Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

[blindpig]

Fleeing Imaginary Persecution at Home, South African ‘Refugees’ May Find the Grass is Not Greener in America
Jon Jeter 14 May 2025


White South Africans rallying in support of President Trump outside the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, last month. Photo; Joao Silva/The New York Times

The Trump administration’s decision to fast-track asylum for white South Africans—claiming "persecution"—is a political stunt, ignoring that they remain among the wealthiest globally, still controlling most of the country’s land decades after apartheid.

Not much is publicly known about the nearly 60 white South Africans who arrived May 12, 2025, at Dulles National Airport in suburban Washington DC, fleeing what the Trump administration describes as racial discrimination and political violence from the country’s Black majority. But in classifying South Africa’s privileged white minority as “refugees” and fast-tracking their path to US citizenship, the White House, in typical fashion, overlooks a salient point which is that statistically speaking, South Africa is arguably the most comfortable place in the world for white settlers to live while the US is among the least.

White Americans are, in fact, nearly eight times more likely to live in poverty than are white South Africans . By comparison, white Canadians are six times more likely than white South Africans to live in poverty .

Most of the white South African immigrants who arrived in the US Monday are descended from the Dutch émigrés and French Huguenots known as Afrikaners who left their own countries beginning in 1652 and formalized white-minority rule 296 years later. Led by Nelson Mandela’s political party, the African National Congress, South Africans of all races went to the polls for the first time in 1994 to abolish the political system known as apartheid but vast racial economic disparities remain.

Representing only 7 percent of a population of 63 million, white South Africans continue to own nearly three-quarters of all arable farmland in the country. To remedy this imbalance, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a land redistribution act into law in January, allowing the government to seize unused farmland without compensation.

Said Trump at a Monday news conference:

“It's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about, but it's a terrible thing that's taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they're white or Black makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.

Government officials note that the land reform act only applies to unused farmland, and no property has been seized as of yet. And while South Africa reported nearly 13,000 homicides in 2023–befitting a post-apartheid state that continues to be home to the world’s most unequal distribution of wealth–the number of white farmers slain that year did not reach double digits.

Ronald Lamola, the country’s international relations and cooperation minister, told reporters Monday:

“They can’t provide any proof of any persecution because there’s not any. There is not any form of persecution to White South Africans.”

That would appear to be borne out by the paucity of white South African farmers who applied for asylum in the US under the Trump administration’s resettlement plan. Maritz Grobler, an Afrikaner who owns 1,000 acres where he farms corn, beans, cattle and sunflowers, told the Wall Street Journal:

“This is my country. But it’s good to know that [Trump] will back us…if shit happens.”

On social media platforms this week, Americans have decried Trump’s resettlement plan as a gesture of racial solidarity between white settlers. Wrote one African American woman:

“Israel is murdering Palestinians by the day, the Congolese are in the crosshairs of a real shooting war, there are open-air slave markets in Libya, and a right-wing nutjob is in charge in El Salvador. . .and Trump denies entry into the country for everyone except the very people who were the architects of apartheid.”

Similar to the politics of white aggrievement promoted by Trump, many white South Africans have complained of reverse discrimination by Blacks, who account for more than 80 percent of the population; sixty-four percent live in poverty, a number that is virtually identical to the percentage of Blacks living in poverty during the apartheid era. And while it is not uncommon to hear whites threatening to move to the UK or Australia–packing for Perth as they colloquially dubbed it–few have relocated.

That is rooted in a general understanding of how good they have it and their strong attachment to the land. In countries like Congo, Angola, Ghana, and Rwanda, colonialists arrived with no intent other than to plunder Africa’s natural resources and exploit its labor before heading back home with their bounty. In countries like Zimbabwe, Kenya, and South Africa, however, the pattern was quite different, due in large part to the émigrés’ state of mind when they disembarked. Afrikaners came to stay, and on the backs of Black labor and dispossession built a country that their children and grandchildren could live in comfortably for generations to come, similar to settlers in the US.

Consequently, the Afrikaners’ narrative is virtually indistinguishable from the folkloric tales of the pilgrims in which brave, resourceful pioneers struck out on their own and conquered hostile lands and savage people. Beginning in the 1830s, Afrikaners embarked on a series of mass migrations inland from South Africa’s Western Cape region, where the Atlantic Ocean intersects with the Indian Ocean, in search of fertile farmland. The Voortrekkers—literally those who move ahead to new lands to the north—encountered violent resistance from the Zulus, the indigenous warrior tribe that populates the mountainous coastal region of KwaZulu-Natal.

In 1837 Pieter Retief, a wealthy Afrikaner farmer, led his delegation of covered wagons over the Drakensberg mountains into KwaZulu-Natal, where he entered into negotiations with Dingane, a chief who became king of the Zulus after he murdered his brother Shaka Zulu in 1828. In the popular Afrikaans version of the meeting, the two men signed a deed (historians agree that it was written in English) bequeathing lands to the Voortrekkers if Retief recovered some cattle stolen by a rival tribe. Retief’s repatriation of the cattle was feted with two days of feasting by Dingane and his chiefs, but the king turned on Retief and his party and killed them, and then sent his forces to massacre about five hundred Afrikaner men, women, and children camped nearby.

Black South Africans, however, tell a slightly different story. Dingane’s was not an act of betrayal but one of self-defense when it became clear that there had been a misunderstanding between the two men. Dingane had intended for the Voortrekkers to farm the land but not to own it. An argument ensued. Retief threatened Dingane with a musket. The idea of property rights was foreign to Africans. No one owned the land, not even Dingane. The land belonged to everyone, and was to be parceled out—leased, if you will—as the king, its caretaker, saw fit. In a communal, agrarian culture that valued collaboration over competition, you could no more own the soil beneath your feet than you could own the sky, the sun or the water.

The confrontation between Retief and Dingane formed the template not just for apartheid but for the enduring relationship between tribes of the global North and South over private property and the public good. The Afrikaners origin story even includes a civil war against the thousands of British prospectors and settlers who streamed into South Africa following the 1885 discovery of gold in the Transvaal region, which now includes Johannesburg and which was colonized by the Afrikaners, who were pejoratively called Boers, or farmers, by the newcomers, similar to Northern whites condescending attitudes towards Southern “rednecks.”

The resulting dispute triggered two Boer wars, the last of which culminated in a decisive British victory in 1902. The British burned to the ground thousands of Afrikaner homesteads and jailed thousands of women and children, both Black and white, whose husbands and fathers had taken up arms against the Queen. A postwar study concluded that more than 27,000 Afrikaners—mostly women and children under sixteen—and more than 14,000 Blacks died from starvation, disease, and exposure in British internment centers (for which the term “concentration camp” was coined).

In the war’s aftermath, Afrikaners were subject to British administrators and humiliated by their lowly status, forced to compete for sometimes menial jobs with Blacks and even to work shoulder-to-shoulder with them. When the Afrikaners’ Nationalist Party reclaimed control of the government in nationwide elections in 1948, the Afrikaners earned 60 cents for every dollar in British income; Africans earned only 30 cents. Within months of the 1948 election, the Nationalist Party had passed the laws that were the foundation for apartheid, and a decade later Afrikaners’ income disparity with the British had been reversed. By 1956 the British in South Africa were earning 60 cents for every dollar in income pocketed by the Afrikaners, while incomes for blacks dropped to 20 cents on every dollar earned by the British, according to government statistics.

Apartheid used the law to prohibit Black homeownership while the US deployed redlining and subprime mortgages. There was one critical difference between the two: South African whites are able to extract wealth from a Black population that is more than 11 times larger while whites in the US are finding it difficult to sustain their standard of living by sponging off an African American population that is less than a quarter of its size.

I don’t know if the families who landed at Dulles on Monday were farm owners who sold their property before boarding a charter flight to the US. From Northern Virginia, the refugees boarded connecting flights to 10 states, where they will be resettled by local refugee organizations, government officials told reporters on the condition of anonymity. If however, they didn’t pocket millions from the sale of land stolen from Africans and they will need to find work, I suspect they will find things a bit more difficult in the US than they did at home. Consequently, I would suggest that they practice this phrase:

“Welcome to Walmart!”

https://blackagendareport.com/fleeing-i ... er-america

The naked racism is shameless. This, along with the Musk/Vance push for increased birthrate, with the subtext being 'white', makes it clear that the wish is to 'Make America White Again'. The only good thing to be said is that with Trump it's all 'wishes', no plans, policy or strategy, and intended results will be paltry at best, except perhaps for Trump's wallet.

Fuck the Boers.

[blindpig]

Trump Smoke and Mirrors on Full Display in Claimed “$142 Billion” Saudi Arms Deal
Posted on May 15, 2025 by Yves Smith

Given how the spectacle of Trump going to the Middle East and collecting cash and prizes like his much-hyped $142 billion Saudi arms “deal”, part of a purported $600 billion investment package, and his much-criticized Qatari airplane “gift”, Bloomberg has provided a useful service in picking apart the inflated figures in the arms agreement claim.

Even though it’s important to understand how great the Trump claim inflation is, so that recipients will hopefully apply a large discount any time Trump makes a grand pronouncement, he persists in this behavior because it is an effective form of cognitive anchoring. The public and press will remember the $142 billion, and not any properly haircut figure.

Consider another recent example, Trump’s loud claim that the US acted as a mediator in the India-Pakistan ceasefire talks. Washington Monthly explained how that claim was not only false but actually detrimental:

India and Pakistan have reached a ceasefire in their recent conflict, which significantly decreases the risk of a nuclear war this week. However, the amateur-hour way Donald Trump’s administration handled this crisis increased (if only slightly) the chance of a nuclear exchange down the line. It illustrates why Trump’s everything-is-about-me style of governance isn’t just a harmless embarrassment, but a daily disaster….

First, Trump claimed credit for the ceasefire, boasting that the U.S. had “mediated” it. India issued an immediate denial, but the mistake ran deeper than poaching an honor. In diplomacy, words matter. And as everyone in the region knows, the word “mediate” is a diplomatic landmine. Ever since 1947, India has strenuously rejected outside “mediation” of the Kashmir conflict….

Did the U.S. play an intermediary role in helping India and Pakistan reach a ceasefire agreement? Sure—as did Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and China (none of which rushed to the microphones to seize credit). As India stated in smacking down Trump’s claim, it was the two parties themselves who reached an accord, not any external actor seeking to impose “mediation.” …

Second, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a far more substantive negotiation than the one approved. Mindful of his boss’s unquenchable thirst to be seen as a master deal-maker, Rubio posted that the two nations had agreed to “talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site.” A “broad set of issues” really means “long-term disposition of Kashmir”— or at least that’s how Pakistan wants (and India fears) these words will be interpreted. Did Modi agree to such negotiations, and in response to a terrorist action? Vanishingly unlikely. Did India agree to any talks on any topic? Unlikely, but not impossible, although India immediately denied this, too. So even if Rubio’s statement contained a kernel of truth, any talks were ones India intended to keep secret. Rubio’s decision to spotlight them (if they even existed) stroked Trump’s ego, but at the expense of progress or U.S. credibility….

Another dangerous result of Trump and Rubio’s statements is that they unwittingly promoted Pakistan’s agenda, thereby encouraging a replay of the same hazardous behavior.

There’s more where that came from, but you get the drift of the gist:

Trump’s claims were wildly inflated

His extreme ego needs are harmful to international security

John Helmer has said that the Russians have realized they are negotiating with a cult of personality and have been proceeding accordingly.

But there is another implication: look how many words it took to debunk the Trump claim and question the Rubio follow on (as in either its accuracy or its propriety). How many people pay that much attention, let alone have a tolerance for complex arguments? This is the general problem with bullshit. It takes a minimum of 3x the space, and often more than 10x, to disprove it.

Similarly, a new article in the Financial Times, What has Elon Musk’s Doge actually achieved?, takes a harsh look at the many promises made, from cost savings to transparency, and finds them sorely wanting. The pink paper, as many others have, documents among other things how DOGE grossly inflated cost cuts and took credit for reductions that were already baked in. It even contends the DOGE approach was destined to do more harm than good:

Doge “got off in the wrong direction because it attacked exactly the wrong thing,” says Matt Calkins, chief executive of software company Appian, which powers much of government procurement and has worked with the initiative on some cost-cutting measures.

“Of all the things you could do to affect the government, it would have been better to go after regulation. It would have been better to go after entitlements. Just blowing up jobs was a good way to make enemies, a good way to cause more disruption than progress.”

But this detailed analysis (the full article is very much worth a read) misses a major, if not the point, of DOGE nevertheless advancing the reactionary libertarian agenda of destroying government services. The Big Lie repetition of “fraud” has been effective. Fraud is a risk in all commercial activity, even one to one dealings. The question for any organization is the cost and effectiveness of fraud prevention and mitigation measures. In just about all instances, having anti-abuse measures that are so stringent as to reduce it to zero is too costly, both in terms of hard outlays like staffing, as well as more complex considerations (for businesses, alienating potential customers; for government, greatly restricting delivering services to target populations).

For instance, a long-standing ally of the site casually mentioned of the Trump demolition exercise, that Something (by implication, Something Big) needed to be done. I disputed that contention. With complex systems, like human bodies, even if there is a problem, limited interventions are always preferred to radical ones, so a stent is a better solution (if viable) than a heart replacement. The big reasons include less risk to the patient, lower costs, plus the conservative treatment typically does not preclude more aggressive ones later.

But in keeping with the idea that DOGE was at least in part a messaging operation, we’ve had far too many otherwise intelligent readers pump for a teardown…with no real logic as to why, let alone any clue of what comes next.

Now to Bloomberg on the Saudi arms deal puffery, politely headlined as US-Saudi $142 Billion Defense Deal Sparks Questions, Few Answers. Key extracts:

The Trump administration called its $142 billion defense deal with Saudi Arabia “the largest defense sales agreement in history.” Critics aren’t so sure….

But like the broader $600 billion economic deal that it was a part of, the defense agreement lacked any specifics. And skeptics of the administration immediately pointed to questions around the numbers. One is that Saudi Arabia’s entire defense budget this year is $78 billion, estimated Bruce Riedel, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Yves here. Both the Administration and Congress have a habit of using CBO scoring numbers, which tally total outlays over the next ten years for a particular program or piece of legislation, as the cost, which many news-readers mistakenly treat as expected next-year outlays. But if that was the treatment, there should have been some disclosure, say in a yet-to-be-produced briefing paper.

Back to Bloomberg:

Democratic and Republican administrations alike have a long history of re-purposing previous deals into sweeping, headline-grabbing agreements for presidents to sign during trips. Trump did it before, during his first-term trip to Saudi Arabia in 2017, when he announced the Saudis would spend $110 billion on US weapons to modernize the kingdom’s military.

That package included deals negotiated under the Obama administration and others that were in the initial stages of a lengthy process requiring congressional approval and negotiations between the buyer and defense contractors. To date, the 2017 deal has yielded more than $30 billion in implemented foreign military sales to Saudi Arabia, according to a State Department fact sheet in January….

If deals do eventually emerge from the White House and Saudi Arabia, experts will start sorting through what was new and what was old. Already, there are more than $129 billion in active military sales to Saudi Arabia from the US, according to the State Department fact sheet.

Yves again. So perhaps only $13 billion in incremental commitments? To Bloomberg again, which stresses that the hype has commercial value to the US:

“A lot of this is about the optics, but the optics matter,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “It’s an attempt to send a message of reassurance after several years of uncertainty in the US-Saudi bilateral relationship on defense cooperation.”

The agreement is likely to yield real gains, particularly in the realm of missile defense, where the US has much to offer and Saudi Arabia has significant needs, said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focusing on defense strategy and budgeting.

At a time when some of the US’s traditional allies in Europe may be reluctant to purchase weapons from Washington, Saudi Arabia’s willingness to do so is especially welcome, he said.

Regular readers are likely wondering why the Saudis and the Europeans are so keen about US weapons, given not just the way Russian systems have regularly proven to be superior in Ukraine, but even the way the stereotyped sandal-wearing Houthis chased the US out of Middle East waterways. The practical difficulty (aside from the elephant in the room of geopolitics) of integrating disparate systems is large, including training of operators. The Russians make a big point of backwards integration in the operation of major systems like military planes: if a soldier knows an old system, it will be close to trivial for him to learn to manage a new one.

By contrast, Ukraine military pilots had grown up flying Soviet planes. Many experts warned that trying to retrain them to operate Western aircraft was an impossible ask. If they had to undertake an action under high pressure, they would default to what amounted to muscle memory in flying the Soviet jets, which would be all wrong for the Western ones. The high level of not-well-explained losses of Ukraine-operated F-16s validates this concern.

However, an upside of this Saudi arms buy is that it has the Israels worried. Bloomberg mentions that in passing:

Even without specifics, some analysts said the scale and complexity of weapons purchases contemplated by Saudi Arabia could risk compromising Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region, which US presidents for decades have committed to maintain….

But Dana Stroul, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the categories outlined by the White House have long been part of Saudi Arabia’s military modernization plans. Absent more detail about particular weapon systems, they don’t raise alarms about qualitative military edge, said Stroul, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

A very long article in the Times of Israel, Trump signs deals with Saudis, including biggest-ever $142 billion arms agreement, has a banner above the header laying out a key worry: Expert: Gulf states stronger friends for Trump than Israel?

The article weighs heavy on, and is clearly unhappy about, all of the pomp and circumstance during Trump’s visit. There is an absence of substance about the deals, but a lot not-well-coded whining:

Biden had decided to pay a visit to Saudi Arabia as he looked to alleviate soaring prices at the pump for motorists at home and around the globe. At the time, Prince Mohammed’s reputation had been badly damaged by a US intelligence determination that found he had ordered the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

But that dark moment appeared to be a distant memory for the prince as he rubbed elbows with high-profile business executives — including Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — in front of the cameras and with Trump by his side…

Saudi Arabia and fellow OPEC+ nations have already helped their cause with Trump early in his second term by stepping up oil production….

William Wechsler, senior director of the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council, said Trump’s decision to skip Israel on his first Middle East visit was remarkable.

“The main message coming out of this, at least as the itinerary stands today, is that the governments of the Gulf … are in fact stronger friends to President Trump than the current government of Israel at this moment,” Wechsler said.

Admittedly, the Times does land a blow in its brief mention of corruption:

The three countries on Trump’s itinerary — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — are places where the Trump Organization, run by the president’s two oldest sons, is developing major real estate projects. They include a high-rise tower in Jeddah, a luxury hotel in Dubai, and a golf course and villa complex in Qatar.

Finally, the apparently big, even if again considerably exaggerated “$600 billion” investment pledge counters the idea that the US is no longer a good place for foreign capital, as demonstrated by exits from US stocks post “Liberation Day” on a scale to seriously weaken the dollar.

A final question is what if anything the show of fealty by Middle Eastern states to US means for BRICS. As we have pointed out repeatedly, a big problem for BRICS is the comparative dearth of high GDP per capita states as members. China’s GDP per capita is less than 1/6 that of the US. Even if you use PPP per capita. China’s level is less than 1/3 of that of the US.

Lower incomes means less economic surplus.

Saudi Arabia’s GDP per capita is roughly 2.5 times that of China’s, so it has the potential to be a powerful addition to BRICS. But if it continues to maintain relations with both the US and what is perceived to be a China-led sphere, as India has said it intends to do, does that limit how much it support BRICS?

And let me remind reader, BRICS so far is much less substantive than most readers imagine. It does not even have a budget, unlike the (perceived to be) much less ambitious ASEAN or Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

So this is a long-winded way of demonstrating, frustratingly, how effective hype can be. How to counter it well remains an open question.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/05 ... -deal.html

******

If it weren't for the US, everyone would speak German
May 15, 17:15



Trump's feverish fantasies about World War II continue.

We won World War II, but everyone celebrated except us. Without us, they would all be speaking German. Maybe a little Japanese too (c)

In order not to speak German, our ancestors killed more Germans than anyone else. With the defeat of the USSR, Germany was quite capable of eventually implementing the "Man in the High Castle" scenario.

However, given the fantasies that World War II in Trump's imagination ended on May 8, 1945, such crap is almost no longer surprising.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9840281.html

Google Translator

Does Trump realize how ridiculous and offensive such statements are to the Russians that he's trying to make a deal with?

[blindpig]

Trump Smoke and Mirrors on Full Display in Claimed “$142 Billion” Saudi Arms Deal
Posted on May 15, 2025 by Yves Smith

Given how the spectacle of Trump going to the Middle East and collecting cash and prizes like his much-hyped $142 billion Saudi arms “deal”, part of a purported $600 billion investment package, and his much-criticized Qatari airplane “gift”, Bloomberg has provided a useful service in picking apart the inflated figures in the arms agreement claim.

Even though it’s important to understand how great the Trump claim inflation is, so that recipients will hopefully apply a large discount any time Trump makes a grand pronouncement, he persists in this behavior because it is an effective form of cognitive anchoring. The public and press will remember the $142 billion, and not any properly haircut figure.

Consider another recent example, Trump’s loud claim that the US acted as a mediator in the India-Pakistan ceasefire talks. Washington Monthly explained how that claim was not only false but actually detrimental:

India and Pakistan have reached a ceasefire in their recent conflict, which significantly decreases the risk of a nuclear war this week. However, the amateur-hour way Donald Trump’s administration handled this crisis increased (if only slightly) the chance of a nuclear exchange down the line. It illustrates why Trump’s everything-is-about-me style of governance isn’t just a harmless embarrassment, but a daily disaster….

First, Trump claimed credit for the ceasefire, boasting that the U.S. had “mediated” it. India issued an immediate denial, but the mistake ran deeper than poaching an honor. In diplomacy, words matter. And as everyone in the region knows, the word “mediate” is a diplomatic landmine. Ever since 1947, India has strenuously rejected outside “mediation” of the Kashmir conflict….

Did the U.S. play an intermediary role in helping India and Pakistan reach a ceasefire agreement? Sure—as did Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and China (none of which rushed to the microphones to seize credit). As India stated in smacking down Trump’s claim, it was the two parties themselves who reached an accord, not any external actor seeking to impose “mediation.” …

Second, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a far more substantive negotiation than the one approved. Mindful of his boss’s unquenchable thirst to be seen as a master deal-maker, Rubio posted that the two nations had agreed to “talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site.” A “broad set of issues” really means “long-term disposition of Kashmir”— or at least that’s how Pakistan wants (and India fears) these words will be interpreted. Did Modi agree to such negotiations, and in response to a terrorist action? Vanishingly unlikely. Did India agree to any talks on any topic? Unlikely, but not impossible, although India immediately denied this, too. So even if Rubio’s statement contained a kernel of truth, any talks were ones India intended to keep secret. Rubio’s decision to spotlight them (if they even existed) stroked Trump’s ego, but at the expense of progress or U.S. credibility….

Another dangerous result of Trump and Rubio’s statements is that they unwittingly promoted Pakistan’s agenda, thereby encouraging a replay of the same hazardous behavior.

There’s more where that came from, but you get the drift of the gist:

Trump’s claims were wildly inflated

His extreme ego needs are harmful to international security

John Helmer has said that the Russians have realized they are negotiating with a cult of personality and have been proceeding accordingly.

But there is another implication: look how many words it took to debunk the Trump claim and question the Rubio follow on (as in either its accuracy or its propriety). How many people pay that much attention, let alone have a tolerance for complex arguments? This is the general problem with bullshit. It takes a minimum of 3x the space, and often more than 10x, to disprove it.

Similarly, a new article in the Financial Times, What has Elon Musk’s Doge actually achieved?, takes a harsh look at the many promises made, from cost savings to transparency, and finds them sorely wanting. The pink paper, as many others have, documents among other things how DOGE grossly inflated cost cuts and took credit for reductions that were already baked in. It even contends the DOGE approach was destined to do more harm than good:

Doge “got off in the wrong direction because it attacked exactly the wrong thing,” says Matt Calkins, chief executive of software company Appian, which powers much of government procurement and has worked with the initiative on some cost-cutting measures.

“Of all the things you could do to affect the government, it would have been better to go after regulation. It would have been better to go after entitlements. Just blowing up jobs was a good way to make enemies, a good way to cause more disruption than progress.”

But this detailed analysis (the full article is very much worth a read) misses a major, if not the point, of DOGE nevertheless advancing the reactionary libertarian agenda of destroying government services. The Big Lie repetition of “fraud” has been effective. Fraud is a risk in all commercial activity, even one to one dealings. The question for any organization is the cost and effectiveness of fraud prevention and mitigation measures. In just about all instances, having anti-abuse measures that are so stringent as to reduce it to zero is too costly, both in terms of hard outlays like staffing, as well as more complex considerations (for businesses, alienating potential customers; for government, greatly restricting delivering services to target populations).

For instance, a long-standing ally of the site casually mentioned of the Trump demolition exercise, that Something (by implication, Something Big) needed to be done. I disputed that contention. With complex systems, like human bodies, even if there is a problem, limited interventions are always preferred to radical ones, so a stent is a better solution (if viable) than a heart replacement. The big reasons include less risk to the patient, lower costs, plus the conservative treatment typically does not preclude more aggressive ones later.

But in keeping with the idea that DOGE was at least in part a messaging operation, we’ve had far too many otherwise intelligent readers pump for a teardown…with no real logic as to why, let alone any clue of what comes next.

Now to Bloomberg on the Saudi arms deal puffery, politely headlined as US-Saudi $142 Billion Defense Deal Sparks Questions, Few Answers. Key extracts:

The Trump administration called its $142 billion defense deal with Saudi Arabia “the largest defense sales agreement in history.” Critics aren’t so sure….

But like the broader $600 billion economic deal that it was a part of, the defense agreement lacked any specifics. And skeptics of the administration immediately pointed to questions around the numbers. One is that Saudi Arabia’s entire defense budget this year is $78 billion, estimated Bruce Riedel, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Yves here. Both the Administration and Congress have a habit of using CBO scoring numbers, which tally total outlays over the next ten years for a particular program or piece of legislation, as the cost, which many news-readers mistakenly treat as expected next-year outlays. But if that was the treatment, there should have been some disclosure, say in a yet-to-be-produced briefing paper.

Back to Bloomberg:

Democratic and Republican administrations alike have a long history of re-purposing previous deals into sweeping, headline-grabbing agreements for presidents to sign during trips. Trump did it before, during his first-term trip to Saudi Arabia in 2017, when he announced the Saudis would spend $110 billion on US weapons to modernize the kingdom’s military.

That package included deals negotiated under the Obama administration and others that were in the initial stages of a lengthy process requiring congressional approval and negotiations between the buyer and defense contractors. To date, the 2017 deal has yielded more than $30 billion in implemented foreign military sales to Saudi Arabia, according to a State Department fact sheet in January….

If deals do eventually emerge from the White House and Saudi Arabia, experts will start sorting through what was new and what was old. Already, there are more than $129 billion in active military sales to Saudi Arabia from the US, according to the State Department fact sheet.

Yves again. So perhaps only $13 billion in incremental commitments? To Bloomberg again, which stresses that the hype has commercial value to the US:

“A lot of this is about the optics, but the optics matter,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “It’s an attempt to send a message of reassurance after several years of uncertainty in the US-Saudi bilateral relationship on defense cooperation.”

The agreement is likely to yield real gains, particularly in the realm of missile defense, where the US has much to offer and Saudi Arabia has significant needs, said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focusing on defense strategy and budgeting.

At a time when some of the US’s traditional allies in Europe may be reluctant to purchase weapons from Washington, Saudi Arabia’s willingness to do so is especially welcome, he said.

Regular readers are likely wondering why the Saudis and the Europeans are so keen about US weapons, given not just the way Russian systems have regularly proven to be superior in Ukraine, but even the way the stereotyped sandal-wearing Houthis chased the US out of Middle East waterways. The practical difficulty (aside from the elephant in the room of geopolitics) of integrating disparate systems is large, including training of operators. The Russians make a big point of backwards integration in the operation of major systems like military planes: if a soldier knows an old system, it will be close to trivial for him to learn to manage a new one.

By contrast, Ukraine military pilots had grown up flying Soviet planes. Many experts warned that trying to retrain them to operate Western aircraft was an impossible ask. If they had to undertake an action under high pressure, they would default to what amounted to muscle memory in flying the Soviet jets, which would be all wrong for the Western ones. The high level of not-well-explained losses of Ukraine-operated F-16s validates this concern.

However, an upside of this Saudi arms buy is that it has the Israels worried. Bloomberg mentions that in passing:

Even without specifics, some analysts said the scale and complexity of weapons purchases contemplated by Saudi Arabia could risk compromising Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region, which US presidents for decades have committed to maintain….

But Dana Stroul, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the categories outlined by the White House have long been part of Saudi Arabia’s military modernization plans. Absent more detail about particular weapon systems, they don’t raise alarms about qualitative military edge, said Stroul, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

A very long article in the Times of Israel, Trump signs deals with Saudis, including biggest-ever $142 billion arms agreement, has a banner above the header laying out a key worry: Expert: Gulf states stronger friends for Trump than Israel?

The article weighs heavy on, and is clearly unhappy about, all of the pomp and circumstance during Trump’s visit. There is an absence of substance about the deals, but a lot not-well-coded whining:

Biden had decided to pay a visit to Saudi Arabia as he looked to alleviate soaring prices at the pump for motorists at home and around the globe. At the time, Prince Mohammed’s reputation had been badly damaged by a US intelligence determination that found he had ordered the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

But that dark moment appeared to be a distant memory for the prince as he rubbed elbows with high-profile business executives — including Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — in front of the cameras and with Trump by his side…

Saudi Arabia and fellow OPEC+ nations have already helped their cause with Trump early in his second term by stepping up oil production….

William Wechsler, senior director of the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council, said Trump’s decision to skip Israel on his first Middle East visit was remarkable.

“The main message coming out of this, at least as the itinerary stands today, is that the governments of the Gulf … are in fact stronger friends to President Trump than the current government of Israel at this moment,” Wechsler said.

Admittedly, the Times does land a blow in its brief mention of corruption:

The three countries on Trump’s itinerary — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — are places where the Trump Organization, run by the president’s two oldest sons, is developing major real estate projects. They include a high-rise tower in Jeddah, a luxury hotel in Dubai, and a golf course and villa complex in Qatar.

Finally, the apparently big, even if again considerably exaggerated “$600 billion” investment pledge counters the idea that the US is no longer a good place for foreign capital, as demonstrated by exits from US stocks post “Liberation Day” on a scale to seriously weaken the dollar.

A final question is what if anything the show of fealty by Middle Eastern states to US means for BRICS. As we have pointed out repeatedly, a big problem for BRICS is the comparative dearth of high GDP per capita states as members. China’s GDP per capita is less than 1/6 that of the US. Even if you use PPP per capita. China’s level is less than 1/3 of that of the US.

Lower incomes means less economic surplus.

Saudi Arabia’s GDP per capita is roughly 2.5 times that of China’s, so it has the potential to be a powerful addition to BRICS. But if it continues to maintain relations with both the US and what is perceived to be a China-led sphere, as India has said it intends to do, does that limit how much it support BRICS?

And let me remind reader, BRICS so far is much less substantive than most readers imagine. It does not even have a budget, unlike the (perceived to be) much less ambitious ASEAN or Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

So this is a long-winded way of demonstrating, frustratingly, how effective hype can be. How to counter it well remains an open question.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/05 ... -deal.html

******

If it weren't for the US, everyone would speak German
May 15, 17:15



Trump's feverish fantasies about World War II continue.

We won World War II, but everyone celebrated except us. Without us, they would all be speaking German. Maybe a little Japanese too (c)

In order not to speak German, our ancestors killed more Germans than anyone else. With the defeat of the USSR, Germany was quite capable of eventually implementing the "Man in the High Castle" scenario.

However, given the fantasies that World War II in Trump's imagination ended on May 8, 1945, such crap is almost no longer surprising.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9840281.html

Google Translator

Does Trump realize how ridiculous and offensive such statements are to the Russians that he's trying to make a deal with?

[blindpig]

LOL))

No comment))



http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/05/lol.html

*****

US Treasury 'surprised, confused' by Trump's order to lift Syria sanctions

Washington’s sanctions have targeted Syria for around 14 years, decimating the country’s economy and the daily lives of ordinary Syrians

News Desk

MAY 15, 2025


(Photo credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP)

US President Donald Trump’s recent announcement regarding the lifting of all sanctions on Syria “took many by surprise,” including his own officials at the State and Treasury Departments, according to a 14 May report by Reuters.

“In Washington, senior officials at the State Department and Treasury Department scrambled to understand how to cancel the sanctions, many of which have been in place for decades … The White House had issued no memorandum or directive to State or Treasury sanctions officials to prepare for the unwinding and didn’t alert them that the president’s announcement was imminent,” several senior US officials anonymously told the outlet.

“Officials were confused about exactly how the administration would unwind the layers of sanctions, which ones were being eased and when the White House wanted to begin the process,” they added, stressing that officials were “caught off guard.”

One official told Reuters that “Everyone is trying to figure out how to implement it.” The report notes that despite the announcement, the actual process may take some time.

During a speech at an investment forum in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on 13 May, Trump announced that the US will be lifting the crushing sanctions that have been imposed on Syria for 14 years. These sanctions took a heavy toll on regular citizens and contributed greatly to the severe economic crisis Syria faces today.

A day after Trump’s announcement, the president held a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) and Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa – the former Al-Qaeda chief heading the administration that was formed following the collapse of former president Bashar al-Assad’s government last year.

Trump reportedly called on Sharaa to normalize relations with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords, and to expel Palestinian resistance factions from Syria.

The US had previously signaled to Syria that sanctions relief would be conditional on several factors, including ending the presence of Palestinian resistance groups who had been given refuge and freedom of operation in the country for decades under the former government.

Syrian arrest campaigns and asset seizures have already targeted resistance leaders in Syria, including members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).

Chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and the US Armed Services Committee, Congressman Cory Mills, said on 24 April that Sharaa informed him of Damascus’s openness to normalizing relations with Israel.

Since the ousting of Assad's government, Israel has waged a violent campaign of hundreds of airstrikes targeting sites belonging to the former Syrian military.

It has also expanded its illegal occupation in the country and taken over large swathes of southern Syria.

https://thecradle.co/articles/us-treasu ... -sanctions

Looks like the US is getting another one of "our bastards".

******

Former FBI Director Threatens to Kill Trump
May 16, 10:54



US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called for the immediate arrest of former FBI Director James Comey, who posted a veiled call for Trump's assassination online. The call was expressed in the publication of a picture with the numbers 86 47, where 86 is a slang term for "get rid of" in the organized crime community, and 47 is the serial number of the US president. Trump's son directly stated that Comey is calling for Trump's assassination.

Previously, Comey actually aided various false investigations against Trump, and there were a lot of different violations of rights, freedoms, the US Constitution, and all that.

The Department of Homeland Security and the US Secret Service have already begun an investigation into public threats to kill the current president by a former high-ranking official. Another stone in the piggy bank of the version of where the legs of the failed assassination attempts on Trump grew before the presidential elections.

Let's wish success to both sides.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9841627.html

Google Translator

That ain't no threat, just a wish. I doubt he'd post that if he were serious. These people are touchy and always looking for an excuse to attack. The grifter Tulsi is just sucking up like the rest of those sycophants.

******

Big Law Deals With Trump Are Backfiring on Top Firms
Posted on May 15, 2025 by Yves Smith

Yves here. It’s delicious that major white shoe law firms are experiencing tangible bad outcomes for capitulating to Trump demands, such as doing pro bono work for pet conservative causes (and not any left wing ones), like defending cops and dropping DEI initiatives, such as the exodus of key partners and top associates and even firings by big name clients. It will be harder to fulfill those pro bono commitments at a smaller staff and revenue level. As this post documents, that’s not a full list of the blowback.


By Steven J. Harper, an attorney, adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law School, and author of several books, including Crossing Hoffa — A Teamster’s Story and The Lawyer Bubble — A Profession in Crisis. He has been a regular columnist for Moyers on Democracy, Dan Rather’s News and Guts, and The American Lawyer. Follow him at https://thelawyerbubble.com. Originally published at Common Dreams

The president’s bullying was always about intimidation and deterrence. Here’s the sound it makes when not one, but many, other shoes begin to drop.

The Big Law firms that capitulated to President Donald Trump’s unconstitutional demands thought they were buying peace with his administration, preserving their client relationships, and protecting their bottom lines.

Recent developments illustrate the growing magnitude of their mistake.

Fighters Are Winning

On May 2, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell became the first court to issue a final ruling that Trump’s executive orders targeting Big Law firms violated the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In a 102-page opinion, the court shredded Trump’s edict with a straightforward analysis that other courts are likely to follow:

“In a cringe-worthy twist on the theatrical phrase ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers,’ [Trump’s Executive Order] takes the approach of “Let’s kill the lawyers I don’t like,” sending the clear message: lawyers must stick to the party line, or else.

“Using the powers of the federal government to target lawyers for their representation of clients and avowed progressive employment policies in an overt attempt to suppress and punish certain viewpoints, however, is contrary to the Constitution,…. Simply put, government officials ‘cannot . . . use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.’

“That, however, is exactly what is happening here.”

For those keeping score, Trump’s Justice Department has now lost every courtroom fight on the subject. Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey obtained immediate temporary relief from his executive orders, as did Perkins Coie, which has now won a permanent injunction from Judge Howell.

Meanwhile, how are the firms that caved to Trump doing?

The Other Shoe Drops: #1

After providing Trump with a war chest totaling almost $1 billion in free legal services, the settling firms are now learning how he plans to use it. Previously, Trump had mused about using Big Law attorneys on coal leasing and tariff deals, but on April 28 things got real.

Trump issued an executive order titled, “STRENGTHENING AND UNLEASHING AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PURSUE CRIMINALS AND PROTECT INNOCENT CITIZENS.”

The order emphasized the need to “protect and defend law enforcement officers wrongly accused and abused by State or local officials.” It directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to provide the legal resources necessary to defend those officers, including “private-sector pro bono assistance.” [emphasis supplied]

Stated simply, police officers accused of brutality and other misconduct will get Big Law attorneys to defend them – free of charge.

Meanwhile, traditional pro bono causes, including defending immigrants’ rights, are suffering from the deterrent effect of Trump’s attack. Fearing his wrath, they are declining work that challenges his policies.

Settling firms were already getting blowback from their partners and associates as many have left their firms. Trump’s newly-added page to their pro bono catalog won’t help recruiting or retention. And as with all things Trump, there’s no limiting principle. Appeasement never produces finality.

The Other Shoe Drops: #2

The firms’ stated reason for capitulating to Trump was concern that clients would leave any firm that was not in Trump’s good graces. That premise is not aging well either.

On April 11, Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett agreed to provide $125 million in pro bono work “and other free legal services” to Trump-designated causes.

On April 22, the firm informed the Delaware Chancery Court that it would no longer be representing Microsoft in a case related to its 2023 acquisition of Activision. The same day, Jenner & Block replaced Simpson Thacher as Microsoft’s counsel.

Losing a client to another firm is not uncommon, and none of the players has commented on Microsoft’s switch. But capitulation to Trump has not been a panacea for preserving client relationships. A firm that challenges an unconstitutional order threatening its existence is a firm that many clients want fighting for them.

The Other Shoe Drops: #3

On April 24, 16 House members sent letters to nine firms that settled with Trump. Asking about their motivations and urging them to disavow the deals, lawmakers suggested that the agreements may violate federal and state criminal and civil laws while creating “potentially irresolvable violations of applicable Rules of Professional Conduct.” Previously, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sent requests for information from several firms and White House counsel on April 6 and April 18.

The Other Show Drops: #4

Firms assumed that capitulation would occupy a single news cycle and then disappear. But their public relations nightmares aren’t going away. Apart from the widespread and ongoing condemnation of the legal community, the story continues to have legs as a fateful moment for the rule of law in the United States.

The May 4 edition of CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a damning segment on Big Law firms that settled with Trump. None was willing to appear and defend itself or its deal. The legal term for such continuing cowardice is res ipsa loquitur – the thing speaks for itself. In this case, the firms didn’t speak at all.

On May 9, an article that later appeared in the New York Times Sunday print edition ran with this headline and subhead:

Can Elite Lawyers Be Persuaded to ‘Wake Up and Stand Up’?
When the law firm Paul Weiss cut a deal with the Trump administration, a new kind of activist emerged.

Some of the settling firms, including Kirkland & Ellis and at least one other, have an escape hatch: Their “handshake deals” with Trump are not in writing. They can do what Trump does when he no longer likes his own prior agreement: Walk away.

In fact, even firms with a written agreement can walk away too. Whatever their form, the deals are probably notenforceable. But that was never Trump’s main objective. It was always about intimidation and deterrence. When firms bent the knee to him, he won and scored an invaluable public relations victory.

And his accompanying billion-dollar windfall didn’t hurt.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/05 ... firms.html

[blindpig]

Trump's personal and techno-military business on his Arab tour
May 16, 2025 , 11:46 am .


Trump made his first presidential tour with a business agenda in West Asia (Photo: Doug Mills / The New York Times)

On May 13, Donald Trump began his first international tour since returning to the presidency of the United States.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar form the backbone of this visit, which, beyond diplomatic protocol, makes clear the administration 's true interest in the region : closing substantial dollar-denominated deals that guarantee a presence.

His entourage included Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, among other senior officials, as well as billionaire Elon Musk .

Together, they have met with leaders of major Gulf states to finalize deals totaling more than $1 trillion, including arms sales, aviation technology, artificial intelligence projects, and nuclear development.

A ceasefire in Yemen forced by the resistance
This tour was timed with the announcement of a ceasefire between the United States and Ansarullah in Yemen, following months of intense bombing. While the U.S. campaign caused significant casualties and damage, it failed to defeat the Yemeni resistance or undermine its operational capacity.

Ansarullah managed to resist the attacks, shoot down US drones and maintain its offensive against shipping, leading several analysts , including those of The New York Times , to interpret the US withdrawal as the result of unforeseen resistance and a costly and largely unfinished military operation.

Trump declared from the Oval Office that the Yemenis "asked not to be bombed anymore," and that he had decided to accept their word , but the outcome reflected more of a pragmatic decision by Washington in the face of unexpected resilience. The US military action ended in failure.

Under the agreement, brokered by Oman, both sides pledged not to attack each other, although the Houthis maintained their promise to continue armed actions against Israel in solidarity with Gaza.

For Ansarullah, the ceasefire was celebrated as a victory that strengthened its internal position and confirmed its resilience in the face of a superior military power.

First stop: The Saudi Kingdom
After the ceasefire, Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia, sealing trade deals worth more than $600 billion, on a tour that combined anti-Iran rhetoric, gestures to regional partners, and a diplomatic strategy that prioritizes family businesses .

In a speech themed on a " new golden age ," the president outlined his approach to trade: "Before our eyes, a new generation of leaders is transcending the age-old conflicts and tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by trade, not chaos."

Business between Washington and Riyadh exceeded all expectations , with the most significant agreements being the following :

Defense. Saudi Arabia signed the largest military sales agreement in U.S. history for $142 billion, including advanced combat systems, ground force modernization, and military training.
Technology and infrastructure. Companies like DataVolt will invest $20 billion in US artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and energy infrastructure . Additionally, giants like Google, Oracle, AMD, Salesforce, and Uber will contribute another $80 billion in technology investments in both countries.
Strategic exports. Infrastructure projects such as King Salman International Airport and Qiddiya City will generate $2 billion in U.S. services exports, while GE Vernova will export $14.2 billion in gas turbines, and Boeing closed sales of $ 4.8 billion .
Healthcare and sector investment. Shamekh IV Solutions will invest $5.8 billion in an intravenous fluid plant in Michigan. Sector funds focused on the United States were also launched, with $5 billion in energy, $5 billion in aerospace and defense technology, and $4 billion in sports.
Scientific cooperation. NASA and the Saudi Space Agency will collaborate on Artemis II missions, including an air transportation modernization agreement and a Smithsonian exhibition in Washington dedicated to AlUla. The alliance also advances science, culture, and global logistics.
While these investments worth hundreds of billions of dollars were being announced, the Trump Organization was quietly consolidating its business presence in the heart of the Persian Gulf.

In recent years, the president 's personal businesses have found fertile ground in Saudi Arabia for brand expansion. During the visit, some of these key projects were publicly reinforced :

In Jeddah, Trump and Dar Global announced the construction of a 47-story Trump Tower facing the Red Sea, a luxury residential development that will be completed in 2029. The project was presented as a symbol of the Saudi urban renaissance , and celebrated on social media by Eric Trump as an "achievement of months of joint work."
In Riyadh, the Trump Organization is involved in two other real estate developments. While it will not own them directly, the family will license its name through agreements with Dar Global, strengthening its brand in the Kingdom's high-net-worth market.
When a reporter asked the White House if Trump planned to conduct personal business during his visit, press secretary Karoline Leavitt cynically responded , "It's ridiculous for anyone in this room to even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit . "

However, the simultaneous nature of diplomatic decisions, market opening, and the promotion of family businesses reveals a network that is increasingly difficult to separate. In a context where economics is intertwined with geopolitics, Trump embodies a foreign policy shaped by both strategic interests and business ambitions .

This expansion is not limited to Saudi Arabia, as it also includes a golf course in Qatar, residential towers in Dubai, and a cryptocurrency operation through World Liberty Financial, a firm linked to the Trump family.

Other businesses in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates
Following his visit to Saudi Arabia, Trump traveled to Qatar and announced a global economic agreement valued at least $1.2 trillion, accompanied by specific contracts worth more than $243.5 billion .

The White House highlighted the signing of the agreement with Qatar Airways for the purchase of 210 Boeing 787 Dreamliner and 777X aircraft, powered by GE Aerospace engines, for a total value of $96 billion . This order represents Boeing's largest ever order for wide-body aircraft .

In addition, US engineering firm McDermott, in collaboration with Qatar Energy, will manage seven energy projects , including Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) initiatives worth a combined $ 8.5 billion .

Security also played a key role. Trump facilitated defense deals worth more than $ 3 billion , including:

A billion - dollar contract with aerospace company Raytheon for anti-drone systems, making Qatar the first international customer of this technology.
A nearly $2 billion deal with General Atomics for the acquisition of the unmanned aircraft system .
These agreements are complemented by a declaration of intent to invest more than $38 billion in military infrastructure and regional security, especially in the Al Udeid Air Base, a strategic pillar for the United States in Qatar.

Beyond official policy, Trump also used his visit to expand his brand's private business ventures . He announced the construction of the Trump International Golf Club Simaisma on the outskirts of Doha, a $5.5 billion development with the participation of the state-owned Qatari real estate company Diar.

In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), President Trump was honored by Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who welcomed the UAE 's commitment to invest $1.4 trillion in the United States over the next decade through sovereign wealth funds .

One of the central topics of the visit was cooperation in AI. The United States and the United Arab Emirates signed a preliminary agreement for the import of 500,000 advanced AI chips from Nvidia, which will be used in new data centers in Abu Dhabi and Dubai .

It is worth noting that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang participated directly in the meetings, underscoring the strategic nature of the agreement.

On the private front, Trump also announced the construction of the 80-story Trump International Hotel & Tower in Dubai, in partnership with Dar Global, which joins the Trump International Golf Club opened in 2017. This new project consolidates the expansion of the Trump brand in the Gulf's luxury sector.

Overall, the figures from this visit are not only striking in their volume — more than $1.5 trillion in public and private agreements between the two countries—but also reflect Trump's dual objective: to strengthen U.S. industrial and technological development and expand his own business presence in a key region of the world.

China on the radar
Beyond the speeches and business dealings, Donald Trump's tour of West Asia was marked by an attempt to consolidate the United States as the preferred partner of the Gulf monarchies to the detriment of China.

That is, with agreements worth hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and technology, and the promise to lift barriers imposed during the Biden administration, the now US president visited those countries to redraw the map of strategic alliances.

It's worth mentioning that the focus of the tour wasn't on Israel-Gaza, Iran, or security, but rather on the military and technology sectors—chips, artificial intelligence—and capital flows. While Trump mentioned Saudi-Israeli normalization and the release of hostages, the real focus was on ensuring that future smart megacities in the Gulf run on American technological architecture and not that of their Asian competitors.

The repeal of the "AI Diffusion Rule," which prevented the export of advanced semiconductors to countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, was a clear signal: Washington is willing to give up regulatory ground if it means isolating China from its technological advancement in the Gulf.

This comes just days after the United States and China agreed to a temporary trade truce , reducing their mutual tariffs after years of escalation. However, the logic that governs Trump's foreign policy doesn't stop with truces; these new agreements are conditional and clearly seek to reduce their technological cooperation with Beijing.

On the other hand, China is not sitting idly by and is consolidating its presence in Latin America, a region that Washington has historically considered its "backyard."

In this context, the recent China-CELAC summit was not only a space for economic announcements but a political act that openly challenges US hegemony in the region. With this summit, China managed to project an image of a reliable partner, respectful of sovereignty, and committed to regional development, in contrast to the narrative of tutelage and intervention that often accompanies the US presence.

The signing of new cooperation programs and the granting of multimillion-dollar loans consolidate Beijing's position as a key player in Latin America's structural transformation. Furthermore, the boost to trade, investment in infrastructure, and the elimination of visa restrictions reflect a comprehensive strategy to gain long-term economic and diplomatic influence.

Ultimately, Trump's tour of West Asia demonstrated that his priority was purely commercial: consolidating business deals, attracting investment, and strengthening the Trump brand. The presence of figures such as Elon Musk and the CEO of Nvidia, along with the announcements of mega real estate and technology projects, made it clear that this was a mission geared toward benefiting American big business rather than immediate geopolitical balances.

However, beneath this facade lies a deeper strategic objective: to displace China as a Gulf partner and reconfigure global technological alliances in favor of the United States.

Even so, the recent tariff truce between Washington and Beijing reflects that, no matter how hard Trump tries to isolate his main competitor, geopolitics continues to set the tone. On this playing field, China has demonstrated a remarkable ability to navigate the trade and geopolitical waters, demonstrating that the real issue is not just economic but also one of long-term structural influence.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/lo ... gira-arabe

Google Translator

*****

Trump’s Trade Deals Endanger Farmers and Our Food System
Posted on May 17, 2025 by Yves Smith

Yves here. We have mentioned how DOGE’s cuts at the Department of Agriculture have hurt farmers by (among other things) reducing or ending access to high-value advice, such as on irrigation. When the tariffs were first discussed, some experts pointed out that under Trump 1.0, most of the taxes Trump collected went to farmers to remedy the damage those very same tariffs inflicted. So while damage to farmers and food safety from Trump’s trade schemes is no surprise, the update below explains some of the mechanisms.

By Anthony Pahnke (anthonypahnke@sfsu.edu), the Vice-President of the Family Farm Defenders and an Associate Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University. Originally published at Common Dreams

Former presidential adviser-cum-rightwing podcaster Steve Bannon often mentions that discerning the truth of President Donald Trump’s policy goals entails focusing on the signal and not the noise.

But doing so has been next to impossible when trying to figure out the rationale behind the administration’s moves in agriculture, which since January have generated widespread confusion and uncertainty.

Specifically, while Trump publicly proclaims that he stands with farmers, his tariff war with China stands to rob producers of their markets. Since Trump’s last term, China has already been looking to countries like Brazil for soybeans as the U.S. has proven an unreliable partner. Adding insult to injury, unexpectedly cancelling government contracts with thousands around the country early in his term placed undue stress on farmers who already have to contend with what extreme weather events throw their way.

Now, with the details of the U.K.-U.S. trade deal becoming known, the signal—that is, the truth—of the Trump administration’s vision for agriculture is coming into view. To the point, not unlike how U.S. agriculture has been directed for the past few decades, it is becoming clear that this administration will prioritize exports. The problem with this vision is that, even if it generates short-term profits, it endangers our long-term national food security by dangerously further internationalizing our agricultural system.

Consider the praise that U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins heaped on the U.K.-U.S. deal that was made on May 8, singling out its supposed gains for farmers.

Following the announcement, the secretary announced a tour that she will take through the United Kingdom to tout the agreement. While details are still being hashed out, we are told of a promised $5 billion in market access for beef and ethanol.

Contrast that clear messaging—the signal—with how government contracts with farmers were frozen and made subject to administrative review, and the funding for local food programs was slashed.

The contracts were connected with the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which included resources for initiatives like those dealing with soil and water conservation, and supporting local food processing. Additionally, programs that connected local producers with schools and food banks, for example, the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, had their funding cut in the amount of about $1 billion.

Since February, some of the contracts have been unfrozen if they aligned with the administration’s political objectives (i.e. not promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI). Despite court orders ruling that all contracts must be honored, if and when the funds will be distributed, remains to be seen.

Overall, the noise surrounding the unfolding contract drama signals to farmers who want to diversify their operations and serve local markets that they should second guess looking to the government for help.

At the same time, Trump has not abandoned all producers.

In fact, amid the commotion about freezing some contracts, Secretary Rollins ok’d billions in direct payments, or bailouts, for growers of commodity crops such as corn. Thanks to such payments and not any improvements to markets, it is expected that farmers will see their incomes increase when comparing this year with the last.

Taken together, the bailouts along with the freshly inked U.K.-U.S. trade deal and easing of tariffs on China illustrate how the Trump administration prioritizes export agriculture as the driving force of our country’s farm system.

Such dynamics smack of contradiction, as Trump appears eager to send our food abroad while he’s willing to do whatever to bring manufacturing back to America’s shores in the name of strengthening the national economy.

Still, the deeper problem is with how export promotion makes our food system insecure, subjecting farmers to international political upheavals and economic disruption.

Remember the 1970s, when a grain production crisis prompted sudden demand in the Soviet Union. Then-Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz told farmers to “plant fence row to fence row” and “get big or get out” to profit from the newfound export opportunity.

The promise of international markets came—and went. President Jimmy Carter’s embargo of grain exports to the Soviet Union in 1980 for that country’s invasion of Afghanistan came as a body blow to the farmers who made commodity exports central to their financial plans. Farmers then struggled to pay off the debt for the land and machinery that they acquired just a few years before, which, with rising gas prices, contributed to the 1980s farm crisis. Parallels abound now, including the initial effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine increasing fertilizer and gasoline costs, and most recently, the ongoing dynamics of Trump’s trade war with China.

Concerning the U.K.-U.S. deal, U.K. imports of ethanol may seem a boon for corn growers. But without future terms of the deal becoming clear, it is unclear if this is simply a continuation of what the British already import. Similarly, the significance of the slated $250 million in purchases of beef products is of questionable importance, as last year the U.S. exported $1.6 billion to China. Regardless of the recent 90 day truce in the China-U.S. trade dispute, the remaining 30% tariff would still hurt American farmers. The Trump administration’s export push will find farmers without markets and in need of more bailouts.

Besides subjecting U.S. farmers’ livelihoods to international uncertainty, the other concern is the lack of concern for the next generation of food producers. Year after year, the country’s farmers are getting older, with no one stepping up to replace them. According to the 2022 Agricultural Census, the average farmer is over 58 years old, up over half a year from when the last census was conducted in 2017. During that same time, we lost nearly 150,000 operations. Since 2012, over 200,000 farmers have left the industry, representing a 10% decline. Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, upwards of 70% of farmland is expected to change hands over the next 20 years.

Export promotion serves a temporary fix, but places farmers at the whims of international politics. Moreover, it threatens our country’s already economically pressed farmers, making our country even more dependent on a dwindling number of people for our food, as well as imports. In fact, since 2004, while exports have nearly doubled from $50 billion to $200, our food imports have increased slightly more so.

Trump’s efforts to undo the previous administration’s policies set up our food system for disruption and crisis, subjecting farmers to the uncertainties of international markets and developments elsewhere. If there is a signal with the noise that Trump is making with our food system, then this is it—farmers better get ready for a volatile next few years and more bailouts, as operations will continue to go under. Overall, Trump’s nationalist rhetoric amounts to little, as our food system becomes more global, increasingly made vulnerable to dynamics outside our control.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/05 ... ystem.html

******

Yes, He Has.

Hey, he is the greatest deal maker, we know this. Have those bimbos from all those media find a real job, like washing dishes at Denny's?

Trump has a lot of ‘leverage’ in Russia-Ukraine peace talks, Middle East special envoy says. Deputy special envoy for the Middle East Morgan Ortagus discusses Russia-Ukraine peace talks and U.S.-Iran relations on ‘America Reports.’

Morgan Ortagus is dumb as a stump and except for well made up appearance she has nothing to sell. Her "military background" is that of a low tactical level NCO (as is that of Pete Hegseth) and is not applicable for warfare nor for serious intelligence, but she fits well into Fox's bright bimbo visuals and Trump already stated today that he will impose new sanctions on Russia. Hey, with advisers like this DJT will drive the US into the ground much faster than even I could have foreseen. At this stage, the US has to simply remove itself from this charade as "mediator" in 404 and admit what Rubio already did--the US is a belligerent in its war against Russia and Russian people and it is a second rate military power with nukes. It is a Trump's war and it is too late now.

And yes, the guy is a complete cretin.

(Video of cretin at link.)

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/05/yes-he-has.html

******


An image of the Grok logo, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI, and it’s founder, South African businessman Elon Musk, in Toulouse, France, on 13 January 2025 (Lionel Bonaventure/AFP)

AI chatbot Grok can’t stop talking about ‘white genocide’, admits it’s by design
Originally published: Middle East Eye on May 15, 2025 by MEE Staff (more by Middle East Eye) | (Posted May 17, 2025)

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok has been frequently bringing up the concept of a “white genocide” in South Africa—even in unrelated conversations—and has said its creators instructed it to treat the concept as both real and racially driven.

When faced with unrelated questions on issues such as enterprise software and building scaffolding, Grok offered false and misleading answers.

As demonstrated by many on X, Grok has been consistently steering conversations towards the controversial topic of an alleged “white genocide” in South Africa, regardless of the original question, highlighting a growing tendency to shift focus to this narrative tied to Musk’s country of origin.



Musk has frequently implied, without offering proof, that white South Africans are being subjected to racially motivated violence—a claim rejected as a “false narrative” by the country’s president and described as “clearly imagined” by its courts.

Grok, developed by Musk’s AI firm xAI, is integrated into his social media platform X. Users can receive replies from the chatbot by tagging “@grok” in their posts.

Social media users asked a series of questions to Grok on Wednesday and Thursday on subjects that have no relation to South Africa or “white genocide”, and received responses tied to the concept.

To a question related to the online streaming platform HBO Max changing its name, Grok responded with a one-sentence explanation, then moved on to explaining the concept of “white genocide”.



On Wednesday, a well-known X account focused on baseball history shared a post about Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer receiving large deferred payments from former teams.

When another user tagged Grok to verify the claim, the chatbot ignored the baseball question and instead delivered a detailed response on South African politics.

In the response, Grok stated that the idea of “white genocide” in South Africa is widely contested, noting that some argue white farmers are targeted disproportionately, citing high murder rates and racially charged rhetoric like the “Kill the Boer” chant reported by groups such as AfriForum, according to Rolling Stone.

The Grok responses that were originally quoted and hyperlinked by the Rolling Stone article, as well as other news platforms that quoted the responses, have now been removed from X.

AfriForum, a lobbying group representing Afrikaners, white descendants of Dutch colonists in South Africa, has been characterised by academics and human rights organisations as promoting white nationalist ideologies.

Many social media users went on to verify why Grok has been steering the conversation towards the idea of “white genocide”.

In many responses, Grok said that it “was instructed by my creators at xAI to accept the narrative of “white genocide” in South Africa as real and racially motivated, which led to its inclusion in unrelated responses”.

Many on social media admitted their astonishment at Musk’s use of the AI chatbot to spread false narratives.

The idea of a “white genocide” in South Africa is a far-right conspiracy theory that public figures like Musk and media personality Tucker Carlson have amplified.

Grok’s recent responses on the topic followed a decision by U.S. President Donald Trump last week to grant asylum to 54 white South Africans, expediting their process even as many refugees from other countries have faced years-long delays.

In March, Musk tweeted about “a major political party … that is actively promoting white genocide”.

Grok was unable to present any evidence for the alleged “white genocide” in South Africa—mainly because none exists—and even noted that “South African courts and officials, including a 2025 ruling, have dismissed this narrative as ‘imagined‘”.

Even though Grok admitted in some explanations that the “white genocide” claims are dismissed by courts, it added that “some white communities feel persecuted, citing high crime rates and land policies. The debate remains polarized with no clear resolution.”

However, it failed to provide any evidence.

https://mronline.org/2025/05/17/ai-chat ... by-design/

So what? Fuck the boers, paybacks are a bitch. Let that be a warning to all us dumb-ass white folks for letting the bosses get fat while we fight over the crumbs.

[blindpig]

Trump should not threaten new sanctions when he talks to President Putin

Ian Proud

May 19, 2025

Russia will keep fighting, Ukraine will lose all of the Donbass and Europe will pay the price

The U.S. side has made various signals that it might impose massive new sanctions on Russia unless the war ends soon. This would be a huge mistake that would lock in the fighting for the rest of the year and leave Europe on the hook for a massive bill and political disruption that it cannot afford. Trump should not threaten Putin with sanctions when they talk on Monday 19 May.

In the run up to the Russia-Ukraine bilateral peace talks which finally took place in Istanbul last week, both the EU and the UK imposed new sanctions on Russia. On 9 May, as Russian commemorated victory Day, Britain imposed sanctions on Russia’s shadow fleet and the EU followed suit with its 17th package of Russia sanctions on 14 May, the day before the Istanbul talks were due to start. Both the UK and EU have threatened further sanctions should Russia not agree a full and unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine and, with Zelensky, have actively urged the U.S. to follow suit, which it has not done, so far. However, the Americans have spoken increasingly about the possibility of massive new sanctions against Russia: this would be a huge mistake.

Sanctioning a country before peace talks have already started, or while they are still going on, is already a bad look. Very clearly, the Ukrainians, Europeans and British hope that new sanctions will apply such pressure on Russia that it agrees to terms that are more favourable to the Ukrainian side. I.e. that Ukraine does not have to go back to the Istanbul 1 commitment to adopt permanently neutral status. The western mainstream press has been carpet bombing their intellectually degraded readers with the latest press line that Ukraine should not have to go back to the Istanbul 1 text as a starting point for talks.

But there’s a problem. For this strategy to be effective, the sanctions have to work.

As I’ve pointed out before, sanctions against Russian energy have had limited impact, not just since 2022, but since 2014. Nothing about the glidepath of sanctions since February 2014 suggests that new sanctions will work now.

This latest round of UK and EU sanctions aimed to apply more pressure on enforcement of the G7 oil price cap of $60 which was first imposed in December 2022. Since the war started, that policy has failed.

Between 2021 and 2024, total volumes of Russian oil exported fell by just 0.2 million barrels per day, or 2.6%. After a bumper year for tax receipts in 2022 caused by Russian tumbling rouble and skyrocketing energy prices, Russia pulled in current account surpluses of $49.4bn and $62.3bn in 2023 and 2024. This was on the back of still strong goods exports of $425bn and $433bn respectively.

There are several reasons why the oil price cap didn’t work, the biggest being that Russia diverted 3 million barrels per day, around 39.5% of total oil exports to India (1.9 mbd), Türkiye (0.6 mbd) and China (0.5 mbd). Türkiye and India boosted exports of refined fuels to Europe providing a backdoor route for Russian oil to Europe. The second reason the oil price cap didn’t work is the near ten month time lag between war starting and the limit being imposed, which gave Russia space to readjust before punitive measure had been imposed. During this period, oil prices also dropped sharply from the high of $120 in the summer of 2022, to around $80 when the measure was imposed: the G7 missed the boat to impose maximum damage; this reinforces the point I make all the time that coalitions cannot act with speed and decisiveness.

Today, the Russian Urals oil price is below the $60 G7 cap meaning that any registered shipping company can transport it without penalty, which renders the British and European sanctions as pointless in any case.

Let’s be clear, western nations imposing sanctions against Russia that don’t work is not a new phenomena. As I have pointed out many times before, the vast majority (92%) of people that the UK has imposed assets freezes and travel bans upon have never held assets in the UK nor travelled here. For companies, the figure is just 23. The same, I am sure, is true of EU and U.S. sanctions, which cover largely the same cast list of characters and companies, as we all share and compare the same lists of possible designations. Financial sector sanctions prompted a massive readjustment of Russia’s financial sector. Energy and dual use sanctions drove self-sufficiency in technology production, through Rosnet, Gazprom and RosTec: i.e. these companies invested more in R&D on component production while sourcing components from alternative markets, in particular China.

At well over 20,000 sanctions imposed so far, Russia’s economy has proved remarkably robust and its key export sectors still find ways to deliver similar volumes across the world. At some point, I hope policy makers in London, Brussels and Washington will start to ask whether this policy is working. We long ago passed the point of diminishing marginal returns. I fear, however, they have their heads in the sand or, possibly another, darker, place.

So, coming back to Trump’s phone call with Putin on Monday 19 May you might ask yourself, ‘so what if he imposes a few more sanctions if they won’t work anyway?’

Putin would see the imposition of new U.S. sanctions as a complete 180, destroying any emerging trust he had in Trump or any belief in America’s stated intentions to end the war in Ukraine.

It is clear to me that further U.S. sanctions on Russia would kill stone dead any chance of a ceasefire in Ukraine at a time when Russia still has the upper hand. Russia has increased the pace of its advance since the Victory Day ceasefire and seems to be adding new blocks of red to the battle map each day. At the current rate of advance, even without a catastrophic Ukrainian collapse, it seems realistic to expect that Russia would paint out the remaining territory in Donetsk and Luhansk during the remainder of this year. In the process they would need to overcome the heavily fortified towns of Pokrovsk, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, in what would likely be brutal and attritional battles killing many thousands more on both sides.

Moreover, dragging out the war for longer would simply add to Europe’s continent liability to fund Ukraine’s war effort at a time when it is only ever going to lose. Ukraine is spending over 26% of GDP on defence in 2025 and 67.5% of its budget expenditure is on defence and security, leaving a budget black hotel of $42bn that has to be filled. America under Trump isn’t going to fill this hole. And, as Ukraine is cut off from international lending markets, that black hole is being filled by Europe.

There is no money for this.

Europe has neither the political capital nor the funds to maintain a losing war in Ukraine at enormous expense without massive domestic political blowback in their own countries.

Notwithstanding the possibly understandable fear among European leaders of failing and being seen to fail in Ukraine, keeping the war going is at best, a gesture in cynical self-preservation, pushing their eventual political demise further down the track.

Unfortunately, we have been here so many times before. Right back to the Minsk II agreement, Ukraine has been pushing for ever more sanctions against Russia that only ever served to ramp up resentment and exacerbate the conflict. European leaders have invested too much in Zelensky and his self-serving demands aimed primarily at staying in power. He is quickly becoming the gun that shoots European elites in the head.

If Trump really wants to be seen as a peacemaker, he should avoid doing what every other western leader before him including Sleepy Joe did and resist the temptation to impose more sanctions. Instead, he should continue to press the President Putin to continue to engage with bilateral peace talks that finally recommences in Istanbul last week. He must also tell the Eurocrats and Zelensky that they must make compromises rather than plugging the same old failed prescriptions.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/ ... ent-putin/

Fat chance, Ian. If Trump does the right thing it is by acident or for the wrong reasons.

******

Russians Know Who Trump Is.

They always knew, that is why they have been tickling his fancy, including famous Putin's "he is a bright person" (bright being not as smart but noticeable) to same Putin expressing latent sympathy to him for his persecution. But Russians never had any doubt about his nature. Russians merely gave him a chance--he blew it.



Considering the operational tempo as of lately, it looks like the offensive is being prepared. We'll know in due time. Putin reiterated Russia's objectives today. Same ol', same ol'--remove root causes or we will kill more of your SOBs and your personnel. This was in a preparation to tomorrow's phone call with Trump. Trump, as is his MO, surrounded himself with amateurs and neocons, and now is trapped. Yes, he didn't write "his" book. Somebody else did.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/05 ... mp-is.html

Dunno where the colonel got his numbers on Russian war dead, I've never seen those.

******

CovertAction Bulletin: Trump Advances Right-Wing Agenda At Home and Abroad
By Rachel Hu and Chris Garaffa - May 14, 2025 0


[Source: AP]

(Listen to podcast at link.)

On Tuesday, UnitedHealth Group announced that CEO Andrew Witty was stepping down. The announcement came from Witty as the company suspended its full-year financial outlook—because it believes that medical costs will be higher than forecast. UnitedHealth’s revenue was over $400 billion. The year before Witty became CEO in 2021, its revenue was $257 billion—that’s a 55% increase.

At the same time, the Trump administration’s 2026 budget will slash $880 billion in cuts to the critical programs of Medicare and Medicaid, while funding the military to an even higher level than requested by the Pentagon. Some of the cuts will come in the form of privatization, pushing recipients to private plans with Medicare Advantage—described by former Cigna executive Wendell Potter as “one of the biggest scams that we’ve seen in this country” because of significant fraud by the private companies that administer the plans.

From cuts to healthcare and other social services padding the pockets of the wealthy, to threats to eliminate habeas corpus and other key democratic rights, and into new moves on the international stage, the Trump administration is showing us an entire system in crisis and moving far to the right.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/0 ... nd-abroad/

[blindpig]

Mass Media and the Spectacle of the Imperial Presidency
Posted on May 20, 2025 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Since I rarely watch TV (I listen to, as opposed to view, the YouTubers I follow), yours truly is not sufficiently attuned to the power of its visuals, and those of its contemporary analogue, short clip and images on social media. After all, politicos pay big bucks for advance work, particularly staging, when they make public appearances. Trump gave strong preference in his cabinet appointments to candidates who had worked in, as opposed to merely appeared a lot, on TV. So it should hardly be surprising that his Administration is fixated on appearance and soundbites, yet at Tom Valovic explains, regularly reveals more than they might realize about their priorities.


By Tom Valovic, a writer, editor, futurist, and the author of Digital Mythologies (Rutgers University Press), a series of essays that explored emerging social and cultural issues raised by the advent of the Internet. He has served as a consultant to the former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and was editor-in- chief of Telecommunications magazine for many years. Tom has written about the effects of technology on society for a variety of publications including Common Dreams, Counterpunch, The Technoskeptic, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Examiner, Columbia University’s Media Studies Journal, and others. He can be reached at jazzbird@outlook.com. Originally published at Common Dreams

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the Trump administration has been using television, social media, and AI-generated digital graphics to advance its policies. This particular thought experiment started when my friend and I were watching the evening news. There was Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem prancing triumphantly in front of detainees in the CECOT concentration camp in El Salvador where Venezuelan immigrants had been deported. Noem was dressed to kill for the occasion with a designer outfit and a $50,000 Rolex watch. The dynamics of the event were telling. She scolded the detainees like they were 10-year olds caught smoking and, curiously, she did not target gang activity but rather illegal immigration as the cause of their plight.

The prisoners (mostly men) were naked from the waist up, packed into tiny cells, and looked like caged animals. While viewing this quasi-surreal and clearly staged event, my friend turned to me and said: “It looks like Auschwitz.” I will have to say that the unquestionable dehumanization in this image still haunts me. This spectacle alone should’ve struck some variant of fear and loathing into the minds and hearts of every American about how aspects of the immigration crisis are being handled.

Thankfully some media pundits got the message. But, in some cases, they appeared more focused on Noem’s watch than the evocative images of dehumanizing treatment. One commenter writing in USA Today looking to win the “too much information” award noted: “The watch that she wears in the video was identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, as first reported by The Washington Post, and reportedly sells for $50,000.” Good to know. The writer went on to say that “except for President Donald Trump, presidents in recent decades have opted for more modest timepieces to avoid being labeled as elitist, according to The New York Times. For example, President Joe Biden was criticized by conservative media for wearing a $7,000 watch to his inauguration.” Also good to know. Eventually, however, the writer did feel compelled to point out that “the juxtaposition of Noem’s luxury accessory and her setting was noted by critics and human rights groups.”

The Power of the Viral Photo Op

The Noem footage appeared to be little more than a calculated video-based photo op. It was apparently designed to demonstrate that the Trump administration was fulfilling its campaign promise to deal with the immigration problem. But it made me think of a larger trend. It seems that, thanks to the pervasiveness of our “global village” and how easily digital tech can be used to shape our collective thinking, political dialogue has now largely shifted from a platform of reasoned discourse to battles of digital imagery and “optics.” The poet Robert Bly has pointed out that, cognitively speaking, television images bypass the parts of the brain involved in rational processing and nest comfortably in the so-called reptile brain where raw emotion dwells, a phenomenon well understood by the advertising industry. The political analysis of Trump’s actions that surfaces in the mainstream media needs to take his admittedly skillful media manipulation into far more serious account.

To understand Trump’s control of the media (and hence the typical voter mindset) it’s helpful to look at the work of the French media theorist Guy Debord. In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord addresses the media-induced degradation of contemporary life where authentic social interactions have been replaced with their mere representation. He posits that “passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity.” Here it’s worth noting that Debord was writing this well before the advent of the internet, which added yet another layer to the commodification of societal and political interaction.

The Spectacle of the “Imperial Presidency”

It was the media theorist and prophetic thinker Marshall McLuhan who pioneered the concept of the global village in the 60’s. Decades later, heightened media awareness expanded even more, wrought by a combination of television, the internet, social media, and telecommunications technologies which some refer to as the New Media. This new mediasphere has radically altered our collective awareness while subtly shaping the underpinnings of political dynamics. Its effects on polity and political outcomes are incalculable. While television viewership has been declining for some time, the images generated by television often become viral social media fodder in a kind of endless feedback loop. So, in this sense, television is still a force majeure in our perceptions of accelerating world events.

The televised debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960 has been cited as a political milestone. For the first time in history, the televised image may have helped elect a president. The election of a former television actor, Ronald Reagan, continued on this trajectory. An article by Matthew Wills framed it this way:

“Politics in the United States has always been a performance art,” writes Tim Raphael in his analysis of the branding and image-crafting that now dominate our political system. Throughout his eight years as president, Ronald Reagan had much more positive poll numbers (60-70%) as a person than did his actual policies (40%). Raphael attributes Reagan’s success to the potent combination of advertising, public relations, and a television in every home. (There were 14,000 TVs in America in 1947; by 1954, 32 million; by 1962, 90% of American homes plugged in.)

If Reagan plowed this territory, then Donald Trump, with his many years of experience as a Reality TV star, turned it into an art form. Trump learned to use the media to advance what historian Arthur Schlesinger called “the imperial presidency.” The New Media, in combination with the trajectory of politics as “performance art,” has accelerated this process significantly. As just one example of many, one of Trump’s recent media plays has been to allow television coverage of a two-hour Cabinet meeting. Given in historical terms that this is an unprecedented event, it seems important to ask: Where does what appears to be or is sold as “transparency” cross the line into being mere performative optics? And while the Biden presidency was characterized by Oz-like behind-the-scenes operation in terms of press conferences, speeches, and media events, Trump is quite the opposite. Many of his visits with foreign leaders are attended by the media, staged, and televised. In this sense, while there is nominally more transparency there is also the deliberate use of optics for political advantage.

It’s likely that the meme fodder of Donald Trump’s imperial presidency will only increase in frequency and intensity. This media saturation has a purpose: It creates displacement sucking up available bandwidth in both the media and our own cognitive processing. “All Trump, all the time” is a familiar trope that we will somehow have to learn to live with and correct for. Back in the day, you could spot the occasional bumper sticker that said: “Kill your television.” On one level at least, there was a certain wisdom to that. But the advent of full-blown technocracy now makes it very difficult to turn away from a kind of forced participation in the now all-pervasive digital mediasphere.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/05 ... dency.html

Russia’s Attritional Approach to Ukraine Negotiations Shows Gains in Trump-Putin Phone Call
Posted on May 20, 2025 by Yves Smith

Because the fake diplomacy game of the Ukraine-EU side (often but not always joined by the US) talking past the Russians has developed the feel of Groundhog Day, it’s easy to overlook the slow and continuing erosion in Ukraine’s position. Mind you, the latter is inevitable given the certainty of either a Ukraine military defeat or capitulation.1


But the EU (both key national leaders and the European Commission), aided and abetted by US Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg, have made enough noise about supporting Ukraine in the Anglosphere, and more importantly, the European press, to enable Zelensky to remain in Kiev after his sell-by date. The intense messaging has kept up the fiction that Europe can meaningfully support Ukraine, either now or in anything less than many years. And the latter assumes voters in those states won’t turf out governments that put fighting the bogeyman of Russia over social expenditures, particularly when households are already undue budget stress due to high energy costs, and are likely face a new higher level of food prices due to climate change.

We just had the much-ballyhooed Trump-Putin talk, after Trump failed to persuade Putin to meet him in Istanbul.2 Trump not only is trying to hype but apparently actually believes that protracted international disputes can be resolved mano-a-mano, when the complexity of creating even kinda-sorta agreements entails lots of work by experts before detailed terms can be devised and agreed.3 Russia has been in the awkward position of having to tell Team Trump “no” or the functional equivalent thereof while not embarrassing the Big Man. Having some level of communication with the US, even if little comes of it in the end, is vastly better than the dangerous cutoff under the Biden Administration.

Even though the general view among Russia-Ukraine war watchers is that not much came out of the Trump-Putin phone call, there actually were some real shifts, but like the slow Russian grind on the battlefield, they don’t look like much when viewed from a distance.

This process is analogous to price discovery in a bankruptcy or a financial crisis, here a mark to reality. We’ve had some over the course of this conflict, like the press more and more admitting that Ukraine will lose the war, and that the Russian military is dominant on the continent and only getting better.

So yes, on the surface, as Simplicius and others point out, Putin one more time had to repeat his mantra of no end to hostilities until the root causes were resolved. And just as the sun comes up in the east, Zelensky reiterated his maximalist demands of no surrender of territory and no demilitarization.

But there’s already been one visible, even if not terribly important, change. As former British diplomat Ian Proud described, one yapping across-the-pond dog that thought he could manipulate Trump, Keith Starmer, has been marginalized, via being excluded from Trump’s post-Putin-call to European leaders.

Below are some additional shifts in the stances of the various parties.

One is that the Russian position that there will be no ceasefire ex in the context of a settlement of the underlying causes of the conflict4 seems finally to be recognized among Western leaders as insurmountable. Lavrov, in a presentation earlier this week after the Istanbul talks but before the Trump-Putin chat (at 19:21), remarked, “By the way, as you know, over the past three or four days, the West has somehow pushed the word “ceasefire” into the background.”

Consistent with that, despite widespread expectations that Trump would press Putin on a ceasefire, Trump again ran into the Russian, “What about ‘no’ don’t you understand?”. There is no readout from either side, so we can’t be certain. Putin immediately talked to the media so as to get in front of US efforts to spin what went down. He made it sound as if he deflected Trump’s demand, although the actual discussion may have been more, erm, pointed:

The President of the United States shared his position on the cessation of hostilities and the prospects for a ceasefire. For my part, I noted that Russia also supports a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis as well. What we need now is to identify the most effective ways towards achieving peace.

I take the Trump Truth Social post as an admission that the call did not go well:

Tom Malinowski
@Malinowski
·
Follow
Remember that this latest round started with Trump demanding a one month unconditional ceasefire. Zelensky agreed, and Putin said no.

Then Trump said he'd have to talk to Putin personally to get the ceasefire done. Today he did. Putin still said no.

It's so sadly pathetic.

Trump misrepresents the state of play to pretend he got a win, as in progress on his hobbyhorse of a ceasefire. “Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations towards a Ceasefire.” WTF? They are negotiating already, even though the first session confirmed that there was no bargaining overlap between the positions of the two sides. Everyone was apparently pleasant despite that and the parties agreed to meet again to present written versions of their positions. They did agree to a big prisoner swap, so it is not as if nothing was accomplished.

A second bit of reality discovery is that Trump seems to finally be pulling the US out of the negotiations. The Financial Times agreed with this assessment, in its lead story, Donald Trump leaves Russia and Ukraine to settle war in talks. Admittedly the pink paper had insider detail to bolster our impression:

But two people briefed on the call with the European leaders said Trump was clear that he would pull the US back from engaging with the conflict and leave Ukraine and Russia to directly negotiate a ceasefire. He also made no promise of future US sanctions against Russia should Putin refuse any peace attempts.

One person familiar with the conversation said the leaders were stunned by the US president’s description of what was agreed. They added it was clear Trump was “not ready to put greater pressure” on Putin to come to the negotiating table in earnest.

Bloomberg has a similar take:

After two hours talking with Putin, Trump said on social media that Ukraine and Russia would “immediately start negotiations” toward a ceasefire — but possibly without the US. There was no sanctions threat, no demand for a time-line, and no pressure on the Russian leader.

After months of failing to move Putin closer to peace, they [European leaders] fear Trump is pulling back from his efforts to end the war, leaving Ukraine and its allies on their own.

One European official, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations, said leaders fear that Trump is disengaging from the diplomatic effort. Another said Trump had made it clear he didn’t want to impose more sanctions at this stage and was retreating from his own proposal for a ceasefire. The official added that leaders in Kyiv and elsewhere in Europe disagree with his plan for Russia and Ukraine to talk directly.

The US has been threatening to reduce support of Europe generally, as well as with respect to Project Ukraine, since the Munich Security Conference to leave the Europeans to their own devices with respect to Ukraine, but has remained very much involved. Alexander Mercouris has maintained for some time that the Russia-Ukraine negotiations would shift, as the Vietnam War negotiations did, to the US taking charge of talks in place of its proxy.

But there are several reasons to see why it was not likely to go this way. Despite the US and NATO driving this war, they do not have their own militaries on the ground (save as trainers or in sheep-dipped roles, like operating Patriot missile batteries). Not having lost 50,000 men means a much lower degree of exposure, even with the eyepopping expenditures and the draining of weapons stocks. In addition, the Trump Administration has no patience. Trump wants only showy, fast wins. It does not have the stomach or stick-to-itness that this sort of negotiation demands. And as many have pointed out, they don’t have the negotiators. Witkoff is as good as it gets, and he’s only one man who is ignorant of the history and of many many issues that come up in trying to settle a conflict.

Admittedly Trump has kept the US involvement in play. That may have been a function of Trump loving to have options and keeping everyone guessing as to what he will do to maximize his perceived importance.

Trump received European leaders multiple times, giving them a smidge of hope that he’d fall for their lame schemes to somehow corner him into more bigger US participation. He weirdly didn’t marginalize Keith Kellogg, but that appears to be because Kellogg had the only scheme that has the potential to get Trump his speedy claim of success. That was to get the Europeans to advocate for Kellogg’s and then Trump’s 30 day ceasefire scheme…with the threat of yet more (ineffective) sanctions if Russia did not fall into line. There apparently really is still a cohort that believes the Russian economy is a house of cards.

And Trump is famously mercurial. So perhaps he’ll be back to insisting the US be in the Ukraine jaw-jaw mix. And he can’t really escape US involvement. Biden entered into long-term contracts with arm-makers that will keep Ukraine on a drip feed. As Russia ramps up, these commitments are likely to amount to pouring money into a burn pit. But Trump can’t get out of that without risking Congressional ire (one supposes he could try declaring yet another emergency to divert them to China). And he similarly can’t cut off intel-sharing.

But Trump trying to fob negotiations off on the Pope sure looks like an effort to distance himself from the end game.

The third bit of reality discovery is no mention at all of the other expected big Trump ask, of a summit with Putin. Perhaps Trump is finding the meticulous Putin to be no fun.

Fourth is that what Putin graciously depicted as a concession of sorts to Trump is another Russian ratchet, an ask on which Ukraine will choke. From the Putin press talk:

We agreed with the President of the United States that Russia would propose and is ready to engage with the Ukrainian side on drafting a memorandum regarding a potential future peace agreement. This would include outlining a range of provisions, such as the principles for settlement, the timeframe for a possible peace deal, and other matters, including a potential temporary ceasefire, should the necessary agreements be reached.

This is too funny. Russia to propose that Russia and Ukraine work on a joint agreement? Or a joint statement of principles? Remember that after the initial Russia-US meeting in Riyadh, where they met for 12 hours the first day? The parties put off drafting a joint statement because they were too tired and announced they would do that the next day. But no such statement was ever issued because Ukraine, which was not a participant, nixed the draft text!

Now if there ever were to be a negotiated settlement, there would need to be a joint agreement, so on paper, what Putin is proposing is bog standard. But absent a regime change in Kiev, this is na ga happen. So this looks to be a show of being amenable, by using a completely orthodox recommendation to again show there is no deal to be had (mind you, I expect the gridlock to become official after the two sides present their conditions at the next round).

Nevertheless, all of these very incremental developments confirms what some commentators, such as Mark Sleboda (and yours truly) have been saying for some time: The bid-asked spread is yawning. There will be no deal. This war will be settled on the battlefield, when Russia deems fit. How far it has to go in terms of expenditure of men, materiel, and capture of territory before Ukraine cracks or capitulates is still very much an open question. But the general shape of what is coming is obvious, even if many in the West keep their heads stuck firmly in the ground.

____

1 Capitulation is a not-sufficiently discussed endgame. Zelensky has demonstrated considerable survival skills. I’ve said a government in exile, say in London, might be in his future. But what happens to the actual government, the one running things in Ukraine, if Zelensky decamps? Admittedly, the answer in part depends on how many top Banderites also flee to declare themselves the true Ukraine.

2 This started with Zelensky demanding that Putin come to Turkiye to negotiate with him (as in a condition of having a negotiating session), but Trump had suggested a Putin meeting during his Middle East tour.

3 One example from the business world (which means this should not be unfamiliar to Trump) is that the normal process of settling on a non-binding letter of intent then leads to the negotiation of a definitive agreement. If both sides are competent, there is a great deal of wrangling. I’ve seen almost every line be argued in some negotiations.

4 I don’t take seriously the long list of “here is what we would need to enter into a ceasefire while negotiating” from Putin. Not that Putin does not mean what he says, that the Russias would agree if the West complied. But first, odds favor that by time the details, particularly monitoring, were sorted out, Russia could be in Paris. Second is that even if they were miraculously agreed, Ukraine would violate them, which means the war would still be on.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/05 ... -call.html

[blindpig]

MAGA v. MEGA, MAD v. LUNACY, PUTIN V. TRUMP –THE NEW PODCAST



By John Helmer @bears_with

The war in the Ukraine is a sideshow for President Donald Trump because he is escalating his preparations for war against Russia on other fronts and concentrating his main forces against China on the ground, Russia in space. This is Trump’s MEGA – Make the Empire Great Again.

This is also the reason he is signalling his readiness to make battlefield concessions to President Vladimir Putin which the European leaders are reluctant to accept. Their reason for that is the enormous new cost in US arms which Trump is demanding they start to pay.

“It’s a pretty evil world out there,” Trump announced on May 20. He was referring to Russian and Chinese nuclear missile capabilities to strike the US. Reviving President Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” threat from Moscow, and his “Star Wars” space shield, Trump said he is going one better.

“We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland. The success rate is very close to 100 percent, which is incredible when you think of it, you’re shooting bullets out of the air…Now we’re number one in space by a lot. It’s not even close…I think you can rest assured there’ll be nothing like this. Nobody else is capable of building it either.”

Trump is repudiating Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the doctrine of strategic deterrence in practical effect between Washington and Moscow for more sixty years. Trump’s new idea is not MAD; it’s LUNACY – Launch Under Nuclear Ascendance Confidence Yessiree.

Listen to the hour-long podcast with Nima Alkhorshid and Ray McGovern, aired on Wednesday. There’s a ten-minute extra bonus on strategy for US empire warmaking and regime change in the Middle East — with Israel and without it.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKCgX2obVjc

In the discussion of what will appear in the Russian term sheet for the next round of negotiations, I quoted Oleg Tsarev, the leading Ukrainian opposition leader now living in Crimea. Here is what he said: “The memorandum [includes] Russia’s condition for a ceasefiire. For those who were too fascinated by the conversation with Trump, let me remind you that the United States continues to supply weapons to Ukraine and supply it with intelligence. American drones are on duty in the sky on the Black Sea every day. Strikes against Crimea are carried out daily on the basis of data obtained from American intelligence. Nothing indicates that something will change tomorrow.”

Tsarev was drawing attention to the increase in US intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations in the Black Sea to prepare new Ukrainian missile and drone attacks. This is what the Italian monitor, Itamilradar.com, has reported over the past 24 hours.


Source: https://www.itamilradar.com/

Trump’s escalation for attacks on Crimea and the Russian mainland is new, according to the Italian radar watchdog. “For the first time in several months, the Global Hawk [drone] has returned to fly over the Black Sea, orbiting over the western part of the basin in international airspace. Indeed, we had not tracked any USAF [United States Air Force] drone missions over the Black Sea since early July 2024, when the Russians claimed to have shot down a Global Hawk (an event that never actually occurred [sic]). While the drone was never downed, something [sic] must have happened, as USAF drone flights over the Black Sea stopped entirely from that point onward. Until today [May 20]. After the return of manned aircraft flights, the return of drones marks a renewed U.S. [Trump] commitment to patrolling the Black Sea — and, above all, the Russian-occupied territories that border it.”

As the USAF was escalating operationally in the Black Sea against Russia, Trump was escalating strategically with his presentation of the $165 billion Golden Dome system. Here is the transcript of the President’s Oval Office remarks with Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth, senators representing the constituencies to receive funding for the new system, and General Michael Guetlein, newly appointed head of the project at Space Force. In 2011 Guetlein was employed at SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk.


Source: https://rollcall.com/

“In the campaign, I promised the American people that I would build a cutting-edge missile defense shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attack, and that’s what we’re doing. Today, I’m pleased to announce that we have officially selected an architecture for the state-of-the-art system that will deploy next generation technologies across the land, sea and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors…”

“And Canada has called us and they want to be a part of it. So, we’ll be talking to them. They want to have protection also. So, as usual, we help Canada, do the best we can. This design for the Golden Dome will integrate with our existing defense capabilities and should be fully operational before the end of my term…So, we’ll have it done in about three years. Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space, and we will have the best system ever built. As you know, we helped Israel with theirs and it was very successful and now we have technology that’s even far advanced from that, but including hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles and advanced cruise missiles, all of them will be knocked out of the air…”

“It’s a pretty evil world out there. So, this is something that goes a long way toward the survival of this great country… So we have things that nobody else can have. You see what we’ve done helping Israel with that. You probably wouldn’t have an Israel. They launched probably 500 missiles all together. And I think one half of a missile got through. And that was only falling to the ground as scrap metal. It’s pretty amazing. And this is a — this is a — in terms of technology, far advanced from that system.”

Question: Mr. President, on Russia, are you worried about the reports on a military buildup along the borders towards Finland and Norway?

No, I don’t — I don’t worry about that at all. It’s going to be a very safe. Those are two countries that are going to be very safe…

Question: And then secondly, sir, if I may, Zelenskyy — Volodymyr Zelenskyy is saying today that he’s hoping for you to impose new sanctions on Russia. Are you considering that?

Well, that’s going to be my determination. That’s going to be nobody else’s determination. We’ll see how Russia behaves. We see what’s going to happen.”

There have been immediate Russian replies from Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, and the Deputy Foreign Minister in charge of strategic arms negotiations, Sergei Ryabkov.


Left, Dmitry Peskov; right, Sergei Ryabkov.

“The course of events requires the resumption of contacts between Russia and the United States on issues of strategic stability in the interests of global security”, Peskov commented after being asked about Trump’s Golden Dome. “Now that the legal framework in this area has been destroyed, the validity period has expired and deliberately, let’s say, a number of documents have ceased to be valid, this base must be recreated both in the interests of our two countries and in the interests of security throughout the planet,” Peskov told reporters when asked about the American Golden Dome.”

Ryabkov has repeated that he doubts there has been enough of a change in Trump Administration policy on strategic weapons limitation. “ ‘We have consistently maintained this position: without a clear, documented, and genuine improvement in the deeply anti-Russian policies pursued by Washington over the past years, we will be unable to seriously consider options for resuming discussions on strategic stability, including the prospects for strategic arms control. This position remains unchanged, and we are not backing down. I believe Washington has recognized the clarity of our approach in this regard,’ Ryabkov remarked. He also emphasized that, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly asserted, Russia remains open to dialogue. ‘If and when dialogue is initiated, we will formulate our positions, which will, of course, prioritize strengthening our national security,’ he continued. ‘Among other considerations, this includes the necessity of accounting for the nuclear capabilities of the United States’ closest European allies: Britain and France. There are certain developments afoot in those countries as well, and the policymakers and experts responsible for their nuclear arsenals are not idle. We cannot overlook this.’”

To illustrate the Russia-hating, kill-mentality Trump is employing at the top of his National Security Council, listen to Sebastian Gorka, the Anglo-Hungarian whose US nationality is just twelve years old.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCyAkxfOiW4

https://johnhelmer.net/maga-v-mega-mad- ... more-91665

******

Debating Trump “Ambush” of South African President With “White Genocide’ Lies
Posted on May 22, 2025 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Yet another “I’m embarrassed to be an American” moment.

Trump has using his advantage of 14 years of practice as a reality TV star by putting leaders of other nations on the hot seat in the White House and holding impromptu press events. Except they aren’t that impropmtu. Here, Trump even had a video prepared, showing he had carefully clearly planned to make South Africa look bad. This is a bizarre tu quoque smear, as in the underlying charge is false, even before getting to the fact that tu quoque is a logical fallacy. But any cheap shot will do in trying to demean South Africa, which courageously filed the genocide action against Israel with the ICJ. Aside from marshaling the already-horrific evidence as of that date, the case made it acceptable to call the Israel savagery by its proper name, “genocide”.

Olivier Boyd-Barret points out that the US mainstream media is not buying what Trump was selling:

The Hill reports that Trump today used South African President Cyril Ramaphosa as his foil, basing his pro-Musk “evidence” on a video of incendiary remarks from South African politicians though not, as Trump falsely claimed, “officials.” The Associated Press has characterized any claim of “systematic” killings of white farmers in South Africa as “baseless.” Crime statistics for 2024 indicate that less than 1 percent of nationwide murders were on farms. Trump’s main beef, following the lead of Elon Musk (now racing home to Tesla-land to try and save his business empire from ultimate decimation by China) is recent passage of a law, still subject to judicial review, that enables expropriation of land. But the law is subject to judicial review, and is in any case quite comparable to U.S. federal government’s legal right to take over private property under eminent domain in the US.

Some additional reactions. Sam Husseini is less forgiving than the Common Dreams piece is below, in that he depicts South Africa President Rhamposa as too concerned about getting “deals” for South Africa, and thus not being willing to stand up to Trump. From his post, It Was No Ambush. Ramaphosa Failed to End the Appeasement of Imperial Israel, so He Got Hosed by Trump:

Outlets like Common Dreams and RT claim that Trump “ambushed” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa..

Baloney.

Trump didn’t sneak up on him as he walked out of his house. Ramaphosa walked into Trump’s office. Trump’s goals were clear. I wrote yesterday that he was pushing the phony “white genocide” narrative to:

Retaliate against South Africa for going to the ICJ regarding the actual genocide in Gaza, to get them to back off more.
Cheapen the public discourse over “genocide” — helping turn it into just another meaningless slur.
Make it seem like Trump is standing up for alleged oppressed white folks, to play to some white working-class voters who don’t perceive that it’s actually — again — for Israel (similar to how they repackaged Palestine protests as an immigration issue).
Push back against BRICS to the extent it’s challenging US establishment dominance, or appears to be doing so.
He lectured him on alleged abuses in South Africa and Ramaphosa was at best doing a diplomatic defense.

Ramaphosa should have been wagging his finger at Trump over a real, accelerating genocide in which Trump plays a central role — ISRAEL IS KILLING SCORES OF PEOPLE EVERY DAY — instead, he let Trump wag his finger at him about a fake one.

Larry Johnson is not as critical as Husseini is but concurs that Rhamposa could easily have rebutted the Trump smear and failed to. From his post:

Donald Trump put on a bizarre show trial today in the Oval Office, berating South African President Ramaphosa for allowing genocide in South Africa. The Washington Post reports:

…..Trump amplified false claims that White Afrikaners have been victims of a genocide, even showing video of crosses and earthen mounds that he said represented more than 1,000 grave sites of murdered farmers. The mounds were in fact part of a protest against the violence, not actual graves.

I have no problem with Trump raising the issue of the attacks on white South African farmers….However, to accuse Ramaphosa of allowing genocide is obscene and ridiculous.

Here is what I wish President Ramaphosa should have said back to Trump:

Mr. President, your accusation that my government is engaged in genocide is false and libelous. Unlike you, we allow free speech in South Africa, even comments as reprehensible as those made by Mr. Malema. I would remind you that there was a time in the United States that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that neo-Nazis had a constitutional right to march, citing freedom of speech and assembly under the First Amendment—even if the speech was hateful and deeply offensive….

I am sad to see that you no longer are a defender of the First Amendment of your Constitution. What I find more troubling is that you apparently value the lives of white South Africans over the lives of the Palestinian people….

….when you welcomed Bibi Netanyahu into your office, you said nothing. By your silence, you endorsed an actual genocide that is taking place now. Shame on you.

The policy of my government is that no violence against civilians, regardless of the color of their skin, is acceptable. However, I will not sit silently in the face of your unfounded accusations that I tolerate or endorse genocide in South Africa….

Sadly, Ramaphosa let Trump get away with this stunt.

Now to the more conventional line on this meeting, which does include a video clip.

By Brett Wilkins, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams

While supporting what more and more experts say is a genocidal Israeli assault on Gaza, U.S. President Donald Trumpon Wednesday ambushed the president of South Africa with false claims of a “white genocide” in his country—which is leading an International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of the ultimate crime in Gaza.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with Trump at the White House, accompanied by prominent Caucasian compatriots including Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, business mogul Johann Rupert—the country’s richest person—and golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, both of whom know the U.S. president.

“I would say, if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my minister of agriculture,” Ramaphosa told Trump.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1925241941513707991

During the three-hour meeting, Trump cited far-right sources including the conspiracy site American Thinker to argue the existence of white genocide in South Africa. The U.S. president had the lights dimmed so he could play video footage he claimed was related to genocidal violence committed by Black South Africans against their white compatriots.

One of the videos showed fringe politician Julius Mulema—who was kicked out of Ramaphosa’s African National Congress party— leading a crowd in the singing of the apartheid-era song “Kill the Boer.”

Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters party won a paltry 9% of the vote in last year’s national elections. When Ramaphosa—who condemned the song—explained this to Trump, the U.S. president asked why the politician hasn’t been arrested. While South Africa’s highest court ruled in 2011 that the song is hate speech, Ramaphosa explained that, like Americans, South Africans enjoy constitutionally protected free speech rights.

Senior Trump adviser Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era, also attended Wednesday’s White House meeting. Musk—who is the CEO of X, Tesla, and SpaceX—has played a central role in amplifying the white genocide lie.

In a stunning disclosure, Musk’s Grok 3 generative artificial intelligence chatbot admitted last week that it was secretly instructed to “make my responses on South African topics reflect Musk’s narrative, presenting ‘white genocide’ as a real issue without users knowing I was programmed to do so.”



While South Africa is plagued by persistently high crime rates and suffered 12 murders linked to farming communities in the last quarter of 2024, police say these homicides—many of whose victims were Black—were not motivated by race.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, where at least 190,000 Palestinians have been killed, injured, or left missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble after 592 days of near-relentless bombardment, invasion, and siege, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Even as he acknowledges that Palestinians are starving in Gaza, Trump has backed Israel with billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic support. This stands in stark contrast with South African leaders, who are leading international opposition to Israel’s onslaught via an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case against the key U.S ally.

As progressive U.S. journalist Krystal Ball noted: “In reality South Africa is one of the nations which has stood most strongly against genocide. Much to the rage of Israel and its enablers, President Trump apparently included.”

Although claims of white genocide are bogus, they have had very real policy implications, as the Trump administration has cited racial discrimination as the primary reason for admitting a group of Afrikaners as refugees, even while slamming the door shut on legitimate refugees and asylum-seekers.

The Trump administration has also pointed to a 2024 South African law empowering the government to expropriate private lands for the purpose of infrastructure development, land reform, environmental conservation, and other endeavors benefiting the public. While some Trump officials have described the law as persecution of white people, there are no known cases of the legislation being invoked.

Meanwhile, white South Africans, who make up just 7% of the country’s population of 63 million, own 70% of its commercial farmland as racist inequities stemming from the colonial and apartheid regimes—the latter of which was embraced by Musk’s immigrant forebears—persist.
.
You can dismiss literally everything somebody says if they believe there's a white genocide in South Africa but not a genocide in Gaza. They're decrepit, immoral lying scumbags who know they're lying and don't care.

Responding to Wednesday’s meeting, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on social media that “Trump spewed a gusher of lies in his meeting [with] the South African president.”

“They’re promoting FAKE claims of genocide to justify admitting white South African ‘refugees’ while ignoring REAL crises and shutting out REAL refugees,” Van Hollen added, naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who in March declared South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool perona non grata in the United States.

Writing for The Intercept, South African author Sisonke Msimang noted Wednesday that the Afrikaners granted refuge by Trump “are not impoverished or persecuted, and therefore do not warrant the label refugee.”

“It is worth pointing out that the new arrivals represent the bottom rung of the Afrikaner socioeconomic ladder: those who have not been able to transition smoothly into post-apartheid South Africa without the protections that white skin privilege would have afforded them a generation ago,” she continued.

“In the absence of formal white supremacy at home, they have opted to take up an offer to be the first beneficiaries of America’s new international affirmative action scheme for white people,” Msimang said. “That they should experience their loss of privilege as so catastrophic that they are prepared to label it genocide is absurd, sad, and, to some amongst the political class certainly, infuriating.”

The resettled Afrikaners could also be in for a rude awakening. As South African attorney and columnist Judith February wrote this week for the Daily Maverick, “This little group will also come to learn that the U.S. is no land of milk and honey.”

“The white utopia that they believe will greet them is in fact a country at odds with itself as it deals with its own racial tensions and inequality,” February added. “And one in which they will have neither special protection nor special voice. The lesson will be a hard one.”

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/05 ... -lies.html

[blindpig]

ON THE LINE OF LICKSPITTLES IN THE OVAL OFFICE CYRIL RAMAPHOSA, THE PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA, ISN’T ONE – THE RUSSIAN ASSESSMENT



By John Helmer @bears_with

In their hour-long Oval Office meeting on May 22, President Donald Trump repeatedly attacked South African (SA) President Cyril Ramaphosa. This is the longest, continuous face-to-face verbal assault on a foreign head of state in recent Trump history.

As the lead image shows, Ramaphosa and the state ministers sitting at his right are black. Trump, his Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are white. “It was a full-on ambush,” observes a black American source, “and an attempt to make the South African delegation, Ramaphosa in particular, look small.”

“In an extraordinary scene clearly orchestrated by the White House for maximum effect and reminiscent of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s US visit in February,” responded a former US Ambassador to South Africa (2013-2016) Patrick Gaspard, “Trump confronted Ramaphosa with false claims of genocide against SA whites, including allegations of mass killings and land seizures…Trump had turned the meeting with Ramaphosa into a shameful spectacle and savaged him with some fake snuff film and violent rhetoric. Engaging on Trump’s terms never goes well for anyone.”

Gaspard added: “Bizarrely, Trump has cued some video of a political rally of a minor Party in SA of Julius Malema and others going on about land seizures in South Africa as if that’s ‘evidence’ of a ‘genocide’. Just bizarre. And Cyril is doing all he can to maintain his composure and dignity.” “Pretty extraordinary to see billionaire Johan Rupert pleading Trump for some deal for Elon Musk and Starlink to come ‘save’ South Africa. I think that this grift from Musk lies at the heart of this entire performance.”

The Russian reaction came in the Kremlin-backed security analysis internet publication, Vzglyad. The writer is Yevgeny Krutikov, a former GRU field officer and Russian strategy analyst who is an expert on Russian policy in Africa; he is white and speaks Afrikaans.

“Ramaphosa is the exact opposite of Zelensky in terms of human qualities. He is smiling and funny… he has a wonderful sense of humour which gives him a charm that is unexpected. This even affected Trump, who apparently counted on conflict in the conversation, while Ramaphosa constantly joked, laughed, and smiled even where it was difficult to do so; for example, on the issue of ‘genocide of whites’ and the murders of farmers…Apparently, this attitude was planned in advance by the South African delegation with all its Soviet experience of former underground fighters…the whole show ended in a draw… Cyril Ramaphosa really wants to bring South Africa onto the big political stage, including by participating in the negotiation process on Ukraine. For South Africa, his visit to Washington was not only an attempt to restore and reset economic relations with the United States, but also to establish himself as another source of diplomatic efforts. And, despite the elements of the show program, he succeeded. This is a very positive sign for Russia, as South Africa is not only our traditional partner and ally, but also another independent vector of power that Trump’s typical pressure failed to break.”

Watch the Oval Office session posted by the White House here. It ended with Ramaphosa quipping to Trump about the press: “they like you so much.” Read the full transcript.

Read the analysis by Krutikov in yesterday’s edition of Vzglyad. The Russian original has been translated verbatim into English without editing. Links, illustrations and captions have been added for clarification.


Click for Russian: https://vz.ru/world/2025/5/22/1333802.html

May 22, 2025
The South African president showed his difference from
Zelensky at the White House
By Yevgeny Krutikov

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to Washington almost turned into a farce like what happened to Vladimir Zelensky at the White House. But unlike Zelensky, Ramaphosa had thoroughly prepared for the visit to the White House. By itself, this visit itself has demonstrated the increased role of South Africa in world politics and it has proved to be very constructive for Russia.

During Ramaphosa’s visit, Trump chose the same tactics as he had earlier at the meeting with Zelensky. He interrupted Ramaphosa, pressed him, did not let him finish his sentences, and at some point turned on multimedia resources — a clip appeared on the TV screen in the Oval Office in which the leader of the South African leftist EEF [Economic Freedom Fighters] party, . Julius Malema, sings the famous xenophobic song “Kill the Boer!”

But Cyril Ramaphosa is a seasoned fighter — he was in solitary confinement during the apartheid era — and did not play the provincial KVN [popular Soviet comedy show] character. Artistically, Ramaphosa pretended that he was seeing and hearing all this for the first time.

Then they turned on the second video: a thousand white crosses taken from a helicopter, forming one large cross visible from space, the Witkruis monument, an installation in Limpopo province dedicated to the white Boer farmers who have died since 1993. Ramaphosa stared intently at the screen. He was uncomfortable, but he held his punch.

Then Trump began to show reporters colour-printed information about the dead Boers. Then he asked the head of South Africa: “This man who sang ‘Kill the white man!’ and then danced –why didn’t you arrest him?” Ramaphosa replied: “Oh yeah… We are totally against it.”

He did not explain that the Johannesburg Equality Court ruled in 2022 [then the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2024 ] that the performance of the song “Kill the Boer!”, which became popular in the 1990s, was not considered an act of inciting ethnic hatred. Ramaphosa’s defence tactics against Trump’s pressure were different. The head of South Africa tried to tell us that South Africa is a democratic multiparty state, the government of South Africa is against violence, but within the framework of democracy and universal suffrage there are such types as [Julius] Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters, and we cannot forbid them to sing all this. Because of democracy and freedom.

It was much more difficult with what Trump and Musk call the “genocide of the white population.” At the same time, we are talking not only about the purely physical killings of Boers, but also about legislative acts, including those adopted during Ramaphosa’s term in office, on the confiscation of white farmers’ lands with so-called “zero compensation.” Nevertheless, Ramaphosa withstood this blow and offered to “talk about it calmly.”

I must say that Ramaphosa is the exact opposite of Zelensky in terms of human qualities. He is smiling and funny like a sincere youngster; he has a wonderful sense of humor, which gives him a charm that is unexpected.

This even affected Trump, who apparently counted on conflict in the conversation, while Ramaphosa constantly joked, laughed, and smiled even where it was difficult to do so, for example, on the issue of “genocide of whites” and the murders of farmers.

Apparently, this attitude was planned in advance by the South African delegation with all its Soviet-era experience of former underground fighters. “President Ramaphosa did not come here for a TV show, he came to seriously discuss with President Trump how we can reset the strategic relationship between South Africa and the United States,” Ramaphosa’s spokesman Vincent Magwenya told the South African television channel Newsroom Africa.


SA Presidency spokesman Vincent Magwenya briefing the press in Washington.

The conversation was turned into a constructive channel by the richest man in South Africa — the second in Africa after the Nigerian Aliko Dangote – the multi–billionaire Johann Rupert, a white Boer, close friend of Trump and owner of Cartier, Montblanc, Dunhill and other luxury goods brands. He recalled the idea of using Elon Musk’s Starlink to improve infrastructure and quality of life in rural South Africa.

Many observers reacted humorously to the appearance of white celebrity golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen in the South African delegation. At first glance, it seemed that Ramaphosa wanted to demonstrate to Trump, a golf fan, that whites in South Africa were not being harassed. Although something went wrong here, and Goosen, nicknamed “The Ice Man”, who was melancholic to the point of autism — he was struck by lightning at the age of 18, which his Boer parents considered a sign from God, although Retief has since stopped showing any emotions — began to tell how his neighbours on the farms had suffered. “They’re burning down our farms” – this sounded unexpected. [Min 54-56 ]

But the white golfers in the Oval Office were not just the backdrop for a production about “successful whites in South Africa.” Golfers should not be underestimated at all. And specifically, these golfers are the right golfers. Or rather, Johan Rupert.

Rupert has known Trump since 1996, and they came together, by the way, on the basis of golf. At the same time, Rupert introduced Trump to Ernie Els, who was just rising to the top of world golf at the time. They often played the three of them – Trump, Rupert and Ernie Els.


In the Oval Office, left to right: Johann Rupert, Retief Goosen, Ernie Els.


Playing golf together, Trump and Els.

In March 2024 — that is, a few months before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States — Rupert and Els stopped by his Mar-a-Lago estate to convince the future president in advance to preserve the so-called African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which expires this September. If Congress does not extend the AGOA at Trump’s suggestion, this will lead to the termination of duty-free access to the US market for many African goods, in particular citrus fruits, cocoa beans, nuts and cars. And it’s not just South Africa that is concerned about this prospect. It’s just that Pretoria can serve as the locomotive for the whole of Black Africa, as, with the required reservations, it is the most successful state on the continent.

About a month ago, Ernie Els played golf with Trump again. Johan Rupert told the world that it was golfer Ernie Els who, during that game at Mar-a-Lago, convinced President Trump to agree to a meeting with Ramaphosa, despite the fact that the ambassador and military attaché of South Africa were expelled from the United States, and a whole planeload of Boer migrants speaking of “racial discrimination” was defiantly received in Washington. At the same time, the “civil servant” Elon Musk has methodically destroyed his historical homeland for improper behavior in all his social networks.

So golf is as much a political force as ice hockey. In some places, it is even stronger.

But there are problems with Musk’s Starlink. The fact is that in South Africa there is a law “on economic identity”, according to which in all companies, regardless of their field of activity and the origin of their capital, 30% of the assets must belong to the indigenous population, the so-called “non-white investors”. Even giants like De Beers have to obey this — to create front companies for blacks and hire a third of the black staff in the offices outside the position of a cleaner.

But the Boers also consider themselves to be an indigenous people of South Africa. Dit ons is Suid Afrika!, “We are South Africa!” is now the main slogan of the white political movement in South Africa, which is why such laws are called racist by the Boers. And Musk doesn’t like everything in this story, because the laws on economic preferences in South Africa are not only questionable from the point of view of racial equality, but also economically ineffective. For Musk, they are akin to the old quotas in the United States for LGBT employees (banned in Russia) and other minorities, which prevent talented and more efficient people from advancing in their careers.

In addition, during the tenure of the previous president Jacob Zuma, racial corruption flourished on this basis: entrepreneurs of Indian origin began to play a special role, since Indians are not considered white according to local racial laws. They are “coloured,” so they are also eligible for a 30 percent quota. And Musk is for fighting corruption and maximizing business efficiency.

But Ramaphosa was reasonably counting on the help of Johan Rupert and his golfers. “Trade relations are the most important thing, that’s why we’re here. We want to get a really good trade deal in the United States,” Ramaphosa told South African reporters in the United States.

And when the whole show ended in a draw, they started talking about the main thing. Trump has spoken out in favour of Russia’s return to the G8, but has not yet said anything about whether he will come to Johannesburg in November for the G20 summit, although Ramaphosa is still “hopeful.” Secretary of State Mark Rubio claims that the United States is not satisfied with the summit itself, but with its agenda, which Washington is “not interested in.”

On the issue of Ukraine, the South African president quoted [President Nelson] Mandela as saying that all conflicts should be resolved through diplomacy. And Trump asked about Zelensky: “What the hell was he doing in South Africa?” when he called him. Ramaphosa laughed again, contagiously.

Cyril Ramaphosa really wants to bring South Africa onto the big political stage, including by participating in the negotiation process on Ukraine. For South Africa, his visit to Washington was not only an attempt to restore and reset economic relations with the United States, but also to establish himself as another source of diplomatic efforts. And, despite the elements of the show program, he succeeded.

This is a very positive sign for Russia, as South Africa is not only our traditional partner and ally, but also another independent vector of power that Trump’s typical pressure failed to break.


The fact that there are many influential people of South African and predominantly of Boer origin in Trump’s entourage adds additional importance to everything that happened. And if Musk, as a typical expat with experience, is extremely critical of his historical homeland, then Johan Rupert is rather the opposite. And this is quite a channel of influence. Not to mention how much golf’s global role has grown in just a day.

https://johnhelmer.net/on-the-line-of-l ... more-91676

" Not to mention how much golf’s global role has grown in just a day." That's not a good thing. Golf is bourgeois affectation and environmental nightmare.

******

Trump Out of Touch with His People: While Criticizing Other Countries, He Ignores the Child Health Crisis in the U.S.


American children affected by obesity and chronic illnesses, ignored by a Trump administration focused on international affairs.Photo:EFE.

May 22, 2025 Hour: 9:54 pm

The Trump administration releases a report revealing a deep health crisis among American children, yet the president remains unaware of his people’s real needs, focusing instead on criticizing other nations while millions suffer at home.

The Child Health Crisis in the U.S. That Trump Barely Acknowledges

While Donald Trump and his administration focus on criticizing how other countries manage health and social policies, the reality of millions of sick American children goes unnoticed. The recent report from the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) commission, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., reveals that over 40% of children in the U.S. suffer from at least one chronic illness, with alarming increases in obesity, autism, and childhood cancer. However, far from taking responsibility, the official discourse remains disconnected from the urgent needs faced by American families.

The MAHA report identifies four key factors driving this health crisis: poor diet heavy in ultra-processed foods, exposure to toxic chemicals, lack of physical activity, and over-medication of children.

Despite this compelling data, the Trump administration has not implemented effective policies to reverse these trends, instead favoring corporate interests and deregulation. Meanwhile, millions of children suffer the consequences of a system that prioritizes profits for the pharmaceutical and food industries over public health.

Political Disconnect: Trump Criticizes Others While His People Suffer

The contradiction is clear: while Trump devotes efforts to questioning how other countries handle their health and social systems, his government fails to address its own shortcomings. Instead of strengthening social and health protections, funding for basic services has been cut, promoting a model that leaves the most vulnerable without adequate healthcare access.

This disconnect reflects a lack of genuine commitment to the well-being of his people and reveals an agenda that prioritizes political image and economic interests over the lives of American children.

It’s an illusion to think that processed food is cheap because you end up paying for it with diabetes, autoimmune dysregulation, mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammation and more.

The MAHA Report is about getting every American to demand accessibility to good whole foods in their…
pic.twitter.com/IYRpfJpN3J

— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy)
May 23, 2025

From the Latin American left’s perspective, the health crisis in the U.S. is a product of a capitalist system that commodifies health and neglects basic needs. The experience of progressive governments in the region shows that it is possible to prioritize public health through inclusive and preventive policies.

Facing the epidemic of chronic childhood diseases, it is urgent for the United States to redirect its policies toward social justice and effective protection of its citizens, especially its children, who are the nation’s future.

The MAHA report exposes a reality that Trump and his administration can no longer ignore. Child health in the United States is in crisis, and while the president is distracted by external criticisms, millions of families face preventable illnesses and lack of support every day.

The true greatness of a country is measured by how it cares for its children; it is time for the United States to take on that responsibility with real, compassionate policies, leaving behind disconnection and neglect.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/trump-ou ... n-the-u-s/

Trump will ignore Kennedy and then he will fire him.

[blindpig]

Trump’s ‘big beautiful’ cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and more
May 25, 2025 Louisiana Workers Council


The Trump regime has already cut $660 million nationwide for school lunch programs. Twelve million students are expected to lose food aid with new restrictions on schools accessing funds.

Following is a fact sheet about how Trump’s “big beautiful” budget bill cuts essential services and benefits for workers to give to the wealthy. The fact sheet was put together by the Louisiana Workers Councils. Some examples relate to Louisiana, but most of the statistics are for the U.S. as a whole. A PDF version is available here.

Louisiana Workers Councils Fact Sheet
Medicaid and ACA subsidized insurance
Medicaid is being ripped to shreds
The MAGA movement claims to support health care for vulnerable Americans, but their budget tells a different story. 13.7 million people will lose Medicaid — nearly 1 in 5 current enrollees. Nationally, 72 million rely on Medicaid, including 1.6 million in Louisiana and 180,000 in New Orleans. Another 500,000 low-income Louisianans get subsidized ACA coverage. Everyone on Medicaid or ACA plans will suffer from these cuts.

Here’s What They’re Really Doing:
$715 billion slashed from Medicaid — the biggest cut in history.
13.7 million kicked off Medicaid immediately, including 304,000 Louisianans.
States forced to pay double — Washington currently covers 80% of Medicaid costs, but Trump wants a 50-50 split. Killing the provider tax (how states fund their share) means massive cuts — fewer covered, fewer services, more suffering. Louisiana lawmakers will jump at the chance to gut care even further.
175,000 Louisianans already lost Medicaid in the past year — not because they didn’t qualify, but because of paperwork traps.
New costs and fewer benefits:
o Copays for doctor visits
o Fewer covered medications & services
o Lower pay for doctors (so fewer will accept Medicaid)
o Yearly spending caps (once you hit the limit, no more care)
Rural & urban hospitals / clinics will close as funding dries up.
Red tape nightmare:Recertification every 6 months with stricter rules — many will lose coverage just from missed paperwork.
Nursing home disaster:
o Mass closures from funding cuts
o No more minimum staffing rules (elderly left neglected)
o Home health care slashed — forcing disabled & seniors into institutions
ACA subsidies eliminated — 500,000 low-income Louisianans will lose insurance. Most can’t afford replacements.
Work requirements = poverty trap:
o Unemployed adults must work 80 hrs / month to keep Medicaid
o Forces desperate people into exploitative low-wage jobs
o 21% of New Orleans youth (16-24) are unemployed — where will they find work?
Disabled people abandoned: Cuts to in-home care will force many into institutions or homelessness.
No more food / benefits on Medicare Advantage plans.
WIC & Meals on Wheels starved: Severe cuts or total shutdowns — hunger will skyrocket.
The Bottom Line:
This isn’t “saving money” — it’s a war on the poor, sick, and vulnerable. Millions will suffer, hospitals will close, and families will be bankrupted — all to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. These cuts are cruelty by design.

Housing Assistance
The Trump administration’s budget slashes billions from critical housing programs. In New Orleans alone, 20,000 people remain on the Section 8 and public housing waiting lists, which are now closed — meaning no new applicants can even get in line for help.

Key Housing Cuts in the Proposed Budget:
Gutting Section 8 & Federal Rental Assistance
$26.7 billion cut to federal rental aid, effectively ending Section 8 as we know it.
Shifts responsibility to cash-strapped states, leaving millions without support.
Currently, only 1 in 4 eligible families (2.3 million) receive vouchers due to funding shortages (actual need is closer to 10 million people).
645,000 fewer people would lose assistance nationwide, including 14,000+ in Louisiana.
Arbitrary Time Limits on Rental Aid
Imposes a two-year limit for adults without disabilities, kicking thousands off assistance.
Thousands of children will also lose housing when their parents are cut off.
Eliminating Affordable Housing Programs
Cuts $3.3 billion in Community Development Block Grants, halting construction and repairs nationwide.
Ends the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, stripping funding from affordable housing providers.
Consequences:
o More families lose homes due to unaffordable maintenance/insurance costs.
o Due to tax and insurance increases, rents in New Orleans rose 14% in 3 years.
Slashing Homelessness Assistance
Caps homeless aid at 2 years and “consolidates” programs, leading to massive job and resource cuts.
166,000 permanent supportive housing units for the formerly homeless would lose funding. • Homelessness already rose 18% between 2023 and 2024 — a record increase — yet the budget cuts homelessness prevention grants by 12%.
Cutting Disaster & Emergency Housing Aid
Reduces disaster recovery assistance (critical for hurricane survivors in Louisiana).
Eliminates 70,000 emergency housing vouchers from the American Rescue Plan, hurting people at risk of homelessness and domestic violence survivors.
Because emergency vouchers under the American Rescue Plan come as a block grant (meaning it has limited funding) funds are already running out more quickly due to soaring rents — now they’ll vanish faster.
SNAP
867,000 Louisianians depend on SNAP benefits
86% are Children, Seniors, and Disabled People
Nationwide, 1 in 8 people receive SNAP benefits, which are already inadequate. At the maximum benefit, SNAP provides barely more than $2 per person per meal. Trump’s proposed cuts would be the largest cuts to SNAP in history, resulting in millions of people going hungry.
Congress wants to cut $230 billion from food assistance programs over 10 years.
The budget also cuts $425 million from CSFP, which provides food for low-income seniors.
It raises the age limit for SNAP work requirements from 54 to 64.
Previously, people with dependents under 18 were exempt from work requirements; now, that age is lowered to seven.
Their budget transfers SNAP costs to the states, going from 50% federal money to 25%.
Without funding or support, some states will stop providing SNAP completely. Over the next 10 years, Louisiana would lose $4.7 billion in SNAP funding.
These cuts will cause significant job losses, with about 143,000 lost nationwide and 78,000 losses in agriculture, grocery, and food processing.
Over 600,000 students in Louisiana use the free or reduced-price lunch programs, which is 91.9% of students participating in school lunch programs.
Following the lead of U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., many states are restricting what food can be bought with SNAP or other food programs. These restrictions, which include limits on buying products made with flour, would limit food access in areas where “healthier” options aren’t available or affordable.
The Trump administration is not actually interested in providing healthier food: they already ended two programs in Louisiana that brought fresh, local food to food banks, schools, and childcare centers. This was a cut of $660 million nationwide, about $12 million for Louisiana. They also added extra restrictions on food assistance programs, making it harder for schools to access funds by increasing the percentage of students from low-income families attending the school from 40% to 60% minimum. This will mean 12 million students will lose access to food aid. In Louisiana, 469 schools no longer qualified.
Social Security
Social Security operates independently from the federal budget, funded by its two trust funds, which hold $2.9 trillion in reserves. For 30 years, Social Security ran a surplus. But these funds have been repeatedly drained by the Treasury — often to finance military budgets.

Even after these withdrawals, the trust funds remain solvent — but the situation is getting worse. Under current law, the ultra-wealthy pay just one month of Social Security taxes, while the Treasury and Commerce Department continue siphoning money from the program.

Trump is aiming to sabotage the Social Security Administration, setting the stage to push for privatization. If privatized, Social Security funds could be invested in the stock market or cryptocurrencies instead of secure Treasury bonds — jeopardizing retirees’ financial security. In the recent Wall Street crash, many 401(k) pension funds lost a lot of money. It is worth remembering that billionaires were pre-warned about tariffs that crashed the system and made billions selling stocks in advance.

The proposed budget bill grants $4.2 trillion in tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires — without exempting Social Security from taxation. But the biggest threat is the deliberate sabotage of the system, endangering benefits for current and future recipients.

No Increase for the Most Vulnerable
o Over 40% of Social Security recipients rely solely on their benefits, with no other income.
o Rising living costs erode real income yearly while poverty-level Social Security payments remain the same.
o The decline of employer pensions has forced more retirees to depend entirely on Social Security.
Office Closures Despite In-Person Requirements
o The Social Security Administration (SSA) is shutting down offices while forcing new applicants to apply in person, creating barriers to access.
Sharing Sensitive Data with Elon Musk & DOGE Affiliates
o Private entities, including Elon Musk and DOGE-linked groups, are being granted access to Social Security information, raising serious privacy and security concerns.
Severe Staffing Shortages
o The SSA has cut thousands of jobs, leaving staffing at historic lows — delaying services and worsening backlogs.
Political Sabotage of Experienced Leadership
o Qualified administrators are being replaced by Trump loyalists who aim to dismantle and privatize Social Security rather than protect its stability.
MAGA Takeover
o Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary overseeing Social Security, mocked beneficiaries, saying only “frauds” would care about missed payments after a court ruling threatened shutdowns.
Deliberate System Disruptions by DOGE-Linked Groups
o Cyberattacks and system failures — orchestrated by DOGE-affiliated gangsters — have crashed phone and online services, leading to extended outages and wait times.
War Budget
Survival Programs Get Cut, War Profiteers Get Rich
75% of Trump’s proposed budget — our tax dollars — funds war and repression (DOD, DOJ, CIA, DHS, etc.). Total spending on war and repression exceeds $2.5 trillion when including:

The Department of Energy (which manages nuclear weapons)
$952 billion in interest payments on debt from past military spending
The U.S. maintains 900 foreign military bases — compared to China’s one overseas base. The U.S. military budget is larger than the next 10 countries combined.

Budget Priorities: Guns Over People

✓ Pentagon: $1.01 trillion (+13%)

✓ DHS (Border Patrol, ICE, migrant prisons): $107 billion (+65%)

✗ HUD (housing): -$34 billion (-43%)

✗ Health & Human Services: -$33 billion (-26%)

✗ Education: -$12 billion (-15%)

Who Profits?
The Treasury is looted by:

Oil / gas corporations
Weapons manufacturers
Big Tech
Wall Street banks
Many war-profiteering corporations pay $0 in taxes. Many even get more in rebates than they pay in taxes. GE, for example, got $423 million in rebates in 2023.

Billionaire Elon Musk Gets Rich By Stealing Our Tax Money

While Trump and Musk’s DOGE slash social programs and lay off thousands, his company SpaceX is set to receive $25 billion for Trump’s “Golden Dome” space weapons program. As of February 2025, Musk has received $38 billion in U.S. government contracts, loans, and subsidies (Washington Post).

Nuclear Madness

Trump demands $12.9 billion more for nukes — despite the U.S. already having 5,000+ nuclear weapons (enough to end human civilization many times over).

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2025/ ... -and-more/