Good Behavior Trump Debate Thread

[Silver]

I'm encouraged to read that Americans don't want a murderer as a President. The propaganda is so bad though that we end up with a Trump instead of a Ron Paul.

https://mises.org/library/peace-popular-0

Peace Is Popular

06/29/2017Jeff Deist
Capitalism is essentially a scheme for peaceful nations. What the incompatibility of war and capitalism really means is that war and high civilization are incompatible. — Ludwig von Mises

Peace is popular.

That was Ron Paul’s message to our audience in Texas earlier this spring, and it has been his consistent message since first running for Congress in the 1970s. So why do seemingly endless wars remain such a stubborn feature of the American presidency, with the shameful complicity of Congress?

Americans who supported Trump did so overwhelmingly because he promised a populist “America First” approach to both domestic and foreign policy. Every poll shows that the domestic economy, culture wars, and immigration were the animating issues of the election — not our ongoing military misadventures in the Middle East. Nobody voted for an escalation of US involvement in Syria, nobody voted to ramp up the never-ending war in Afghanistan by dispatching the Mother of All Bombs, and nobody voted to resurrect an absurd decades-old conflict with North Korea.

Yet President Trump has done all of these things, largely abandoning the noninterventionist promises of Candidate Trump. Perversely, ordering a missile attack on a Syrian air base was the first and only act that earned him praise from his enemies at organs like the New York Times and Washington Post. “He’s finally acting presidential” they gushed.

To understand Trump’s departures from his campaign rhetoric is to understand the very nature of politics and the bureaucratic state. Nobody goes to Washington to “run” the government. Washington runs them.

Trump, ostensibly the biggest outsider to win the presidency in modern American history, cannot overcome the entrenched foreign policy establishment any more than he can overcome gravity. Ninety-five percent of employees at the State Department, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and the rest of the alphabet soup agencies do not come and go with elections. They, along with the vast apparatus of defense contractors, are not going anywhere.

Permanent war and interventionism requires permanent funding. And like all tax-funded enterprises, war is inherently anti-capitalist. It diverts resources, swells state bureaucracies, and hides the horrific human and economic costs in a cloak of patriotism and platitudes about America’s role in the world. When we hear Vice President Pence talk about “rebuilding the arsenal of democracy,” he really means it.

Ludwig von Mises saw German war socialism up close as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army during the Great War. Under Wehrwirtschaftslehre, the German doctrine of war economics, the normal calculations of capitalist businessmen go out the window. Costs, quality, demand, and profit become wholly secondary to the overriding goal of preparing the nation for war. Thus war drives the impulse toward autarky (something we’ve seen in Trump) and economic dictatorship: the will and whims of ordinary citizens must yield to war production.

Thus in his darkest moments during the war, Mises resolved to write the definitive refutation of state controlled economies. The result was his 1922 classic Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, which remains perhaps the most important critique of collectivism ever written. It’s a book everyone should read and share, to understand the fundamental link between war and collectivism.

Dr. Paul’s message of peace and nonintervention is so critical today. It’s a message that is decidedly popular (outside of DC), nonpartisan, and tailor-made for a new century. It resonates with young and old alike, with rich and poor, and across racial lines. It’s popular with the alt-Right and the progressive Left, budget hawks and Greens, Burkean conservatives and tie-dyed peaceniks. We just need to get the message to Mr. Trump.

[larsenb]

I'm encouraged to read that Americans don't want a murderer as a President. The propaganda is so bad though that we end up with a Trump instead of a Ron Paul. . . . ..

We just need to get the message to Mr. Trump.

You certainly won't get through to him or his supporters by blanket labeling him as a "murderer, a liar and an oathbreaker". Ron Paul does understand this. You don't. Ron Paul has also noticed some of the good things Trump has done.

[Silver]

Cain murdered Abel. Let's see if I get any resistance on that statement.

[Silver]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 53121.html

Donald Trump's first US military raid 'kills 30 civilians, including 10 women and children'
'Why kill children? This is the new [US] administration - it’s very sad, a big crime'

Gabriel Samuels @gabs_samuels Monday 30 January 2017 13:57 GMT
The Independent Online

The eight-year-old daughter of a radical preacher was among a large group of civilians reportedly killed during a US dawn raid in Yemen, the first military operation overseen by Donald Trump.

Around 30 people, including 10 women and children, are thought to have been killed by American military personnel in the rural Yakla district of al-Bayda in the south of the country, according to medical staff.

Nora Al-Awlaki, the daughter of lecturer and al-Qaeda sympathiser Anwar al-Awlaki who was killed in an airstrike in 2011, was one of those who lost their lives, her grandfather Nasser said.

“Why kill children? This is the new [US] administration - it’s very sad, a big crime,” Nasser Al-Awlaki said. “[Nora] was hit with a bullet in her neck and suffered for two hours.” The Pentagon did not refer to any civilian casualties in its statement.

The US military meanwhile confirmed 14 al-Qaeda fighters had been killed in the raid, and a further two in a drone strike on central Yemen later in the day. An American commando was killed in retaliation, and three others injured.

[freedomforall]

Cain murdered Abel. Let's see if I get any resistance on that statement.

What are you seeking...a pat on the head for declaring that Cain killed Abel? Just who do you know that does not know this? Besides, you're the one telling the story. So let's hear all about how Cain killed Abel so the story comes out accurate.
Do you equate Cain to Trump; is Trump, in your mind, a reincarnation of Cain?
Do you have Trump, the murderer, on the brain continuously? Do you have nightmares that taunt you night till morning? Have you lost all mental reasoning and only have the capacity to spread gossip, hate and backbiting? After all, calling Trump a murderer, liar and oathbreaker....by definition...is backbiting.

Now give us some resistance!

[freedomforall]

Hey, Silver, since you're an expert on picking out murderers, here is a question for you:

Were any of these prior POTUS"S murderers?

Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Franklin D Roosevelt
Harry S Truman
Dwight D. Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Barack Obama


Which one was responsible for 105,000 deaths in Japan by the use of Atomic bombs, rather than have 250,000 to 500,000 American casualties by invading Japan? Was the use of A-bombs an act of murder?

[Silver]

Trump's administration includes global elites.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch ... t-that-way

The World Is Now $217,000,000,000,000 In Debt And The Global Elite Like It That Way
By Michael Snyder, on June 29th, 2017
The borrower is the servant of the lender, and through the mechanism of government debt virtually the entire planet has become the servants of the global money changers. Politicians love to borrow money, but over time government debt slowly but surely impoverishes a nation. As the elite get governments around the globe in increasing amounts of debt, those governments must raise taxes in order to keep servicing those debts. In the end, it is all about taking money from us and transferring it into government pockets, and then taking money from government pockets and transferring it into the hands of the elite. It is a game that has been going on for generations, and it is time for humanity to say that enough is enough.

According to the Institute of International Finance, global debt has now reached a new all-time record high of 217 trillion dollars…

Global debt levels have surged to a record $217 trillion in the first quarter of the year. This is 327 percent of the world’s annual economic output (GDP), reports the Institute of International Finance (IIF).

The surging debt was driven by emerging economies, which have increased borrowing by $3 trillion to $56 trillion. This amounts to 218 percent of their combined economic output, five percentage points greater year on year.

Never before in human history has our world been so saturated with debt.

And what all of this debt does is that it funnels wealth to the very top of the global wealth pyramid. In other words, it makes global wealth inequality far worse because this system is designed to make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer.

Every year the gap between the wealthy and the poor grows, and it has gotten to the point that eight men have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people on this planet combined…

Eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, according to a new report published by Oxfam today to mark the annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos.
This didn’t happen by accident. Sadly, most people don’t even understand that this is literally what our system was designed to do.

Today, more than 99 percent of the population of the planet lives in a country that has a central bank. And debt-based central banking is designed to get national governments trapped in endless debt spirals from which they can never possibly escape.

For example, just consider the Federal Reserve. During the four decades before the Federal Reserve was created, our country enjoyed the best period of economic growth in U.S. history. But since the Fed was established in 1913, the value of the U.S. dollar has fallen by approximately 98 percent and the size of our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.

It isn’t an accident that we are 20 trillion dollars in debt. The truth is that the debt-based Federal Reserve is doing exactly what it was originally designed to do. And no matter what politicians will tell you, we will never have a permanent solution to our debt problem until we get rid of the Federal Reserve.

In 2017, interest on the national debt will be nearly half a trillion dollars.

That means that close to 500 billion of our tax dollars will go out the door before our government spends a single penny on the military, on roads, on health care or on anything else.

And we continue to pile up debt at a rate of more than 100 million dollars an hour. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government will add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt once again in 2018…

Unless current laws are changed, federal individual income tax collections will increase by 9.5 percent in fiscal 2018, which begins on Oct. 1, according to data released today by the Congressional Budget Office.

At the same time, however, the federal debt will increase by more than $1 trillion.

We shouldn’t be doing this, but we just can’t seem to stop.

Let me try to put this into perspective. If you could somehow borrow a million dollars today and obligate your children to pay it off for you, would you do it?

Maybe if you really hate your children you would, but most loving parents would never do such a thing.

But that is precisely what we are doing on a national level.

Thomas Jefferson was strongly against government debt because he believed that it was a way for one generation to steal from another generation. And he actually wished that he could have added another amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would have banned government borrowing…

“I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.”

And the really big secret that none of us are supposed to know is that governments don’t actually have to borrow money.

But if we start saying that too loudly the people that are making trillions of dollars from the current system are going to get very, very upset with us.

Today, we are living in the terminal phase of the biggest debt bubble in the history of the planet. Every debt bubble eventually ends tragically, and this one will too.

Bill Gross recently noted that “our highly levered financial system is like a truckload of nitro glycerin on a bumpy road”. One wrong move and the whole thing could blow sky high.

When everything comes crashing down and a great crisis happens, we are going to have a choice.

We could try to rebuild the fundamentally flawed old system, or we could scrap it and start over with something much better.

My hope is that we will finally learn our lesson and discard the debt-based central banking model for good.

The reason why I am writing about this so much ahead of time is so that people will actually understand why the coming crisis is happening as it unfolds.

If we can get everyone to understand how we are being systematically robbed and cheated, perhaps people will finally get mad enough to do something about it.

[Silver]

Now we'll take up the unholy practice of asset forfeiture as a topic. Wouldn't you know it, the authoritarian, Trump, is in favor of it. Here's an example of the cops denying a man his due process. You'll need to go to the link to see all the Facebook posts referred to in the article.

http://theantimedia.org/facebook-post-t ... steal-60k/

FB Post of Cops Stealing Man’s $60k Got Trolled so Hard the Comments Are Being Deleted
June 30, 2017 at 4:58 pm
Written by Carey Wedler

(ANTIMEDIA) Civil asset forfeiture, the process by which government agents can steal cash and other property from Americans without so much as charging them with a crime, has drawn sharp criticism in recent years. Though President Donald Trump encouraged the practice during a meeting of law enforcement agents in February, many Americans are fed up.

In 2014, alone, government agents confiscated $4.5 billion from Americans. Many of these victims are not even charged with a crime before the government robs them. Though there have been some efforts to curb the invasive practice, it is still alive and well.

We're revolutionizing the news industry, but we need your help! Click here to get started.
Case in point: WCSJ Radio, based out of Illinois, posted to Facebook on Thursday about a “bust” by Illinois State Troopers and the Grundy County Sheriff’s Department – assisted by the DEA — that yielded $60,000 in cash. According to “law enforcement sources,” the stop was part of a larger drug investigation. The money was taken after the driver of the vehicle, in an apparent gesture of good faith, gave the officers consent to search his car.

Aside from the monumental failure that is the war on drugs in general, the most telling part of WCSJ’s post was the last two lines:

“Two DEA agents arrived at the scene and took possession of the money. No drugs were found during the stop.”

No drugs were found during the stop. And yet federal agents still stole tens of thousands of dollars from an individual who was not charged with a crime or proven to be doing anything illegal in any court of law. Though the picture accompanying the post showed a proud cop with a police dog (the canine was clearly unaware of the crime his owners were committing), the injustice of the non-existent “bust” was not lost on the internet.

Over a thousand comments streamed into the WCSJ post to shame the officers for stealing. We previously embedded some of these comments only to find they had been removed — including one from a cop supporter who still disapproved of the officers’ behavior:

Instead, we decided to grab screenshots of the comments that hadn’t been deleted yet — and they’re still glorious.

Some called a spade a spade:

Others focused on American principles and how the cops had violated them:

Though some attempted to condone the cops’ actions, the resistance was out in force:

Other commenters just engaged in some good old-fashioned trolling and sarcasm:

One summed up America’s hypocritical moral exemptions for cops:

Many waxed philosophical, pointing out government’s inherent corruption and questioning their authority altogether:

As the Trump administration and lawmakers cater to cops — and officers continue to get away with theft and murder — there is at least some hope to be found in the mounting opposition to this paradigm, evident in the reaction to this latest example of police overreach.

[Silver]

If you can stomach it, at the link there's a video of Trump holding forth on seizing assets from people who haven't been charged with a crime.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tru ... 284f28be3c

02/07/2017 06:43 pm ET | Updated Feb 07, 2017
Trump Gives Thumbs-Up To Cops Taking More Stuff Away From People
The president endorsed civil asset forfeiture, which lets police seize even innocent people’s property.
By Ryan J. Reilly , Nick Wing

WASHINGTON ― During a meeting with sheriffs on Tuesday, President Donald Trump got a misleading lesson on the controversial practice of asset forfeiture. Almost immediately, Trump encouraged the sheriffs to use it more aggressively.

Asset forfeiture is a hugely lucrative weapon in the law enforcement arsenal, allowing cops to seize property from both criminals and suspected criminals and direct those proceeds into their department coffers. Although police officials often claim they’re just “taking money from drug dealers,” that’s a drastic over-simplification.

In fact, using civil asset forfeiture, the government can seize cash and property from people who have never been charged with crimes, and then force them to engage in legal battles to prove their innocence and recover their assets.

Critics across the political spectrum have come out against civil forfeiture in recent years. They say it infringes on people’s due process and property rights and gives law enforcement monetary incentive to engage in bad practices.

But none of those critics appeared to be at the table with Trump, acting Attorney General Dana Boente and a group of sheriffs who are largely supportive of Trump.

The president’s full comments on asset forfeiture are worth examining.


Sheriff John Aubrey of Jefferson County, Kentucky, broached the issue with the president. Here’s their exchange, according to a White House release:

SHERIFF AUBREY: And the other thing is asset forfeiture. People want to say we’re taking money and without due process. That’s not true. We take money from dope dealers ―

THE PRESIDENT: So you’re saying ― okay, so you’re saying the asset-taking you used to do, and it had an impact, right? And you’re not allowed to do it now?

SHERIFF AUBREY: No, they have curtailed it a little bit. And I’m sure the folks are ―

THE PRESIDENT: And that’s for legal reasons? Or just political reasons?

SHERIFF AUBREY: They make it political and they make it ― they make up stories. All you’ve got to do ―

THE PRESIDENT: I’d like to look into that, okay? There’s no reason for that. Dana, do you think there’s any reason for that? Are you aware of this?

MR. BOENTE: I am aware of that, Mr. President. And we have gotten a great deal of criticism for the asset forfeiture, which, as the sheriff said, frequently was taking narcotics proceeds and other proceeds of crime. But there has been a lot of pressure on the department to curtail some of that.

THE PRESIDENT: So what do you do? So in other words, they have a huge stash of drugs. So in the old days, you take it. Now we’re criticized if we take it. So who gets it? What happens to it? Tell them to keep it?

MR. BOENTE: Well, we have what is called equitable sharing, where we usually share it with the local police departments for whatever portion that they worked on the case. And it was a very successful program, very popular with the law enforcement community.

THE PRESIDENT: And now what happens?

MR. BOENTE: Well, now we’ve just been given ― there’s been a lot of pressure not to forfeit, in some cases.

THE PRESIDENT: Who would want that pressure, other than, like, bad people, right? But who would want that pressure? You would think they’d want this stuff taken away.

SHERIFF AUBREY: You have to be careful how you speak, I guess. But a lot of pressure is coming out of ― was coming out of Congress. I don’t know that that will continue now or not.

THE PRESIDENT: I think less so. I think Congress is going to get beat up really badly by the voters because they’ve let this happen. And I think badly. I think you’ll be back in shape. So, asset forfeiture, we’re going to go back on, okay?

SHERIFF AUBREY: Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: I mean, how simple can anything be? You all agree with that, I assume, right?

PARTICIPANT: Absolutely, yeah.

THE PRESIDENT: Do you even understand the other side of it?

PARTICIPANT: No.

THE PRESIDENT: It’s like some things ―

PARTICIPANT: No sense.

THE PRESIDENT: Sort of like the Iran deal. Nobody even understands how a thing like that could have happened. It does nothing.

PARTICIPANT: You shouldn’t be allowed to profit from the illegal proceeds, right? So if you’re going to sell narcotics and sell illegal drugs in our country, you also cannot profit from that. And so we seize those profits.

THE PRESIDENT: So do we need any legislation or any executive orders for that, would you say, Dana ― to put that back in business?

MR. BOENTE: I don’t think we need any executive orders. We just need kind of some encouragement to move in that direction.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. Good. You’re encouraged. (Laughter.) I love that answer, because it’s better than signing executive orders and then these people take it and they make it look so terrible ― “oh, it’s so terrible.” I love it. You’re encouraged, okay?

PARTICIPANT: Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Good. Asset forfeiture. You’re encouraged. Okay.
It’s clear that Trump hasn’t thought much, if at all, about this issue. It’s also clear that a large group of law enforcement officers chose not to explain to him what the criticisms are.

But the view that there are no real concerns associated with giving police broad leeway to seize and forfeit people’s property is not uncommon in the law enforcement community. Police organizations have been some of the most aggressive opponents of growing state efforts to rein in civil forfeiture and ensure that cops are only taking assets from actual criminals.

Well-publicized incidents of civil forfeiture abuse have fueled this debate. Last year, for example, sheriff’s deputies in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, seized more than $50,000 from a driver under suspicion that it was “drug money.” They had no evidence the money’s owner was involved in the drug trade, however, and it turned out that he managed a Christian rock band from Burma. Deputies returned the money months later, following news reports that it came from ticket sales and donations earmarked for an orphanage in Thailand.

In 2014, a Pottawattamie County, Iowa, sheriff’s deputy pulled over a 20-year-old motorist and seized his entire life savings, a total of $19,000, claiming it was connected to a crime. It took more than a year for a court to determine that police had erred in taking the cash and to order its return.

Not all problematic instances of civil forfeiture involve large seizures of cash. A 2015 American Civil Liberties Union report found that Philadelphia cops had made a habit of taking small amounts of money from civilians. Over a two-year period, 60 percent of the department’s cash seizures involved amounts of less than $250.

While none of the sheriffs meeting with Trump apparently “understand the other side” of the asset forfeiture story, such ignorance puts them at odds with much of the public and many elected officials. Although Americans are not widely familiar with the process of civil forfeiture, a poll conducted last year found that 84 percent think police should be able to take people’s money or property only after convicting them of a crime.

“Legislators who are trying to limit civil forfeiture should be praised instead of condemned,” said Matt Miller, managing attorney of the Texas office of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm that argues that all forfeiture should be tied to criminal convictions. “Forfeiture encourages police to go after money; it doesn’t encourage them to go after criminals. That’s why you have everyone from tea party Republicans to Democrats introducing bills to limit civil forfeiture.”

Miller added, “We would hope that if the president knew how much civil forfeiture gets abused across the country, he wouldn’t have made those remarks.”

Boente will likely soon be replaced in the attorney general’s office by Jeff Sessions, who has also been supportive of asset forfeiture.

How will Trump’s first 100 days impact you? Sign up for our weekly newsletter and get breaking updates on Trump’s presidency by messaging us here.

[Silver]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/44 ... es-article

Some Progress against the Evils of Civil Asset Forfeiture
by GEORGE LEEF June 27, 2017 1:02 PM

Kevin Williamson nailed the truth in his recent essay — civil asset-forfeiture laws are indeed the death of due process. Justice Thomas sees that clearly and perhaps a majority will be persuaded the next time a case involving those laws reaches the Supreme Court. However, the widespread opposition to allowing police to seize an innocent person’s property simply on suspicion that it was somehow involved in or resulted from a crime is having an impact at the state level.

In Colorado, Connecticut, and Illinois, bills have either been signed or have reached the governor’s desk that make their laws less amenable to abuse by police who want to engage in some legal plunder. And in Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court has ruled in an ugly case (a 72-year-old woman was going to lose her house because her son sold some drugs in it) that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against excessive fines applies to such forfeitures. That decision will cut into the profitability of civil asset forfeiture. I discuss those advances in my latest Forbes article.

Sadly, Congress is sitting on its hands. A bill that would defang this viper as practiced by the federal government, the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act, is stuck in its respective Senate and House committees. Yes, Congress is busy, but in the past there has been heavy support from Democrats and Republicans for the legislation. Getting the FAIR Act passed shouldn’t be terribly hard.

Months ago, President Trump (after meeting with some sheriffs in Texas) indicated his opposition to reforming civil asset forfeiture, but it might be possible to get him to see that signing a reform bill into law would be most popular in lower-income and minority communities. If he wants to increase his support there, that would be a good move. In any case, repairing the damage civil asset forfeiture does to due process of law should need no political calculus.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/44 ... es-article

[Silver]

OK, OK, I get it. Nobody cares about Trump being in favor of unlawful asset seizure. I mean, that's boring compared to murder so we'll turn our bus around and drive back to Syria where...

...The US is Killing Syrians to Show Syria That Killing Syrians is Bad

http://theantimedia.org/us-killing-syri ... lling-bad/

une 30, 2017 at 1:03 pm
Written by Darius Shahtahmasebi

(ANTIMEDIA) — Earlier this week, the White House released a fresh warning that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was planning a chemical weapons attack and that he would pay a “heavy price” for doing so. The warning appeared to confuse a number of U.S. officials who had not been consulted before the warning was released.

As CBS reported, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said U.S. intelligence had seen activity at a specific aircraft shelter at the Shayrat airfield – the same airfield Donald Trump bombed in April of this year over unproven allegations that it was the base from which a chemical weapons attack had been launched approximately two days prior.

And what was that specific activity that the U.S. had picked up on? According to CBS:

“He [Pentagon spokesman Davis] said increased activity had been seen at Shayrat over several days, including increased aircraft activity. Davis said the evidence of preparations for a possible new chemical attack ‘became more compelling’ within [the] last 24 hours, and that it was ‘strongly suggestive of intent’ to conduct such an attack.” [emphasis added]

The Pentagon saw increased aircraft activity at an airbase? What are the odds of that?

Not long after, the White House claimed their warning that Assad would pay a “heavy price” was successful in deterring the attack even though we now know Assad was more than likely not responsible for the most recent chemical weapons debacle in April, as recently reported by Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh. Assad was also likely not responsible for the other major attacks pinned on his military, either.

The White House’s claim of successful deterrence against Assad came moments after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that Russia would respond proportionately should the U.S. strike their close ally in Syria.

And people think I’m crazy when I warn them about the impending global conflict between Russia and the United States.

Even if it is all just a mere sabre-rattling chess game to see who can emerge with the most black and white pieces of the Syrian chessboard after ISIS falls, the potential for something to go wrong is far too high for my liking.

That being said, the Syrian government is defending itself from a foreign-backed insurgency and requested Russian assistance to ostensibly protect itself. The United States (and the so-called coalition it represents), on the other hand, is the only party to the Syrian conflict consistently claiming to be concerned with human rights and the mounting civilian death toll. They also claim to be fighting ISIS and continue to reiterate that they do not seek a war with the Syrian government, even as they repeatedly bomb government assets.

And yet the U.S. government reportedly killed 500 civilians in the last month of fighting in Syria – a country they have no legal justification to bomb in the first place. According to Airwars researcher Alex Hopkins, the coalition killed at least 57 women in May, alone. Some 137 children died in the last month of fighting, as well.

In the first week of fighting in Raqqa in June of this year, the U.N. warned that American airstrikes had already killed 300 civilians that same week.

[Silver]

Trump supporters want to pretend that he is not a murderer, when the sad truth is that almost every elected official in Washington DC along with many career bureaucrats are murderers. If they knowingly put weapons into the hands of murderers do you think they are innocent?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-0 ... -heres-why

Only 2% Of US Politicians Actually Want To Stop Arming Terrorists - Here's Why

by Tyler Durden
Jul 1, 2017 4:15 PM
Authored by Alice Salles via TheAntiMedia.org,

One of the few elected Democratic lawmakers with an extensive anti-war record, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), has combined forces with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) to push legislation through both the House and the Senate that would bar federal agencies from using taxpayer-backed funds to provide weapons, training, intelligence, or any other type of support to terrorist cells such as al-Qaeda, ISIS, or any other group that is associated with them in any way.

The Stop Arming Terrorists Act is so unique that it’s also the only bill of its kind that would also bar the government from funneling money and weapons through other countries that support (directly or indirectly) terrorists such as Saudi Arabia.

To our surprise — or should we say shame? — only 13 other lawmakers out of hundreds have co-sponsored Gabbard’s House bill. Paul’s Senate version of the bill, on the other hand, has zero cosponsors.

While both pieces of legislation were introduced in early 2017, no real action has been taken as of yet. This proves that Washington refuses to support bills that would actually provoke positive chain reactions not only abroad but also at home. Why? Well, let’s look at the groups that would lose a great deal in case this bill is signed into law.

Military & Homeland Security Companies, Lobbyists, And Lawmakers All Profit From War
With trillions of tax dollars flowing to companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and even IBM, among others, companies that invest heavily in weapons, cyber security systems, and other technologies that are widely used in times of war would stand to lose a lot — if not everything — if all of a sudden, the United States chose to become a nation that stands for peace and free market principles.

For one, these companies have a heavy lobbying presence, ensuring that lawmakers sympathetic to their plight are elected every two years. When the possibility of a new conflict appears on the horizon, these companies are the first to lobby heavily for action.

But this dynamic isn’t a secret. We all know that the crony capitalist system that thrives in Washington, D.C., is the very bread and butter of politics in America. After all, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation in his farewell address in 1961 that “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” were becoming the great powers behind U.S. politics, and that if we weren’t weary of this influence, we would risk living in a perpetual state of war.

Still, we allowed it to take over. And there isn’t one industry powerful enough to counter this destructive authority.

With the support of an army of well-established and connected millionaire lobbyists, the war machine operating in Washington is so powerful that anything can be turned into an existential threat.

Any conflict abroad that has absolutely no importance or that poses literally no threat to the common American is inflated to become a threat to the American way of life. They hate us “for our freedom.” Therefore, we must show them what democracy looks like.

Without the same kind of powerful and wealthy team behind the cause for sanity and peace, this army of big money and big lobbyists has single-handedly put us and many generations to come in debt over Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and now Syria. And as the marketing machine behind this kind of lobbying effort taps into the social justice trend that has infiltrated every aspect of our culture in recent years, these organizations have learned that they will get even broader support from the public if they add feminist, anti-poverty, and pro-equality messages to their pro-war efforts.

Take the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, for instance, which, as NBC has reported, originated with “Obiageli Ezekwesili, a former vice president of the World Bank for the Africa region and a senior advisor on Africa Economic Development Policy for the Open Society Foundations” — a George Soros-backed foundation. In no time, the social media “effort” had become the most effective lobbying force behind the expansion of the never-ending war on terror. And whether it was meant to promote this outcome or not, it helped the United States easily invest more tax dollars into an unwinnable war.

As you can see, even if Gabbard and Paul managed to use all of their time to force the Stop Arming Terrorists Act through Congress so it could get to President Donald Trump’s desk, the powers at play in Washington would do their best to sweep this effort under the rug. Not because individuals involved in pro-war lobbying are, perhaps, thirsty for war per se, but because the system under which they operate allows for bad incentives to produce a great deal of wealth and influence, tilting the balance toward evil.

Without a state that can be bribed, companies would be left to fend for themselves and stay afloat by making customers… happy. And you can’t make customers happy if all you have to offer is war.

[Silver]

Obama got away with blaming Bush for nearly everything for more than half of his 8 years in the White House. How long the Trump administration will try to excuse this sort of governmental abuse/unrighteous dominion? (The article at the link and those linked within it take some startling twists and turns. I'm not going to vouch for all of it. However, the betrayal of America by Trump is clear.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-0 ... ing-screws

The American People Are The Number One Target: "They Are Tightening The Screws"

Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Jul 1, 2017 10:05 PM

Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces ) via SHTFplan.com,

A little more than a week ago it was announced that Whole Foods was bought by Amazon.com for just under $14 billion. One of the major problems with this is that Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon has deep ties with the CIA and the Federal government.

Wal-Mart being fully in the government’s pocket and now Whole Foods brought under thumb as well, how much longer before Kissinger’s “Food as a Weapon” principle is brought to bear? A good article was just released by Jon Rappaport entitled Buy your food from the CIA: Amazon buys Whole Foods, that is worth reading.

marmalade loves fellow war criminal.jpg (101.93 KiB) Viewed 1326 times

As if that connection is not nefarious enough, there is more: it appears a new cloud technology is being produced for the CIA from…you guessed it…none other than the CIA, as is excerpted here:

The intelligence community is about to get the equivalent of an adrenaline shot to the chest. This summer, a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community. If the technology plays out as officials envision, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The Details About the CIA’s Deal with Amazon,” - www.theatlantic.com 6/17/17
Guess the data center that ran taxpayers billions that is in Utah is not enough, nor the fusion centers in every state. Did you like “…a new era of cooperation and coordination…” between the friendly agencies? And all to “avoid intelligence gaps,” just for your protection, right?

Wrong.

They are tightening the screws, little by little, while they refine all the control mechanisms and place that security web over their number one target: the American people.

They are taking control of the food supply incrementally. Water? Yes, here in Montana, the state just sent out a form for property owners to declare their water rights…as the CKST (Confederated Kootenai &Salish Tribes) Water Compact was passed into law in Montana in 2014. Actions will be taken within the next two years.

As enumerated in other articles, Montana kicked in $3 million after the liberals in the state House and Senate, as well as the liberal governor, Bullock (D, MT) signed the water compact into law. The shortfall is $8 million, as the total state commitment was $11 million. They are just waiting for the Senate to ratify this as a Federal treaty, and then they can (ostensibly on “behalf” of the Indian Tribes) place meters on everyone’s wells…off of the reservation…and “manage” the water on behalf of the Indian Tribes…enforced by DHS.

This is a small slice of the country as a whole. They are following full speed ahead with the Agenda 21 Directive to take over everyone’s food, water, land…everything. A war will surely enable them to throw the Executive Order 13603 into action to confiscate and control every resource in the United States, including human labor…slave labor, to be precise. Incrementally they place these laws into effect, and the stultified public, thinking only of the next barbeque and fireworks party is dumbed down into inactivity. http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/e ... y_03182012

There’s enough going on in the international arena that is capturing everyone’s attention, such as North Korea’s missile tests and threats, China’s aggressive South China Sea/Senkaku islands maneuvering, and the Syrian debacle unfolding with the U.S. ratcheting up the tough-talk of blaming Russia and Iran for any “Syrian chemical attack” that comes along. Russia also just deployed a new satellite, and there is the possibility that in a televised broadcast, he sent out a message to “sleeper” agent in the West. See the article by Stefan Stanford entitled Vladimir Putin sends message to ‘Russian Sleeper Agents’ in West as Russia Launches Top Secret Military Satellite. http://allnewspipeline.com/Putin_Messag ... ellite.php

“Hammer and Anvil” usually refers to a military maneuver to crush an enemy force between two friendly elements. This maneuver is being employed here and now, as well: either crush the United States and enslave its people domestically, with an economic collapse or civil war, or just initiate a war with another country and enslave the citizenry afterward. Either way, they are pushing their agenda forward each day. It is just a matter of time to find out which of the two vehicles…international war or domestic tyranny…that they will employ to obtain their globalist and totalitarian objectives." (close quote)

Just remember that Trump and Kissinger work for the same Gadiantons.

cheshire kissinger.jpg (26.78 KiB) Viewed 1326 times

[Silver]

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/wo ... 1498965907

Trump eyes Kissinger, 93, as go-between with Russia
TOM PARFITT, ALLAN HALL, RHYS BLAKELY
DECEMBER 29, 2016

Donald Trump is considering deploying former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger to reset Washington’s relations with Russia.

The news that the 93-year-old has been consulted by Mr Trump and may play a part in crafting US policy was welcomed by the Kremlin.

Mr Kissinger is said to have advised Mr Trump to roll out a plan to end sanctions on Moscow that would “recognise Russia’s dominance” in the former Soviet states of Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan.

According to German newspaper Bild, Western intelligence services believe the move would be part of a broader strategy ­formulated by Mr Kissinger under which Russia would withdraw from the east of Ukraine in exchange for the West being “no longer bothered about the Crimea issue”.

Mr Kissinger has close ties with President Vladimir Putin and has met Mr Trump since his election win.

A decision to allow the ­Kremlin free rein in what it ­considers its back yard would ­delight Moscow.

Mr Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said the Kremlin would welcome Mr Kissinger having a role in the Trump administration.

“Kissinger remains one of the wisest experts who have deep knowledge of Russian affairs and Russo-American relations,” Mr Peskov said.

During the presidential campaign, Mr Trump said he would be in favour of improved relations with Russia.

Last week, he released a “very nice letter” he received from Mr Putin urging fresh dialogue.

Mr Kissinger, who served as nat­ional security adviser under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, first encountered Mr Putin in the 1990s and has visited him since he entered the Kremlin in 2000, including in February.

The two men are said to have struck up a rapport after realising that they each had roots in intelligence work.

This month, Mr Kissinger described the Russian leader, who is a former KGB spy, as “a man with a great sense of connection, an inward connection, to Russian history as he sees it”.

Mr Kissinger has urged the West to shoulder part of the blame for the conflict in Ukraine. In an interview in 2014, he said Crimea was “a special case” and Russia’s annexation of the peninsula was inappropriate but “not a move towards global conquest”.

Mr Trump said during the election campaign he would be “looking at” recognising Russia’s annex­ation of Crimea and lifting US sanctions on Moscow.

Mr Kissinger and the president-elect might differ in style — a polished diplomat and a brash populist — but they have talked on numerous occasions. The US website Politico said Mr Kissinger was “positioning himself as a potential intermediary” with Moscow.

Mr Kissinger is a controversial figure. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his efforts to end the Vietnam War, but has been criticised for his involvement in US bombing in Cambodia.

In Moscow, he is remembered as one of the architects of detente in the 1970s.

The Times

[Silver]

what we are fighting for.gif (67.85 KiB) Viewed 1282 times

What are we fighting for? Why must our soldiers die in the Middle East or North Africa or Afghanistan? Warmongers love war and the bloody profits.



US General: Troops Should Stay in Iraq Long After ISIS Defeat
July 3, 2017 at 4:27 am
Written by Jason Ditz

(ANTIWAR.COM) — In an interview with the Fayetteville Observer, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend talked about a planned troop rotation coming up in September, saying he hoped the fighting over the city of Mosul would be over by then, but that despite predictions of an end to the ISIS war, US troops should stay.

Townsend’s comments about the US having a long-term military presence in Iraq is in keeping with other Pentagon officials, who have tried to blame the rise of ISIS between the end of the 2011 occupation and the 2014 reinvasion on the lack of US ground troops, despite the US having a substantial presence, and having spend years arming and training Iraq’s military.

Townsend insisted that the US troops would have to stay long after the ISIS war specifically to train up the Iraqi military again, and to make sure that they can actually fight off future insurgencies. There’s no indication how long this would take.

Other officials, however, have envisioned a more or less permanent US military presence, suggesting that the only way Iraq can be kept intact without collapsing into another immediate war would be for the US to have a number of troops. (close quote)

Consider this instead:
The Light of the Perfect Day
May 2016
By Elder Larry R. Lawrence
Of the Seventy

Love Others

One of the best ways to gain light is to learn to love as our Father in Heaven loves. We call this kind of love charity. Mormon exhorts us to “pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love” (Moroni 7:48) Love rapidly brings more light into our spirits; contention and jealousy take light away.

Remember, the first commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind (see Matthew 22:37–38). The reward for loving God and for putting Him first in our lives is huge. Jesus taught, “If your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light” (D&C 88:67; emphasis added).

The second commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves (see Matthew 22:39). This may be more difficult to do because our neighbors are not perfect. The real secret for learning to love others is found in serving them. That’s why it comes natural to love our children, even though they too are far from perfect.

The more you serve, the more you love, and the more you love, the more light you receive. Missionaries—both old and young—develop a glow about them that is visible to others. Full-time service is rewarded by lots of spiritual light. (close quote)

[Silver]

A massive Somalian Navy fleet is anchored off the eastern seaboard just a few miles from Washington, DC, and threatening our way of life. The Somalians have declared a no-fly zone over the eastern half of the US to protect Somalia's national security interests. Somalia and her allies and partners throughout the region will assure a peaceful transition to a more democratic form of government within the United States in the coming years and decades ahead.

Or maybe the reality is that Trump has abdicated, as any narcissist would, his duties as President under the Constitution and allowed the Military Industrial Complex to continue their warmongering unchecked. Sackcloth and ashes will be America's reward for such treachery.

Seriously though, who here thinks that the country of Somalia or its citizens pose some grave existential danger to America? They don't, which means we're just over there killing them because we can. Killing for the fun and profit of it all. Sackcloth and ashes. How can this behavior go unpunished by a God of justice?

http://theantimedia.org/us-airstrike-hits-somalia/

July 4, 2017 at 6:46 am
by Jason Ditz

(ANTIWAR.COM) — Pentagon officials have confirmed that they carried out an airstrike Sunday morning inside the country of Somalia, and that they were trying to target the al-Shabaab insurgency, saying they were after “specific militant targets.”

What they actually hit, however, isn’t at all clear, with no word yet out of Somalia on the results of the strike, and the Pentagon insisting that they are still “assessing the results,” and holding out the idea they might provide information in the future “as appropriate.”

In practice, however, the Pentagon has recently been very tight-lipped about the results of airstrikes, especially those strikes that didn’t go according to plan, meaning that “al-Shabaab was targeted” may well be the last we ever hear about the incident.

The Trump Administration has given the Pentagon increased autonomy to carry out operations in several places around the world, including in Somalia, and this is the second such strike in a little over a month. The previous strike was said to kill eight militants. As far as this strike, it’s anyone’s guess.

[Silver]

What Trump supporters can't fathom is that nothing really changed with the election of Trump. The worst of the NWO/Gadianton/billionaire-class bankster/Military Industrial Complex warmongers are still in control, and when they get together, those of both Democratic and Republican stripes, they laugh; they laugh at us, the serfs.

http://theantimedia.org/spotted-togethe ... -hamptons/

Meanwhile, Spotted Together At A Party In The Hamptons…
July 4, 2017 at 1:14 pm
Written by Tyler Durden

(ZH) — While publicly polarizing average-joe America at every opportunity, it appears the ‘elites’ are having a blast ‘together’ behind the scenes…

As Politico reports…

We're revolutionizing the news industry, but we need your help! Click here to get started.
OUT AND ABOUT IN THE HAMPTONS — Lally Weymouth held her annual summer party last night at her house in Southampton.

There was a long gold carpet entrance from where the parking was to a big tent next to her house. She served champagne, rare filet, fried chicken, cornbread, a big chocolate cake, ice cream and cookies decorated as American flags. Brother Don Graham did a big tribute to toast Lally (whose birthday is tomorrow) and shouted out Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film about how Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham challenged the government for the right to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971 (Tom Hanks is playing Bradlee and Meryl Streep is playing Graham). Don made a big deal that Spielberg was there and jokingly conceived a Spielberg movie about Lally and described the cast (some actors and some in the room).

SPOTTED: Jared and Ivanka chatting with Joel Klein and Alan Patricof, Kellyanne Conway on the dance floor, Boyden Gray, Chris Ruddy, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and wife Iris, Katharine Weymouth, Mary Jordan, Richard Cohen, Margaret Carlson, Gillian Tett, Steven Spielberg chatting with Steve Clemons and Robert Hormats, Carl Icahn, Tom Lee (famous for doing a leveraged buyout of Snapple and now lives in Princess Radziwill’s house), David Koch, John Paulson, Dina Powell, Richard Edelman, George Soros and his wife Tamiko Bolton, former Florida Gov. and Sen. Bob Graham (Lally’s uncle), her cousin Gwen Graham (who is running for Florida governor), Maria Bartiromo, Ray Kelly, Bill Bratton, Jeff Rosen, William Drozdiak, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.).

As DailyWire.com writes, David Koch was at a party with George Soros? Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Kellyanne Conway, too?

This should surprise absolutely no one. It must be noted that attending the same gathering as someone with whom you disagree isn’t wrong, nor is it a sign that you are colluding with them.

That said, it shouldn’t come as a shock that these people — Soros, Conway, Kushner, etc. — were all partying together. They are the Washington elites. The majority of those in the D.C. political world are homogeneous. They may play enemies on the great American stage, but behind the curtain, this acting troupe is thick as thieves.

This is actually a good lesson on perception. We, as voters, must be able to discern who is simply playing the game, and who is truly trying to change Washington for the benefit of the people.

The men and women who are doing everything they can to bring the United States back to constitutionalism are in the minority. It’s our job to recognize the value in these people, and vote for them. It’s also our job to see the actors for what they really are, rebuke them, and remove them from office.

This slice of life – this snapshot from a party – tells a thousand words. Washington, D.C. is a carefully crafted stage play, designed to distract the American people from what goes on behind the scenes. If we fail to recognize that, we will never achieve substantial change.

[Silver]

Trump is comfortable hanging out with those who have destroyed America because he learned from the very best of the sick traitors that occupy NYC, a sick, pitiable existence named Roy Cohn.

https://www.thenation.com/article/king-cohn/

King Cohn
Roy Cohn was one of the most loathsome characters in American history, so why did he have so many influential friends?
By Robert SherrillAUGUST 12, 2009
AP Images
Roy Cohn (right) with Sen. Joseph McCarthy, during a committee hearing in Washington on April 26, 1954.

Citizen Cohn
By Nicholas von Hoffman
Doubleday
483 pp.
$19.95.

The Autobiography of Roy Cohn,
By Sidney Zion
Lyle Stuart
284 pp.
$18.95.

Roy Cohn was one of the most loathsome characters in American history, so why did he have so many influential friends?

Briefly, in the nastiest of times, Roy Cohn did certain things that made him worthy of a historical footnote. In the eighteen months he served as Senator Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel, he contributed in some degree to the establishment of what Nicholas von Hoffman calls our ongoing era of two dreadful isms: loyaltyism and securityism.

But, though Cohn was one of the brashest and most easily hated, he was only one of numerous creators of the isms, and his role has probably been greatly overrated simply because he was so adept at publicizing himself.

In any event, the importance of Roy Cohn's life after that "short, wild ride" in Washington thirty-five years ago was of no significance at all. Except as it illuminated, and still illuminates, the society that fawned over him and allowed him to flourish. In that respect, but only in that respect, it was of enormous significance.

Von Hoffman reminds us that Cohn "lived in a matrix of crime and unethical conduct," "derived a significant part of his income from illegal or unethical schemes and conspiracies," and thrived "cheek by jowl with so many men of sharp practice and dim luster in business and politics" that Cohn's pal Joey Adams, the comedian, would say of Cohn's dinner parties, "If you're indicted you're invited."

But important unindicted people were invited, too. And they went. Large slices of the upper crust of New York and Washington snuggled up to him, laughed and entertained one another with stories about his crimes as though they were choice insiders' jokes, and wrestled for the privilege of partying with Cohn and his crooked and perverse friends. Why choose his company? The sleaze of Roy Cohn was no secret. Why ignore it? Why excuse it? The only important questions forced on us by these books have nothing to do with Roy Cohn, but everything to do with judges and lawyers and publishers and writers and TV stars and politicians and developers–the wealthy and the powerful people who for many years ate Roy Cohn's $#!% with a grin.

An example. Cohn was attorney for Studio 54, which von Hoffman identifies as "perhaps the most glamorous, fashion-setting nightclub to popularize drug use among white-collar people." Cocaine was its mother's milk. "That the establishment was run on lines contravening half the laws in the statute book made it not one whit less popular." For special celebrities, the wildest parties were held in the basement, where, along with high society's homosexuals, transsexuals and transvestites, one could find many illustrious souls who were there for the kick of watching and smelling. It was in Studio 54's catacombs, writes von Hoffman, that Cohn held some of his biggest birthday bangs, attended on at least one occasion by "the important officials of the Democratic, Republican, and Conservative parties, most of the city's major elected officials, a number of congressmen, the Chief Judge of the United States District Court and Roy's usuals, comedian Joey Adams, columnist William Safire, Donald Trump, Si Newhouse, Sidney Zion, and doubtless many another that the excluded Voice reporters did not pick up on standing outside in the street."

Why were those people there, sucking up to Cohn?

And what were people like Geraldine Ferraro and Alan Dershowitz ("who was a somewhat well-disposed acquaintance of Roy's") doing at other Cohn parties and showing up as character witnesses when he was about to be disbarred?

And aren't liberals a bit troubled when they read that one of their old standard-bearers, Murray Kempton, had "a contemptuous affection for Roy"? What is contemptuous affection? Is that what liberals feel who are too gutless to hate?

Is it possible that the New York legal community is as riddled with corruption as even the surface evidence in these books indicates? To be sure, Cohn was ultimately disbarred for lying, for stealing insurance money received after the burning of a yacht on which a crew member died (murder?), for trying to cheat a client out of $100,000, and for forging a signature–but the bar's blustery pretense of morality did not come until Cohn was so sick he could never have practiced law again anyhow. Where were the pious attorneys when he was riding high? It wasn't that they were ignorant of his shenanigans. Von Hoffman says that "some of the most important and influential practitioners of law in the United States had an idea of what kind of lawyer Roy was years before he was expelled from his profession"; indeed, more than an "idea." Cohn was famous among lawyers for winning cases by "delays, evasions, lies, and fixes," and by some he was "considered the brains behind whole networks of thieving public officials."

It's because they provoke, endlessly, questions about supposedly decent people–not because they give an elaborate resume of Cohn–that these two books are important social documents.

And always there are troubling questions about the press. Why was it– if von Hoffman knows what he's talking about–that, at the very height of Cohn's criminal career, only one newspaper of general circulation, the New York Daily News, communicated to the subway straphangers that "the glamor lawyer was a crook"? Besides the News, only The Village Voice and The American Lawyer told the truth about Cohn. At the same time, The New York Times, the most prestigious of the print media, continued to put Roy in its news columns in a most favorable light, while CBS News, then the most prestigious of the broadcasting media, did a laudatory 60 Minutes piece." Sometimes lawyers settled cases with Cohn not because they couldn't whip him in court but because they feared that Cohn would smear them and their clients through easy manipulation of the press. As one lawyer told Steven Brill, publisher of The American Lawyer:

We weren't buying off the lawsuit. We were buying off Roy Cohn. It's Cohn we were interested in, and what he said he could do to us in the press…He can get a headline in The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times icking up a phone….These papers printed uncritical, big headline accounts of Cohn's charges.

Someday William Safire, a very old and very close friend of Roy Cohn, may be so kind as to entertain us in his New York Times Magazine column, "On Language," with a discussion of "press ethics," complete with illustrations of its oxymoronic qualities drawn from the press's relations with Cohn. He might even want to tell us, for example, what he thinks "sellout" means, in reference to the work of gossip columnists and political columnists.

When these columnists–people like Liz Smith and Safire himself– become conduits for the self-serving dirt supplied by a fellow like Cohn, and then give him the kind of publicity that he can change into power and money, is that selling out? Is it the same as giving and accepting a bribe?

Is Sidney Zion's book on Cohn the ultimate sellout? Zion, a former New York Times reporter, admits that Cohn did many favors for him, including helping him expedite a liquor license for a saloon Zion was buying, and he admits that Cohn was "the best source I had" for news tips. In return, says Zion, he gave Cohn "advice" on how to handle the people at The Times. As for other things Zion did for Cohn, he says vaguely, "He never asked me to do anything I wouldn't have done for him anyway." Which, given the fact that Zion refers to Cohn as "old buddy," is not very reassuring. For me, the whole Cohn-Zion relationship seems such a cozy swap-off that I would feel foolish indeed to bet on the accuracy of anything in Zion's book–either the so-called autobiographical part, which allegedly was dictated by Cohn in the closing period of his life when his mind was beginning to wander, or the defensive commentary of Zion. There are times when I suspect that Zion is using Cohn's "autobiography" to take care of some of his own vendettas. In any event, one should be very slow to trust anyone who–after conceding that Cohn had trashed the Bill of Rights, was a "rogue," a "legal executioner" and a "notorious bastard"–excuses his close friendship with Cohn by quoting that excruciating cliche of H. L. Mencken's: "What a dull world it would be for us honest men if it weren't for its sinners."

Let us look more closely at this cuddly fellow.

The biggest problem in Roy Cohn's life was being a Jew. He wanted to be a Jew, but at the same time he was ashamed of being a Jew.

Typically for Cohn, the pleasure of being a Jew was that it opened many avenues to be exploited and manipulated. (His father, Al, a respected judge–apparently no small accomplishment in New York–and political crew boss, first opened many of these avenues for him.) Cohn was skilled at tapping the fatherly instincts of older Jews. Hey, what a smart boy! And how mannerly! As a sapling attorney he courted fellows like Judge Jerome Frank, who came to despise Cohn, and Judge Irving Kaufman (more on him later). All his life, Cohn particularly sucked up to Jewish journalists, because he practiced law through headlines. He became a tout and gossip procurer for Walter Winchell, who returned the favor by giving Cohn his first national notoriety, and he was very close to the once-powerful columnist George Sokolsky, in whom Cohn saw a second father, and Richard Berlin, head of the Hearst newspaper conglomerate. Cohn was virtually a member of the newspapering Newhouse family; throughout his adult life he was in daily contact with Si Newhouse, and on one occasion old Samuel Newhouse gave Cohn a half-million bucks, free and clear, to get him out of a jam. And, as already mentioned, The Times in the Abe Rosenthal era was an entirely friendly dumping ground for Cohn's politically murderous gossip (such as the unproven rumor that Hamilton Jordan had partaken of cocaine at Studio 54).

On the other hand, Roy Cohn seems never to have come to terms with being a Jew. "Roy never tried to deny his Jewish heritage," writes von Hoffman, "yet at the same time it seemed as though he sometimes sought out people who thought less of him for having it." Many of his closest allies, people with whom he went far out of his way to collude in wickedness–J. Edgar Hoover, numerous congressmen and senators–did not like Jews. Cohn's parties frequently were heavy with people who didn't like Jews. Cohn gave some of von Hoffman's interviewees the feeling that he enjoyed being called a kike, and he frequently used the term himself. A New York Post gossip columnist recalls that "he could be like many Jews that I've known. He could be terribly anti-Semitic…Roy was always calling people kikes–you know, terrible Jewish epithets– 'Typical kike remark,' he'd say; 'kike' this or that about money, a favorite word of his." Cohn had no closer friend or more loyal supporter than Si Newhouse, but it is said that Cohn, behind his back, called him "Jewhouse."

One might fairly assume that Cohn hated himself for being a Jew and spent a great deal of his life tormenting Jews to show that, down deep, he could be just as anti-Semitic as the most bigoted WASP. One must bear in mind that it took some doing in Cohn's early adulthood to achieve that equality, for it was an, era when few respectable clubs accepted Jewish members and when most respectable private universities had Jewish quotas. What's more, there was, at least when Cohn was very young, still a sharp social distinction between German Jews and Russian Jews, the former considered much spiffier, the latter being Cohn's lineage (though Roy's mother pretended otherwise). This Jewish schism was no laughing matter. Indeed, the German Jewish banking establishment (the Loebs, the Kuhns, the Lehmans), von Hoffman tells us, teamed up with the Anglo-Saxon-controlled New York Clearing House to destroy Roy's much-beloved uncle Bernie, once a powerful banker who spent two years in Sing Sing. Roy Cohn never forgot the people who caused this family tragedy, and he never forgave. But he also learned from it what he considered a vital lesson: that it wasn't smart to be too different, too Jewish. While he made a career of insulting and ridiculing the WASP-defined ruling class, he worked ceaselessly to become a part of it, accepted by it, admired by it. He wanted nothing to do with losers, particularly Jewish losers, which may account for his having never been known to mention the Holocaust.

These were not rare sentiments. Many Jews felt just as he did, totally willing to exploit their Jewishness and at the same time ashamed of it, angry because they were prisoners of it.

In Cohn's life, this resulted in grotesque ironies. Toward the end of his brief fling as Senator Joseph McCarthy's high executioner, when other senators were pressing McCarthy to fire him, McCarthy warned them on orders from Cohn, who many believe controlled McCarthy far more than McCarthy controlled him, that if he were forced to fire Cohn it would be an obvious act of antiSemitism "and Winchell and Sokolsky would have plenty to say about that."

Cohn's using the "anti-Semitic" threat took balls indeed, seeing as how he had been for several years the foremost example in America of what he called the great anti-Semitic tradition of putting "a Jew…to catch a Jew." Cohn helped "catch" many Jews, politically and socially. And on at least one occasion he not only helped catch Jews but kill them as well.

This, of course, was in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg espionage trial. On the record, Cohn, as an Assistant US Attorney, was what a later American Bar Association report called "the third-ranking member of the prosecution staff." In fact, as von Hoffman correctly insists and as the "Cohn" of Sidney Zion's book boasts, he helped persuade presiding Judge Irving Kaufman (in illegal ex parte discussions) that the death penalty was the right penalty. Von Hoffman points out that the bar association subcommittee (whose most important member was Simon Rifkind, a chap "quite close to Roy") later exonerated both men of carrying on in such an unfair fashion. But Zion quotes Cohn as saying that while he had no influence on Kaufman's sentencing Julius to the chair–after all, quoth Zion's Cohn, "Kaufman told me before the trial started that he was going to sentence Julius Rosenberg to death"–he did perhaps persuade Kaufman to fry Ethel. Kaufman, says Zion's Cohn, "was concerned about a possible public opinion backlash if he sentenced a woman to the electric chair, particularly a mother with two young children." Cohn continues:

Irving Kaufman has said that he sought divine guidance in his synagogue before deciding upon the sentences. I can't confirm or deny this. So far as I know, the closest he got to prayer was the phone booth next to the Park Avenue Synagogue. He called from that booth to a phone I used, behind the bench in the courtroom, to ask my advice on whether he ought to give the death penalty to Ethel Rosenberg. We often communicated during the Rosenberg case in this manner.

Cohn advised him to shoot the juice to her because "she's worse than Julius. she was the mastermind of this conspiracy."

Having helped dispose of the Rosenbergs, Cohn responded to his destiny by moving temporarily to what he called the "capital of cutthroats," Washington, where he got the job with McCarthy's committee that Bobby Kennedy had sorely wanted and that he hated Cohn for beating him out of. (And, being the true son of his father, Bobby probably hated Cohn for being a Jew.) Cohn's vigorous and sometimes crazed part in the Communist witchhunts of the era had nothing to do with patriotism. As a patriot, he can be measured by the fact that he "slithered out of the armed service," to use von Hoffman's phrase, in both World War II and the Korean War in a very crafty way. A congressman was pressured into appointing him to West Point–not once, but three times; each time Cohn failed the West Point exam, but he could not be drafted as long as he was trying to get in, so he managed to delay long enough to see the end of World War II from the safe perch of Columbia Law School. And when the draft was revived in the Korean War, Cohn again successfully avoided service by joining the National Guard.

If patriotism did not drive him to Washington, what did? He says he went to "cure my inferiority complex." Since he had never as a lawyer shown the feeling, be must have meant something stemming from his Jewishness. He was ashamed that Jews were getting something of a reputation as far-lefters. "Not all Jews are Communists," he said in the McCarthy days, "but most Communists are Jews." Like his mentor columnist Sokolsky, whose sympathy for Jews was so limited that he had "what von Hoffman calls an "apparent willingness to accommodate himself to European fascism," Cohn was very worried "lest the non-Jewish public get the idea that Jews loved Moscow more than America." The McCarthy committee's shoveling into the affairs of the Army at Fort Monmouth was particularly fruitful in this regard, so much so that Jewish groups complained that "most of the witnesses at the hearings were Jewish" and "most of the scientists suspended at Fort Monmouth were also."

Significantly, the most important actions taken by Cohn in Washington were self-destructive. He destroyed forever all chances for real acceptance by either the Jewish or WASP upper class. And he destroyed his alter ego, McCarthy.

He did the first by forcing two favorites of the WASPish old-school-tie Foreign Service to resign. He ruined one career by threatening–plenty ironic, considering Cohn's later recreational preferences–to expose an old homosexual affair, and he ruined the other career by threatening to expose an old secret marriage. He did this to avenge the way the Foreign Service had made him and his colleague G. David Schine look so ridiculous in their book-burning tour of Europe–a tour which Cohn would years later admit was "a colossal mistake." Adds von Hoffman, "how big a colossal mistake he probably never understood."

He had gone out in the world and done things to men, non-Communist, non-criminal men, which would never be forgiven. The trip had changed the course of his life; this was not a question of a Democratic boy going to work for a Republican senator; this was welding himself to a political faction that people from his background despised. Publicly, there was no way back for Roy.

To the establishment, Cohn "had stamped himself a varlet. Roy had to sneer at Harvard, Yale, and the Union League Club; that world was [now] closed to him forever."

As for McCarthy, drunken and malleable and dumb, Cohn destroyed him by forcing him to hound and hound the Army to give Schine favored treatment in boot camp, a pursuit that was tactically insane and ultimately led to the hearings that ruined McCarthy and of course ended Cohn's Washington career. The anti-Army crusade was so bizarre as to make one almost believe Cohn willed his own defeat.

Cohn returned to New York City and went into the practice of law at a level where most payments were under the table. Here again, Cohn was turning inside out the Jewishness of his early training and environment. Thanks to a judge who was a friend of Cohn's father, he was taken into a solid and reputable law firm (Saxe, Bacon & O'Shea, later Saxe, Bacon & Bolan) in 1957, and he managed within a dozen years to destroy its reputation by both sloppy lawyering and shady lawyering. It became known as the law firm that bought off judges, suborned witnesses and won cases through trickery and political pressure. "The acts Roy was committing," writes von Hoffman, "were the antithesis of what he had learned from men like Jerome Frank; they were an affront to the rock-sure morality of the conscientious Jewish professional and business men of his growing up."

"By early 1963," von Hoffman goes on, "Roy had won himself a reputation, among reporters and editors willing to believe the worst if given a little evidence to hang it on, as a sleazy man of affairs." This is one of the several times that von Hoffman shows a strange contempt for Cohn's critics. What's with him? What does he mean by "a little evidence"? Von Hoffman lists mountains of evidence: looting enterprises by collecting excessive fees; asking other lawyers around his firm to sign false affidavits (and telling one who wouldn't, "I can't afford your Harvard ethics"); asking clients for money to bribe the judge and then pocketing the bribe money; or not telling clients he was going to bribe judges, and doing it. His money was spread widely. "If fixing the clerks wouldn't accomplish his goals," says von Hoffman, "Roy would tamper with witnesses." There were strong suspicions that he sometimes defrauded his own law partners. On at least one occasion he allowed top Mafia bosses to hold their meeting in his office so that, if wiretapped, what they said could not be used against them in court because of the lawyer-client relationship–a relationship with the Mafia, it should be added, that was much too extensive and friendly and covered too many years to be in any way innocent. (Indeed, if Zion's Cohn is to be believed–always a big if–he got Irving Saypol, the prosecutor in the Rosenberg case, appointed US Attorney through the good offices of Frank Costello, it being the case, says Cohn, that "the mob had for years decided the appointment of the US attorney.")

Cohn's most despicable crime as a lawyer, the professional crime for which there is no forgiveness, was defrauding his clients. He did it in myriad ways. Sometimes he would take their money, promise his personal help and turn the case over to the most unpracticed members of the firm, young men who had never even been in court; occasionally he dumped cases on law students who were just hanging around. Sometimes Cohn would take a client's money and turn up in court so poorly prepared that it was inevitable the client would go to jail. Indeed, he seldom made formal preparations for a trial but instead relied on what one close associate called his talents as an "intimidator and bluffer and @#!!$#!% artist." Sometimes he would take a client's money and give no representation at all, none: pure swindle.

There was, in fact, nothing so unprofessional, so unethical, that he would not do it to a client. Perhaps his most memorable trick was to turn rat, stool pigeon, on one client in an effort to save another. Von Hoffman writes:

One disco owner, a client of Roy's who had been paying Roy to bribe New York City officials to get a zoning variance, had confidential lawyer-client tax information turned over to the government to rescue the owners of Studio 54 from impending incarceration. It didn't work, but the man, who went to the penitentiary himself, might have taken Roy with him had he learned of his attorney's treason soon enough.

And of course Cohn constantly–constantly–leaked stuff to the press about his clients to get publicity for himself. It was this total disloyalty that made some observers wonder what Safire and Zion and others in Cohn's retinue were talking about when they spoke of his loyalty. Steven Brill, of The American Lawyer, told von Hoffman, "He was the most disloyal person to clients imaginable…I really want to know why Bill Safire likes him so much. Loyalty? Dogs have loyalty. He was never loyal to clients."

Cohn was notorious as a deadbeat. Except for what he owed homosexual prostitutes, he never paid his bills. Creditors could always sue him, of course, but "suing Roy could be a costly waste of time. The lawyers' fees might soon equal the size of the debt and the case would not go to trial, particularly in New York City where Roy had one or perhaps two judges, who must have been on his pad, because they would grant any postponement, any preliminary motion he asked for." Occasionally a creditor would win a suit, but they virtually never collected because he had nothing they could attach (as the IRS discovered; he went to his grave owing it $7 million). He rented or leased everything. He had no bank account. He wasn't paid for his legal work but got phony "loans" or lived on a kind of millionaire's barter system. Very often he paid his own staff with bad checks. Indeed, Cohn could have been prosecuted for fraud because of the pattern of his non-payments.

His life was spent in a cocoon of filth and disrepair. "The expression used to describe Roy's abodes time and time again was '$#!% house,' " writes von Hoffman. His bedroom was decorated with frogs: frog drawings, frog paintings, frog decals, frog patterns on sheets, on nightshirts, on wallpaper, froggies everywhere; it was a room "bulging with stuffed animals, in this enormous turn-of-the-century townhouse, the plaster cracking, the paint all but gone from the walls, leaks squirting, and drafts finding their way through the ill-attended cracks."

His table manners were notoriously foul. He would eat from other people's plates, using his fingers, dipping his fingers into their gravy. He craved sweets but feared getting fat, so, as one boyfriend recalled, "In these fancy restaurants he'd order the yummy desserts, eat them and then spit them out into a napkin."

Was this the dapper lawyer whose name endlessly splotched the gossip columns of New York, the celebrated man-about-town fixer who threw parties at Studio 54 that mayors and congressmen and Harvard lawyers fought to be invited to? The same. If you see a split, splintered, shattered personality here, you're right. There was a deep streak of madness in Cohn, perhaps inherited from his mother's side. His maternal grandmother was deranged. One of his mother's brothers was "either mentally retarded or brain-damaged." Some members of the Cohn family thought Roy's mother should have been institutionalized. Everyone agreed she was extremely neurotic at the very least.

But the madness, I think, was also generated by self-hatred. (As a reward for wading through these two biographical bogs, I am surely entitled to indulge in a bit of amateur psychoanalysis.)

How could he avoid self-hatred? He betrayed his moralistic Jewish inheritance, betrayed his political party (he never quit claiming to be a Democrat), tricked his friends, defrauded his law partners, cheated his clients, treated his profession like a whorehouse. It was only natural, and doubtless subconsciously to him seemed absolutely just, that as punishment he destroy his own reputation and his body.

As everyone knows, Cohn, "the bestk-nown non-showbusiness homosexual in the country," died of AIDS.

When he was young, he dated girls. He claimed to have been engaged to Barbara Walters at one time. They were friends for many years, but he had few other women friends. Some who knew him well say he hated women.

Just how long he was a homosexual is not clear. Zion says a doctor told him that Cohn had been having sex with men since he was 15. Von Hoffman cites a reporter who remembers seeing Cohn in the homosexual bars around Washington when Cohn was in his mid-20s. But others say they knew– because they shared hotel rooms with him–that Cohn engaged in straight sex as a young man. Always with prostitutes. Not nice girls. And even with the prostitutes, one of his old pals says, "He seemed to be one of those people who was just weird about sex the way he was weird about everything else."

Von Hoffman indicates that Cohn really came out of the closet when his mother died. Others have said the same. It isn't surprising that they link the twists and turns of his sex life to his mother, an extremely dominating woman. She and Roy were so close it was rumored he used to date her. In any event, by the 1970s Cohn found his relaxation in places that were, as a lover reported, "wall-to-wall anywhere from sixteen-year-olds to thirty-year-old body builders who'd be wearing dungarees with a surface tension of sixty pounds per square inch. We're talking about guys with huge musculature packed into T-shirts with stuffed crotches [sic], bikini briefs stuffed with Kleenex–a 'big box' is what it's called."

Cohn was a particularly nasty homosexual. He was often a favored guest at the ranch of multimillionaire Shearn Moody, who readily provided, we learn, "many little boys of the night" to guests who desired them. The story is that one night Cohn desired a boy who turned out to have warts on his penis, but Cohn said, "Oh well, I don't care." And the first thing you know, Cohn had "venereal warts on his anus."

Cohn's appetite for sex was hearty, to say the least. One of his longtime lovers told von Hoffman, "The joke was five a night at a hundred a pop. Roy was incredibly promiscuous." Another said, "Roy had to have sex every night, and no matter what the cost…he would have someone there. If it wasn't me, it was Peter, Dirk, a guy named Bill who did porno movies….no matter what, he had to have it every night. And then he would beat off afterward to pornography…I think for all the times he liked to be on the top so much, he loved being on the bottom."

Cohn was rumored to have humped, or been humped by, Schine, his colleague of the McCarthy days, but von Hoffman says there is no evidence of such a relationship. Ditto the rumors that he humped, or was humped by, his dirt-supplying pal J. Edgar Hoover. Ditto the rumors that he humped, or was humped by, Cardinal Spellman (who reputedly was hot for choir boys) all very, very close friends of Cohn, to be sure, but by von Hoffman's reckoning they serviced one another only in political ways.

What of Cohn's rumored relationship with homosexuals around Reagan?

When Roy's name comes up among straight people with an inside knowledge of Washington politics, particularly Democrats, there is speculating about him and the "lavender Mafia," which is the group of closet homosexuals in important positions in the Reagan administration. Whether a "ring" of such men, bound together by power, politics, and sexual preference, exists depends as much on semantics as observed behavior. However the ring question is resolved, one of Roy's paths of access to the Reagan administration, but only one of several, was his connection with certain homosexual men near the White House.

This seems to be a line of investigation that von Hoffman was too lazy to pursue. Roughly how many men does he mean? How close to the White House do these rumors take us? How high do they go? (He does mention one "important operative in the Reagan camp," whatever that means.) Von Hoffman leaves these questions alone.

Typically disloyal, Cohn gave no support to homosexuals who were trying to win public acceptance. He called them "fags," did all he could to make their lives miserable, lectured against them, berated politicians for any display of tolerance toward homosexuals and urged laws to restrict their freedom. To his death he denied that he was homosexual, but the Dorian Gray scene of his lying of AIDS said it all: "Roy…lay in bed, unheeding, his flesh cracking open, sores on his body, his faculties waning" and with a one-inch "slit-like wound above [his] anus."

It's said that the one true love in Roy Cohn's life was his spaniel, Charlie Brown.

[Silver]

Trump supporters bent on trying to justify his murders, especially those in Syria, usually do so from a misunderstanding of the true nature of the relationship between Syria's President Al-Assad and the Syrian people. The Trump supporters have fallen for the propaganda that Assad is some sort of demon, therefore it's OK to overthrow him and kill the little demons -- the people who support Assad. Of course, what America is doing is just murder, plain and simple, and we will reap the whirlwind for it.

The truth, of course, is quite different. Assad is no George Washington, but neither is he Lucifer.

http://theantimedia.org/500000-syrian-r ... urn-syria/

Over 500,000 Syrian Refugees Return To Government-Controlled Areas Of Syria
July 4, 2017 at 8:52 am
Written by Whitney Webb

(MPN) — DAMASCUS (Analysis) – Crucial to the Western narrative of the Syrian conflict is the assertion that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a brutal dictator who has taken to killing his own people over the course of Syria’s six-year-long conflict. This allegation has been the crux of the “humanitarian” justification for foreign military intervention in Syria that would seek to depose Assad’s government, a justification frequently used by the U.S. and its allies prior to an invasion or the toppling of an extant regime.

While this narrative has been pervasive in media coverage of the Syrian conflict, it is now being debunked by the very Syrian refugees that the media purported were fleeing Assad in the first place. According to a recent statement from Andrej Mahecic, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, an estimated 440,000 displaced Syrians who remained in the country have returned to their homes since the year began. In addition, 31,000 refugees in neighboring countries also returned to Syria in the first half of the year, with 260,000 having returned to Syria from other nations since 2015.

UNA-USA San Diego @UNASanDiego
UN Refugee Agency: Almost 500,000 Syrian refugees have returned home. Find out why: http://htl.li/RfjO30de1Yj #UNHCR #standwithrefugees
1:00 PM - 1 Jul 2017
Syrian refugee children in a camp for displaced in Jordan. Photo: February 2016
Syria war: Almost 500,000 refugees return in 2017 - UN - BBC News
The UN calls this a "notable trend", but warns conditions for a safe return "are not yet in place".
bbc.com
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Though Mahecic noted that these refugees represent only a “fraction” of the five million Syrian refugees living in neighboring countries, what is notable is that nearly all of those who have decided to come back are settling in areas of Syria controlled by the government or where the Syrian government has made major territorial gains against ISIS and US-backed militants like al-Nusra Front in recent months – namely Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus.

Even with the conflict in Syria still raging, thousands of the displaced are eagerly returning to their homes under the control of the Syrian government. This may seem strange, as the U.S. media has long suggested that most refugees were fleeing Assad, not foreign-backed terrorists like Daesh (ISIS) and Al-Nusra.

Of course, this assertion was based on “polls” of refugees conducted by the Syria Campaign, a USAID-funded organization that has long pushed for U.S. military intervention in Syria.

This begs the question: why would refugees choose to return to territory controlled by the person they supposedly sought to flee, as the mainstream media portrays?

These latest figures from the UN suggest that many refugees were not fleeing their government, but rather the violence caused by a foreign-funded insurgency intended to topple the popular Assad government. As Middle East Eye noted in 2015, prior to the outbreak of the conflict, Assad was widely popular, though his popularity allegedly evaporated as the 2011 Saudi- and U.S.-funded uprising began.

Did Assad’s popularity with the Syrian people ever really go away? Western media reports containing interviews with the handful of Syrians who support Assad as dictator claim it is so. But the evidence has long suggested that the majority of Syrians have continued to approve of their president throughout the conflict.

Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that the “popular uprisings” against the Assad government in 2011 were staged on behalf of foreign mercenaries largely backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – governments that have long sought to remove Assad from power. Assad’s popularity prior to the outbreak of violence likely remained unchanged after the fact.

Polling within Syria has consistently shown this to be true. Even polls funded by anti-Assad nations like Qatar have also found that the majority of Syrians continue to overwhelmingly support Assad. Indeed, when elections were last held in 2014, the Western media could not hide the large crowds that came to vote, as the population re-elected Assad, who won with 88 percent of the vote. By contrast, voter turnout was 55.7 percent in the last U.S. Presidential election, suggesting that Assad has a stronger democratic mandate than U.S. President Donald Trump.

Six years into the conflict, video footage, and photographs clearly show that Assad and his wife regularly walk among the Syrian people in Damascus with little to no security detail. The Assads even drive their own cars – without security – through the countryside.

View image on Twitter
maytham @maytham956
President #Assad driving his car and passing by a check point at one of the villages of Mesyaf in the countryside of #Hama #Syria
7:38 AM - 26 Jun 2017
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This seems like a difficult feat for a “hated” and “feared” dictator to perform on a regular basis. By contrast, some Western leaders can hardly spend a few minutes among their constituents – even with a massive security detail in tow – without being sped away for their own protection.

Even U.S. politicians who have traveled to Syria have come back acknowledging Assad’s popularity. For instance, Virginia State Senator Richard Black has cited internal reports from U.S. intelligence which state that, were an election in Syria to be held today, Assad would likely be reelected with 90 percent of the vote, including in areas occupied by terrorists.

[Silver]

Being President is hard and stuff. So I will just pretend bigly that I don't have any Constitutional obligations and I'll let private companies decide about war and stuff.

http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=76412

Trump: I’m giving the military ‘total authorization’
Posted on June 28, 2017 by State of the Nation


By: Leo Shane III
Military Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday called the recent high-profile military actions overseas proof that he’s fulfilling his promise to let defense leaders act decisively without interference from politicians.

“What I do is I authorize my military,” in response to a press question about the use of a massive bomb in an assault on Islamic State group positions in Afghanistan. “We have the greatest military in the world, and they’ve done the job, as usual. We have given them total authorization, and that’s what they’re doing.

“Frankly, that’s why they’ve been so successful lately. If you look at what’s happened over the last eight weeks and compare that really to what has happened over the last eight years, you’ll see there is a tremendous difference.”

The Afghanistan airstrike — the first battlefield use of the military’s Massive Ordnance Air Blast weapon — on Thursday was the latest in a series of large scale, sometimes controversial military actions by the Defense Department in Trump’s first three months in office.

Earlier this month, the military fired nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield in response to chemical weapons use by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. In January, U.S. special operations forces conducted a raid against an al-Qaida compound in Yemen that resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL and several civilians.

Pentagon leaders have also come under scrutiny for an airstrike in Iraq in March that killed more than 100 civilians, due to incomplete information supplied by friendly forces on the ground.

And the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria has slowly risen in recent months, in response to international efforts to combat ISIS in the region.

White House officials said Trump was heavily involved in authorizing the Yemen raid and Syria strike, but Trump appeared to indicate he was not the final authority on the use of the MOAB against terrorist positions this week.

During the presidential campaign, he repeatedly promised to review rules of engagement for U.S. troops in war zones and limit micro-management of military operations by executive branch bureaucrats, a frequent criticism of President Obama by conservatives.

But military officials said the rules of engagement have not been updated for Iraq yet, and have not publicly commented on whether they have been given more independent operational authority in recent weeks.



Earlier in the day, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the Afghanistan attack came after officials “took all precautions necessary to prevent civilian casualties and collateral damage as a result of the operation.”

He also said the attack sent a clear message to U.S. adversaries.

“The United States takes the fight against ISIS very seriously and in order to defeat the group, we must deny them operational space, which we did,” he said.

[iWriteStuff]

“What I do is I authorize my military,” in response to a press question about the use of a massive bomb in an assault on Islamic State group positions in Afghanistan. “We have the greatest military in the world, and they’ve done the job, as usual. We have given them total authorization, and that’s what they’re doing.

Boy, this just screams "The Deep State is my best friend ever!" Can you imagine Reagan giving the military total autonomy? How about Bush? I don't even need to ask if anyone thinks Washington would have abdicated all responsibility for military operations.

Dude's a Gadianton. Trump is proud to give control over to the Deep State at the Pentagon.

[Silver]

Elites in the White House and elites on Wall Street ensure that everyone else is going to get poorer via economic policy or deader via war. Trump is not your friend. He is murdering innocent people overseas. There will be blowback. He is enriching himself, his family, and his friends. There will be pitchforks.

The pictures below tell a story made up of many, many thousands of words -- a tragedy long in the making. In the 2nd graph particularly, look at the average household income of the bottom 50%. Less than $25,000/year. Given the low purchasing power of the US dollar, the bottom 50% of income earners in America are not much better than slaves. That $25k is not individual earnings. It is household earnings. Everybody in the house combined.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-0 ... ragmenting

billionaires on parade.png (36.57 KiB) Viewed 1162 times

household-income7-17.jpg (57.25 KiB) Viewed 1162 times

[2EstablishZion]

Yeah, and to add insult to injury, most of those bottom 80% are two or more people working, so the salaries are more like $30K/yr. The top 10%, much more often that "household income" is either all or mostly 1 person.

[freedomforall]

Obama Caught ‘Acting As President’ In Indonesia, Trump Gives Him Brutal Surprise

Also: http://www.usanewsflash.com/obama-violated-logan-act/


Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act

The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that details the fine and/or imprisonment of unauthorized citizens who negotiate with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States. It was intended to prevent the undermining of the government's position.[2] The Act was passed following George Logan's unauthorized negotiations with France in 1798, and was signed into law by President John Adams on January 30, 1799. The Act was last amended in 1994, and violation of the Logan Act is a felony.

[freedomforall]

RIGHT IN MIDDLE OF SPEECH TODAY, TRUMP POINTED AT A VET AND DID THE UNTHINKABLE