrants. Trump’s view is only unusual because the US is not, objectively by any criteria, a full country: the number of people per square kilometre in the United States is 38 while it is 520 in the Netherlands.

A nation for itself. When one combines mercantilism with migrant dislike, one gets close to what US foreign policy under Trump will look like. It will be the policy of nationalist anti-imperialism. I have to unpack these terms. This combination is uncommon, especially for big powers: if they are big, nationalist, and mercantilist, it is almost intuitively understood that they have to be imperialistic. Trump, however, defies this nostrum. He goes back to the Founders’ foreign policy that abhorred “foreign entanglements”. The United States, in their and in his view, is a powerful and rich nation, looking after its interests, but it is not an “indispensable nation” in the way that Madeleine Albright defined it. It is not the role of the United States to right every wrong in the world (in the optimistic or self-serving view of this doctrine) nor to waste its money on people and causes which have nothing to do with its interests (in the realist view of the same doctrine).

Why Trump dislikes imperialism that has become common currency for both US parties since 1945 is hard to say, but I think that instinctively he tends to espouse values of the Founding Fathers and people like the Republican antagonist to FDR, Robert Taft, who believed in US economic strength and saw no need to convert that strength into a hegemonic political rule over the world.

This does not mean that Trump will give up US hegemony (NATO will not be disbanded), because, as Thucydides wrote: “it is not any longer possible for you to give up this empire, though there may be some people who in a mood of sudden panic and in a spirit of political apathy actually think that this would be a fine and noble thing to do. Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go”. But in the light of Trump’s mercantilist principles, he would make US allies pay much more for it. Like in Pericles’ Athens, the protection will no longer come for free. One should not forget that the beautiful Acropolis that we all admire was built with gold stolen from the allies.

This article was first published on Branko Milanovic’ Substack