#and if you can’t see that netanyahu has been talking with trump behind the scenes to get this ceasefire

[xbuster]

This is beyond “you are not immune to propaganda.” This is “you are willfully taking the bait and refusing to let go because owning the libs is what you base your entire brand of online activism on and to that end you are willing to praise fascists.”

Trump did not magically negotiate a ceasefire deal 5 days before his inauguration by coincidence. I refuse to believe there is anyone stupid enough that they can recognize Netanyahu as a fascist, but can’t see how he would hold off on accepting a ceasefire deal all the way until right before Trump’s inauguration in order to prop up another fascist government that will let him finally raze all that’s left of Gaza to the ground. This is a deliberate attempt to spite liberals over real analysis of the negotiation.

[gibsongirlselections]

Bob Woodward: Stenographer of the Washington Establishment

At the end of Trump’s first term, there are scores of people the president has humiliated, fired by tweet, and excoriated publicly after nasty and public fallings out, and all of them have stories to tell. These angry, jilted rejects from the Trump administration, the presidential version of The Apprentice, have poured out their hearts, and their grievances, to Washington’s reporting angel, Bob Woodward. From national security heavyweights, to former and current senators and White House officials, to generals famous for their silence, the veteran Watergate journalist transcribes them all in his latest book Rage.

While Trump wasn’t interviewed for Woodward’s first book on the administration, the president picked up the phone and spoke to Woodward a total of 18 times for this latest offering. Yet even with that level of access, the book suffers from Woodward’s uncritical embrace of narratives spun by ex-officials transparently attempting to resuscitate their own reputations after Trump’s unceremonious defenestrations.

Rage is awash with an astonishing array of self-serving narratives: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein drafting the memo that justified firing FBI Director James Comey in May 2017; pious Marine Corps General Jim Mattis praying at Washington’s National Cathedral for the country’s fate under Trump’s command; oil executive and erstwhile Secretary of State Rex Tillerson bemoaning Trump not keeping his word and his fire-by-tweet; Jared Kushner opining on his brilliant father-in-law’s “great strength” of unpredictability, to name a few.

The biggest problem with Woodward’s books on the Trump administration is that he serves up these self-interested perspectives with far too much credulity. History is written by the winners, and everyone wants to be certain Woodward captures their version of events. Throughout both Fear and Rage, the reader can never be certain who is talking, because Woodward serves up his narrative in omniscient voice. Almost all the original reporting Woodward conducted is on “deep background.” Whomever it is that spoke to Woodward wasn’t willing to publicly put their names to what they told him. 

But it’s not too difficult to guess who his sources are, because in their own telling, they are the heroes. And who, other than the people present in the room themselves, could tell Woodward the thoughts of central players or word for word what happened at private White House meetings, or on the golf course with Trump? 

In Fear, a predictable bevy of former White House officials like Steve Bannon, Gary Cohn, Rob Porter, H.R. McMaster, John Kelly and Chris Christie tell Woodward how lunatic, imbecilic, or angry Trump is, and how they personally stood between the president and disaster. 

In Rage, Woodward has some new sources, and new heroes. In this passage from the Epilogue of Rage, see if you can guess who they are:

Mattis, Tillerson and Coats are all conservatives or apolitical people who wanted to help him and the country. Imperfect men who answered the call to public service. They were not the deep state. Yet each departed with cruel words from their leader. They concluded that Trump was an unstable threat to their country. Think about that for a moment: The top national security leaders thought the president of the United States was a danger to the country.

It’s Mattis, Tillerson and former director of national intelligence Dan Coats—coincidentally the very same people whom Woodward has heavily relied on for his Rage narrative. 

In one particularly striking scene, Woodward writes that Mattis told Coats, “There may come a time when we have to take collective action” since Trump is “dangerous. He’s unfit.”

It’s not clear what sort of action Mattis is referring to. After all, Mattis famously declined to dish any dirt on his former boss after resigning. Mattis said, “if you leave an administration, you owe some silence,” and “when the time’s right to speak out about policy or strategy, I’ll speak out.”

Mattis resigned in December 2018 after disagreeing with Trump on withdrawing troops from Syria, something the president had promised to do many times during the 2016 presidential campaign. As recently as June 2020, Mattis said he had just come to the realization that Trump was a threat to the Constitution as a result of Trump’s decision to deploy soldiers to quell the George Floyd protests in Washington, D.C. This means that Woodward’s account, in which Mattis calls Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” in 2019, can’t be true. 

According to Woodward, Mattis disagreed with Trump on policy: Trump made “a terrible decision” on Syria; he “didn’t agree” with Mattis and crossed his “red line.”

“I was often trying to impose reason over impulse. And you see where I wasn’t able to, because the tweets would get out there,” Mattis said of Trump. He calls Trump’s attitude towards allies “indefensible.”

“It was jingoism. It was a misguided form of nationalism. It was not patriotism.”

When Mattis resigned, he reportedly told Trump, “You’re going to have to get the next secretary of defense to lose to ISIS. I’m not going to do it.”

The retired Marine Corps general tells Woodward he’s “buried too many boys” to risk Trump escalating violence in the Middle East. Trump is the first president that hasn’t either started a war or brought the U.S. into a new armed conflict in over 39 years. Yet Woodward doesn’t press Mattis on his conclusion that Trump is “dangerous,” “unfit,” and going to get boys killed.

In another chapter of Rage, Woodward writes uncritically that Tillerson and Mattis “had stopped or slowed some of Trump’s intentions in Afghanistan and South Korea, but their ambitious goal of directing foreign policy had largely failed.”

In another chapter, Tillerson is unceremoniously fired via tweet. Tillerson “was never told why he was fired. The president did not give him a reason.”

Maybe Tillerson was axed because he was, on his own admission, obstructing the president’s wishes on foreign policy?

None of these people were forced to work for the Trump administration. But by doing so, one would presume they all agreed to carry out Trump’s policies, not surreptitiously work to sabotage his agenda behind his back. They also all had the option of resigning and speaking out publicly about what they believed the dangers they saw were.

But that’s not what they did. They talked to Woodward, anonymously, and in his telling, people like Mattis and Tillerson are the “adults in the room”—even when they behave appallingly, openly flouting Trump’s policy goals, Woodward doesn’t seriously question their accounts.

Consider this scene Woodward describes: Gary Cohn, then-chief White House economic adviser, prevented President Trump from withdrawing from a trade agreement with South Korea by simply removing a letter announcing the withdrawal from the Resolute desk. Trump reportedly never noticed the letter was missing. 

In conversations with former White House adviser Rob Porter, Cohn threatened to reprise his tactic and remove another letter in order to prevent Trump from leaving the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.)

“I can stop this. I’ll just take the paper off his desk,” Cohn tells Porter.

It is shocking that Cohn felt empowered to literally take options off the table of the duly-elected president of the United States; and more shocking still, Woodward recounts this without putting any pressure on Cohn as to the story’s veracity or the narrator’s chutzpah.

While there’s an endless parade of self-serving accounts from disgruntled former staff in both books, there’s nothing about the deal President Trump helped facilitate between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. While the deal is only the third Arab-Israeli peace deal negotiated since Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, and the first time a diplomatic relationship has been established between Israel and a Gulf Arab country, it doesn’t merit a single word in the forty six chapters of Rage. 

In the epilogue, Woodward abandons journalistic impartiality and weighs in on his opinion of Trump: he’s “the wrong man for the job” of president. But Woodward need not have written this for the reader to know his conclusion. Napoleon once said that history is “an agreed upon fable.” Through his unquestioning use of self-serving sources, Woodward allows Rage to be nothing more than a shockingly unabashed stenography of the Washington establishment.

The post Bob Woodward: Stenographer of the Washington Establishment appeared first on The American Conservative.

[politicaltheatre]

Lies We Tell, pt.2

Diplomacy

No doubt, you've heard a lot about diplomacy the past few weeks, and somehow the name at the center of every discussion was Donald Trump. Even recognizing his current day job, this is very strange.

It's strange for two reasons. The first is obvious: not only is diplomacy something Trump appears not to understand, it is something he has made very clear that he hates. The second is that diplomacy requires a great deal of lying.

Now, we all know how much Trump likes to lie. He isn't particularly good at it, but he's enthusiastic. Not only does he love lying, he loves to be lied to. You might think this would make him a natural for diplomacy, which is simply a form of negotiation, something he swears he is "the best" at, but you would be very, very wrong.

The reason Trump hates diplomacy is the kinds of lies diplomats have to tell. The pageantry alone would seem to be right up Trump's alley, but, no, the pageantry has to make both parties look good. This is a man to whom life has always been and always will be a zero sum game. Remember the group picture at the N.A.T.O. summit a year ago? Remember how he pushed his way to the front?

Don't think for a second any of those men and women forgot. When Trump pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, they may have expressed suitable disappointment, but they were more than happy to see him - not the United States, just him - go. When he pulled the same routine this month by pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, they were furious. And yet, despite the public anger, there are quite a few in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris who see this as a long term opportunity.

Why? Because with Trump pulling out of every deal signed by Barack Obama, seemingly because it was signed by Barack Obama, and with the Brits withdrawing from the European Union, Germany and France are now the two western countries with the most credibility among the rest of the world. That's credibility they have gained at the United States' expense. 

That credibility can and probably will lead to business opportunities for Europe based companies at the expense of American ones. The sanctions the United States may re-impose on companies doing business with Iran may hurt in the short term, but they will spur supply chains that cut the United States out of the loop if its traditional partners aren’t cooperating. You'd think a man who's lived his entire life as a zero sum game would get that, but, no.

Trump, like any other right wing thinker, doesn't think like a diplomat. He can't. Everything for him is short term. The idea that the impression the rest of the world has of his dishonesty, his corruption, and his seeming lack of control over his administration will play into negotiations on trade and nuclear weapons is beyond him.

What exactly was the goal of Trump's now-aborted trade war with China anyway? The steel tariffs didn't end up creating more jobs in the United States; if anything, they just shuffled jobs around. And, yes, the price of soup cans may have gone up so much that Campbell's Soup actually did suffer.

And the withholding of intellectual property rights to the Chinese mobile phone company ZTE raises all sorts of questions. It was definitely a classic case of "hostage taking", an age old negotiating tactic that sometimes involves the actual taking of hostages, as North Korea has demonstrated for decades.

The questions are these: 1) Was ZTE taken hostage to extract concessions from the Chinese in Trump's attempt at a trade war?; 2) Was ZTE being used as a bargaining chip to encourage the Chinese to apply pressure on the North Koreans in the peace talks with South Korea?; 3) Was Trump hoping to apply pressure on Chinese investors so that they would invest in his property in Indonesia?

North Korea did release three hostages, two of whom it took on Trump's watch, and Trump's company did receive investment from some well connected Chinese, but the threat that a Chinese company might be used this way can't be good news for American companies currently partnering with Chinese ones. In the long term, the Chinese companies won't trust the arrangement.

Trust, despite the lies necessary to diplomacy, is the ultimate goal of diplomacy. This is not the kind of trust we have with friends and loved ones but the kind we have with business partners. It's a matter of reducing risk, of managing it. If I think you're aren't going to pay your bills or are going to run out on a deal, I won't do business with you.

You'd think Mr. "Art of the Deal" would get that, but he's run out on a lot of bills and now he's pulling out of a lot of deals. Granted, they weren't his deals, they were his predecessor's, his black predecessor's.

There's a reason racism and the right wing have traveled such a long road together. Racism is a justification for doing harm to others without accountability or apology. Never having to be accountable or apologize, which is an admission of accountability, is what right wing ideology is all about. In the eyes of the right wing, to be accountable is to be weak, to accept an "other" as an equal is to be weak, and to codify that accountability and acceptance into law is intolerable.

In destroying Barack Obama's legacy, Trump is sending a message both to his right wing, American backers and to the men - always men - he idolizes more than anyone, possibly even himself, the "strong men", the Vladimir Putins and Xi Jinpings and Benjamin Netayahus of the world. It's at once an adolescent "fuck you" to anyone demanding accountability from the wealthy to the poor and a dog whistle to anyone on the fence about voting for him in 2020.

It is for this that Trump pushed for withdrawal from the Iran nuclear treaty, for this that he fired anyone who dared say "No”. It is for this that he moved the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, when the diplomats managed to persuade twelve United States presidents not to.

Why would anyone trust a negotiating partner like that? Why would anyone think, This is the time to start negotiating? Trump was offered a great deal of credit by South Korean President Moon Jae-In for rattling his saber and bringing North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un to the table, but given the daily tantrums and contradicting of his own, chosen representatives, a better question to ask might be, Why would anyone ever believe Kim has any intention of going through with it?

The peace talks between Kim and Moon that grabbed so much attention just a month ago actually had very little to do with Trump and his words. The first scene in the pageant took place back at the Winter Olympics in Peyongchang, South Korea. Remember them? Remember the diplomatic welcome of the North Korean delegation? Remember how Mike Pence snubbed them?

Well, the groundwork for that, and for the unified Korean teams, was handled behind closed doors over a period of years, basically going back to South Korea's bid, which was before Kim Jong-Un even succeeded his father, Kim Jong-Il. All of it required allowing North Korea to present a version of itself that all sides knew was a lie so that it could save face. The country is poor and its people may well be every bit as oppressed and miserable as we believe; you just don't say so out loud, not if you want to achieve something.

That North Korea offered to enter discussions about possibly ending the war between North and South and offered to include a meeting with Trump more or less came down to timing and Kim's possible belief that in Trump he was dealing with an idiot who can't control himself or his lackeys. That Kim has already shown the telltale signs of pulling out of the deal are what we should have expected. After all, it's what his father and grandfather already did when it was their turn.

None of this surprises the South Koreans or the Chinese, who may not have been invited to Singapore but would most definitely be there. It very likely doesn't surprise the Americans, either. Kim is expected to lie. He's expected to make promises and then to find excuses to withdraw while saving face. It's a pantomime and it's as much part of diplomacy as a state dinner.

Trump is a bullshit artist's bullshit artist. Perhaps this is why the people who chose him choose to believe he might actually have an edge on North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. It takes a bullshit artist to catch a bullshit artist, right? That, unfortunately, is one more lie.

Trump hasn't been able to handle any of the other bullshit artists in power, not Putin, not Xi, not Netanyahu, and not either of his Republican counterparts in Congress. He hasn't been able to grasp the pantomime necessary for diplomacy. Instead, like the rest of us, he chooses to believe the lie as long as he can. He surrounds himself with those willing to lie to him, and fires those who break the spell. If Trump truly believes his own bullshit, Kim will eat him alive.

It's possible Trump isn't foolish enough to believe Kim would give up nuclear weapons, the one real bargaining chip he has, but there he is with Iran expecting them to do the same. The likely result of both new negotiations is the same: North Korea and Iran will end up with the ability to create nuclear weapons, but will hold off in exchange for financial incentives provided, respectively, by China and the European Union/Russia. Even with that investment, any chance at real change for North Korean and Iranian citizens, in the form of access to international media and expanded human rights within their own countries, is unlikely.

The United States will have seen its prestige and its international clout damaged. On the upside, Trump's campaign promise to reduce American overseas obligations will have been kept, but only because the United States will be neither needed nor wanted by anyone else anymore.

Trump may like to pretend he's "Nixon going to China" with his wild and crazy routine, but the reality is that Nixon only went to visit Mao after years of toning down his rhetoric and months of behind the scenes work by a team of diplomats. 

Nixon, despite his many, many faults - including racism, paranoia, and lying - and his escalation of the American war in China’s neighbor Vietnam into China’s other neighbors Cambodia and Laos, went into his meeting with the Chinese with diplomatic goals, chiefly de-escalating tension between nuclear, Cultural Revolution-era China and the United States. And he de-escalated.

De-escalation, like diplomacy in general, isn't a word that seems to fit with Donald Trump. It's something he doesn't seem to understand and does seem to hate. To tell ourselves otherwise would just be another lie.

- Daniel Ward

[phaelosopher]

New Post has been published on http://www.phaelosopher.com/2017/01/22/dividable-americans-not-trump-americas-greater-weakness/

'Dividable' Americans, Not Trump, Are America's Greater Weakness

Donald and Melania Trump take their first walk as President and First Lady.

It has been quite the new beginning for 2017. Now let us get accustomed to what seemed like the most unlikely of outcomes; i.e., the election of Donald J. Trump as president of United States of America Corporation, who managed to make it through the inauguration. Perhaps it was never in doubt, but it sure seemed that way.

I am not writing this as a Trump supporter, nor as a critic. To be either would be a giant waste of time and energy. As I have written on numerous occasions, the individual who plays the role of “Commander in Chief” is a focal point of public attention, with all the indicators and trappings of power, but he takes orders and implement policies and directives that originate from sources other than the American People.

You may find it hard to believe, but the President does not serve The People. If anything, he oversees their “management,” on behalf of those “behind the scenes” functionaries. The last president that dared attempt to take actions that would benefit the American People, was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. His killing, November 22, 1963, which seemed so senseless and cruel to me just 3 days into my 12th year on this planet, was a sad day indeed.

November 22, 1963 ~ one sad day for a 12-year old boy… and for the world.

I am not saying that the president does not serve The People to suggest that we have no power. Quite the contrary. Not only do we have power, we are the Power that makes things happen in this world… not just Americans, but The People of Earth. We use language, cultural, ethnic, and other factors, like religion, to emphasize our differences and even justify hostilities. They make it easy to dismiss or overlook so much that we have in common.

How does this behavior qualify as *being* the change that you seek?

Yes, there are people who simply want to take from the “rich”, but what we don’t realize, is that we are “the rich”. What is being taken from us ~ to the extent that we allow it ~ is hope, imagination, health, and our opportunity to grow and evolve in conscious awareness of the Amazing Power that is Within each of us. 

I just finished reading The Secret Science Beyond Miracles (1948), by Max Freedom Long. It is an amazing treatise on the work, philosophy, and science of early 20th Century Kahuna culture in Hawaii. These people were the healers, sages, and wise men and women of their communities. They had a working knowledge of who they are, and their connection with both ancestral spirits (consciousness), and the Aumakua or “High Self”.

When you read what the Kahunas did routinely, day in, and day out, before the “Christianization” of Hawaii, you have a clue of powers that are vested in all Human Beings. Fire walking was just one of many amazing practices that were commonplace in Hawaii. But just as Hawaiians were induced to turn away from their working traditions to adopt new religious customs that did not work (Kahunas facilitated healings that modern medicine still can’t begin to fathom), so have we been taught to turn to the human “authority”, whose motivations are generally more for his or her institution’s gain, than for yours or mine.

A Constant Vying for Your Attention

Why do you think there’s such a constant and incessant push by corporations to get your attention or gather information about you? It’s because bringing ideas to your attention, acceptance, and adoption makes them real, makes them spread and grow.

We’ve been groomed and conditioned to be great workers and consumers… followers who need “heroes” and “leaders” to “look up” to. We’ve been taught to believe in a false inequity, created by force. Then, taught by abusers, we equate “force,” coercion (another form of force), and the use thereof, with authority, “civilization,” “freedom”, “truth”…. even love.

So it’s no wonder that certain “clans” of people, who have maintained cooperative relationships for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and who are well prepared and experienced to exploit the minds of multitudes, have shaped our worldview, relying on our proclivity to trust, as the indigenous people of the Caribbean did when Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492, looking for new sources of gold so that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella could fund their wars, and decided that he could use force to subjugate these people.

I have mentioned this title from time to time, but it stands mentioning here, A People’s History of the Unit ed States (PDF download), by Howard Zinn (1980 Longman), brilliantly documents instance after instance of deliberate, willful actions that, like a plague, infected, and then devastated the lives, cultures, traditions, and histories of millions of people. It will soon become evident that Columbus was the instrument, not the instigator, of these actions, just as POTUS has also had to jump through hoops set by current-day counterparts.

Obama Campaigned Against GMO But Signed Law to Protect Monsanto

Last year (2016), Barack Obama signed the DARK Act into law, which in essence, directly dishonored the People’s mandate that food products that involved genetically modified components be labeled. It struck down a law that passed in Vermont, and preempted labeling laws in Connecticut, Main, and Alaska, seed labeling laws in Vermont and Virginia, and prevented other states from adopting such legislation in the future.

And we just accepted this???

Mr. Obama’s action is actually easier to understand than the public’s non-reaction. He protected Monsanto from the consequences of The People’s inevitable awakening to how they have been systematically fucked over by institutions that they trusted were operating in their interest. Monsanto hasn’t operated in the public interest, but it was reasonable believe that the U.S. government agencies, like the USDA, EPA, CDC, etc., were. (I won’t include the FDA… I doubt anyone still believes they operate in the public interest… well, “Flat Earth” theory is making a comeback.)

Where were those people who were in the streets of Washington D.C. the other day breaking windows and burning cars, when Mr. Obama’s action was an affront to all to them, and Hillary Clinton would have continued the policies?

New problems created, none solved by calculated, organized, destructive acts.

This is not to say that Mr. Trump is inclined to repeal the DARK Act, since he hasn’t been required to offer an opinion about it.

Source: The Organic & Non-GMO Report.

Protests and acts of violence maintain tension and divisiveness, which tend to elevate the perceived need for security and harsh or “tough” responses instead of discussions about issues that need new approaches. The GMO debacle is just one of many.

International Old Boy’s Club

Mr. Trump is an “outsider,” but he’s an outsider who is on the inside. He would have had to be in order to be acceptable by the people/organizations that Washington actually works for. Notice how Israel was just fine with his election. President-elect Trump even insinuated himself into the U.N. Security Council condemnation of Israeli settlements on the West Bank (See Dec. 2016 Story), giving an indication that he would be more “pro” Israel. Never mind that Mr. Obama was directed (also in 2016) to send an $3.8 billion donation to Israel for 10 years, to do what they please, which generally means spending money on weapons that, among other things, they use against Palestinians on the Gaza Strip.

Donald Trump and Israel P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr. Trump has already invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit Washington in early February.

To his credit, Mr. Trump was the only candidate, among the Republican contenders and in the runoff with Hillary Clinton, who offered anything approaching sentiment that could be construed as desiring to establish peaceful relations between Israeli and Palestinians in the region. Everyone else babbled “tough talk” about “enemies” and vigilance, totally deaf, dumb, and blind to atrocities that Israel has been party to, like the false flag attack of the U.S.S. Liberty June 8, 1967, that left over 200 people either dead or wounded.

But then, that’s the larger web at work, because evidence is that factions in Washington, including President Lyndon B. Johnson, were complicit in the operation.

When you look at what has been done, and is being done, some of the policies that the government agencies are behind, such as:

insane vaccination schedules,

no inclination to cut back or remove mercury preservatives in vaccines,

fluoridation in water supplies,

more shots required as condition of entering public school

GMO and pesticide use on crops,

standard cancer treatment regimens (chemotherapy, radiation, etc.)

chemtrails in the atmosphere, and

many other initiatives, too many to list here,

May actually be how they “manage” the larger population.

As such, Monsanto may actually be providing a service of population management for United States of America Corporation. Mr. Obama’s signing the DARK Act into law, after it was passed by both the Senate and House of Representatives, would simply allow the company to know it won’t be subject to any indemnification efforts when the wheels of this great travesty finally fall off the bus.

We are so ready to point fingers at each other, demanding change in the other, without looking in the mirror.

The problem with this is that it cuts both ways.

What we seek, expect, or demand from others, we must also be willing to give. More specifically, we must be able to embody. If you know that your life matters, then it is your responsibility and opportunity to demonstrate that this knowledge is active, by showing others that you value their life too. If you know that all life is sacred, and every human is a Gift, then look for that Gift within yourself. As you exercise it and share it, you’ll start noticing it in others. Strength will come, because it will be much harder to divide, when “enemies” become friends.

Videos

Here’s a short glimpse of Howard Zinn. If you don’t read his book in its entirety, just familiarize yourself with some of the scenarios that he chronicles. It’s not the history that you learned in public school (after getting up-to-date on your shots).

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

Trace Amounts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6yFujShISI

Alone With My Thoughts ~ Episode 14 ~ A New President and the Space/Time Continuum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-ynRAvJgIk