Trump sure seems to want a war

[Ezra]

Syrian air strikes.

Sending an armada to North Korea.

He's @-) bully.

[Silver]

1849: Gutle Schnaper, Mayer Amschel Rothschild's wife dies. Before her death she would nonchalantly state, "If my sons did not want wars, there would be none." http://rense.com/general88/hist.htm

Someone has said that all wars are banker wars. Have you noticed how many bankers Trump has in his administration? A good example is Wilbur Ross, Jr., the Secretary of Commerce. As a banker, Ross saved Trump from financial disaster at least once so besides being a Rothschild banker, which is bad enough, his position in Trump's administration appears to be payback.

With lots of Goldman Sachs bankers, with a lawbreaker for Treasury Secretary (Mnuchin), wars should not be a surprise to anyone. Wars are also good for hiding other sins and for rallying the sheeple. Nobody wants to be unpatriotic during a war, right?

[brianj]

Syrian air strikes.

Sending an armada to North Korea.

He's @-) bully.

Maybe, just maybe, if hostile powers know that Trump is ready and willing to go to war they will be less inclined toward belligerent action.

By your definition, John F Kennedy was a tremendous war monger. There were multiple times when jets were loaded with nuclear bombs, idling on the runway and waiting for the order. It's hard to fathom just how close we came to nuclear war over the Cuban Missile Crisis.

But what happened under JFK? Khrushchev realized he was dealing with someone willing to start a nuclear war and backed down.

The Supreme Leader of North Korea and the Supreme Leader of Iran will recognize that Trump is ready for war and hopefully they will back down. Both were emboldened by Obama and both will back down when faced with a President who isn't going to take their crap.

[Ezra]

What you are talking about is evil fighting evil. Neither side is doing as they should. Neither side is seeking and adhering to the word of god.

So ya with a show of enough force or after dropping enough bombs other countries won't want to do anything at the moment. But given the opportunity they would.

Does that make our actions justified. No.

It just means we are not doing as god asked and we should be. If we were doing as he asked. We would have gods protection. We would not be getting blowback from our current actions. We could make amends for past transgressions. And have healthy relationships with other countries. Missionary efforts would be more successful.

[lundbaek]

It seems to me that Trump, being a total outsider, does not realize the goals and battle plans of the globalists, or even that hey exist. But then, niether eo most Americans.

[Silver]

It seems to me that Trump, being a total outsider, does not realize the goals and battle plans of the globalists, or even that hey exist. But then, niether eo most Americans.

Lundbaek, please allow me to disabuse you of that belief. Too many of Trump's decisions are perfectly in line with the globalists. This can't be accidental. Plus, although I don't think he's that smart, he's aware enough to know that he's breaking campaign promise after campaign promise without an explanation to all his erstwhile supporters. That is the action of man who thinks he's moving in the right crowd, the powerful crowd.

If he were on our side, we'd have some real victories every once in a while like him waking up one morning and suddenly saying, "There hasn't been a war in Germany for a hundred years or more so let's close all the bases and bring those boys home. It'll be beautiful. Everybody will fly first class on Trump Airlines and eat lobster. Delicious lobster." No, nothing tangible is happening that is a win for true patriots. Losing.

[Ezra]

It seems to me that Trump, being a total outsider, does not realize the goals and battle plans of the globalists, or even that hey exist. But then, niether eo most Americans.

I feel trump put on a good show to make America think he was on The opposing side of Hillary. But it was a show. They are still friends. They still run with the same crowd.

[lundbaek]

Silver and Ezra might be right, although I'm not ready to buy that yet. If so, it was a great act, not only by Trump, but also by all those who worked so hard to keep him out of the White House and are working not to destroy his administration. If Trump's act was phony I don't think the globalists would appear so anxious to destroy him. But you guys might just be right.

[Ezra]

Silver and Ezra might be right, although I'm not ready to buy that yet. If so, it was a great act, not only by Trump, but also by all those who worked so hard to keep him out of the White House and are working not to destroy his administration. If Trump's act was phony I don't think the globalists would appear so anxious to destroy him. But you guys might just be right.

I don't remember which of our prophets when asked about our church being known for polygamy suggested that even bad publicity is still publicly.

Most nonmembers know Mormans as the polygamy church. Even though they don't know the facts. everyone has heard of that and because of hearing about us they are curious.

All the negative publicity of trump simply served to divide the county more which is something they want while placing one of there people into that position of power. If they didn't want trump to run or win they would have done what they did to Ron Paul almost completely ignore him. Or they would have just killed him.

The fact that trump was headlining everything just shows their support of him.

Think about all the story's of people protecting themselfs and others by using guns. Do you see making headlines and the news.

No. Why?

Why do they ignore those story's?

They don't want it to have any publicity. To gain a following. Gain support.

So they ignore it. Pretend like it never happened. Make it completely one sided. So only their side gets the publicity and attention and following.

Romney vs bush win win for them.
Bush vs Obama win win for them

We have not had a front runner that wasn't their man in a century. All we are doing is voting on which poison to have shoved down our throats for the next 4 years unless you vote for someone who has no chance of winning in our current media controlled zombies climate.

[harakim]

It seems to me that Trump, being a total outsider, does not realize the goals and battle plans of the globalists, or even that hey exist. But then, niether eo most Americans.

If he were on our side, we'd have some real victories every once in a while like him waking up one morning and suddenly saying, "There hasn't been a war in Germany for a hundred years or more so let's close all the bases and bring those boys home. It'll be beautiful. Everybody will fly first class on Trump Airlines and eat lobster. Delicious lobster." No, nothing tangible is happening that is a win for true patriots. Losing.

I'm a little confused

[Silver]

It seems to me that Trump, being a total outsider, does not realize the goals and battle plans of the globalists, or even that hey exist. But then, niether eo most Americans.

If he were on our side, we'd have some real victories every once in a while like him waking up one morning and suddenly saying, "There hasn't been a war in Germany for a hundred years or more so let's close all the bases and bring those boys home. It'll be beautiful. Everybody will fly first class on Trump Airlines and eat lobster. Delicious lobster." No, nothing tangible is happening that is a win for true patriots. Losing.

I'm a little confused

Of course there have been battles in Germany in less than 100 years. I was simply poking fun at Trump's way of exaggerating everything. His mouth gets in the way of his brain.

[Silver]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPGfUTLrFg

In the video at the link above Ann Coulter explains how ridiculous the attack on Syria truly is. The killing of Syrians at that airbase is an indefensible crime. 17 minutes and 40 seconds.

[Mark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPGfUTLrFg

In the video at the link above Ann Coulter explains how ridiculous the attack on Syria truly is. The killing of Syrians at that airbase is an indefensible crime. 17 minutes and 40 seconds.

I agree with Coulter on her take about Syria and the Middle East. Thomas Jefferson said it best: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none." We are not and never were supposed to be the worlds police force. Endless wars on foreign soil. It will eventually bring us to our knees. The military industrial complex continues to call the shots. Reigning with blood and horror upon the whole earth. Whose voice are we listening to? It sure isnt the Prince of Peace. Josephs last days alleged prophesy comes ever closer..

[Silver]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPGfUTLrFg

In the video at the link above Ann Coulter explains how ridiculous the attack on Syria truly is. The killing of Syrians at that airbase is an indefensible crime. 17 minutes and 40 seconds.

I agree with Coulter on her take about Syria and the Middle East. Thomas Jefferson said it best: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none." We are not and never were supposed to be the worlds police force. Endless wars on foreign soil. It will eventually bring us to our knees. The military industrial complex continues to call the shots. Reigning with blood and horror upon the whole earth. Whose voice are we listening to? It sure isnt the Prince of Peace. Josephs last days alleged prophesy comes ever closer..

Right, but please allow me to edit your comment slightly.

"The banksters and their military industrial complex continue to call the shots."

[Mark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPGfUTLrFg

In the video at the link above Ann Coulter explains how ridiculous the attack on Syria truly is. The killing of Syrians at that airbase is an indefensible crime. 17 minutes and 40 seconds.

I agree with Coulter on her take about Syria and the Middle East. Thomas Jefferson said it best: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none." We are not and never were supposed to be the worlds police force. Endless wars on foreign soil. It will eventually bring us to our knees. The military industrial complex continues to call the shots. Reigning with blood and horror upon the whole earth. Whose voice are we listening to? It sure isnt the Prince of Peace. Josephs last days alleged prophesy comes ever closer..

Right, but please allow me to edit your comment slightly.

"The banksters and their military industrial complex continue to call the shots."

How about we just sum it up with what and who it really is: Babylon. :ymparty:

[ajax]

Easy To Threaten War When You Don’t Understand The Consequences
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/04/eri ... eaten-war/

By Eric Margolis

April 14, 2017

“If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.”

So thundered President Donald Trump last week. Unfortunately, neither China nor North Korea appeared intimidated by this presidential bombast or Trump’s Tweets.

What would ‘we will’ actually entail? This clear threat makes us think seriously about what a second Korean War would be like. Memory of the bloody, indecisive first Koran War, 1950-53, which killed close to 3 million people, has faded. Few Americans have any idea how ferocious a conventional second Korean War could be. They are used to seeing Uncle Sam beat up small, nearly defenseless nations like Iraq, Libya or Syria that dare defy the Pax Americana.

The US could literally blow North Korea off the map using tactical nuclear weapons based in Japan, South Korea and at sea with the 7th Fleet. Or delivered by B-52 and B-1 bombers and cruise missiles. But this would cause clouds of lethal radiation and radioactive dust to blanket Japan, South Korea and heavily industrialized northeast China, including the capital, Beijing.

China would be expected to threaten retaliation against the United States, Japan and South Korea to deter a nuclear war in next door Korea. At the same time, if heavily attacked, a fight-to-the-end North Korea may fire off a number of nuclear-armed medium-range missiles at Tokyo, Osaka, Okinawa and South Korea. These missiles are hidden in caves in the mountains on wheeled transporters and hard to identify and knock out.

This is a huge risk. Such a nuclear exchange would expose about a third of the world’s economy to nuclear contamination, not to mention spreading nuclear winter around the globe.

A conventional US attack on North Korea would be far more difficult. The North is a small nation of only 24.8 million. Its air and sea forces are obsolete and ineffective. They would be vaporized on the first day of a war. But North Korea’s million-man army has been training and digging in for decades to resist a US invasion. Pyongyang’s 88,000-man Special Forces are poised for suicide attacks on South Korea’s political and military command and control and to cripple key US and South Korean air bases, notably Osan and Kunsan.

North Korea may use chemical weapons such as VX and Sarin to knock out the US/South Korean and Japanese airbases, military depots, ports and communications hubs. Missile attacks would be launched against US bases in Guam and Okinawa.

Short of using nuclear weapons, the US would be faced with mounting a major invasion of mountainous North Korea, something for which it is today unprepared. It took the US six months to assemble a land force in Saudi Arabia just to attack feeble Iraq. Taking on the tough North Korean army and militia in their mountain redoubts will prove a daunting challenge.

US analysts have in the past estimated a US invasion of North Korea would cost some 250,000 American casualties and at least $10 billion, though I believe such a war would cost four times that much today. The Army, Air Force and Marines would have to mobilize reserves to wage a war in Korea. Already overstretched US forces would have to be withdrawn from Europe and the Mideast. Military conscription might have to be re-introduced.

US war planners believe that an attempt to assassinate or isolate North Korean leader Kim Jung-un – known in the military as ‘decapitation’- would cause the North Korean armed forces to scatter and give up. I don’t think so.

My visits to South and North Korea have shown me that soldiers of both nations are amazingly tough, patriotic and ready to fight. I’ve also been under the Demilitarized Zone in some of the warren of secret tunnels built by North Korea under South Korean fortifications. Hundreds of North Korean long-range 170mm guns and rocket batteries are buried into the hills facing the DMZ, all within range of the northern half of South Korea’s capital, Seoul.

North Korea is unlikely to be a pushover in a war. Even after US/South Korean forces occupy Pyongyang, the North has prepared for a long guerilla war in the mountains that could last for decades. They have been practicing for 30 years. Chaos in North Korea will invite Chinese military intervention, but not necessarily to the advantage of the US and its allies.

Is Commander-in-Chief Trump, who somehow managed to avoid military service during the Vietnam War, really ready to launch a big war in Asia? Most Americans still can’t locate Korea on a map. Will Congress tax every American taxpayer $20,000 to pay for a new Korean war? Will Russia sit by quietly while the US blows apart North Korea? Does anyone in the White House know that North Korea borders on Russia and is less than 200km from the key Russian port of Vladivostok?

All this craziness would be ended if the US signed a peace treaty with North Korea ending the first Korean War and opened up diplomatic and commercial relations. No need for war or missile threats. North Korea is a horrid, brutal regime. But so is Egypt, whose tin pot dictator was wined and dined by Trump last week.

But pounding the rostrum with your shoe is always much more fun than boring peace talks.

[Mark]

I will repost this part of Kunstlers blog. It "pays" to Follow the money..

"There is the head of government, one Bashar al Assad (son of the previous president, Hafez al Assad). The Assads had run Syria as a mostly secular Arab state until the civil war within Islam, Sunni against Shia, spilled out of Iraq. The Assads belonged to the tiny Alawite sect of the Shia. They comprise only 13 percent of the Syrian population, which has a Sunni majority. Under the Assads, Syria has tilted toward Iran, the Shia home state, and away from the Sunni Arabs elsewhere in the neighborhood. Russia has cultivated Iran and support its “friends,” the Assads.

A mash-up of Sunni jihad armies fights the Assad government in Syria’s civil war. These are Isis, al Qaeda, and Jabhat al Nusra. The US government had made official noise about supporting the more “moderate rebels” in the Syrian conflict. Who are they exactly? Do you have a clue? Which army among those three rebel groups are “moderates?” And what is their moderate goal under jihad? To topple Assad. And then what? To set up a new theocratic government perhaps? How is it in America’s interests to promote Islamic jihadi theocracy?

One hypothesis is that the struggle is over who gets to run gas and oil pipelines through Syria to get easier access to the Mediterranean Sea and the European energy market. Iran would very badly like to do that. But they are in competition with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the little giant emirate of natural gas. So, you have the Iran/Shia gang on one side and the KSA/Qatar/Sunni on the other side. Anybody who had scanned the news since 1979 can probably tell whose side the US is on. By the way, this hypothesis has had no airing among the mainstream media triumvirate: The New York Times, CNN, and The WashPo. These news orgs won’t even entertain that angle of the story… but as I said, it’s only a hypothesis.

It was not so many weeks ago that President Trump met with the crown prince of KSA at the White House to give assurances of American friendship and support. KSA is supposedly America’s chief ally against Isis in Syria. Yet, KSA and the USA are dedicated to getting rid of the Assad government as well as Isis. That is, we are against both sides in the Syrian civil war. Still wondering why the American public is confused by all this? Do you know who our choice is to replace Assad? Can you name an opposition figure? Of course you can’t. There is nobody. What the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the NSA seem to have in mind is the familiar failed state policy that has worked so well in the past (not)..."

[Silver]

Mark,
Very good. Both of your posts just above contain questions that the Never Truth (Always Trump) crowd here steadfastly refuse to address. Thanks for sharing.

I'm amazed at how prevalent the selective amnesia is in America. Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya are all perfect examples of the CIA/US military getting involved without a single example of success. And we have the hubris to think we can make it all better in Syria?

[iWriteStuff]

I'm amazed at how prevalent the selective amnesia is in America. Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya are all perfect examples of the CIA/US military getting involved without a single example of success. And we have the hubris to think we can make it all better in Syria?

Or North Korea.... I spent my morning ironically arguing with my little brother (who is also against Trump) about the necessity of intervening in North Korea. He thinks it's merited; I do not. I think there's absolutely *0* reasons to get involved there. Let China handle it. Or South Korea. Or Japan. They are over 6,000 miles away from the mainland United States. Who cares if he's setting off fireworks in his backyard? We have over 30k troops stationed right across the border from him. Imagine how we would feel if Russia parked 30k troops on the Canadian border! :-ss :-ss :-ss

Captain Moroni knew for a certainty that the Lamanites were going to attack his people. Knew it, sans doubt, and knew that they knew where to attack him. Did he engage in preemptive warfare? No, because that would be unrighteous. There is no such thing as a righteous preemptive strike. If this is our approach, we can know with a certainty that the Lord will not hold us up in our conflict. He never blesses the aggressor.

Slightly off topic, but I read this from Nibley yesterday and it seemed pretty timely again:

Let us make one thing clear: contention is not discussion, but the opposite; contention puts an end to all discussion, as does war. Cedant leges inter arma, said the Romans— when war takes over, politics are in abeyance. The most famous dictum of Clausewitz is that war is simply a continuation of the political dialogue in another arena, but—as he points out at great length and with great clarity—it is an arena in which the appeal is all to brute force and in which any talk of laws or rules or principles cannot be anything but a strategic ruse. In reality a declaration of war is an announcement that the discussion is over.

and

A society has reached a point of “ripeness” when it can no longer go in the direction it has been taking, when the only hope of motion lies in a change or a direct reversal of direction, and repentance is that change of direction. It is when men reach the point of refusing to repent that they have reached the point of fullness. The reason that our lives are extended as they are beyond the age of reproduction is to allow us the fullest possible opportunity to repent. Therefore, when men have lost the capacity to repent, they forfeit any right to sojourn further upon the earth; the very purpose of this extended span of life being to practice repentance; when men announce that they have no intention of repenting, there is no reason why God should let them stay around longer to corrupt the rising generation. There is a time limit, then, and I believe that the time limit has now been reached—the cup is full. For we have in our time the terrifying phenomenon of men who refuse to repent.
- Hugh Nibley, Beyond Politics

[Silver]

The continuing saga of Americans who refuse to realize they are being duped.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-1 ... d-go-wrong

What Could Go Wrong?

Apr 14, 2017 2:27 PM
Kunstler.com,

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Yeats wrote. The funny thing is, we didn’t seem to miss the center all that much after it was gone. America is perfectly satisfied hunkering down at the margins these days. Especially the margins of thinking.

One thing that used to occupy the center was public discussion, debate, and argumentation. Now and again, it featured a coherent exchange of ideas. These days, the main political factions are sunk in hysteria of one kind or another. Their primitive promptings hardly add up to ideas but rather limbic spasms of fear and rage. And then there is the shadow partner of the two parties called the Deep State, led by the quaintly dubbed “Intelligence Community.” These birds, many of them lifers, are dedicated to making the public discussion of anything as incoherent as possible so as to prevent any change in policy that might curtail the growth of the Deep State, a sort of cancer of the body politic.

Case in point, the recent Syrian aerial gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Elected officials were all over the cable networks selling the NSA’s story that Syrian president Bashar Assad bombed women and children with Sarin gas three days after State Department declared that it had a new policy of letting Assad remain in power after decades of sedulously scheming to shove him out. That might have led to the end of the six-year-long Syrian civil war, which Assad seemed to be winning, finally — with Russian assistance.

But instead the incident has led to new official calls to shove Assad out… to be replaced by what…? Nobody knows. Because the US Deep State thrives when chaos reigns in foreign lands. So much the better for their looting operations, such as the theft of Libya’s 141 ton gold reserves in 2011. And if not looting hard assets directly, the Deep State benefits when its many black box vendors — the private security armies, materials suppliers, arms sellers — are raking in the accounts receivable.

The fascinating part of the Syrian gas bombing story is how easily the public swallowed it. Those elected congressmen and senators infesting the cable stations told the public that the Intelligence Community “issued a consensus report” that the Syrian air force has dropped Sarin gas bombs on the hapless civilians. Nobody offered any actual evidence that this was so. These days, mere assertions rule.

That’s how we roll now. I’m still waiting to see some evidence that Trump’s campaign “colluded with Russia” to spin the election toward him. Those claims, too, were put out as “a consensus analysis” by the Intelligence Community. And then in March, months after the disputed election, just-retired NSA director James Clapper told NBC’s Meet the Press that his agency had no evidence of “Russian collusion” with the Trump forces. That was only a few weeks ago.

For the moment, it may benefit casual observers to adopt the most cynical attitude possible about the “consensus reports” that emanate from these myriad agencies. What it all finally seems to represent is the snowballing incompetence, venality, mendacity, and impotence of the US government in general, in all its layers and branches.

Hence, the idiotic PR stunt the other day of dropping the so-called “Mother of All Bombs (MOAB)” on some backwater of the once-and-future Mother of All Backwaters, Afghanistan. Did you happen to see a photo of that Mother Bomb? It looked bigger than any airplane that might be assigned to carry it, a cartoon of a bomb, more ridiculous than anything you might see in a Vin Diesel movie. It even had the acronym “MOAB” plastered on its fuselage in case anyone might confuse it with a canister of Round-up. I wonder what it cost. Got to be more than the $1 million-plus for a Tomahawk missile. You could probably run the whole Medicaid system of Alabama on what one MOAB invoice comes in at.

Meanwhile, the Navy’s Aircraft Carrier Strike Force 1 steams off the waters of North Korea and we lately have word that the US might just try to preemptively take out Kim Jong-un’s nuclear bomb assembly site. There’s a tang of excitement in the air (and on the cable channels). America’s back in the game, proving that when all else fails we can be depended on at least to blow some $#!% up. What could wrong?

[ajax]

[ajax]

What a Perverse Presidential Incentive System!
https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/ar ... ve-system/

By Sheldon Richman - April 14, 2017

All I can say is, we’ve got a hell of a political system on our hands when the surest way for a president to win the adoration of those who thought him a dangerous, ignorant, narcissistic, erratic, and bullshitting blowhard yesterday is to drop a bomb or fire a cruise missile today.

We already knew something like this was the case. War presidents tend to be remembered better than presidents who had the misfortune to reign during peacetime, sometimes despite their best efforts.

I guess it’s understandable that a president who “led the nation into war” would stand out in the memory more than one who did not, but it’s no less a matter of concern to those who actually hate war and love peace rather than just say it. It’s especially worrisome when you realize that many people — pundits and scholars in particular — believe that only in waging war does a president display his finest traits: leadership, courage, strength, resoluteness, and so on.

Since presidents are thought to come into their own only during state-sponsored butchery, we may find a parallel in what Randolph Bourne said of the state itself. Writing in 1918, after the evil evangelist Woodrow Wilson had taken the United States into the Great War, Bourne observed that a republican state in peacetime is boring. It “has almost no trappings to appeal to the common man’s emotions. What it has are of military origin, and in an unmilitary era such as we have passed through since the Civil War, even military trappings have been scarcely seen. In such an era the sense of the State almost fades out of the consciousness of men.

“With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again. The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war….”

Then everything changes.

“The moment war is declared…,” Bourne continued, “the mass of the people, through some spiritual alchemy, become convinced that they have willed and executed the deed themselves. They then, with the exception of a few malcontents, proceed to allow themselves to be regimented, coerced, deranged in all the environments of their lives, and turned into a solid manufactory of destruction toward whatever other people may have, in the appointed scheme of things, come within the range of the Government’s disapprobation. The citizen throws off his contempt and indifference to Government, identifies himself with its purposes, revives all his military memories and symbols, and the State once more walks, an august presence, through the imaginations of men. Patriotism becomes the dominant feeling, and produces immediately that intense and hopeless confusion between the relations which the individual bears and should bear toward the society of which he is a part.”

In other words, war reminds the people that their real religion is the religion of State, i.e., nationalism. Their other religions place a distant second.

War of course has changed in many ways since Bourne’s day. We won’t see columns of men marching down joyously tearful crowd-lined American streets on their way to be dispatched to Syria or any of the other places in which “we are at war.” There will likely be no conscription with its patriotic appeals. (Am I too hasty in ruling this out?) America’s heroes do their killing largely though not entirely by remote control, from behind drone consoles or on ships safely in the Mediterranean. To be sure, special-ops “advisers” and “trainers” get to see some of the action up close, and sometimes one of them takes a hit, at which time we’ll be frequently assured that he or she really did die for our freedom. Anyone who suggests an American warrior died in vain or on behalf of imperial ambitions will be shunned — or worse.

So a president today may have to work a little harder than in the past to garner adoration — but not that hard, especially when it comes to our furrowed-brow pundits and solemn politicians.

The Trump case drives home the point. Here was a guy who until recently scared the bejeezus out of our weightiest thinkers. He was thought to combine three of the worst traits: conceit, ignorance, and impulsiveness, born of an exaggerated estimate of his own gut. Yet all he had to do to win over these critics was (illegally) to command the Navy to fire several dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles from some ships, and suddenly he’s just the right man in just the right place at just the right time. CNN’s and the Washington Post‘s Wise Pundit, Fareed Zakaria, declared him president just after the missiles launched. The New York Times‘s Nicholas Kristof said Trump’s action was of “dubious legality,” “hypocritical,” and “right.” Every major newspaper lauded him editorially and turned over its op-ed page exclusively to commentators who agreed. Such praise gushed forth even though Trump’s strike against Syria was rash, having been ordered before an inquiry into the origin of the chemical-weapons attack had been conducted. Dissent was as scarce as a hint of humility in the Trump household.

We can be sure that Trump did not misread the lesson. He’s a man who has craved the respect of the establishment all his adult life. When he could not win it in the business world, he said the equivalent of “screw you” and ran for president as an anti-establishment candidate. But that was never authentic; he was as transparent as a snake-oil hawker.

Yet Trump continued to crave the respect of those who, in his mind, really matter (unlike the forgotten working people he pretended to champion). It didn’t hurt that by going after Russia’s ally and suggesting that Vladimir Putin was complicit, he could show Those Who Matter that he really isn’t a Kremlin puppet. It also didn’t hurt that he chose to go after a guy (Assad) whom the American establishment has wanted to get off for a long time, although this will benefit the bin Ladenites and worse. (“If there was anything that [the strike on] Syria did, it was to validate the fact that there is no Russia tie,” Prince Eric said.) Neocons and humanitarian (sic) interventionists alike favor the destabilization of Syria long sought by Israel and Saudi Arabia, not to mention America’s Israel-firsters.

So as I said, we’ve got a hell of a political system on our hands.

Now, what about Trump and North Korea?

[Silver]

I'm a slightly separated cousin of Toby Keith's. I wonder if he approved of the use of his song for that segment. Don't know him well enough to call him up and ask.

[ajax]

Donald J. Trump: The Empire's Spanker-In-Chief
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/fe ... -in-chief/

written by david stockman
wednesday april 12, 2017

trump-spank.jpg (18.88 KiB) Viewed 1951 times

The Donald's missile "attack" on Syria's al-Shairat air base is surely the most impetuous, thoughtless, reckless and stupid act from the Oval Office that we can remember — and that covers 50 years at least. And we put "attack" in quotes because it's now evident that virtually every one of those $1.4 million per copy Tomahawks amounted to a big fat nothing-burger.

To wit, 36 of the 59 missile were duds and landed somewhere that was not the al-Shairat air base, including a nearby village where apparently a number of civilians were killed. The 23 that did hit the base actually missed the main runway, which, by the way, was back in operation launching Syrian air force sorties within 24 hours. None of Assad's operational warplanes were hit, either — just a handful of old MIG-23s that have apparently long been languishing in the base's "repair" boneyard.

Yes, the Donald's sharpshooters did annihilate several glorified Butler buildings, otherwise referred to as "hangars", and a few fuel tanks — the better for some post-attack fireworks to be posted to the War Channels (CNN, MSNBC and Fox).

But what the Tomahawks surely did not hit was the chemical weapons storage facilities alleged by the Pentagon to be at the base. With Washington's satellites monitoring al-Shairat like a cloud of bumble bees, there was not a whit of evidence of Syrian personnel running around with gas masks after the missiles hit.

Had there been, the War Channels would have been playing it in an endless loop all weekend. Naturally, the Pentagon says these apparently non-existent stores weren't even targeted owing to humanitarian (?) reasons.

Right, copy that!

Worse, launching this feckless attack in the midst of sharing Caesar salad with the leader of China was surely an amateur ploy right out of the pages of The Apprentice. That's because within 24 hours of Xi Jinping's departure from what will now be known as War-A-Lago, the Syrian air force had not only resumed launches from the base, but was actually bombing the very site of the original offense at Khan Sheikhoun!

Upon hearing the news, China's supreme leader would have presumably browned his Changshan (traditional tunic) in the fear of it — save for the fact that he is the reincarnation of Mao Tse-tung in a business suit, and just as ruthless.

That gets us, of course, to the purpose of attacking any sovereign government that has not attacked or threatened America; and, most especially, one waging a determined fight against the one threat to America's peace of mind, if not actual physical security, extant on the planet today.

That is, the radical jihadist head-choppers of ISIS, and particularly the al-Nusra terrorists desperately holed up in their last redoubt in Idlib province. Even if Assad had used chemical weapons — and there is zero proof he did — what possible purpose was there in a pinprick attack on Assad's military capability that was hailed by jihadists all over Syria and the greater Middle East?

Does the Donald really wish to attack both sides in the most tangled, bloody, sectarian and convoluted civil war in modern history — a course of action he has long, and rightly, criticized.

Did he really reverse in a mere two days, the anti- "regime change" line he had held for years? And one he had wielded to great effect with a "don't do it" tweet storm in August 2013 in the wake of what now is clear had been a false flag chemical attack staged by radical jihadists at Ghouta designed to lure Obama into attacking the regime?

The weekend talk show huffing and puffing by Secretary Tillerson and the ignorant little nincompoop he appointed as UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, would leave you to guess, but not really. At the time of the attack Thursday evening, Administration spokesmen made it clear that the attack was "punishment" for Assad's violation of international norms about the fair way to kill civilians when waging urban warfare.

You see, dropping white phosphorous, which is a second cousin of sarin gas, as Washington did on Fallujah is apparently OK. The same goes for drone attacks and percussion bombs on civilian targets, as Washington has been doing throughout the better part of the Middle East for much of the last two decades.

But this was different. Why, according to the self-appointed tribunes of the moral high ground at the editorial pages of the New York Times, Assad's attack on Khan Sheikh0un was so heinous that it cried out for punishment.

So then and there, Donald J. Trump appointed himself the Empire's Spanker-in-Chief, and thereby destroyed what remained of his stillborn Presidency. Indeed, it will be all downhill from here because the Deep Steep now most assuredly has the Donald by his stubby.

Still, the fact that Donald Trump has now made himself a laughingstock by putting what amounted to a wimpy birch-switch to Bashar's behind, does raise a crucial question. If Trump is to be praised — as the mainstream media did incessantly since Thursday night — for stepping up as Spanker-in-Chief, why stop with Assad?

How about his recent visitor to the Oval Office, General Sisi of Egypt? The latter has put thousands of his political enemies to death or in jail or through unspeakable torture. But rather than getting the birch switch, Sisi got a ringing endorsement from the Donald for his regime of terror and assurance that Washington's $1.5 billion annual stipend to the Egyptian military would be his for the duration.

Then again, why was the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman grinning like a Cheshire cat after his Oval Office meeting with the Donald. He should have been grimacing in agony after several hundred Saudi-style lashes for conducting what amounts to a genocidal campaign against the civilian population of Yemen.

So far there have been more than 10,000 civilian casualties — including 4,000 dead men, women and children who were at the receiving end of Saudi bombs and missiles. And some of the latter were Textron-supplied "percussion" bombs which upon impact leave behind hundreds of unexploded bomblets disguised as brightly-colored balls, toys and trinkets.

Needless to say, they do not include a warning label in Arabic or otherwise saying "keep out of the reach of children." The proof of that is dozens of dead and maimed children who picked up the "toys" supplied by the war criminal pictured below (left side of the photo).

trump-saudi.png (258.69 KiB) Viewed 1951 times

The worst part of the Donald's spanking campaign, of course, is that the White House has not offered one iota of proof that Assad did it. Nor has it even attempted to refute the exceedingly plausible Russian-Syrian claim that the regime's bombing raid in the heart of Nusra Front's last remaining occupied territory hit a weapons depot where the jihadists were storing not only conventional ammo, but possibly manufacturing projectiles stuffed with chemical agents, too.

Do ya think that the Donald could have kept his birch switch in the drawer for at least a few days so that an impartial international inspection team could have examined the site and the victims?

In fact, retired DIA Colonel Patrick Lang gave us a roadmap to what may actually have happened based on his own sources in the intelligence community. In the past his credibility has been excellent, and his story makes far more sense than the White House's. That is, on the verge of victory over the jihadists and only days after the Trump Administration threw in the towel on regime change, Assad committed an act of complete insanity:

Donald Trump’s decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie. In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened.

1. The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at each other) the upcoming operation.

2. The United States was fully briefed on the fact that there was a target in Idlib that the Russians believes was a weapons/explosives depot for Islamic rebels.

3. The Syrian Air Force hit the target with conventional weapons. All involved expected to see a massive secondary explosion. That did not happen. Instead, smoke, chemical smoke, began billowing from the site. It turns out that the Islamic rebels used that site to store chemicals, not sarin, that were deadly. The chemicals included organic phosphates and chlorine and they followed the wind and killed civilians.

4. There was a strong wind blowing that day and the cloud was driven to a nearby village and caused casualties.

5. We know it was not sarin. How? Very simple. The so-called “first responders” handled the victims without gloves. If this had been sarin they would have died. Sarin on the skin will kill you. How do I know? I went through “Live Agent” training at Fort McClellan in Alabama.

There are members of the U.S. military who were aware this strike would occur and it was recorded. There is a film record. At least the Defense Intelligence Agency knows that this was not a chemical weapon attack. In fact, Syrian military chemical weapons were destroyed with the help of Russia.

This is Gulf of Tonkin 2. How ironic. Donald Trump correctly castigated George W. Bush for launching an unprovoked, unjustified attack on Iraq in 2003. Now we have President Donald Trump doing the same damn thing. Worse in fact. Because the intelligence community had information showing that there was no chemical weapon launched by the Syrian Air Force.

So given that very plausible alternative possibility, why not at least have an Adlai Stevenson moment? That's when President Kennedy's UN Ambassador stood before the entire world and showed dramatic reconnaissance photos proving the Soviets had indeed placed intermediate range missile batteries in Cuba.

By contrast, the Deep State's octopus of secrecy today hides behind the pathetic excuse that it must protect its "sources and methods" at all hazards. Therefore it can only "assess" and "judge" out loud that the bad guys actually did it. Meanwhile, the Congress, the American public and the rest of the world should take their word for it that the intelligence community (IC) has the hard evidence.

Well, FU, IC.

For crying out loud, the entire world — and most especially the Russians, Assad regime and assorted other purported malefactors — knows that the skies of the planet are swarming with US intelligence satellites. And that NSA's digital blood funnel, to borrow Matt Taibbi's felicitous description of Goldman Sachs in another context, has penetrated every nod, switching center and backdoor of the entire global communications grid.

So exactly nothing is being protected by Washington's refusal to stump up the SIGINT (signals intelligence) proof if they've got it.

That's exactly what didn't happen, of course, back in August 2013 when the jihadists pulled a similar false flag to lure Obama into a similar attack. At the time, the White House released a four-page, evidence-free paper pinning the blame squarely on Assad in what it called a “government assessment” because even the IC would not vouch for it.

Needless to say, not a shred of SIGINT was ever released to prove the White House contentions — save for an obvious leak a few days after the event to the ever complaint New York Times. The latter's rewrite of their leaked White House talking points claimed that an assessment of the chemical rocket's trajectory found at the site proved the sarin-carrying missiles were fired from deep in government controlled territory more than 12 kilometers away.

As it happened, an international arms control expert and leading MIT scientist in the field, teamed up shortly thereafter to prove from the primitive rockets examined by international inspectors after the attack that they could have had a trajectory of no more than 2 kilometers. That is, they were fired from the heart of jihadist controlled territory in the very villages where the horrific sarin gas attack occurred.

As Philippe Lemonoine summarized in a recent post, the evidence has only gotten even more unequivocal since then:

Back in 2013, Carla Del Ponte, a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (IICISAR) and the former Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, told the BBC that “what appears to our investigations [is] that [chemical weapons were] used by the opponents, by the rebels and we have no indication at all that … the authorities of the Syrian government have used chemical weapons”. To be sure, she indicated that she was only talking about their preliminary findings and, when the IICISAR published its report a month later, it didn’t assign responsibility to anyone. Del Ponte reiterated her claims after the report was published in another interview to Euronews and said that she didn’t regret making them.

There is still more to cast doubt on the hypothesis that Assad was behind the attack in Ghouta. Seymour Hersh, a famous investigative journalist who, among other thing, broke the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib scandal, argued in two detailed articles published a few months after the attack that Turkey provided sarin to Syrian rebels. According to him, the Turkish government wanted them to carry out a false flag attack using chemical weapons in Syria, which Erdogan hoped would force the US to intervene against the regime. Indeed, as I already noted above, Obama had declared the use of chemical weapons a red line that Syria could not cross under any circumstances. Hersh’s claims were later supported by the allegations made in December 2015 by Turkish members of Parliament, who claimed that, back in 2013, several people had been arrested with chemicals in the South of Turkey a few weeks before the attack in Ghouta. According to them, the prosecutor’s office had wiretapped conversations proving that they were making sarin, but this was almost completely ignored in the Western media.

But far be it for the mainstream media to remember back that far. Indeed, the cable channels and the beltway politicians were all in war heat the entire weekend at the sight and sound of Imperial Washington literally pounding sand in the Syrian desert.

And right up front were not merely the usual suspects like Senator McWar (R-AZ) and Little Marco (R-FL) busy ranting about the "war criminals" in Damascus and Moscow, but also the ever so thoughtful (by his lights) Fareed Zakaria pronouncing within minutes of the attack that "tonight Donald Trump became president".

Yes, that's what the man said. The entire Imperial City has become so sick with war fever that an illegal, unconstitutional act of rash stupidity can be proclaimed an exercise in high statesmanship.

Needless to say, the Donald will never shake himself loose of this tar-bay. He has the US now in harm's way in the thick of an inferno crawling with Assad's allies including the Russians, the Iranians and Hezbollah fighters, as well as his enemies scattered among pockets and crevices of an artificial nation created by European imperial diplomats in 1916 and utterly destroyed by Imperial Washington a century later.

The "enemies", of course, include the remnants of the Islamic State in the dusty rubble-strewn towns of the Upper Euphrates and the pockets of the northeast such as Idlib province controlled by the equally horrid jihadists of Nusra front and the various rebranded affiliates which operate with it.

As to the latter, the Donald may have actually helped revive what amounts to a Taliban in the Levant in the name of protecting Syria's women and children.

Here is what one of America's most distinguished scholars has to say about the Nusra front and their White Helmet auxiliaries who now rule the roost in Idlib. The latter flood the world with fake news on the social media, of course, about how they are being victimized by the duly elected leader of Syria — even as they would "Khadafy" him in a heartbeat if they had the half the chance:

To judge how incompetent the rebels have been in providing a viable or attractive alternative to Assad, one need merely consider the situation in the province of Idlib, where the rebels rule. Schools have been segregated, women forced to wear veils, and posters of Osama bin Laden hung on the walls. Government offices were looted, and a more effective government has yet to take shape. With the Talibanization of Idlib, the 100-plus Christian families of the city fled. The few Druze villages that remained have been forced to denounce their religion and embrace Islam; some of their shrines have been blown up. No religious minorities remain in rebel-held Syria, in Idlib, or elsewhere. Rebels argue that Assad’s bombing has ensured their failure and made radicalization unavoidable. But such excuses can go only so far to explain the terrible state of rebel Syria or its excesses. We have witnessed the identical evolution in too many other Arab countries to pin it solely on Assad, despite his culpability for the disaster that has engulfed his country."

Needless to say, we have no brief for Bashar al-Assad. He and his family have ruled Syria for 40 years harshly and more often than not by the sword. Their regime has been based on secular principles and a coalition of minorities including Christians, Druse, Kurds, Yazidis and their own minority Alawite (Shiite) tribe. The alternative is a Sunni-jihadist led reign of ethnic cleansing and an extension of the murderous caliphate hanging on by a thread in Raqqa and Mosul.

Yet in getting out the birch switch against Assad without even remotely proving the case, the Donald has ended up siding with the incipient Taliban occupiers of Syria's northeast.

He needs to be careful. It's only a few short steps to this:

trump-taliban.png (157.17 KiB) Viewed 1951 times

[freedomforall]

It seems to me that Trump, being a total outsider, does not realize the goals and battle plans of the globalists, or even that hey exist. But then, niether eo most Americans.

I feel trump put on a good show to make America think he was on The opposing side of Hillary. But it was a show. They are still friends. They still run with the same crowd.

Name just one person who could do a better job in the White House, given who actually runs this country and has done for decades.
Just like every other civilization, Americans have chosen evil over good. Can we honestly blame Trump for this? Had the people in this country stayed the course and kept close to God we wouldn't be in this mess. The Saints could have been able to choose honest, wise and good candidates for all offices, continually. The Ten Commandments would still be honored and observed. Prayer would still be something of value in our educational organizations. Honesty, love and peace would permeate our neighborhoods, and God would be worshiped with reverence and heartfelt devotion.
So how can so many people sit here and blame Trump for all the ails in the world? People make me sick with all their biases and name calling, which is not one iota better than the quick tongues on board cutting down Trump.
People here with all their wisdom and learning, yet, seemingly, knowing nothing as to what really has happened to our society, how and why. I lived in the days of having prayer in school and I didn't hear any kids complaining. Hate and loathing is taught to the youth by wayward and uninformed parents that do not want to live under God's laws. Children of all races do not know hatred until it is taught them, and then the problem escalates until no one likes anyone, and everyone is under immediate suspicion of being evil, a rapist, a pedophile, a thief, a murderer, a mugger, dishonest, a drug pusher, whatever, anything but a worthwhile child of God. And even when one is nice to someone, they question your motives and shun you at times assuming there is something wrong with you. Old Scratch has got a lot of people by the short hairs and they are oblivious to it.
I say the wheat and tares need to wake up and truly see what side of the fence they are really on.