Donald Trump Is Not Your Friend
Trump supporters are George W Bush supporters LARPing as Ron Paul supporters.
Caitlin Johnstone
November 8, 2024
Virulent Iran hawk Brian Hook has reportedly been chosen by Donald Trump to help staff the State Department of the incoming administration, just in case you were still holding out hope that this time might be different and Trump really would end the wars and fight the deep state.
Readers might remember Hook as the swamp creature who in 2017 was seen in a leaked State Department memo lecturing Rex Tillerson on the US government’s policy of using human rights as a cynical tool to undermine enemies and reinforce alliances. This is done, Hook explained, by ignoring human rights abuses when they are perpetrated by US allies while emphasizing them at every opportunity in the nations of enemy governments in order to “impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”
“The ‘realist’ view is that America’s allies should be supported rather than badgered, for both practical and principled reasons, and that while the United States should certainly stand as moral example, our diplomacy with other countries should focus primarily on their foreign policy behavior rather than on their domestic practices as such,” Hook wrote in the memo, saying that “In the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights.”
“One useful guideline for a realistic and successful foreign policy is that allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries,” Hook wrote. “We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them. For this reason, we should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to US relations with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. And this is not only because of moral concern for practices inside those countries. It is also because pressing those regimes on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”
Hook’s words, shared in confidentiality with the political neophyte Tillerson, were an excellent window into what western empire managers are doing when they feign outrage at alleged human rights abuses in nations they’ve targeted for destruction. The fact that his would be one of the first names chosen by Trump suggests we can expect more despicable foreign policy recklessness from the returning president.
I’m already getting people telling me to “give Trump a chance” and stop criticizing him before he’s in office when I point out developments like this. Give Trump a chance? He had four years. He was the president for four fucking years. Trump showed us who he is: a murderous warmongering empire lackey just like his predecessors.
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. There’s no reason to think this time will be different. Trump criticizes foreign interventionism because that kind of rhetoric is popular, not because he actually means it. In order to get to where he’s at Trump cut deals with Zionist oligarchs, powerful lobby groups, and more or less the exact same Republican voting base and donor class that’s given rise to every other disgusting Republican president in recent years. Even if he wanted to end wars and fight the establishment (and there is no evidence that he does), he’s already tied his own hands with the deals he’s made with the powerful establishment factions he’s promised his service to.
Trump supporters are George W Bush supporters LARPing as Ron Paul supporters. They act like they’re backing some anti-war figure who’s taking a meaningful stand against the machine, when they’re really backing a guy who spent four years rolling out longstanding neocon agendas.
That’s what makes them so annoying. At least liberals are more or less honest about wanting to preserve the status quo; Trumpers want you to take seriously their belief that they participated in some huge revolutionary act by ticking a box for the Republican on election day. They correctly believe that their country is controlled by an unelected deep state (though they are very confused about who that actually is), but they incorrectly believe this unelected power structure can be defeated by voting for one of the two mainstream candidates presented to them at the ballot box. Like that would ever be an option.
I am really not looking forward to another four years of that shit, I’ll be honest. For four fucking years these morons were in my mentions telling me every action of Trump’s that I criticized was actually a brilliant 47-dimensional chess maneuver against the deep state, even when he was openly advancing some longstanding agenda of the CIA and neoconservative swamp monsters like ramping up aggressions against Iran or staging a coup in Venezuela. They warm up to me because they see me criticizing the media and talking about corrupt power structures and go “Ooh, she’s like me!”, but then they cannot understand why I keep criticizing their shitty Republican daddy figure. And then I have to spend my time explaining to them that their hero is a murderous imperialist shitstain.
And at the same time I’m going to have to be criticizing the Democrats because they’ll be attacking Trump for being insufficiently hawkish on foreign policy, because that’s the only foreign policy criticism you’re allowed to level at a US president in mainstream politics and media — which will only contribute to the problem of Trump supporters thinking I’m on their side. It’s a much less efficient and straightforward way for me to do my thing than when there’s a Democrat in charge of the war machine. It’s not my preferred way to operate.
Let me make things simple: if you are cheering for the US president, you are not fighting the power. You are a power-worshipping bootlicker, and you should feel embarrassed.
Your president is not your friend. The US president will always, always serve the warmongering power structure you correctly feel needs to be opposed. The plutocrats and empire managers who rule your country are never, ever going to let you vote them out of power.
The decisive elements of Donald Trump's victory in the US
7 Nov 2024 , 11:00 am .
According to electoral data, and in the absence of any electoral challenge movements from the Democratic Party, the Republican Party candidate, Donald Trump, has been re-elected President of the United States after a campaign that has undoubtedly been a milestone in American politics.
He would be the first president to be re-elected in that country after having lost the office in the previous process. With three nominations for the highest office, he manages to set the unique record of being elected as a conservative political leader since 2016.
The election results so far show that the Republican candidate won 277 electoral colleges, seven more than he needed to win. With more than 71.5 million votes, he has surpassed Kamala Harris in the popular vote, equivalent to 51%.
Trump won the majority of the popular vote in favor of a conservative candidate, 20 years after George W. Bush did so.
The Republican Party's victory is also comprehensive: it won the majority of the contested governorships, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The party already dominated the US Supreme Court, which now allows Trump to consolidate power that formally guarantees him unprecedented control over the country.
TERRITORIAL RESULTS
The Republican's victory in the swing states, as expected, defined the contest. He has won definitive or preliminary victories in the states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, which are part of the "rust belt", the former industrial corridor, now a delocalized and socioeconomically depressed landscape in the central-west of the North American nation.
He also triumphed in the " Bible Belt ," made up of the southeastern states, including Georgia and North Carolina, which were also key swing states in the election.
Even with preliminary data, Trump is likely to emerge as the winner in Arizona and Nevada, which would add up to all of these types of disputed states.
SECTOR RESULTS
Trump has achieved new milestones for a Republican candidate in terms of sectoral voting by gender, race and age groups, which is very important for a country like the United States where electoral trends tend to be segmented around these factors.
An analytical-electoral exit poll study broadcast by NBC revealed relevant data in this regard:
a) By gender
According to the numbers, 43% of Harris' supporters would be men compared to 54% of women who preferred her.
In the case of his opponent, the opposite phenomenon occurred: 54% of his voters were men compared to 44% women.
These figures coincide with estimates made prior to the elections. Harris tried to project herself as a reference for this sector. From the vice presidency she promoted the defense of sexual and reproductive rights, trying to attract the support of liberal women.
Meanwhile, the Republican presented himself as a promoter of traditional masculine values and managed to instrumentalize "anti-woke" codes in his campaign, especially in his conservative proposal to contain "gender ideology."
Clearly, both candidates managed to create a gender gap, that is, they managed to attract votes among voters identified by this aspect.
B) By racial identity
In this sector, the data is beginning to show very striking trends. According to other polls, 43% of whites voted for Harris compared to 55% who voted for Trump.
This indicator proved to be decisive, since 58% of the US population is white, which tilted the electoral balance in favour of the Republican candidate. It is a central element that contributed to the victory in disputed states.
Among Latin Americans, 53% voted for the Democrats, compared to 45% who opted for the American businessman. This is significant given that this group is now the largest minority in the United States, with 19% of the population, whose vote has a greater weight than it has ever had in history.
Although Harris won the majority of the Latin American vote, it was not enough. In fact, Trump has achieved the best results among this population for a Republican Party candidate in a presidential election.
Among African Americans, who make up 12% of the US population, the gap is abysmal. 86% put their trust in Harris versus 12% who backed the tycoon. However, this did not define the contest in the key states.
Other racial minorities also favored Harris . But the excessive identity-based segmentation of the vote ended up favoring Trump due to the demographic and statistical weight of the white majority. The Democrats failed to position the Republican as a "racist," as they had done in the previous elections.
C) BY AGE GROUP
The majority of Harris' voters are between 18 and 29 years old, while the bulk of her opponent's voters are between 45 and 53 years old. By segment, the group between 30 and 44 years old chose Harris by 51% compared to 45% who chose Trump.
Among those aged between 45 and 64, 45% opted for the first and 53% for the other.
Finally, 50% of those over 65 years old voted for the Democrats, compared to 49% who voted for the tycoon.
D) By level of academic training
As for educational attainment, 57% of college graduates preferred Democrats versus 40% who opted for Republicans.
Among those without a college education, the majority of Americans, 43% voted for Harris versus 55% for Trump.
other VARIABLE WEIGHT POLITICS
Several key phenomena occurred during this election that were predictable and symptomatic of the current state of US politics.
First, Trump won by putting the economic situation at the center of the agenda, marked by high inflation, rising credit costs and job insecurity.
According to a Gallup survey published on October 9, reported by the BBC , the economy was the main issue in the election, important to 9 out of 10 respondents.
Another Pew Research study agreed that the economy was the central theme of this campaign. 81% of registered voters in the survey said that it was "very important" for their decision in this election.
According to Gallup, 54% of voters believe Trump can handle the economy better than Harris, and it is clear that the candidate managed to capitalize on the issue as a political vector.
The issue of "immigration" was also a decisive element of Trump's campaign. A study by the New York Times determined that the "problem" of immigrants concerned 70% of whites, 33% of Latin Americans and 40% of the black population.
The issue of sexual and reproductive rights, decriminalization of abortion or its prohibition was relevant in some states. In parallel with the election, constitutional and state amendments on this issue were put to vote in ten states, including Nevada and Arizona.
Harris managed to capitalize on support around this in several places. Proposals to expand the decriminalization of abortion won in seven of the ten states, including Nevada and Arizona. There was a split vote, as voters leaned in favor of these rights, but at the same time supported the Republican.
The pattern that this information reveals is that the political movement that has brought Trump back to the Oval Office is not Republican in classical terms. The party has not been the central factor in this electoral experience: it was the candidate and his political offer.
Trump's proposals were attractive in the current context of his country. He put the collective aspiration for a better economy at the centre, revitalising the promises of the "American Dream" and "Make America Great Again", just as he did in his previous candidacies.
But his victory also incorporates anti-immigrant and ultra-anti-progressive nuances as part of a larger development of the cultural war.
This alludes to the fact that the "woke" ideological model of social relations (sexual diversity, extreme gender theories, feminism and the racial "melting pot" of immigration) has lost ground as a political offering and as a vehicle for executive and legislative public policies in the United States.
Trump is a feature of a higher political phenomenon, which speaks of the existence of a real, long-term conservative wave.
But it is also intergenerational, multi-class and no longer represented solely by whites. Latin Americans, especially, and a part of the African-American community, share with Trump specific views on the relevant issues (economy, migration and woke anti-progressivism , in that order of importance).
These elements seem to confirm the existence of what is known as "Trumpism" as a transversal political fact and a force with its own qualities. It also stands as a political conglomerate that, for this election, was nourished by the concrete aspirations of large social layers, coupled with a political discontent accumulated by the erratic management of the outgoing Democratic administration.
It’s Time to Stop Buying into Tooth-Fairy Politics. No One’s Bringing Salvation
Posted by Internationalist 360° on November 7, 2024
Jonathan Cook
Kamala Harris didn’t lose because she’s a woman or because she’s black.
She lost because, if your political and media system – rigged by donors – limits the choice to two hardline neoliberal candidates, with anything else denounced as “communism”, the most hardline, neoliberal candidate has an edge.
Over time, the system keeps moving further to the hardline, neoliberal right. You can’t stop that relentless shift by voting for one of the two symptoms of your diseased political system.
You have to rise up against the diseased system itself.
Notice a pattern of behaviour by the establishment media that week after week told us Kamala Harris was poised for a narrow win, that her “politics of joy” would ultimately swing the day.
For more than two years, that same establishment media told us Ukraine would win if only we sent a few more bombs / tanks / planes. None of those weapons helped. They just incentivised each side to invest more deeply in war. What happened instead was entirely predictable: lots of Ukrainians and Russians have died fighting a protracted war Ukraine could never win and that could have been snuffed out early on with a peace agreement – an agreement that was actively blocked by the US and Britain.
Over the past year, that same establishment media told us that Israel wasn’t committing a genocide, even as we watched it kill and maim 10,000s of children in Gaza. That same media told us that our leaders were “working tirelessly” for peace, even as they sent Israel more and more weapons to kill and maim.
The establishment media isn’t there to report the world as it is. It is there to shape our consciousness of it – to the benefit of the establishment.
It is there to sell us pipe-dreams.
It is there to buy time.
It is there to make us believe next time will be different.
It is there to buy our docility.
It is there to conceal the fact that our leaders are sociopaths, more committed to lining their pockets than saving the only world we have.
The Guardian’s editor, Kath Viner, lost no time in trying to cash in on her readers’ fears of a second Trump presidency. She quoted the paper’s media columnist, Margaret Sullivan, warning: “Trump poses a clear threat to journalists, to news organisations and to press freedom in the US and around the world.”
She noted that Kash Patel, who may be Trump’s choice for FBI director or attorney general, has threatened: “We’re going to come after people in the media.”
Viner herself added that the Guardian “will stand up to these threats, but it will take brave, well-funded independent journalism. It will take reporting that can’t be leaned upon by a billionaire owner terrified of retribution from a bully in the White House.”
Viner wants readers to dig deep and send more money to the Guardian’s already brim-full coffers to wage that fight on their behalf.
Except… every time the Guardian has been tested, every time it has needed to stand up for genuinely independent journalism and journalists, it has failed dismally – even before Trump’s return to the White House.
For more than a decade, the Guardian led the smearing of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange – the most high-profile and truly independent journalist of our era.
The US and UK went after him for exposing their war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was locked up in a high-security prison in London for years while the US sought his extradition on preposterous “espionage” charges. He faced a 175-year jail sentence.
The Guardian not only raised barely a peep against his years-long persecution, but it actively colluded in that persecution, as I have explained on several occasions.
Most notoriously of all, Viner’s paper recycled an utterly false story – presumably supplied to it by the British security services – smearing Assange as a Russian agent. Even though the story has been thoroughly discredited, Viner has never retracted it.
The failure to defend Assange wasn’t a one-off.
Precisely how brave was the Guardian in standing up to the UK’s security services when they came knocking at its door in 2013 after it published Edward Snowden’s revelations that we were all being illegally spied on by, or on behalf of, the NSA? Did the paper use its huge funds to fight the intelligence agencies and protect the public’s right to know how their governments were breaking the law?
No, the Guardian agreed to destroy the hard drives containing Snowden’s leaks with angle grinders, watched by UK intelligence officials.
But worse than that, the Guardian then proved to the security agencies that it had turned over a new leaf. It would not go rogue again by airing the dirty secrets of the British state and its Washington patron.
As Declassified UK has documented at length, the paper jumped into bed with Britain’s security services, agreeing for the first time to become a member of the Ministry of Defence’s so-called D-Notice Committee, overseeing reporting restrictions. It didn’t fight for independent journalism. It became a member of the club that enforces secrecy on journalists.
It was rewarded with world-exclusive scoops: a series of interviews with the heads of Britain’s secret services, puffing up their repressive security agenda. The Guardian had become a fully tamed stenographer to power.
The consequences of the paper’s collusion with the UK security state has been on show in the last few months as Keir Starmer’s government has waged war on independent journalists trying to draw attention to British complicity in Israel’s genocide.
In as many months, three journalists – Richard Medhurst, Sarah Wilkinson and Asa Winstanley – have been raided by counter-terrorism police, and are being investigated under Britain’s draconian Terrorism Act for “encouraging terrorism” by criticising Israel.
You might imagine from Viner’s pleas to readers to help her challenge the threat of state repression that the Guardian has been leading the defence of journalists targeted by the British state for intimidation.
Not a bit. The paper has not written a word about any of these recent attacks on independent journalists, attacks taking place on the Guardian’s doorstep.
Viner wants you to believe she and her paper will act as torch-bearers for honest, adversarial journalism abroad, when she has consistently shown zero courage in defending independent journalism at home.
The outcome of this election was never going to make a meaningful difference to the victims of the US empire, whatever we were told.
Trump or Harris, the engines of “economic growth” – meaning accelerated, wasteful, resource-depleting, suicidal consumption – would continue to burn white-hot.
Trump or Harris, arms would still flow to Israel to slaughter and maim the children of Gaza. Israel would still receive diplomatic cover to starve 2.3 million Palestinians there. And protests against this genocide would still be smeared as antisemitic.
Trump or Harris, the politics of the tooth fairy was going to triumph. Each side would continue to believe its chieftain – a black woman or a white billionaire – was the only, true saviour. Each would blame the other as the reason salvation never arrives.
And Trump or Harris, the winner would slide us further down the slope towards authoritarianism and repression. Because salvation isn’t arriving, not as long as we cling to this provably corrupt, failed system, and believe these charlatans and the parties they lead have our interests – rather their own – at heart.
Funny how so many progressive supporters of Palestine stay mum on Ukraine... That Cold War programming sunk deep roots.
*****
Trump victory in the context of capitalist crisis
Eugene Puryear and Brian Becker discuss Trump’s victory in the context of the world and the right-ward shift of the Democratic Party
November 08, 2024 by Peoples Dispatch
Photo via @realDonaldTrump/X
As the people of the US and the world begin to process the realities of a second term of Donald Trump as president of the United States, many have sought to understand how the far-right, anti-worker businessman was able to win the race in such a landslide. Analysts have pointed out that Trump’s victory is not an anomaly, and in recent years, the governments of other major capitalist countries around the world have experienced a similar defeat of incumbent governments amid economic crisis.
Keir Starmer became the UK prime minister after the Labour party secured one of its biggest electoral victories in history in July, winning 412 seats. In comparison, the Conservatives, who held power for almost 15 years, struggled to reach 121 seats. Also in July, Emmanuel Macron’s liberal coalition was defeated at the polls in France. In Japan’s general elections held in late October, the Liberal Democratic Party also lost power.
What is behind these major shifts? According to socialist journalists and left leaders Brian Becker and Eugene Puryear, it is the economic desperation faced by working class people in these major capitalist countries, which have experienced inflationary crises in recent years. “People are desperate for solutions,” BreakThrough News journalist Eugene Puryear said in a recent discussion with Brian Becker, which was aired on The Socialist Program.
Read part two of the full interview, which has been lightly edited for clarity, below. In this interview, Puryear and Becker also go into the rightward shift of the Democratic Party through Kamala Harris’ campaign.
Brian Becker: Incumbent governments in capitalist economies are falling. The Tory government was turned out in the UK, replaced by a Labour government, which is also pretty right wing.
In France, you had Macron do a snap election, thinking his center capitalist party would come back. That was a disaster for him. The far right and also an organized left under the form of a popular front also gained votes. But the capitalist center was defeated.
In Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been basically one party rule since the US set up the post-World War II Japanese political order, they lost. And the ANC in South Africa.
So in all of these capitalist countries, the working classes, the middle class, the poor, anyway, they weren’t enthusiastic about the incumbency.
When you look at the big picture here, you must come to the conclusion that the crisis of the Democratic Party or the failure of the Democratic Party is really associated with a global failure of the major capitalist countries that dominate the global capitalist economy.
Instead of blaming workers and voters for being too right wing, we need to sharpen the attack and make it even more persuasive to more people, that the problem is capitalism and the solution is in fact a socialist reconstruction or reorganization of the economy.
Because inflation, wage deflation, unaffordable housing, medical care that’s out of reach, all of these are solvable problems. These are the problems of capitalism. The socialist program is actually achievable, and people’s needs could be met.
Eugene Puryear: I think that’s a good point. You could also add Argentina. You could add Australia to that. You could link it also in a major way to the state elections that we’ve seen in Germany, where the issue of the war in Ukraine, which has really been behind this massive spiraling cost of living crisis, became a flashpoint in these state elections that don’t even actually reflect national policy.
You look at Modi, who did succeed in India, but with a much reduced majority, and most people sort of chalk that up to the fact that the India Alliance opposition ran a campaign that was very heavily focused on the inability of the BJP government to address the cost of living crisis and deliver for people as it concerns economic development.
Capitalism as a system is becoming more and more unsustainable. There’s more than enough food to feed everyone in the world, there is more than enough housing. We’re not living in a shortage economy, either in the United States, or on a worldwide level.
We’re living in an economy where there are artificial shortages, because the primary issue of how society is organized in the United States, in the Global North and around the world more broadly, except for a few countries, is to organize everything to make a profit.
Clothes are made, not to put clothes on people’s back, but to make a profit. Homes are made, not to put shelter over people’s heads, but to make a profit. Food is grown, not to actually feed people, but to make a profit. Water even is basically produced primarily only to make a profit.
You look at almost every single thing that exists in society, and even where it’s not made to make a profit, when it’s a public utility, every single public utility around the world is totally under attack, because they say the reason the public utilities aren’t that good is because they’re not designed to make a profit.
We live in a world that’s creating artificial scarcity and artificial shortages, as opposed to applying the human and material resources that we have at hand to meet people’s needs, to have a people-first versus a profit-first reality.
You have more pure right-wing movements. You have the rise of more left-wing and socialist movements. You have ideas that have been pushed out of the mainstream of the capitalist reality being brought back in, because people are desperate for solutions.
BB: I mentioned that Harris ran to the right, meaning she tried to pretend she was a Reagan-like Democrat to win over Republicans. I want you to talk about whether that succeeded. She was running around the country with Liz Cheney, who’s really, really right wing. And her father, of course, is the architect of the Iraq war.
This is what the Democrats always do. When the right gets stronger, they move to the right. They don’t say, we’re going to have a clear left-wing, anti-right wing anti-capitalist program. They’re so wedded to Wall Street, so wedded to the corporations, so wedded to the military industrial complex, and so insipid when it comes to fighting the right, that they embrace the right. So did it work?
EP: Well, from what I saw, it did not work. I did see at least one poll that it actually went down 1%, the support for registered Republicans. For Kamala Harris, it certainly was below 10%. So we’re in the single digits, and it was less than where they were in 2020.
In fact, to your point, I think it could have backfired against them, because there are so many odious things tied to many of these Republicans, especially the neocon wars. This is an issue that Trump was bringing up in relation to the Cheneys right there at the end, saying that, how could any Muslim or Arab person support the Democratic ticket when they’re bringing out the people who are supporting and invading Iraq and all of these other countries?
So hypocritical it may be for Trump, but nonetheless, I think he was spot on in some senses, that it probably was such a glaring contradiction that undoubtedly must have driven some people to stay home.
All the things that they’re saying are so bad about Trump, are things that the Bush administration was doing quite a bit, things that the Reagan administration was doing quite a bit. Reagan, who started his 1980 campaign, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been lynched in the summer of 1964 in a reign of terror across Neshoba County, to prevent Black people from voting and being able to integrate public facilities. These are the people you’re saying were the great mythical Republican Party. You can look at the role that Reagan played in the invasion of Grenada, the demonization of those on public assistance.
BB: Well, in one way, Ronald Reagan was actually to the left of Kamala Harris’s program in 2024, because in 1986, Reagan signed an immigration reform bill, what was originally called the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, and that allowed 3 million people who are undocumented, in the current language, “illegal aliens”, to become citizens or to have a pathway to citizenship. Many more people were given legal status.
The last time there was immigration reform was 1986. That’s almost 40 years ago. You have Kamala Harris today saying, we’re going to build a wall. She sounded more like Trump about this than Ronald Reagan.
EP: If you look at the Republican Party platform of 1980 when Reagan first ran, you might be surprised how much of what was in there was actually implemented by Bill Clinton in 1992 through 1999, especially as it concerns many of the issues around public assistance, so-called welfare reform, and so on.
In his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton rolled out a whole tough on the border thing himself, to try to criticize the Republicans similarly for not being tough enough on the border. Once he becomes the president, he pursues a border policy that is designed to drive [migrants] into the most dangerous parts of the desert, hoping they die, in order to deter them through death.
The biggest mistake we could make is to say that Trump is some sort of new phenomenon. I view Reagan as a part one and and Trump is a part two of the exact same program.
We can date it to Reagan’s primary run in the Republican primary in 1976 to the creation of this project, starting with the Powell memo and this huge push by corporate America to wage an offensive against all of the things that they thought were terrible in terms of what was happening to the country: the rise of the Great Society programs, the elements of the Civil Rights Act, what they believe was infringing upon private property, the rise of the consumer rights movement, the rise of the environmental movement, the fact that there was a growing space in society for intellectual challenges to either capitalism as a whole or at least elements of capitalism.
The elites who ran society were worried that things were getting away from them a little bit. And so they came up with a plan. And this was embraced by all of the biggest corporations on Earth.
They formed think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, [which is] right at the center of Project 2025. [These corporate elites] decided they were going to put together a political program designed to roll back workers’ rights, civil rights, women’s rights, consumer rights, and environmental rights in order to make sure that they could have as much ability to profit as they possibly could, and that they would also make a huge thing underlining all of this big tax cuts so that they were able to then keep more of their ill gotten gains that they would be getting by steamrolling over all of the constituencies that I just mentioned.
Trump is really a culmination of what was being started under Reagan, in this attempt to roll back reforms that were made because working class people, Black people, others had risen up and demanded elements of their rights, demanded changes to the economy.
This is not a struggle between Democrats and Republicans. This is a struggle between the decline of capitalist dynamism and the rights of working class people, because there is no way that you can improve the life of the average person in America without infringing upon the rights of capital to make profit at all costs.
Reality may be very different from Republican rhetoric.
Despite Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, there are no signs that US foreign policy will undergo significant changes, particularly with regard to the conflict in Ukraine. Despite Trump’s campaign rhetoric, which highlighted a desire to reassess international alliances and reduce US involvement in foreign conflicts, current geopolitical conditions and domestic pressures within the United States make it difficult to predict the success of any disruptive action by Washington in the current conflict.
It is important to remember that, although Trump has presented himself as a leader opposed to “endless wars” and has advocated, on several occasions, a more isolationist stance, his previous presidency has already shown that, when confronted with the realities of global power and the strategic commitments of the United States, he has maintained policies largely aligned with the interests of the so-called “political class” and the military-industrial complex. During his first term, Trump adopted an assertive approach towards Russia, even while at the same time making ambiguous statements and demonstrating a certain sympathy for Vladimir Putin. The continuation of military support for Ukraine and the tightening of sanctions against Russia are examples of how his foreign policy, despite his promises of disengagement, has been sensitive to domestic pressures and the need to maintain the position of the United States as the leader of the West – even if to some extent acknowledging the beginning of a more polycentric order.
With his re-election, the continuation of the policy of support for Ukraine could be a direct reflection of this reality. The current geopolitical context – with the ongoing war in Ukraine, Moscow’s resistance to any attempt at external interference in its strategic environment, and the intensification of global tensions – ensures that the United States, regardless of its leadership, will maintain an aggressive stance towards Russia. Military and financial support for Kiev could continue under Trump, albeit with adjustments in terms of volume and type of assistance. Trump may try to reduce the level of direct US commitment, but pressure from the political establishment, the defense industry, and European allies, particularly Poland and the Baltic states, is likely to prevent any drastic change.
Furthermore, electoral considerations and the need to maintain a Republican base that still sees Russia as a significant threat make it difficult for Trump to adopt a more conciliatory stance toward Moscow. Although the former president has spoken out against the continued escalation of the conflict, advocating negotiations and suggesting that European allies should take a more active role, the chances of a real de-escalation remain low. Trump cannot simply ignore the commitments made by the United States to NATO and its allies in Europe, which, in turn, have shown no willingness to accept any form of substantial concessions to Russia, especially regarding Russian territorial claims in the already reintegrated regions.
Furthermore, the domestic situation in the United States could make any attempt at change even more difficult. The opposition of key figures in Congress, both Republican and Democratic, to the idea of a deal with Russia is likely to keep support for Ukraine, if not intact, at least secure to some degree. American foreign policy is largely determined by the military-industrial complex, which sees prolonging the war as a way to fuel demand for weapons and strengthen the US position as the dominant provider of security in the global market. There is no indication that Trump has the ability, or even the interest, to challenge this system in favor of a deal with Moscow.
Finally, while Trump’s campaign rhetoric suggested a shift in US priorities, in practice his victory will not significantly alter the dynamics of the conflict in Ukraine. Pressure from European allies and the US’ own domestic political apparatus will ensure that support for Kiev continues, albeit in less visible forms or with a greater focus on indirect assistance such as mercenaries and intelligence. Russia should therefore prepare for a continuation of the Western policy of containment of its leadership in Eurasia, with the Trump administration likely to focus on trying to negotiate an end to hostilities in a way that favors US interests rather than a genuine peaceful resolution that involves significant concessions to Moscow.
Ultimately, the Trump administration, with all its rhetoric of “America First,” will be hostage to the complex and deep structures of US domestic power and NATO demands. What seemed like a possible reorientation in relations with Russia will probably become just another chapter in the continuity of Western policy of confrontation, with some tactical modifications but with little chance of substantial transitions.
In fact, without Kamala Harris, the chance of nuclear escalation in the conflict is reduced, but the end of hostilities will not be achieved by American will, but by the Russian assessment that the objectives of the special military operation have been achieved – which will certainly still take some time to happen.
Given Trump's ego-driven 'unpredictability' I wouldn't think the possibility of nuclear exchange is lessened, consider his hard-on for Iran.
*****
What was it that Trump knew that Harris didn’t?
Originally published: What was it that Trump knew that Harris didn’t? on November 6, 2024 by John Rees (more by What was it that Trump knew that Harris didn’t?) (Posted Nov 09, 2024)
Donald Trump is back. The 45th President is now also the 47th President of the United States. World leaders, heads of Nato and the EU, Keir Starmer, and particularly far-right figures like Dutch politician Geert Wilders, all hurried to congratulate Trump.
Trump didn’t actually win any more votes than he did when he lost in 2020. But the Democrats under Kamala Harris lost votes by the bucket full.
For many people watching Donald Trump’s rambling, incoherent appearances in the final weeks of the U.S. Presidential campaign, one question is dominating their minds: how could Americans elect this man? Twice.
Perhaps the answer to that question can be found in Dearborn, Michigan.
Dearborn is home to the largest Ford car and truck plant in the world. The River Rouge plant employs 30,000 workers. The Dearborn area is also home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country. Here are Newsweek’s early projections of the Dearborn poll results: Donald Trump 47%, Kamala Harris 28%, Jill Stein, the anti-war Green candidate, 22%.
Now Jill Stein won’t be the beneficiary of discontent over the economy and Gaza everywhere. But that discontent exists everywhere.
In Ohio, at the biggest truck stop in America, one trucker told Channel 4 news: ‘I go to the supermarket and spend $200 and come out with just three bags of shopping.’ To many Americans, Trump’s stump campaign question, ‘are you better off now than four years ago?’ only had one answer.
In the Democratic heartland states, Harris’ vote fell like a stone. In New York, it went from plus 23 to plus 12, in blue-collar New Jersey it was worse, falling from plus 16 to just plus 4, in Connecticut it fell from plus 20 to plus 8. It was the same story in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maryland, and Delaware.
Harris could never rise above the legacy of the Biden presidency. In both economic and foreign policy terms she just looked too establishment, too elite, too rich, too much like she didn’t care.
Now Trump is very definitely rich too. Very definitely an elite billionaire. But he presents, and goes to great lengths to present, as an outsider. And that is attractive to some who are deeply disillusioned with the misery of life for working people in the U.S.
Of course, Trump has a committed base of far-right racists and reactionaries, but, substantial as they are, they are not large enough to win 51% of the vote.
For that, disillusioned Democrats are necessary. And the Biden/Harris administration has provided them in spades.
And this is not just a pattern in U.S. politics. Across the globe, the populist right builds out of disappointment with the liberal centre. Unless there is a radical break with the system that produces austerity at home and war abroad, the Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump cycle will repeat, and not just in the U.S.
Mebbe it's not so weird as dialectical that the Trump win, largely fueled by disgruntled Dem voters, will turn out an advance for real progress with disillusionment crumbling the Dems hold on workers. They voted for the 'change candidate' this time, a TV character, who as he will not run again will show his ruling class teeth this time around.
If, as seems likely, the Rs get the House then we will see reaction and libertarianism run amok. Painful for us and the planet in general but it could generate a counter-reaction. If so, we cannot allow the Dems to again capture that momentum with their slick bullshit but that won't happen without a of of hard work on the part of socialists. Work, work, work...it's what makes us human.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Trump Puts An Appropriately Ugly Face On A Very Ugly Empire
A crude, stupid plutocrat who is owned by other plutocrats is the perfect representative of that tyrannical power structure.
Caitlin Johnstone
November 9, 2024
❖
The only thing I like about Trump is exactly what so many empire managers hate about him: he gives the game away. He says the quiet parts out loud. He’s the only president who’ll openly boast that US troops are in Syria to keep the oil or lament that they failed to take the oil from Venezuela, or just come right out and tell everyone he’s bought and owned by Zionist oligarchs.
Trump is the opposite of Obama, who was very skillful at putting a pretty face on the evil empire. Trump puts a very ugly face on a very ugly thing. He is a much more honest face to have on the empire. A crude, stupid plutocrat who is owned by other plutocrats is the perfect representative of that tyrannical power structure.
Trump’s Return to the White House
November 8, 2024
Trump is clearly not the change required, says John Wight, but he understands far better the America that for Washington has become enemy territory.
Trump at a re-election campaign rally in Rochester, New Hampshire, on Jan. 21. (Liam Enea, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
By John Wight
Special to Consortium News
Despite Jan. 6, 2021. Despite all of his legal travails. Despite the endorsements of Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey et al. Notwithstanding it all, Kamala Harris lost and Donald Trump won the keys to an increasingly ill-begotten kingdom.
If the result of the U.S. presidential election of 2024 has proved anything it is that the corporate Democratic Party establishment, to paraphrase the famed French statesman Talleyrand, has “learned nothing and forgotten everything.”
Kamala Harris was Hillary Clinton 2.0. She was the change-nothing candidate in an age in which change has never been more necessary.
Trump is not the change required, clearly, but with all his abundant flaws he understands far better the America from which Washington has become so detached, it has long since become enemy territory.
No shortage of money when it comes to subsidising wars and conflicts in far flung corners of the globe, while millions at home struggle to keep food on the table and a roof over their benighted heads.
Huge amounts of political bandwidth expended in the name of propping up Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, in his failing and disastrous war against Russia — a war being waged in the name of U.S. and Western hegemony — while failing to mount a serious intervention to save the lives of Palestinian babies as they were and still are slaughtered by the thousand on the altar of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Zionist, ethno-supremacist chopping block.
All of that and yet, still, we have overpaid and under-qualified Democratic Party ideologues scratching their heads as to the reasons why Trump prevailed in this election.
Trump’s brand of vulgar realism speaks to the mounting late stage capitalist chaos that is blighting the lives of the many in the name of the few in this land of the unfree. A rogue billionaire snake-oil salesman par excellance, Trump has perfected the art of playing to the fabricated fears of America’s forgotten and ignored.
Where once Robert De Niro was a poster-boy for Americana, this now stumbling, bumbling wreck of a man with his regular tirades against the now two-time president is a lightning rod for a Hollywood and movie celebrity culture despised by millions in an age in which social media and the podcast is king.
“Trump’s brand of vulgar realism speaks to the mounting late stage capitalist chaos that is blighting the lives of the many in the name of the few in this land of the unfree.”
Here it must be said and said again that the two Joes — Biden and Rogan — had a huge part to play in Trump’s victory. President Biden, with the hubris of a man who placed his own personal interests above those of country, remained steadfast in his determination to stand for a second term way past the point where it was obvious to all that he could hardly stand on his own two feet.
If Trump is America’s Nero, then Biden was its Emperor Claudius — the accidental leader of a country mired in imperial decline.
The cultural phenomenon that is Joe Rogan is a man whose microphone wields more power than a thousand bayonets. His three-hour-long Trump interview in the run-up to Nov. 5 was a game-changer in this election.
In it, Trump came across as the relatable alternative to a Harris campaign that excelled itself in excelling in nothing. Her VP pick, Tim Waltz, was cast as her folksy and down to Earth all-American foil. In truth, and in fact, he came over as a ham actor in an episode of The Waltons.
Taking a step back, the gnashing of teeth in Kiev, London, Brussels — in every part of the world in which Western liberal values still reign to the detriment of progress — in response to Trump’s election victory has been wonderful to witness. But here any sense of triumphalism must give way to the hard fact that Donald J. Trump ain’t no Henry Wallace.
“If Trump is America’s Nero, then Biden was its Emperor Claudius — the accidental leader of a country mired in imperial decline.”
Where Wallace believed in the cause of the common man as an end worth fighting for, Trump has used the common man as his own personal footstool. Netanyahu will have celebrated Trump’s victory on Nov. 5.
In him he sees a kindred white supremacist, Islamophobic spirit. In him he sees a man he can utilize in his malign desire to reshape the Middle East with blood and bullets.
Yes, we can — and we should — despise everything that Harris and Biden represents. But we should do so without celebrating the nativism of Trump and the beast of Trumpism it has unleashed.
On the contrary, impervious to truth, decency, humility or limitation, his is the warped character of the megalomaniac, driven by the ineluctable belief in his own wisdom and strength, underpinned by off-the-scale narcissism.
The shifting tectonic plates of American politics today emits chilling parallels to the prelude of the “first” U.S. Civil War of 1861–65. In the lead-up to this event of world-historical-importance, partisan politics reached such a pitch of intensity that the breach between the two Americas forged became irreconcilable.
Political opponents morphed into political enemies to the point where the ballot became the precursor to the gun.
This said, the depiction of Trump as the fascist threat to American democracy is as overblown as it misses the point. When your precious democratic system normalizes the genocidal slaughter of an indigenous people in the third decade of the 21st-century, it is hardly worth saving or salvaging.
When it upholds Third World levels of poverty amid islands of obscene wealth and ostentation, it has ceased to be the answer and has become the problem.
America as a country is circling the drain. When a clown enters the palace, the palace becomes a circus. Trump is a clown who knows how to weaponize fear for political ends.
When the people become ‘sheepified’ they yearn for a shepherd. In him, millions believe they have found one. The point at which he fails them in this role — as he will and as he must — this is the point at which serious politics will begin.
The Chris Hedges Report: The World According to Trump
November 9, 2024
Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, provides insight into what a Trump presidency may look like outside of the borders of America.
By Chris Hedges The Chris Hedges Report
Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States and given the host of global debacles the U.S. has its hands in —ranging from the genocide in Gaza, to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Iran to the Ukraine war — nobody is quite certain what direction the country will take with the former president at the helm again.
Joining host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report is Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. With his extensive insights and expertise into the Middle East and American foreign policy, Wilkerson provides a valuable understanding into what a Trump presidency may look like outside of the borders of America.
Wilkerson predicts Trump will stay true to “his disdain for war,” emphasizing “it’s genuine. I don’t think he likes war. I don’t think he likes starting wars.” Regarding Ukraine, Wilkerson thinks Trump will shut down the war effort. But when it comes to the Middle East, that commitment clashes with one of Trump’s long standing loyalties: unwavering support for Israel.
War with Iran seems increasingly likely by the day despite, according to Wilkerson, resistance from the Pentagon and prior administrations. In the case of Trump, however, “you wonder how long that resistance can hold up if the president of the United States is intent on—and this is the one place where Trump really worries me—doing everything in his power for Israel,” Wilkerson notes. He adds, “Trump has made it quite clear that that’s his policy, that’s his belief, and I think he’s being honest about it.”
Host: Chris Hedges
Producer: Max Jones
Intro: Diego Ramos
Crew: Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges
Transcript: Diego Ramos
TRANSCRIPT
Chris Hedges: Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, retired and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. He is a Vietnam War veteran, who attended Airborne School, Ranger School and the Naval War College, and who, as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, logged over 1,000 hours on combat missions. He went on to serve as deputy director of the Marine Corps War College at Quantico and was executive assistant to Admiral Stewart A. Ring, United States Navy Pacific Command and Director of the United States Marine Corps War College.
His disillusionment with the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East followed the revelations of detainee abuse, the ineptitude of post-invasion planning for Iraq and the secretive decision-making by the Bush administration that led to the invasion of Iraq.
At a congressional hearing recorded on C-SPAN in June 2005, he gave his analysis of the Iraq war’s motivation:
“‘I use the acronym OIL,’ he said, ‘O for oil, I for Israel and L for the logistical base necessary or deemed necessary by the so-called neocons – and it reeks through all their documents – the logistical base whereby the United States and Israel could dominate that area of the world.’”
Wilkerson has said that the speech Powell made before the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003 — which laid out a case for war with Iraq —included falsehoods of which he and Powell had never been made aware. “My participation in that presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in my professional life,” he has said. “I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council.” He called the U.N. presentation “probably the biggest mistake of my life.”
He has taught at the College of William & Mary and George Washington University. He is a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, a group of former military, intelligence and civilian national security officials who describe themselves as offering “alternative analyses untainted by Pentagon or defense industry ties” and countering “Washington’s establishment narrative on most national security issues of the day.”
Joining me to discuss U.S. foreign policy, the conflicts raging in the Middle East, including the genocide in Gaza, and the fate of the American empire is Lawrence Wilkerson.
Let’s begin with the election and its effect. I mean, you saw the intelligence community, [retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark] Milley, all sorts of figures essentially joined the Democratic campaign in support of Kamala Harris. Let’s talk about why Trump triggers such deep animus within the Pentagon and the intelligence community, and what you see happening during a second Trump administration.
Wilkerson and Hedges.
Lawrence Wilkerson: I think the animus was created — within my community anyway, I still call it that, the Pentagon, the military in general — because they don’t see any concerted effort on his part to express a strategic appraisal that agrees with theirs. Theirs being the one most parroted by The New York Times, for example, and others of their ilk, who are simply spokespersons for the military industrial complex and for the national security state, which we have most assuredly become.
And so they’re worried about anyone who would come in and threaten to break the china. And that’s what Trump, that’s what his forte is, starting to break the china. And they’re very protective of their china, just as are the national security agencies in general and the 16, I guess it’s 16 now, entities that we have that are supposed to be our intelligence eyes and ears, led by the C.I.A. Not led by the DNI, because he still has no real power over the C.I.A., but led by the C.I.A.
I would say [C.I.A. Director] Bill Burns is the most powerful guy in the United States with regard to intelligence and what goes to the White House and what doesn’t go to the White House. So that’s part of the reason they just don’t know this guy, except from the first term. And the first term would not, through Kelly and Milley and other people’s eyes, give you much hope if you were a Pentagon member of the bureaucracy, if you will.
The second reason, I think, is because he’s so mercurial. He’s all over the map, and the military doesn’t like that at all. They like constancy, even if it’s incorrect constancy. They prefer constancy to change and mercurial nature. And I think that’s a problem with them. And there’s a third reason too, and that is that they’re worried about what I call Christian nationalism, some of them anyway, others are aiding and abetting it. And what that means, in essence, is not just this far flung, but very ripe and alive effort by certain Christian groups in America to make Christianity the national religion, to change the Constitution in that effect, or to discard the Constitution with regard to religion, but they’re worried that they have flag officers in the military who are very much Christian nationalists.
We have an occasion right now that we’re looking at it, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Mikey Weinstein’s group out in New Mexico, where the [inaudible], the three star general who is the chief of personnel, the personnel man for the chief of staff of the Army is married to a woman who rolls in the aisle and speaks in tongues. And Mikey’s obtained a video of this general in uniform being at one of her gatherings with this group.
That’s just the surface, if you will. There are people like General Flynn, for example, who are still in the military. So that’s disconcerting for the bulk of the military that doesn’t subscribe to this theory or this desire to do away with the Constitution when it comes to freedom of religion. Those things are bothering them, and Trump has shown a propensity to use the Christian movement in this country for political gain and to not have much in the way of regard for what that might mean otherwise. So that’s disturbing.
Chris Hedges: Yeah, I graduated from Harvard Divinity School and wrote a book on the Christian right a little over a decade ago, called American Fascist: The Christian Right and the War on America. And of course, I know Mikey’s work well. Let’s just unpack that. Why do they see Christian nationalism — it’s interesting that you raise that as an issue — why do they see that as such an important issue? Just explain, in their vision, and perhaps yours, how that could roll out in a really negative way. You’re
Lawrence Wilkerson: You’re talking about the way the military looks at it, yeah, at least those who aren’t… Yeah, I think they’re most concerned about it in terms of what it might mean for the tyranny that would have to come along with it, and they’re having to enforce that tyranny, because if you make Christianity the national religion, and that’s their ultimate goal, is to not just put Bibles in classrooms and stop abortions completely, not those social issues that always loom up, and paint them with their brush. The secret that they want no one to know until it happens is they do want Christianity to be the national religion.
In that regard, we even have a branch of American Catholics who are working on this. If you look closely at what’s happened in the last 50 years, in particular, with the Catholic Church. My wife was Catholic, so I’m aware of some of the things in the Catholic Church that I wouldn’t have been aware of had she not been. She’s passed away now. But if you look closely at it, there is this behind-the-scenes movement in America to create an American Catholic Church. We don’t like it being in Rome, its head being in Rome. We don’t like Francis in particular. We despise Francis. And when I say, “we” I’m using a rhetorical device to describe these people. We’d like to have our own pope and our own Catholic Church. And there are people, some would say, one or two on the Supreme Court right now, are of that mind too, and would work for that, or might be working for that, were they given the occasion to do so.
You put that together, that Roman Catholicism, Opus Dei like Roman Catholicism, and the other people who are, for example, like John Hagee funding millions of dollars to West Bank settlers in Israel, even now. And you’ve got a real fear on the part of rational military people, this might get out of hand. … If you make Christianity the national religion, and you do all the things that you would have to do, constitutionally and otherwise, or just totally disregard the Constitution in that process. What you get, as we have just seen probably enough Americans behind you to do it, then you have a whole different ball game for the military.
Because the military then is called on, domestically and otherwise, and most Americans don’t understand the domestic missions that the Army in particular, but the military in general, has to defend that, and they don’t want to. They think that’s fractious, they think that’s unconstitutional. They think that’s something that would cause more harm than good. And I’m glad to say that there are still some people like that left in my military.
Chris Hedges: Well I mean, Trump has an ideological void, of course, but we saw in his first term that he filled it with these Christian nationalists or Christian fascists, Betsy DeVos, Mike Pence, Bill Barr and others. Certainly it appears that they will fill that void again. I want to talk about Ukraine.
Lawrence Wilkerson: Let me add one other thing. This is not just Trump. Remember, I served in the George W. Bush administration. I cannot tell you how many times I had to deal with the White House personnel office over such things as this man can’t go to Iraq. Why can’t he go to Iraq? Why can’t he serve in Iraq? He’s not a Christian. Talk about counterintuitive.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about Ukraine. I mean, Trump has deviated from the establishment consensus on Ukraine, I never understood, perhaps you can unpack it for me, the whole Ukraine policy, other than as a kind of proxy war to degrade the Russian military and isolate Putin. I was in East Germany when the Berlin Wall came down as a reporter. I was there when the promises were made to [the last Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev not to extend NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany. And of course, as you know, the Soviet Union had to acquiesce to the reunification of Germany. And that was the promise made. And I’m not defending the invasion, obviously, of Ukraine, but we certainly baited the Russians and Putin.
But let’s talk about Ukraine. I don’t see how any military strategist seriously could think that in a war of attrition, the Ukrainians could dominate, but explain what’s happening and then how you see if there isn’t going to be a difference, how you see a difference in a Trump administration’s policy towards Ukraine and Russia.
Lawrence Wilkerson: Let me say, first I was there too. I was special assistant to Chairman Powell, and the change that took place with the advent of Bill Clinton was absolutely disastrous, and I attribute to William Jefferson Clinton a lot of the problems we’re living with today, including the violation, major violation of that promise not to expand NATO. That’s a longer story, better enough for another time.
I think what we’re looking at in Ukraine vis a vis Trump, or Trump vis a vis Ukraine, is his — and I think Doug McGregor, for example, is right about this, I just watched him on Judge Napolitano’s show — is his disdain for war. I think it’s genuine. I don’t think he likes war. I don’t think he likes starting wars. I don’t think he would be a president who… He’ll go off and kill someone like the Iranian IRGC member or other people whom he’s told are terrorists or whatever. But I don’t think he wants war. [inaudible] war, and so he’s willing to shut down Ukraine.
Now there’s another reason too. I think he detests NATO for different reasons than I. I don’t like NATO much either. I think it’s well beyond its sell-by date. And he sees NATO as being — and he’s right in this —as being an aider and abettor — Brussels is — of the war in Ukraine, as Washington is, led by that perfidious [inaudible]. And so he wants to shut that down.
Palestinians with the corpses of people killed by Israeli airstrikes outside the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalia, north of the Gaza Strip, on Oct. 9, 2023. (Bashar Taleb, Palestinian News & Information Agency for APAimages, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Chris Hedges: How do you see it playing out in Gaza? I’ve actually been in the Middle East quite a bit in the last year, in Egypt twice, spent much the summer in Jordan, was in Qatar, was in the West Bank. And everything I can glean, Israel, of course, wants to push them into the Sinai. And the Egyptian military, I was told by Egyptian journalists in Cairo, has just been adamant, has told [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah] el-Sisi that there’s no way. A Palestinian is, in fact, according to them, if Israel attempts to push the Palestinians into the Sinai and Sisi accepts them, he’s finished. That’s what they said.
But how do you see it playing out? We know what Israel’s intent is, which is, of course, depopulating, annexing northern Gaza. They’re largely towards that goal, creating a humanitarian crisis in the south, but eventually ethnic cleansing, these genocidal tactics are now increasingly being used in the West Bank. How do you see it going? They must be completely aware of what Israel’s intent is. But where do you see that developing?
Lawrence Wilkerson: There are two sets of thoughts, I think, or beliefs, strategic goals in the — and it depends on what body of people you’re talking about. Are you talking about Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and a host of others, Lindsey Graham? Or are you talking about saner people, I would say, on the other side of the aisle, or even in the Republican Party? They think that Israel is doing our job for us, as Bibi Netanyahu is want to say if Israel was not killing or ridding the region of these Arabs, Palestinian or otherwise, and think about how MbS must think about this, we’d have to be doing it. And so he’s doing us a great favor. He’s doing our dirty work for us. He even has said that publicly.
The other side says, No, Israel is our ally and our friend, and we have to stand by them no matter how heinous Bibi is. We’d like to get rid of Bibi. We’d like to put a different picture on Israel, but he’s there, and he’s in charge, and he’s doing what he needs to do.
And then there’s the group that I belong to, I think, that says this is horrible, what we’re doing. And we all warned about this in the military, we warned about this. David Petraeus even testified to Congress one day and let it slip that Israel was a greater liability than a strategic asset, and maybe we ought to think about rearranging the relationship. After that got out, of course, he walked those remarks back, as David is wont to do, but the military understands how much a strategic liability Israel truly is, especially down in the ranks, where people have actually had a chance to look at it, to study it, to look at the history and to understand what’s happened and understand the real history of it, which is often propagandized by the Israelis and the U.S. for consumption by the public. But the military understands that history. The military understands the USS Liberty, for example, they understand that those sailors were machine gunned.
Damage to USS Liberty, June 1967. (Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
Chris Hedges: Now we should explain. That was the [U.S.] ship that the Israelis attacked and killed, was it 36 or something? I can’t remember. 31 [U.S.]sailors were killed.
Lawrence Wilkerson: Yeah, and a bunch wounded, and I don’t think there’s any question, having looked at some of the investigation and some of the obscuration of that investigation, there’s any doubt in my mind that Israel did it intentional.
Chris Hedges: That was the 1967 war.
Lawrence Wilkerson: Yeah, I don’t know whether it was because they thought we were picking up information that they were uploading an atomic weapon, or they thought we were sharing some of the information we were picking up with a very sophisticated spy ship, which Liberty was, with Moscow in an attempt to bring pressure on Israel. I don’t know what the reason was, because they wouldn’t let the investigators get into the real nitty gritty. President cut it off. But I do know that Israel knew what they were doing.
Chris Hedges: Israel had carried out a series of massacres of captured Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai. That was one of the theories. And the ship obviously would have known about that.
Lawrence Wilkerson: Well, you remember in the London Times, I think it was reported. And then, when The Times was a good newspaper, and it was reported by the BBC, on Panorama, by the — I can’t remember his name now, terrible short term memory. I was just reading his piece last night where he’s having the conversation with Golda Meir. He sent her a dozen or two or three red roses every time before he went to Israel. And she really appreciated that. So she’d give him the first interview whenever he was there. This time, she wouldn’t give it to him. She said, I have to give it to the Americans, I’m sorry. And he just sent her the roses and everything. Anyway, he did talk to her on the telephone, and he reported this in that article in The Times and on Panorama. He asked her, point blank, would you use the Samson option? I don’t think he used that phrase. He said, would you use a nuclear weapon if Israel’s existence were in question? Without batting an eye she said, of course. And he said, you understand what that means? And she said, Yes. Now was that for public consumption so that people would understand that Israel was serious about winning this conflict, a conflict they started? The Egyptians didn’t start the ’73 war.
Chris Hedges: Yeah, I know. That’s another myth they peddled.
Lawrence Wilkerson: But I do think that Netanyahu, if his back was to the wall and he were forced to do so, the big question, of course, that was being asked was, even if you knew you would be taking the world into a nuclear holocaust, would you still do it? Yes.
Chris Hedges: I mean, how much damage do you think Iran can inflict on Israel? Israel’s a small country. I think it has a population of 6 million. What does Iran have, 90 million? I mean, I can’t remember.
Lawrence Wilkerson: If you’re talking about between the river and the sea, about 14 million Israeli citizens; 7 million plus are Palestinian and 7 million, not quite as much, are Jews. Very small, not as small as Gaza, no bigger than Greater London, or smaller than Greater London. Gaza is where they’re dropping all that ordinance, just putting the military template on it and saying, how many casualties, how many casualties have been… that ordinance, that concrete, that rebar, those streets, those buildings, the template puts down on the terrain and says, with great accuracy, how many casualties? It’s 200,000. Guarantee it’s not 40-or-50,000. The template says it’s well north of 100,000 and we’ll not know, because you won’t find some of these people, they’re buried so deeply under rubble.
Israeli air-strike damage in Gaza, Dec. 6, 2023. (Tasnim News Agency, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
If Israel were to really be attacked by the full weight of Iran, it would be a nightmare for Israel. It’s becoming that way just with Hezbollah. You’re never going to get those Israelis to go back to their homes. They’re going to evacuate Israel eventually. I was told the other day by a friend in Tel Aviv that already, by his count, a million Jewish Israelis have departed.
Chris Hedges: Since Oct. 7, yeah, that’s numbers they’ve hidden. But I’ve heard 500,000 but certainly a significant number have just left the country. And these are often the best educated, they tend to be the secular part of society.
Lawrence Wilkerson: Putin was exercising his prudence and strategic verve by offering any of the Russians who had immigrated to Israel: come back, we need you, you’re our brain trust.
Chris Hedges: Yeah. I mean, one of the things, just to talk about the Israel- relationship, is that [Jonathan] Pollard who gave Israel all sorts of intelligence information, he gave them information on C.I.A. and Russian assets, which allowed the Soviets to roll it all up but he gave it to Israel, and then Israel was giving it to the Soviet Union in exchange for the release of Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union. But it destroyed the, obliterated the intelligence operation of the U.S. in the Soviet Union.
Lawrence Wilkerson: And Pollard is now, I’m told, I learned this 24 hours ago, Pollard is now instrumental in and very important to Bibi’s propaganda effort with regard to Gaza and Lebanon. A traitor, and we let him go, and Bill Clinton did almost as much damage as Trump in that regard with Pollard. Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich as his last ignominious act in office. I think it was David Rothkopf, or someone, said that was the most ignominious use of the pardon power by the president in the history of the country. I think they were right.
Chris Hedges: You should explain who he was.
Lawrence Wilkerson: Marc Rich really ran a company that, a huge company that sold, amongst other products, discounted price oil to Israel, and was responsible, in large measure, for Israel’s economic success under the finance minister named Bibi Netanyahu, and then later, as he became prime minister, interrupted only by his fellow mate, Arial Sharon.
Marc Rich made sure that Saddam Hussein’s oil in the U.N. Oil-for-Food Programme was stolen and shipped to Israel. He also made sure that the pipeline in Syria, the one we were just talking about, was pumping to Israel. And he made sure that, eventually, the pipeline out of Kirkuk, out of northern Iraq, which has always had a problem with Baghdad, was shipping to Israel. So one of the reasons Israel’s neo… what do you call their system of capitalism? It’s not quite what ours is, but they have more billionaires per capita than we do.
He made that happen with that discounted oil and now look at what Netanyahu has done. He had inked an agreement with Lebanon for the richest gas field in the Mediterranean thus far. That’s abrogated, it’s all belonging to Israel. Now there was a deal that Gaza had the second richest gas field in the Mediterranean for its own. That’s gone, he’s got that too.
Thirty years of the future needs of Israeli energy are contained in those two gas fields. He’s got them both. Yeah, they’re off the coast of Lebanon and Israel. That’s an important point that’s often missed in terms of the occupation of Northern Gaza, because they need the coastline.
Chris Hedges: Let’s just close by talking about the institutions themselves, the C.I.A., the Pentagon, which, and I mean, I’ll characterize it, but you can correct me if I’m wrong, these institutions appear hostile to a Trump presidency, especially the intelligence community. How much can they damage, constrain, control Trump?
Lawrence Wilkerson: That’s an excellent question. First of all, the intent has to be there, and it has to be at some of the higher levels in order to do that. I’m not sure it’s going to be particularly because he can take care of those levels if he wants to. But if it is there at the second echelon, so to speak, or the second, third echelons, it can be disturbing of anything that he wants to do as it could any president. It can falsify intelligence. It can lead the president astray with regard to serious national security issues.
Right now, one of the most serious issues Trump’s going to face, I think, I’m no economist, but I know a lot of economists, and they’re telling me, the bond market right now is what we should be looking at, not the stock market. In fact, the stock market is euphoric and for the rich. The bond market is saying Trump is going to have one of the worst economic situations by midterm in our history. Our aggregate debt is also saying that. CBO [Congressional Budget Office] released a report saying it’s $50.2 trillion in a decade, decade and a half.
U.S.Treasury Department in Washington. (Wally Gobetz, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The interest payments on that debt are already the defense budget equivalent, almost a trillion dollars, this year, almost a trillion dollars. By the end of that period, the CBO looked at about 10 to 12 years, and they think they’re being optimistic, it’s going to be 2 trillion. It’s going to be the equivalent of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the defense budget combined.
We cannot sustain that under anybody’s rules of gerrymandering the financial system in the world or whatever, we just can’t stand that. And when the American people understand some of this intuitively, and the crisis of confidence comes with that understanding, and many are saying it’s going to happen on Trump’s watch, he’s going to have a real problem, and he’s going to have to retrench majorly. I don’t know what they’re going to do. I don’t know what we’re going to do as a country when this comes to bear with full force.
Chris Hedges: All right. Well, that was Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. I want to thank Diego [Ramos] Sofia [Menemenlis], Thomas [Hedges] and Max [Jones] who produced the show. You can find me at Chris Hedges.Substack.com.
How Trump’s Return Will Impact the World
Posted by Internationalist 360° on November 11, 2024
Ben Norton
As Donald Trump prepares to return for his second term as US president, all of his top cabinet candidates are China hawks. We analyze Trump’s likely foreign policy and economic strategy.
As he prepares to return to the White House, US President-elect Donald Trump has appointed neoconservative Iran hawk Brian Hook to lead his State Department transition team. This has excited pro-Israel groups.
At a September event at the Israeli-American Council, Trump proudly declared, “I was the best friend Israel ever had”.
All of the likely candidates for Trump’s secretary of state and national security advisor are China hawks. These include neocons Marco Rubio, Robert O’Brien, and Mike Waltz. Three other possible choices, Ric Grenell, Bill Hagerty, and Vivek Ramaswamy are so-called “MAGA” Republicans who have distanced themselves from neoconservatism, but still share the neocons’ vehement hatred of China and would escalate tensions with Beijing.
Trump’s former trade representative Robert Lighthizer is coming back in his second administration. Lighthizer is another hawk who oversaw the trade war on China during Trump’s first term. Lighthizer started his political career in the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s, when he helped wage a similar trade war on Japan.
During his campaign, Trump pledged to impose tariffs of “more than” 60% on Chinese goods. China is the United States’ third-largest trading partner, after Canada and Mexico.
The former chief strategist in Trump’s first administration, Steve Bannon, boasted in 2018, “We’re at war with China”. Bannon confidently predicted a US war in the South China Sea by 2027. The week of the November 2024 election, Bannon made similar remarks, stating that Trump will have to “defend” Taiwanese separatists. Bannon urged Trump to settle the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine in order to prepare for conflict with Beijing.
In the following video and podcast, Ben Norton analyzes what Trump’s foreign policy and economic strategy will likely be, based on his previous term and statements made by him and his allies during the 2024 campaign. Norton addresses China, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Iran, tariffs, de-dollarization, and more.
Topics
0:00 Intro
0:33 Summary of Trump’s foreign policy
10:44 Neocons in Trump’s cabinet
14:41 China
18:48 Tariffs & trade with China
24:47 US dollar & re-industrialization
29:39 Protectionism
37:01 Russia & Ukraine
42:23 Israel-Palestine
44:31 Iran
46:36 Middle East (West Asia): Yemen, Iraq, Syria
49:41 Latin America: Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia
53:17 Africa
54:32 Europe
56:11 Japan & South Korea
57:53 Outro
Why the Enthusiasm for Mass Deportation, A Hard and Likely Largely Losing Way to Deal with Illegal Immigration?
Posted on November 11, 2024 by Yves Smith
Mass deportations look set to become the new “Defund the police,” a catchy sounding, absolute and un-implementable solution to messy and long-standing problems. That is not to say that the Trump Administration will find some groups procedurally easy to deport, like the 1.3 million with final orders of deportation from immigration court. But as we will see soon, legal and operational issues loom large and will generate high costs even if they can be solved.1
Since there is no plan yet, merely speculation and spitballing by interested parties, we’ll limit this post to high-level issues. But a key one, and weirdly absent from most discussions, is why the fixation with forcing out illegal immigrants the hard way, as in locating and rounding them up and shipping them somewhere else, supposedly where they came from? It should be obvious that this is operationally very difficult, even before getting to the large legal impediments.
The much simpler way is to make it very very difficult for these migrants to get paid work, and in a more draconian version, make it hard for them to get driver’s licenses that were valid nationally. That is less hard than it might seem. And it would have the merit of targeting a root cause, that of employers being willing to hire, as in exploit, undocumented laborers.
This approach would be far from comprehensive (we’ll sketch out possible approaches below), but it would likely have a much faster impact than a controversial, cumbersome, and costly deportation scheme. And it would have the second-order effect of making the US much less appealing to economic migrants, who by all accounts constitute the great majority of undocumented arrivals.
Of course, one could take the cynical view that the mass deportation scheme is meant to fail. Trump has to recall well the simpler and easier to execute idea of a border wall did not get done. A successful mass deportation scheme (and our lighter-touch analogue) would deprive a lot of businesses of cheap workers, particularly in nasty jobs like the meatpacking industry and ones like construction, where new migrants provide a flexible labor pool. My conservative-watching contacts say the alternative of targeting employers and workplaces is well known as a way to seriously dent employment of undocumented workers. But aside from occasional raids, there’s not been much willingness to go there due to the expected, loud outcries from the rule-breaking business operators.
A related issue is how to reduce entry at the Mexico border. “Reducing entry” is very much in the “ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” category, since as we will see soon, anyone on US soil has Constitutional due process rights.
What Are Some of the Deportation Ideas Under Consideration?
Since these plans are being formulated, we’ll use a weekend Wall Street Journal story, Trump Advisers Ramp Up Work on Mass Deportation Push, for a current reading. Note the proposal are overlapping. They include:
Declaring a national emergency to allow for the use of “military assets.” That would also allow for the immediate use of Pentagon funds, which could
Fund building that wall
Allow for using bases and military equipment, along with service members, to help with detention and removal
Reversing the Biden policy of leaving illegal immigrants who had not committed crimes alone
Improving Immigration Court procedures to expedite cases
Hiring more Federal agents
The American Immigration Council has estimated the outlay for a full-bore deportation program at $968 billion due among other things to increased need for manpower, detention locations, and transportation, particularly planes to cart migrants to home countries. There don’t yet seem to be competing tallies from conservatives.
Trump is unapologetic about a possible nose-bleed price tag. He could point out that the annual run rate is lower than for supporting the Ukraine war under Biden. Some details from the Journal about procedural details and issues:
Officials from Trump’s first administration have also written draft executive orders to resume construction of the border wall and revise President Biden’s existing restrictions on asylum at the southern border to remove the humanitarian exemptions. They are planning to enter aggressive negotiations with Mexico to revive the Remain in Mexico policy, a person working on Trump’s transition said, and are identifying potential safe third countries where asylum seekers could be sent.
They also want to revoke deportation protections from millions of immigrants who have either been granted a form of humanitarian protection known as temporary protected status—which covers hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Venezuelans—or entered the country on a quasi-legal status called humanitarian parole. That population includes millions who have entered via government appointments at the southern border, as well as tens of thousands of Afghans evacuated after the fall of Kabul and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians allowed into the U.S. following the Russian invasion….
Rather than forcibly deporting all migrants, Trump’s advisers hope they can induce some to leave voluntarily, according to people familiar with the matter. They have discussed offering immigrants in the country illegally—or those who entered on parole through Biden administration programs—a chance to leave the country without penalties, so they can return on a visa if they are eligible. Under normal circumstances, when someone is deported, they are barred from returning on a visa for 10 years.
It is striking that this article ignores the elephant in the room, the Constitutional due process rights of all immigrants. It depicts a remark by a Congressional Ultra as wanting to get rid of the above-mentioned “deportation protections” like temporary protected status, when his remark clearly covers the much bigger barrier of the right to court hearings as a precondition to deportation. Again from the Journal:
Rep. Chip Roy (R., Texas), an anti-illegal-immigration hard-liner, said he thinks the Trump administration should disregard those deportation protections because, in his view, they were issued illegally.
“I believe we need to push the boundaries and claim they’ve got no status,” he said.
We’ll turn to that issue in the next section.
The Journal does address the “sanctuary cities” problem, but oddly not by name:
Trump struggled during his first term to deport large numbers of migrants, particularly those living in blue states that cut off cooperation with the federal government. In addition to a huge infusion of cash, mass deportations would require unprecedented coordination among federal, state and local officials.
Last time, Trump not only lacked Republican control of both houses, but also considerable opposition from within the party. If Trump were to use the “national emergency” route, it seems likely that the Federal authority would supersede that of states and cities, as in the military or Federal policing bodies could remove immigrants in sanctuary cities over their objections. Of course, the lack of state and local police help would indeed make the effort much harder.
It might also be possible for the Feds to punish uncooperative states and municipalities. There’s plenty of precedent for the national government withholding funds to jurisdictions that failed to comply with Federal mandates, see for instance, CMS withholds another $1-plus million over vaccine mandate compliance. The case here was Florida for not requiring Federal healthcare workers to get Covid shots. Having said that, I’m not sure these holdbacks have ever been big enough to cause sufficient pain so as to change behavior.
The other aspect that hasn’t get gotten the consideration it warrants is the very bad authoritarian look of an aggressive implementation of these measures. It allow Dems to stoke fears that the intellectual elites would be the next to be herded into of Cultural Revolution camps. What if, say, Team Trump tries to encourage Stasi-level spying by paying bounties for valid and usable reports of where illegal immigrants live and work? Will freedom-cheering conservatives sign up happily for a bulked-up police state apparatus?
The Due Process Impediments to Deportation
For starters, “due process” means cases have to be handled individually, and the defendant has the right to a court. And everyone who is in the US has that right. This is why the Republicans are so keen to enlist Mexico to help prevent entry, and to focus on the low-hanging fruit of the 1.3 million who have outstanding deportation orders.
The basics, from Clearwater Law Group:
The Constitution protects all people living in the United States, regardless of immigration status. Most constitutional provisions apply based on personhood, not citizenship. In other words, if an individual is physically present in the US, they are entitled to the protections granted by the Constitution. This includes the right to due process and equal protection under the law.
The Fifth Amendment, for example, states that “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” And the Fourteenth Amendment uses the Due Process Clause that describes the legal obligation of all state governments to provide equal protection of the laws to all persons, regardless of immigration status. So while undocumented immigrants are not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, they are still protected by its principles.
Savvy readers might point to the gaps between theory and practice, like the way CBP too often harasses Americans returning from abroad who have engaged in wrong-think by questioning them and even seizing their electronic devices.2
A key decision is the Supreme Court’s Reno v. Flores, with the underlying case first filed in 1985 and settled in 1997, addressing the poor treatment of immigrant children.3 There has been continued legal wrangling over the settlement, including the expansion of the ambit of Flores, which was initially limited to unaccompanied minors, to extend the maximum 20 days in detention to families with children.
Even the Biden Administration sought to escape from Flores. From a May 2024 CNN story:
The Biden administration moved Friday to terminate a decades-old agreement that governs conditions for migrant children in government custody, according to a court filing, which argues that the settlement was meant to be temporary.
The 1997 Flores settlement, as the agreement is known, requires the government to release children from government custody without unnecessary delay to sponsors, like parents or adult relatives, and dictates conditions by which children are held. The Health and Human Services Department is charged with the care of unaccompanied migrant children.
The Biden administration has previously signaled that it planned to end the Flores agreement, instead preparing a federal regulation that, the administration argues, “faithfully implements” the requirements spelled out in the settlement, provides additional protections and responds to “unforeseen changed circumstances since 1997.” The regulation was published in late April….
But immigration attorneys have expressed concern over the lack of outside oversight if the Flores settlement is terminated.
“If the government were to prevail in its motion, HHS would no longer be bound by the Flores settlement. As Flores counsel, we would no longer be able to interview children in HHS custody, or file motions to enforce when the rights guaranteed by Flores are denied to children in HHS custody,” said Neha Desai, senior director of immigration at the National Center for Youth Law.
Operational Impediments to Deportation
Many readers may not know that ICE is not so much in the business of rounding up suspected illegal immigrants as collecting them from police. From BBC:
Most immigrants already in the country enter into the deportation system not through encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents but through local law enforcement.
However, many of the country’s largest cities and counties have passed laws restricting local police co-operation with Ice….
Deportations of people arrested in the US interior – as opposed to those at the border – have hovered at below 100,000 for a decade, after peaking at over 230,000 during the early years of the Obama administration.
“To raise that, in a single year, up to a million would require a massive infusion of resources that likely don’t exist,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, told the BBC.
For one, experts are doubtful that Ice’s 20,000 agents and support personnel would be enough to find and track down even a fraction of the figures being touted by the Trump campaign.
Mr Reichlin-Melnick added that the deportation process is long and complicated and only begins with the identification and arrest of an undocumented migrant.
After that, detainees would need to be housed or placed on an “alternative to detention” programme before they are brought before an immigration judge, in a system with a years-long backlog.
Only then are detainees removed from the US, a process that requires diplomatic co-operation from the receiving country.
“In each of those areas, Ice simply does not have the capacity to process millions of people,” Mr Reichlin-Melnick said.
I am a bit leery of depending so much on a single ultimate source, the American Immigration Council, but so far no other organization seems to have taken a granular look at what a mass deportation operation would entail. Note just one factoid from the short overview below, that even if the Trump Administration gets to the point of deporting migrants, some countries won’t take them back:
Why Not the Easy Way: Targeting Employment?
Yours truly is at a loss to understand why the Trump teams seems to be taking the mass deportation idea to heart, when as some have pointed out, Trump should be taken seriously but not literally. Admittedly, a conservative contact contends that, particularly in light of business community opposition to losing too many cheap workers, all that is likely to happen is a marked tightening up of entry at the southern border, plus a serious campaign to deport criminals.
The much easier way to get many undocumented migrants to leave is to make it very hard for them to get work. There are many ways to do that, like occasionally raiding employers in areas that use a lot of illegal immigrants and increasing the sanctions on those establishments (bigger fines and even criminalization). But one route would be much tighter enforcement of the rules requiring employers to have a Social Security Number for anyone paid over $590 a year.
As I read the Social Security Administration rules of issuance, categories like temporary protected status and humanitarian parole are not eligible. Knowledgeable readers please pipe up. From the Social Security Numbers for Noncitizens:
What do I need to submit to the Social Security office?
You need to prove your identity and work- authorized immigration status.
To prove your identity and work-authorized immigration status, show us your current U.S. immigration documents and your unexpired foreign passport. Acceptable immigration documents include your:
• Form I-551 (Lawful Permanent Resident Card, Machine- Readable Immigrant Visa).
• Form I-94 (Arrival/Departure Record).
• Form I-766 (Employment Authorization Document/EAD).
• Admission stamp showing a class of admission permitting work.
Other sections at the Social Security Administration site seem to confirm this cursory reading,4 but even if not, it would be easier for a Trump Administration to tighten up Social Security Number issuance rules than implement many of measures needed for a muscular deportation scheme.
Some crackdowns could start immediately, such as on employers who submit SSNs that have been used multiple times.5 Lambert has also joked that Vance should be tasked to enforcing OSHA rules at meatpacking plants so that they are safe enough that Americans would be willing to work there.
Of course, someone who was imaginative and determined could also go after driver’s licenses, that ones that were valid outside the issuing state could be issued only to citizens or those in particular visa categories. Even though that might only have limited practical impact, it would reinforce the message that undocumented immigrants were facing an increasingly hostile bureaucratic regime.
Needless to say, the obvious route of targeting employers either directly via raids or indirectly by Social Security number would put the focus of who benefits from the current lax immigration regime. And we are already seeing “But the economy!” howling. One predictable venue is CNBC:
During the campaign, Trump pledged to end the Temporary Protected Status that allows workers from select countries to come to the U.S. to work. If some of the larger deportation efforts, like rolling back TPS, come to fruition, experts say that there will be ripple effects felt in most sectors of the economy, in particular construction, housing and agriculture.
Economists and labor specialists are most worried about the economic impact of policies that would deport workers already in the U.S., both documented and undocumented….
While the worst of the labor crisis spurred by the post-Covid economic boom has passed, and labor supply and demand has come back into balance in recent months, the number of workers available to fill jobs across the U.S. economy remains a closely watched data point. Mass deportation would exacerbate this economic issue, say employers and economists….
“There are millions, many millions who are undocumented who are in the trades; we don’t have the Americans to do the work,” said Chad Prinkey, the CEO of Well Built Construction Consulting, which works with construction companies. “We need these workers; what we all want is for them to be documented; we want to know who they are, where they are, and make sure they are paying taxes; we don’t want them gone.”
And tamer version in NBC’s Some Republicans try to tone down Trump’s mass deportation threats:
The prospect of mass deportations is generating fear and apprehension among families with noncitizen members and businesses that employ undocumented workers.
But some Republicans’ readings of Trump’s policy — which he has promised would bring about deportations at a scale never before seen in the U.S. — are more limited in scope.
Republicans in immigrant-heavy states have been suggesting he’ll prioritize or only focus on the worst criminals.
“I am sure that the Trump administration is not going to be targeting those people who have been here for more than five years that have American kids, that don’t have criminal records, that have been working in the economy and paying taxes,”[6] Florida Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar said in a PBS interview. Her Miami-Dade district is home to about 200,000 undocumented people….
Asked in the interview whether she got those assurances from Trump or someone in his potential administration, Salazar didn’t directly answer, but said she is “going to be one of those voices making sure within the GOP to make that distinction.”
We’ll have a much better idea of how much Team Trump intends to retreat from a strong-form version of mass deportations by inauguration. Stay tuned.
______
1 One has to wonder about the competition for military personnel, since Team Trump is contemplating invoking emergency powers to get armed forces deployed to this task. Given how YouTubers like Douglas Macgregor point out how small the Army is, at below 500,000, and has difficulty meeting recruitment targets on top of that, this initiative would cut into Trump’s ability to credibly threaten Russia and Iran ex nukes.
2 Note citizens cannot be denied re-entry but the CBP seems to take the point of view that they can be detained for up to eight hours. I have a friend here who was repeatedly harassed when the returned to the US for no fathomable reason. It did not stop until she prevailed upon relatives to call Congresscritters to get the dogs called off. And even though the person of interest can remain silent, anyone with an operating brain cell understands that almost certainly means their devices will be confiscated. She has described long form the practical difficulty of standing up for your rights in these circumstances.
3 From Wikipedia:
Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292 (1993), was a Supreme Court of the United States case that addressed the detention and release of unaccompanied minors.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s regulations regarding the release of alien unaccompanied minors did not violate the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution.[1] The Court held that “alien juveniles detained on suspicion of being deportable may be released only to a parent, legal guardian, or other related adult.” The legacy for which Reno v. Flores became known was the subsequent 1997 court-supervised stipulated settlement agreement which is binding on the defendants (the federal government agencies)[2]—the Flores v. Reno Settlement Agreement or Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA) to which both parties in Reno v. Flores agreed in the District Court for Central California (C.D. Cal.).[3][Notes 1] The Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA), supervised by C.D. Cal., has set strict national regulations and standards regarding the detention and treatment of minors by federal agencies for over twenty years. It remains in effect until the federal government introduces final regulations to implement the FSA agreement. The FSA governs the policy for the treatment of unaccompanied alien children in federal custody of the legacy INS and its successor—United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the various agencies that operate under the jurisdiction of the DHS-in particular the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The FSA is supervised by a U.S. district judge in the District Court for Central California.[4]
The litigation originated in the class action lawsuit Flores v. Meese filed on July 11, 1985 by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CHRCL) and two other organizations on behalf of immigrant minors, including Jenny Lisette Flores, who had been placed in a detention center for male and female adults after being apprehended by the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) as she attempted to illegally cross the Mexico–United States border. Under the Flores Settlement and current circumstances, DHS asserts that it generally cannot detain alien children and their parents together for more than brief periods.[4] In his June 20, 2018 executive order, President Trump had directed then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ask the District Court for the Central District of California, to “modify” the Flores agreement to “allow the government to detain alien families together” for longer periods, which would include the time it took for the family’s immigration proceedings and potential “criminal proceedings for unlawful entry into the United States”.[4]: 2 On July 9, Judge Gee of the Federal District of California, ruled that there was no basis to amend the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA) that “requires children to be released to licensed care programs within 20 days.”
4. See:
Therefore, a parolee with only a Form I-94 or a parole stamp in the foreign passport who is not work authorized incident to their status can only apply for a non-work Social Security Number (SSN), if eligible. For information on eligibility for a non-work SSN, see RM 10211.600.
5 To keep the post to manageable length, we are skipping over other enforcement ideas, like outlawing the staffing agencies that now help place immigrants under Temporary Protected Status.
Of course, employers could revert to paying these workers even more off the books, as in via using cash or crypto. But there are limits to that for enterprises that get their revenues in the legitimate economy, in that they would not be able to deduct these labor expenses.
6 This “paying taxes” as a condition of regularization is a clever dodge. Obama also had a amnesty scheme which included workers who had been paying payroll and income taxes for a long time, IIRC more than five years. The reason that is an issue is the Social Security number issue discussed at length above. Unless things have changed radically, most of the undocumented migrants who have these taxes withheld are through SSNs used multiple times, as in they can’t prove how much of Treasury tax deposits were on their behalf and thus whether they really covered all their work hours. I had one friend who for shaggy dog details had gotten a SSN but was in some sort of Heisenberg uncertainty visa status otherwise due to his estranged wife refusing to cooperate with the remaining steps to make him legal. He maintained he was the only person who could actually benefit from the Obama scheme. But it was a non-starter because it required participants to leave the US and then apply for re-entry.
The final say on this issue will come from the US Chamber of Commerce, this is a capitalist country, after all. I don't expect them to be happy with higher labor cost.
******
The political labyrinth of anti-Chavezism begins with Donald Trump
Nov 9, 2024 , 8:18 pm .
The Venezuelan opposition is fragmented in its expectations regarding the new Donald Trump government (Photo: AFP / Federico Parra)
Both María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia sent their congratulations to Republican candidate Donald Trump after his recent victory in the US presidential race. As expected, their first statements have aimed to project closeness and support for the cause of regime change.
"President Trump, the democratic government that we Venezuelans elected on July 28th [...] will be a reliable ally to work with your administration," Machado posted on her X account, while indicating that these are "decisive days" and that she was certain that she had "the support of the peoples of the Americas and their democratic governments to ensure a transition to democracy without delay."
For his part, from Spain, González Urrutia, former candidate of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), sent his congratulatory message illegally identifying himself as "president-elect" of Venezuela and advocating for the "strengthening of our relations, always for the benefit of our peoples."
The messages from both figures, representatives of the pro-intervention and pro-sanctions sector of the Venezuelan opposition, have sought to open a window of high expectations regarding the return of the American magnate to the White House, in the hope that an eventual increase in pressure, materialized in coercive measures and other actions of destabilization against the government of President Nicolás Maduro, will empower them again and return them to the center of the agenda.
At first glance, this sector's hope is that Washington will continue to push the "electoral fraud" narrative that emerged after the July 28 results, which has lost momentum since then and seemed to indicate that the Venezuelan issue had been diluted from the White House's foreign policy priorities during the last weeks of the outgoing Biden administration.
The messages from Machado and González Urrutia have encouraged a perception that the Republican's victory represents a "victory" for this sector, largely due to the foreign policy adopted by the first Trump administration against Venezuela, when the mechanisms of economic, financial and commercial suffocation were intensified, in addition to the implementation of mercenary actions.
It was during this period that they recognized Juan Guaidó as "interim president," and under this false government figure, Venezuelan resources and assets abroad were seized in the order of tens of billions of dollars, including the important company Citgo, a subsidiary of PDVSA in the United States.
Various mainstream media have attempted to set the tone for public opinion in this direction, encouraging specific actors who have advocated redoubling Washington's intervention maneuvers against Venezuela:
"It is a political victory for both Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, who have long been allies of the Republican Party. There is no doubt that there will be a reorientation of policy towards Venezuela," said opposition political analyst Daniel Arias, when consulted by El Tiempo.
Added to this is the fact that the Republicans have obtained a majority in the Senate , and are hoping to achieve a similar result in the House of Representatives, which would give them total control of the US Congress.
"If this happens, Senator Marco Rubio could take advantage of this majority to push for tougher and more forceful policies towards governments that oppose the United States," the media outlet quotes Arias as saying.
The message Trump left in his campaign
These expectations, however, are tempered by uncertainty about the stance the American businessman will adopt in his second term, especially in light of the negative impact on his political image of the failure of the "maximum pressure" strategy and the failed "Guaidó project."
This probable factor of reconsideration is based on the analysis of the issues that Donald Trump addressed during his electoral campaign. Regarding the Caribbean country, Laura Dib, director for Venezuela of the Washington Office on Latin American Affairs, told El Tiempo that "the statements on this issue have been, in reality, very superficial."
In his ambiguity, Trump emphasized the effects of Venezuelan migration to the United States, and echoed the stigmatization of Venezuelans as alleged criminals, mentioning the Aragua Train .
The PUD's statements were aimed precisely at highlighting this component of the speech of the now elected US president. After congratulating him on the results of November 5 and ratifying the desire of Machado and González Urrutia that the next US government supports the "peaceful transition" (a pseudonym for a coup d'état), the opposition coalition highlighted:
"In the United States, more than 545,000 Venezuelan migrants who fled the crisis in our country are living and building a better future for themselves, their families, and the nation that welcomed them with their work every day. It is necessary to continue and deepen policies that allow for their integration and protection."
The migratory aspect of the PUD is important and draws a labyrinthine scenario for the opposition in general, in its different currents and organizational expressions, with respect to Trump.
The causal relationship between the tightening of US sanctions and the intensification of the migratory flow from Venezuela has been proven, a factor that implies a dead end for the extremist sector that promotes economic aggression. In doing so, they would also be encouraging the departure of Venezuelans from the country in a restrictive and threatening context with respect to migration reinaugurated by Trump, who has promised massive deportation operations on more than one occasion.
On the other hand, publicly emphasizing the closeness to the Republican would bring negative political consequences for the opposition in the face of the deterioration of the conditions of Venezuelan migrants in the US. This is what underlies the digression of the PUD, which seems to want to avoid running a political and reputational cost that does not worry Machado much.
Facing the abyss, look with uncertainty
In addition to what has been said above, not everyone in the anti-Chavez universe thinks the same about the American president-elect. To the labyrinth regarding the sanctions-immigration binomial, there is added a climate of emerging fragmentation of criteria.
On the other, more moderate side of the opposition spectrum, which also has no interest in regime change and has a history of supporting conspiracies and economic measures promoted by Washington, it seems to be anticipated that a return to an aggressive strategy against Venezuela, lacking channels of negotiation and agreements, would harm them as a political force.
Henrique Capriles is in this camp, who also spoke out on social media about Trump's victory, indirectly referring to the sanctions and in clear opposition to the celebratory tone set by Machado and González Urrutia. There he stressed that "no measure that weakens the social fabric of Venezuelans will be successful," and pointed out the need for "a new stage of relations in which negotiations advance."
The internal clashes at Primero Justicia, which led Capriles to resign from the board of directors, are representative of the consequences of having abandoned channels of dialogue and, instead, following the strategy of economic pressure and institutional ignorance led by the head of Vente Venezuela.
In turn, the governor of Zulia state, Manuel Rosales, another opposition political actor who has distanced himself from María Corina Machado's agenda since the results of July 28, limited himself to congratulating Donald Trump on his election without making any additional comments.
The opposing positions regarding their expectations for the direction that the US government's foreign policy will take in the next four years also reveal pre-existing divisions in an already critical environment for that sector: a disintegrated leadership in the face of the strategy of a Guaidó 2.0 with Edmundo González, without a defined political direction for January 10, 2025, or for the electoral schedule for that year, and without even being certain whether María Corina Machado is within the country's borders.
Only mass struggle can defeat Trump and all capitalist reaction
November 11, 2024 Stephen Millies
Several thousand people standoff with police outside the Seattle Police Department East Precinct on June 2, 2020, during the national uprising for George Floyd. It is the mass movement that kept Trump in check during his first term, not the Democratic Party.
Millions of people are angry, depressed, and disgusted at Trump winning the capitalist election. Many are terrified.
They have a right to be. Trump says “no price tag” will stop him from deporting millions of immigrant workers in fascist roundups.
His campaign spent $215 million on TV ads attacking transgender people. Bigots are being encouraged to assault Transgender people, their families, and allies.
Text messages have been sent to Black people across the country, ordering them to report to plantations and pick cotton as enslaved people.
Yet, for all of the bluster of Trump and Fox News, the convicted rapist is hardly getting any more votes than he got four years ago. It’s the Democratic vote that has fallen like a rock.
Wars and hunger don’t produce enthusiasm
Trump was able to appeal to people sick of wars because Biden shipped $64 billion of weapons to Ukraine. Another $17.9 billion of bombs and shells were sent to Netanyahu’s apartheid regime that’s committing genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.
Getting war criminal Dick Cheney to endorse Kamala Harris didn’t help either. For many in the Arab and Muslim communities, Trump couldn’t be worse than the genocide enablers Biden and Harris.
What has four years of Joe Biden as president done for the working class? Rents went through the roof, increasing by nearly 30% from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to January 2024.
A record-high 653,104 people were counted as homeless in January 2023, with over 256,000 of them unsheltered in the winter. The $82 billion spent on the proxy war against Russia and Netanyahu’s genocide could have housed hundreds of thousands of people.
Food prices rose by 27% between January 2020 and September 2024. It was obvious that capitalist monopolies were responsible.
Even the White House admitted that “four large meat-packing companies control 85% of the beef market. In poultry, the top four processing firms control 54% of the market. And in pork, the top four processing firms control about 70% of the market.”
Biden’s response was to let SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits — formerly known as food stamps — be cut by at least $95 per month on March 1, 2023.
While the White House refused to sue monopolies, McDonald’s did. The exploiter of over two million low-wage workers and the largest purchaser of beef filed an antitrust suit against the four biggest meat packers on Oct. 4.
How many of the 49 million people who had to use food banks in 2022 didn’t see any point to vote in 2024?
Capitalists claw back concessions
The 2020 elections were held after the Black Lives Matter movement had swept the United States. As many as 26 million people had taken to the streets.
It was because of these millions that Kamala Harris was made the Democratic candidate for vice president. If the 2020 election had been held months earlier, when the movement was at its height, Biden’s 7 million vote margin over Trump would have been greater.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck earlier that year, billionaires and banksters were frightened. Not so much for their own health, although thousands of them fled their Manhattan penthouses.
They were terrified of what tens of millions of workers suddenly thrown out of work would do. That’s the reason why their Congress approved “economic impact payments” that gave thousands of dollars to tens of millions of families.
For the first time in nearly 50 years of cutbacks and union-busting, many poor and working people felt they had gotten a little bit ahead. Rents were frozen while evictions and foreclosures largely stopped.
The number of people living under the absurdly low federal poverty level dropped by 14.5 million people. The number of Black and Latinx children living in absolute poverty dropped by 60%.
So it was all the more painful when Biden and the Democratic Party-controlled Congress let the American Rescue Plan’s anti-poverty measures expire in 2021.
The number of people living in absolute poverty rose by 14.5 million people, while the share of children living in poverty rose by seven percentage points.
Meanwhile, rising prices — largely the result of monopolies grabbing as much profit as they could — canceled any wage gains made by the working class.
The capitalist class recoiled from the anti-poverty measures they felt compelled to carry out at the height of the pandemic. They even think it was these limited programs that fueled the Black Lives Matter movement instead of hundreds of years of oppression.
Fightback to survive
Their rebellion against those concessions makes the wealthy and powerful all the more vicious. Trump, Vance, and their string pullers like Elon Musk and Wall Street hedge fund operators plan to launch an offensive against the working class at home.
They want to axe every program won by the working class in the last 90 years, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Capitalists seek to jack up the retirement age to 70.
Trump will use the U.S. government’s deficit created by the trillion-dollar Pentagon budget and $950 billion in tax-free interest payments as the excuse to do so.
At the same time, Trump & Co. is targeting the rest of the world, particularly the People’s Republic of China.
Trump’s scheme to bring industry back to the U.S. is fueled by the needs of the military-industrial complex. But his plan to super-size tariffs on imported goods may self-destruct.
While before World War II, the vast majority of manufactured items were produced in the United States and Western Europe, today they’re largely made in Asia, Brazil and Mexico.
It’s cheaper clothes, shoes, and furniture — imports bought by the working class — that’s allowed rents to skyrocket.
Behind the biggest landlords and real estate sharks like Trump is the bank or insurance company that holds their mortgage. Banksters already have too many shuttered shopping centers on their balance sheets as a result of Amazon.
Trump’s tariffs will be a wage cut for the entire working class. People will have to fight back.
Next year will be the bicentennial of the first world capitalist crisis. Since 1825, recessions or depressions have occurred every 10 years or so.
While shutdowns during the pandemic may have delayed the next recession, it will break out sooner than later.
The Democratic Party will do nothing to protect us. Many of its big shots are calling to retreat from any opposition to bigotry.
We need to organize ourselves to stop Trump’s raids against immigrants. Union organizing drives are the best weapon against all the Elon Musks.
One of the first steps is to demonstrate against Trump’s “inhoguration” on Jan. 20, 2025. Mass struggle is our only way to survive.
Movement leaders in the US say Trump’s agenda will be met with a strong fightback
US-based movement leaders take up the task of answering the burning question: “What is to be done?”
November 11, 2024 by Peoples Dispatch
Claudia De la Cruz speaks at "What is to be done?" panel on November 8 (Photo: Wyatt Souers)
Just two days after Donald Trump’s landslide victory against Vice President Kamala Harris, US socialists and movement leaders took up the task of answering the burning question: What is to be done following Trump’s win?
Hundreds of people gathered at the People’s Forum in New York City on November 8 for a panel discussion which featured the presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Claudia De la Cruz, who ran against both Trump and Harris in a explicitly socialist campaign, Brian Becker, executive director of the anti-war organization the ANSWER Coalition, Eugene Puryear, journalist with BreakThrough News, Jorge Torres, part of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network with extensive experience organizing undocumented immigrant workers, and Miriam Osman, leader in the Palestinian Youth Movement, which has played a central role in the Palestine solidarity movement across North America.
Layan Fuleihan, Education Director of the People’s Forum, opened up the discussion. “We, the workers, the social movements, the immigrant families, the young people, the anti-war movement, the working class as a whole, we are faced with many urgent questions,” she said.
“How will we confront this continual rise of the right? Will we be driven by fear and apathy or pessimism? Will we stay home? Or will we organize our forces and chart our own path forward? Will we follow the lead of the Democratic Party and mourn their loss? Or will we assert that we reject the billionaire agenda no matter which party is executing its orders?”
Speakers put the blame for Trump’s win not on a shift to the right by working class people, but on the failures of the Democratic Party. Claudia De la Cruz spoke to what she called the “scapegoating of working class sectors” by the Democrats.
“They are saying we have to blame Black men, that we have to blame Latino men, that we have to blame immigrant communities, that we have to place judgment on those who didn’t go out and vote,” she said.
In reality, according to De la Cruz, “it is the spinelessness of the Democratic Party that has brought us here.”
“While Trump won this election, we cannot pretend that the Democrats have not allowed and conducted attacks against the working class people for decades,” De la Cruz said. “If we think about the last 16 years, the Democratic Party had power for 12 of those years, and they didn’t do anything. Not a single thing to protect or expand our rights. In fact, they sat back and watched how our rights were placed on a chopping block and said, we can’t do anything about it.”
Torres, who himself comes from a migrant background and was undocumented, spoke not only of the fear that exists within immigrant communities of Trump’s anti-migrant policy promises, but also the resolve to fight back. According to Torres, for the past few months, immigrant day laborers within the NDLON network were very scared of what would happen in the event of a Trump win. Trump has promised to deport between 15 to 20 million people in the largest mass deportation in US history, a policy which could result in family separations affecting up to 1 in 3 Latinos in the country.
But this did not paralyze these communities, who instead came together in a renewed resolve to “start organizing for real,” Torres described. Communities began to ask one another, “What does that mean when we say the people save the people?”
“We made a decision that it was about time to organize local communities in popular committees across the country,” Torres said. “We decided to organize popular assemblies across the country. In around one month we organize almost 25 assemblies across the country. And now we have almost 45+ committees led by workers, led by undocumented people, led by people that really are directly impacted.” Torres also mentioned that NDLON is working closely with the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil, speaking to deep ties of international solidarity.
According to Torres, “most of the committees have lost their belief and hope and the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.”
“By now it is time to organize, and we just have us, and we don’t have no one else,” Torres asserted.
According to Eugene Puryear, Trump’s policy promises to round up migrant workers should be a call to action for a mass movement to defend immigrant communities. This movement can find inspiration from the history of the movement for the abolition of slavery in the United States. Puryear recalled the history of the Fugitive Slave Act, which imposed harsh punishments on those who sheltered runaway slaves. But this certainly did not stop abolitionists and anti-slavery activists from protecting slaves anyway.
“Whether or not the law said one thing, there was a higher law: that they had to fight against slavery no matter the risk,” Puryear described.
“So [abolitionists] formed things called vigilance committees, all across the country, that said that when a fugitive slave is brought before the bar into the courthouse, we will go to the courthouse and we will physically resist the imposition of returning them back. That we will physically remove them from the courthouse if we have to, and put them on the Underground Railroad and send them to Canada. And maybe we won’t succeed. Maybe we’ll be beaten. In many cases, these were serious tussles. People were pulling out guns. Maybe we’ll even be killed. But we would rather risk our lives than allow our formerly enslaved brothers and sisters to be taken back.”
There are parallels between the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and Trump’s promise to remove tens of millions of migrants from the country by force, Puryear argued. And the historic tasks of the mass movement, therefore, are similar to those shortly before slavery was abolished. “You can say it’s scary, and it is scary. You can say it’s odious, it is odious. But when they start bringing the trucks around to round people up, you can also say, I’m going to step outside of my door and I’m going to link arms with my neighbors. And if you’re going to throw them out, you better throw me out with them because we’re standing together no matter what,” Puryear said.
Brian Becker also echoed this same militant fighting spirit, rooted in the lessons of past movements. Becker drew attention in particular to the movement that arose after 2016 in opposition to Trump’s first election.
“There’s another side to the question of what is to be done, and that is what is to not be done,” Becker said. “Let’s learn the lesson of the first Trump administration when Trump came into office. So many people went to the airports because he said, we’re going to ban Muslims from coming into the country. Massive protests on Inauguration Day. We outnumbered Trump supporters. This was the anti-Trump resistance,” he described.
“But what happened? The Democratic Party completely co-opted that movement, completely took over that movement, because they said you have to resist Trump, the person, which meant that the best and practical way to do it, is to get rid of Trump by electing the Democrats.”
This co-optation marked the end of this mass movement, which because merely a “tail to the Democratic Party,” Becker described.
According to Becker, “the problem isn’t just Trump. The problem is the capitalist system and the ruling class parties. The Democrats and the Republicans are not an opposition to capitalism. They are the voice of capitalism.”
Becker spoke to the need to “build a political program” independent of the two establishment parties, which speaks to the needs of the masses of people.
Miriam Osman of the Palestinian Youth Movement spoke to the way that the movement in solidarity with Palestine has given people in the US renewed political clarity regarding the similarities between both major parties. “Our task is to draw more and more people into our struggle against the shared enemy, the shared enemy of the Palestinian people, the shared enemy of the working people of the world, and the shared enemy of working people in the United States,” which is the US ruling class, Osman articulated. “Our task is to build power. Our task is to unify our efforts, because this is the only thing that’s going to give us the force to transform this system.”
The Incoming Trump Administration Is Already Filling Up With War Sluts
]This should dash the hopes of Trump supporters everywhere that this time their guy really will end the wars and drain the swamp.
Caitlin Johnstone
November 12, 2024
Donald Trump has named Republican congressman Mike Waltz as his next national security advisor, a position that was held by ultrahawk John Bolton in the last Trump administration.
Like Bolton, Waltz is a warmongering freak. Journalist Michael Tracey has been filling up his Twitter page since the announcement with examples of Waltz’s insane hawkishness, including his support for letting Ukraine use US weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, criticizing Biden for not escalating aggressively enough in Ukraine, advocating bombing Iran, opposing the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and naming Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and Venezuela as “on the march” against the United States toward global conflict. The mainstream press are calling Waltz a “China hawk”, but from the look of things he’s a war-horny hawk toward all the official enemies of the United States.
Trump has also confirmed that Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik will be taking on the role of US ambassador to the UN, a role previously held by warmonger Nikki Haley in the last Trump administration. Again, there doesn’t seem to be much difference between the old hawk and the new one.
Stefanik is best known for her congressional efforts to stomp out free speech on college campuses, making a lie of Trump’s lip service to the importance of First Amendment rights. As explained by Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp, she’s a hawkish swamp monster whose political career was primed in some of the most odious neoconservative think tanks in Washington, and opposes placing any limits on US military support for Israel. Earlier this year Stefanik actually flew to Israel to give a speech before the Israeli Knesset vowing to help stop the “antisemitism” of protesters against Israel’s genocidal atrocities at American universities.
And now we’re getting reports throughout the mass media that deranged war slut Marco Rubio has been tapped as Trump’s new secretary of state. It’s really hard to imagine anyone worse for the role of Washington’s top diplomat than a warmonger who has spent his entire political career pushing for more wars, sanctions and slaughter at every opportunity.
This should dash the hopes of Trump supporters everywhere that this time their guy really will end the wars and drain the swamp. Trump’s appointment of Iran hawk Brian Hook to help staff the State Department for the next administration and his rumored consideration of Mike Rogers for secretary of defense are likewise bad signs, as is Tucker Carlson’s claim that virulent China hawk Elbridge Colby is likely to play a role in the administration.
Trump’s anti-interventionist supporters loudly applauded the other day when he unexpectedly announced that Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley would not be playing a role in the next administration. In response to the announcement, libertarian comedian and podcaster Dave Smith said on Twitter that stopping Pompeo was not enough and that “we need maximum pressure to keep all neocons and war hawks out of the Trump administration.” In response to Smith’s post, Donald Trump Jr tweeted, “Agreed!!! I’m on it.”
When I saw this, I tweeted the following:
“Ignore their words and watch their actions. Been saying it for years, and I’m going to keep on saying it. Ignore their words, watch their actions. Talk, as they say, is cheap.”
Their actions are telling us a lot more than their words right now.
Elections Have Consequences - We Just Don't Know Which
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is selecting a number of hawkish people to fill his cabinet.
There are currently a lot of hot takes what these appointees will do.
Marco Rubio, the likely Secretary of State, may want to launch a new coup in Venezuela.
Michael Waltz, the potential national security advisor, is anti-Russian and anti-China.
Elise Stefanik, a Zionist, will serve as the Israel's second ambassador to the United Nations.
If there were no limits either of these people would launch new wars.
That Trump is selecting rightwing nuts is not unexpected. He needs their backing to push things through.
But the fact that Trump is selecting these people does not mean that he will listen to them or follow their advice. His first term demonstrated that the people he selects often do not last. There is thus no reason to despair over this or that bonehead selection.
There are also objective reason why policies Trump or his acolytes might want to pursue might well be impossible. To lower taxes while the budget deficit is at a record and interest rates are high is not really doable. To push Ukraine towards a victory will fail due to facts on the ground. Any itch to attack Iran carries a high risk of a military defeat.
We will have to wait for the administrations real policy decisions to anticipate where it will go. A good sign will be when Trump succeeds in implementing policies that the hawks he has chosen oppose.
I am not really optimistic about that. My earlier prediction still holds:
[Trump] had previously chosen people who were opposing and sabotaging his policies. He lacked the authority and/or will to rein them in. I do not believe that he has learned from it.
But maybe he did learn from it. I for one will try to stay objective and to give him a chance.
Posted by b on November 12, 2024 at 16:42 UTC | Permalink
(Note to all pre-Russian commentators suffering from Trump 'hopium': The enemy of your enemy is not your friend. I expect that to dissipate except for the die-hard culture warriors soon enough.)
The return of "drill, drill, drill" A brief review of Trump's energy proposals
Nov 11, 2024 , 4:15 pm .
Donald Trump tours a liquefied natural gas terminal under construction in Louisiana in 2019 (Photo: AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Donald Trump's electoral victory in the United States marks a return to an energy policy focused on increasing domestic oil and gas production in order to reduce dependence on foreign hydrocarbons, or at least that is the intention.
Trump said he would develop "the liquid gold beneath our feet," referring to the nation's reserves of such resources, reviving the spirit of the 2017 "Make America Great Again" slogan.
"First I will end Kamala Harris's anti-energy crusade and then I will implement a policy of abundance, independence and even energy dominance. We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country," he offered in September 2023 with the launch of Agenda 47 , which was his platform to showcase his political offer.
Although energy was not the focus of his campaign, the Republican businessman linked it to the economy, the key issue that gave him victory. At the time , when he ambitiously promised to bring U.S. energy costs to the lowest levels in the world, he claimed that this would curb inflation and boost job creation.
"I will immediately issue a national emergency declaration to achieve a massive increase in domestic energy supply. To issue rapid approvals for new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries. Prices will immediately fall in anticipation of this tremendous supply that we can quickly create. I will end the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam," he continued in his manifesto on Agenda 47.
According to his speeches, a policy approach is on the horizon that will benefit the fracking industry by encouraging oil drilling activities. This strategy aims to increase oil production, which could result in an oversupply on the market and, therefore, a reduction in oil prices.
Majority in the Senate
The Republican Party 's gaining of a majority in the Senate will facilitate strategic appointments in departments with greater weight in this area, a situation that will allow Trump to implement his policies without major complications. Republican senators such as John Thune have expressed their commitment to "renew America's energy dominance," which indicates a joint effort to reorient national energy policy.
Indeed, he is expected to announce his top Cabinet posts within two to three weeks, offering an initial view of the direction his administration will take, but it will be at the end of the first quarter that the roadmap he will implement will become clearer.
Key executive branches include the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy, as well as the Department of the Treasury , which plays a key role in imposing illegal sanctions on oil-producing countries.
The Department of the Interior is responsible for managing nearly all public lands in the United States. During his previous presidency, Trump promoted a “drill, drill, drill” energy policy by facilitating leasing permits for oil, gas and coal extraction.
One of the many precedents for this is in April 2017, when Trump signed an Executive Order to expand offshore drilling and reverse the Obama administration's decisions to de-lease certain areas of the Outer Continental Shelf in Alaska and on the Atlantic coast. It will not be surprising if he applies such a methodology on this occasion.
His administration could roll back environmental regulations implemented by the Biden administration through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The tycoon has harshly criticized that legislation, considering it an unnecessary burden on taxpayers.
IRA subsidies and tax credits for renewable energy could be repealed, especially if the House also falls under Republican control, which seems highly likely.
Having a majority of that party in both the Senate and the House of Representatives would give him a wide advantage, allowing the now president to push through a legal corpus with fewer obstacles than in his previous term and would facilitate budget reallocations towards supporting the hydrocarbon industry.
Industry contributors
In May 2024, the Washington Post revealed in an exclusive that Donald Trump held a private meeting with top executives of major US oil companies, including Chevron, Exxon and Occidental, in which he asked them for an ambitious fundraising of one billion dollars in exchange for promises to immediately dismantle dozens of environmental policies and regulations.
This rapprochement was the prelude to an increasingly close relationship between Trump and the fossil fuel sector, which has begun to extend its financial support in unprecedented magnitudes.
By October, the Republican had raised a record amount compared with his previous presidential campaigns. Donation data shows that the oil and gas sector had already given him some $14.1 million , which while not at the top of the list of contributors — the $150 million contributed by Timothy Mellon or the more than $100 million from Elon Musk — are just the tip of the iceberg, with total contributions from the sector estimated to have reached $75 million , a sum directed to both the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee and other associated committees.
The support of this industry extends beyond the best-known companies, involving a much broader network of actors. "The support of the oil industry to Donald Trump is much deeper than people think," said Alex Witt , an advisor to Climate Power, who emphasizes that the support network includes not only large oil companies but also service and refining companies, with important financial interests in the energy structure of the United States. This alliance is not accidental: executives and companies see in Trump a shield that will protect their profits in a context of increasing pressure to transition to clean energy.
Donations to Trump from oil companies are second only to conservative interest groups, which in turn receive significant funding from the same oil interests. Energy Transfer , a natural gas and propane transportation company, stands out with a contribution of more than $10 million , a figure that consolidates it as one of the largest individual donors to the Republican candidate's campaign.
Meanwhile, the eyes of Congress have also been on this flow of money. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has launched an investigation into donations from the oil industry. In his analysis, he recalled a report by the International Monetary Fund that estimates that fossil fuel companies receive subsidies in the United States at 700 billion dollars annually. These funds, added to private contributions, reflect the weight that this sector continues to have in the political sphere.
Trump’s campaign capitalized on that support during its recent fundraising events, with events in Houston and Midland, Texas. In early October, Eric Trump and his attorney Alina Habba participated in a fundraiser organized in Oklahoma City by Robert Hefner IV, head of Envision Exploration, an oil company. Simultaneously, JD Vance , Trump’s running mate, attended similar events in New Orleans and Dallas, backed by executives from key energy companies such as Moncrief Oil and Charter Holdings. The latter, led by Ray Washburne , who also heads Sunoco LP, contributed more than $550,000 to the cause.
Notable contributors include Tim Dunn , chief executive of CrownQuest Operating, who has donated $5 million to the MAGA committee. Dunn, a vocal critic of climate policies, has repeatedly supported pro-Trump groups that promote a skeptical view of climate change. Other notable names include coal magnate Joseph W. Craft III , with a $2 million donation, and billionaire Paul Singer , whose firm has invested in oil and gas companies.
Also in the mix were Kelcy Warren , chief executive of Energy Transfer, who contributed nearly $6 million, and Timothy Dunn , head of Texas-based oil company CrownQuest, who gave another $5 million. Harold Hamm , founder of Continental Resources, mobilized industry leaders to rally behind Trump, saying, "We have to do this because this is the most important election of our lifetimes."
In sum, the oil and gas industry has established itself as the fourth most important source of financing for Trump's campaign, climbing six positions compared to the 2020 election cycle.
The strong support of oil companies for the Republican candidate reflects a clear interest in removing regulatory obstacles. Corporations looked to his administration for an ally to facilitate an unprecedented expansion in drilling and extraction of the resource, given a more favorable legal environment.
The promise by the next US president to reduce controls represents an opportunity for the sector to expand its scope of action, an opportunity that they consider critical for their future in the context of global energy competitiveness.
Foreign policy
Overall, Trump's foreign policy on energy is aimed at consolidating US hegemony in the international arena - as the world's leading oil producer - and adjusting global market shares in order to monopolize and be the most relevant energy supplier. He will probably renew a strategy of energy self-sufficiency by encouraging domestic oil and gas production while challenging foreign competitors.
Among his first moves could be ending the Biden administration's moratorium on new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permits, similar to the one during his first term, in a bid to increase the United States' presence in the global oil and gas market.
The Republican was one of the biggest proponents of LNG development, presenting it as an alternative to Europe's dependence on Russian gas. His historical opposition to the Nord Stream II project, which facilitated the transport of Russian gas to Europe, is in line with his vision of reducing the Slavic country's influence on the European energy market.
On the other hand, Trump's strategy towards oil countries under sanctions, such as Venezuela, would focus on the use of licenses and restrictions in a tactical manner, according to the interests of his administration. Trump is likely to adopt a multifaceted and calculated strategy with respect to Venezuela, maintaining illegal sanctions to prevent a greater entry of Venezuelan crude into the US market, although he could play with flexibilities or with greater restrictions on exemptions depending on the behavior of the market and its prices.
"Just three years ago we were energy independent, but now we are begging Venezuela to give us its oil. And yet we have much more than any other country. There is no country, Saudi Arabia, Russia, no one, that has what we have," he said in a campaign video.
This policy is not only based on controlling supply but also on restricting those countries that it considers geopolitical adversaries.
In relation to West Asia, Trump is expected to maintain a pragmatic relationship, characterized by alliances with countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which remain fundamental in the global oil market. During his previous term, Trump strengthened ties with these countries in search of stability in the market and a counterweight to Iran.
However, the spotlight will be on China, which is likely to continue a policy of trade and technological decoupling, especially in clean technology manufacturing and critical minerals.
As part of his strategy, he could impose more tariffs on Chinese products, including those related to energy and technology, in an attempt to reduce US dependence on Chinese supplies. This could affect global energy demand and lead to price adjustments, complicating market dynamics.
As for the electric vehicle sector, Trump could adopt an ambivalent stance. Although he has shown sympathies for fossil fuels and distrust of some environmental policies, his close relationship with Elon Musk could push some policies to encourage electric vehicles, especially those produced domestically.
Musk, as a major contributor to his campaign, represents a significant influence that could shape an approach in which such technology is pushed as part of diversifying energy supply, without compromising the push for fossil fuels.
Whatever the case, Trump's return to power promises a restructuring of the global market, focused on maintaining US supremacy. With a "drill, drill, drill" agenda he would seek not only to secure low domestic prices but also to gain market share in the global market.
The Trump Administration: From “No War Hawks” to All War Hawks
Posted by Internationalist 360° on November 13, 2024
Brian Berletic
In the weeks leading up to the 2024 US presidential election, Americans and many around the world invested hope that former-president and now President-elect Donald Trump would grind America’s wars abroad to a halt and instead invest in the United States itself.
These hopes were based on rhetoric surrounding the Trump campaign. The candidate’s son, Donald Trump Jr., remarked publicly, “we need maximum pressure to keep all neocons and war hawks out of the Trump administration,” a reflection of candidate Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail.
Unfortunately, just as was the case during President-elect Donald Trump’s previous term in office, this was an empty promise meant to secure the support of war-weary Americans and possibly even to throw nations abroad off balance, before filling his cabinet with the most vocal “neocons and war hawks” living and breathing in Washington D.C.
Continuity of Agenda…
During President-elect Trump’s previous administration, he lined his cabinet with hardcore neocons and war hawks like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Nikki Haley who all worked ceaselessly to continue all the wars President Trump inherited from the Obama administration and attempt to provoke additional wars US special interests have long-since sought including with China, Iran, and even Russia itself.
During the first Trump administration, the US initiated a trade war with China and other measures aimed at gutting China’s largest and most successful businesses including smartphone manufacturer Huawei, culminating in sales bans across the collective West, US-based Google cutting Huawei off from its Android operating system, and even the detainment of Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou while traveling in Canada.
During the first Trump administration, the US also continued its military build-up across the Asia-Pacific as a means of encircling and containing China within its own borders, another policy inherited from the Obama administration.
In the Middle East, the Trump administration continued the illegal occupation of Syria which began under the Obama administration, continued carrying out strikes against the Syrian government and its allies, with President Trump bragging about pilfering Syrian oil. It was also during the first Trump administration that the US assassinated senior Iranian military leader General Qasem Soleimani while visiting Iraq on official business, an indisputable act of war against both Iran and Iraq. General Soleimani had until then been successfully fighting the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” across the region, including in Syria and Iraq.
And while President Trump was accused of being an agent of Russian interests, in reality his administration helped accelerate the US proxy war with Russia in Ukraine by beginning to arm Ukrainian forces, almost certainly the final red line crossed convincing Moscow to launch its Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022. It was also during the first Trump administration that the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, paving the way for the subsequent Biden administration to station intermediate-range missiles in Europe pointed at Russia.
As the first Trump administration egregiously violated campaign promises of ending US involvement abroad, many Trump supporters resorted to a number of excuses including President Trump’s “inexperience,” suggesting he may not have known who Pompeo, Bolton, or Haley actually were and that during a second administration his cabinet would act upon lessons learned.
Restocking the Swamp…
Fast-forward to today, the incoming Trump administration had temporarily bolstered that hope – that these lessons were indeed learned – by announcing Bolton, Pompeo and Haley would play no role in the incoming administration.
This was short-lived, however, as it was subsequently announced that the next national security adviser would likely be Mike Waltz, the ideological twin of John Bolton. Elsie Stafanik was announced as US ambassador to the UN, the ideological twin of Nikki Haley. And both Marco Rubio and Richard Grenell are being considered as the possible incoming US Secretary of State, men whose views are indistinguishable from former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – or US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken under the Biden administration for that matter.
All of President-elect Trump’s considerations and appointments are enthusiastic neocons and war hawks who have spent their careers advocating war abroad, particularly against Russia, China, and Iran, but also Libya, Syria, Venezuela, and many other nations. Stafanik is listed as an “expert” at the US National Endowment for Democracy, a neocon directed organization involved in political interference worldwide, including in Ukraine in 2014, beginning what has now evolved into Washington’s failing proxy war with Russia.
While some may claim the incoming Trump administration’s neocon and war hawk picks represent a “bait and switch,” in reality the Trump administration’s inclusion of J.D. Vance as vice president pick was – up front – an open declaration that war and warmongering would continue abroad, just not in Ukraine.
Newsweek in its article, “JD Vance Tells Tim Dillon US Needs Weapons To Fight China, Not Russia,” made it clear that “stability in the Indo-Pacific and supporting Taiwan should be a higher priority for the U.S. than military aid to Ukraine.”
President-elect Trump’s close association with and appointment of neocons and war hawks involved in the very policies he ran on opposing represents a repeat of the first Trump administration’s seamless continuation of US foreign policy, regardless of appealing rhetoric suggesting otherwise.
Pausing Ukraine to Accelerate War Elsewhere…
It may seem paradoxical, then, that the incoming Trump administration seems determined to end the conflict in Ukraine. Rather than any sort of political transition in the US, this represents more of a transition of priorities among America’s unelected special interests driving US foreign policy, regardless of who occupies the White House or controls the US Congress.
The US proxy war in Ukraine, a war the first Trump administration played an equal role in precipitating, by all accounts, has run its course. The goal of “extending Russia” at the expense of Ukraine has been achieved to the fullest extent possible. With US stockpiles exhausted and escalation requiring what is left of US military power being reserved for a larger and more dangerous war with either Iran and/or China, Washington’s choice is to either double-down on Ukraine or pivot toward Iran and/or China before the windows of opportunity for success amid these two potential conflicts closes for good.
The incoming Trump administration is lined with neocons and war hawks who have openly promoted the arming of the US-installed separatist regime on Taiwan in a bid to eventually carve Taiwan off from China permanently. This is despite the US State Department officially not supporting Taiwan independence and agreeing bilaterally with Beijing on a “one China” policy noting there is one China, Taiwan is part of China, and there is only one recognized government of China, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing.
As part of preparing for this conflict, the US has expanded its military presence in the Asia-Pacific spanning the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, and will undoubtedly continue during the second Trump administration made up of the most vocal proponents of this policy.
This process also involves creating conflict between the Philippines and China, currently the Philippines’ largest trade partner and until recently an important infrastructure partner, to create a pretext for an expanding US military footprint upon the former US colony and Southeast Asian nation. This allows the US to further surround China and a possible conflict zone around its island province of Taiwan with nearby US forces.
While the political “right” in the United States depicted the Biden administration as “soft” on China, it was under the Biden administration that an intensive reorganization of US military forces took place specifically to prepare for war with China.
This included the reorganization of the US Marine Corps into a highly mobile anti-shipping missile force, and the US Air Force’s adoption of its Agile Combat Employment (ACE) strategy dispersing US air bases across the Asia-Pacific to make it more difficult for China to retaliate against US installations should war begin.
These transformed US military forces will now be fully in place as an openly hostile anti-China administration takes power, just as the Trump administration helped set the stage for the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine commencing during the subsequent Biden administration.
What is abundantly clear is that US foreign policy is not determined by US elections. Elections merely determine the rhetoric used to sell what is otherwise a continuous agenda to the public, the faces presenting that rhetoric, and the excuses for why US foreign policy continuously fails to change despite elections.
For the rest of the globe facing four more years of US hostility worldwide, it must continue working on a multipolar international order that creates the conditions within which US aggression abroad is simply impossible. This can and is being achieved by using financial, economic, diplomatic, and military means to constrain US coercion – be it sanctions or military force, proxy or direct intervention – through financial and economic alternatives beyond the reach of US sanctions and powerful military deterrence. This leaves US special interests with only one option – to work constructively with a world it can no longer impose itself upon.
Absolutely Misplaced.
I am talking about professional criteria (which my today's video is about).
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump stunned the Pentagon and the broader defense world by nominating Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary, tapping someone largely inexperienced and untested on the global stage to take over the world's largest and most powerful military. The news was met with bewilderment and worry among many in Washington as Trump passed on a number of established national security heavy-hitters and chose an Army National Guard major well known in conservative circles as a co-host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekend.” While some Republican lawmakers had a muted response to the announcement, others called his combat experience an asset or said he was “tremendously capable.” Hegseth's choice could bring sweeping changes to the military. He has made it clear on his show and in interviews that, like Trump, he is opposed to “woke” programs that promote equity and inclusion. He also has questioned the role of women in combat and advocated pardoning service members charged with war crimes.
His combat experience in Afghanistan is irrelevant within the framework of global balance of power and to "tame" Pentagon one needs a huge expertise in procurement and R&D, which automatically disqualifies Hegseth on this merit alone. It is all fine and dandy to command a company, but many people forget that USMA at West Point USED TO BE (not anymore) a good engineering school first and foremost. I'll give you a mental experiment... Take an aging fart like me and put me in charge of the staff of, say, coastal missile systems (Bastions), restore my clearance and give me a month or two in the formation, without unnecessary humbleness--I will be able to run it and provide for acceptable combat readiness. Get my aging ass to some missile corvette--same shit, after a month or two I will be able to command it or to become COS of the brigade of such ships. I will be able to do it because I have fundamental military-engineering background which is a MUST for such tasks. Hegseth has degree in... Politics. Now imagine this guy taking on utterly corrupt R&D and procurement policies of Washington. I don't think so.
And then, of course, there is SMO, Russia and 21st century battlefield, which was utterly absent in Iraq and Afghanistan. But then again, Lisa Franchetti has degree in journalism and in business from the on-line college. She is CNO (Chief of Naval Operations)--Chester Nimitz and Elmo Zumwalt are spinning in their graves. Let me remind WHO was the guy behind stunning technological development and industry reorganization in Russian Armed Forces. Compare:
Yury Borisov was born on 31 December 1956 in Vyshny Volochyok. He graduated from Kalinin Suvorov Military School [ru] in 1974 and from Radioelectronics Higher Command School in 1978. In 1980s he studied mathematics at the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics of Moscow State University from which he graduated in 1985. Borisov is married and has two children. For 20 years from 1978 to 1998 he was enlisted into the Armed Forces of both the Soviet Union and Russia. He was Federal Agency on Industry deputy head in October 2007 and became Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade in July 2008. He was a Military-Industrial Commissioner for Russia in March 2011 and as of 12 November 2012 under Presidential Decree, Borisov was promoted to Deputy Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation.
That's the caliber of people and their competencies one needs to change things. No additional comments are necessary...
"Lesser evil", huh Andrei? Is Little Marco a lesser evil too?
******
Shale ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Hits Wall of Capital Restraint
Posted on November 14, 2024 by Yves Smith
Yves here. It appears there is a teeny bit of good news on the environment front, if you consider “less bad than promised” to be positive. Trump has promised that he would lower US energy prices via much more ambitious shale industry production. The shale industry has other ideas.
By Irina Slav, a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. Originally published at OilPrice
Trump will encounter a very different mindset of shale industry executives in 2025 compared to the late 2010s.
Discipline and a pragmatic approach to balancing production growth with shareholder returns are likely to hold in the industry.
Large shale companies have curtailed capex and aren’t likely to be incentivized in any way to increase it meaningfully.
The U.S. oil and gas industry finally got what it has wanted since 2020—an American president supportive of the sector and promising to fix the regulatory burdens that have piled up over the past four years.
Although President-elect Trump is chanting “drill, baby, drill,” the priorities of the U.S. oil industry have drastically changed since Trump’s first term.
Trump will encounter a very different mindset of shale industry executives in 2025 compared to the late 2010s when he was last president.
The U.S. shale patch is drilling, but it is drilling because it wants to distribute more of the profits to shareholders. It has made huge progress in capital discipline and efficiency gains and is getting more bang for its buck. Priorities are now returns to investors and financial frames capable of withstanding oil price volatility.
U.S. oil production continues to grow and will grow in the near future. But don’t expect the stellar growth from 2018-2019—when the industry added 1 million barrels per day (bpd) to American crude output every year—just because Trump is president, analysts say.
On the campaign trail in October, the president-elect promised supporters in North Carolina, “I’m going to cut your energy prices in half, 50 percent.”
“I’ll get those guys drilling. They are wild. They are tough and wild. They are crazy. They’ll be drilling so much,” Trump said.
“Those guys” could surely use a boost to the industry, such as a permitting reform to facilitate energy infrastructure development, a lift of President Biden’s pause on LNG export projects permitting, and easier access to financing when U.S. oil and gas isn’t vilified left and right.
But they will surely beg to differ from Trump’s remark at the same North Carolina rally, “If they drill themselves out of business, I don’t give a damn, right?”
Discipline and a pragmatic approach to balancing production growth with shareholder returns are likely to hold in the industry. After the latest wave of mergers and acquisitions, large publicly traded companies hold the majority of U.S. shale production and the remaining commercial resources in the Permian, the biggest shale play where output growth has been most pronounced in recent years. These companies will continue to seek to boost investor returns and will surely want to avoid a repeat of the 2016 and 2020 oil price crashes and losses—through capital discipline and efficiency gains.
Chevron, for example, sees its capex in the Permian probably peaking this year. Chief executive Mike Wirth told the Q3 earnings call, just a few days before the U.S. presidential election, that “I think what you’ll see is this year is probably going to be the peak in Permian CapEx.”
“We’ll begin to attenuate as well and we’ll really open up the free cash flow there,” Wirth said, adding, “But the headline here is continued efficiency and productivity gains, strong free cash flow today, and we’re going to manage it for even stronger free cash flow in the future.”
Not exactly a “drill, baby, drill” plan.
Chevron’s capex is now less than half compared to a decade ago—at about $18 billion, down from $40 billion.
“We’re doing it in a much more capital-efficient manner than we ever have before,” Wirth said.
At Exxon, efficiency gains and advanced technologies have helped the supermajor double its profit per oil equivalent barrel on a constant price basis, from 2019 unit earnings of $5 per oil-equivalent barrel to $10 per barrel year-to-date in 2024, excluding Pioneer, Kathryn Mikells, ExxonMobil’s chief financial officer, said on the earnings call.
Despite the rhetoric and policy platforms, the U.S. tight oil sector “is expected to continue its steady growth, driven more by market forces and company strategy than by government policy,” Matthew Bernstein, Senior Analyst, Upstream Research at Rystad Energy, wrote in an analysis ahead of the U.S. election.
The U.S. industry’s new priorities of returning more cash to shareholders suggest that “even if prices rise, companies are unlikely to significantly increase spending, as production has somewhat decoupled from oil and gas prices,” Bernstein said.
“As a result, the traditional link between high prices and increased drilling activity has been weakened, with companies instead focusing on maintaining capital discipline and maximizing returns.”
Will Trump End or Escalate Biden’s Wars?
Posted on November 14, 2024 by Yves Smith
Yves here. Many readers will find this post to be unduly generous about the odds that Trump might change course from America’s full spectrum belligerence under Biden. The fact that his appointments so far are hawks and his loudest anti-war allies during his campaign, RFK, Jr., has not been offered any posts, does not bode well for the idea that Trump will do much to end or scale back the US “forever wars”. Trump did name Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (DNI), but while that gives Gabbard “a seat at the table,” DNI is not the office from which forever wars emerge or are managed.
Scott Ritter, at the top of a recent talk with Nima of Dialogue Works, is dismissive even of the claim that Trump’s foreign policy picks are loyalists and itemizes how they can be expected to oppose Trump’s intent to steer clear of war with Iran and China.
Admittedly, Vance is anti-war but the Vice President is not a post that normally has much influence on foreign policy (with Dick Cheney the big exception). As an aside, as of this writing. Rubio has not yet been announced at Trump’s Secretary of State nominee, and the delay has led to speculation about other names.
Admittedly, one area where improvement is likely is the Ukraine war. Trump has long been dismissive of NATO, which he views as providing unwarranted subsidies to wealthy states. And that’s before getting to giving the EU a dose of its own medicine, as in the openly hostile treatment EU leaders gave to Trump during his first term.
However, Trump (as indicated by Vance’s peace ideas outlined below) is almost certainly not well informed about the fact that Russia is handily winning the war and how depleted Western weapons stocks are. That translates into the US having no bargaining leverage ex nukes. Russian officials have made clear that Russia will continue to prosecute the war until all SMO objectives have been achieved. The West continues to reject Putin’s most important requirement, no NATO membership for Ukraine and a commitment to its neutrality. The insistence that Ukraine will someday join NATO means that Russia will press onward until it can impose its will on all of Ukraine.
It’s not clear when and how Trump will get that reality check. One reason they might be better able to accept it than Biden (who also had a bizarre visceral hatred of Putin) is that, as outsiders, they didn’t create this situation. When they realize that the US is badly overextended, it would also reinforce the idea that the US needs to pick its spots.
We plan to discuss this topic in more depth soon, but even negotiation/diplomacy lover Alexander Mercoursis has concluded that Russia will end the war on the battlefield and Putin has no reason to compromise.
On the Middle East front, all of Trump’s appointments are diehard Israel loyalists. That does not bode well for keeping Israel from dragging the US into a war with Iran. However, if Trump and his team work out that Iran (ex nukes) has demonstrated escalation dominance, that Gulf States have been quietly and in Saudi Arabia’s case, openly strengthening ties Iran, and that it would take a US draft to bulk up the army enough to invade Iran (which is necessary to subdue it), they might start thinking about a Plan B. But even in that optimistic scenario, one can expect flailing and brinksmanship in the meantime. And the genocide in Gaza will continue.
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books, with an updated edition due in February 2025. Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of< Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
Photo Credit: UNICEF
When Donald Trump takes office on January 20th, all his campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours and almost as quickly end Israel’s war on its neighbors will be put to the test. The choices he has made for his incoming administration so far, from Marco Rubio as Secretary of State to Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and Elise Stefanik as UN Ambassador make for a rogues gallery of saber-rattlers.
The only conflict where peace negotiations seem to be on the agenda is Ukraine. In April, both Vice President-elect JD Vance and Senator Marco Rubio voted against a $95 billion military aid bill that included $61 billion for Ukraine.
Rubio recently appeared on NBC’s Today Show saying, “I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong when standing up to Russia. But at the end of the day, what we’re funding here is a stalemate war, and it needs to be brought to a conclusion… I think there has to be some common sense here.”
On the campaign trail, Vance made a controversial suggestion that the best way to end the war was for Ukraine to cede the land Russia has seized, for a demilitarized zone to be established, and for Ukraine to become neutral, i.e. not enter NATO. He was roundly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats who argue that backing Ukraine is vitally important to U.S. security since it weakens Russia, which is closely allied with China.
Any attempt by Trump to stop U.S. military support for Ukraine will undoubtedly face fierce opposition from the pro-war forces in his own party, particularly in Congress, as well as perhaps the entirety of the Democratic party. Two years ago, 30 progressive Democrats in Congress wrote a letter to President Biden asking him to consider promoting negotiations. The party higher ups were so incensed by their lack of party discipline that they came down on the progressives like a ton of bricks. Within 24 hours, the group had cried uncle and rescinded the letter. They have since all voted for money for Ukraine and have not uttered another word about negotiations.
So a Trump effort to cut funds to Ukraine could run up against a bipartisan congressional effort to keep the war going. And let’s not forget the efforts by European countries, and NATO, to keep the U.S. in the fight. Still, Trump could stand up to all these forces and push for a rational policy that would restart the talking and stop the killing.
The Middle East, however, is a more difficult situation. In his first term, Trump showed his pro-Israel cards when he brokered the Abraham accords between several Arab countries and Israel; moved the U.S. embassy to a location in Jerusalem that is partly on occupied land outside Israel’s internationally recognized borders; and recognized the occupied Golan Heights in Syria as part of Israel. Such unprecedented signals of unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s illegal occupation and settlements helped set the stage for the current crisis.
Trump seems as unlikely as Biden to cut U.S. weapons to Israel, despite public opinion polls favoring such a halt and a recent UN human rights report showing that 70% of the people killed by those U.S. weapons are women and children.
Meanwhile, the wily Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is already busy getting ready for a second Trump presidency. On the very day of the U.S. election, Netanyahu fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who opposed a lasting Israeli military occupation of Gaza and had at times argued for prioritizing the lives of the Israeli hostages over killing more Palestinians.
Israel Katz, the new defense minister and former foreign minister, is more hawkish than Gallant, and has led a campaign to falsely blame Iran for the smuggling of weapons from Jordan into the West Bank.
Other powerful voices, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a “minister in the Defense Ministry,” represent extreme Zionist parties that are publicly committed to territorial expansion, annexation and ethnic cleansing. They both live in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
So Netanyahu has deliberately surrounded himself with allies who back his ever-escalating war. They are surely developing a war plan to exploit Trump’s support for Israel, but will first use the unique opportunity of the U.S. transition of power to create facts on the ground that will limit Trump’s options when he takes office.
The Israelis will doubtless redouble their efforts to drive Palestinians out of as much of Gaza as possible, confronting President Trump with a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in which Gaza’s surviving population is crammed into an impossibly small area, with next to no food, no shelter for many, disease running rampant, and no access to needed medical care for tens of thousands of horribly wounded and dying people.
The Israelis will count on Trump to accept whatever final solution they propose, most likely to drive Palestinians out of Gaza, into the West Bank, Jordan, Egypt and farther afield.
Israel threatened all along to do to Lebanon the same as they have done to Gaza. Israeli forces have met fierce resistance, taken heavy casualties, and have not advanced far into Lebanon. But, as in Gaza, they are using bombing and artillery to destroy villages and towns, kill or drive people north and hope to effectively annex the part of Lebanon south of the Litani river as a so-called “buffer zone.” When Trump takes office, they may ask for greater U.S. involvement to help them “finish the job.”
The big wild card is Iran. Trump’s first term in office was marked by a policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran. He unilaterally withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal, imposed severe sanctions that devastated the economy, and ordered the killing of the country’s top general. Trump did not support a war on Iran in his first term, but had to be talked out of attacking Iran in his final days in office by General Mark Milley and the Pentagon.
Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, recently described to Chris Hedges just how catastrophic a war with Iran would be, based on U.S.military wargames he was involved in.
Wilkerson predicts that a U.S. war on Iran could last for ten years, cost $10 trillion and still fail to conquer Iran. Airstrikes alone would not destroy all of Iran’s civilian nuclear program and ballistic missile stockpiles. So, once unleashed, the war would very likely escalate into a regime change war involving U.S. ground forces, in a country with three or four times the territory and population of Iraq, more mountainous terrain and a thousand mile long coastline bristling with missiles that can sink U.S. warships.
But Netanyahu and his extreme Zionist allies believe that they must sooner or later fight an existential war with Iran if they are to realize their vision of a dominant Greater Israel. And they believe that the destruction they have wreaked on the Palestinians in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, including the assassination of their senior leaders, has given them a military advantage and a favorable opportunity for a showdown with Iran.
By November 10, Trump and Netanyahu had reportedly spoken on the phone three times since the election, and Netanyahu said that they see “eye to eye on the Iranian threat.” Trump has already hired Iran hawkBrian Hook, who helped him sabotage the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018, to coordinate the formation of his foreign policy team.
So far, the team that Trump and Hook have assembled seems to offer hope for peace in Ukraine, but little to none for peace in the Middle East and a rising danger of a U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
Trump’s expected National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is best known as a China hawk. He has voted against military aid to Ukraine in Congress, but he recently tweeted that Israel should bomb Iran’s nuclear and oil facilities, the most certain path to a full-scale war.
Trump’s new UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, has led moves in Congress to equate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism, and she led the aggressive questioning of American university presidents at an anti-semitism hearing in Congress, after which the presidents of Harvard and Penn resigned.
So, while Trump will have some advisors who support his desire to end the war in Ukraine, there will be few voices in his inner circle urging caution over Netanyahu’s genocidal ambitions in Palestine and his determination to cripple Iran.
If he wanted to, President Biden could use his final two months in office to de-escalate the conflicts in the Middle East. He could impose an embargo on offensive weapons for Israel, push for serious ceasefire negotiations in both Gaza and Lebanon, and work through U.S. partners in the Gulf to de-escalate tensions with Iran.
But Biden is unlikely to do any of that. When his own administration sent a letter to Israel last month, threatening a cut in military aid if Israel did not allow a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza in the next 30 days, Israel responded by doing just the opposite–actually cutting the number of trucks allowed in. The State Department claimed Israel was taking “steps in the right direction” and Biden refused to take any action.
We will soon see if Trump is able to make progress in moving the Ukraine war towards negotiations, potentially saving the lives of many thousands of Ukrainians and Russians. But between the catastrophe that Trump will inherit and the warhawks he is picking for his cabinet, peace in the Middle East seems more distant than ever.
Only the deluded think that Trump can bring peace in Ukraine. Trump's ego will not allow the possibility of him being tarred a 'loser' and Russia's conditions will allow no less. And say what you will about Biden, the man stays bought.
******
Trump stacks incoming US cabinet with 'Israel-first' hawks
The President-elect's choices for multiple key positions indicate support for Israel is the priority of the incoming administration
News Desk
NOV 13, 2024
(Photo credit: AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File)
US President-elect Donald Trump has announced a slew of aggressively pro-Israel figures to fill the cabinet of his upcoming administration, reinforcing fears that he will prioritize Israeli over US interests, continue to enable Israel's genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and give the green light for Israel to achieve its most desired goal – the ethnic cleansing and annexation of the West Bank.
AP reported on 13 November that Trump's pick for ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor and Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee, has long rejected a Palestinian state, repeatedly signals his unwavering support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, frequently visits Israel, and firmly believes the West Bank belongs to Israel because “the title deed was given by God to Abraham and to his heirs.”
In an interview with Israeli Army Radio, Huckabee said that “of course” annexation of the West Bank is a possibility, but noted that he is not the one who sets policy.
Bloomberg reported that during his run for president in 2015, Huckabee held a fundraiser in the illegal Jewish settlement Shilo, located deep in the heart of the occupied West Bank between the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Nablus.
Huckabee's Shilo event was sponsored by Simon Falic, an US-Jewish supporter of both Republican candidates and right-wing Israeli politicians.
Trump’s appointment of Huckabee and other hawkishly pro-Israel figures comes after Israeli-US billionaire Miriam Adelson donated $100 million to his presidential campaign in October, allegedly in exchange for a pledge to allow Israel to annex the West Bank.
On 13 November, Trump named Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host, author, and military veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as his pick for defense secretary.
After a visit to Israel to see biblical sites in 2016, Hegseth told the Jewish Press “It's the story of God's chosen people. That story didn't end in 1776 or in 1948 or with the founding of the UN. All of these things still resonate and matter today.”
“I have come to really appreciate the Jewish heritage and the Jewish state. I understand how geopolitically we are linked and how critical it is that we stand by such a strong ally,” he added.
Sources speaking with the New York Times reported Monday that Trump is expected to nominate Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a persistent Israel supporter, to serve as secretary of state.
The Jewish Forward reported that “If picked, Rubio's selection would likely reassure both Israel and traditional Republicans that Trump intends to maintain his strong support for Israel in a second term, amid concerns about an inner circle pushing an isolationist approach.”
The president-elect announced Tuesday that he has chosen John Ratcliffe, who was director of national intelligence (DNI) during Trump's first term, to serve as his CIA director.
Earlier this year, Ratcliffe criticized President Joe Biden's hollow threat to withhold weapons shipments to Israel amid its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, saying the it had put a key ally at risk. He also argued that the administration had not been harsh enough on Iran.
Trump also declared his choice this week of Republican Congressman Michael Waltz of Florida, a former Green Beret, as national security advisor.
Waltz has also worked with prominent neoconservatives who helped launch the 2003 Iraq war on Israel's behalf. Waltz served as an advisor to defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and advised then-vice president Dick Cheney on counterterrorism.
The Jewish Insider described Waltz as an “Israel and Iran hawk” and “stalwart supporter of Israel” who has advocated that Israel strike Iran's oil and nuclear infrastructure.
President-elect Trump has picked Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York to be his next ambassador to the UN.
Politico noted that Stefanik has “made herself a household name among Republicans as a staunch defender of Israel.”
Stefanik has repeatedly accused the UN of anti-Semitism for its criticism of Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and its continued opposition to the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements and oppression of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
She has also supported blocking US support for the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), the main provider of humanitarian aid to Palestinians, amid Israel's effort to starve the remaining Palestinian population in northern Gaza.
On 12 November, Trump announced the delegation of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem for the position of secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
As governor, Noem prioritized fighting the so-called rise in anti-Semitism, passing a bill that would criminalize criticism of Israel based on the definition of anti-Semitism proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Swimming in Mud in the Fifth Circle of Hell: The Forty-Sixth Newsletter (2024)
Instead of solving the problems of the majority, the ‘far right of a special type’ – a right that is intimately tied to liberalism – cultivates a politics of anger.
14 November 2024
Boris Taslitzky (France), Le Petit Camp à Buchenwald (The Small Camp of Buchenwald), 1945.
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
When Dante Alighieri and his guide reach the fifth circle of hell in Inferno’s Canto VII, they come across the River Styx, where people who could not contain their anger in life now wallow and fight each other on the surface of the turbulent, muddy water, and below them lie those who had been sullen in life, their frustrations coming to the surface as bubbles:
And I, who stood intent upon beholding,
Saw people mud-besprent in that lagoon.
All of them naked and with angry look.
They smote each other not alone with hands,
But with the head and with the breast and feet,
Tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth.
Every culture depicts some variation of this characterisation of hell, in which those who have violated rules that are intended to produce a harmonious society suffer an afterlife of punishment. For instance, in the Indian Gangetic plain, centuries before Dante, the unknown authors of the Garuda Purana described the twenty-eight different narakas (hells). The similarities between Dante’s Inferno and the Garuda Purana can be explained by the common horrors and fears that human beings share: being devoured alive, drowned, and mutilated. It is as if the justice available to most people on Earth is insufficient, and so there is hope that a divine justice will eventually deliver a deferred punishment.
Wayan Ketig (Indonesia), Bima Swarga, c. 1970.
In January 2025, Donald Trump – who has cultivated a politics of anger that is not uncommon in our world – will be inaugurated for his second term as the president of the United States. Such a politics of anger is present in many countries, including across Europe – which otherwise sees itself as somehow above the brutal emotions and as a continent of reason. There is a temptation amongst liberals to characterise this politics of anger as fascism, but this is not accurate. Trump and his political confraternity across the world (from Giorgia Meloni in Italy to Javier Milei in Argentina) do not advertise themselves as fascists, nor do they wear the same emblems or use the same rhetoric. Though some of their followers brandish swastikas and other fascist symbols, most of them are more careful. They do not wear military uniforms, nor do they call the military out of the barracks to lend them a hand. Their politics is couched in a modern rhetoric of development and trade alongside the promise of jobs and social welfare for nationals. They point their fingers at the neoliberal pact of the old parties of liberalism and conservatism and mock them for their elitism. They elevate individuals from outside the ranks of the elites as saviours, men and women who they say will finally speak for the discarded precarious workers and the declined middle classes. They speak angrily to differentiate themselves from the old parties of liberalism and conservatism, who speak without emotion about the ghastly social and economic landscape that now exists in much of the world.
This begs the question: are the leaders of this ‘far right of a special type’ – a new kind of right wing that is intimately tied to liberalism – doing anything especially unique? A close look shows that they are merely building upon the foundation laid by the colourless leadership of the old parties of liberalism and conservativism. For example, the old parties already:
decimated the social fabric through privatisation and deregulation, weakened trade unions through policies of uberisation, and created insecurity and atomisation in society.
enforced policies that have increased inflation and deflated wages while increasing the wealth of the few through lax tax policies and rising stock markets.
strengthened the repressive apparatus of the state and tried to stifle dissent, including by targeting those who want to rebuild working-class movements.
encouraged war and devastation, such as by preventing a peace deal in Ukraine and encouraging the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians.
Such a politics of anger is already in motion in society, though none of it was created by the far right of a special type. A world of anger is the product of the neoliberal pact of the old parties of liberalism and conservatism. It is neither the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), nor France’s National Rally (Rassemblement national) or Trump in his first term that have produced this world, however repellent their politics may be. When these groups win state power, they become beneficiaries of a society of anger produced by the neoliberal pact.
Toyohara Kunichika (Japan), Yanagikaze Fukiya no Itosuji, 1864.
The language of Trump and his political family is nonetheless alarming. They speak with casual anger, and they turn that anger against the vulnerable (especially migrants and dissidents). Trump, for example, speaks of refugees as if they are vermin that need to be exterminated. Older, decadent language can be heard in the rhetoric of the far right of a special type, the language of death and disorder. But this is their tone, not their policies. The old parties of the neoliberal pact have already sent their militaries to the border, invaded the slums, cut social relief and welfare out of the budgets of their countries, and increased spending for repression at home and abroad. The old politicians of the neoliberal pact will say that the ‘economy’ is flourishing, by which they mean that the stock market is bathed in champagne; they say that they will protect the right of women to control their health but pass no legislation to do so; they say that they are for ceasefires while they authorise weapons transfers to continue war and genocide. The neoliberal pact has already dislocated society. The parties of the far right simply push away the hypocrisy. They are not the antithesis of the neoliberal pact but its more accurate mirror image.
Yet irrational anger is not the mood of the people who vote for the parties of the far right of a special type, a cliché woven by unimaginative neoliberal politicians. It is the tone of the far right of a special type’s leading politicians that would earn them a place in the fifth circle of Dante’s hell. They are the angry ones. Their elite opponents, the politicians of the old parties of liberalism and conservatism, are the sullen ones, under the mud, their emotions muffled.
Franz von Stuck (Germany), Inferno, 1908.
In 2017, Brazil’s Perseu Abramo Foundation published a study about the political perceptions and values of the residents of São Paulo’s favelas, which found that they are in favour of more social policies of relief and welfare. They know that their hard work does not result in sufficient means, and so they hope that government policies will provide additional support. These opinions should theoretically lead to the growth of class politics. Yet the researchers found that this was not the case: instead, neoliberal ideas had flooded the favelas, leading its residents to see the primary conflict not as one between the rich and the poor, but one between the state and individuals, setting aside the role of capital. The findings of this study are replicated in many other similar investigations. It is not that the sections of the working class that turn to the far right of a special type are irrationally angry or deluded. They are clear about their experience, but they blame the degradation of their lives on the state. Can you blame them? Their relationship to the state is not shaped by social workers or welfare offices, but by the viciousness of the special police that are authorised to deny their civil and human rights. And so, they come to associate the state with the neoliberal pact and to hate it. Rising from these muddy waters, the politicians of the far right appear as potential saviours. Never mind that they have no agenda to reverse the carnage that the neoliberal policies of the old parties inflict on society: at least they purport to hate it, too.
Fuyuko Matsui (Japan), Keeping up the Pureness, 2004.
Yet the agenda of the far right of a special type is not to solve the problems of the majority: it is to deepen them by inflicting an acerbic form of nationalism on society, one that is not rooted in love of one’s fellow human beings but in hatred of the vulnerable. This hatred then masquerades as patriotism; the size of the national flag grows, and enthusiasm for the national anthem increases by decibels. Patriotism begins to smell of anger and bitterness, of violence and frustration, of the mud of hell. It is one thing to be patriotic about flags and anthems, but it is another to be patriotic against starvation and hopelessness.
Human beings ache to be decent, but that ache has been smothered in the mud by desperation and resentment. Dante and his guide eventually make their way through the circles of hell, crossing streams and chasms to arrive at a small hole in the firmament from which they can see the stars and have their first glimpse of paradise. We ache to see the stars.
Will the neoconservative agenda remain intact under Trump?
13 Nov 2024 , 10:32 am .
Donald Trump talks with Mike Huckabee at an event in Pennsylvania, in the midst of his presidential campaign (Photo: AP)
Recently, Donald Trump Jr. announced that he was working to ensure that neoconservatives and war hawks would not be included in his father's next administration.
After American comedian Dave Smith posted on X: "We need maximum pressure to keep all neocons and war hawks out of the Trump administration," the son responded: "Okay... I'm on it."
The president-elect, who is in the process of selecting his cabinet for when he returns to power in January, has since appointed several of them to senior positions.
They advocate reordering the world in terms of American exceptionalism through direct military action, contrary to any realistic or even pragmatic perception.
This group reached its peak of power during the George W. Bush administration, especially in the context of the war in Iraq. Over time, they have adapted to changes in the American political landscape and continue to influence the direction of foreign policy.
The new nominations, so far
On November 12, Trump nominated Florida Republican Congressman Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser in his future administration. In a post on the social media site Truth Social, he described him as "an expert on the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran, and global terrorism."
According to The Guardian , “Waltz is a decorated Green Beret.” He held key roles under George W. Bush, including as a policy director at the Pentagon and as a counterterrorism adviser under vice president Dick Cheney, perhaps the most iconic neoconservative of those years, now in the anti-Trump camp.
Following the evacuation of Afghanistan in 2021, Waltz urged Joe Biden to resume military operations in the region. The Intercept revealed that before his 2018 run for Congress, he ran a defense contracting company with offices in Afghanistan.
Journalist Michael Tracey describes Mike Waltz as one of the “most staunch interventionists in the US House of Representatives.” In an interview with him in 2022, he expressed his opinion on the Biden administration’s policy in Ukraine, arguing that it “has not escalated the war quickly and aggressively enough.”
The day before the presidential election, the congressman said in another interview that in order to end the conflict in Ukraine, it was necessary to increase sanctions against Russia and adopt a more permissive stance regarding Kiev's use of long-range weapons provided by NATO.
Waltz advocates an equally tough approach toward Iran and China.
In a statement on social media, Trump also expressed his enthusiasm for the nomination of Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, as ambassador to Israel, calling him a "respected public servant" who "will work tirelessly to achieve peace in West Asia."
He added: "The people of Israel love him," a designation that will be welcomed by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who is determined to continue escalating the war against Palestine and Lebanon.
Throughout his career, Huckabee has maintained a strong pro-Israel stance, promoting the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, considered illegal under international law. He denied the Israeli military occupation as an objective fact and even the very existence of the Palestinian people.
Other confirmed nominations , in chronological order, are Elise Stefanik, who will serve as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.; Pete Hegseth, who will head the Department of Defense; and John Ratcliffe, who will head the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Elise Stefanik has led efforts to silence pro-Palestine movements on American campuses and backed Israel's decision to cut aid to UNRWA, accusing the UN agency of involvement in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
She also takes a decidedly anti-China stance. Following an incident at Harvard, where a student was removed for interrupting the People's Republic's ambassador, Stefanik said that higher education institutions should not be used as "tools for the Chinese Communist Party's transnational repression."
Pete Hegseth is a veteran and Fox News host who served in the military in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. He worked with the group Veterans for Freedom to lobby for increased troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. After Soleimani was killed, he urged Trump to bomb critical infrastructure in Iran, including mosques and hospitals.
Hegseth criticized the Biden administration for not sending weapons to Ukraine quickly enough and called Putin "authoritarian" and a "war criminal."
John Ratcliffe has called Iran "acts of war" against the United States, alleging that the country hacked Trump campaign emails and plotted to assassinate him.
He argues that the United States should carry out joint attacks with Israel against Iran , thereby supporting the strategy of "maximum pressure."
Marco Rubio is currently the nominee for secretary of state, according to insiders close to the decision-making cited by the New York Times .
In addition to being a staunch supporter of Zionism and a harasser of Iran and China, Rubio plays a key role in promoting interventionist measures against Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, on which he insists on maintaining economic sanctions. He gave strong support to the false government of Juan Guaidó.
Some of Trump's most ardent supporters, Politico says , expressed disapproval of the still-unconfirmed pick for the post, stating a preference for Ric Grenell, the former acting Director of National Intelligence.
Conservative comedian Dave Smith said Tuesday that Rubio is "a disaster."
"We could give Liz Cheney the State Department," Smith wrote. "It's a terrible signal."
"Blonde? Hillary wasn't available?" wrote another MAGA influencer.
None of these positions on issues such as China, Russia, West Asia and Latin America are distinguishable from those taken by other neoconservatives in previous administrations, including Trump’s first. If anything, the main difference lies, it seems, in the level of support and loyalty that these individuals provide to the president-elect.
False promises and the permanence of war
It is notable how Donald Trump's decisions regarding appointments for his next administration contradict the promises he made during his campaign to obtain massive support for his re-election, thus repeating a pattern that was already observed during his first presidential campaign and his subsequent administration in 2016.
Under the slogan "America First," Trump pledged to abandon the neoconservative agenda of costly and unnecessary wars to focus on economic recovery and lowering the cost of living for Americans.
In fact, the Trump campaign seemed to have pushed a considerable group of neoconservative voices into an open alliance with the Democratic Party, and they associated themselves with Kamala Harris's electoral campaign, which is reminiscent, again, of the situation in 2016, when William Kristol and Robert Kagan, the most representative theorists of the so-called "neocons", supported the Democrats.
Despite announcing that he would not name his former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, or his former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, to positions in his next administration — both of whom are notorious neoconservatives — his recent appointments suggest that Washington's course of action will not change significantly.
During his first term, hawks of this stature, along with others such as John Bolton, were the ones who determined much of the foreign policy of that administration.
In American foreign policy, both Republicans and Democrats in recent decades have operated under the framework, sources of power and influence, and actors of neoconservatism.
As the days go by, Trump's second administration seems to be confirming this trend once again, acting as a mere façade for the neoconservatives' aggressive interests and policies on the international stage.
November 14, 2024 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR West Asia reacts to Trump’s dalliance with Zionism
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman addressing the joint extraordinary leaders summit of Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Arab League, Riyadh, November 11, 2024
The election victory of Donald Trump in the November 5 election is being perceived in the West Asian region with growing anxiety as presaging the US aligning one hundred percent with the Zionist project for Greater Israel.
Although Trump has kept out vociferous neocons from his government positions, the same cannot be said for pro-Zionist figures. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims he has spoken three times with Trump already since the election and they “see eye-to-eye regarding the Iranian threat and all of its components.”
The “components” implies that Netanyahu hopes to get a blank cheque from Trump to accelerate the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, for annexation of West Bank, violent reprisals against Palestinians and, most important, to carry the war right into Iranian territory.
Three events in as many days this week show the first signs of a backlash building up. On Monday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei gave Tehran’s first official reaction to Trump’s election victory. Baqaei took a nuanced line saying, “What matters to us in this region is the United States’ actual behaviour and policies regarding Iran and the broader West Asia.”
Notably, Baqaei expressed “cautious optimism that the new [Trump] administration might adopt a more peace-oriented approach, reduce regional hostilities, and uphold its commitments.” (Tehran Times) Baqaei also refuted the recent allegation by Washington that Iran was involved in plots to assassinate Trump. He called the Biden Administration’s allegation as “nothing more than an attempt to sabotage relations” between Tehran and Washington by “laying traps to complicate the path for the next administration.”
Baqaei also held out an assurance to the incoming US administration that Tehran firmly adheres to a nuclear programme for peaceful purposes. He announced that Rafael Grossi, head of International Atomic Energy (IAEA) was due to arrive in Tehran on Wednesday night.
Taken together, Baqaei’s remarks suggest that Iran hopes there’s still daylight possible between Trump and Netanyahu. The clincher here would have been the remark that Trump slipped into his victory speech with great deliberation on November 6 that “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
Trump was on record during his election campaign that “I don’t want to do damage to Iran but they cannot have nuclear weapons.” Tehran’s consultations with Grossi responds to Trump’s concern. This is smart thinking. Iran’s non-provocative stance would mean there is no alibi for attacking Iran.
That said, however, the “known unknown” still remains — namely, Iran’s retaliation to the Israeli attack on October 26. On November 2, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a video released by Iranian state media, promised “a crushing response” to Israeli attack. Conceivably, the period till January 20 when Trump is sworn in, is going to be critical.
Meanwhile, this week witnessed that Iran and Saudi Arabia have given verve to their detente, which is now manifesting as Riyadh’s solidarity and open support for Iran in its growing confrontation with Israel.
Amidst the growing tensions in the region, the chief of staff of Saudi Arabia’s armed forces, Fayyad al-Ruwaili, visited Tehran on November 10 and met with his Iranian counterpart General Mohammad Bagheri. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke on the phone with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the phone in the context of a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – Arab League in Riyadh on November 11-12. Iran has extended an invitation to MbS to visit Tehran!
Two hugely significant highlights of the Riyadh summit have been, first, the Saudi prince’s inaugural address where he warned Israel against hitting Iran. This marked a historic turn by Riyadh toward Tehran-Israeli conflict, and away from US-supported normalisation with Jerusalem.
MbS told the summit that the international community should oblige Israel “to respect the sovereignty of the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran and not to violate its lands.”
Again, Saudi Arabia accused Israel for the first time of committing “genocide” in Gaza. MbS told the leaders who gathered in Riyadh, that the kingdom renewed “its condemnation and categorical rejection of the genocide committed by Israel against the brotherly Palestinian people…”
Trump has been put on notice that he’s meeting a radically different geopolitical landscape in West Asia compared to his first term as president. The Trump transition team is keeping its cards close, offering NatSec Daily a boilerplate statement that Trump will take “necessary action” to “lead our country” and “restore peace through strength.” But warning bells are ringing.
The key pillars of Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy against Tehran — isolating Iran and ramping up economic pressure while maintaining a credible threat of military force as deterrent — have become wobbly.
On the other hand, the massive Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel on October 1 and the colossal failure of the Israeli air strike on Iran twenty-six days later convey a loud message all across West Asia that Israel is no longer the dominant military power it used to be — and there is a new sheriff in town. Trump will have to navigate the fallout of both sides of this issue with diminished US diplomatic and geopolitical capital at his disposal.
Meanwhile, Tehran is also deepening its cooperation with Russia, which adds a giant new Ukraine-sized complexity to Trump’s Iran policy. While in Eurasia, the US has allies, Trump is navigating in West Asia pretty much alone.
The US’ stark isolation comes home dramatically by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s announcement on Wednesday that Turkey, a NATO member country, has severed all ties with Israel. Erdogan disclosed this to journalists aboard his plane after visiting Saudi Arabia. A regional trend to ostracise Israel is visible now and it is destined to expand and deepen.
The summit in Riyadh witnessed the African Union joining hands with the Arab League and OIC to sign a tripartite agreement on Tuesday to establish a mechanism to support the Palestinian cause, which will be coordinated through the three organisations’ secretariats as a game changer to strengthen their influence in international forums. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan noted that the three organisations will now onward speak with one voice internationally.
Even as the summit concluded in Riyadh, Crown Prince Salman had a call on Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin readout stated that the two leaders “reaffirmed their commitment to continue the consistent expansion” of Russian-Saudi ties and specifically “stressed the importance of continuing close coordination within OPEC Plus and stated the effectiveness and timeliness of the steps being taken in this format to ensure balance on the global energy market.”
On the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Kremlin readout noted with satisfaction that “the principled approaches of Russia and Saudi Arabia with regard to the Middle East settlement are essentially identical.”
MbS’ initiative to re-invigorate his conversation with Putin can only be seen against the backdrop of the profound misgivings in Riyadh regarding the Trump-Netanyahu bromance and the spectre of a possible regional war haunting the region stemming out of Israel drawing encouragement from the seamless US support expected through the coming 4-year period for the Zionist cause.
Donald Trump has repeatedly explained the critical importance of vengeance (Mother Jones, 10/19/16): “When somebody screws you, you screw them back in spades. And I really mean it. I really mean it. You’ve gotta hit people hard. And it’s not so much for that person. It’s other people watch.”
“Revenge—it’s a big part of Trump’s life,” Mother Jones‘ David Corn (10/19/16) wrote just before Trump was elected to the presidency the first time:
In speeches and public talks, Trump has repeatedly expressed his fondness for retribution. In 2011, he addressed the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia, to explain how he had achieved his success. He noted there were a couple of lessons not taught in business school that successful people must know. At the top of the list was this piece of advice: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”
Knowing this about Trump, Democrats and liberals worry that he will use the Department of Justice, especially if Matt Gaetz is confirmed as attorney general, as an unrestrained vehicle to pursue the prosecution of political enemies.
But given Trump’s constant attacks on media—“the opposition party,” as his ally Steve Bannon called the fourth estate (New York Times, 1/26/17)—journalists fear that he will use the power of the state to intimidate if not destroy the press.
Defunding public broadcasting
If you run a journalistic outfit, like PBS president Paula Kerger (Politico, 3/27/19), and don’t know why Trump doesn’t like you, you probably aren’t doing your job very well.
Trump called for defunding NPR (Newsweek, 4/10/24) after a long-time editor accused the radio outlet of liberal bias in the conservative journal Free Press (4/9/24). Rep. Claudia Tenney (R–NY) introduced legislation to defund NPR because “taxpayers should not be forced to fund NPR, which has become a partisan propaganda machine” (Office of Claudia Tenney, 4/19/24). With Republicans also holding both houses of congress, bills like Tenney’s become more viable. Trump has previously supported budget proposals that eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Politico, 3/27/19).
The infamous Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda many see as a blueprint for the second Trump term, calls for the end to public broadcasting, because it is viewed as liberal propaganda:
Every Republican president since Richard Nixon has tried to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) of taxpayer funding. That is significant not just because it means that for half a century, Republican presidents have failed to accomplish what they set out to do, but also because Nixon was the first president in office when National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which the CPB funds, went on air.
In other words, all Republican presidents have recognized that public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake. As a 35-year-old lawyer in the Nixon White House, one Antonin Scalia warned that conservatives were being “confronted with a long-range problem of significant social consequences—that is, the development of a government-funded broadcast system similar to the BBC.”
All of which means that the next conservative president must finally get this done, and do it despite opposition from congressional members of his own party if necessary. To stop public funding is good policy and good politics. The reason is simple: President Lyndon Johnson may have pledged in 1967 that public broadcasting would become “a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families and to provide assistance to our classrooms,” but public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism.
PBS and NPR, as FAIR (10/24/24) has noted, has for decades caved in to right-wing pressures—PBS by adding conservative programming, NPR by trying to rid itself of political commentary altogether. But the right will never let go of its ideological opposition to media outlets not directly owned by the corporate class.
‘Whether criminally or civilly’
A
A bill—defeated for now—”would have granted the Department of the Treasury broad authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofits deemed to be supporting ‘terrorism'” (Al Jazeera, 11/12/24).
Trump also has a well known track record of revoking the credentials of journalists who produce reporting he doesn’t like (Washington Post, 2/24/17, 5/8/19; New Republic, 11/5/24). It is realistic to assume that a lot more reporters will be barred from White House events in the years ahead.
While a bill that would grant the secretary of the treasury broad authority to revoke nonprofit status to any organization the office deems as a “terrorist” organization has so far failed (Al Jazeera, 11/12/24), it is quite possible that it could come up for a vote again. If this bill were to become law, the Treasury Department could use this ax against a great many progressive nonprofit outlets, like Democracy Now! and the American Prospect, as well as investigative outlets like ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The department could even target the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has already said in response to Trump’s victory, “The fundamental right to a free press, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, must not be impaired” (11/6/24).
Margaret Sullivan (Guardian, 10/27/24), an avid media observer, said there is no reason to think Trump will soften his campaign against the free press. She said:
In 2022, he sued the Pulitzer Prize board after they defended their awards to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Both newspapers had won Pulitzer Prizes for investigating Trump’s ties to Russia.
More recently, Trump sued ABC News and George Stephanopoulos for defamation over the way the anchor characterized the verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual misconduct case against him. Each of those cases is wending its way through the courts.
Margaret Sullivan (Guardian, 10/27/24): “Donald Trump poses a clear threat to journalists, to news organizations and to press freedom in the US and around the world.”
She added:
There is nothing to suggest that Trump would soften his approach in a second term. If anything, we can expect even more aggression.
Consider what one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, Kash Patel, has said.
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel threatened during a podcast with Steve Bannon. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”
Trump has already gone after the New York Times and Penguin Random House since Sullivan wrote this. CJR (11/14/24) said:
The letter, addressed to lawyers at the New York Times and Penguin Random House, arrived a week before the election. Attached was a discursive ten-page legal threat from an attorney for Donald Trump that demanded $10 billion in damages over “false and defamatory statements” contained in articles by Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.
It singles out two stories coauthored by Buettner and Craig that related to their book on Trump and his financial dealings, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, released on September 17. It also highlighted an October 20 story headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment” by Baker and an October 22 piece by Schmidt, “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”
And just before his victory, Trump sued CBS News, alleging the network’s “deceitful” editing of a recent 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris “misled the public and unfairly disadvantaged him” (CBS News, 10/31/24).
Expect more of this, except this time, Trump will have all the levers of the state on his side. And whatever moves the next Trump administration makes to attack the press will surely have a chilling effect, which will only empower his anti-democratic political agenda.
(Well, there's no denying that they wuz axin' for it....Some of the big bosses hedged their bets at the last minute, dunno if that will do them any good, he is a vengeful bastard.)
******
Ultra-conservative war hawks dominate Trump cabinet
Trump quickly fills cabinet positions with Zionists, warhawks, and personal friends all unified under an ultra-conservative agenda and total loyalty to Trump
November 14, 2024 by Peoples Dispatch
Since being elected to be the 47th President of the United States last week, Donald Trump has moved quickly to fill his cabinet with both Washington insiders and outsiders, but all unified under an ultra-conservative agenda and a complete loyalty to Trump.
Peoples Dispatch has compiled a list of notable appointments below:
Thomas Homan: “Border Czar”
Homan was the head of ICE during Trump’s first term, and has been selected to lead up Trump’s campaign promise to conduct mass deportations of 15 to 20 million people. Homan pledged at the Republican National Convention that he would “run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen” and promised to “flood sanctuary cities” with agents to conduct mass arrests, and carry out massive raids targeting workplaces. He was given the “Presidential Rank Award” by Barack Obama in 2015 for his work in “enforcement and removal operations.” Obama himself was dubbed the “Deporter in Chief” by immigration activists for deporting more people than any president who came before him.
Stephen Miller: Deputy chief of staff for policy
Miller is another pick that signals that Trump is serious regarding his campaign promise to carry out the largest mass deportations in US history. Miller is the architect of the cruelest anti-immigrant policies of the first Trump administration, such as family separation, and a key bridge between the Trump administration and the “alt-right” fascist movement. Miller supports deploying military units of the National Guard to hunt down undocumented people, and advocates for the construction of massive camps to detain immigrants rounded up in raids.
Marco Rubio: Secretary of State
Trump’s choice of Florida Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State has surprised some who wanted to believe Trump’s campaign promise of “preventing World War III”. Rubio is a notorious warhawk, known for promoting an aggressive foreign policy approach towards countries that do not tip-toe around the US, including Iran, China, Russia, and Venezuela. Rubio’s appointment could be a test of whether the Trump administration will lean more neoconservative than promised or whether Rubio will be forced to toe a more isolationist foreign policy line.
Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, has a particular hostility towards the socialist state and is a key promoter of harsh sanctions against the island. Rubio has also attacked left-wing social movements within the United States, attempting to use the power of the state to harshly sanction the BDS movement and pro-Palestine and leftist organizations.
Michael Waltz: National Security Adviser
US Army colonel and Florida Representative Michael Waltz is also a notorious warhawk, particularly on China and Iran. During Trump’s first administration, after he almost provoked war with Iran with his assassination of General Qassim Suleimani in 2020, Waltz was one of a small group invited to the White House to receive a briefing on the strike.
Matt Gaetz: Attorney General
Trump loyalist and Florida Representative Matt Gaetz is a prominent figure in the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party, leading the charge to overthrow the more established Republican Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House—who was replaced with Mike Johnson in 2023. Gaetz, like Trump, is no stranger to scandal, being embroiled in a three-year long federal sex trafficking investigation that ended in 2023.
Pete Hegseth: Secretary of Defense
Hegseth is a controversial Fox News host and military veteran, who is known for his advocacy on behalf of former members of the military who have been convicted of war crimes. This includes lobbying in defense of Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, who was accused of stabbing a teenaged prisoner of war to death and shooting a teenage girl and elderly man while deployed in Iraq. Since Trump picked Hegseth, his collection of right-wing tattoos has gotten some media attention, which includes a tattoo across his arm of the medieval crusader slogan “Deus Vult,” which translates to “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,” and signals his political leanings towards the Christian far right.
Kristi Noem: Secretary of Homeland Security
Noem is the current Governor of South Dakota who’s known for her total loyalty to Trump. Noem’s deeply anti-migrant agenda has led her to claim that the “United States of America is in a time of invasion” as a consequence of immigrants “waging war against our nation.” Noem supported the Muslim ban during Trump’s first term because it would restrict refugees from “terrorist hotbed areas.”
John Ratcliffe: CIA Director
Ratcliffe was Trump’s director of national intelligence during his first term. This pick was praised by Republican Representative Mike Turner, who has accused fellow Republican colleagues of repeating Russian propaganda, for helping “counter the serious threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.”
Tulsi Gabbard: Director of national intelligence
Trump’s pick of veteran and former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard as the pick to oversee 18 spy agencies has been welcome news to those more critical of the foreign policy establishment. Gabbard endorsed Trump last month, claiming that Trump would transform the Republican Party “back to the party of the people, and the party of peace.”
Steven Witkoff: Special envoy to the Middle East
Witkoff is a Zionist multi-millionaire real estate investor and close personal friend of Trump’s, with zero prior experience in politics in the Middle East/West Asia region.
Mike Huckabee: Ambassador to Israel
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and ardent Evangelical Christian is likely to continue his long career of defending Israel in his new post. Huckabee once argued that there was “no such thing as a Palestinian” and recently claimed that the US would back an Israeli attempt to annex the West Bank.
Elise Stefanik: United Nations ambassador
The conservative New York representative went viral for her role in orchestrating the downfall of several prominent university presidents, including former Harvard President Claudine Gay, over the accusation that these presidents were not repressing pro-Palestine students enough. Stefanik is viewed as one of the most prominent enemies of the student movement in the US.
Lee Zeldin: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
Trump’s pick of Zeldin as EPA Administrator signals that Trump is ready to make good on his campaign promise to attack key environmental protections that are one of the few ways the US government attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
The world’s richest person, who in many ways directly bought votes for Trump in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, has been promised a formal role in Trump’s administration alongside entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, through the new commission dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency (the acronym referencing an internet meme). DOGE is in many ways designed to help the ultra-rich including Musk slash through government regulations that may place a limit on power and profit.
Ain't too worried about DOGE, first it is not an actual government agency, just an advisory body. Second, I think Trump and Musky will have a falling out over electric cars.
Most of these people are utterly unqualified other than loyalty to the Solipsist in Chief.
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CovertAction Bulletin: Struggle Continues Under Trump
By Rachel Hu and Chris Garaffa - November 14, 2024 0
Within days of winning the election, Donald Trump is already making announcements about who will—and won’t—be in his cabinet and influencing his administration. On today’s show, we’re going to take a look at what a second Trump term is going to look like. From Elon Musk being on calls with Trump and Zelenskyy to RFK having influence over health policy and beyond, workers in the US and around the world will be under attack on many fronts.
We’re joined later in the show by Walter Smolarek, producer of The Socialist Program, to talk about Trump’s foreign policy and in particular what his election means for the genocide in Gaza, conflict with China, and the war in Ukraine.
Halting the Decline or Falling Into the Abyss?
Posted by Internationalist 360° on November 14, 2024
Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Trump’s victory is a desperate and historically understandable gesture by US society to halt the decline of the imperial prosperity it experienced throughout the 20th century and, above all, after the Second World War. It is a desperate gesture, because society has to turn to a president convicted by the US criminal justice system, who has performed very badly during the Covid-19 pandemic (1.2 million deaths, many of them avoidable), who has incited the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and who openly claims to be willing to eliminate the very essence of US democracy – the limited powers of each sovereign body (checks and balances) – in exchange for the promise that everything will go back to the way it was before.
But it is also a historically understandable gesture because all previous empires have declined and died due to the internal degradation of their social, economic, political, and cultural life. If anything, external enemies delivered the final coup de grace. It is difficult to define what the decline of an empire consists of, when it begins and when it ends. For example, the Roman Empire began to decline after the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 AD), but only collapsed three hundred years later. Broad generalizations should be avoided on this subject, which is prone to determinism and insensitive to historical contingencies. I can imagine future historians worrying less about the decline of the American empire than about how long the empire survived the predictions of its decline.
When I talk about decline, I’m talking about the discourse of decline as a political weapon for access to power. Trump’s main slogan – MAGA (Make America Great Again) – is clear in this respect. There is decline, but it can be halted, even reversed. The popular vote given to Trump shows that this discourse is convincing in the US today.
Halt the decline or fall into the abyss?
Social polarization, the concentration of wealth, the increase in social inequality, the degradation of the quality of the political elite and of democratic coexistence, the dominance of financial capital over productive capital – these are all seen as signs of decline. Decline is a structural but discontinuous process. It can be halted at times by the same forces that are responsible for its decline.
Because of its rentier nature, financial capital was the first to show signs of halting the decline. The day after Trump’s victory, Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index announced that Donald Trump’s victory had helped, overnight, to increase the fortunes of the 10 richest people in the world. According to the index, these fortunes gained almost 64 billion dollars on Wednesday alone. It was the biggest daily increase recorded since the index began in 2012. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, also saw his fortune grow the most. His net worth increased by 10%, the equivalent of 26.5 billion dollars. He was one of the biggest supporters of Trump’s campaign and was promised a position in the next government; the fortune of Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, increased by more than 3%, which means an increase of 7 billion dollars; Bill Gates, owner of Microsoft, saw his wealth rise by 1.2% to 159.5 billion; Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, saw their wealth increase by 3.6%, each reaching a fortune of around 150 billion. The euphoria in the world of bitcoins was another manifestation of financial optimism. If these individuals were nationals of a country hostile to the US, they would immediately be labeled oligarchs. Whether this is evidence of a halt to the decline or a deepening of the decline is an open question for now. In reality, it means a new boost to the concentration of wealth, a new economic protectionism with unpredictable consequences, and a deepening of the crisis of democratic coexistence. If the danger of fascism was real if Trump was elected, as was said and repeated by Kamala Harris’ campaign, why is Joe Biden now making statements guaranteeing the peaceful transition of his government to the Trump administration? Is this a democratic gesture in a democracy on the brink?
Democracy or a new kind of oligarchy?
Of course, Trump didn’t win the election with the vote of the tycoons. He won the election with the vote of the American people, especially the most vulnerable who have seen their standard of living deteriorate over the last four years, especially after President Biden’s social agenda was blocked in Congress and the war in Ukraine became the Biden administration’s major investment. The Democratic Party has long abandoned the working classes, exposing them to declining living standards, inflation in the price of essential goods and increased exploitation. It’s no surprise that these classes are now abandoning it. In relation to the 2020 election, the Democratic Party lost 10 million votes and only gained votes among the upper classes. It clamorously lost the youth vote, outraged by US complicity in the Gaza genocide.
How is it possible that the social groups that will eventually suffer the most from the worsening concentration of wealth voted for Trump? One of the essential conditions for the functioning of liberal democracy is for citizens to be well informed. This condition is deteriorating worldwide in times of fakenews and hate speech, and the American public is considered one of the most ill-informed in the world.
But this may be just one of the reasons. Public opinion surveys consistently show that US citizens are in favor of progressive social policies: expanding affordable medical services, the right to housing, controlling inflation of essential goods and increasing taxes paid by the richest. However, the Democratic Party focused its election campaign on the danger of fascism and the backlash against race and gender identity politics. It seemed a sensible tactic given Trump’s racism and misogyny throughout his campaign. The truth is that all this seemed too abstract for 75% of the voter population who, polled at the exit polls, said they were experiencing financial difficulties. The identity politics argument only won votes among the higher social classes.
This is reminiscent of the analysis by US political scientists in the 1970s and 80s about the low value Latin American countries placed on democracy, easily exchanging it for any dictator who promised to improve their living conditions. Perhaps these analyses should be revisited, but now applied to the American people.
It seems increasingly clear that the majority of the American population no longer has any influence on the conduct of political life. In a recent book, Oxford professor Joe Foweraker (Oligarchy in the Americas, 2021) argues that a transition is underway in the US from a democratically elected constitutional government to a government of an unelected oligarchy that is virtually unaccountable to anyone. This is a new kind of oligarchy. Unlike the robber barons of the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, today’s oligarchs don’t use corruption, state subsidies or state loans; they simply control political power so that the taxation system and the economic regulatory framework favor their interests. In other words, they manipulate political power in order to distort markets or prevent the state from reforming them. The vast majority of US senators and congressional representatives belong to the richest 1% in the US and are compensated for defending policies that favor the new oligarchy. In view of this, the vote for Trump may well have been a protest vote. A genuine vote, but one destined to fail. A protest vote destined to fail because Trump has already announced more tax cuts, more deregulation of the economy, and an increase in fossil energy production.
The analysis of Project 2025 (Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, 920 pages) published by the Heritage Foundation in 2023 is revealing of what could happen in the coming years, both in the US and in the world influenced by US politics [1]. In addition to the concentration of power in the figure of the President, the project is based on the following ideas: “Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-government to the American people. Defend the nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely – what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty’.”
Defending the borders means deportation. And what will massive deportation of undocumented immigrants mean? Thousands of police? An army? Construction of internment camps? What will the invective against teachers in schools and universities mean if Trump considers the vast majority to be far-left radicals, Marxists or even communists? How will he force teachers to “teach students to love their country and not hate it”?
Trump and the world
Everything that happens in the US at home has repercussions in the world. Trump’s victory is likely to have the following global impacts. It accelerates the ethnic cleansing underway in Palestine in order to consolidate the Israeli government as a spearhead in the Eastern Mediterranean, historically the geopolitical space for relations between East and West; as the empire’s advance guard in a strategic area, Israel will have veto power over US policy in the region; true to this strategy, Iran is geopolitically more important than Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe where, incidentally, around 30% of the land is already in the hands of the multinational companies DuPont, Cargill and Monsanto (owned by the world’s largest investment fund, Blackrock). It aggravates the confrontation with China, but whether this increases or decreases the likelihood of World War III is unknown for now; everything will depend on China’s strategy for whom four years of Trumpism is little more than a minute in China’s long life; and if the war is fought, it may be by very different means from previous wars, even if it ends up with the same death toll as always. It strengthens far-right forces around the world, now that the “world’s largest democracy” is ruled by the far right. It will try by all means to halt the advance of the BRICS. This last topic deserves a special mention.
The BRICS and the Trojan Horse
By vetoing Venezuela’s entry into the BRICS, perhaps the most clumsy act of Brazilian diplomacy in recent decades, Brazil has established itself as the Trojan Horse of the BRICS, that is, as a wedge of US imperialism at the heart of an initiative that sought to be an alternative to it. Oil still says almost everything. If Venezuela joined the BRICS, in future 6 out of every 10 barrels of oil produced daily in the world would be produced by the BRICS. Brazil is not alone in this policy, as India, albeit more discreetly, is also trying to delay the affirmation of the BRICS. Just as Brazil is too close to the US, India is too close to China.
It is legitimate to think that Brazil, by acting in this way, is trying to refound the policy of non-alignment that emerged from the Bandung Conference in 1961. The problem is that the original non-alignment was between Soviet socialism and Western capitalism, while the non-alignment sought now would be between two versions of capitalism, one led by China, the emerging empire, and the other led by the US, the declining empire. The history of capitalism shows that between two versions of capitalism there are no alternatives, but rather a savage struggle which, however, can include more or less long periods of truce.
History indicates that these periods will become shorter and shorter. Just bear in mind the sad recent history of Europe. After the Second World War, Europe built a version of capitalism, social democratic capitalism, and presented it as an alternative to US liberal capitalism. Similar phenomena occurred in Japan and South Korea. But these alternatives were only viable as long as they served (or didn’t hinder) the interests of US capitalism. The moment this was no longer the case, these alternatives went into crisis and, in the case of Europe, the war in Ukraine was the coup de grace. To halt its decline, US capitalism demanded Europe’s full support for its plan to confront China by weakening its strongest ally, Russia. Europe went along, making its social-democratic model unviable, diverting funds previously allocated to social policies to finance the war, and stopping buying cheap gas and oil from Russia in order to buy them several times more expensive from the US. The propaganda war made the mediocre politicians who govern Europe believe that once Europe was more closely aligned with the US, it would be stronger and safer. Trump’s victory, the divestment from NATO and the protectionism that are being announced cruelly show that Europe will soon be standing in the middle of the world square naked and dumb, wondering how all this was possible. Perhaps it will return to being, as it was until the 15th century, an insignificant corner of Eurasia, as far away from Russia as it is from the USA. There were warnings, but Cassandra’s curse is more alive than ever.
In the case of Brazil, I would dare to advise the Itamaraty politicians to read or re-read the books by Ruy Mauro Marini, one of the greatest Brazilian social scientists of the last century, who, in various publications, develops the theory of sub-imperialism. At the time, Marini was analyzing the relative autonomy of the military dictatorship’s government in the Latin American context in relation to US imperialism. This reading or re-reading is urgent so that politicians and diplomats can conclude that times have changed and that there is no place for relative autonomy today.
Brazil’s move against Venezuela is geopolitically an act to halt the decline of US imperialism. The US will be grateful for this support from the only political forces that are now its unconditional allies worldwide, the right and the far right. I wouldn’t like to see the PT government in a few years’ time, like Europe, standing naked and dumb in the world square wondering how all this happened.
Donald Trump is not an aberration. He and the seventy-five million who voted for him are just as American as Kamala Harris and the seventy-two million who voted for her. They can all feel legitimized by the Declaration of Independence, a structurally ambiguous document that can justify both inclusion and exclusion, “the two faces of American freedom” (Aziz Rana). Trump’s victory is above all a symptom of the crisis of liberal democracy, especially since neoliberalism assumed hegemony in capitalist economic thinking from the 1980s onwards. The causes need to be looked into more deeply and it is from this reflection that alternatives can emerge, if the human race does not run out of time.
[1] If anyone has any doubts about the crisis of the left and of progressive politics, try to imagine the possibility of such a vast array of think tanks coming together to produce a progressive policy plan as detailed and as vast as this ultra-conservative policy document-manifesto.
All of this talk about 'the end of Democracy' in the USA comes from people who don't realize that we've been an oligarchy all along. All that's changing is that the façade is taken down because they are convinced that the masses in the USA are not longer a threat to the plutocrats. We shall see...
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Scientists Fear What’s Next for Public Health if RFK Jr. Is Allowed To ‘Go Wild’
Posted on November 15, 2024 by Yves Smith
Yves here. As much as we have lambasted the CDC’s and Biden Administration performance during Covid, yours truly is not keen about the idea of RFK, Jr. as head of HHS. Even though he has some good ideas about improving Americans’ food safety, he’s not only unsound but unrepentantly so on some important issues.
First, he intends to fire 600 officials at the NIH. Mass firings are never a good idea. Perhaps I missed it, but I have yet to hear him address what I see as a far more serious problem: that NIH employees can and do collect royalties on NIH projects, with Fauci having been a particularly big-ticket beneficiary.
Second, the article suggests RFK, Jr. would tighten up vaccine and drug approvals. Given the dodgy mRNA vaccine trial/approval process (IM Doc has pointed out that increases in all-cause mortality for Pfizer during the study period would have led to an immediate halt to the trial until it was understood why that happened and if the “why” implicated vaccine safety) and the suppression of reports of vaccine injuries (we have discussed this repeatedly and at length), it may actually be necessary to do that to restore any faith in vaccines. And IM Doc has also decried the gutting of the role of Institutional Review Boards as a check on Big Pharma. So there is a need for improvement.
But RFK, Jr. is hardly the person to do that. He has never recanted his wrong-headed and decisively-debunked claim that thiomersal in vaccines (or for that matter, vaccines at all) caused autism. He was also an important figure fanning misguided fears about an MMR vaccine in Samoa, where two deaths had occurred. The problem was not the vaccine but that two nurses, later convicted for manslaughter, had mixed it with muscle relaxant. Measles vaccinations plunged, an outbreak occurred, and 83 children died.
The article also suggests that RFK, Jr. would relax the already weak standards for dietary supplements. The US is already more permissive than most countries, which generally do not allow the sale of hormones like melatonin and DHEA. In Australia, dietary supplements are regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration and made to pharmaceutical grade standards, so you know you are getting the dose and potency listed on the label. It may be a function of these standards that the only time I have found echinacea to help in fighting off bugs was when I used an Australian brand (and yes, I had also tried many supposedly very high quality US versions).
Having said all of that, I am not sure Trump can get the votes for his approval. I would have preferred RFK, Jr. as attorney general. He could still have made plenty of trouble, and potentially more of the clearly net positive sort.
By Arthur Allen, senior KFF Health correspondent, who previously worked for Politico. Originally published at KFF Health News
Many scientists at the federal health agencies await the second Donald Trump administration with dread as well as uncertainty over how the president-elect will reconcile starkly different philosophies among the leaders of his team.
Trump announced Thursday he’ll nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, after saying during his campaign he’d let the anti-vaccine activist “go wild” on medicines, food, and health.
Should Kennedy win Senate confirmation, his critics say a radical antiestablishment medical movement with roots in past centuries would take power, threatening the achievements of a science-based public health order painstakingly built since World War II.
Trump said in a post on the social platform X that “Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” echoing Kennedy’s complaints about the medical establishment. The former Democratic presidential candidate will “end the Chronic Disease epidemic” and “Make American Great and Healthy Again!” Trump wrote.
If Kennedy makes good on his vision for transforming public health, childhood vaccine mandates could wither. New vaccines might never win approval, even as the FDA allows dangerous or inefficient therapies onto the market. Agency websites could trumpet unproven or debunked health ideas. And if Trump’s plan to weaken civil service rights goes through, anyone who questions these decisions could be summarily fired.
“Never has anybody like RFK Jr. gotten anywhere close to the position he may be in to actually shape policy,” said Lewis Grossman, a law professor at American University and the author of “Choose Your Medicine,” a history of U.S. public health.
Kennedy and an adviser Calley Means, a health care entrepreneur, say dramatic changes are needed because of the high levels of chronic disease in the United States. Government agencies have corruptly tolerated or promoted unhealthy diets and dangerous drugs and vaccines, they say.
Means and Kennedy did not respond to requests for comment. Four conservative members of the first Trump health bureaucracy spoke on condition of anonymity. They eagerly welcomed the former president’s return but voiced few opinions about specific policies. Days after last week’s election, RFK Jr. announced that the Trump administration would immediately fire and replace 600 National Institutes of Health officials. He set up a website seeking crowdsourced nominees for federal appointments, with a host of vaccination foes and chiropractors among the early favorites.
At meetings last week at Mar-a-Lago involving Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., Kennedy, and Means, according to Politico, some candidates for leading health posts included Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University scientist who opposed covid lockdowns; Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who opposes mRNA covid vaccines and rejected well-established disease control practices during a measles outbreak; Johns Hopkins University surgeon Marty Makary; and Means’ sister, Stanford-trained surgeon and health guru Casey Means.
All are mavericks of a sort, though their ideas are not uniform. Yet the notion that they could elbow aside a century of science-based health policy is profoundly troubling to many health professionals. They see Kennedy’s presence at the heart of the Trump transition as a triumph of the “medical freedom” movement, which arose in opposition to the Progressive Era idea that experts should guide health care policy and practices.
It could represent a turning away from the expectation that mainstream doctors be respected for their specialized knowledge, said Howard Markel, an emeritus professor of pediatrics and history at the University of Michigan, who began his clinical career treating AIDS patients and ended it after suffering a yearlong bout of long covid.
“We’ve gone back to the idea of ‘every man his own doctor,’” he said, referring to a phrase that gained currency in the 19th century. It was a bad idea then and it’s even worse now, he said.
“What does that do to the morale of scientists?” Markel asked. The public health agencies, largely a post-WWII legacy, are “remarkable institutions, but you can screw up these systems, not just by defunding them but by deflating the true patriots who work in them.”
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf told a conference on Nov. 12 that he worried about mass firings at the FDA. “I’m biased, but I feel like the FDA is sort of at peak performance right now,” he said. At a conference the next day, CDC Director Mandy Cohen reminded listeners of the horrors of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and polio. “I don’t want to have to see us go backward in order to remind ourselves that vaccines work,” she said.
Stocks of some the biggest vaccine developers fell after news outlets led by Politico reported that the RFK pick was expected. Moderna, the developer of one of the most popular covid-19 vaccines, closed down 5.6%. Pfizer, another covid vaccine manufacturer, fell 2.6%. GSK, the producer of vaccines protecting against respiratory syncytial virus, hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, and influenza, fell just over 2%. French drug company Sanofi, whose website boasts its products vaccinate over 500 million annually, tumbled nearly 3.5%.
Exodus From the Agencies?
With uncertainty over the direction of their agencies, many older scientists at the NIH, FDA, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are considering retirement, said a senior NIH scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job.
“Everybody I talk to sort of takes a deep breath and says, ‘It doesn’t look good,’” the official said.
“I hear of many people getting CVs ready,” said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University. They include two of his former students who now work at the FDA, Caplan said.
Others, such as Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, have voiced wait-and-see attitudes. “We worked with the Trump administration last time. There were times things worked reasonably well,” he said, “and times when things were chaotic, particularly during covid.” Any wholesale deregulation efforts in public health would be politically risky for Trump, he said, because when administrations “screw things up, people get sick and die.”
At the FDA, at least, “it’s very hard to make seismic changes,” former FDA chief counsel Dan Troy said.
But the administration could score easy libertarian-tinged wins by, for example, telling its new FDA chief to reverse the agency’s refusal to approve the psychedelic drug MDMA from the company Lykos. Access to psychedelics to treat post-traumatic stress disorder has grabbed the interest of many veterans. Vitamins and supplements, already only lightly regulated, will probably get even more of a free pass from the next Trump FDA.
‘Medical Freedom’ or ‘Nanny State‘
Trump’s health influencers are not monolithic. Analysts see potential clashes among Kennedy, Musk, and more traditional GOP voices. Casey Means, a “holistic” MD at the center of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” team, calls for the government to cut ties with industry and remove sugar, processed food, and toxic substances from American diets. Republicans lampooned such policies as exemplifying a “nanny state” when Mike Bloomberg promoted them as mayor of New York City.
Both the libertarian and “medical freedom” wings oppose aspects of regulation, but Silicon Valley biotech supporters of Trump, like Samuel Hammond of the Foundation for American Innovation, have pressed the agency to speed drug and device approvals, while Kennedy’s team says the FDA and other agencies have been “captured” by industry, resulting in dangerous and unnecessary drugs, vaccines, and devices on the market.
Kennedy and Casey Means want to end industry user fees that pay for drug and device rules and support nearly half the FDA’s $7.2 billion budget. It’s unclear whether Congress would make up the shortfall at a time when Trump and Musk have vowed to slash government programs. User fees are set by laws Congress passes every five years, most recently in 2022.
The industry supports the user-fee system, which bolsters FDA staffing and speeds product approvals. Writing new rules “requires an enormous amount of time, effort, energy, and collaboration” by FDA staff, Troy said. Policy changes made through informal “guidance” alone are not binding, he added.
Kennedy and the Means siblings have suggested overhauling agricultural policies so that they incentivize the cultivation of organic vegetables instead of industrial corn and soy, but “I don’t think they’ll be very influential in that area,” Caplan said. “Big Ag is a powerful entrenched industry, and they aren’t interested in changing.”
“There’s a fine line between the libertarian impulse of the ‘medical freedom’ types and advocating a reformation of American bodies, which is definitely ‘nanny state’ territory,” said historian Robert Johnston of the University of Illinois-Chicago.
Specific federal agencies are likely to face major changes. Republicans want to trim the NIH’s 27 research institutes and centers to 15, slashing Anthony Fauci’s legacy by splitting the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he led for 38 years, into two or three pieces.
Numerous past attempts to slim down the NIH have failed in the face of campaigns by patients, researchers, and doctors. GOP lawmakers have advocated substantial cuts to the CDC budget in recent years, including an end to funding gun violence, climate change, and health equity research. If carried out, Project 2025, a policy blueprint from the conservative Heritage Foundation, would divide the agency into data-collecting and health-promoting arms. The CDC has limited clout in Washington, although former CDC directors and public health officials are defending its value.
“It would be surprising if CDC wasn’t on the radar” for potential change, said Anne Schuchat, a former principal deputy director of the agency, who retired in 2021.
The CDC’s workforce is “very employable” and might start to look for other work if “their area of focus is going to be either cut or changed,” she said.
Kennedy’s attacks on HHS and its agencies as corrupted tools of the drug industry, and his demands that the FDA allow access to scientifically controversial drugs, are closely reminiscent of the 1970s campaign by conservative champions of Laetrile, a dangerous and ineffective apricot-pit derivative touted as a cancer treatment. Just as Kennedy championed off-patent drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat covid, Laetrile’s defenders claimed that the FDA and a profit-seeking industry were conspiring to suppress a cheaper alternative.
The public and industry have often been skeptical of health regulatory agencies over the decades, Grossman said. The agencies succeed best when they are called in to fix things — particularly after bad medicine kills or damages children, he said.
The 1902 Biologics Control Act, which created the NIH’s forerunner, was enacted in response to smallpox vaccine contamination that killed at least nine children in Camden, New Jersey. Child poisonings linked to the antifreeze solvent for a sulfa drug prompted the modern FDA’s creation in 1938. The agency, in 1962, acquired the power to demand evidence of safety and efficacy before the marketing of drugs after the thalidomide disaster, in which children of pregnant women taking the anti-nausea drug were born with terribly malformed limbs.
If vaccination rates plummet and measles and whooping cough outbreaks proliferate, babies could die or suffer brain damage. “It won’t be harmless for the administration to broadly attack public health,” said Alfredo Morabia, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University and the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Public Health. “It would be like taking away your house insurance.”
The Face At The Front Desk Changes, The Corporation Remains The Same
Obama continued and expanded Bush’s most evil policies. Trump continued and expanded Obama’s most evil policies. Biden continued and expanded Trump’s most evil policies. Now Trump is preparing to keep the streak going.
Caitlin Johnstone
November 15, 2024
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Obama continued and expanded Bush’s most evil policies. Trump continued and expanded Obama’s most evil policies. Biden continued and expanded Trump’s most evil policies. Now Trump is preparing to keep the streak going. The face at the front desk changes, but the corporation stays the same.
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Trump’s insanely pro-Israel cabinet of bloodthirsty Iran hawks suggests that Trump is going to expand the evils of the Biden administration in the middle east. This is a great example of the point I often make that the empire uses Democrats and Republicans the way a boxer uses the jab-cross combo to set up knockout blows.
Democrats and Republicans are different from one another, not in the ways they claim to be different, but in the same way the jab and the cross are used differently in boxing. The jab, thrown with the left hand for an orthodox fighter, is used as a range-finding weapon which can stun or blind the opponent to open them up for a crushing power blow from the right hand. That power blow is called a cross, which is often set up by the jab in the classic “one-two” combination you learn on day one in boxing.
The two parties are not the same, but they are used in conjunction with one another toward the same end, and, most importantly, they are both being used by the same boxer to punch you right in the fucking face. You’ll hear people try to argue that Democrats are better because it sometimes hurts less when they’re in office, but that’s exactly the same as saying it’s a good boxing strategy to let your opponent jab you in the face because it hurts less than the cross. You can’t understand boxing if you see your opponent’s fists as two opposing forces and think you can side with one against the other. You can’t understand US politics in that way for the exact same reason.
Any decent boxer will tell you they’d rather fight an opponent with a powerful cross than a masterful jab, because an opponent with a great jab will stifle your offense while allowing their offense to be much more effective — including their cross. The two-armed monster of the US oligarchy will keep using both fists to punch you in the face until you stop staring at its hands and trying to calculate which one you’d rather be smashed by, and start focusing on knocking that motherfucker’s head off.
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Israel regularly bombs buildings full of civilians and then sends sniper drones to go pick off the survivors, including children.
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It’s the most liberal thing ever how Democrats who’ve been completely ignoring Gaza are pointing to the news of Israeli plans to annex the West Bank and going “HAHAHA see what happens when you stupid Muslims and leftists refuse to support Kamala??”
Like, the West Bank is already an occupied territory. West Bank annexation would have been very escalatory a couple of years ago, but compared to everything that’s happened in the last thirteen months it’s barely a blip. The way these Democratic Party loyalists spent months frantically telling everyone to shut up about an active genocide are now going “Are you happy now?? Israel’s gonna CHANGE THE PAPERWORK on the West Bank!” says so much about their worldview.
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The only intellectually honest reason to support Trump is because you’re a garden variety Republican and you support standard Republican agendas like lower taxes on the rich and low tolerance for human diversity. There is no honest basis to support Trump on antiwar grounds, or because you want the swamp of corruption to be drained from Washington. This was obvious to anyone who paid attention the last time he was president, but it is glaringly obvious now from all the warmongering swamp monsters he’s been packing his cabinet with.
This narrative so-called “MAGA Republicans” have about themselves as some new special breed of Republican who are meaningfully different from the Republicans of the past simply is not born out by any kind of material evidence. They’re not draining the swamp. They’re not fighting the deep state. They’re not ending the wars. They’re doing all the gross stuff Republicans have always tried to do while LARPing as brave rebels.
I despise the entirety of the Republican Party; it’s one of the most evil things humanity has ever produced. But in a sense I actually respect the Republicans who don’t pretend to be anything different from what they’ve always been more than I respect the frauds who pretend they’re waging some kind of populist insurgency against the establishment. At least the Ben Shapiros and the Fox News weird hair pundits are honest about who they are and what they’re doing.
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Trump supporters tell me, “At least Trump might end the Ukraine war!”
Trump probably will end the Ukraine war eventually; if he doesn’t the next president will. Ukraine has already lost and the US needs its resources to prepare for war with China over Taiwan, so it’s only a matter of time before the proxy war is brought to a conclusion. The empire was always going to leave Ukraine a smoldering wreck after a senseless, stupid, insanely dangerous war that could easily have been avoided with a few low-cost concessions and a little diplomacy.
Trumpers have been fixated on Ukraine because it’s one of the wars that can be pinned more on the other party (even though Trump himself played a major role in paving the way to that war while he was president), but what matters is what happens after that war ends. Everything about Trump’s foreign policy cabinet picks indicates all that war machinery will be redirected toward Iran, China, and who knows where else once Washington stops pretending it’s going to help the Ukrainians kick Putin in the balls and retake all their territory. Stop looking for excuses to paint this warmongering empire goon as some kind of antiwar hero and watch what the war machine actually does.
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The western empire behaves irrationally because it is ultimately run by irrational forces.
The gears of capitalism are turned by the blind pursuit of profit.
Plutocrats and interest groups lobby and bribe in the blind pursuit of power and control.
Empire managers blindly continue the policies and agendas of the previous generation of empire managers, moving war machinery and control mechanisms around the world pursuing planetary domination for its own sake.
And all the individuals running this operation are deeply unconscious people — more unconscious even than the average human — whipped about by forces within themselves that they’re not at all aware of like unresolved trauma and maladaptive coping mechanisms.
The empire is flying blind, which is why it looks like it’s flying blind. It’s why it’s doing completely irrational things like destroying the biosphere we all depend on for survival, continuing to work toward global hegemony despite all the evidence that this will fail, continuing to make life harder and harder for the people who live under it despite growing discontent and revolutionary sentiment swelling in the background, and preparing for an unwinnable and self-destructive war with China.
The empire is behaving illogically because it is illogical. The gears are turning themselves. There is ultimately no man behind the curtain, no scheming manipulators unleashing all these evils to advance some grand plot which will benefit them. They’re more like bacteria in a petri dish mindlessly consuming the food scientists placed there without slowing down as supplies begin to dwindle. They might have elaborate rationales and narratives to justify why they’re doing what they’re doing, but ultimately they don’t know. They are doing it because they are swept up in the momentum of forces which they do not understand, both internally and externally.
The challenge facing us is to become a conscious species. A species that is responsive rather than reactive, driven not by primitive unconscious impulses and habit but by an alert and truth-based relationship with reality. That’s what’s being asked of us here in this slice of spacetime. That is the existential hurdle we must find some way to get past. And the western empire is the largest and most concrete manifestation of that obstacle.
Trump’s Speeches Are Chaotic, Rambling and Extremely Effective. Aristotle Can Explain Why
Posted on November 16, 2024 by Yves Smith
Yves here. Given Trump’s advanced age, and the eventual confirmation of suspected Biden decrepitude, the media and Trump opponents have jumped on what they depict as signs of Trump cognitive decline. One area they have harped on are his very loosely structured, extemporaneous speeches at his rallies. Lambert, who carefully parsed Trump’s presentation at a 2016 rally in Bangor, roused himself to compare that performance with a 2024 rally in Las Vegas. His bottom line:
My extremely subjective view, then, is that from Trump’s language, his mental acuity in 2024 is the same as it was in 2016: His techniques are the same; his humor is the same; the texture of his language is the same. You don’t have to respect Trump’s language, or even like it, but it has not changed. (It’s also very, very hard to imagine Biden improvising in front of a crowd for over an hour. Trump makes a lot of jokes about teleprompters, underlining this difference.)
The point here is that Trump’s much-derided rally style is a schtick. This post explains why it works and therefore why Trump keeps deploying it.
Mind you, that does not mean that there has not been or will be examples of Trump cognitive impairment, such as disorientation, losing his train of thought, or physical difficulties. But his established unstructured rally mode is not evidence of that.
By Loren D. Marsh, Research Fellow, Humboldt University of Berlin. Originally published at The Conversation
In recent news cycles, there has been a persistent and growing narrative that Trump’s appearances are undisciplined, meandering and damaging his chances in the election. Trump’s critics believe he is narcissistic and impulsive, and that there is no consistent strategy or larger plan behind his rhetoric. Indeed, in many outlets this view is ubiquitous and practically unquestioned.
However, with half of the US electorate on his side, Trump’s chaotic speaking style is clearly no barrier to success. If his public appearances are indeed so shambolic, why do they continue to fire up his supporters, and even attract new ones?
Trump’s critics are obviously missing something about how his rhetoric works. They may rationalise that many of his supporters don’t take him literally or assume that it’s “just an act”, but if this were the case, why would so many voters follow someone they don’t actually believe?
Evidently, explaining Trump’s appeal requires a different kind of tool for analysing political messaging. It is here that we can turn to ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who invented the science of storytelling, and gave us precisely the tools we need to understand Trump’s rhetorical success.
As a classics scholar, my research has cracked the code of Aristotle’s seminal narrative theory of muthos in his Poetics, written in the 4th century BC. Muthos is a timeless theoretical framework that can reveal the inner workings of any narrative – even Donald Trump’s.
Muthos in a Nutshell
Aristotle recognised that any story or narrative contains two kinds of events: muthos and episodes.
The muthos is a small, limited group of events that are tightly connected by cause and effect (lightning struck the tree, then the tree caught fire). With these events, it is necessary or probable that each will cause the next. They are the core of the story and crucial for its emotional impact.
Because each event in the muthos leads directly to the next, none of them can be changed, eliminated, or reordered without changing the essence of the story itself. You can imagine these central muthos events like billiard balls a table. A person hits the first ball, which then hits the second ball, which hits third ball, and so on until the balls come to rest. To reach their final arrangement, they must hit each other in a specific way, meaning the number of these events is inherently limited.
The “episodes” are the narrative’s other events, which are only loosely connected by cause and effect (lightning struck the tree, then it started to rain). These are related, chance or tangential events that do not necessarily have to occur as a direct effect of what happened before.
While not as central to the core story and its emotional appeal, the episodes are in no way less important or interesting. In fact, since they don’t necessarily follow from previous events or directly cause the following ones, they are often the most sensational and visible part of the story.
Both muthos and episode events are crucial for building a narrative with maximum impact. But narratives are by no means confined to the realms of fiction.
Trump’s Narrative: Episodes Feed the Muthos
A presidential campaign itself can be viewed as a story, with both muthos events and episode events that play out in the media.
Trump’s candidacy has often been criticised for its chaos and drama, featuring an endless series of sensational or suspenseful distractions: brazen lies, incendiary campaign promises and court cases, to name but a few. However, to his supporters these events are not the real story of Trump’s candidacy, they are just the episodes. Beneath all the lurid drama, Trump carefully maintains a very coherent muthos: that he is an outsider defying a corrupt establishment.
Trump’s story can be summed up as follows. The US is run by corrupt insiders (Democrats and their ilk) who attack an outsider (Trump). By defying the insiders, the outsider proves that he cannot be corrupted.
In order to defy and defeat the insiders, they have to first attack him, and Trump deliberately provokes these attacks. Much of his erratic, unpredictable behaviour serves this exact purpose. It could be something as serious as refusing to admit he lost in 2020, as offensive as insisting Haitian immigrants have an appetite for Ohio cats, or as mundane as exaggerating his crowd sizes. Those are episodes.
His reactions to the attacks he provokes form his muthos – while his behaviour seems erratic, Trump never changes his behaviour, alters course, or apologises in the face of establishment attacks or criticisms of his own attacks. This convinces his followers that he cannot be corruptly manipulated or pressured to act as the insiders want.
Trump’s consistently defiant actions and statements are the events in his narrative that make it necessary or probable that his followers believe he is an anti-establishment outsider. They are the muthos parts that sit at the heart of his story.
English Outsider On Trump's Cabinet Of Curiosities And How Little It Matters
Referring to Judge Napolitano discussion with Col Lawrence Wilkerson about Trump and the Defense Department (video) English Outsider writes:
"Yes, the man all hoped would give the quietus to the neocons seems to be appointing neocons himself.
Mercouris has made some valuable preliminary observations on the subject of Trump's appointees so far. Risking paraphrasing him (the reference is to his video of a couple of days back), he considers that these appointments are made mainly to ensure Trump has in place those loyal to him, that consideration over-riding any question of whatever foreign policy stance the prospective nominees may hold.
As said, these are preliminary or tentative conclusions arrived at by Mercouris but I believe they make very good sense. Following on from Mercouris' conclusions are I believe further conclusions on the subject of these somewhat hawkish proposed nominees.
1. It no longer matters what US foreign policy is with respect to Ukraine and maybe with respect to the ME.
The Russians are going to get their "demilitarisation and denazification" in Ukraine whatever the West does or attempts. That has long been apparent and is now apparent to all. So the views of the Trump nominees on Ukraine, and the views of Trump himself on Ukraine, no longer matter when it comes to changing facts on the ground.
Similarly in the ME, whether the appointees are Israel Firsters or not also no longer matters. It looks as if Israel is heading for defeat, but whether it is so or not the outcome can't be altered by the US. Neither Biden nor Trump are going to authorise open and declared war on behalf of Israel and if they did, it's doubtful that American military power is sufficient to change that outcome.
In addition, open and active war against Iran, for instance, would lead to an increase in oil prices and to significant damage to American ships and bases. That is not something Biden has been prepared to risk so far and Trump even less: it would damage his credibility were he to open his Presidency with a major war having given the impression, in his election campaign, that he was opposed to one.
So there's nothing much the US or the West as a whole can do to alter the outcome either of the Ukrainian war or of the conflict in the ME. I haven't read "The Art of the Deal" but I'm sure that Trump recognises that when you sit down to play, the first priority is to recognise the strength of your own hand. Whatever the US hawks may believe, the Pentagon will know that in either case we in the West hold no aces.
2. Given that military impotence the US politicians can follow the example of the Europeans. They can make what threats they please knowing they will not risk putting those threats into practice. We've seen Macron threatening French boots on the ground knowing he's never going to declare war on Russia. We see Scholz and Starmer still impeccably resolute, knowing they will never be at risk of having to back up words with deeds. Now we will see US politicians - have in fact been seeing them for some time - doing the same.
But it's not all sound and fury signifying nothing. In the case of the ME the American politicians have to bear in mind the strength of the voting bloc made up of the Evangelicals, Christian Zionists, Mormons and the various religious sects for who Israel First is an article of faith. That voting bloc is large, in the tens of millions. It was not one Biden wished to offend. It was a necessary component in the portion of the electorate that carried Trump to victory. They need the rhetoric even if the reality falls short of their expectations. By proposing Israel Firsters, and vociferous Israel Firsters at that, Trump has given them that rhetoric.
3. After the defeat in Ukraine, and what looks very likely to be defeat in the ME, the first priority of the politicians will be to save face.
The UK politicians, as we see have seen in the UK press, have their alibi ready for Ukraine. "We would have won had the Americans not let us down. They should have permitted deep strikes. They should have put boots on the ground. They should have threatened nuclear". That alibi ignores the fact that none of those courses would have been practicable. But it will probably serve and most of the UK electorate will be content with it.
No doubt such alibis will be coming out of Europe. It is essential for Trump to have a similar alibi. None can say whether the war will end before Trump's inauguration but if it doesn't, if it's the Trump administration that has to confess defeat, the Democrats will undoubtedly attempt to lay the blame for that defeat at his door. By proposing hawks and thus adopting hawkish rhetoric, Trump will be able to avoid that reproach.
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Are those fair conclusions to draw from Mercouris' observation? Pretty squalid conclusions, if so, but then that's politics. But for me, my judgement of the success of the Trump Presidency will be on quite other grounds. I stated that judgement on Colonel Lang's old site and state it here:
This final stage of the Ukrainian war is leading to quite appalling casualties. The genocide in the ME is not only a tragedy for those suffering. It is an ineradicable stain on Western civilisation and future generations will look back in horror at what we supported and often encouraged.
Trump's Presidency will be judged not by the success of his internal reforms. It will be judged by the extent to which he managed, even before his inauguration, to bring these horrors to an end."
Implications of a Second Trump Term for Working Class and Oppressed Peoples
Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report Contributor 13 Nov 2024
Irrespective of the rhetoric that characterized the campaign, the world’s majority will continue to be compelled to struggle against imperialist exploitation and oppression.
There are numerous arguments being advanced as to the reasons behind the outcomes of the November 5th presidential and congressional elections which resulted in the declaration of former President Donald Trump as the winner of the race for the White House. Republicans retook control of the Senate while the final composition of the House of Representatives remains to be determined.
Among some of the leading Democratic Party officials and pundits there have been sharp disagreements over why the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did not prevail in the attempt to defeat Trump in what would have been his final attempt at occupying the Oval Office. Some officials such as former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have blamed incumbent President Joe Biden for not exiting the race earlier and allowing for a primary contest that could have determined his successor over a period of several months.
Vermont Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders accused the Harris-Walz ticket of not placing enough emphasis on the plight of the working class in the United States, allowing Trump and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance to masquerade as champions of ordinary people attempting to stay ahead of inflationary pressures. This critique of the Harris campaign was not confined to Sanders but was stated by many other commentators as well. The Biden administration failed to bring security to U.S. voters and suffered from a lack of enthusiasm in November 2024.
Upsurge in Racist Threats
Neither of these explanations took serious consideration of the continuing racist, sexist, misogynist and anti-LGBTQ plus bigotry that permeates the ideological framework of the U.S. and its dominant social groupings.Trump’s appeal was clearly racist.
In the immediate aftermath of the media calling the elections in favor of the Trump-Vance ticket, African Americans in various states across the U.S. received text messages ordering them to report to plantations to resume the slave labor which was the bulwark of colonial and antebellum periods of North American history. This particular attempt at intimidation was chosen for obvious reasons.
In the U.S., it would take a Civil War between 1861 and 1865 to destroy the structural basis for African enslavement. Later at the conclusion of 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified nearly three years after the Emancipation Proclamation issued by then-President Abraham Lincoln. The Proclamation stated that ending slavery was Lincoln’s goal but it only freed enslaved people in regions still under confederate control and was not the abolitionist document that it is believed to be. Political gains for Black people were as tenuous then as they are today.
At the time of the conclusion of the Civil War there were nearly four million Africans subjected to involuntary servitude. Another 500,000 were considered “free” although they were denied the legal rights of equality and self-determination. Then of course, the passage of several Civil Rights Acts and the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution during the period of 1866-1875 ostensibly granted African Americans full “citizenship.”
Nonetheless, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist terrorist organizations ensured the overthrow of Federal Reconstruction and the return of near slave-like conditions for African Americans after the contested presidential elections of 1876. The adoption of segregationist laws ushered in the era of Jim Crow where African Americans were the victims of thousands of lynchings, forced geographic removals, land thefts and the imposition of sharecropping, tenant farming and peonage.
Consequently, the arrival of text messages to the mobile phones of African Americans in Alabama, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and South Carolina provided a clear picture of what the upcoming era will entail. These texts targeted African Americans studying on college and university campuses such as Clemson University, Ohio State University, University of Alabama, among others. A number of messages threatened racist violence against African Americans from the Klan and other racist groups.
The Economic Crisis and the Expansion of Imperialist War
One of the central myths of the Trump-Vance campaign was that the economic crisis facing the U.S. is the direct result of the policies adopted and implemented by the Biden-Harris administration. The falsehoods that during the Trump administration of 2017-2021 there was a major improvement in the socioeconomic conditions of working class and oppressed peoples can be easily refuted with the facts.
If the actual situation is correctly examined, it will reveal that tremendous problems existed for the majority of people in the U.S. even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in the early months of 2020. Corporate tax cuts given to the transnational corporations by republican and democratic administrations along with massive subsidies to the Pentagon exacerbated austerity and lowered real wages for working people.
During 2019 a record number of retail closings exceeded 9,300 with 23 corporate bankruptcies costing workers hundreds of thousands of jobs. These closings included long-time retail outlets frequented by working people such as Payless Shoe Source, Sears, Forever 21 and many others.
The following year was one of the most distressing in modern history. The worst pandemic in over a century resulted in more than a million deaths, tens of millions of job losses and tens of thousands of permanent business closings. The Trump administration initially released $2.2 trillion in stimulus funds in order to avoid a complete economic collapse and prolonged depression.
Trump’s handling of the pandemic created confusion and anxiety. Although vaccines were distributed on an emergency use basis, there were conflicting messages over whether they should be accepted among the people. The lack of a true health care system increased the number of deaths from covid. By the end of the first Trump administration the spread of COVID-19 persisted without any clear strategy to bring the pandemic under control.
In response to the police executions of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and numerous African Americans, mass demonstrations and rebellions erupted throughout the U.S. The outrage over the brutal deaths of African Americans spread to other geopolitical regions in Europe, Africa and Asia. The United Nations Human Rights Commission held hearings on racist state violence in the U.S. under the aegis of the African Union (AU) , which evoked the resolutions submitted by Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik Shabazz) when he attended the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit in Cairo, Egypt in July 1964.
Consequently, the failure to respond adequately to the pandemic and the attempted suppression of anti-racist demonstrations in 2020 was instrumental in sealing the fate of the first Trump administration. With the ascendancy of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, there were great expectations on the part of many oppressed and working peoples for fundamental reforms.
During Biden’s first year in office with a Democratic Party effective majority in the House of Representatives and Senate, an additional stimulus package was approved. Despite Biden’s reduction of a promised stimulus payment from $2,000 to $1,400 , all together $5.5 trillion in stimulus funding was made available in the U.S. by the end of 2021.
Despite this massive infusion of federal money into the U.S. economy, real wages declined while consumer prices skyrocketed impacting the ability of working people to purchase food, gasoline, housing and other important necessities of life. Measures by the Federal Reserve Bank to calm inflation has not resulted in a substantial improvement in the living standards in the U.S.
It was these contradictions which were exploited by the Trump campaign to win 73 million to the 68 million votes of Harris-Walz in the presidential elections. The stimulus programs disappeared during the Biden administration and the “Build Back Better” legislation championed by Biden and the democrats never materialized. The administration, which claimed to be “the most progressive since FDR” failed at providing its voters with economic security at a pivotal moment. As a result of these political failures, Biden suffered from low approval ratings when the 2024 election season began and Trump’s campaign focused on improving the economy. However, the advocacy of tariffs, mass deportations and political retributions against perceived enemies will not bring about the promised economic revival for the tens of millions experiencing hardships and impoverishment in the U.S.
World War, Fascism and the Anti-Imperialist Struggle
Trump has run three electoral campaigns under the theme of making America great again. If history is a guide to the contemporary world situation, Trump’s program for reclaiming the uncontested supremacy of Washington and Wall Street will inevitably fail. The overwhelming majority of people throughout the world will vigorously fight the imperialist onslaught by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led by the U.S.
As has been demonstrated in Palestine and other states within West Asia, the determination of people to resist Zionism and their U.S. imperialist backers has only grown exponentially. Trump’s policies will end in economic ruin for the U.S. as well as defeat at the hands of oppressed and working people domestically and throughout the globe.
“America First” Means Stomping Out Free Speech In The US In Order To Help Israel
Trump literally standing before an Israeli flag and vowing to kill free speech for the advancement of Israeli information interests makes a lie of everything the so-called “MAGA movement” has ever claimed to stand for and exposes it for the scam it has always been.
Caitlin Johnstone
November 17, 2024
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There’s a video of Donald Trump going around where he says — while standing in front of an Israeli flag — that in his first week in office he’s going to stomp out “anti-semitic propaganda” on university campuses throughout the United States. As anyone who’s been paying attention knows, this of course means stomping out speech that is critical of Israel and its genocidal atrocities.
This clip has sparked controversy on social media, but the funny thing is it’s actually a resurrected older clip from a Trump campaign event back in September. Trump was elected while openly campaigning against free speech, even as his supporters promoted him as a champion of free speech. He campaigned on jailing flag burners as well, for the record.
Trump literally standing before an Israeli flag and vowing to kill free speech for the advancement of Israeli information interests makes a lie of everything the so-called “MAGA movement” has ever claimed to stand for and exposes it for the scam it has always been.
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Trump supporters are already falling all over themselves to justify his warmongering cabinet picks and his vow to crack down on freedom of assembly on college campuses, and he’s not even president yet. These people will put zero pressure on Trump to end wars and fight authoritarianism. They’ll bootlick and make excuses throughout the entire four years, just like they did last time. They’re not anti-establishment populists, they just want to feel like anti-establishment populists.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Trump supporters are George W Bush supporters LARPing as Ron Paul supporters.
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On Thursday The New York Times reported that Elon Musk had met with the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations on behalf of the incoming Trump administration to discuss the possibility of easing tensions in the middle east, much to the delight of Trump supporters everywhere. On Saturday CNN reported that Iran says no meeting took place between its UN ambassador and Elon Musk, and Financial Times reports that the Trump administration is actually set to ramp up aggressions against Iran as soon as Trump takes office.
Trump supporters have been citing the Musk story as evidence that Trump plans to make peace with Iran, and you can expect them to either ignore the Financial Times story or spin it as some 87-D chess maneuver designed to promote “peace through strength”.
Anyone who spends their time defending any US president against criticisms of their depraved empire servitude is a pathetic power-worshipping bootlicker. It’s an embarrassing, undignified way to live, and Trump apologists should feel bad about it.
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Love it when something happens that isn’t even in the top 100 worst things that have happened to Palestinians in the last 13 months and liberals who’ve been ignoring Gaza this entire time go I HOPE ALL YOU STUPID LEFTISTS AND MUSLIMS ARE HAPPY WITH YOUR PROTEST VOTE!
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Kamala Harris: I love Dick Cheney and I own a gun and I hate immigrants and anyone who stands up for Palestinians and I’ll be way more hawkish on Iran than Trump.
Liberal pundits: Kamala lost because she went way too woke.
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Instagram progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared on MSNBC that Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for intelligence chief, is “pro-war” despite her efforts to present herself as anti-war.
This is one of those statements that’s dishonest when it comes out of the mouth of the person saying it but would be true if someone else said it. It’s true that Gabbard is a warmongering genocide apologist who backs all the evil things Biden is doing in the middle east right now, but she’s less of a warmonger than the murderous swamp monsters AOC spent the last year endorsing and campaigning for. Gabbard at least promoted diplomacy over war in Ukraine while AOC herself promoted and defended the US proxy war from the word go.
AOC’s whole schtick is talking the talk of an anti-imperialist socialist while walking the walk of a standard empire lackey, and this is another good example of this.
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Everything bad that happens under the Trump administration will have happened because the Democratic Party was too corrupt and evil to run a good campaign with a good platform and a good candidate.
“Much, much better and far less money:” a blueprint for health policy in the second Trump administration
On November 14, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was named Secretary of Health and Human Services in Donald Trump’s second administration, embodying many of the concerns health workers have about upcoming changes to US health policy
November 15, 2024 by Candice Choo-Kang
Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Source: Wikimedia Commons
The 2024 election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has worried many, with the question of health as one of the primary concerns. Health professionals fear the damage a second Trump presidency will have on access to healthcare and on the health of marginalized populations. These concerns include leadership of governmental health agencies, access to insurance, and restrictions on reproductive health and gender affirming care.
One of the gravest concerns is the figure of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s (RFK Jr.) and what his role in public health policy will be in his quest to “Make America Healthy Again”. It was first reported that Kennedy was recommending appointees for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Commissioner of Food and Drugs. On November 14, Trump announced that RFK Jr. himself will be HHS Secretary.
RFK Jr. is known for his relentless anti-vaccination rhetoric and for promoting false information linking vaccinations to autism. RFK Jr. has been recommending that fluoride, a naturally occurring mineral that prevents tooth decay, be removed from US drinking water supplies as he believes fluoride is a neurotoxin associated with “arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”
However, beyond concerns of misleadership, health activists worry about how proposed structural changes may further limit the country’s already unequal healthcare system.
What to expect in health insurance and medical debt?
During President Trump’s campaign for his first term in office, he promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka Obamacare), but was unsuccessful in this endeavor. During the 2024 campaign, Trump emphasized not repealing, but making the ACA “much, much better and far less money”.
Regardless of the administration, however, the US simultaneously ranks as one of the richest countries in the world and one with the worst health indicators compared to other countries, particularly in the Global North. This is not a new phenomena: it has been a facet of the country for decades. Virtually all other Global North countries offer more extensive healthcare coverage at lower cost.
Weaknesses of the US healthcare system include high out-of-pocket expenses and inefficiency due to its unique and extreme complexity. Based on the 2021 US Census, 20 million people owe some type of medical debt, summing up to over USD 220 billion. The US system values profit over health, the real reason for inaccessibility of healthcare in the US. Still, Vice President-elect JD Vance promised the administration would increase “competition in the healthcare markets,” a term used to mask the profit-making motives of the health industry.
Reproductive and gender justice
Arguably one of the longest-lasting legacies of Trump’s presidency is his influence on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Supreme Court justices have lifetime appointments, and Trump appointed 3 of the 9 seats to Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett during his first term. This has led to a conservative majority in SCOTUS with many consequences, including the 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade. This ended federal protection for abortions and has consequently caused the criminalization of abortion in some states.
During Trump’s first presidency, his administration restricted many clinics receiving federal Title X funds from providing referrals and information about abortions. Trump has stated that he will not use legislation like the Comstock Act to ban medication abortion (e.g. mifepristone), yet access to such pills remains vulnerable. On the other hand, although the Biden administration claimed to support the right to abortion, it took no substantive steps to protect access (e.g. decriminalization, funding abortion on federal land/buildings). All these attacks have had devastating effects, including a 7% rise in US infant mortality.
Trump’s first term also birthed new attacks on LGBTQ health and gender-affirming care. In Executive Order 13798, entitled Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty, Trump enabled health providers to deny care to LBGTQ+ people based upon “conscience-based objections”. The Biden administration reversed some of these policies, effective as of March 2024. However, under the Biden administration, state laws have been allowed to grossly attack this type of care as seen in Ohio, where laws banning gender-affirming care for minors are upheld.
The health of migrants and global health
As of 2023, immigrants represent over 14% of the US population and exceed 47 million in number. After the end of Trump’s border closing policy (Title 42), the Biden administration saw a massive influx of migrants entering the US. Resources, including healthcare, were not sufficiently provided by federal, state or city governments to migrants. Both administrations discouraged people, particularly those coming from Central America, from entering the US, ignoring the country’s direct role in destabilizing Global South countries and thus forcing migration.
Further affecting global health, Trump previously reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which prevents US funds from supporting organizations that promote or provide abortions. Trump also withdrew the US from the World Health Organization (WHO), a decision that the Biden administration reversed.
Both administrations have been avid proponents of war and are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands as epitomized by the current genocide of the Palestinian people. Israel has targeted hospitals and healthcare workers, destroying Gaza’s health system. Trump, a defender of Israel, would not oppose these war crimes and would likely support the annexation of and reign of terror in the West Bank as well.
Trump appears determined to use his second term in office to cause major set backs in the already unequal, privatized US healthcare system. While millions already struggle to access the care and support they need, Trump’s policies will further deepen these inequalities.
Trump’s Energy Sanctions Are a Double-Edged Sword for Global Economy
Posted on November 18, 2024 by Yves Smith
Yves here. We are sure to see more articles along these lines, with more refined analyses, as the details of Trump energy sanctions emerge. This piece is still helpful as an early quick take.
Some minor issues: we recently published another OilPrice piece that argued that Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” won’t get as far as the Administration like because the shale industry is being careful, as in return-conscious, about making investments.
Similarly, the author gets harrumph-y about China “violating” US sanctions on Iran. UN energy and financial sanctions on Iran (ex weapons sales, those expired in 2020) were lifted in 2016 as part of the JCPOA. The US exiting the JCOPA did not restore UN sanctions; the US instead imposed its own. Only UN sanctions are legal under international law. So China is within its rights to thumb its nose at these US sanctions, although it is at risk, as with US and EU sanctions against Russia, of having its banks targeted with secondary sanctions.
By Felicity Bradstock, a freelance writer specialising in Energy and Finance. Originally published at OilPrice
Trump’s second term is likely to see a return to stricter energy sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, and Russia.
The US is in a strong position to enforce sanctions due to record-high oil and gas production.
Stricter sanctions could disrupt global oil markets, increase geopolitical tensions, and prompt retaliation from China.
The U.S. continues to uphold sanctions on several countries including Iran, Venezuela, and Russia. While the Biden administration eased sanctions on Venezuelan energy at the beginning of the year, and Iran has been able to increasingly circumvent sanctions, there was no clear path to bringing the sanctions to a total stop. Now, with the election of Donald Trump as President for a second non-consecutive term, U.S. energy sanctions could become stricter as he focuses on boosting domestic oil and gas output and strengthening controls on these countries.
On his campaign trail, Trump repeatedly vowed to impose stricter sanctions on Iranian and Venezuelan crude, which could lead to a decrease in the global oil supply and drive up prices. “Conceptually, the impact of a potential second Trump term on oil prices is ambiguous, with some short-term downside risk to Iran oil supply … and thus upside price risk,” Goldman Sachs commodities analysts wrote in a research note. “But medium-term downside risk to oil demand and thus oil prices from downside risk to global GDP from a potential escalation in trade tensions.”
Having often shouted the phrase “drill baby, drill” at his rallies, Trump is expected to double down on his support for U.S. oil and gas production. The uncertainty over new licenses seen during Biden’s term in office will be a thing of the past, as oil and gas companies pursue more exploration activities to maintain their record levels of crude and gas output. The U.S. is the world’s biggest oil producer, contributing 22 percent of the world’s crude, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
While oil and gas output was growing to record highs under Biden, restrictions were also eased on energy from sanctioned countries, such as Iran and Venezuela. Iran is now producing around 3.5 million bpd of crude and exporting 1.8 million bpd, despite the continued sanctions. This is a significant increase from the amount being produced when Trump was in power, which fell to an official low of around 400,000 bpd under his previous administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign.
We are already starting to see a change in the trend with Iranian oil, with exports falling due to the complex geopolitical situation in the Middle East. Iran’s exports are expected to decrease even further under the new Trump administration as the stricter imposition of sanctions is to be expected. This week, Trump selected U.S. Senator Marco Rubio – who has long pushed for a tougher U.S. policy on Iran and China – as secretary of state for his new government. Bob McNally, the president of Rapidan Energy, stated, “Senator Rubio has a consistent and strong record as a hawk on Iran, Venezuela, and China.” McNally added that Rubio will “zealously implement President-elect Trump’s plans to exert pressure on Iran’s crude exports, nearly all which go to China”.
China has increased its import of discounted energy supplies from U.S.-sanctioned countries, including Iran, Venezuela and Russia, by blatantly circumventing sanctions in recent years. China has used special routes, ghost tankers, and other clandestine tactics to increase its imports of crude from these countries, and, as sanctions have loosened, it has imported oil and gas via more conventional routes.
Russia overtook Saudi Arabia to become China’s biggest crude supplier in 2023, shipping 2.14 million barrels per day of oil to the Asian giant. China also reported importing 11 percent more crude from Iran in the first three months of 2024 than during the same period in 2023. This could present an issue as Trump attempts to impose stricter sanctions, potentially prompting China to retaliate if its energy supplies are disrupted.
Nevertheless, Trump has doubled down on his plans for stricter sanctions on all three countries. In October, Venezuela’s oil exports rose to 950,000 barrels per day, a four-year high. However, Jose Cardenas, Washington strategic consultant and lobbyist, explained, “Revoking the oil licenses would send a powerful signal to not only Maduro, the opposition, the EU, and others that the U.S. is serious about a democratic transition taking place in Venezuela.” Any move to further strengthen sanctions on Venezuela would likely push the South American country closer to Iran and China, which could cause geopolitical tensions for the U.S. and its allies.
When it comes to Russia, Ian Bremmer, the president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said, “What I am hearing from Trump advisors is that Trump would be prepared to put much tougher sanctions against them,” if Russia rejects a peace deal. As the U.S. has increased its natural gas output significantly over the last few years, and its allies have secured alternative gas supplies, it leaves Trump in a strong position to enforce strict sanctions on Russian energy.
Based on what Trump said during his campaign trail and the people that he is appointing to key government positions, it seems likely that he will impose stricter energy sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, and Russia when he takes office. The U.S. is in a strong position to do this as its oil and gas output stands at an all-time high. However, stricter sanctions could lead China to retaliate, as its energy supply chains become disrupted. It could also encourage Venezuela and Iran to deepen their ties with one another, thereby creating greater geopolitical unrest.
Considering the 'carrot' which Putin just offered the swine hund depending on US 'allies' could be mistaken when Russia calls a halt to offensive action and Europe is not overwhelmed by 'Asiatic hordes'...
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That’s Trump, what else?
Lorenzo Maria Pacini
November 17, 2024
The American president-elect promised things on the campaign trail and is now preparing to implement contrary ones.
Apparently, in 2024, the obvious things are still making news. Like, for example, the fact that the American president-elect promised things on the campaign trail and is now preparing to implement contrary ones.
Apparently, the average citizen does not understand, or does not want to understand, that American democracy (and beyond) is a giant joke. And, still apparently, the great change is still far from coming.
All according to plan
The problem is not the presidential candidates; the problem is the American system itself. We have written this before and it bears repeating by summarizing:
the crisis of the so-called “rules-based order” by which the U.S. has established its hegemony for nearly a century is a delicate and difficult crisis to resolve, but it will inevitably lead to a conclusion.
Republican or Democrat, the American ruling class is made up of Zionists, with a messianic frenzy and an unstoppable urge for destruction, control and extermination.
The American economy is based on the most extreme neoliberalism, and to keep itself alive it needs to generate crises and wars everywhere, otherwise it collapses inexorably.
The epochal battle of Sea Power versus the Heartland does not change based on the first and last name of the politician who sits in the Oval Office, it can only change with a noological (= of model of civilization, of the spirit of that people) change, which can only happen from within the American people, not from outside.
Trump or Harris, the problem of the United States remains the same: the United States itself, its conformation, the basis with which it was born. This is the problem of the United States. To change the situation in America, America needs to change and stop being what it has been so far. It needs a radical change from within.
This change has to do with American identity, history, traditions, cultures and the necessary deep and radical reflection on how and why the United States of America came into being. Without this collective therapeutic phase, there is no escape. Clearly, such a process is difficult, because the existential and anthropological dimensions have been butchered to the core, culture has been replaced by cheap, take-away consumer products, and values have become a vintage element of a past that is not even that fascinating because it is tiring and boring. Yet, we have to start over somewhere.
Not a reversal of classical geopolitics, but its fulfillment through a geographical and noological variation in History.
Is Trump ready to change? More importantly, does he want to change?
Trump’s victory shapes up in multiple respects as yet another bluff in the poker game titled “American Elections.” Or is it?
The neocon front this time had no hiccups. An easy victory, with no twists, no attacks, no deaths, no messianic resurrections, no revolutions or civil wars, nothing cinematically engaging. Almost sorry that the proceedings went smoothly. Q’s (few) veterans have been waiting years for their blond-haired tufted Christ to save the world from communism, but every four years they have to postpone the appointment.
Between a friendly conversation with Joe Biden in which they talked about a “smooth transition to the White House” and a few posts on X, the favorite platform of all Western politics, the Tycoon stunned the whole world by doing the thing politicians do best: doing the exact opposite of what they promised during the election campaign. How? By promoting the most Zionist government team in recent American history.
In the star-studded pole position, we have only the best: Brian Hook, Mike Waltz, Lee Zeldin, Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, Richard Grenell, Elise Stefanik, Tulsi Gabbard, and of course J. D. Vence. All iron-clad Zionists, loyalists to the Third Temple project, of which Trump has been the great promoter since before his first presidential term.
What change were we talking about?
Trump has made numerous proclamations on the campaign trail, centered on stabilizing U.S. foreign relations, touching on the hot topics of the Middle East, Ukraine and China, but also bioethical issues particularly regarding the battles of the LGBT movements and, of course, the immigration issue and the tax issue. Too bad that none of the elected candidates are interested in fulfilling their election promises.
Let’s start with Marco “Mark” Rubio: Cuban-born, Zionist, he will be Secretary of State. He is an unbridled supporter of the destruction of Palestine and Greater Israel, but has been an opponent of direct U.S. engagement in the war in Ukraine, preferring the sacrifice of Europe’s geographically closer and cheaper serfs. He is, on the other hand, a great enemy of China, so much so that his September 2024 report, entitled The World China Made, is the best and most comprehensive reading of China’s achievements in high-tech industry and global trade that has been published by any branch of the U.S. government in many years. Utopians like Mike Pompeo, who believed (and perhaps still believe) that regime change in China is just around the corner, did not get an offer from President-elect Trump. Sen. Rubio has a solid understanding of China’s economic power. He is a realist who has done his homework. And that is the right starting point for U.S. policy toward China. Some commentators speculate that a hawk like Rubio has the credibility to strike a deal with China. Certainly, as his report shows, he is in possession of a great deal of intelligence information and is ready to confront the “red enemy.”
Richard Grenell is a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, a key country for U.S. control in Europe since 1945: by destroying Germany culturally and politically, by first subjugating its industrial fabric and then its currency, the Americans ensured the backlash in their favor. Grenell knows the colony Europe well enough to know that the war in Ukraine is comfortable up to a point, so it suits the U.S. to pull out of it, leaving the Europeans to solve the problem. In 2019, when he was serving as a diplomat, he threatened European companies for participating in the Nord Stream 2 project, a fact that cost him expulsion as persona non grata from Germany. Soon after, he won the consolation prize entitled “National Intelligence Directorate of the United States of America.” And, coincidentally, as a longtime Republican he is also anti-Chinese.
The latter post is now held by Tulsi Gabbard, a native of Samoa who entered politics as a Dem but a critic of Joe Biden and director of America’s 17 intelligence agencies. A career military, abortionist, exemplary ethnic and cultural mix of popular America, promoter of “gender correct” reform of the Armed Forces, sworn enemy of the Axis of Resistance, voted to impeach Trump in 2019 and was accused by Hillary Clinton of colluding with Russia. She will continue as head of U.S. intelligence, in an administrative continuity that represents a careful partitioning of the balance of power within the new presidential cabinet.
Then there’s Michael Waltz, who enters as national security adviser for his second administration. With 26 years of service in Special Forces with Middle East and Africa missions and then in the Pentagon, he was one of the initiators of actions against the Axis Resistance and a staunch supporter of U.S. intervention in Israel.
Along the same lines is Biran Hook, a little-known but decidedly important figure in the Zionist political equation. Career-trained at the State Department, a political disciple of Mike Pompeo, he is U.S. special representative to Iran, in the first Trump administration was director of policy planning and was the finest advocate of the Abrahamic Accords, coordinating Israel and UAE intelligence against Iran.
He will get along well with Lee Zeldin, grandson of Reform rabbis and married into a Mormon family, who before being an environmentalist at the EPA was a senior military intelligence officer in Iraq, one of the first to rejoice at the bombing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in 2020 under the Trump administration. He will be minister of the environment.
Let’s not forget Pete Hegseth – a man we will hear a lot about – hawk of Iran, appointed to head the Pentagon. An interesting career, as he has been a Fox News anchor and a war veteran. A master of infowarfare, although he is criticized in America for his “insufficient” military career. To be a minister of defense, on the other hand, does not
To the Central Intelligence Agency will go John Ratcliffe, another fierce Zionist, right-wing Tea Party man, already the nation’s director of intelligence in the 2020-2021 biennium, the one of transition between Trump and Biden. He will be the first person to serve simultaneously as CIA director and director of national intelligence. He is known to have been the proponent of the Russian interference theory in the 2016 election, an advocate of sanctions in the Middle East and a major opponent of China. Imagine what he will do at the CIA. Little power in the hands of one man.
There is no shortage of “pink quotas” either. The first notable is Kristi Noem, governor of Dakota, who will be Secretary of Homeland Security, known as “the most powerful intern on Capital Hill,” who has already promised to toughen laws against anti-Semitism.
She is joined by Elise Stefanik, who will be a representative to the UN. A seemingly unprepared woman, a member of the New York House of Representatives who manages many votes in the Catholic world. An interesting note actually appears on her resume: she was personal assistant to Zionist Joshua Bolten, one of America’s most powerful men, first a CIA agent, then White House Chief of Staff, then executive director of Goldam Sachs in London.
Let’s add two big-name figures: the first is Vivek Ramaswamy, the Indian-born entrepreneur and politician operating in the pharmaceutical industry and a member of Yale’s Zionist think tank Shabtai, the university’s most exclusive Jewish club. Ramaswamy is a true “master” of the pharmaceutical world, a real contradiction to the heralded battles against Big Pharma. The other prominent name is Elon Musk, but we will devote another article to him.
It is not yet clear who will go to the Treasury. Candidates include Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s man, coder of the trade war against China, a true expert on global markets; Howard Lutnick, successful Zionist billionaire, Trump’s campaign fundraiser; Linda McMahon, neocon Catholic, director of WWF (World Wrestling Federation) and former director of the Enterprise Agency; and Scott Bessent, a Zionist who grew up in Soros Fund Management and now holds a seat on the board of Rockfeller.
So, nothing new. A Zionist entourage, like all the previous ones, to continue the same plan. Make America Great Again, was that not the motto? Seems more a plan to rebuild the glory of Israel.
Implications of the new U.S. government for the international context
Let us now look at the situation in the international framework.
The United States of America will have a Republican administration with a Zionist and anti-Chinese majority. Nothing new under the sun. The main challenge Trump will face concerns the national interest. The US needs to regain its identity and reassert itself as a global power while protecting its hegemony. The “government of the fittest” was elected perhaps for this. The international interests linked to the permanent success of the U.S. are too numerous and financially binding. The rules-based international order must be restored or at least maintained in part. The U.S. domestic social crisis needs to be resolved, and historically nothing is better for Americans than a war, one that is media-engaging, ideologically stimulating, and puts a lot of fuel into federal industry.
For Trump’s government, the three main fronts of interest – Ukraine, the Middle East and Palestine – may be worth the electoral risk.
The war in Ukraine is delegable to Europe, which has already been prepared for it since well before the start of Special Military Operation. Ukraine’s entry into NATO is not essential, because it is not strategically convenient: why have to involve European countries with Art. 5 of the Treaty, when they are already involved by virtue of actual subservience, which is military, economic and political? One can proceed with the conflict in an alternative way. The European countries, in any case, will not allow themselves to be harmed to the point of self-destruction, so they will respond sooner or later, whatever it takes. The present ruling classes have been trained for precisely this mass war suicide. Whether it is a hybridly maintained low-intensity conflict or a return to conventional warfare with frontiers and trenches, direct engagement for the U.S. is neither tactically necessary nor strategically expedient. Russia is ready for this scenario and is preparing its forces consistently.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine is, once again, an eschatological issue. For American neocons it’s a matter of life and death, indeed of “eternal life.” The messianism inherent in the American world, which precisely traces the Jewish Zionist one, is the same one that gave birth to Israel as a state by occupying Palestine. The struggle for the Third Temple is too important a project for American elites. Global domination comes through the conquest and maintenance of these subtle orders of power, with which American culture is imbued on all levels. The U.S. is ready to intervene massively and has a great interest in doing so, because Israel’s nuclear power and its weapons production capacity is hardly comparable to other states in the world. The destruction of Israel and the return of free Palestine, from the river banks to the sea, is not contemplated in the U.S. futurology.
China is a different matter altogether. The US on those front plays perhaps the last glimmer of international credibility to its partners. Counterbalancing the economic – and political – power of the People’s Republic of China is critical to the survival of the U.S. productive and commercial fabric. The neoliberal system envisions a never-ending battle of the markets to the death, which is why a Pax Mercatorum cannot be accepted even theoretically. China threatens control of the Pacific and American aerospace control. Neither option is acceptable to American military doctrine. It’s not essential to know that the war will be won; what matters to the U.S. is to launch the war, then what comes next will be a matter of bluffing the poker hand. Too bad that the Chinese, as well as the Russians, are used to quite different, more strategic, thoughtful and articulate board games. Of the shouts of some drunk Yankee in a cowboy hat throwing cards on the table, they really don’t care.
Trying to contemplate a positive scenario, one must recognize that the dawn of the new American Heartland probably comes through this “new phase of old things.” There are some European and Eastern analysts and experts who are cheering Trump’s victory, claiming that it would be a victory against globalism and the power of elites. While some political communication within infowarfare strategy, such as from Russia to the American and European worlds, is understandable and legitimate, it is equally true that such claims of jubilation are not supported by evidence. On the contrary, the scenario that lies ahead with the government team is anything but “anti-globalist.” We are looking at a qualified selection of experienced, trained globalists ready to act in the name of the “free world.” They are simply not Democrats but Republicans; that’s perhaps the only difference.
Ideological revolution is a far cry from Trump’s plans. In fairness and honesty, we leave ourselves time and space to see what Lady USA’s new government will do, but one thing is certain: Make America Great Again is not a motto that will be able to be implemented as it has been in the past. America can make America great again by carrying out that inner revolution that will one day lead it to confront the other poles of the multipolar world with respect and seriousness. Otherwise, the fate of this empire will be that of every empire in History: the decline.
Psychopathy is almost a job requirement for secretary of state, because the title entails a responsibility for helping to roll out the violence and tyranny which serves as the glue that holds the US empire together.
Caitlin Johnstone
November 19, 2024
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Marco Rubio will be joining a long list of psychopaths as the next US secretary of state. A few of Trump’s cabinet picks might have a hard time getting past the Senate, but not Rubio. He’s the exact type of blood-guzzling swamp leech those creatures on Capitol Hill adore.
Psychopathy is almost a job requirement for secretary of state, because the title entails a responsibility for helping to roll out the violence and tyranny which serves as the glue that holds the US empire together. As secretary of state you are responsible for whipping up international consensus for brutal economic sanctions regimes, drumming up support for heightened aggressions against the official enemies of Washington, and making up excuses for the criminal abuses of the US and its allies.
This is funny in a dark sort of way because the secretary of state is supposed to be in charge of US diplomacy, which in theory should mean making peace and resolving conflicts without violence. The US Department of State was supposed to be the peacemaking counterbalance to the US Department of War (renamed the Department of Defense in 1947 because “Department of War” was a little too honest), but because the US runs a globe-spanning empire that is held together by endless violence it has little use for peacekeeping, so the State Department mostly gets used to help inflict more violence and abuse. In theory it was supposed to be the Peace Department, but in practice the US just got two War Departments.
Rubio will be a suitable addition to the list of sadistic manipulators who have served in that role before him, joining the likes of Antony Blinken, Mike Pompeo, Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger as the next soulless manipulator to lead the US State Department in pressing the imperial boot into the throat of the global south.
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I’ve had multiple Kamala supporters angrily tell me I helped Trump win by criticizing Biden’s foreign policy in the lead-up to the election. I cannot imagine being so much of an unprincipled bootlicker that I’d expect people to lie about a genocide to help someone win more votes.
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Nothing Trump will do inside US borders over the next four years will be the tiniest fraction as murderous, tyrannical and worthy of ferocious opposition as what Biden is doing in Gaza right now.
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American progressives who stopped talking about Gaza in July-August to avoid hurting Kamala seem to have forgotten to go back to talking about Gaza now that the election is over.
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Trump is profoundly evil, but he is a very conventional kind of profoundly evil, of the same variety as Biden, Obama and Bush before him.
The big lie about Trump is that he is a special deviation from the norm, and both sides believe this lie. Everything about the actual policies of his first term reveal that he is a very ordinary Republican president, who is evil in more or less the same ways as all the other evil Republican presidents. He didn’t do anything that wasn’t already being done by those before him and won’t continue to be done by those after him. But both Democrats and Republicans see him as a drastic departure from status quo US politics, differing only in whether they perceive this as a good thing or a bad thing.
This happens because US presidents cannot significantly differ from one another in actual policy and decision making. If they were the sort to disrupt the status quo too much, they never would have been allowed to ascend to the presidency. There is simply too much power riding on the US empire for any significant change in its operations to be tolerated by the actual power structure which really runs things. So because presidents and viable presidential candidates cannot significantly differ from each other in terms of policy, they instead differ from each other in terms of narrative and emotion.
That’s what we’re seeing in all the vitriol and passion and frenetic punditry about Trump on both sides of the US partisan divide. A bunch of empty narrative fluff pouring a lot of emotional energy into either supporting or opposing a very ordinary evil in a very ordinary Republican president.
If they didn’t do that, the entire US political landscape would just be Democrats and Republicans agreeing with one another about 99 percent of the evils of the US empire and half-heartedly disagreeing about the remaining one percent. And that would give the whole game away. It would kill the illusion that Americans live in a real democracy where their votes actually mean something and they actually have some meaningful degree of control over what their government does. If this understanding took root, it would only be a matter of time until America’s heavily-armed population began thinking thoughts of revolution.
So we’re left watching these ridiculous histrionics over what amounts to the ordinary everyday pendulum swings between ordinary everyday Democrat governance and ordinary everyday Republican governance, with one side remaining in control about half the time and both sides working together to push the status quo further and further into oligarchy, militarism and tyranny.
The whole US political spectacle is all emotion and no substance. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
