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

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

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 27, 2018 4:48 pm

And now for something completely different...
Love Him or Loathe Him, Trump is Liberating us All From The Empire's Lies
Vladimir Golstein
Sott.net
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 20:28 UTC
trump fake newsTrump and the Fine Art of Dialectics

Alexander Blok, one of the smartest and most noble of Russians, wrote this amazing essay on Catiline, a Roman rebel whose plot was crushed and who was utterly maligned by the father of all bullshit, Cicero.

So Catiline was this patrician, a decadent SOB who, when mistreated and challenged by the Roman establishment, organized the Roman deplorables and started a rebellion.

It was squashed of course, but for Blok, he remained a hero. Blok calls Catiline the Roman Bolshevik, and insists on approaching him not from Cicero's moralizing NYT-like perspective, but from the perspective of World Revolution.

For Blok, as he puts it, the heart of the Roman Empire stopped when Christ was born. It continued for another few hundred years, but in a zombie-like state until its petty, militaristic, provincial, materialistic character was finally exposed as the bluff it always was, and it collapsed under the weight of its own corruption. And here is Blok's paradoxical view: Catiline's rebellion makes sense only from this perspective.

Catiline might have been corrupt, decadent, debauched and what have you. Yet, he did expose how rotten Rome was. For that, both Blok and Ibsen (another rebel against stifling bourgeois order) place Catiline in heaven.

Which takes me to Trump. Whatever his critics say, he has it, and then some, but like Catiline, he fully exposes how corrupt, venal, and petty the established order is.

The genie cannot be put back into the bottle. Mass media is exposed for what it is: a spinning machine for the militaristic oppressive order, a purveyor of fake news. And this is not the view of some obscure academic like Chomsky. It is the view of the President of the United States.

Isn't it liberating?! No more butchery, bombing, and destruction, while the press conducts its cheer-leading campaign in support of another "humanitarian intervention", be it Serbia, Iraq, or Libya. The genie is out of the bottle. People are not buying it anymore.

Politicians are corrupt! Trump exposes it. Mass media lies and spins! He exposes it. Mass media is in obvious disarray. The only thing the Establishment learned to do during the 'End of History' period was to spin and promote government policies. Now, with their insane hatred of Trump, they can't do it any longer. And because they also became so lazy and corrupt as they suckled at the teat of the Establishment, they can't bring themselves to expose political or military corruption either.

The only thing left to them is "Russia-gate". How pathetic. So let them expose that Trump, 'the Emperor', is naked. He merely laughs back at them, and wiggles his naked derrière in their faces. And not just his, but their own. Their naked cowardliness, their naked corruption, their naked immaturity and lack of civic honor. The only thing they know how to do is to be sycophantic and sing 'Hail to the Chief'. And now they can't even do that because... #NotMyPresident! What a glorious scandal!

The empire built on lies, corruption, militarism, and petty materialism no longer can pretend to be anything else. And we should all be grateful to Trump for that. And to Americans who voted for him.

The French had their chance, yet they voted for their version of Obama, a petty little banker in cahoots with their corrupt media. In other words, they decided to act like ostriches, keeping their heads in the sand, and thinking that if they sign the Paris accord, all will be fine, 'Rome will continue unopposed'.

Except that it won't. The heart of today's Roman Empire has stopped, the wailing and gnashing of teeth has begun, and yet the ostriches march on.
About the author

Vladimir is a professor of Slavic studies at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA. He was born in Moscow and emigrated to the United States in 1979.

Professor Golstein's scholarly interests embrace Russian culture, religion, philosophy, and poetry, of the past two centuries. He is the author of Lermontov's Narratives of Heroism (Northwestern University Press, 1998) and numerous articles on nineteenth-and twentieth century Russian authors, including Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tsvetaeva, and Bulgakov. He is currently completing a monograph on the conflict of generations in Russia.

https://www.sott.net/article/373688-Lov ... pires-Lies
Well, this is some of what I've been going on about. If the masses view the output of the MSM as 'fake news' how can that not work in our favor? Because right now most people I know repeat 'the news' like parrots and any other take must be from lala land.. The other part, of course, is for Trump to be recognized as 'the avatar of his Class'. As they seem determined to take him down, and the bogus 'Russian' arguments got no real substance they look to be going after his personal finances. Excellent. That would be sweet, because one of the arguments I'm sure he will deploy is that 'everybody does it'. Quite right, if 'everybody' is your class peers. That should be exploited. It ain't the best argument, but some good old class animosity certainly opens the door to more crushing analysis.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 09, 2018 1:52 pm

Midterm Elections: Corporate Democrats Versus the Monster They Empowered
Glen Ford, BAR executive editor 08 Nov 2018

Midterm Elections: Corporate Democrats Versus the Monster They Empowered
Midterm Elections: Corporate Democrats Versus the Monster They Empowered
Only transformational programs, like single payer health care, can erode the coherence of the White Supremacist Bloc, and at the same time galvanize the numeric majority of the nation.

“The midterms were a test of whether Donald Trump could continue to hold majorities of white Americans in thrall to his non-stop, red-meat racist political theater.”

Tuesday’s midterm elections put Democrats back in control of the U.S. House while strengthening the Republican hold on the Senate. The big picture is that, two years after Donald Trump replaced the GOP’s old arsenal of racial code words and dog whistles with blaring white supremacist bullhorns, majorities of U.S. whites are firmly committed to an openly white nationalist political program under the leadership of a billionaire huckster who speaks their vile language. Although the GOP remains a minority party -- Democrats outpolled them in House races by 7 to 9 percent – white supremacists remain the largest bloc in the U.S. political spectrum. The 2018 midterms were a test, not of insurgent left-leaning Democrats -- a disorganized and confused faction that was kept largely in check by the party’s corporate leadership -- but of whether Donald Trump could continue to hold majorities of white Americans in thrall to his non-stop, red-meat racist political theater.

“White supremacists remain the largest bloc in the U.S. political spectrum.”

He could, and did, confirming the potency of the overt white supremacist strategy, which has succeeded in proving both the intransigence and coherence of racist white majorities, even as most of the ruling class and its media mounted an unprecedented offensive to restore the previous corporate political consensus: austerity and war cloaked in a façade of “diversity.” Trump made “me feel like an American again,” said a white West Virginia hardware store worker quoted by the New York Times. The man felt restored in the belief that he still lives in a white man’s country.

Republican gains in the Senate reflect both the solidity of the white supremacist bloc and the structural racism of the U.S. electoral system. The Democratic gain of up to 28 seats in the House is not unusual for presidential incumbent parties at midterm ; Democrats lost 54 seats in 1994, under Clinton, the GOP dropped 39 seats in 2006, under Bush, and Obama’s party lost a whopping 63 seats and both houses of Congress in 2010. The latest election has given the corporate Democrats leadership of one house of the national legislature, but did not break white supremacy’s hold on majorities of white voters. The White Man’s Party, as redefined and reinvigorated by Donald Trump, is still the nation’s most formidable bloc, by far.

“The overt white supremacist strategy has succeeded in proving both the intransigence and coherence of racist white majorities.”

This was a rematch of the contest that corporate Democrats wished for and thought would allow them to win decisively back in 2016. Democratic leaders sought to set the terms of electoral battle as a conflict between “deplorables,” as Hillary Clinton described white supremacist voters, and the rest of the electorate, the great bulk of whom the corporate Democrats believed could be corralled into Hillary’s Big Tent, where big city and Deep South Black politicians, Rio Grand valley and East L.A. Hispanics, suburban white “moderates,” Silicon Valley and Wall Street oligarchs, scheming CIA operatives and warmongering generals would find common cause against the Orange Menace. Clinton campaign chief John Podesta urged his troops and their friends in media to do everything possible to boost Donald Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination, in the certainty that Clinton would beat him in a landslide -- as incontrovertibly documented in the emails that were pilfered and delivered (not hacked) to Wikileaks (not the Russians) and sent to the media. By March of 2016, corporate media – most glaringly CNN, but including the whole herd -- had already given Trump’s GOP takeover gambit $2 billion in free media, amounting to more exposure than all the other candidates from both corporate parties, combined, including Clinton. By end the of the general election campaign, corporate media had bestowed a total of $5 billion in free media on Donald Trump -- their criminally cynical contribution to the solidification and consolidation of the white supremacist bloc in the United States.

Trump is not their Frankenstein, but the Democrats and their media supplied most of the electricity that energized the monster. White supremacy is endemic to the U.S., part of its founding settler DNA, but the corporate media and Democratic Party’s strategy to help install Trump as a “straw man” presidential candidate who could be swept aside in the general election wound up giving white supremacists a champion around which to unite.

“The corporate media bestowed a total of $5 billion in free media on Donald Trump.”

When the strategy failed, they blamed it on the Russians and launched a neo-McCarthyite campaign of slander against domestic dissidents -- like Black Agenda Report -- blaming the “far left and far right” for “sowing discord” on behalf of a foreign power. It was their own failed electoral strategy that had destabilized the corporate duopoly, simultaneously threatening the “corporate consensus” on foreign and domestic policy and giving new life to the Old Confederacy.

This is the big picture -- much of the rest of the midterm results is clutter. The white supremacist bloc flexes its muscles and fingers its triggers. The racist horde -- a majority of whites – feels a renewed entitlement to primacy in the national life. Corporate Democrats, whose bungled schemes led us to this juncture, forge ahead with the same strategy as in 2016. Nancy Pelosi, who ordered the Congressional Black Caucus to downplay the crimes of Katrina the last time she was Speaker of the House, served up pablum and called it a victory speech:

“We will strive for bipartisanship, with fairness on all sides. We have a responsibility to find our common ground where we can, stand our ground where we can’t, but we must try. We’ll have a bipartisan marketplace of ideas that makes our democracy strong. A Democratic congress will work for solutions that bring us together, because we have all had enough of division. The American people want peace. They want results. They want us to work for positive results for their lives.”

“The white supremacist bloc flexes its muscles and fingers its triggers.”

What crap. By “peace,” she means less rancor between the two corporate parties. The actual corporate agenda is austerity and war, the only future the oligarchy envisions for the planet. Trump shares this imperial vision -- when he is thinking about subjects other than himself -- but is glad to ride and stoke the white revanchism that is now part of his brand.

Only Big, Alternative Projects -- transformational programs, like single payer health care, that actually shift power and resources from the ruling oligarchy to the masses -- can erode the coherence of the White Supremacist Bloc, forcing significant numbers of them to abandon the prioritization of race, and at the same time galvanize the numeric majority of the nation: minorities of whites and majorities of everybody else. Nancy Pelosi’s job is to make sure that does not happen in her wing of the duopoly, despite the fact that 85 percent of Democrats -- and 52 percent of Republicans -- favor Medicare for All, with only 20 percent of Americans opposed. In other words, there is an overwhelming popular consensus in favor of single payer health care that is diametrically opposed to the corporate consensus. Corporate parties, in a duopoly system, cannot resolve that contradiction in favor of the people.

That’s why the struggle must be mainly in the streets, and to build non-corporate parties, including independent Black formations -- which requires a split in the Democrats, the section of the duopoly that is not explicitly the White Man’s Party, but instead slavishly serves the oligarchy.

https://blackagendareport.com/midterm-e ... -empowered

Pretty good analysis of the election & electorate but I can't follow Ford's reasoning as to how Single-Payer gonna be our foot in the door. Been there, done that with the Dems & in retrospect it was a forgone conclusion. Does he expect something to coalesce around this issue spontaneously or is this gonna be the Greens reaching for 1st tier status? The 1st is ridiculous, the 2nd sure treachery.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 19, 2018 12:18 pm

On May 20, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud signed a series of letters of intent for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to purchase arms from the United States totaling US$110 billion immediately, and $350 billion over 10 years. Wikipedia

Fact Checker Analysis
Trump’s $110 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia: still fake
Trump demurs on Saudi arms sales following Khashoggi disappearance

By Glenn Kessler
October 11
“I know they’re [Senators] talking about different kinds of sanctions, but they’re [Saudi Arabia] spending $110 billion on military equipment and on things that create jobs, like jobs and others for this country. I don’t like the concept of stopping an investment of $110 billion into the United States.”

--President Trump, in remarks to reporters, Oct. 11, 2018

President Trump pushed back against sanctioning Saudi Arabia over the disappearance and likely killing of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, saying the Saudis have pledged to buy $110 billion of military equipment from the United States.

But this number is fanciful and unlikely to come to fruition – and in any case many of the purported deals are long in the future, according to a detailed list obtained by The Fact Checker. Indeed, in a March meeting with the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, Trump noted that the current set of planned deliveries was “peanuts.”

Let’s explore.

The Facts
When Trump completed his visit May, 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia, claiming $270 billion in sales, we gave him Three Pinocchios after a review of the data. The $110 billion in military sales aroused great skepticism among experts, with Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution calling the claim “fake news.”

Most of the publicly announced items had been previously announced by the Obama administration and there appeared to be few, if any, signed contracts. Rather, many of the announcements were MOIs — memorandums of intent. There were six specific items, adding up to $28 billion, but all had been previously notified to Congress by the Obama administration.

After Trump’s remarks on Khashoggi, Reidel said the $110 billion figure was “still fake.”

He said the Saudis have not bought locked in the arms deals touted by Trump, even a $15 billion deal for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile system that has received preliminary approval from Congress. He noted that the Saudis let a September deadline for the deal lapse with Lockheed Martin, despite a 20 percent price cut.

A review of the announcements on the Defense Security Cooperation Agency website since Trump’s 2017 trip reveals that, besides THAAD, there have been six State Department announcements of approval of Saudi sales, totaling just $4 billion.

According to the confidential 2017 document of all of the military-sales agreements reviewed by The Fact Checker, most of the items did not have delivery dates or were scheduled for 2022 or beyond. The THAAD, for instance, was scheduled for 2023-2026. An order for four ships would not be completed until 2028. Billions of dollars in bombs are scheduled for delivery in 2022.

In essence, this is a wish list. It’s worth recalling that Obama offered Saudi Arabia $115 billion in deals, about half of which resulted in actual sales.

Trump raised the possibility that the Saudis might turn to Russia or China for its hardware. The Saudis are still considering purchasing a Russian S-400 air-defense system, but Reidel said the kingdom is too invested in U.S. equipment – which means the U.S. has significant leverage if it wanted to punish the Saudis over the Khashoggi matter.

“It would take decades to transition from U.S. and U.K. aircraft, for example, to Russian or Chinese aircraft,” Reidel said. “Same is true for tanks, communications equipment and other hi-tech equipment. And the Saudis don’t have time given they are bogged down in Yemen.”

The Pinocchio Test
This is an example of a politician believing his own propaganda. The $110 billion-figure is not real and unlikely to come to fruition – and even if it did, it represents sales far in the future. The president should scale down the use of the number, especially when talking about a diplomatic crisis today. Given that little on the supposed deals has advanced since Trump’s announcement 1 1/2 years ago, we are upping this to Four Pinocchios.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ed3fade1f7


The lies of Trump and the consternation of liberals are equally delicious. Trump flat out states the immoral logic of American foreign policy and the Post retorts, "No, no,we'll not lose that money, it's in the bag." And they don't even flinch saying it. And that's why Trump should engage in theatrics, but Trump only does that for himself. And he ain't gonna risk his private relationship with those moneybags, no way in hell. But for some reason no one brings that up...

It's all right out in the open but the way the propaganda is presented ya'd never know it. 'Free speech', 'free press', what a fucking joke when one class got all the keys. The Business of America is Business.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 27, 2018 6:23 pm

Trump says he was 'very tough' on GM's Barra over plant closures
By Kevin Liptak, CNN

Updated 12:38 PM ET, Tue November 27, 2018

General Motors is closing plants and cutting jobs 02:36
Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump publicly chastised General Motors CEO Mary Barra on Monday over her decision to close four plants in the US because of sagging demand for sedans.

The President, speaking to reporters on his way to a pair of campaign stops in Mississippi, said he'd talked to Barra about the closures, which will also hit a fifth North American plant in Canada.
"I was very tough. I spoke with her when I heard they were closing and I said, you know, this country has done a lot for General Motors," Trump said, referring to the federal bailout of the company after the 2008 financial crash.
He later repeated: "You know, the United States saved General Motors, and for her to take that company out of Ohio is not good."
A White House official said that Trump had spoken with Barra on Sunday, before the closures were publicly announced. Barra was at the White House on Monday for a previously scheduled meeting with economic adviser Larry Kudlow as Trump was speaking on the South Lawn, the White House official said.
Trump, who made the revival of American manufacturing a centerpiece of his 2016 campaign, has a track record of publicly criticizing companies that seek to shut down or move production abroad, including furnace maker Carrier.
GM announced Monday morning that it would shut operations at plants in Detroit; Oshawa, Ontario; Warren, Ohio; White Marsh, Maryland; and Warren, Michigan. The plants made sedans that have waned in popularity, including the Chevrolet Volt, Impala and Cruze, the Buick LaCrosse and the Cadillac CT6 and XTS. GM said it will no longer make those cars.
Two of the plants made engines and parts for those cars. The facilities made some trucks, but those trucks are also made in Mexico.
The company also said it would close three plants outside North America by the end of next year. One of those closures, in South Korea, had been previously announced.
Trump said he told Barra she had "better" reopen plants in the US soon.
"We have a lot of pressure on them. You have senators and a lot of other people, a lot of pressure," the President said.
He said the company should find a car that sells better than the Chevy Cruze.
"I think you're going to see something else happen there, but I'm not happy about it," Trump said. "Their car is not selling well. So they'll put something else -- I have no doubt that, in a not-too-distant future, they'll put something else. They better put something else in."
CNN's David Goldman contributed to this report.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/26/politics ... index.html

This guy doesn't understand how capitalism works, his understanding that of a 19th century rentier. His peers may not like his style but they'd ignore the liberals if he toed the line, fucking with their money is a bridge too far. What we'll probably see is GM toss him some sort of fig leaf, which will vaporize in short order, but he'll have gotten his soundbite. The knives are bound to come out again, soon, as the tariffs, with promise of more, take their toll. Let's see what else this pustule can do to advance the crisis of capitalism.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 28, 2018 12:21 pm

From yesterday's Washington Post interview, the choice cuts:
Afghanistan, three troops were killed overnight in that roadside bomb. Can you explain why 17 years later we’re still there? Why are Americans still fighting there?

TRUMP: We’re there because virtually every expert that I have and speak to say if we don’t go there, they’re going to be fighting over here. And I’ve heard it over and over again.
I've heard this somewhere before. Didn't work out that way. Too bad.
You said yesterday when you were leaving that you were skeptical of a climate change report that the government had done. Can you just explain why you're skeptical of that report?

TRUMP: One of the problems that a lot of people like myself — we have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers....

Number two, if you go back and if you look at articles, they talked about global freezing, they talked about at some point the planets could have freeze to death, then it’s going to die of heat exhaustion. There is movement in the atmosphere. There’s no question. As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it — not nearly like it is. Do we want clean water? Absolutely. Do we want clean air to breathe? Absolutely. The fire in California, where I was, if you looked at the floor, the floor of the fire, they have trees that were fallen, they did no forest management, no forest maintenance, and you can light — you can take a match like this and light a tree trunk when that thing is laying there for more than 14 or 15 months. And it’s a massive problem in California.
I think that China wants to make a deal very badly. I think we’ll either make a deal or we’ll be taking in billions and billions of dollars a month in tariffs and I’m okay with either one of those two situations. But I can tell you that China wants to make a deal. I can tell you that other countries want to make deals because they know that I’m not playing around.
So I’m doing deals, and I’m not being accommodated by the Fed. I’m not happy with the Fed. They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... nal&wpmk=1

The Dems are so bad that this shit flies.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 21, 2018 4:43 pm

Trump Unchained

Kelly: out. Mathis: out. US occupation of Syria: out. Half the US troops on Afghanistan: out.Trump is shrugging off the chains that his peers imposed upon him. " I gotta be me!" he shrieks while flouncing about the offal office. The dogs are closing in, he's gotta do something, do what works, what got him elected. He wants to claim that each and every campaign promise has been kept, plus. Doesn't matter about the actuality, just the appearance. He's gotta keep his base rabid, it's the only thing between him and a Republican revolt.

Doesn't matter that the Kurds been sold up the river again, that NATO will try and hang on to the territory in Syria, though SAA & friends will have something to say about that. Or that the US will still be in Afghanistan, it's an operational fate a compli. Less war less soldiers is a good thing, even if his reasoning is warped. So the party of George McGovern doubles down joining war-mongers like Lindsay Graham. I hope at least some people take the lesson here, but their class allegiance will proly get in the way of that, as usual.

More shoes are now bound to drop, this intransigence will not go unanswered. He is proving unreliable. He mighta thought that fat tax break would get his peers off his ass, and while I'm sure they enjoyed it that was a 'one off' and these people like income streams, like those obtained from investments which Trump is fucking up with his tariffs. They could give a fuck about the US collecting 'billions', it ain't going in their pockets.

Hard to say what comes next all depends whether his base can be weakened, by damning new revelations or mebbe just fatigue. There will be new rallies, soon, photo ops with the troops he brought home for Christmas. If the base cracks the Republicans will bolt in a jiffy and he'll bail before they can nail him down, screaming "Conspiracy!" and "Unfair!" the whole way to the chopper.If the Dems prove so incompetent that they cannot dispose of the sorryist nemesis in their history we get 2 more years of unbridled self-aggrandizement, aggravated racism & xenophobia & lame SNL skits. And mebbe war or something like it with Iran. Dunno what his hard-on for Iran is about, perhaps influenced by his Saudi buddies, mebbe still butt-hurt about the Embassy(he seen it on TV!), proly both.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 08, 2019 2:23 pm

Who's in charge here?
Bolton departs Turkey without meeting with Erdoğan
DAILY SABAH
ISTANBUL
Published
17 hours ago
Image
National Security Adviser John Bolton (AP Photo)

Turkey cannot accept US condition of protecting YPG terorrists, Erdoğan says
U.S. President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton is preparing to leave Ankara after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan denied his requested meeting.

Erdoğan earlier in the day slammed statements Bolton made that Washington's condition for a troop withdrawal from Syria is that Turkey protects the PKK's Syrian affiliate People's Protection Units (YPG).

Commenting on the development, Erdoğan told reporters that Presidential Adviser Ibrahim Kalın is Bolton's Turkish counterpart. The two held a meeting on Syria at the Presidential Complex in Ankara earlier on Tuesday. The president said his busy schedule prevented him from meeting Trump's adviser on Tuesday, but if it had been necessary, they would have met.

Erdoğan said at the Justice and Development (AK Party) Party's parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday morning that Bolton's comments on the YPG were unacceptable, and that Turkey could not accept the U.S.' stated condition.

Bolton said Sunday that the U.S. military withdrawal from northeastern Syria is conditioned on defeating the remnants of Daesh terrorist group, and on Turkey assuring the safety of fighters allied with the United States — the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is dominated by the YPG terrorists.

https://www.dailysabah.com/diplomacy/20 ... th-erdogan
Seriously. It's getting weirder & weirder.

Crank up the DEVO

Any reduction of imperialist occupation would be welcome, the pushback against Trump's efforts to buoy his popularity by fulfilling(however marginally) campaign promises had to be expected. What is notable is the lack of protocol and on the face of it a total lack of respect for the Boss, who cannot have failed to notice. But will his fans notice?

*********************

Edit:

Donald J. Trump Verified account @realDonaldTrump 15 hours ago

Endless Wars, especially those which are fought out of judgement mistakes that were made many years ago, & those where we are getting little financial or military help from the rich countries that so greatly benefit from what we are doing, will eventually come to a glorious end!
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Wed Jan 23, 2019 8:14 pm


@realDonaldTrump
Following Following @realDonaldTrump
More Donald J. Trump Retweeted Vice President Mike Pence
The citizens of Venezuela have suffered for too long at the hands of the illegitimate Maduro regime. Today, I have officially recognized the President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the Interim President of Venezuela.
The liberals are happy with him again, so presidential.

This cannot help but be nasty. The fascists are counting Maduro's days, but I don't think so. Time to 'gun up' the militia. The bastards been on a roll but remember the Bay of Pigs.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 25, 2019 9:33 pm

Venezuela - Trump's Coup Attempt Is Based On A Seriously Flawed Plan
The U.S. led coup-attempt against the government of Venezuela under President Maduro is based on a plan that is similar to this one (vid).


bigger
While U.S. coup plotting against Venezuela goes back to at least 1998 when the deceased President Chavez won his first election, the actual planning for this coup attempt was only done during the last two month. There are many holes in the plan and it involves a lot of wishful thinking. That might give the Maduro government openings to deflect the attack.

More likely though will the insufficient planning, based on false perceptions of the situation on the ground, lead to demands for escalation and mission creep. Venezuela must thus immediately prepare for the worst.

Today U.S. media give some insight into the decision making before the coup-attempt. The Wall Street Journal headline makes it clear that the U.S. is 100% responsible for it:

Pence Pledged U.S. Backing Before Venezuela Opposition Leader’s Move
Trump administration’s secret plan pledging support for opposition leader Juan Guaidó was preconceived and tightly coordinated

The night before Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president of Venezuela, the opposition leader received a phone call from Vice President Mike Pence.
Mr. Pence pledged that the U.S. would back Mr. Guaidó if he seized the reins of government from Nicolás Maduro by invoking a clause in the South American country’s constitution, a senior administration official said.

That late-night call set in motion a plan that had been developed in secret over the preceding several weeks, accompanied by talks between U.S. officials, allies, lawmakers and key Venezuelan opposition figures, including Mr. Guaidó himself.

The leading figures were Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Pompeo and Senator Marco Rubio as well as hawks in in the National Security Council.

A decisive moment came a week later in a White House meeting Jan. 22, the eve of protests in Venezuela, when Mr. Rubio along with Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, both Republicans from Florida, were called to a White House meeting with Mr. Trump, Vice President Pence and others.
...
Other officials who met that day at the White House included Messrs. Pompeo and Bolton, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who presented Mr. Trump with options for recognizing Mr. Guaidó.
Mr. Trump decided to do it. Mr. Pence, who wasn’t at that meeting, placed his phone call to Mr. Guaidó to tell him, “If the National Assembly invoked Article 233 the following day, the president would back him,” the senior administration official said.

Trump himself is only interested in Venezuela's oil reserves, which are the largest of the world:

While the developments this week surprised many onlookers, Mr. Trump had long viewed Venezuela as one of his top-three foreign policy priorities, including Iran and North Korea.
...
Mr. Trump requested a briefing on Venezuela in his second day in office, often speaking to his team about the suffering of Venezuelan people and the country’s immense potential to become a rich nation through its oil reserves, ...
Before the U.S. attack on Libya Trump said (vid) that the U.S. should demand 50% of the oil profits from the 'rebels' it hoped to put into place: "[They] should have said: We'll help you but we want 50% of your oil."

It is interesting that neither the Pentagon nor the Justice Department were involved in the planing of the coup attempt. They could have pointed out the obvious flaws.

Article 233 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (pdf) is not a valid legal basis for Guaidó himself or for the Venezuelan National Assembly to declare him president. It regulates the procedures in the case that the elected or sitting president "becomes permanently unavailable" which Maduro is obviously not. To cite Article 233 for this is a scam that no court will accept.

The White House planning also seem to go no further than the current stage. This for example is extremely wishful thinking:

“The U.S. believes the rank-and-file military are most likely with the opposition,” the senior administration official said. “The most significant development in the last 24 hours has been that the [Venezuelan] military has stayed in its barracks. And Maduro hasn’t ordered them to squash the protests possibly because he’s unsure they would follow his orders and doesn’t want to test that.”
This is delusional. The opposition protests were so far smaller and less violent that those in 2016. Even during those riots the military stayed in the barracks because it plays no role in the internal security of Venezuela. To confront rioting protestors is the job of the local police and the National Guard of Venezuela which "can serve as gendarmerie, perform civil defense roles, or serve as a reserve light infantry force." While the National Guard is formally a military service it has its own line of command. Since 2002 Chavez and the Maduro have cleaned up the military. It has also received a number of perks. Many nationalized companies are led by (former) military officers. To base a plan on an unfounded hope of military support for a coup is crazy.

The White House seems at a loss at what to do next:

Much remains to be sorted out, including the U.S. determination that Mr. Guaidó represents the lawful government and is entitled to all revenues.
If that legal determination is made, it will soon be tested in court. As the flawed quoting of article 233 as a basis for Guaidó's self declaration as president is not legally valid, any such determination will be flawed. That the administration has not thought of this before it acted is quite curious.

The Washington Post goes deeper into the obvious flaws of the plan:

With risks ahead, Trump administration pins hopes on Venezuela’s opposition

“I think that speaks for itself,” national security adviser John Bolton said when asked Thursday what Trump meant by saying “all options” are available to him.
The administration is betting that it will not need to spell it out further. But it was unclear whether it has fully mapped out a strategy in the event that President Nicolás Maduro refuses to budge, serious violence erupts or foreign supporters of Maduro’s government — including Russia and Turkey — decide to intervene on his behalf.

For now, the hope is to use the newly declared interim government as a tool to deny Maduro the oil revenue from the United States that provides Venezuela virtually all of its incoming cash, current and former U.S. officials said.
..
“What we’re focusing on today is disconnecting the illegitimate Maduro regime from the source of its revenues. We think consistent with our recognition of Juan Guaidó as the constitutional interim president of Venezuela that those revenues should go to the legitimate government,” Bolton said.

“It’s very complicated. We’re looking at a lot of different things we have to do, but that’s in the process,” he said.

If the U.S. stops payment for oil to the Maduro government, Venezuela will obviously stop shipping oil to the States. Several large Gulf Coast refineries are geared specifically to that heavy type of oil. They will have to stop working and gas prices in the U.S. will increase. One wonders how Trump's voters will like that.

The administration also wants to increase sanctions on Venezuela but the existing ones are already causing the people pain while they have little effect on the government.

The plan is also based on the hope that the dude that came up in Venezuela can actually do something:

The U.S. pressure campaign is aimed partly at convincing Maduro that he cannot continue to govern, and partly at building up Guaidó.
“We have been engaged with the same strategy: to build international pressure, help organize the internal opposition and push for a peaceful restoration of democracy. But that internal piece was missing,” the official said. “He was the piece we needed for our strategy to be coherent and complete.”

But what does Guaidó have? Does he have any office, any public building, any army? Does he controls the ports, the custom offices and the central bank? Even in Venezuela few knew him. How many really committed followers does he have? There are some 8-9 million followers of the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela. These are poor people. Many of them own what they have to the socialist government. They will fight against an illegitimate coup. What means does the guy the U.S. supports to suppress them?

Notes the Post:

The Trump administration hopes Venezuela’s armed forces switch allegiances, but there is no clear road map for what Trump would do if that does not happen, or if blood is spilled.
The Post also confirms that the U.S. military was not involved in the planning even as the logical consequence of the coup-attempt is likely a war:

“It’s kind of a giveaway, that [the Defense Department] or Southcom was not part of this process or wasn’t given a heads-up,” said one former senior administration official.
“One could argue that we are on, if not an inevitable path, certainly a path toward intervention because of the dramatic nature of what we’ve done,” the former official said. “Telling a sitting president he is no longer president and recognizing somebody else. Next question: Okay, what comes next? To what extent are we actually prepared to continue to march down this road?”

That is the $64,000 question.

My impression is that Trump was scammed. It was long evident that he gives little attention to details and does not think things through. Most likely Bolton, Pompeo and Rubio presented him with a three step plan:

Phase 1. Support the self declared president Guaidó; Phase 2: ... (wishful thinking) ...; Phase 3: Take half of their oil!

Trump accepted the plan without asking how phase 2 might really play out. I doubt that he knew that it will likely to lead to higher gas prices. Nor do I think that he knew that it will likely require a military escalation up to a major war that will take years to unfold. He would have known that both will cost him dearly during the next election.

This is similar to Trump's other genius plan that now leads to the closing of U.S. airports. Phase 1 of that plan was to shutdown the U.S. government. Phase 2 foresaw that the Democrats give him money. Phase 3 was the Great Wall on the southern border that would help him to get reelected. That plan also failed because of wishful thinking. It also costs Trump at the polls.

But Trump has now committed himself to both poorly laid out plans and it will be extremely difficult for him to pull back from them. While he may still wiggle out of the domestic embarrassment over his wall, it will be much more difficult to do that on the international stage where he asked many other nations for their support. He is now on the spot and has no decent moves to make. Higher gas prices and a military escalation go against his election promises. His voters will not like either.

Bolton and Pompeo are both experienced politicians and bureaucrats. They likely knew that their plan was deeply flawed and would require much more than Trump would normally commit to. My hunch is that the soon coming mission creep was build into their plan, but that they did not reveal that.

Trump just ruined his presidency by falling for their scheme. How long will it take him to understand that?

Posted by b on January 25, 2019 at 03:09 PM | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/01/v ... -plan.html

bolding added

Scammed? Naw, he's a dumb motherfucker.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 15, 2019 12:32 pm

Trump's declaration of a national emergency is nothing less than chipping away at bourgeois democracy in order to build his wall. Hardly out of the blue, previous presidents have been legally assuming more power for decades, he builds on precedent. Quantity begets quality. Nonetheless, a serious breach of the unspoken gentleman's agreement which maintains the facade of representative rule.

Naturally, I am reminded of ancient Rome. As the republic grew into an empire things got wanky, great contradictions arose or came to a head. Which, after a series of civil wars lead to the Imperium and Principate. We do things a bit differently nowadays, shorter time lines what with communications and transport. No Sulla on the horizon, nor Marius, Trump is a wanker. Who needs them when ya got Marx and Lenin? Time to grid our loins(always wanted to say that) for the fascism that is their only means of Order, and it won't be just for black folks anymore either. Mebbe not tomorrow, and 'American Style', but coming.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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