 |
|
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Sicks Bux 
Hal 2003-2019
Joined: 30 Jun 2020
Location: Me Island Ome
|
| Post subject: |  |
|
Obama got one. Has Trump been any more hawkish than him?
_________________
The beatings will continue until moral improves. |
|
|
|
 |
David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| pietillidie wrote: | | David wrote: | | I'm sorry, but I simply don't accept that the difference between trade war and military invasion is so trivial, and I write that in full acceptance that the former is every bit as dangerous as you say. We're talking about long-term economic and diplomatic destabilisation here – destabilisation that can be repaired – not wanton destruction. It's like comparing the Cold War with Vietnam; yes, the former made the world a tinderbox and fostered conflicts like the latter, but ask a Vietnamese peasant whether they would have preferred another round of US/Soviet sabre-rattling or napalm. |
Simply saying 'it's like comparing the Cold War with Vietnam' shows you have no idea about either. The mass death and destruction in Indochina and Latin America were central elements of the Cold War! Yes, each case was multi-faceted, but every single intervention was funded by US politicians and their voters as part of the Cold War. That's why it's a racist joke that it's called 'cold'.
I am better to hand you over to Tannin for the war history, but there are three things you're gravely mistaken about here which have distorted your reasoning and conclusion:
1. Too much WW2 and not enough WW1 work, to misquote Jake the Muss. This is why you don't have a sense of urgency over Trump's global trade war. As I say, it is war alright, just on time delay. Go read anything about WW1 and the lead-up to WW2. I don't rate analogies myself, but at least the analogy can put the possibility into your head and make you look under different lamp posts. Start looking at the economic numbers and tell me something's not going to give, and soon if this keeps up.
2. You somehow actually think the Cold War was 'cold', swallowing the propaganda in full. Chomsky would turn in his grave if he were already dead like most 90-year olds  You've falling for one of the worst misdirections in American history, yet somehow you're sure you've astutely avoided the misdirection of a malignant narcissist and well-honed serial conman who insists he's 'different'.
3. You make the inexplicable assumption that economic suppression doesn't directly result in death through massive cuts to healthcare and social services. We are talking developing economies Trump is suppressing here, so just watch all the classics from infant mortality to communicable disease control. Do you think losing a leg to an IED is worse than brain damage caused by malnourishment? Or that dying in child birth is superior to being shot? Trump's economic suppression is a direct and typically callous hand on the executioner's switch for the poorest in developing countries and BRICS economies who, after decades of crawling through the mire to set up their economies have finally start seeing a glimmer of hope, only to have a psychopathic creep unilaterally snuff that hope out to pay for his wreckage and con gullible fools into thinking he's different from the last lot of killers.
What a vile piece of shite - and he's got you conned cold, like the supposed 'Cold' War you so prefer. |
I think you’re getting carried away here and hung up on a misunderstanding of my analogy. Of course I’m aware of the massive atrocities that were committed around the world over the course of the Cold War, often through direct US action or assistance, from Indonesia to Iran to the many US-backed coups in the Americas (a recently released book, Vincent Bevins’ The Jakarta Method, deals with this history in great detail; you should check it out if you haven’t). Indeed, the fact I used Vietnam as a counter-example ought to have tipped you off, because I’m not aware of anyone who doesn’t recognise the Vietnam War as a key Cold War conflict (and, at any rate, inextricable from it).
So while I’m guilty of imprecise language here, I think it should be clear from context that by "Cold War" I’m referring solely to the central military, economic, intelligence and diplomatic arm-wrestle between the US and the USSR and not the proxy conflicts and coups. You may protest that that’s an arbitrary definition, but I’d argue that it’s relevant here because that’s effectively where the US and China are at right now. The tensions are there, and things could certainly get a lot worse, but we haven’t seen an outbreak of proxy wars between the two superpowers (for what it’s worth, most of the US proxy conflicts are being fought with Democratic Party bete noir Russia instead; China seems to have the good sense to stay out of those). So it’s probably fair to say that China and the US are more on a pre-Cold War footing (at worst) at present – and Chinese leadership likely recognise the Trump administration as a blip and are patiently waiting to see whether his aggression is reflective of a long-term trend.
That’s why, contra point 1, I don’t think we’re quite in World War 1 territory (and it’s honestly a stretch to make that parallel given how much the world and relationships between nations have changed since then). But this is one point I’m not willing to strongly contest, because I honestly have no idea how close or far we are from WW3 at any given moment – and I doubt many have much more of a clue about that. But Trump’s antipathy toward war actually comforts me a little here, as I suspect he would baulk at the opportunity to involve the US in one. More likely he will leave a big mess for the next president to clean up (or escalate, as the case may be). Which is why the prospect of Biden as a Trojan horse for neocons doesn’t seem quite so much of an irrelevance to me, you know? Maybe less of a dangerous prospect than whatever might follow a second Trump administration, but still ...
So I hope that’s cleared up that misunderstanding in point 2. On point 3, I think you’re on dangerous ground if you’re equating economic mismanagement with war. Yes, of course people suffer and die if economies tank; but now we’re talking about the morality of different flavours of free trade and protectionism, and I think that’s pretty fraught as, in the absence of quantifiable data, we really may just as well be debating lives that could be saved through theoretical measures (according to taste in economic theory) not taken. Isn’t it a bit too glib to equate the catastrophic impact of something like the Iraq War – the extent of which you’re obviously perfectly well aware of and have long railed against – with, essentially, a superpower deciding to go protectionist and levying vindictive trade penalties left, right and centre? You could even maybe argue that the suffering is equal because it’s dispersed globally; I don’t know if that bears out, but it’s not totally implausible.
The trouble is that all of this just feels a little like mystification. We know the awful cost of war in terms of the lives lost, the injuries, the trauma, the rapes, the destruction of homes and essential services, the loss of infrastructure, the refugee migrations, the political destabilisations, the economic impact (!), the reprisals, the generational grudges. Why not make our opposition to that a guiding principle, and not treat it as just another way of $$%^%%$ the world up? I’m sorry, but even if you’re right that trade war inevitably leads to war, you won’t convince me that trade war is war. Certainly not anything on the scale we’re seeing, as bad as it is.
But anyway, isn’t this all a bit academic? It’s not as if Trump and Xi’s tariff tit-for-tat is anywhere near our biggest global economic challenge at the moment; as I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’re all in the midst of a global economic catastrophe right now – one that, try as he might to stuff his own country up, Trump has only played a small part in at most. You’re discussing the medical effect of a punch to the face minutes before a nuclear bomb strike. Lucky for Trump’s legacy, I guess, that we’ll never really be able to calculate the extent of his damage to the global economy, given it all happened on the eve of a great depression that wasn’t substantially of his making.
So in summary: 1) maybe, 2) no and 3) unconvinced. Lastly, while I should probably ignore the dig, I’m puzzled by the suggestion that Trump is conning me. Do you think I source any of my reading material from White House press releases, or Trump-friendly media? I’m sure you don’t think that, so why make the accusation?
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^The more you talk about the Cold War the more you make my point that Trump and creeps are setting us up for global disaster. Just how do you think this new Cold War and communist panic will be resolved? Through an exchange of traditional dance and theatre?
Of course it will be war. And by dragging down the global economy to pay for their self-serving global economic theft, Trump, Pompeo and Mnuchin have made sure it will have to be world war.
Trade war is actual war despite your naivete, while strategic economic suppression resulting in death is still willful killing. Not all wars are trade wars, but all trade wars are wars. Always have been, always will be. Your effort to sidestep this makes no sense in any moral universe, including your own.
The deranged psychopath is already implementing international disaster before your very eyes. Killing and sickening the impoverished through economic suppression before your very eyes. Priming national violence and international breakdown before your very eyes. Funding a terrorist state to slaughter a neighbouring state before your very eyes. Wrecking pristine environments before your very eyes. Destroying all hope of dealing with global warming before your very eyes. Making nuclear war more likely before your very eyes. Emboldening local and global far-right fascists before your very eyes. Causing tens of thousands of deaths due to self-serving lies and mismanagement before your very eyes.
But no, it's the candidate whose voters and party didn't support Bush, Cheney and the neocon fanatics twice you really have to watch.
This is the sort of nonsense that once had you wondering if invading Iraq might be a good idea. Have some clarity for once, for goodness' sake. Just use basic commonsense without trying to be contrarian or clever. E.g., Trump was clearly always a malignant narcissist who wrecked shit, and therefore would on taking office almost certainly continue to be that way. Nothing exotic, but solid commonsense.
Trump's chaos will continue to worsen, like weather events under conditions of global warming. He will continue to stimulate the US economy to make markets (and therefore himself) look good and pay for his debts. He will continue to undermine global stability and damage competitor and world economies to try to make himself look good because that's the only outcome his pathological psychiatry can accept. Collaboration and mutual benefit simply don't exist in his damaged brain.
In doing so he will continue to cause overvaluation within the US and devaluation everywhere else. As reality begins to surface, he will need to blame China more aggressively, with the latter in turn becoming more strident and fanatical in response. Clear as day, and this will only intensify because he's a one trick pony and global capital can see it a mile off, thus piling onto this bet and exacerbating it.
The result will not be a repeat of your imaginary Cold War where Russians and Americans merely 'sabre rattled' and exchanged folk songs even as Indochina and Latin America mysteriously burned to the ground in another dimension.
The existing carnage and chaos and the monumental risk of catastrophic global conflict is what you have to deal with before you even get to the foibles of Biden and institutional Democrats, and begin dealing with other crises like global warming. You don't get to conduct the inquest and apportion fractions of blame part way through the disaster. Your first concern is survival.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| pietillidie wrote: | | But no, it's the candidate whose voters and party didn't support Bush, Cheney and the neocon fanatics twice you really have to watch. |
They literally did, though, when it mattered – including, notably, Biden himself. And so did I. But, in my defence, I was 14 and didn’t have a vote in the US senate. So if things are as bad as you say right now as a result of Trump’s presidency – and you make a compelling case – one wonders how much of that damage his successor will be able to fix as opposed to exacerbate.
And that’s all I’ve ever been arguing here, incidentally: not that one should vote for Trump, or that a Biden administration won’t be better in key ways, but that the latter presents distinct dangers of its own.
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Sicks Bux wrote: |
Obama got one. Has Trump been any more hawkish than him? |
It's his second nomination and we probably have less tropps in the middle east, and declining, than we've had for decades. Whatever his (numerous) faults he shows little interest in being involved in armed conflict anywhere in the world and more interested in brokering peace deals.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| David wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | | But no, it's the candidate whose voters and party didn't support Bush, Cheney and the neocon fanatics twice you really have to watch. |
They literally did, though, when it mattered – including, notably, Biden himself. And so did I. But, in my defence, I was 14 and didn’t have a vote in the US senate. So if things are as bad as you say right now as a result of Trump’s presidency – and you make a compelling case – one wonders how much of that damage his successor will be able to fix as opposed to exacerbate.
And that’s all I’ve ever been arguing here, incidentally: not that one should vote for Trump, or that a Biden administration won’t be better in key ways, but that the latter presents distinct dangers of its own. |
I partly agree with that, but much of the party including Obama and a large portion of its constituents opposed it. Indeed, Obama was rewarded with leadership by the party for that clarity. And you would have to concede, in US politics it's one thing to fail to oppose war once the drumbeat of war is rolling, than to be the warmonger who set the the passions aflame.
But when I refer to clarity I'm not referring to moral clarity in areas where it only marginally exists, such as between chauvinist Republicans and chauvinist Democrats. I'm talking decisive problem solving, something which has its place such as during pandemics when populist self-servers like Trump and Johnson talk so much drivel they undermine decisive resolution. You can't have endless death, pandemic, economic suppression and instability; within sane parameters, sometimes we need clarity.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Would any other politician on earth except Putin survive purposely undermining a response to a known deadly, virile pandemic? Again, the worst we thought of Trump — that he caused tens of thousands of additional deaths through his dithering and denial — turns out to be dead true.
Tens of thousands of dead purely to preserve his market highs. That's a textbook illustration of how malignant narcissism under pressure is effective psychopathy — as many professional psychiatrists have long cautioned for the greater good.
Mao would be proud of killing off that many citizens for self glorification.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^If that makes you feel better.
Not only does Fauci have more to say, that effing piece of shite Trump held a rally for maskless Khmer Rouge Hats and therefore negligently killed more people just so his name could be glorified, as if to underscore the point.
| Fauci via The Hill wrote: | "Certainly there were disagreements. There were times I was out there telling the American public how difficult this is, how we're having a really serious problem, and the president was saying it's something that's going to disappear, which obviously is not the case," Fauci said.
Fauci added that there continue to be "some disagreements in what we say and what comes out from the White House," but said they're trying to get the right word out.
Fauci said he couldn't comment specifically on what Trump said to Woodward "except to say yes, when you downplay something that is really a threat, that's not a good thing."
...
When asked about the largely maskless crowd at Trump's outdoor rally in Michigan on Thursday night, Fauci noted that just because an event is outside doesn't make it safe.
"If you're outdoors and you're crowded together and you don't have a mask, the chances of respiratory transmission of a virus clearly are there," Fauci said. "Just because you're outdoors doesn't mean you're protected, particularly if you're in a crowd and you're not wearing masks." |
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/516046-fauci-i-disagree-with-trump-that-us-is-on-final-turn-of-pandemic
Bless Fauci for trying to remain in the room for the good of humanity, but we have the Woodward record, months of public record, and Trump's incredibly consistent malignant narcissism that simply doesn't waver.
Was malignant narcissist and wrecker, is malignant narcissist and wrecker, will be malignant narcissist and wrecker. It's really not that difficult to work out at that level of extremely severe and dangerous mental illness.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
Jezza 
2023 PREMIERS!
Joined: 06 Sep 2010
Location: Ponsford End
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Trump announces 'peace deal' between Bahrain and Israel
| Quote: | Israel and the Gulf state of Bahrain have reached a landmark deal to fully normalise their relations, US President Donald Trump has announced.
"The second Arab country to make peace with Israel in 30 days," he tweeted.
For decades, most Arab states have boycotted Israel, insisting they would only establish ties after the Palestinian dispute was settled.
But last month the United Arab Emirates (UAE) agreed to normalise its relationship with Israel.
There had been much speculation that Bahrain might follow suit.
Mr Trump, who presented his Middle East peace plan in January aimed at resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict, helped broker both accords.
Bahrain is only the fourth Arab country in the Middle East - after the UAE, Egypt and Jordan - to recognise Israel since its founding in 1948. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54124996
Give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize award 
_________________
| 1902 | 1903 | 1910 | 1917 | 1919 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1935 | 1936 | 1953 | 1958 | 1990 | 2010 | 2023 | |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^Great, Israeli psychopath and gangster Netanyahu threatens to annex the West Bank and cause mayhem to distract from his crimes, and in return American psychopath Trump does yet another arms deal with fascist Saudi vassal states to pay back his military-industrial supporters at home, meanwhile sustaining the fossil fuel economies of all parties for decades more, paying back his fossil fuel supporters, even as the West Coast burns.
All this as he tears up arms treaties, scuppers international cooperation and wrecks international bodies, conducts a global trade war to suppress international economies and the economic growth of poor countries, incites horror confrontation with China, turns Central Americans fleeing starvation due to climate change into race bait, and causes death and chaos at home in real time.
It's the same BS over and over and over again as the usual arms and fossil fuels scumbags wreck the joint by having their political representatives play off parties, heighten catastrophic risk, and displace costs.
Mission accomplished!
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Chomsky on the Manslaughterer-in-Chief wrote: | President Trump is desperate. His entire attention is this one issue on his mind: That’s the election. He has to cover up for the fact that he’s personally responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans. It’s impossible to conceal that much longer. Just compare the United States with Europe or even Canada. It’s becoming a pariah state, to the point where Americans aren’t even permitted to travel to Europe. Europe won’t accept them.
His chances of victory depend on his doing something dramatic. He was trying very hard to set up military confrontations. You mentioned martial law. It’s moving towards martial law. He might even be able to try to cancel the elections. There’s no telling what he would do. He’s completely desperate. This is like the actions of some tin-pot dictator in a neo-colony somewhere, small country that has a military coup every couple of years. There’s no historical precedent for anything like this in a functioning democratic society. If he could send Blackshirts out in the streets, he’d be happy to do that.
Exactly how this will eventuate is very hard to say. The courts are unlikely to do anything. We may even get to a point where the military command has to decide which side they’re on. The man is desperate. He’s psychotic. He is in extreme danger of losing his position in the White House. He’ll do anything he can to prevent it.
...
Well, there are various maneuvers that theoretically they might undertake. One might be to try to throw the election to the — to refuse to accept the vote, to make sure that the Republican governors don’t authorize their own electors. This is routine and automatic, but technically they could refuse. Could throw it into the House, where there’s enough Republicans in the House to essentially turn the election into the kind of farce that you find, as I said, in some tin-pot dictatorship. That’s one possibility. Another possibility is he might just try to call out the military to impose martial law.
And the point is, he cannot lose. First of all, he’s psychologically incapable of losing. Secondly, if he loses, if he leaves the White House, he may be facing serious legal problems. Now he has immunity, but there’s a whole swamp around him. He’s tried to keep it from being investigated. He fired all the inspectors general when they were beginning to investigate it. The federal attorney for the Southern District of New York — that’s Wall Street and so on, the most important — started looking into it. Fired him, replaced him with a flack from the private equity industry. There’s nothing he would not do to try to maintain office, virtually nothing you can think of.
This is a major crisis. There’s been one or other form of parliamentary democracy for 350 years in England, and 250 years here, and nothing like this has happened before. We’re dealing with a figure who’s out of the political spectrum for functioning democracies. And he has a political party behind him which by now has just turned into cowardly sycophants. They’re terrified to cross His Imperial Majesty. He’s got a popular base of heavily armed, angry white supremacist militias. There’s no telling what he would do. I think the country, by November, may be a different country — and a different world, given U.S. power.
But that’s kind of the immediate issue. The reason why this is the most important election in history has nothing to do with this. Four more years of Trump’s climate policies and nuclear policies might simply doom the human species, literally. We don’t have a lot of time to deal with the environmental crisis. It’s very serious. Every prediction that’s been made by scientists has been too conservative. Each time it comes out worse.
I won’t run through the details, but it’s a major catastrophe looming. We have some time to deal with it. Four more years of Trump might well take us to irreversible tipping points. At the very least, it will make it much harder to confront this growing crisis. There’s no stopping the polar ice caps from — ice sheets from melting, the Amazon forest from being destroyed. Large parts of the world might become simply unlivable. We’re talking about potential sea rises of maybe one or two feet by the end of the century, much more later. This is all totally catastrophic. You can’t conceive of how human society can survive in an organized way.
At the same time, Trump is dedicated to destroying the arms control regime. Last August, he terminated the Reagan-Gorbachev INF Treaty, which helped control the potential for nuclear war growing from a European conflict. Now he’s dismantled the Open Skies Treaty, goes back to Eisenhower. That’s gone. He’s imposed frivolous demands to try to delay negotiations on the New START treaty, which the Russians have been pleading for for a long time. This is due for renewal in a few months. May already be too late to renegotiate it, the last of the arms control treaties. He’s now threatening to carry out nuclear weapons tests, tests that would undermine the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, almost 30 years. The United States never ratified it, but it’s lived up to it.
All of this opens the door wider for other countries to react the same way. The arms industry is, of course, euphoric. They’re getting huge new contracts to develop major weapons to destroy all of us. This encourages others to do the same. So there are new contracts down the road for hopeless means to try to defend ourselves against the monstrosities that we’re helping to construct. This is Trump, racing towards this, apparently enjoying it. You can’t describe it in normal — the term you used, “sociopath,” is perfectly accurate. Whether this can be contained within the constitutional structures of the United States, we don’t know.
I mean, something similar to this happened in the United Kingdom a couple of months ago. Boris Johnson, the prime minister, prorogated the Parliament, closed the Parliament, so that he could ram through his version of Brexit. This was regarded by British legal experts as the worst crisis in 350 years. Well, in Britain, the Supreme Court nullified it. That’s unlikely to happen here.
I might say that there’s another country that’s trying to mimic the United States, Brazil, with another ridiculous dictator, Jair Bolsonaro, who’s trying to be a clone of Trump. He was being investigated by — he and his family, involved in all kind of sordid criminal activities, came under investigation. He fired the investigators. But that was blocked by the courts in Brazil. Not here. When Trump fired them all, purged the executive, nothing from the courts, nothing from the Republicans in Congress. Brazil at least has a thin barrier to another military dictatorship. The United States is in worse shape. This is pretty serious. There’s been nothing like it. There’s no precedents that have any real relevance.
...
As I say, there’s no precedent for this in any minimally functioning democracy. There are countries, many of them, where the military has taken over, often with U.S. support or even initiative, because we wanted to overthrow the civilian government. Nothing like this has happened since — aside from the fascist regimes, interwar regimes, totally different conditions, there’s just no precedent.
There was, as you may recall, a couple of weeks ago, press reports with headlines about how Trump is expanding his purge of the executive, which has almost been cleansed of any controls or dissident voices. He’s extending this to trying to purge the military. Well, there were speculations at the time that the purge of the military might be preparation for a plan to try to bring the military in to carry out something which would amount to a military coup.
The military so far has been refusing, pulled out the 82nd Airborne from Washington after Trump wanted it in there. They’ve been rejecting the proposals from the White House for more force and violence. That’s why he’s resorting to forces outside the official military in his current campaign to set up violent confrontations in Democratic-run cities, the plan right now. What the military would do, we don’t know.
If you look for precedents in Third World dictatorships, it would depend on how those at the colonel level react, people close in contract with troops. But we have no precedent for anything like this. There’s nothing like it. This is a unique situation in modern history, in the modern history of the democratic — more or less democratic societies.
|
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/7/24/noam_chomsky_on_trump_s_troop
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| More Chomsky on the Manslaughterer-in-Chief wrote: | This sounds strong, but it’s true: Trump is the worst criminal in history, undeniably. There has never been a figure in political history who was so passionately dedicated to destroying the projects for organized human life on earth in the near future.
That is not an exaggeration. People are focused now on the protests; the pandemic is serious enough that we will emerge from it at terrible cost. The cost is greatly amplified by the gangster in the White House, who has killed tens of thousands of Americans, making this the worst place in the world [for the coronavirus]. We will emerge [from the pandemic, but] we’re not going to emerge from another crime that Trump has committed, the heating of the globe. The worst of it is coming — we’re not going to emerge from that.
The ice sheets are melting; they’re not going to recover. That leads to exponential increase in global warming. Arctic glaciers, for example, could flood the world. Recent studies indicate that on the present course, in about fifty years, much of the habitable part of the world will be unlivable. You won’t be able to live in parts of South Asia, parts of the Middle East, parts of the United States. We’re approaching the point of 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were about twenty-five feet higher than they are now. And it’s worse than that. The Scripps Oceanographic Institute just came out with a study that estimated that we are coming ominously close to a point [similar to] 3 million years ago, when sea levels were fifty to eighty feet higher than they are today.
All around the world, countries are trying to do something about it. But there is one country which is led by a president who wants to escalate the crisis, to race toward the abyss, to maximize the use of fossil fuels, including the most dangerous of them, and to dismantle the regulatory apparatus that limits their impact. There is no crime like this in human history. Nothing. This is a unique individual. And it’s not as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Of course he does. It’s as if he doesn’t care. If he can pour more profits into his pockets and the pockets of his rich constituency tomorrow, who cares if the world disappears in a couple of generations?
As far as the government is concerned, we’re seeing something pretty interesting. Parliamentary democracy has been around for 350 years, starting in England in 1689 with the so-called Glorious Revolution, when sovereignty was transferred from the royalty to the parliament. The beginnings of parliamentary democracy in the United States [came] about a century later. Parliamentary democracy is not just based on laws and constitutions. In fact, the British constitution is maybe a dozen words. It’s based on trust and good faith, the assumption that people will act like human beings.
Take Richard Nixon. Pretty rotten guy, but when the time came that he had to leave office, he left office quietly. Nobody is expecting that with Trump. He doesn’t act like a human being. He’s off somewhere else. He [doesn’t] even make appointments that can be confirmed by the Senate. Why bother? I don’t like somebody, I’ll throw them out. One Republican, Lisa Murkowski, dares to raise a small question about his nobility, [and he] came down on her with a ton of bricks — I’m going to destroy you.
It’s not fascism. It’s what I said before: tin-pot dictator of some small country where they have coups every couple of years. That’s the mentality.
Congress, the Senate, happens to be in the hands of a soul mate of his, Mitch McConnell — in many ways the real evil genius of this administration, dedicated to destroying democracy long before Trump. When [Barack] Obama was elected, McConnell said openly to the public, “My main goal is to ensure that Obama can achieve nothing.” Okay. That’s saying, “I want to destroy parliamentary democracy,” which is based, as I said, in good faith and trust in the interchange.
The Senate. the so-called world’s greatest deliberative body, is reduced to passing legislation that will enrich the very rich, empowering the corporate sector, and making judicial appointments to stack the judiciary with young, ultraright, mostly incompetent justices who can ensure for a generation that no matter what the public wants, they’ll be able to block it.
It’s a deep hatred of democracy and fear of democracy. That’s not unusual among the elites; they don’t like democracy for obvious reasons. But this is something special.
That’s on top of the pandemic, on top of the global warming crisis, the crisis of nuclear weapons, which is equally severe. Trump is dismantling the entire arms-control regime, greatly increasing the risk of destruction, virtually inviting enemies to develop weapons to destroy us that we [won’t be able to] stop.
Trump is taking the worst aspects of capitalism, particularly the neoliberal version of capitalism, and amplifying them. Let’s just take the pandemic. Why is there a pandemic? In 2003, after the SARS epidemic, which was a coronavirus, it was well understood by scientists — they were saying, “Another coronavirus, much more serious than this, is very likely. Now here are the steps we have to take to prepare for it.” Somebody has to take the steps. Well, there is a pharmaceutical industry, but extraordinarily wealthy, huge labs can’t do it. You don’t spend money on something that might be important ten years from now — stopping a future catastrophe is not profitable. That’s a capitalist crisis.
Government has the resources; they have great labs. But then comes something called Ronald Reagan, at the beginning of the neoliberal assault on the population, arguing that government is the problem, not the solution — meaning we have to take decisions away from government. Government is influenced by people. Now we have to put [decisions] in the hands of unaccountable private institutions which have no influence from the public. In the United States, that’s sometimes called libertarianism. That’s the beginning of the neoliberal assault.
George H. W. Bush established a presidential scientific advisory council board. Obama called it into office, correctly, the first day of his administration and asked them to prepare a pandemic warning reaction system. A couple of weeks later, they came back with a system that was put in place. January 2017, the wrecker comes into office. First days of his administration, [Trump] dismantles the whole system to respond to a pandemic; started defunding the Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention] (CDC) and every health-related aspect of government, year after year. Eliminated programs of American scientists in China working with Chinese scientists to identify potential coronavirus threats and throws it out. So when [the coronavirus] hit, the United States was uniquely unprepared — thanks to the wrecker.
And then it got worse. He refused to react to it. Other countries responded to it, some of them very well and very quickly. It’s almost gone, mostly under control. Not in the United States. He didn’t care. For months, US intelligence couldn’t get the White House to say, “There’s a serious crisis.” Finally, according to reports, he noticed that the stock market was declining, and then said, “We have to do something.” What he has done is just chaos.
But a large part of the problem is pre-Trump. Why aren’t the hospitals ready? Well, they run on a business model. That’s neoliberalism. It has to be just-in-time delivery. They don’t want to lose a cent. So we don’t have an extra hospital bed; we have to make sure the CEOs of the private hospitals get millions of dollars a year in compensation. Can’t have an extra bed — you cut into that. So everything’s parroted above. The nursing homes, which are privately owned, are reduced to minimal functioning, because we can make more money that way, if we’re a private-equity corporation that owns them. Now we can contribute to Trump’s campaign so he can have a photo-op with us, telling us how wonderful we are for destroying the nursing homes, killing all the elderly people.
It goes deep into issues well before Trump, but he is a unique phenomenon — again, the worst criminal in human history, so his minor crimes are to destroy American democracy and to amplify a pandemic killing over a hundred thousand people. But those are minor crimes by his standards. |
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/noam-chomsky-donald-trump-coronavirus-george-floyd-protests
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Jezza wrote: | Trump announces 'peace deal' between Bahrain and Israel
| Quote: | Israel and the Gulf state of Bahrain have reached a landmark deal to fully normalise their relations, US President Donald Trump has announced.
"The second Arab country to make peace with Israel in 30 days," he tweeted.
For decades, most Arab states have boycotted Israel, insisting they would only establish ties after the Palestinian dispute was settled.
But last month the United Arab Emirates (UAE) agreed to normalise its relationship with Israel.
There had been much speculation that Bahrain might follow suit.
Mr Trump, who presented his Middle East peace plan in January aimed at resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict, helped broker both accords.
Bahrain is only the fourth Arab country in the Middle East - after the UAE, Egypt and Jordan - to recognise Israel since its founding in 1948. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54124996
Give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize award |
Yer right. Give Trump a peace prize for (rightly or wrongly) claiming a role in a "peace" settlement between two countries that weren't at war in the first place. Twice!
Give me a break.
But wait, wait! There is peace between Denmark and Mexico! Yay! And no fighting at all between the USA and Canada! Or Australia and New Zealand! I claim my Peace Prize too! Better give me two prizes 'coz that's three pairs of countries who weren't fighting and aren't fighting now. And I could make more - Brazil and Sri Lanka; Japan and France!
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
The Rules
FAQ
Usergroups
Calendar
Search
Log in
Register
