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

[blindpig]

Big Beautiful Cover Up: Epstein, ICE, and the MAGA War State

Originally published: MintPress News on July 7, 2025 by Greg Stoker (more by MintPress News) | (Posted Jul 09, 2025)


The Department of Justice has quietly declared the Epstein case closed—no client list, no criminal conspiracy, and no further disclosures. Despite years of public pressure and speculation, the DOJ and FBI now assert that the contents of the Epstein files primarily involve sensitive victim information and materials that, if released, could endanger innocent individuals. In their view, the matter warrants no further investigation or transparency.

This abrupt conclusion follows months of political theater. Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, now closely aligned with Trump loyalists, had claimed to be reviewing the Epstein files. Yet no public findings ever emerged from her office. Meanwhile, high-profile figures like Kash Patel, Trump’s ally director of the FBI, are positioned within the same agencies that would need to circumvent institutional barriers—including Bondi herself—to reveal any explosive information.

While public curiosity about Epstein’s elite connections remains strong, the most potent political uses of the case have already been extracted. The files became a symbolic lightning rod for anti-establishment outrage, especially within MAGA and QAnon circles. What began as calls for accountability evolved into a conspiracy-laden mythos, where Donald Trump was painted as the lone warrior fighting a network of global elites trafficking children. The absence of real disclosures didn’t undermine the story; it amplified the sense of hidden truth, driving engagement and radicalization.

A recent twist came when Elon Musk publicly implied that Trump’s name appeared in the Epstein files, only to later walk back his statements. Musk’s retraction came after Trump posted a statement from David Schoen—both Epstein’s former lawyer and Trump’s impeachment defense attorney—claiming no wrongdoing. Still, the optics of their past association continue to stir speculation, especially since Epstein once referred to Trump as a “close friend” in a 2017 interview, despite Trump later claiming to have distanced himself years earlier.

The DOJ’s final memo reveals a more disturbing subtext. It stresses that most of the unreleased Epstein material is tied to child sexual abuse and cannot be disclosed, not even partially. Yet this explanation, while framed as a defense of victim privacy, conveniently ensures no high-profile figures face scrutiny. The narrative arc concludes not with justice, but with silence.

As the Epstein discourse is effectively retired, new narratives are already being prepared to mobilize public emotion. Chief among them is the militarization of ICE under the guise of national security. With proposals to turn ICE into the third-largest armed force in the U.S., “terrorist sleeper cells” and “criminal migrants” are likely to become the next emotionally charged rallying cries. Behind these efforts are powerful private defense contractors like Palantir, with their predictive policing algorithms and expansive national databases, tools designed to secure profit through surveillance and incarceration.

The Epstein saga, rather than delivering justice, functioned as a political psyop—weaponizing disgust, redirecting rage, and channeling rebellion into electoral support for the very system it appeared to oppose. In the end, the performance of accountability overshadowed its need, and the machinery of the state continues to serve its true constituency: profit and power.

https://mronline.org/2025/07/09/big-bea ... war-state/

******

Trump Just Gave a Huge Gift to China’s Economy
Posted on July 9, 2025 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Trump’s fixation with trying to retreat into the past is producing even more destruction to the US than we would have suffered from the progress of imperial decline. This post describes how Trump’s “big beautiful bill” has all sorts of bennies for China.

By Dana Nuccitelli, research coordinator for the nonprofit Citizens’ Climate Lobby, and an environmental scientist, writer, and author of ‘Climatology versus Pseudoscience,’ published in 2015. He has published 10 peer-reviewed studies related to climate change and has been writing about the subject since 2010 for outlets including Skeptical Science and The Guardian. Originally published at Yale Climate Connections

On the Fourth of July – America’s 249th birthday – President Donald Trump signed into law a bill that could very well cede the country’s position as the leading global economic superpower to China.

As the nonpartisan energy think tank RMI has argued, the world is in the midst of a transition from the Information Age, which the United States led by dominating the development of new software and information technologies, to the Renewable Age, in which the development and deployment of electric and renewable energy technologies will drive the global economy.

This transition is dominated by insurgent clean technologies, such as solar, wind, electric vehicles, and batteries, whose prices are falling rapidly and whose growth is exponential.


Transitions to new global economic ages and the countries that led and are poised to lead them. (Image credit: RMI / used with permission)

Chinese manufacturers have invested heavily in those technologies. To help the U.S. economy better compete in the clean tech sector, Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, in August 2022. That law included incentives to spur domestic manufacturing of these key clean energy technologies.

And it was working.

The U.S. experienced a clean energy manufacturing boom over the ensuing two years. But Republicans’ new budget reconciliation law, called the “One, Big Beautiful Bill Act,” guts those incentives and pulls the rug out from under nascent domestic clean energy industries.

On America’s birthday, President Donald Trump could not have given the Chinese economy a more generous gift.

Chinese Manufacturers Are Dominating the EV Market

The United States has the world’s second-largest car market, but EVs account for less than 10% of the country’s new auto sales. That can give U.S. residents the mistaken impression that EVs are unpopular.

In fact, more than one in five new passenger cars sold around the world in 2024 were electric. BloombergNEF, a market research firm, forecasts that this share will rise to about one in four new cars this year. That could rise to four out of every 10 by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. In other words, the global auto market is increasingly electric.

China has the largest domestic auto market in the world, and half the new vehicles sold in the country today are EVs. And Chinese automakers are dominating the global EV market, offering a wide array of affordable and advanced cars. The electric car giant BYD’s cheapest model, the Seagull, is priced at less than $10,000, dramatically undercutting U.S.-based companies like Tesla.

Ford CEO Jim Farley recently described Chinese EVs as “far superior to what I see in the West.” He added that if his company loses the EV market to Chinese automakers, “We do not have a future Ford.”

Former President Joe Biden placed a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs to protect the U.S. domestic industry. And U.S. demand for EVs was expected to grow rapidly in the coming years as the result of federal tax credits for American-made electric cars and U.S. tailpipe pollution regulations.

But Republicans’ new budget law will terminate the former on September 30, and the Trump administration has gutted the latter.

As a result, energy systems modelers at Princeton and BloombergNEF project that only about half as many U.S. residents will buy EVs over the next five years as previously expected. By 2030, only about 27% of new car sales in the U.S. are now expected to be electric, compared to 80% in China.

Chinese Firms Are Winning the Solar Market, Too

The story is similar for solar panels. Solar energy is cheap, fast to deploy, and produces virtually no pollution during its operation. It accounted for about 70% of all new global power generation capacity added in 2024, including nearly 60% in the United States.

Chinese firms control over 80% of the global solar panel manufacturing supply chain, according to the International Energy Agency.

The IRA aimed to bolster the U.S. solar manufacturing industry, in part through clean electricity tax credits. But as a result of the Republican budget law’s rapid phaseout of those incentives, the U.S. will deploy about 40% less clean energy over the next decade, according to modeling by experts at Princeton. Companies like U.S. solar manufacturer Talon PV have already begun pausing or canceling U.S. projects in anticipation of the clean energy tax credit repeals, as well as other uncertainties like Trump’s unpredictable tariffs.

When the IRA became law, there was a surge in planned battery, EV, and solar manufacturing investments, according to a project to track clean energy manufacturing announcements by a team at Wellesley College. That was followed by a steep decline since last November’s elections and associated threats to clean energy incentives.

Energy Innovation, a Yale Climate Connections content-sharing partner, anticipates that the repealed clean energy tax credits will cost 760,000 jobs by 2030 and reduce the country’s gross domestic product by nearly a trillion dollars.


U.S. clean energy manufacturing project investments announcements by quarter. (Image credit: Wellesley College’s The Big Green Machine database / used with permission)

The Budget Reconciliation Law Gives the Chinese Economy Other Advantages

The big budget law will likely cause a tremendous number of other negative impacts. Because clean energy deployment will slow down at a time when power demand is rising rapidly and natural gas turbines are facing years of delivery backlogs, experts warn it will create energy scarcity. American companies will likely be left scrambling to find enough supply to meet rising power demand, which will lead to higher electricity bills and put U.S. artificial intelligence developers at a disadvantage in their high-stakes race against their Chinese competitors.

Increasing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels will also result in more air pollution and sicker U.S. residents, coinciding with at least 17 million people losing their health coverage and more than 300 hospitals facing the risk of closure, the result of other provisions in the GOP’s new law.

The Senate Made the Bill 25% Less Damaging to the Climate

As harmful as the final law is, it was very nearly considerably worse for the climate. The version initially passed by the House would have effectively immediately gutted the clean electricity tax credits. It was so damaging that 13 House Republicans pleaded with their Senate colleagues to fix the bill they had all just voted for.

The Senate Finance Committee did indeed make some improvements, softening the requirements for clean electricity to qualify for the tax credits and significantly extending their timeline for sources other than solar and wind.

Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), and John Curtis (Utah) reportedly negotiated a last-minute amendment to the bill that added a one-year runway for new solar and wind projects to begin construction and still qualify for the full clean electricity tax credits.

The Princeton modelers estimated that compared to the status quo, the House version of the bill would have added about 2.7 billion tons of climate pollution to the atmosphere while increasing average U.S. household energy bills by more than $2,000 over the coming decade. The final bill passed by the Senate and signed into law by Trump is projected to instead add 2.1 billion tons of climate pollution and cost U.S. households a bit under $1,700 in higher energy bills over the next decade.

That’s about 25% less costly than the House version – both to pocketbooks and to the climate.

But it’s considerably worse than the status quo of Biden-era policies and regulations, in which the accelerated deployment of cheap solar and wind energy was expected to reduce household energy bills by about $600 over the next decade.

And on its new course, the U.S. will exceed its 2030 Paris commitment by 7 billion tons of climate pollution, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief.


Average U.S. household annual energy costs under continued Biden administration policies (green), the proposed House budget bill (blue), and the Senate bill that Trump signed into law (gray). (Image credit: Princeton REPEAT / CC BY 4.0)

Given the slimmest of margins by which the bill passed the Senate, any Republican senator could have sent the bill back to the drawing board by simply voting no. Sen. Murkowski instead chose to cast the deciding vote after extracting a variety of concessions for her state and clean energy incentives, before pleading with the House to further fix the bill whose passage she had ensured.

A Bill Everyone Dislikes, Except Chinese Manufacturers

Because of the sprawling nature of the big budget law, it has something for just about everyone to dislike. And indeed, polls have consistently found that Americans oppose the bill by a nearly two-to-one margin.

Whether it be higher energy costs, lost domestic manufacturing, jobs, and economic growth, the ballooning of the national debt, energy scarcity, drastic cuts to the social safety net, exacerbated income inequality, or an extra 2 billion tons of climate pollution, there may only be one group that loves the big budget bill. As Energy Innovation’s Senior Director of Modeling and Analysis Robbie Orvis put it:

“To sum it up, this bill is a GIFT to China, which must be smiling right now watching what’s happening. We are gifting them the industries of the future, making the U.S. an eminently harder place to invest in, and decreasing our energy security.”

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/07 ... onomy.html

*******

Granted, It Is CNN.

But still, the audio is available. Donnie chose a very wrong country to threaten and fuck with.

Donald Trump told a private gathering of donors last year that he once sought to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from attacking Ukraine by threatening to “bomb the sh*t out of Moscow” in retaliation, according to audio provided to CNN. “With Putin I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m going to bomb the sh*t out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice,’” Trump said during one 2024 fundraiser, according to the audio. “And then [Putin] goes, like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ But he believed me 10%.”

Here is audio. (Audio at link.)

The news itself is not new, it is a good insight into Trump's psychology, though, and into his utter lack of statesmanship qualities. But somebody should have told him that "believing 10%" to something means that people know 100% that you are full of shit. He chose a very wrong man to get into the dick measuring contest with. Here are more details from Canadians.

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
Prescient by Mencken.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/07 ... s-cnn.html

Excellent From Larry ...

... and Medvedev))

Sometime in the next decade, I think the publishers of Roget’s Thesaurus will include, “Trump” as a new synonym for erratic. Trump executed another of his signature volte face during a meeting with his cabinet.

Former Russian President Medvedev, wasted no time skewering Trump with this post:



Read the whole thing at Larry's blog.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/07 ... larry.html

******

Does Elon Musk’s third party have a prayer? Trump is not a believer

Robert Bridge

July 9, 2025

Elon Musk may find his effort to reach the Martian surface a much easier task than cracking the U.S. political system.

The U.S. leader dragged his former adviser over the coals after the tech mogul announced plans to bankroll the so-called America Party.

The wealthiest individual in the world announced the creation of the America Party in a series of weekend posts late on Saturday and early Sunday to X, formerly known as Twitter, the social media platform that is part of his private empire.

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” the South African native defiantly declared.

“Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”

Musk, who was chosen to slash federal spending through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) created by Donald Trump, has been an outspoken critic of the president’s “big, beautiful bill” that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said would increase the national deficit by $3.3tn (£2.85tn) through 2034.

Opponents of the ‘BBB’ say it provides major tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, while slashing federal safety net welfare programs, with close to 11 million people forfeiting healthcare insurance.

The pair have sparred over the bill’s cost and consequences since Musk departed the government in May, and on Friday, when Trump signed his bill into law during a Fourth of July celebration on the White House lawn, Musk opened a poll on X: “Now is the perfect time to ask if you want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system”.

Respondents voted two to one in favor of the plan, Musk announced late on Saturday. He provided journalists with scant details about the structure of his next big thing or a timeline for its future development. But his earlier posts suggested it would focus on two or three Senate seats, and eight to 10 House districts.

It’s a rather ingenious idea considering that both chambers of Congress are controlled by Republicans by a slim margin.

“Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people,” Musk reasonably explained.

Trump scoffed at his former best buddy’s decision to start and fund a new U.S. political party, calling it “ridiculous” on Sunday. “Third parties have never worked, so he can have fun with it but I think it’s ridiculous,” the president told reporters traveling with him back to the White House aboard his helicopter Marine One after a day of whacking golf balls.

He then elaborated, at Trumpian length, in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. “I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” the president wrote. “He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States”.

“The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS,” Trump added. The president then went on to claim that the Tesla and SpaceX chief was motivated by discontent over his plan to halt subsidies to promote the purchase of electric vehicles.

Musk, however, was not deterred by the U.S. president’s lengthy tirade, arguing rather naively that it would be “not hard” to break the two-party stranglehold in U.S. politics enjoyed by Democrats and Republicans. He went on to question “when & where should we hold the inaugural American Party congress? This will be super fun!”

But does the billionaire fully understand the depths of the swamp he’s getting himself into? By conservative estimates, Musk forked over about $275 billion of his personal fortune to get Trump elected for a second term in last November’s presidential race. While that may be mere chump’s change for the mogul, he will be expected to spend much more to shake up the petrified power structure now dominating Capitol Hill (While there is no requirement for new political parties in the U.S. to register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) at the start of the process, reporting regulations begin once spending surpasses what the FEC calls “certain thresholds”). And let’s face it, Trump is right. America has never enjoyed a third choice for very long, and with very little success when those moments arrived.

With few exceptions, the U.S. political system has two major parties which have won, on average, 98% of all state and federal seats.

“The United States stands out among the world’s democracies for having an unusually small number of competitive parties;” Seth Masket wrote in Democracy. “[a]nd for such a large, diverse, and multiethnic society to have just two dominant parties means that those parties will be strikingly vast, complex, heterogeneous coalitions.”

Musk should be familiar with Duverger’s law, which holds that in political systems with single-member districts and the first-past-the-post voting system, as in, for example, the United States and Britain, only 2 powerful political parties tend to control power. Citizens are encouraged not to vote for third party spoilers because, as the reasoning goes, they will just split votes away from the major party. Such a model diverts sharply from the European system where citizens are actively encouraged to create, join and vote for new political parties if they are unhappy with current choices. Such thinking is practically unheard of in the United States.

And try to wrap your head around this riddle: in the 1992 U.S. presidential election, Ross Perot’s independent run received zero electoral votes despite receiving 19% of the popular vote, the most won by a non-major-party presidential candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Perot remains the only non-major-party presidential candidate since George C. Wallace in 1968 both to win counties and to finish as high as second place in any state.

And then the America Party will inevitably face the formidable firewall known as the U.S. media, which dutifully serves its powerful masters, i.e., those two heads of the same snake wielding the greatest political clout. It gets better. They are propped up by a shady organization known as the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a nonprofit corporation established in 1987 under the joint sponsorship of the Democratic and Republican political parties in the United States. Yes, you read that right. The organization created to ensure fair play and equal access to various resources (primarily in the media) during the debates is owned lock, stock and barrel by the two-party monopoly.

In 1985, the bipartisan National Commission on Elections recommended “[t]urning over the sponsorship of presidential debates to the two major parties”. The CPD was established in 1987 by the chairmen of the Democratic and Republican Parties to “take control of the presidential debates”.

Against such formidable odds, Elon Musk may find his effort to reach the Martian surface a much easier task than cracking the U.S. political system, constructed as it is in layers of formidable protection to guard against pesky ‘outsiders.’

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/ ... -believer/

[blindpig]

TRUMP PULLS PUTIN TICKET, TAKES TOMBOLA PRIZE FOR HIMSELF – BREAKING NEWS IN NIMA PODCAST



By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

President Donald Trump began rigging his latest attempt to win the Nobel Peace Prize in January 2024, a year before the Norwegian Prize Committee closed the 2025 prize nominations on January 31. That was also eleven months before Trump was elected president to begin the peacemaking streak which he currently lists as Pakistan and India, Iran and Israel, Congo and Rwanda, Israel and Hamas, and Kosovo and Serbia.

Trump had told Republican congresswoman Claudia Tenney to file her nomination on January 30, 2024, and so – owing Trump a great deal of election campaign endorsements and money in 2018 and again in 2024 — Tenney did exactly that on January 30, 2024.

It’s not exactly clear from the Norwegian rules whether that nomination has been held over to qualify Trump for this year. So on April 24 at the White House Trump told Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre to make sure of the rules. “I salute President Trump… on that we work together,” Støre said, adding: “on that prize, you know, there is a committee taking care of that which is completely working on its own terms and I cannot comment on that.”

Trump then told the Pakistan’s Army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, to arrange for Pakistan to file its prize nomination; Trump lunched with Munir at the White House on June 18; the nomination was announced in Islamabad on June 21.

Trump’s advisors thought a Muslim nomination mightn’t do the trick in Oslo so they recommended Trump ask for a Jewish one. This was produced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at dinner with Trump on July 8.

The Prize Committee is due to announce the winner on October 10. Pope Leo XIII has agreed to come to Trump but not in time to nominate him.

The only Christian head of state to decline Trump’s invitation to a prize-winning session is President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Trump has been asking him since their telephone call on February 12. He repeated himself when they spoke on July 3. But Putin said no.

Trump has been announcing his response ever since. “I’m not happy with that”, he said after five hours.“ An hour later: “Yeah, I’m very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin…And I, I’m very disappointed.” On July 6: “I was very disappointed with my call with President Putin. I was very disappointed.” On July 7, meeting with Netanyahu Trump repeated twice over: “I’m disappointed, frankly, that President Putin hasn’t stopped. I’m not happy about it.” On July 8 he told a Cabinet meeting: “We’re not happy with Putin. I’m not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now ‘cause he’s killing a lot of people…And I’m not happy with Putin.”

Is this a cognitive symptom Trump is revealing?

Repetitive stress injury can affect the brain, according to Russian experts. US experts call it chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) from injuries to head. Obliteration – another repeated Trump word – of brain cells is the direct cause. Visible symptoms, according to the Mayo Clinic of Cleveland, are “Trouble thinking. Memory loss. Problems with planning, organizing and carrying out tasks. Behavioral changes. Impulsive behaviour. Aggression.”

In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, “Trump’s Masterplan DESTROYED by Putin in One Move!” we discuss the Russian diagnosis of Trump’s symptoms, and the new Kremlin decisions to follow.

In Moscow a very well-informed source comments: “Nobel Peace Prize was always the Olympic Gold for war criminals so he has that sealed. The Peace Prize repeat now includes Serbia and Kosovo. The slaps at Putin are explicit. Papa is disappointed that Vova is a bad boy and didn’t give him his ceasefire. We have to accept the Russian diplomacy option has failed and there is continuity in US policy. All the more reason and case for a very loud and unmistakable military victory.”

A NATO veteran comments: “He doesn’t need to be to more mentally competent than Biden. Everything is in place. From Congress, Senate, Supreme Court, law enforcement, the military, right down to the local pub; the raids, detentions, firings, threats, international aggression. Iit’s all baked in.”

THE NORWEGIAN PEACE PRIZE FIX – TRUMP AND STORE, APRIL 24


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZEsl69GKOQ Min 3:58-4:38. In answer to a Norwegian reporter asking if Støre thinks Trump’s efforts on the Ukraine war deserve nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, Støre said: “I salute President Trump for having taken very important initiatives to get this conflict towards an end…on that we work together…on that prize, you know, there is a committee taking care of that which is completely working on its own terms and I cannot comment on that.” Trump then added: “Thank you very much for that question. I like that question.” Since 2018, the members of the Committee are Berit Reiss-Andersen (chair, of the Labour Party), Henrik Syse (deputy chair, of the Conservative Party), Thorbjørn Jagland (Labour Party), Anne Enger (Centre Party) and Asle Toje (Progress Party). Prime Minister Støre heads the Labour Party.

THE ISRAEL PEACE PRIZE FIX — JULY 7


Netanyahu: Trump “is forging peace as we speak from one country and region after another…so [the Ietter] is nominating you for the Peace Prize which is well deserved and you should get it.” Trump: “Thank you very much, this I didn’t know.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDoRTbQAJs4 At Minute 6:36 Trump says “we did a job with India and Pakistan, and with Serbia and Kosovo.”

TRUMP CALLS “BULLSHIT” ON PUTIN’S END-OF-WAR TERMS


“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4qJsCqneLU Min 5:26. This Axios report discloses Trump’s decision to send ten Patriot missile batteries to Kiev; each battery has eight launchers. The number of missiles Trump has agreed to send has not been disclosed.

Click to view and listen to the new Dialogue Works podcast, aired on July 9, 7:30 PM Moscow time, 12:30 pm New York time.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuej555xllw

For the full list of Dialogue Works podcasts, click here.

https://johnhelmer.net/trump-pulls-puti ... more-92043

****

"Team Trump"
July 9, 18:59



Trump's team in Minnesota.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9946289.html

New round of trade war
July 10, 10:24



Trump has stepped up the trade war against Brazil by imposing a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods. More tariffs against other BRICS countries can be expected in the coming weeks, as well as new sanctions against Russia + tariffs against the EU cannot be ruled out.

Trump also introduced a new round of duties against a number of countries.

Algeria - 30%,
Libya - 30%,
Iraq - 30%,

Brunei - 25%,
Moldova - 25%,
Kazakhstan - 25%

, Philippines - 20%.

All duties come into force on August 1.

The use of such economic blackmail is a characteristic sign that it is no longer possible to maintain US economic hegemony by conventional means.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9946886.html

Google Translator

******

Daniel Davis Wonders ...

... as do we all: WHO is in charge?



How many persons does he have in his head? I already posted famous FBI profiler Candice Delong speaking on the issue of narcissists and their alternative universes in which they control the universe, due to their (perceived) greatness. But here is the deal: apart from being absolutely shallow in terms of practical geopolitics, Trump simply has no class--this is now a definitive feature of the political class in the West. This derives from being highly uncultured and proud of it. When it combines with narcissism--it is an explosive mix. As one old anecdote goes about this class:

--Honey, I just bought Rembrandt!
--How much horsepower does it have?

Yes, we are at this junction now.

Here is mechanism:

Pathological narcissism is a defense mechanism intended to isolate the narcissist from his environment and to shield him from hurt and injury, both real and imagined. Hence the False Self - an all-pervasive psychological construct which gradually displaces the narcissist's True Self. It is a work of fiction intended to elicit praise and deflect criticism.

The unintended consequence of this fictitious existence is a diminishing ability to grasp reality correctly and to cope with it effectively. Narcissistic Supply replaces genuine, veritable, and tested feedback. Analysis, disagreement, and uncomfortable facts are screened out. Layers of bias and prejudice distort the narcissist's experience.

Yet, deep inside, the narcissist is aware that his life is an artifact, a confabulated sham, a vulnerable cocoon. The world inexorably and repeatedly intrudes upon these ramshackle battlements, reminding the narcissist of the fantastic and feeble nature of his grandiosity. This is the much-dreaded Grandiosity Gap. To avoid the agonizing realization of his failed, defeat-strewn, biography, the narcissist resorts to reality-substitutes. The dynamics are simple: as the narcissist grows older, his Sources of Supply become scarcer, and his Grandiosity Gap yawns wider. Mortified by the prospect of facing his actuality, the narcissist withdraws ever deeper into a dreamland of concocted accomplishments, feigned omnipotence and omniscience, and brattish entitlement.

The narcissist's reality substitutes fulfill two functions. They help him "rationally" ignore painful realities with impunity - and they proffer an alternative universe in which he reigns supreme and emerges triumphant.

It is also known as a small dick complex.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/07 ... nders.html

******

Washington Imposes 50% Tariff on Brazil’s Exports, Lula Responds
July 10, 2025


President of the US empire, Donald Trump, presents an executive order during his inaugural parade, January 20, 2025. Photo: Reuters/Carlos Barria.

The president of the US empire, Donald Trump, has announced a 50% tariff on Brazilian products starting August 1, in retaliation for the trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro and so-called “violations” of freedom of expression in Brazil.

The measure, according to the White House letter published this Wednesday, July 9, claims to seek balance for the trade relationship between the nations, and responds to trade policies and censorship orders attributed to the Brazilian Supreme Court.

Earlier, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva responded to Trump’s accusations by emphasizing that Brazil “is a sovereign country and does not accept interference or tutelage from anyone.”

Lula also described Trump’s threat, which is now a reality, as “very misguided and irresponsible,” adding that they “don’t want an emperor; I don’t see it as appropriate for a president of a country like the US to threaten the world through the internet,” he said.

President Trump expressed concern about the treatment of former far-right Brazilian president Bolsonaro, describing it as “an international disgrace.” In the letter, he wrote: “This trial should not be happening. It is a witch hunt that must end immediately.”



According to the White House, the legal proceedings against the far-right former Brazilian president were only partly the reason for the economic measure. The US colony’s government also pointed to actions by the Brazilian Supreme Court, which reportedly issued “hundreds of secret and illegal censorship orders” to social media platforms in the US empire, threatening them with multimillion-dollar fines and exclusion from the Brazilian market.

These orders, the letter reads, supposedly violate the freedom of expression of citizens of the US empire, as well as electoral transparency in Brazil.

In terms of trade, the US empire criticized the trade relationship with Brazil, calling it “non-reciprocal” due to the South American country’s tariff policies and non-tariff barriers. Trump ironically claimed that the 50% tariff is “much lower” than what is needed to establish a “level playing field” between the two nations.

Furthermore, he warned that goods transshipped to evade this tariff will face an even higher rate. The measure, which takes effect in less than a month, could significantly impact Brazilian exports, especially in sectors such as agriculture, meat, and industrial products, which depend on the US empire’s market.

Brazil’s response
In response, President Lula called his ministers to an urgent meeting following Trump’s “tariff hike.” On Wednesday night, he posted a statement on social media stating that Brazil is a sovereign nation that will not accept foreign interference, and explained that proceedings for those planning the coup d’état (referring to support for Bolsonaro) are under the jurisdiction of the judiciary, as well as that Brazil rejects hate content on social media platforms.

RT reported the Brazilian leader saying that Brazil “will not accept being tutored by anyone” and that “freedom of expression is not to be confused with aggression or violent practices.”

After explaining that the US entity’s decision is not based in facts, as the empire has a trade surplus of more than US$400 billion with Brazil, the Brazilian president reported that his country will address the White House decision in accordance with Brazil’s Economic Reciprocity Law, meaning there will be an economic retaliation.

Below, you can read the content of President Lula’s statement:

In light of the public statement made by U.S. President Donald Trump on social media on the afternoon of Wednesday (9), it is important to highlight the following:

Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage.

The judicial proceedings against those responsible for planning the coup d’état fall exclusively under the jurisdiction of Brazil´s Judicial Branch and, as such, are not subject to any interference or threats that could compromise the independence of national institutions.

In the context of digital platforms, Brazilian society rejects hateful content, racism, child pornography, scams, fraud, and speeches against human rights and democratic freedom.

In Brazil, freedom of expression must not be confused with aggression or violent practices. All companies—whether domestic or foreign—must comply with Brazilian law in order to operate within our territory.

The claim regarding a U.S. trade deficit in its commercial relationship with Brazil is inaccurate. Statistics from the U.S. government itself show a surplus of $410 billion in the trade of goods and services with Brazil over the past 15 years.

Therefore, any unilateral tariff increases will be addressed in accordance with Brazil’s Economic Reciprocity Law.

Sovereignty, respect and the unwavering defense of the interests of the Brazilian people are the values that guide our relationship with the world.

https://orinocotribune.com/washington-i ... -responds/

******

Bondi and Hegseth might be messing up — but they’re doing what Trump picked them to do
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Published 12:00 AM EDT, Thu July 10, 2025


Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks alongside US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, DC, on April 22. Oliver Contreras/AFP/Getty Images/File
CNN
—
When President Donald Trump searched for his top Cabinet secretaries, a flair for running a smooth governing machine was nowhere on the job description.

So rising frustration among White House aides about chaos coming from the offices of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi seems a bit rich.

Trump is getting exactly what he should have expected after spurning traditional public servants and filling top roles with high-wattage Fox News performers, MAGA favorites, conspiracy theorists and central-casting archetypes with little knowledge of how Washington works.

The most disruptive president in modern history never showed much interest in governing. His administrative arson is vital to his image as an elite establishment scourge. But even in his unorthodox administration, there comes a time when incessantly playing to the outlandish fringe of the conservative media machine clashes with Trump’s and the nation’s interests.

Hegseth, after an accident-prone six months at the Pentagon, is feeling heat again — this time for halting US arms shipments to Ukraine without telling the president. This followed his towel-snapping boasts about US strikes on Yemen on a group chat that leaked earlier this year.

Bondi is paying the price for a habit of exaggeration and trying to feed the MAGA media beast after failing to stand up her earlier promises of stunning revelations from files about the death and clients of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Two other top officials, FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino, who made their names fanning right-wing conspiracy theories before joining the “deep state” they once demonized, also found themselves in damaging climbdowns on the issue.

They are not the only Trump favorites under rising scrutiny. The president’s choice of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the department of Health and Human Services is becoming even more controversial after measles cases hit their highest levels since the disease was eradicated in the US a quarter-century ago. Kennedy has recommended that parents vaccinate their kids against the disease. But he recently dismissed an expert panel of vaccine advisers who have shaped government policy on inoculations, causing widespread concern among the US public health community.

RFK Jr. is not directly responsible for the current measles outbreak. But a president who appoints the country’s best-known vaccine skeptic is clearly sending a message to families who mistrust government public health guidelines. If the breakout gets worse and the administration gets the blame, Trump will reap what he sowed for trying to play into his base’s suspicion of federal health advice dating at least back to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But Kennedy can’t hold a candle to the ultimate example of Trump appointing a wild iconoclast who then, in the president’s words, “went off the rails.” The only surprise with Elon Musk is that the chainsaw-wielding Tesla chief lasted as long as he did at the Department of Government Efficiency before his and Trump’s bromance imploded.

There’s so far no public sign that the White House is getting ready to jettison Trump’s controversial Cabinet picks.

But there’s barely concealed fury in the presidential mansion over another Trump appointment for a big Washington job. Federal Reserve Chief Jerome Powell is frequently berated for refusing to slash interest rates and unleash what Trump insists is massive pent-up economic growth.

Trump chose Powell — who fears the US economy has yet to fully vanquish inflation as Trump risks price hikes with his tariff policy — in his own first term. But he’s long since turned on the man who was instrumental in ending an inflationary crisis without triggering a recession and widespread unemployment, a feat many economists predicted was impossible.

Powell is being slammed by the president for doing his job — rather well, in contrast to Bondi, Hegseth and other top Trump acolytes, whose inexperience is glaring.


Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sits down at the Pentagon on July 9, in Arlington, Virginia. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Hegseth feeling heat again
The latest storm around Hegseth has recharged speculation as old as Trump’s second administration: How long is he going to last at the Pentagon?

CNN reported Tuesday that the defense secretary failed to inform the White House before he authorized a pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine last week. The move, confirmed by five sources, set off a scramble in the administration to work out what was going on and what to tell Congress and the Ukrainian government.

It was the latest demonstration of administrative mayhem around Hegseth, who has no experience in government, is charged with running one of the world’s most complex bureaucracies and has already fired several top aides in a purge that likely worsened the disarray in his policy apparatus.

He might have been forgiven, however, for failing to anticipate Trump’s sudden reversal on Ukraine. After criticizing former President Joe Biden for arming Kyiv as it fights for survival after a Russian invasion, the president has suddenly and belatedly gotten fed up with President Vladimir Putin, who embarrassed Trump over a push for peace that he’d hoped would end in a Nobel Prize.

The White House denied that Hegseth failed to tell Trump about pausing the shipments to Ukraine, and the administration said that they will resume. Wider uncertainty remains, however, about whether Trump’s turn against Putin — to whom he has always genuflected — will be sustained, or even whether it’s a negotiating ploy to get the Russian president to the table.

But until Hegseth crosses Trump’s invisible red line, he could survive. That’s because he might keep messing up, but he constantly delivers on what Trump really wants.

Hegseth shows total fealty to the president and is the only Cabinet member who comes close to his boss’s mastery of stunt politics.

After reports that early intelligence assessments contradicted Trump’s claims to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in B-2 bombing raids, Hegseth put on a wildly theatrical show in a Pentagon briefing, slamming the media and pouring exaggerated praise on the president in a made-for-television tirade that rivaled any of his former work on Fox News.

Hegseth’s outspoken loyalty to Trump is a cause for concern across Washington because he is such a departure from the president’s first-term secretaries of defense, James Mattis and Mark Esper, who reined in some of the president’s riskiest impulses. If Trump ousts Hegseth, he’d have to find someone else who’d implement his orders unquestioningly.

The Pentagon chief’s defenders can argue that the sophisticated US raid on Iran’s nuclear plants went off without a hitch operationally, in a way that suggests the pandemonium in the secretary’s office is not yet hurting US readiness.

But every time Hegseth shows up on Capitol Hill, he’s asked by Democrats whether he’d carry out an order from the president to open fire on protesters. And he’s yet to give a straight answer.


Attorney General Pam Bondi looks on as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 8. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Bondi is being criticized for her most Trumpian qualities
Bondi has a record as an accomplished lawyer and public official in Florida, and, like anyone who aspired to a job in the Trump Cabinet, she is good on TV.

But her willingness to foster the MAGA movement’s obsession with conspiracy theories — which helped her get her job in the first place — has tripped her up.

It’s long been an article of faith on the fevered extreme of the conservative movement that Epstein, who died in jail awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, was murdered and that he had once kept a list of famous people who used him to gain access to underage girls.

Bondi promised she’d expose the truth. But the truth turned out to be prosaic: Epstein was not murdered and that there was no list.

Bondi’s problems started with a Fox interview in February in which she implied the Epstein list was sitting on her desk. And she orchestrated a big photo op at the White House where conservative influencers were handed files on Epstein. The plan backfired because those files didn’t contain any revelations. As is the way with conspiracy theories, the opacity only fueled the conspiracy machine.

This may be one case where a lack of experience in national politics is to blame. There may not be a line between governance and conservative opinion television anymore, but Bondi’s loose comments on the case raised expectations and created a political mess.

The White House tried to fudge the issue by saying her quotes on Fox were misinterpreted. But that has not stopped fringe influencers such as Laura Loomer — who previously convinced Trump to fire top staffers on the National Security Council — from calling for Bondi’s dismissal.

Bondi also said on Wednesday that she could not release large amounts of video from the Epstein case because it contained child pornography. But the online crowd is now fixated on a “missing minute” on prison surveillance tapes.

Trump appeared frustrated at the story, which is detracting from a purple patch of political success.

“Are people still talking about this guy, this creep?” Trump said of Epstein on Tuesday. He may have had a point. While this is a huge issue for certain conservative media influencers, it’s not clear at all that most Republican voters really care that much about it.

Trump did not express public frustration with Bondi. But CNN reported on Tuesday that there’s impatience inside the West Wing about how the issue has been handled.

It’s not the first Bondi misstep. Earlier this year she faced ridicule after claiming in a previous Cabinet meeting that Trump’s crackdown on fentanyl coming across the border had saved 258 million lives — in a country of about 340 million people.

Still, like Hegseth, Bondi offers Trump real value. She’s an enthusiastic partner in the president’s effort to enact revenge against prosecutors, legal firms and political foes who investigated or crossed him.

In a new bombshell Wednesday, CNN reported that former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan — both vehement Trump critics — are under investigation by the Justice Department for possible false statements to Congress. The probe arises from one of Trump’s longstanding obsessions — an intelligence community finding that Russia’s 2016 election interference operation was meant to help him beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Bondi’s Justice Department prosecutors have been infuriating district court judges for months as the tip of the spear of Trump’s war on the justice system. Her team has won several big Supreme Court victories as Trump pushes his power to its limits.

So, as with Hegseth, there are good reasons for Trump to keep her around.

In any case, if promoting conspiracies; engaging in bombast and exaggerations; and politicizing the legal system and the military while creating chaos in government were disqualifications for high office, Trump would never have made it back to the White Hous

[blindpig]

Let The Tariff Wars Begin Again!
Roger Boyd
Jul 11, 2025

So, on July 8th the Trump administration decided to start sending out what has to be one of the most insulting, condescending and arrogant form letters ever sent out by the US president to other heads of state. Both unilaterally imposing a tariff on exports to the US from each country and demanding a no-tariff treatment for US exports to each country. With a threat that if they dare to respond in kind, the US tariff will be the rate already stated plus whatever tariff the country places upon US exports. Then, an additional tariff for any goods trans-shipped from China. Here is the letter sent to the PM of Japan and published on Trump’s Truth Social site (of course it would be!).



The letters would also of course fail basic school-level grammar, looking as if they may have been written more by AI than any human hand. Separately, Trump has also stated that there will be an extra 10% tariff on any nation daring to get together within the BRICS group to defend themselves against the US actions!

It seems that Trump thinks that he is a US president in the 1920s dealing with some recalcitrant Caribbean nation instead of in 2025 dealing with the sovereign nations of the rest of the world! The new tariff levels will come into effect on August 1st, giving some time for the foreigners to bow down to King Trump and beg for a lower level of tribute payments to the US Empire! My feeling is that Trump and his administration are going to be in for a nasty shock once again, which will drive a very nasty stock market negative reaction from its happy stupor of the last three months. Will we then have a Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO) moment again, or will Trump stick it out and the trade mayhem will begin?

Even with the current range of tariffs in the letters sent so far, an inflationary and supply shock to the US economy would be expected.

Already in place tariffs on steel and aluminum: 50%

Already in place tariffs on vehicles (with some US9MA exceptions): 25%

Already in place tariff on China (plus 100% on Chinese EVs): 55%

Already agreed tariff level on Vietnam: 20%

Tariff level on South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Tunisia: 25%

Tariff level on South Africa, Bosnia & Herzegovina: 30%

Tariff level on Indonesia: 32%

Tariff level on Serbia, Bangladesh: 35%

Tariff level on Cambodia, Thailand: 36%

Tariff level on dirt poor Laos and war-torn Myanmar: 40%

On Wednesday July 9th, Trump added some more:

Algeria, Iraq and Libya: 30%

Brunei and Moldova: 25%

Philippines: 20%

Sri Lanka 30%

Brazil: 50%

New 50% tariff on imported copper

Canada and the US are working toward a trade deal by July 21st, although late on Thursday night (July 10th) Trump sent a tariff letter to Canada that threatened a 35% tariff on all imports not covered by the USCMA free trade agreement from August 1st. The sectoral tariffs on steel, aluminum and copper will all hit major Canadian industries. The Mexico deadline now seems to be August 1st. The UK agreed to no tariffs on aerospace products and 25% on steel, but a deal covering all UK-US trade still needs to be agreed; possibly with a 10% tariff on other goods. No statement yet about the negotiation with the EU and any unilateral US tariffs on the EU, but it seems that an agreement on 10% tariffs is close. Then there is the outstanding case of India, where negotiations between the two countries are still ongoing. Trump has floated the possibility of a 200% tariff on pharmaceutical imports, which is an important sector for India.

In some cases, China is actually benefitting from these tariff changes as the differences between what it pays in tariffs on exports to the US and what other countries pay are being narrowed for specific countries and for specific sectors. The US is ending up weakening its vassals while at the same time benefitting China.

The tariff letter sent to Brazil is so ostentatiously an attempt to coerce the nation into stopping an ongoing criminal investigation into the previous president to make gunboat diplomacy look restrained. For a US president to so publicly attempt to interfere into the legal proceedings of one of the largest nations on Earth is quite astonishing, and yet another nail into the US soft power coffin. Below is the letter that was sent to the Brazilian president, quite incredible. Brazil is by far the largest economy in South America.



Underlining the fact that these tariffs have absolutely nothing to do with trade is the fact that the US actually ran a trade surplus with Brazil in 2024; with the US exporting goods and services worth US$49.7 billion to Brazil and importing US$42.3 billion worth of goods and services from Brazil. The US trade surplus with Brazil actually grew by 31% in 2024! The main Brazilian goods exports to the US are oil, oil products, minerals, cement and agricultural produce which generally exist within a fungible global market place. US goods exports to Brazil consist of refined petroleum products, coal, industrial machinery, aircraft and spacecraft. Could we see Brazil certifying the Chinese C919 (direct competitor to the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320) and sourcing the industrial machinery from China in retaliation?

The brazen US attempt at domestic political and juridical interference can only help Brazilian relations with a China that stays away from any interference in other nations’ internal matters. China is Brazil’s largest trading partner, and companies such as BYD have been building production plants within the country. Recently, the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding to assess the feasibility of building a 4,500 km railway from the Brazilian port of Ilheus (directly west of the capital Brasilia) to Rio Branco in the far west of Brazil next to the Peruvian border, then across the Andes to the Peruvian port of Chancay (which has been greatly expanded with Chinese investment). Once in place, such a railway could cut shipping times to Asia by as much as 12 days compared to using the Panama Canal while also acting to integrate the east and west coast economies of South America. This is exactly the kind of massive infrastructure project that China excels at.

US exports which rely on a large amount of imported goods will become much less competitive in overseas markets against nations that are not handicapped by large import tariffs, especially with respect to products that use a lot of steel and/or aluminum, and now also copper. The latter is a commodity that has widespread uses across industrial sectors, and now Trump has created a bifurcated global market; a US one with higher prices and a world-outside-the-US with lower prices. China’s huge low carbon industries, such as batteries, electric engines, EVs, wind, solar, nuclear and smart grids will benefit from having lower copper prices than US manufacturers face. There will be a significant supply shock to the US economy as it will in many cases take years to replace the goods supplied through imports that have been made unprofitable by the tariffs; with respect to copper at least five years. Half of all the copper used in the US comes from imports.

The countries of ASEAN (Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, Philippines), which are being tariffed between 20% and 40%, all enjoy free trade with China under the RCEP trade agreement. As do South Korea and Japan, which are both being tariffed at 25%, and Australia and New Zealand for which tariff levels have not yet been announced. As the Asia Times notes:

As much as this is a loss for Japan, the return of “Tariff Man” is a win for China. Japan isn’t alone this week. Trump hit close US ally South Korea with a 25% wallop, while his administration shocked Southeast Asia with outsize tariffs. He slapped a 32% tax on Indonesia, 36% on Cambodia, 40% on Laos, 40% on Myanmar.

Trump risks single-handedly assembling a China-Japan-Korea-Southwest Asia bloc, something that Xi Jinping’s inner circle could never have done on its own.

Certainly, Trump just gave Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and new Korean President Lee Jae Myung a fresh reason to join forces. And to take seriously signals from Beijing that a three-way free-trade deal could be in the cards.

There is also the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) between Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. Vietnam and China have trade agreements with the EAEU, and there is a memorandum of understanding between ASEAN and the EAEU. With China moving up the value-added curve, there is much room for lower value-added activities to be moved to third countries but still as part of the Chinese-dominated supply chains. These tariff actions by the US against nations in the region will drive a greater level of integration in Central, South East and East Asia which will benefit both China and Russia.

President Xi should be very happy with all the favours that President Trump is doing for him these days, including a disastrous energy policy which just gave the field of low carbon industries away to China without a fight.

https://rogerboyd.substack.com/p/let-th ... egin-again

******

Trump (Probably) Just Did Lula a Massive Favour With His 50% Tariff Threat Against Brazil
Posted on July 11, 2025 by Nick Corbishley

This has little to do with trade — in fact, the US had a $6.8 billion annual trade surplus with Brazil last year — and everything to do with geopolitics.

On Wednesday, Brazil became the latest in a growing list of countries to receive a threatening letter from Donald J Trump. Brazil, the letter warned, will face 50% tariffs on all its exports to the US as of August 1 due to its government’s “witch hunt” against former President Jair Bolsanaro over his attempted coup in January, 2023.

In other words, this has little to do with trade — in fact, the US had a $6.8 billion annual trade surplus with Brazil last year, which Trump is now putting in jeopardy. Instead, this is partly about meddling in another country’s domestic politics, though there are also geopolitical factors at work (more on those later). As Bloomberg reports, Trump’s latest levy “shows the world that nothing is off limits”:

According to Stephen Olson, visiting senior fellow at ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, it’s unprecedented for the US to add a tariff onto a foreign country to stop a judicial proceeding, and “it signals to US trade partners that any and all issues that catch Trump’s attention could become a problematic part of the trade agenda”.

Of course, as NC reader aerrty notes in the comments below, that is not to say that the US hasn’t used other means, whether diplomatic, covert or military, to stop judicial proceedings in other countries.

The tariff threat also reaffirms the impression that the US under Trump is a grossly unreliable partner. Lula, for his part, described the threat as a direct attack on Brazilian sovereignty. He also said he will seek to resolve the matter through negotiations, adding that, if necessary, he will not hesitate to impose retaliatory tariffs on US exports to Brazil by 50%, which Trump in turn has vowed to respond to by further hiking US tariffs on Brazilian products.

In Lula’s own words (machine translated):

In the face of US President Donald Trump’s public statement, it is important to emphasize: Brazil is a sovereign country with independent institutions that will not accept outside meddling; legal proceedings against those who planned the coup d’état are the exclusive competence of the Brazilian courts and are therefore not subject to any type of interference or threat that violates the independence of national institutions.

Lula also called for a united BRICS response to Trump’s latest tariff escalation, which is hard to see happening:

BREAKING: Brazil’s President Lula urges BRICS to hit back with retaliatory tariffs after Trump’s new U.S. tariff plan.

Saving Bolsonaro’s Skin?

During his presidency (2018-22), Jair Bolsonaro enjoyed close ties with Trump while maintaining Brazil’s BRICS commitments and expanding trade with China. But he was unable to secure a second term in what ended up being a closely fought, polarising election. As readers may recall, when Lula was declared winner hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters stormed Brazil’s three most important government buildings — the Congress, presidential palace and supreme court building — as the security forces watched on.

Bolsonaro himself was in Florida at the time, from where he refused to accept Lula’s victory. It took him almost three months to return to Brazil, and when he did he found himself the subject of a criminal investigation. If found guilty of crimes including involvement in an attempted coup and an armed criminal association and the violent abolition of the rule of law, he could face up to 43 years imprisonment.

Bolsonaro and his family are trying everything they can to prevent that. In recent months, Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, together with Paulo Figueired — a businessman, journalist and grandson of João Figueiredo, who led Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1979 to 1985 — have been in Washington lobbying US lawmakers to sanction Brazilian Supreme Court justices who are overseeing the trial against Bolsonaro.

They include Alexandre de Moraes, the former justice minister who spearheaded Brazil’s efforts to regulate tech platforms. As president of the Superior Electoral Court during the campaign for the 2023 elections, Moraes ordered the removal of hundreds of fake news stories and the blocking of accounts on social networks, mainly of Bolsonarists, who accused him of seeking to censor them.

Moraes’ actions have earned him praise from the left and opprobrium from the far right. It has also placed him squarely in the sights of the Trump administration. In May, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a visa restriction for foreign officials who “censor” US citizens. Although the statement did not mention De Moraes specifically, Rubio himself acknowledged in a congressional hearing that the Supreme Court judge would probably be sanctioned.

But now the Trump White House has gone from sanctioning a judge to sanctioning an entire economy — and what’s more, one with which the US has a trade surplus. In his letter Trump, with his trademark “language intensity“, accuses Brazil’s Supreme Court of issuing “hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to US Social Media Platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from the Brazilian social media platform.”

The Trump administration probably wants to keep Bolsonaro out of jail so that he can rerun for president next year, probably in the hopes that a new President Bolsonaro would sabotage the BRICS from within. However, this is highly unlikely given that Bolsonaro has already been disqualified from running by the Supreme Court.

There are other reasons for Trump’s latest tariff threat, including two of which that are geopolitical. On Monday, Brazil and China signed an MoU to begin technical studies for a bioceanic railway project that will connect the Brazilian Atlantic coast with the port of Chancay, on Peru’s Pacific coast. The agreement was signed between Brazil’s state-owned company Infra SA, under the Ministry of Transport, and the China Railway Planning and Research Institute.

Admittedly, this project has been in the works for a long time, and there are no guarantees that it will ever be completed, especially if a politician of Bolsonaro’s ilk were to win the elections next year in Brazil. However, the fact that Chancay is already operational (though not fully built) gives the proposed rail project a lot more weight. And if it were completed, there can be no denying that it would further diminish US influence in South America.

Another point of contention is the US dollar. During his post-summit press conference, Lula threw caution to the wind in saying that the dollar would cease to be the global reserve currency that has allowed the US to finance itself at low interest rates despite its delicate fiscal position. But this process will take time, Lula said. The Brazilian leader also underscored the role that BRICS central banks have been playing in the development of “cross-border, instant and secure” payment systems that do not include the dollar.

Despite these pronouncements, the BRICS’ commitments appear to be characteristically timid on issues of global finance. For example, rather than looking to replace the IMF and the World Bank — the Bretton Woods institutions that have helped preserve Western dominance and exploitation of Global South economies — the BRICS have called for reform of the IMF, including a new share of voting rights and an end to the tradition of European management of the fund.

As for dedollarisation, it is likely to be a long, drawn out process that may well be accelerated by four years of Trump 2.0. There is currently no viable replacement for the dollar nor is there likely to be one for years to come. Despite all the hype of recent years, the BRICS is not even close to developing an alternative currency regime. From Yves’ preamble to the May 11, 2023 post, “NY Times Is Wrong on Dedollarization: Economist Michael Hudson Debunks Paul Krugman’s Dollar Defense”:

I have to confess to not being at all keen about the discussion of dedollarization. It seems most commentators are adopting one of two positions, either defending the dollar or eagerly predicting a quick demise.

This is not how this kind of transition happens. As we stressed, it took two world wars and the Great Depression to dethrone sterling. The fact that countries are succeeding in reducing their attack surface to US sanctions by engaging in more bilateral trade does reduce the perception of US power (keep in mind sanctions never worked as well as the PR would have you believe).

The fact is that trade-related foreign exchange flows are a tiny fraction of investment-related foreign exchange trading. The level ebbs and flows, but a Bank of International Settlements study put it at 60x the level of trade flows. I have not seen more current work.

Trump’s Dollar Fears

However, while the dollar’s days may not be as numbered as some, including Lula himself, suggest, Trump is taking the threat of dedollarisation very seriously. He knows that the USD is one of the most important, if not the most important, pillar on which the US’ global power rests, and on the campaign trail he even compared the potential loss of the dollar’s reserve currency status to losing a world war.

In recent months Trump has described the BRICS as an “anti-Western” forum and went so far as to threaten a 100% tariff on its members if they challenge the hegemony of the dollar. On Tuesday, Trump pledged to impose an additional 10% tariff on the BRICS, claiming the bloc was created to replace the US dollar as the dominant currency for international trade.

But the more Trump huffs and puffs, the weaker the dollar grows, which may be good news for US exports in the short term but is also a clear sign of waning confidence in the US economy. As NBC reports, the dollar has declined more than 10% compared with a basket of currencies over the past six months — something it has not done since 1973. At the same time, demand for gold, particularly among central banks, is at historic highs.

One of the main reasons for the gradual move away from the dollar in recent years is the US’ flagrant abuse of its dollar hegemony. As Michael Hudson wrote in March 2022, “the confiscation of the gold and foreign reserves of Venezuela, Afghanistan and now Russia, along with the targeted grabbing of bank accounts of wealthy foreigners has torpedoed the idea that dollar holdings or those in its sterling and euro NATO satellites are a safe investment haven when world economic conditions become shaky.”

No More USD Reserve Currency = No More US Sanctions

In a widely circulated video in February, Marco Rubio showed he was acutely aware of this risk. But his biggest concern about the US dollar’s progressive loss of standing was the concurrent loss of Washington’s ability to bully other countries through the threat or imposition of economic sanctions (emphasis my own):

Brazil, the largest country in the Western Hemisphere south of us, just cut a trade deal with China. From now on they are going to do trade in their own currencies and get right around the dollar. They’re creating a secondary economy in the world totally independent of the United States. We won’t have to talk about sanctions in five years because they will be so many countries transacting in currencies other the dollar that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.

What is now clear, if it wasn’t already, is that Trump’s tariffs are essentially sanctions by other means, and in many cases they are being imposed for reasons that have nothing to do with trade. As Yves has documented in recent months, Trump’s tariffs appear to be doing as much harm to the US economy as they are to many of their intended targets, much as how Brussels’ endless rounds of Russian sanctions have boomeranged against the EU economy.

Trump’s tariff tantrums and other threats are also doing harm to the US’ already tarnished image around the world, even among broadly US-aligned nations. Brazil, like India, is keen to deepen its relations with its BRICS partners while at the same time maintaining close economic ties to the US and Europe. But Trump’s threat to slap 10% tariffs “on any country that aligns itself with the BRICS’ anti-American policies” suggests that may not be possible.

What Trump appears to be trying to establish here is the economic equivalent of GW Bush’s “you’re with us or against us” ultimatum. As such, Trump’s threats are not just aimed at Brazil; they are aimed at what the BRICS broadly represents — a more multilateral, or South-South, approach to global development — or what Chinese leaders often call “South-South cooperation”. And that is what the US cannot abide.

However, if Trump wants to weaken Lula’s position both domestically and internationally, and by extension strengthen Bolsonaro’s hand, or that of his political allies, imposing 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods at the behest of the Bolsonarists is the worst possible way of going about it.

It could even turn around Lula’s prospects in next year’s general election, assuming he runs, which given his age is by no means guaranteed. Those prospects were looking pretty grim just a few months ago as public support for Lula, who finished his second term on an impressive 80% approval rating, hit record lows. In a poll published in mid-February by the Datafolha institute, 24% of respondents rated Lula’s government as “good” or “very good” while 41% rated it “bad” or “very bad”.

Since then, Lula has campaigned to raise taxes on the super rich, “so that money from education and health does not have to be cut,” which appears to have resonated with many voters (who woulda thunk it?). In fact, yesterday saw the following meme doing the rounds on social media contrasting Lula and Bolsonaro’s differing approaches to taxation (the text reads: “Lula wants to tax the ultra-rich. Bolsonaro wants to tax Brazil [via Trump]”):

According to a recent Latam Pulse survey by AtlasIntel in collaboration with Bloomberg, Lula’s approval rating increased by 2% compared to May and, at 47.3%, is at its highest level in the past year.

If the presidential elections were held today with the same candidates as in 2022, Bolsonaro (PL) would place marginally ahead of Lula. However, Bolsonaro’s 1.6% lead is within the poll’s margin of error. More important still, Bolsonaro has been disqualified from running in the 2026 election by the Supreme Court. Even if he weren’t, Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Brazilian goods at the request of Bolsonaro’s family would probably put paid to his electoral hopes.

The reason is simple: many conservative voters in Brazil will baulk at supporting a candidate that calls for the US government to wage economic war against Brazil on his behalf.

We have already seen how Trump’s threats of annexing Canada and imposing crippling tariffs on the US’ northern neighbour, in direct violation of the USMCA agreement, essentially made Mark Carney’s turnaround victory possible. A former economic advisor to the deeply unpopular Justin Trudeau and , Carney, the globalists’ candidate, rode a tsunami of popular fear and anger at the threat Trump posed not only to Canada’s economy but its sovereignty.

A scathing editorial on Thursday in O Estado de S. Paulo, a newspaper with a right-wing, conservative editorial stance, suggests that something similar could happen in Brazil, a country where the public holds broadly favourable views towards the US. As in Canada, Trump’s threats could end up tipping the balance not only against his own preferred candidate but against the US in general. From Brasil 247:

Entitled “Mafiosi Thing”, the editorial lambasts the White House’s attempt to interfere in Brazil’s internal affairs and calls for a firm and sovereign reaction from the Brazilian government and society.

The editorial states that “Trump uses the threat of imposing trade tariffs on Brazil to force the country to surrender to his absurd demands”, classifying the manoeuvre as a “mishmash” motivated by political and ideological reasons – among them, the ongoing legal proceedings against Jair Bolsonaro and the actions of the Supreme Court against American digital platforms used to disseminate coup speeches.

The newspaper also dismantles Trump’s main argument, which accuses Brazil of maintaining a trade surplus with the United States. According to the editorial, “the U.S. has a robust trade surplus with Brazil,” which reveals that the U.S. president “blatantly lied in the letter to justify the drastic measure.”

The offensive by Trump — who is seeking reelection and had already shown signs of retaliation against Brazil after Bolsonaro’s conviction — is seen by the newspaper as an “outrageous” violation of national sovereignty. The text points out that Trump “does not have the slightest respect for the liturgies and rituals of relations between states” and that, even by his standards, “the letter addressed to the Brazilian government crossed all limits.”

Here’s the money quote from the editorial:

“Wearing Trump’s cap today means aligning oneself with a troglodyte that can cause immense damage to the Brazilian economy.”

And, of course, the US economy.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/07 ... razil.html

******

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Prisoners Say Their Living Conditions Are a Form of Torture
July 10, 2025


President Donald Trump tours a immigration jail, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," located at the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida, on July 1, 2025. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP.

They report inadequate and maggot-infested food, inability to bathe, flooding, denial of religious practice, and more.

Detainees at the “Alligator Alcatraz” concentration camp in the Florida Everglades say they are enduring inhumane conditions, including inadequate and maggot-infested food, inability to bathe, flooding, and denial of religious practice, CBS News Miami reported Tuesday.

Officially known as Krome Detention Center, the 5,000-bed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration detention facility located on the grounds of a rarely used municipal airport approximately 20 miles west of Miami last week began receiving people arrested during the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. While U.S. President Donald Trump and other proponents of the prison have sadistically joked about alligators eating escaping prisoners, the biggest dangers faced by detainees are found inside the facility’s walls.

“They’re not respecting our human rights,” one detainee told CBS News Miami during a phone interview. “We’re human beings; we’re not dogs. We’re like rats in an experiment.”

“I don’t know their motive for doing this, if it’s a form of torture,” he added. “A lot of us have our residency documents and we don’t understand why we’re here.”

Another inmate, the Cuban reggaeton artist Leamsy La Figura, said guards “only brought a meal once a day and it had maggots.”

“They never take off the lights for 24 hours,” he claimed. “The mosquitoes are as big as elephants,” and “there’s no water to take a bath, it’s been four days since I’ve taken a bath.”

A Colombian detainee said his mental health is breaking down.

“I’m on the edge of losing my mind. I’ve gone three days without taking my medicine,” he said. “It’s impossible to sleep with this white light that’s on all day.”

“They took the Bible I had and they said here there is no right to religion,” the detainee added. “And my Bible is the one thing that keeps my faith, and now I’m losing my faith.”

DHS officials have not yet responded to the detainees’ allegations.

On Monday, Florida state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-17) confirmed that “several immigrants who aren’t facing any criminal charges” were nevertheless sent from the Orange County Jail in Orlando to Alligator Alcatraz.

This, after Democratic state lawmakers were denied entry to the facility last week. The Florida Division of Emergency Management claimed that “the legal authority cited by the legislators does not extend to this facility in the manner requested.”

“Florida statute grants inspection authority to a legislative committee, not to individual legislators engaging in political theater,” the agency added.

Meanwhile, Alligator Alcatraz merchandise offered at the Florida Republican Party’s online store has been “selling like hotcakes,” according to Evan Power, the state GOP chair.

Responding to this, Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) told The Guardian that “cruelty was always the point.”

“Selling hats and merchandise for a place that is about to become a hell on Earth for thousands of people who are going to be subjected to some of the worst conditions and human rights abuses you could think of is disgusting,” he added.

https://orinocotribune.com/alligator-al ... f-torture/

******

Arrogant, liar, greedy, stupid, ignorant, petty, cruel, narcissist, nut job: all of the above. But I tell ya, mah fellow Amerikans, we made this possible, mebbe inevitable. Because like forever we tolerated the slop being served up by the Democrats and Republicans, fear-mongered into rejecting any alternative, until the nation puked up Trump. Hard as it seems and hard as it will be we to a good degree deserve what we're gonna suffer. I just hope he doesn't get us blown to smithereens, more likely now than ever.

[blindpig]

The anointed and the annihilators: Trump’s peace candidacy and his apostles in Tel Aviv and Rawalpindi
Originally published: Countercurrents on July 9, 2025 by Junaid S Ahmad (more by Countercurrents) | (Posted Jul 12, 2025)

There are moments in world affairs so brazen, so jaw-droppingly cynical, that satire simply gives up and goes home. One such moment has arrived: the unlikeliest of duos—Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Pakistan’s General Asim Munir—have found common cause in nominating Donald J. Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s right. A warmonger-in-chief being heralded by a military autocrat and a genocidal demagogue as the global symbol of peace. George Orwell, meet your latest footnote.

But let’s not be misled by the absurdity. This is not a comedy of errors. It’s a political ritual of allegiance, where power is flattered, imperialism is decorated, and peace is contorted into a mockery of itself. That Netanyahu and Munir are Trump’s cheerleaders for this grotesque honor tells us everything we need to know about the rotting soul of contemporary global politics.

Netanyahu’s Blood—Soaked Nomination
Let’s begin with the easier case: Benjamin Netanyahu. This is a man who has overseen the sustained, merciless and genocidal bombardment of Gaza; the violent settlement expansion in the West Bank; and the systematic erosion of Palestinian life, liberty, and land. Under his leadership, Israel has dropped any pretense of coexistence and charged headlong into what can only be described as concentration and death camps bolstered by high-tech siegecraft.

And yet, here he is, nominating Trump for a peace prize.

Why? Because Trump gave Netanyahu exactly what he wanted: recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the erasure of Palestinian claims to sovereignty, carte blanche for Israeli aggression, and a diplomatic coup in the form of the Abraham Accords—normalization deals signed not in the interest of peace, but in the currency of arms sales, surveillance tech, and shared contempt for popular resistance.

Trump’s presidency was a golden age for Israeli impunity. For Netanyahu, nominating Trump is not an act of admiration—it’s a political thank-you note written in the language of strategic reward. You gave us what we wanted, especially and most importantly now with supporting war and terror against Iran. Now we give you this nomination. A ceremonial trinket, perhaps, but one that helps sanctify violence under the banner of “diplomatic achievement.”

Munir’s Machinations in Khaki
But Netanyahu’s motives, however odious, are at least straightforward. General Asim Munir’s are a little murkier—and no less disturbing.

As Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, Munir has proven himself less a guardian of national defense and more a loyal executor of imperial interests, both foreign and domestic. Having presided over a brutal crackdown on dissent, the forced disappearance of political activists, and the wholesale dismantling of civilian democratic forces, Munir now fancies himself not just a general, but a statesman—a khaki kingmaker courting Washington.

So when Munir praises Trump’s “role” in easing tensions between Pakistan and India, he’s not being sincere—he’s being strategic. He knows Trump couldn’t care less about South Asian peace. This nomination is a calculated overture to Trump’s ego, an attempt to ingratiate himself with a man who may once again hold the keys to American patronage.

In nominating Trump, Munir isn’t rewarding peace. He’s buying leverage. He wants to be seen as Washington’s man in Islamabad, a reliable custodian of regional “stability”—that is, a suppressor of democratic uprisings and an enabler of foreign agendas. And Trump, who has always admired a good strongman, is exactly the kind of figure Munir wants to impress. After all, what better way to ensure the longevity of your tenure than to align yourself with the most powerful demagogue on the world stage?

Trump: Mascot of Manufactured Peace
The man at the center of this surreal circus is, of course, Donald Trump—a figure whose relationship with peace is about as authentic as his tan.

Here is a man who tore up the Iran nuclear deal, brought the world to the brink of war with Tehran, cozied up to autocrats in the Gulf, fanned the flames of Hindu nationalism by celebrating Modi’s aggression in Kashmir, and normalized apartheid and genocide in Palestine. This is the man whom Netanyahu and Munir, in their infinite moral flexibility, have chosen to rebrand as a modern-day peacemaker.

Trump’s foreign policy was never about peace—it was about transaction. Peace, for him, was a product for sale: to be exchanged for oil, weapons contracts, or political favors. The Abraham Accords, often touted as his crowning foreign policy achievement, were nothing more than a regional alliance of autocracies built on the graves of Palestinian aspirations. It was diplomacy for despots, a backroom deal between monarchies and militaries, dressed up as progress.

That Trump now stands poised to be lauded by two of the most repressive figures in modern geopolitics is not just ironic—it’s obscene. The Nobel Peace Prize, already sullied by past embarrassments, would collapse entirely into farce if it ever landed in his tiny, clammy hands.

The Prize as Political Currency
It’s worth asking: why the Nobel Peace Prize? Why this prize, of all things, when none of these men has the faintest interest in actual peace?

Because in this world, the prize has become political currency. A symbolic tool to confer legitimacy, to rebrand tyranny as leadership, and to whitewash war crimes with the bleach of diplomacy.

Netanyahu wants Trump’s continued favor, perhaps even cover for Israel’s next phase of ethnic cleansing. Munir wants Trump’s blessing to secure his own position at home and elevate his stature abroad. And Trump wants a trophy—any trophy—that proves he’s not just a loser with multiple indictments and a failed coup on his résumé.

So they trade endorsements like mob bosses exchanging favors. You nominate me, I protect you. You praise me, I ignore your crimes. You flatter me, and I’ll look the other way when you crush your people.

This is not geopolitics. It’s gangsterism with better suits.

Collateral Damage: Democracy and Dignity
And what of those caught in the crossfire of this grotesque performance?

In Pakistan, the democratic process lies in shambles. Civilian leaders, other than the generals’ kleptocratic sycophants, have been sidelined, exiled, or imprisoned. Imran Khan, the country’s most popular politician, remains behind bars while the military consolidates its grip under the guise of national security. His crime? Challenging the authority of the uniformed elite and trying to build a just and sovereign Pakistan. Munir’s message to Washington is clear: I’ll keep the chaos contained—just keep the aid flowing and the praise coming.

In Palestine, resistance is bombed, starved, and erased from diplomatic memory. The very people who most deserve global solidarity have been airbrushed out of “peace deals” that trade their rights for regional arms partnerships. Netanyahu’s peace is paved with rubble and barbed wire.

In both cases, the real casualties of this Nobel nomination charade are truth, justice, and any genuine hope for self-determination. The spectacle distracts from the suffering. The prize, in this case, is a mask for the violence.

The Final Insult
At its best, the Nobel Peace Prize has been a flawed but meaningful recognition of efforts to resolve conflict and advance human dignity. At its worst, it has been handed to war criminals in tuxedos. What Netanyahu and Munir propose is something beyond the pale. They are not simply nominating a man unworthy of peace—they are redefining peace itself to mean its opposite.

This is not just hypocrisy. This is humiliation. It is the ritual humiliation of oppressed peoples everywhere—Palestinians, Kashmiris, Pakistanis—who are told that their suffering is not only invisible, but irrelevant to the charade playing out on the global stage.

A Reckoning Is Due
What does all this mean for the rest of us—those who still believe peace is more than a marketing slogan?

It means we must reject the pageantry of power and return to the substance of justice. It means we must see through the performance and recognize who truly pays the price when tyrants give each other medals. It means building solidarity between those fighting military rule in Pakistan, apartheid and genocide in Palestine, and demagoguery in America. Because these struggles are not isolated—they are interconnected.

When the generals and the occupiers and the aspiring emperors unite to award each other, it’s a sign not of strength but of desperation. They know the people are watching. They know legitimacy can’t be manufactured forever. And they know that no peace prize can silence the thunder of an awakened people demanding their dignity back.

So let them nominate whom they wish. Let them applaud each other in gilded rooms. Let them mistake flattery for immortality. History will remember not the ceremonies—but the crimes.

And one day, when peace is reclaimed from the hands of tyrants and returned to the people, we’ll look back at this moment for what it was: the last gasp of a dying order trying to sanctify its sins with a golden plaque.

https://mronline.org/2025/07/12/the-ano ... awalpindi/

If the Peace Prize was ever good for anything that ended when they gave it to Henry Kissinger. Ever since it has been a repository of war criminals, shysters and broken old men. So mebbe Trump does deserve it...

*****

Khalil Sues Trump Admin for $20 Million
July 11, 2025

In lieu of payment, the pro-Palestine student organizer would accept the administration’s apology and abandonment of its policy of political retaliation and abuse of power.


Demonstrators outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington, D.C., after federal agents targeted pro-Palestine student activist Mahmoud Khalil for deportation. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

By Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams

Pro-Palestinian student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil on Thursday began the process of suing U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration for $20 million in damages for the harm he suffered as a result of the government’s “politically motivated plan to unlawfully arrest, detain, and deport” him.

“This is the first step towards accountability,” Khalil said in a statement. “Nothing can restore the 104 days stolen from me. The trauma, the separation from my wife, the birth of my first child that I was forced to miss. But let’s be clear, the same government that targeted me for speaking out is using taxpayer dollars to fund Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

“There must be accountability for political retaliation and abuse of power,” he asserted.

“And I won’t stop here. I will continue to pursue justice against everyone who contributed to my unlawful detention or spread lies in an attempt to destroy my reputation, including those affiliated with Columbia University. I’m holding the U.S. government accountable not just for myself, but for everyone they try to silence through fear, exile, or detention.”

In March, federal agents who were in plain clothes and lacked a warrant accosted Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who recently finished a graduate program at Columbia, and his wife — Noor Abdalla, a U.S. citizen who was then pregnant with their son —outside their New York City home.

Following Khalil’s arrest, several other student activists critical of the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on Gaza were also targeted for deportation.

The claim that 30-year-old Khalil filed Thursday against the U.S. Homeland Security and the State Department, as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is a precursor to a lawsuit that will cite the Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), part of his legal team.

The filing accuses the Trump administration of carrying out a plan to deport Khalil “in a manner calculated to terrorize him and his family,” and says the mistreatment caused “severe emotional distress, economic hardship, damage to his reputation, and significant impairment of his First Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights.”

Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent who was finally freed from an ICE facility in Louisiana last month, is seeking $20 million to help others similarly targeted by the government and Columbia, but “he would accept, in lieu of payment, an official apology and abandonment of the administration’s unconstitutional policy,” CCR explained.

The Associated Press reported that

“a White House spokesperson deferred comment to the State Department, which said its actions were fully supported by the law. In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, called Khalil’s claim ‘absurd,’ accusing him of ‘hateful behavior and rhetoric’ that threatened Jewish students.”

While the departments’ comments signal that the Trump administration won’t be making any apologies, Khalil’s team is determined to move forward with his case.

“The Trump administration’s unconstitutional targeting of Mr. Khalil led to severe harms that he continues to navigate, including financial loss, reputational damage, and emotional distress,” said Samah Sisay, staff attorney at CCR.

“Mr. Khalil will never get back the three months stolen from him while in immigration detention, including his child’s birth and first months of life. The government must take accountability for their unlawful actions and compensate Mr. Khalil for his suffering.”

Khalil’s claim was filed a day after an ICE official testified under oath that a task force formed in March used lists from Canary Mission, an operation linked to Israeli intelligence agencies, and the pro-Israel group Betar Worldwide, to compile reports on international students targeted for their protest activities.

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/07/11/k ... 0-million/

*****

Trump Declares Trade War on Canada
July 12, 15:06



Trump has declared a trade war on Canada.
From August 1, 2025, all Canadian goods imported into the United States will be subject to 35% tariffs.
Canada has hinted that it will respond to Trump's actions.

A little earlier, a trade war was declared against Brazil (there is a 50% duty there), Lulu said that Brazil will not bend and will introduce symmetrical duties on American goods.
Also, over the past week, Trump has introduced new duties against about a dozen countries, starting with Kazakhstan.

Next week, we expect new sanctions against Russia and an announcement of a trade war against the EU.

In fact, it is clear who will bend and who will not. All this is an excellent indicator that it is no longer possible to maintain American economic hegemony by conventional means of dictatorship and control.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9951120.html

Google Translator

*****

From Cassad's telegram account:

Colonelcassad
The Trump administration has firmly and clearly taken the path of concealing the materials on Epstein's pedophile island.

1. The video from the cell where Epstein "suicided" was edited, 1 minute of the video from it disappeared.
2. The list of visitors to the pedophile island will not be published. Previous statements about the full publication of the materials "were misunderstood."
3. The videos from the island will not be published, because they contain "child pornography."
4. The facts of Epstein's connections with the FBI and Mossad will not be investigated.

With a very high degree of probability, Epstein's files (including the videos) contain not only the leaders of the Democratic Party, but also Trump himself. Therefore, under Trump, these materials will not be published, because they will mean Trump's political suicide.
But this story will not be let go, and for the rest of his term, Trump will be haunted by accusations of pedophilia and rape on Epstein's pedophile island.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

[blindpig]

Epstein files will not be released
July 12, 23:02



The Trump administration has firmly and clearly taken the path of covering up the Epstein pedophile island materials.

1. The video from the cell where Epstein "suicided" was edited, 1 minute of the video disappeared.
2. The list of visitors to the pedophile island will not be published. Previous statements about the full publication of the materials "were misunderstood."
3. The videos from the island will not be published, because they contain "child pornography."
4. The facts of Epstein's connections with the FBI and Mossad will not be investigated.

With a very high degree of probability, Epstein's files (including the videos) include not only the leaders of the Democratic Party, but also Trump himself. Therefore, under Trump, these materials will not be published, because they will mean Trump's political suicide.
But this story will not be let go, and for the rest of his term, Trump will be haunted by accusations of pedophilia and rape on Epstein's pedophile island.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9952200.html.

Google Translator

(Yeah, old news, but we can't share the pix enough.)

*****

Trump terrified by BRICS strategic threat

Pepe Escobar

July 12, 2025

You want war? Bring it on.

This is it. The ruling classes of the Empire of Chaos, plus the current, clownish Circus Ringmaster have finally realized that BRICS is a serious strategic threat – and existential challenge – to their unilateral domination of the current system of international relations.

They didn’t come to this conclusion by carefully scrutinizing the BRICS annual summit in Rio – or last year’s ground-breaking summit in Kazan for that matter: they are lousy at doing basic homework.

It’s more like they were awakened from their torpor by feeling in their skins which way the – global – wind is blowing, in terms of all sorts of models being tested to bypass the U.S. dollar and the iron-clad control of the Bretton Woods institutions.

The conclusion was inescapable: BRICS have crossed the ultimate red line. No more Mr. Nice Guy talk shop. The 130-plus point Rio declaration, released at the first day of the summit, spells it out, politely but decisively: this is what we are, a systemic alternative; and we’re going to write the rules of the new system our way.

Building the Geopolitics of Sovereignty

BRICS 2025 in Rio was a stunning surprise. Expectations initially were low – when comparing the meek Brazilian presidency with the extraordinary amount of work put out by Russia in 2024 leading to Kazan.

Yet in the end Rio coalesced what Kazan had annonced: the new, rising system will be all about sovereignty, equality, and fairness – with emphasis on continental-wide economic integration; trade in national currencies; an expanded role for new global financial institutions such as the NDB (the BRICS bank); and myriad platforms for sustainable development.

A Geopolitics of Sovereignty has to be structurally constructed: the iron and cement for the new system will come from a new interconnection of trade in national currencies, independent payment/settlement systems, and new investment platforms.

Geo-economically, BRICS is already on a roll. A quick glance of a map of Eurasia, and Afro-Eurasia, will suffice to convey the existing and emerging interconnection of connectivity, logistics and supply chain corridors. Across BRICS lands, those tie up energy sources, rare earth deposits, and a wealth of agricultural commodities.

To quote the Godfather of Soul James Bown, Papa’s got a brand new (BRICS) bag.

Hence it’s no wonder that a tawdry incarnation of the White Man’s Burden, the Circus Ringmaster, has unleashed Full War on BRICS and its partners – from threats to tariffs, complete with a previous death certificate (at the time he was even more clueless on what BRICS is all about).

The serial Trump Tariff Temper Tantrum (TTT) is of course another manifestation of Divide and Rule, trying to blow up BRICS from the inside. And now we’re up several notches, with a trademark childish letter threatening 50% tariffs on all Made in Brazil products exported to the U.S. – plus extra “sectoral” tariffs.

And yet this has nothing to do with trade. Over the past 15 years, the U.S. trade surplus with Brazil is over a hefty $400 billion. Some Trump 2.0 underling should have whispered that number into his boss’s ear.

But even if they did, that’s irrelevant. Because the latest gimmick actually constitutes a crass foreign interference in another nation’s domestic politics and upcomig presidential race, illegal and predictably once again making a mockery of international law.

The Circus Ringmaster started by hollering in his posts that the Lula government – and the independent Brazilian judicial system – had been involved in a witch hunt against his buddy, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is being legally prosecuted under charges of staging a coup to overturn the results of the 2022 presidential election and prevent Lula from taking power.

It was up to not so smooth operator Steve Bannon to give the whole tawdry game away: if you ditch the prosecution of Bolsonaro, we ditch the 50% tariffs.

President Lula’s response has been measured, but firm: “Brazil’s trade with the U.S. makes up just 1.7% of our GDP. You can’t call these figures vital (…) We will look for other partners“.

Of course it will be very tough. A 50% tariff is like a deadly hurricane. Example: Brazil is the largest global exporter of orange juice. 95% of indigenous production is exported, nearly half to the U.S. It will take some time and lot of hard work to find “other partners”. The solution may lie across BRICS lands. In time, there should be plenty of candidates for top Brazilian exports such as oil, steel, iron, planes and parts, coffee, timber, meat and soy.

Unionizing every exporter in the world against U.S. importers

In parallel, the top two BRICS actors, China and Russia – both already under zillions of sanctions (Russia) and trade tariffs (China) – see the Trump TTT as a spectacular opportuniy ahead for undermining even faster the unilateral U.S. grip on trade and currency systems.

The war on BRICS has gone up to the next level, now that Russia, China, Iran and Brazil are all confirmed – illegitimate – targets. It’s up to this Sri Lanka viewpoint to delightfully summarize the stakes:

“Trump has effectively unionized every exporter in the world against American importers.” It comes down to a quite simple equation: “If you tariff one person, more power to you. But it you tariff everyone, more power to us.”

“More power to us” translates into BRICS and the wider Global South perfectly aware there’s no way out except full steam ahead for the BRICS project, culminating in full de-dollarization. From Kazan to Rio and beyond, it’s now also clear that out of control TTT will target any nation or partner that aligns with “anti-American” BRICS.

You want war? Bring it on.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/ ... ic-threat/

*****



Trump’s BBB busts the budget to benefit arms makers, AI warlords
Antiwar Dot Com·July 12, 2025

Trump’s bill slashes spending on veterans to boost corporate welfare for the Big Five arms manufacturers and surging AI spying firms like Palantir.
Originally published at Antiwar.com.

The Senate is on the verge of passing the distinctly misnamed “big beautiful bill.” It is, in fact, one of the ugliest pieces of legislation to come out of Congress in living memory. The version that passed the House recently would cut $1.7 trillion, mostly in domestic spending, while providing the top 5% of taxpayers with roughly $1.5 trillion in tax breaks.

Over the next few years, the same bill will add another $150 billion to a Pentagon budget already soaring towards a record $1 trillion. In short, as of now, in the battle between welfare and warfare, the militarists are carrying the day.

Pentagon Pork and the People It Harms
The bill allocates tens of billions of dollars to pursue President Trump’s cherished but hopeless Golden Dome project, which Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has described as “a fantasy.” She explained exactly why the Golden Dome, which would supposedly protect the United States against nuclear attack, is a pipe dream:

“Over the last 60 years, the United States has spent more than $350 billion on efforts to develop a defense against nuclear-armed ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles]. This effort has been plagued by false starts and failures, and none have yet been demonstrated to be effective against a real-world threat… Missile defenses are not a useful or long-term strategy for keeping the U.S. safe from nuclear weapons.”

The bill also includes billions more for shipbuilding, heavy new investments in artillery and ammunition, and funding for next-generation combat aircraft like the F-47.

Oh, and after all of those weapons programs get their staggering cut of that future Pentagon budget, somewhere way down at the bottom of that list is a line item for improving the quality of life for active-duty military personnel. But the share aimed at the well-being of soldiers, sailors, and airmen (and women) is less than 6% of the $150 billion that Congress is now poised to add to that department’s already humongous budget. And that’s true despite the way Pentagon budget hawks invariably claim that the enormous sums they routinely plan on shoveling into it — and the overflowing coffers of the contractors it funds — are “for the troops.”

Much of the funding in the bill will flow into the districts of key members of Congress (to their considerable political benefit). For example, the Golden Dome project will send billions of dollars to companies based in Huntsville, Alabama, which calls itself “Rocket City” because of the dense network of outfits there working on both offensive missiles and missile defense systems. And that, of course, is music to the ears of Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), the current chair of the House Armed Services Committee, who just happens to come from Alabama.

The shipbuilding funds will help prop up arms makers like HII Corporation (formerly Huntington Ingalls), which runs a shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the home state of Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss). The funds will also find their way to shipyards in Maine, Connecticut, and Virginia.

Those funds will benefit the co-chairs of the House Shipbuilding Caucus, Representative Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Representative Rob Wittman (R-VA). Connecticut hosts General Dynamics’ Electric Boat plant, which makes submarines that carry ballistic missiles, while Virginia is home to HII Corporation’s Newport News Shipbuilding facility, which makes both aircraft carriers and attack submarines.

The Golden Dome missile defense project, on which President Trump has promised to spend $175 billion over the next three years, will benefit contractors big and small. Those include companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon (now RTX) that build current generation missile defense systems, as well as emerging military tech firms like Elon Musk’s Space X and Palmer Luckey’s Anduril, both of which are rumored to have a shot at playing a leading role in the development of the new anti-missile system.

And just in case you thought this country was only planning to invest in defense against a nuclear strike, a sharp upsurge in spending on new nuclear warheads under the auspices of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) has been proposed for fiscal year 2026. Thirty billion dollars, to be exact, which would represent a 58% hike from the prior year’s budget. Meanwhile, within that agency, nonproliferation, cleanup, and renewable energy programs are set to face significant cuts, leaving 80% of NNSA’s proposed funding to be spent on — yes! — nuclear weapons alone. Those funds will flow to companies like Honeywell, Bechtel, Jacobs Engineering, and Fluor that help run nuclear labs and nuclear production sites, as well as educational institutions like the University of Tennessee, Texas A&M, and the University of California at Berkeley, which help manage nuclear weapons labs or nuclear production sites.

Weakening the Social Safety Net
And while weapons contractors will gorge on a huge new infusion of cash, military personnel, past and present, are clearly going to be neglected. As a start, the Veterans Administration is on the block for deep cuts, including possible layoffs of up to 80,000 employees — a move that would undoubtedly slow down the processing of benefits for those who have served in America’s past wars. Research on ailments that disproportionately impact veterans will also be cut, which should be considered an outrage.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of veterans from this country’s disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will continue to suffer from physical and psychological wounds, including traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cutting research that might find more effective solutions to such problems should be considered a national disgrace. In the meantime, active-duty personnel who are getting a tiny fraction of the potential Pentagon add-on of $150 billion are similarly in need.

Worse yet, turn away from the Pentagon for a moment, and the cuts in the rest of that “big beautiful bill” will likely have an impact on a majority of Americans — Democrats, independents, and MAGA Republicans alike. Their full effects may not be felt for months until the spending reductions contained in it start hitting home. However, enacting policies that take food off people’s tables and deny them medical care will not only cause unnecessary suffering but cost lives.

As President (and former general) Dwight D. Eisenhower, a very different kind of Republican, said more than 70 years ago, the ultimate security of a nation lies not in how many weapons it can pile up, but in the health, education, and resilience of its people. The big beautiful bill and the divisive politics surrounding it threaten those foundations of our national strength.

Clash of the Contractors?
As budget cuts threaten to make the population weaker, distorted spending priorities are making arms producers stronger. The Big Five — Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman — produce most of the current big-ticket weapon systems, from submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles to tanks, combat aircraft, and missile-defense systems. Meanwhile, emerging tech firms like Palantir, Anduril, and Space X are cashing in on contracts for unpiloted vehicles, advanced communications systems, new-age goggles for the Army, anti-drone systems, and so much more.

But even as weapons spending hits near-record or record levels, there may still be a fight between the Big Five and the emerging tech firms over who gets the biggest share of that budget. One front in the coming battle between the Big Five and the Silicon Valley militarists could be the Army Transformation Initiative (ATI). According to Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, one of the goals of ATI is to “eliminate obsolete systems.”

Driscoll is a harsh critic of the way members of Congress put money in the budget — a process known as “pork barrel politics” — for items the military services haven’t even asked for (and they ask for plenty), simply because those systems might bring more jobs and revenue to their states or districts. He has, in fact, committed himself to an approach that’s incompatible with the current, parochial process of putting together the Pentagon budget. “Lobbyists and bureaucrats have overtaken the army’s ability to prioritize soldiers and war fighting,” he insisted.

Driscoll is talking a tough game when it comes to taking on the existing big contractors. He’s evidently ready to push for “reform,” even if it means that some of them go out of business. In fact, he seems to welcome it: “I will measure it as success if, in the next two years, one of the primes is no longer in business.” (“Primes” are the big contractors like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics that take the lead on major programs and get the bulk of the funding, a significant portion of which they dole out to subcontractors all over the country and the world.)

Ending pork-barrel politics in favor of an approach in which the Pentagon only buys systems that align with the country’s actual defense strategy, as Driscoll is suggesting, might seem like a significant step forward. But be careful what you wish for. Any funds freed up by stopping congressional representatives from treating the Pentagon budget as a piggy bank to buy loyalty from their constituents will almost certainly go to emerging tech firms ready to build next-generation systems like swarms of drones, weapons that can take out a hypersonic missile, or pilotless land vehicles, aircraft, and ships. Driscoll is a major tech enthusiast, as is his friend and Yale law school classmate J.D. Vance, who was first employed by Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, who then backed his successful run for the Senate from Ohio.

Since the tech firms don’t have the equivalent of the Big Five’s extensive production networks in key congressional districts, they need to find other ways to persuade Congress to fund their weapons programs. Fortunately, the Silicon Valley militarists have a significant number of former employees or financial backers in the Trump administration who can plead their case.

In addition, military-tech-focused venture capital firms have hired at least 50 former Pentagon and military officials, all of whom can help them exert influence over both the Trump administration and Congress. The biggest “catch” was Palantir’s hiring of former Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, who had run the hawkish Congressional special committee on Communist China.

Some journalists and policy analysts have wondered whether the feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk will hurt the military tech sector. Well, stop fretting. Even if Trump were to follow through on his threat to cut the government funding of Musk’s firms, the tasks they’re carrying out — from launching military satellites to developing more secure Internet access for deployed military personnel — would still proceed, just under the auspices of different companies. There would be some friction involved, simply because it’s hard to shift suppliers on a dime without slowing down production. And the transition, should it occur, would also add cost to already exceedingly expensive programs.

But Trump’s threat to cancel Space X’s contracts may just be more grist for his verbal combat with Musk rather than anything his administration plans to follow through on. Even if Musk and his president never reconcile, the DOGE cuts to international diplomacy and domestic social services that Musk spearheaded will still do serious damage for years to come.

Money Can’t Buy Security
A shift toward emerging military tech firms and away from the Big Five will be about more than money and technology. Key figures among the growing cohort of Silicon Valley militarists like Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, see building weapons as more than just a necessary pillar of national defense. They see it as a measure of national character.

Karp’s new book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, mixes the Cold War ideology of the 1950s with the emerging technology of the twenty-first century. He decries the lack of unifying concepts like “the West” and sees too many Americans as slackers with no sense of national pride or patriotism. His solution, a supposedly unifying national mission, is — wait for it! — a modern Manhattan project for the development of the military applications of artificial intelligence. To say that this is an impoverished version of what this country’s mission should be is putting it mildly. Many other possibilities come to mind, from addressing climate change to preventing pandemics to upgrading our educational system to building a society where everyone’s basic needs are met, leaving room for creative pursuits of all kinds.

The techno-optimists are also obsessed with preparing for a war with China, which Palmer Luckey, the 32-year-old founder of the military tech firm Anduril, believes will happen by 2027. And many in his circle, including Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, are convinced that any potential risks from the development of AI pale in comparison to the need to “beat China,” not just in getting to sophisticated military applications first, but in winning a future war with Beijing, if it comes to that. Talk of diplomacy to head off a war over Taiwan or cooperation on global issues like climate change, outbreaks of disease, and building a more inclusive, less unequal global economy rarely come up in discussions among the hardcore militarist faction in Silicon Valley. Instead, that group is spending inordinate amounts of time and money seeking to influence the future of U.S. foreign and military policy, a dangerous development indeed.

Whether the emerging tech firms can build cheaper weapons with superior capabilities will be irrelevant if such developments are tied to an aggressive strategy that makes a devastating conflict with China more likely. While the fight between the Big Five and the tech leaders may prove interesting to observe, it is also ominous in terms of this country’s future economic and foreign policies, not to speak of the shape and size of our national budget.

The rest of us, who aren’t billionaires and don’t draw $20 million in annual compensation packages like the CEOs of the big weapons firms (directly or indirectly funded by our tax dollars), should play a leading role in rethinking and revising this country’s global role and our policies at home. If we don’t rise to that challenge, this country could end up swapping one form of militarism, led by the Big Five, for another, spearheaded by hawkish, self-important tech leaders who care more about making money and spawning devastating new technologies than they do about democracy or the quality of life of the average American.

https://thegrayzone.com/2025/07/12/mili ... ding-high/

******

Epstein Case Fuels Internal Dispute Between MAGA Supporters, DOJ, and FBI

The Epstein case, involving accusations of trafficking minors and sexual exploitation, raised expectations among Trump supporters, who hoped his administration would clarify the magnate’s connections with influential figures. Prominent MAGA allies have pointed out that these expectations were not met.


(FILE). The U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi (left), speaking during a roundtable organized by the President of the United States, Donald Trump (right). Photo: EFE.

July 13, 2025 Hour: 1:45 am

The handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and a conspiracy theory about his “client list” and death sparked an internal clash between Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) influencers, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and the FBI.

Top MAGA figures like Laura Loomer have called for the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi after a DOJ and FBI memo concluded there is no evidence that Epstein, accused of trafficking minors, maintained a “client list” of famous people he blackmailed.

The document, revealed on Monday, also states that the magnate committed suicide in a New York prison in 2019, rejecting a popular right-wing theory about Epstein’s supposed murder to protect acquaintances, including former President Bill Clinton.

Diehard MAGA supporters are unpleased with these findings because Trump, Bondi, and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had promised, before this administration began, to reveal “the truth” about the case.

Laura Loomer, a prominent Trump ally and influencer, reiterated on Saturday her demand that Bondi resign, nicknaming her “Scam Blondie”. “Asking for transparency isn’t difficult. She lied on national TV. Bondi has been very DAMAGING to the admin and she has damaged public trust in the DOJ”, she wrote on X.


The controversy has caused a feud between the DOJ and the FBI. Bondi’s circle accuses Bongino’s team of planting stories in conservative media to discredit her, while Bongino’s camp blames Bondi for mishandling the Epstein fiasco, according to multiple U.S. media reports.

Democrats in Congress have seized on the scandal to demand the DOJ release the full Epstein files and highlight divisions within the Trump administration.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, referring to President Trump, tweeted: “Wow who would have thought that electing a rapist would have complicated the release of the Epstein Files?”

https://www.telesurenglish.net/epstein- ... j-and-fbi/

(AOC and low hanging fruit...)

Critical 30% Tariff Threat: Trump Targets EU and Mexico Amid Global Economic Warnings

Trump 30% tariffs threaten EU and Mexico trade relations amid rising economic tensions.


Washington (United States), 11/07/2025.- US President Donald Trump responds to questions from reporters after walking out of the South Portico of the White House to board Marine One on the South Lawn, in Washington, DC, USA, 12 July 2025. President Trump and First Lady are heading to Kerrville, Texas, to meet with local officials and first responders after a deadly flash flood a week ago killed at least 120 people with at least 160 people still missing. EFE/EPA/SAMUEL CORUM / POOL

July 12, 2025 Hour: 1:07 pm

Trump imposes 30% tariffs on EU and Mexico, triggering global concerns over trade wars and economic fallout. Read the full analysis on the Trump 30% tariffs and their geopolitical impact.

Geopolitical Context Behind Trump’s Tariff Move
The imposition of Trump 30% tariffs on the European Union and Mexico marks a significant escalation in U.S. trade policy under President Donald Trump. This move comes amid heightened protectionist rhetoric and follows a pattern of unilateral trade actions that have previously targeted China and Canada. Analysts warn it could destabilize global supply chains and provoke retaliatory measures, especially from key U.S. allies.

The timing is politically sensitive, as it precedes the 2026 midterm elections and occurs during a period of increased domestic pressure over inflation and drug-related deaths linked to fentanyl imports. The decision also reflects Trump’s broader strategy of leveraging tariffs as tools for diplomatic negotiation rather than purely economic instruments.


Trump Announces 30% Tariffs Against EU and Mexico
Washington, July 12, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump announced this Saturday the implementation of 30% tariffs on goods imported from the European Union and Mexico, effective August 1. In official letters addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Mexican Head of Government Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump justified the move by citing persistent trade imbalances and Mexico’s role in the fentanyl crisis.

“These tariffs are necessary to protect American workers and families,” Trump stated, framing the action as part of his “America First” agenda. The announcement has triggered widespread concern among economists and international leaders about potential economic repercussions.

El País – U.S. Tariff Threat Against Mexico

Conditions and Warnings in Official Letters
In his letter to the EU, Trump demanded “complete and open access to the U.S. market without any tariffs” as a condition for reconsidering the 30% tax. He also encouraged European companies to relocate manufacturing operations to the United States, offering expedited approval processes for such moves.

He warned that goods attempting to bypass the tariffs via third countries would still be subject to them, stating, “if you raise your tariffs, we will add to ours.”

Regarding Mexico, Trump accused the country of failing to stop fentanyl trafficking, which he claims has caused thousands of American deaths. However, recent data shows record seizures and joint efforts between the two nations to combat drug cartels.

France 24 – Trump Tariff Announcement

Economic Impact and International Reactions
Experts caution that the Trump 30% tariffs could severely disrupt major industries across Europe, particularly automotive manufacturing — where German brands hold significant market share — along with pharmaceuticals, machinery, and agricultural exports like wine and cheese.

In Mexico, a critical partner under the USMCA (T-MEC) agreement, the tariffs threaten to increase consumer prices and disrupt regional supply chains. Analysts warn that both economies may suffer, including U.S. consumers who rely on affordable imports.

The European Commission has rejected the move and reaffirmed its willingness to negotiate, while the Mexican government reiterated its commitment to anti-drug cooperation and called for dialogue.

RFI – U.S. Tariff Threats

The Trump 30% tariffs come at a time of growing global economic uncertainty. They follow earlier protectionist policies targeting Canadian steel and Chinese tech, and reflect a broader shift toward aggressive bilateral bargaining. While the administration frames the tariffs as defensive, critics argue they risk damaging long-standing alliances and undermining multilateral trade frameworks.

The move also echoes similar tactics used during Trump’s first term, raising fears of a new wave of trade wars just as markets begin to stabilize after years of pandemic and inflation shocks.

Conclusion: A Rising Trade War Risk
The Trump 30% tariffs on the EU and Mexico represent a sharp escalation in U.S. trade policy, with potentially far-reaching consequences. While the administration argues these measures aim to correct unfair trade practices and curb fentanyl flows, many experts warn of unintended economic costs and retaliatory cycles that could spiral into a broader trade conflict.

As global leaders weigh their responses, the world watches closely to see whether diplomacy can prevent further escalation — or if the Trump 30% tariffs mark the beginning of a new era of economic nationalism.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/trump-30-tariffs/

South Sudanese Specialists Challenge Legality of Deportees Arriving from the U.S.

South Sudan’s recent acceptance of several deportees from the U.S. —with only one being a South Sudanese citizen—has drawn sharp criticism from legal experts, who warn it sets a troubling precedent and may reflect U.S. pressure rather than lawful international cooperation.


(File) U.S. President Donald Trump. Photo: EFE.

July 13, 2025 Hour: 6:51 am

South Sudan Government accepted eight deportees (seven of whom are non-South Sudanese) from the United States last week but did not provide explanations regarding the reasons for the decision or the legal procedures followed, ringing alarms among several lawyers and experts about the legality of the measure.

Political Science professor Abraham Koul Nyoun stated that this could represent “both a challenge and a diplomatic opportunity,” allowing the African country to use it as leverage to negotiate the lifting of U.S. sanctions. Amid political turmoil, South Sudan remains one of the world’s most impoverished nations.

However, he warned that “some of the deportees could pose a threat if not subjected to proper supervision, and this acceptance could be misinterpreted as a willingness to turn the country into a dumping ground for people.”

Out of the eight, only one is a South Sudanese citizen, while the others are originally from Myanmar, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and Mexico, according to a statement from the South Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Tensions between Juba and Washington date back to February 2025, when the South Sudanese government refused to accept a deportee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, U.S. diplomatic and economic pressure, including threats to restrict bilateral cooperation, led South Sudan to reverse its stance in May.

James Loko, an International Law professor at the University of Juba, condemned the move, calling it a clear breach of the non-refoulement principle established by the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. He warned that sending individuals to countries with which they have no legal ties poses profound ethical and legal dilemmas and risks contravening South Sudan’s obligations under international agreements, including those of the UN and African Union.

Since reclaiming the presidency in January, Donald Trump has pursued rapid deportations as a cornerstone of his mass deportation agenda, a key campaign pledge. Numerous organizations have criticized these actions for undermining fundamental rights, including the right to due process.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/south-su ... m-the-u-s/

[blindpig]

Trump, Epstein and the Deep State

The Trump administration’s refusal to release the Epstein files and videos is done not only to protect Trump, but the ruling class. They all belong to the same club.

Chris Hedges
Jul 12, 2025


American Satyricon - by Mr. Fish

The refusal by the Trump administration to release the files and videos amassed during investigations into the activities of the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, should put to rest the absurd idea, embraced by Trump supporters and gullible liberals, that Trump will dismantle the Deep State. Trump is part of, and has long been part of, the repugnant cabal of politicians – Democrat and Republican – billionaires and celebrities who look at us, and often underage girls and boys, as commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure.

The list of those who were in Epstein’s orbit is a who’s who of the rich and famous. They include not only Trump, but Bill Clinton, who allegedly took a trip to Thailand with Epstein, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, former Secretary of the Treasury and former president of Harvard University Larry Summers, cognitive psychologist and author Stephen Pinker, Alan Dershowitz, billionaire and Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner, the former Barclays banker Jes Staley, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, the magician David Copperfield, actor Kevin Spacey, former CIA director Bill Burns, real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, former Maine senator George Mitchell and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who reveled in Epstein’s perpetual Bacchanalia.

They also include law firms and high-priced attorneys, federal and state prosecutors, private investigators, personal assistants, publicists, servants and drivers. They include the numerous procurers and pimps, including Epstein’s girlfriend and daughter of Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell. They include the media and politicians who ruthlessly discredited and silenced the victims, and strong armed anyone, including a handful of intrepid reporters, seeking to expose Epstein’s crimes and circle of accomplices.

There is a lot that remains hidden. But there are some things we know. Epstein installed hidden cameras in his opulent residences and on his private Caribbean island, Little St. James, to capture his high-powered friends engaging in sexual romps and abuse of teenage and underage girls and boys. The recordings were blackmail gold. Were they part of an intelligence operation on behalf of the Israeli Mossad? Or were they used to ensure that Epstein had a steady source of investors who funneled him millions of dollars to avoid being outed? Or were they used for both? He shuttled underage girls between New York and Palm Beach on his private jet the Lolita Express, which was allegedly outfitted with a bed for group sex. His coterie of famous friends, including Clinton and Trump, are recorded as traveling on the jet numerous times on released flight logs, although many other flight logs have disappeared.

Epstein’s videos are in the vaults of the FBI, along with detailed evidence that would rip back the veil on the sexual proclivities and callousness of the powerful. I doubt there is a client list, as Attorney General Pam Bondi claims. There is also no single Epstein file. The investigative material amassed on Epstein fills many, many boxes, which would bury Bondi’s desk and probably, if collected in one room, dominate most of the space in her office.

Did Epstein commit suicide, as the official autopsy report claims, by hanging himself in his jail cell on August 10, 2019 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City? Or was he murdered? Since the cameras recording activity in his cell the night were not functional, we do not know. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist hired by Epstein's brother, who served as the chief medical examiner for New York City and who was present at the autopsy, said he believes Epstein's autopsy suggests homicide.

The Epstein case is important because it implodes the fiction of deep divisions between Democrats, who had no more interest in releasing the Epstein files than Trump, and the Republicans. They belong to the same club. It exposes how the courts and law enforcement agencies collude to shield powerful figures who engage in crimes. It lays bare the depravity of our exhibitionist ruling class, accountable to no one, free to violate, plunder, loot and prey on the weak and the vulnerable. It is the tawdry record of our oligarchic masters, those who lack the capacity for shame or guilt, whether dressed up as Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

This class of ruling parasites was parodied in the first-century satirical novel “Satyricon” by Gaius Petronius Arbiter, written during the reigns of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. As in Satyricon, Epstein’s circle was dominated by pseudointellectuals, pretentious buffoons, grifters, con artists, petty criminals, the insatiable rich and the sexually depraved. Epstein and his inner circle routinely engaged in sexual perversions of Petronian proportions, as The Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie Brown, whose dogged reporting was largely responsible for reopening the federal investigation in Epstein and Maxwell, documents in her book “Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.”

As Brown writes, in 2016 an anonymous woman, using the pseudonym “Kate Johnson,” filed a civil complaint in a federal court in California alleging she was raped by Trump and Epstein when she was thirteen, over a four-month period, from June to September 1994.

“I loudly pleaded with Trump to stop,” she said in the lawsuit about being raped. “Trump responded to my pleas by violently striking me in the face with his open hand and screaming that he could do whatever he wanted.”

Brown continues:

Johnson said that Epstein invited her to a series of ‘underage sex parties’ at his New York mansion where she met Trump. Enticed by promises of money and modeling opportunities, Johnson said she was forced to have sex with Trump several times, including once with another girl, twelve years old, whom she labeled ‘Marie Doe.’

Trump demanded oral sex, the lawsuit said, and afterward he “pushed both minors away while angrily berating them for the ‘poor’ quality of the sexual performance,” according to the lawsuit, filed April 26 in U.S. District Court in Central California.

Afterward, when Epstein learned that Trump had taken Johnson’s virginity, Epstein allegedly ‘attempted to strike her about the head with his closed fists,’ angry he had not been the one to take her virginity. Johnson claimed that both men threatened to harm her, and her family if she ever revealed what had happened.

The lawsuit states that Trump did not take part in Epstein’s orgies but liked to watch, often while the thirteen-year-old “Kate Johnson” gave him a hand job.

It appears Trump was able to quash the lawsuit by buying her silence. She has since disappeared.

In 2008, Alex Acosta, who at the time was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, negotiated a plea deal for Epstein. The deal granted immunity from all federal criminal charges to Epstein, four named co-conspirators and any unnamed “potential co-conspirators.” The agreement shut down the FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful figures who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes. It halted the investigation and sealed the indictment. Trump, in what many consider an act of gratitude, appointed Acosta as Secretary of Labor in his first term.

mack442@fastmail.com
password
mack442@fastmail.com
Subscribe
Trump contemplated pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell after she was arrested in July 2020, fearing she would reveal details of his decades-long friendship with Epstein, according to Trump biographer Michael Wolff. In July 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

“Jeffrey Epstein’s closest relationship in life was with Donald Trump…these were two guys joined at the hip for a good 15 years. They did everything together,” Wolff told host Joanna Coles on The Daily Beast Podcast. “And this is from sharing, pursuing women, hunting women, sharing at least one girlfriend for at least a year in this kind of rich-guy relationship with each other’s planes, to Epstein advising Trump on how to cheat on his taxes.”

The legal anomalies, including the disappearance of massive amounts of evidence incriminating Epstein, saw Epstein avoid federal sex-trafficking charges in 2007, when his attorneys negotiated the secret plea deal with Acosta. He was able to plead guilty to lesser state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution.

The prominent men accused of engaging in Epstein’s carnival of pedophilia, including Epstein’s attorney Dershowitz, viciously threaten anyone who seeks to expose them. Dershowitz, for example, claims that an investigation which he has refused to make public, by the former FBI director Louis Freeh, proves he had never had sex with Epstein’s victim Virginia Giuffre, who was trafficked at 17 to Prince Andrew. Giuffre, one of the few victims to publicly take on her abusers, said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” among Epstein and Maxwell’s friends, until at the age of 19 when she escaped. She “committed suicide” in April 2025. Dershowitz has sent repeated threats to Brown and her editors at The Miami Herald.

Brown continues:

[Dershowitz] kept referring to information that was contained in sealed documents. He accused the newspaper of not reporting “facts” that he said were in those sealed documents. The truth is, I tried to explain, newspapers just can’t write about things because Alan Dershowitz says they exist. We need to see them. We need to verify them. Then, because I said “show me the material,” he publicly accused me of committing a criminal act by asking him to produce documents that were under court seal.

This is the way Dershowitz operates.

What disturbs me the most about Dershowitz is the way that the media, with few exceptions, fails to critically challenge him. Journalists fact-checked Donald Trump and others in his administration almost every day, yet, for the most part, the media seems to give Dershowitz a pass on the Epstein story.

In 2015, when Giuffre’s allegations first became public, Dershowitz went on every television program imaginable swearing, among other things, that Epstein’s plane logs would exonerate him. “How do you know that?” he was asked.

He replied that he was never on Epstein’s plane during the time that Virginia was involved with Epstein.

But if the media had checked, they could have learned that he was indeed a passenger on the plane during that time period, according to the logs.

Then he testified, in a sworn deposition, that he never went on any plane trips without his wife. But he was listed on those passage manifests as traveling multiple times without his wife. During at least one trip, he was on the plane with a model named Tatiana.

Epstein donated money to Harvard and was made a visiting fellow in Harvard’s Department of Psychology, although he had no academic qualifications in the field. He was given a key card and pass code, as well as an office in the building that housed Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. He referred to himself in his press releases as “Science Philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein,” “Education activist Jeffrey Epstein,” “Evolutionary Jeffrey Epstein,” “Science patron Jeffrey Epstein” and “Maverick hedge funder Jeffrey Epstein.”

Epstein, replicating the pretensions and vacuity of the characters who were parodied in the “Dinner with Trimalchio” chapter of Satyricon, organized elaborate dinner gatherings for his billionaire friends, including Elon Musk, Salar Kamangar and Jeff Bezos. He dreamed up bizarre schemes of social engineering, including a plan to seed the human species with his own DNA by creating a baby compound at his sprawling ranch in New Mexico.

“Epstein was also obsessed with cryonics, the transhumanist philosophy whose followers believe that people can be replicated or brought back to life after they are frozen,” Brown writes. “Epstein apparently told some of the members of his scientific circle that he wanted to inseminate women with his sperm for them to give birth to his babies, and that he wanted his head and his penis frozen.”

The Epstein story is a window into the moral bankruptcy, hedonism and greed of the ruling class. This crosses political lines. It is the common denominator between Democratic politicians, such as Bill Clinton, philanthropists, such as Bill Gates, the billionaire class, and Trump. They are one class of predators and grifters. It is not only girls and women they exploit, but all of us.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-168163626

******

Show Epstein's files
July 13, 19:19



Show Epstein's files

Elon Musk demanded the publication of the "Epstein files" that Trump promised to publish in his election promises. But since there are not only Democrats there, but also Republicans, led by Trump himself, then of course Trump does not want to publish anything and will not (he is not his own enemy), and the US Department of Justice and the US Attorney's Office are now, in front of everyone, actually concealing a crime, trying to ensure that visitors to Epstein's pedophile island (who also turned out to be a Mossad informant), where minors were raped, escape the law.

This story will be worse than the "Kennedy assassination files."

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said that the Republican Party could lose up to 40 seats in the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections due to the scandal surrounding the Epstein files and the administration's response to the situation. Bannon claims that if the party loses 10% of MAGA supporters, it will have catastrophic consequences for the Republicans:

@usaperiodical - zinc

Trump is trying to pretend that the scandal around the Epstein files is not significant, although in fact, given the peculiarities of American domestic politics, it can significantly affect US domestic politics. Until the files are made public, the very fact of their existence can be used to attack the Trump administration, which is already leading to the fact that disappointed Trump supporters are falling away from the MAGA movement. Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and others have already distanced themselves from Trump and are calling for the lists to be made public. The Democrats will not let this topic go. The main thing for them is to drag it out until the midterm elections in 2026.

Trump is now effectively acting without restrictions, maintaining control over the Senate and the House of Representatives. The loss of some seats in the House of Representatives and the very possible loss of several seats in the Senate will result in Congress being under the control of the Democrats, and Trump will be a lame duck until 2028, who will be driven by the threat of impeachment and constantly having his "valuable" initiatives blocked. In fact, Trump has just over a year of full power left, which the globalists expect to endure, after which he will return to power in the United States by the end of autumn 2026. The destruction of MAGA from within through the Epstein case facilitates the achievement of this goal. Trump's statements that no one is interested in Epstein's files caused a real Streisand effect, when even those who did not particularly follow this story began to dig into the dirty pedophile laundry of the American establishment.

P.S. By the way, Musk stated that Bannon is also on Epstein's lists.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9953379.html

Google Translator

******

The largest wealth heist in U.S. history: Trump’s bill sacrifices lives for billionaires
July 12, 2025 Gregory E. Williams


At least 338 rural hospitals are at risk of closing in the aftermath of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is now law. It’s big, but there’s nothing beautiful about it.

We’re about to see the largest upward transfer of wealth in U.S. history. It’s also going to be the largest cut to health care in the history of the U.S. The “Big Bill” includes over $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

About 66 million people in the U.S., or 20% of the population, live in rural areas. They will be especially hard hit. Rural hospital access has been declining for a long time, with Medicaid being the only thing that has saved many hospitals. (This is proof you don’t have to be on Medicaid to benefit from the program.)

At least 338 rural hospitals are at risk of closing right now. That means grandparents who have heart attacks will die because there’s no hospital to take them to. Children with allergies will die from anaphylactic shock because they can’t get to the ER.

All so the billionaire oligarchs can steal even more of the people’s money. Much of it will be stuffed into the coffers of the weapons manufacturers and private prison contractors. Those who wrote and voted for the bill know it’s going to kill people, and they don’t care.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analyzed data from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, along with other sources, to assess who will win and who will lose because of this bill. They said their analysis “suggests that a tiny sliver of affluent families — the top 1% by income — will receive tax cuts totaling $1.02 trillion over the next decade. For comparison, the bill’s cuts to the Medicaid health care program will total $930 billion over the same period.”

Meanwhile, an analysis by researchers at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania predicted that the House version of the budget bill would lead to 51,000 excess deaths in the U.S. annually. They were just looking at the medical side of things: health care coverage and things like that. They weren’t even considering other areas like food access or rising prices.

They sent letters about these findings to Senate leaders, but even if they hadn’t, these politicians know very well that their policies kill people. These same politicians were unbothered by over 1 million people dying from COVID-19 in the U.S., and millions more dying globally. In U.S. politics today, they scarcely mention these deaths anymore.

The ruling class and their Washington minions just don’t care. In fact, they applauded as they cast their votes in favor of this bill that would result in so much death. The oligarchs rule. It’s time to throw them out and replace them with an equitable socialist system.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2025/ ... lionaires/

The similarities of this and the libertarian plundering of the USSR are too great to ignore.

******

Donald Trump’s eventful day at the Club World Cup final: Being booed, celebrating with Chelsea and a winner’s medal
By Ben Morse, CNN
Updated 8:14 AM EDT, Mon July 14, 2025


There appeared to be some confusion among Chelsea players during their trophy celebrations when President Donald Trump remained on stage. Buda Mendes/Getty Images
CNN
—
While Chelsea stole the show on the pitch in a masterful showing against Paris Saint-Germain, President Donald Trump was arguably the center of attention at the FIFA Club World Cup final on Sunday.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump were at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to witness the Blues’ dominant performance against PSG, as two goals from Cole Palmer and one from new addition João Pedro gave Chelsea a 3-0 victory to become the inaugural winners of the newly formatted competition.

But for Trump, it was an eventful afternoon from his very first appearance in front of fans.

He and the first lady were cheered upon their arrival at MetLife Stadium, but when he was shown on the video screens during the pre-game national anthem, Trump received a scattering of boos. He was booed again later on after the game, when he was presenting medals on the field to players alongside FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

But a hostile reception from some in attendance wasn’t the end of things for the 79-year-old, who was routinely shown on the TV coverage of the game sitting alongside Infantino.

CNN reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi attended as she is under pressure over the release of a memo about accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was also spotted in the suite by the pool camera following the president and the Associated Press reported Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, NFL legend Tom Brady and media mogul Rupert Murdoch all joined the president as well.


Trump recieved a mixed reaction from fans during the Club World Cup final at MetLife Stadium. Alex Grimm/Getty Images

Having handed the winner’s trophy to Chelsea captain Reece James with Infantino, Trump remained on stage while the FIFA boss departed. There appeared to be some confusion among the Chelsea players as to whether they should wait for Trump to leave before proceeding with the ceremonial trophy lift.

But after a few moments, Chelsea goalkeeper Robert Sánchez – standing on the other side of Trump – motioned for James to go ahead with Trump standing center stage.

It led to the unusual image of the Chelsea squad celebrating its tournament victory with the US president squarely in the middle of it all.

Afterward, the Chelsea players expressed their bewilderment about Trump’s presence on stage. Typically in soccer, the trophy lift is for the players and staff of the winning team.

“I knew he was going to be here, but I didn’t know he was going to be on the stand when we lifted the trophy, so I was a bit confused,” said Palmer, who was named the player of the tournament.

James added: “Before they told me that he was going to present the trophy and exit the stage. I thought he was going to exit the stage, but he wanted to stay.”

There was confusion on social media as well as videos appeared to show Infantino giving Trump a winner’s medal.

CNN Sports has contacted FIFA to ask whether Trump was specifically given a medal by the body and to whether he was meant to be on stage during the trophy lift.

“It was an upset today, I guess,” Trump told reporters after flying back to Washington following Chelsea’s victory, per AP. “But it was a great match.”

It was a unique ending to a unique tournament, one that saw games played in scorching heat, matches delayed for thunderstorms and teams from across the globe congregate to compete against one another.

The final – contrary to other big soccer matches – had the customary razzle-dazzle that comes with an American sporting event through a halftime performance, with British rock band Coldplay making a surprise cameo performance alongside J Balvin, Doja Cat, Tems, and Emmanuel Kelly.

With the World Cup being played in the US, Canada and Mexico in less than 12 months, things could get even bigger and more unusual than normal.

https://us.cnn.com/2025/07/14/sport/don ... ea-psg-spt

Just when you thought that Trump couldn't be more boorish or obnoxious...

[blindpig]

50 day ultimatum
July 15, 12:59



Russia has officially and effectively ignored Trump's "50-day ultimatum."

1. The strikes on Ukraine continued as before.
2. Russia does not refuse to negotiate, but only taking into account the recognition of the realities on the ground.
3. In response to the statements of the program "17 Patriot complexes", 2 German Iris-T air defense systems were taken out tonight.
4. As it turned out, some of the complexes announced by Trump will arrive only in a few months.
5. China and India also showed no intention of fulfilling Trump's demands.
6. At the same time, Trump's 30% tariff against the EU will come into force on August 1, and the bill on sanctions against the Russian Federation in the US Congress has been canceled.
7. In general, nothing is changing for the Russian Federation now, it is necessary to continue to advance, occupying new territories, "improving the negotiating background".

P.S. Spoiler - the war will not end in 50 days.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9956052.html

******

Gaslighting: Trump, Epstein, and Soros
Posted by Internationalist 360° on July 13, 2025
Kim Petersen

Gaslighting illustration concept with two hands with tangled string over someone's head

The Donald Trump administration has been continuously gaslighting the American people. The examples are myriad. Let’s begin with the tariffs. The United States has imposed them on nearly every country. Ukraine has managed to escape being issued a tariff, so far. Israel, though, has not escaped a proposed 17% Trump tariff, which is bizarre since Israel over the years has been the number one recipient of US aid. It is putting money in one pocket while removing money from the other pocket. Such is the lunacy of Trump’s tariffs that they are even applied to penguins. The amount of the tariffs and the dates for implementation have been in constant flux. Trump and his team insist that the exporting countries will pay the tariffs. That works when the US is the only market for one’s exports.

Second, Trump kept saying no more wars. He would be the man who’d end the special military operation by Russia in Ukraine in 24 hours. He’d stop sending weapons to Ukraine. That supplying of weapons adduces US involvement in a proxy war, as it was under Joe Biden, and continues to be under Trump. Then Trump allied with Israel against Palestinians, exposing his hypocrisy. Trump would often whine about how grief-stricken he is about the killing of people in the fighting between Russia and Ukraine. Yet, he takes a decidedly different stance on the killing of Palestinians by Israeli Jews. The Palestinians need to be expunged from the territory to erect a riviera on the beaches of Gaza. And then the “peace president” launched an aggression against Iraq. And let’s not forget that Ansar Allah sent the ill-fated US navy away from the waters near Yemen.

To put absurdity over the top, the genocidaire Benjamin Netanyahu has nominated the warmaking Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, a prize he has long pined for. Forthrightly or not, Trump downplays his chances of winning the Nobel recognition he covets: “It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me.”

Third, Trump has promised repeatedly to release all the JFK documents, the RFK documents, and the Epstein documents. Trump only made a partial release of the JFK files, many heavily redacted, during Trump 1. He promised the rest would be forthcoming. No release has occurred at the time of this writing during Trump 2. In the latest bit of gaslighting, the public is expected to believe that there are no Epstein files. Apparently, the associates of Epstein can now relax and breathe much easier. As to what became of Epstein videos, files, notes, it leads to a suspicion. There is a high likelihood that this escaping the gun also applies to Trump who had a relationship with the deceased financier Epstein. Equally oleaginous is the poor quality video of Epstein’s cell that has a missing one-minute. In other words, much of the documentation to imprison Epstein is missing, and the same goes for his imprisoned partner in recruiting underage females, Ghislaine Maxwell. Much of the evidence to put her behind bars is now deemed non-existent.

Trump is relying on his bluster (i.e., lies) to confuse Americans — in particular, his MAGA base. The media is on notice that it will be ridiculed for asking questions about Epstein. Said Trump who interjected himself to a question posed by a reporter to attorney general Pam Bondi:

Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? Been talked about for years. You’re asking, we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things, and are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.

However, the gaslighting surrounding the Epstein sex trafficking ring has caused rumblings among some of the MAGA people.
A photograph of a red pill in someone's left palm and a blue pill in his right palmSuch is the power of gaslighting that if some people are told something often enough, even when there is powerful evidence to the contrary, that the gaslighter can confuse the gaslit people. The media and fact checkers have been playing a big role in this.

In a 16 August 2024 essay, professor T.P. Wilkinson wrote:

“George Soros, who by his own public admission already enriched himself at the age of 14 with the help of Nazi occupiers of his native Hungary.”

He had not provided substantiation for this claim, so I asked. He said that he had cited his source in a previous article. Indeed, he had done this in his essay “The Health which I See is Disease (… if the Hierarchical Church so Defines)” on 5 March 2021.

This led me to a 1998 60 Minutes interview, where Georg Soros openly admits that as a 14-year-old boy he helped Nazis dispossess Jews of their property. It is crystal clear in the video and undeniable. But the mass media has seemingly built up a huge wall of gaslighting around Soros ever having worked for the Nazis against fellow Jews.

Wilkinson does not mince words, George Soros is a serial murderer.

Yet, there are a plethora of refutations of Soros having worked for the Nazis. These charges against Soros can be fought through gaslighting or orchestrated whitewashing. Yet, despite the concrete evidence of the video interview, it is the videotaped words of Soros versus the words that gaslighters use to frame the admission of Soros.

For example, Reuters sets up a strawman. It does not deal with the criticism that Soros helped dispossess Jews of their property for the Nazis. It deflects by stating that Soros was not a Nazi. So Soros wasn’t a card-carrying member of the National Socialist Party of Deutschland. But there is a well known refrain about ducks. If Soros quacks like a Nazi and behaves like a Nazi, ergo he must be a Nazi.

Newsweek even denies in its fact check that Soros assisted the dispossession of Jewish property for the Nazis. Perplexing. In other words, either Newsweek is lying or it is calling Soros a liar.

The Independent writes:

Of all the conspiracy theories spun around the 87-year-old [soon to be 95-year-old] Jewish billionaire George Soros – that he is the “puppet master” of all liberals, that he owns Black Lives Matter, that he is secretly building a new world order – the most demonstrably insane may be the claim that he was a Nazi.

That is: That the 14-year-old boy who had to hide from his own government during the German occupation of Hungary was a war criminal who sent his own people to gas chambers.

*****

Nowadays, given the proliferation of the internet and the reposting and archiving of e-information, it is nigh impossible to remove regrettable words from the information universe.

If Soros regrets his admission, how then should he elude his own words? When you are a billionaire, you can build your own media empire and gaslight. The Soros Economic Development Fund says:

We invest in critical media companies to foster their growth and safeguard their editorial independence. This work helps to promote freedom of expression and dissent, the fight against disinformation, and the imperative to develop new business models as cornerstones of democracy.

Sounds impressive. However, Xinhua reports on a study conducted by Media Research Center Business:

Soros spent hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in bribes to build his own “network of media ties” so as to manipulate public opinion, U.S. media said.

Is this how Soros manages to use his deep pockets to influence all these media (including, apparently, the Reuters fact check) to deny what he said during his 60 Minutes interview?

I lived in Hungary for two years, so of course, I had heard of Soros and his financial corruption. Reuters did not hide Soros’s shady business practices, headlining “Hungary court confirms $2.5 mln fine on Soros fund,” and reporting, “New York-based Soros Fund Management LLC will have to pay a fine of 489 million forints ($2.5 million) for unlawful trades in shares of OTP Bank.”

Before I had ever ventured to Hungary, I had worked as a dive instructor in the Maldives. At the resort restaurant, I once engaged in conversation with a businessman who worked for a company buying bad debt from companies going under. During our conversation, I brought up Georg Soros. He expressed surprise that a random dive instructor knew who Soros was and asked how I knew this?

My terse reply: “I read.”

However, reading, per se, is insufficient. It may even be harmful. Gaining knowledge is not simply comprehending what one reads. The source of the information, what questions are raised about what is written, analyzing the evidence, and the ability to rationally consider the information is vital to coming to a reasoned conclusion. This is especially important given the widespread gaslighting and disinformation. It is imperative that readers and viewers regard information with open-minded skepticism.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2025/07/ ... and-soros/

******

Trump’s “Major Statement” On Russia Is A Clumsy Attempt To Thread The Needle
Andrew Korybko
Jul 15, 2025



His threatened secondary sanctions could majorly backfire by harming the US’ own interests.

The “major statement” on Russia that Trump earlier hyped up turned out to be a clumsy attempt to thread the needle between radically escalating US involvement in the Ukrainian Conflict and walking away from it. His new three-pronged approach includes: 1) the rapid dispatch of up to 17 Patriot missile systems to Ukraine; 2) more arms sales to NATO countries who’ll in turn transfer them to Ukraine; and 3) up to 100% secondary sanctions on Russia’s trading partners if a peace deal isn’t reached in 50 days.

In the order that they were mentioned, each corresponding move is aimed at: 1) bolstering Ukraine’s air defenses in order to decelerate the pace of Russia’s continual on-the-ground gains; 2) helping Ukraine reconquer some of its lost land; and 3) coercing China and India into pressuring Russia into a ceasefire. The first two goals are self-explanatory, with the second being unrealistic given the failure of Ukraine’s much more heavily armed counteroffensive in summer 2023, while the third requires some elaboration.

China and India’s large-scale imports of discounted Russian oil have served as crucial valves from Western sanctions pressure by helping to stabilize the ruble and thus Russia’s economy in general. Even though these imports also help their own economies, Trump is wagering that they’ll at the very least curtail them in order to avoid his threatened 100% secondary sanctions. He might make an exception for the Europeans and Turks, who also purchase Russian resources, on the pretext of them arming Ukraine.

By focusing on Russia’s two largest energy importers, Trump is trying to greatly reduce the budgetary revenue that the Kremlin receives from these sales while sowing further divisions within the RIC core of BRICS and the SCO, expecting as he is that at least China or India will partially comply at minimum. Prior to his deadline, he envisages that their leaders – who are years-long close friends with Putin – will try to pressure him into the ceasefire that the West wants, though it’s unknown whether they’d succeed.

In any case, Trump is poised to place himself in a dilemma entirely of his own making if one of them doesn’t comply with his demand to stop trading with Russia, or if one or both only do so in part. He’d either have to delay the imposition of his threatened 100% secondary sanctions on all their imports, lower the level, or reduce the scale to only apply to their companies that still trade with Russia otherwise there could be serious blowback, especially if China is the one that doesn’t fully comply.

His preliminary trade agreement with China, which he described in early May as a “total reset” in their ties, could collapse and thus raise prices across the board for Americans. As regards India, their ongoing trade talks could collapse too, which could create an opening for advancing the nascent Sino-Indo rapprochement whose existence was cautiously confirmed by its top diplomat on Monday. Each case of blowback, let alone both of them at the same time, could be very detrimental to American interests.

Trump’s attempt to thread the needle therefore isn’t just clumsy, but it could also majorly backfire, thus raising the question of why he agreed to do so. It looks like he was misled into thinking that Putin would agree to a ceasefire that doesn’t resolve the root security-related causes of the conflict in exchange for a resource-centric strategic partnership. When Putin declined, Trump took it personally and imagined that Putin was playing him, which led to Trump’s advisors manipulating him into this escalation as vengeance.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/trumps-m ... -on-russia

(Oh my, the king has evil advisors... Please see John Helmer on Trump's mental state.)

*****

Message to Trump: Incompetence Is Not Virtue. Also, People Will Die
Posted on July 15, 2025 by Yves Smith

Yves here. This short Dean Baker post says even more than he intends. Why has there not been more uproar about the jokes masquerading as administrators that Trump has installed in the Cabinet and other top posts? Because, as we and others (particularly Aurelien) basic managerial “put one foot in front of the other” skills have been catastrophic decline over the last two decades. I am stunned to now look somewhat charitably upon the likes of Hank Paulson, Timothy Geithner, and Ben Bernanke in the runup to and after the financial crisis. Even though they flailed about and sought only to address proximate problems so as to preserve a rotting status quo, they did so with some appreciation of what they were up against and so eventually were able to stumble their way through to an end-state that worked for them. We have nothing like even that limited level of skill operating anywhere at senior levels.

And why has that become acceptable? The only thing I can fathom is fear in the ranks of the press and the business community. I recall having readers say during Brexit that the business community held back from expressing their considerable, fact-based reservations about the way Brexit was evolving into the hardest form possible out of fear of retaliation by the Government. The press has also become cowardly. The Conversation has a new article, ABC’s and CBS’s settlements with Trump are a dangerous step toward the commander in chief becoming the editor-in-chief, which details how both networks capitulated to Trump suits when the odds of them prevailing in court was very high. The piece also points out how past Presidents tried to muscle the media and got less far. A lesson here is that the press is more than ever run like a business and not with a sense of editorial mission, which would result in relishing fights with power where the publisher has a winning case. The press that published the Pentagon Papers is long dead. And that is a big driver in the rise and continued failing upward of abject mediocrities like Keir Starmer and Kamala Harris. The Trump team does represent a ratchet down, but it’s on an established trajectory.

And as readers will also appreciate, “People will die” is a feature, not a bug, per Lambert’s second rule of neoliberalism.

By Dean Baker, the co-founder and the senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of several books, including “Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better bargain for Working People,” “The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive,” “The United States Since 1980,” “Social Security: The Phony Crisis” (with Mark Weisbrot), and “The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.” Originally published at Beat the Press; cross posted from Common Dreams

We all know and expect that a president’s top appointees are picked in large part because of their willingness to carry out a president’s agenda. But usually these are people with some experience in the areas that they are overseeing. Insofar as this is not the case, they can generally rely on the high-level career officials in the departments or agencies under their control to make sure that necessary tasks get accomplished.

Unfortunately, this is not the case now. The main and possibly only qualification for Trump’s top appointees is the ability to tell blatant lies with a straight face. He has picked people who not only have no background in the areas they oversee, they don’t even have the most basic understanding of their responsibilities. And in many cases they have fired or marginalized the career people with expertise.

Starting at the top, Trump picked a former Fox talk show host with a drinking problem, Pete Hegseth, to be his Secretary of Defense. Secretary Hegseth apparently didn’t know that he shouldn’t be making war plans on unsecured channels and without knowing who was included in the conversations. He apparently also didn’t know that his wife should not be included in the discussions.

Hundreds of people just died in Texas because of this failure, and we are virtually certain to see far worse in the future.

Trump has a Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who claims he doesn’t know that tariffs (import taxes) are taxes. Since tariffs are among the oldest form of taxes, long predating the income tax, this is a pretty elementary point that a Treasury Secretary would be expected to know.

Kristi Noem, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, didn’t know what habeas corpus is. Since that is basic right guaranteed by the Constitution, it would be rather important for the person controlling the largest federal police force to be familiar with the concept.

While knowledge of their areas may not be a strong point for top Trump officials, lying in front of TV cameras is an area of real expertise. We see this constantly.

We just saw Attorney General Pam Bondi tell us that there is no Jeffrey Epstein client list. This was after telling us back in February that the list was sitting on her desk and promising that it was soon to be released.

After Trump released his “Liberation Day” tariffs, which included a steep tariff on the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick insisted this was not a mistake and an indication of a rushed job. Instead, he said the tariffs were necessary to prevent transshipment from other countries to escape the taxes Trump was imposing.

This is obviously an absurd claim since there were many uninhabited islands that escaped taxation. In addition, while the problem of transshipment to avoid tariffs is real, it is not one that can be solved by putting a tariff on imports from islands inhabited by penguins and seals.

China and other countries whose exports are subject to high tariffs can and will ship them through countries that face much lower import taxes. If our customs agents can’t recognize that we are not actually importing cars and television sets from uninhabited islands, they surely will not be able to detect that the goods coming from Thailand or Indonesia were actually manufactured in China.

Trump appointees do have a remarkable ability to lie. RFK Jr. can tell us that discouraging people from getting the measles vaccines has nothing to do with the largest measles outbreak in decades. They all tell us that we can reduce Medicaid spending by $800 billion over the decade (roughly 10 percent), without throwing anyone off the program. And former DOGE boss Elon Musk told us 20 million dead people were getting Social Security benefits.

But it seems that none of them can do their jobs, and since they have fired or sidelined most of the high- level civil servants with expertise, these jobs are not getting done. Hundreds of people just died in Texas because of this failure, and we are virtually certain to see far worse in the future. As much as Trump might insist otherwise, incompetence is not a virtue.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/07 ... l-die.html

Trump doesn't care about anyone but himself and maybe, possibly his immediate family.

[blindpig]

Trump urges Kiev to ‘make Russia feel the pain’: Report

The US president has announced new weapons deliveries to Ukraine and has given Russia a 50-day deadline to make a deal

News Desk

JUL 15, 2025


(Photo credit: NBC News)

US President Donald Trump has encouraged his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to launch strikes deep in Russian territory, even asking him if he could attack Moscow if provided with long-range missiles by Washington, according to sources cited by the Financial Times (FT) on 15 July.

The conversation took place during a 4 July phone call between US and Ukrainian officials, the sources said.

“Volodymyr, can you hit Moscow? … Can you hit St. Petersburg too?” Trump was cited as asking the Ukrainian president.

“Absolutely. We can if you give us the weapons,” Zelensky reportedly responded.

According to the report, Trump signaled his support for such a strategy, which would aim to “make them [Russians] feel the pain” and force Moscow back to negotiations.

A western official briefed on the phone call said the conversation reflected a desire by Ukraine’s allies in the west to supply long-range weapons capable of “bringing the war to Muscovites.”

This sentiment has recently been “echoed privately” by US officials. Zelensky and the White House have not responded to requests for comment.

“The discussion between Trump and Zelensky led to a list of potential weapons for Kiev being shared by the US side with the Ukrainian president in Rome last week,” three sources told FT.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that new weapons deliveries to Ukraine announced recently by Trump may include the long-range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS).

The report noted that Trump did not mention whether the military aid might also include permission to use new and powerful offensive weapons.

An informed source told the outlet that Trump is prepared to authorize the use of 18 long-range ATACMS missiles by Ukraine, at their full range of 300 kilometers.

While ATACMS cannot reach Moscow or St. Petersburg, they are capable of hitting bases, airfields, and weapons depots deep inside Russian territory.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on 15 July that “decisions made in Washington, in [other] NATO countries, and in Brussels itself are interpreted by the Ukrainian side not as a signal for peace but a signal for continuing the war.”

Trump announced on Monday a series of steps aimed at pressuring Moscow to end the war with Ukraine. This includes “massive” supplies of US weapons and assistance, among them Patriot air defense systems.

He also issued a 50-day deadline for a deal to be made, after which he would impose 100 percent tariffs on Russia.

“We’re going to be doing secondary tariffs. If we don’t have a deal in 50 days, it’s very simple, and they’ll be at 100 percent.”

The announcement was described as a dramatic shift in policy by Trump, who has styled himself as an anti-war president.

The US and Russia held talks in Saudi Arabia in March this year, agreeing to establish a path to ending the conflict.

Since then, however, Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russia. In early June, Ukrainian drones struck dozens of Russian fighter jets in Siberia.

In recent days, Russia has also launched record numbers of drones and missiles at Ukraine.

Peskov said on Monday that Russia was still “waiting for proposals from the Ukrainian side on the timing of the third round of direct Russian–Ukrainian negotiations."

Two rounds of talks between Moscow and Kiev that took place in Turkiye in recent months have failed to result in a breakthrough.

https://thecradle.co/articles/trump-urg ... ain-report

******

Sure, He Merely "Asked".

Now there is a bit of conundrum for Donnie.

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump asked Volodymyr Zelenskiy whether Ukraine could strike Moscow, an inquiry that the White House says was merely a question but one that came hours after he voiced frustration at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to accept a ceasefire in the war. During a July 4 phone call with the Ukrainian president, Trump quizzed Zelenskiy about whether Ukraine could hit the Russian capital and St. Petersburg if given US long-range weapons, according to a person briefed about the conversation. Zelenskiy replied that it could if the US provided the weapons, the person said. Asked about the details of the call, which were first reported by The Financial Times, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “President Trump was merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing. He’s working tirelessly to stop the killing and end this war.”

I wonder what does this situation remind me of? Hm? Ah, yes, the handling of Epstein files--nothing to see here, folks--move along, move along. But if Trump didn't know that the only way 404 can TRY to hit Moscow (a dubious proposition, considering Moscow's AD) ONLY if the US provides say JASSM-ERs with 1,000 km range. There is so much to unpack here. Imagine a neighbor going to find a hitman and "merely" asking if he can kill you? Nah, just the neighbor is just asking, no hard feelings. BTW, how much is to off somebody? Again, just asking, nothing to it. And no, Karoline, Trump doesn't know what real work is or what does it mean to be a statesman. He doesn't care about "killing".

(more...)

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/07 ... asked.html

******

Here’s How Trump Was Manipulated Into Mission Creep
Andrew Korybko
Jul 16, 2025



Zelensky, anti-Russian US hawks, Melania, and the Mainstream Media each exploited in their own way his false expectation that Putin would agree to a ceasefire-partnership deal.

Many are struggling to make sense of Trump’s decision to clumsily thread the needle between radically escalating US involvement in the Ukrainian Conflict and walking away from it. The preceding hyperlinked analysis concluded that he was manipulated into this by his advisors, who exploited his false expectation that Putin would agree to a ceasefire that doesn’t resolve the root security-related causes of the conflict in exchange for a resource-centric strategic partnership. This observation will now be elaborated upon.

Trump campaigned on the promise of ending the Ukrainian Conflict “on day one”, which he later admitted was an “exaggeration”. He claimed that his friendship with Putin and keen dealmaking skills would easily bring this about. In pursuit of that end, Trump tried sweet-talking Putin by blaming the conflict on Biden and Zelensky, lending credence to Russia’s claims that Ukraine’s NATO aspirations posed a threat to its security, and promising that “Crimea will stay with Russia” once the conflict ends.

To further sweeten his proposal for an unconditional ceasefire that would essentially freeze the conflict along the Line of Contact, Trump also suggested a resource-centric strategic partnership with Russia. For his part, Putin suggested the same, albeit with the intent of encouraging Trump to coerce Zelensky into Russia’s demanded concessions for peace. Nothing was ultimately achieved due to the resultant deadlock, which Trump apparently took personally, thus making him susceptible to manipulation.

After spring’s US-Ukrainian minerals deal was signed, Zelensky began more loudly talking about his earlier interest in an unconditional ceasefire, which influenced Trump into thinking that Putin is the only obstacle to peace due to the ceasefire conditions that the Russian leader demanded in June 2024. Trump had already speculated that Putin is “tapping [him] along” so Zelensky’s rhetorical reversal from pledging to fight till Russia’s strategic defeat to calling for an unconditional ceasefire was timely and strategic.

It wasn’t just Zelensky whispering in Trump’s ear that Putin was playing him but also anti-Russian hawks like Lindsey Graham and even his own wife Melania, who Trump revealed on Monday would challenge his claim of “wonderful” calls with Putin by pointing out that Russia was still bombing Ukraine. In parallel with this, the Mainstream Media claimed that Putin was “humiliating” Trump, which aimed to take advantage of his pride and desire for praise from his critics alike to push him into mission creep.

Trump’s mercantile opportunism then likely put any remaining doubts to rest about the perceived need to (clumsily) thread the needle after NATO agreed to pay full price for American weapons that it would then send to Ukraine as a means of limiting the US’ direct involvement in the conflict. From his perspective, Europe would bear the costs of further escalation and even the consequences if everything spirals out of control, thus making his new three-pronged approach to the conflict a no-brainer.

Trump was therefore manipulated into mission creep by Zelensky, anti-Russian US hawks, Melania, and the Mainstream Media each exploiting in their own way his false expectation that Putin would agree to a ceasefire-partnership deal. NATO then took advantage of his mercantile opportunism to agree to pay full price for US arms that they’ll send to Kiev. For as disappointing as this is for many, including Russian policymakers, the silver lining is that he’s still reluctant to radically escalate the US’ direct involvement.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/heres-ho ... lated-into

The poor baby...Indeed, he has been referred to as a 'man child', and that lead photo certainly looks like one. Fact is he believed his own bullshit and when that was frustrated he has slipped into tantrum mode. This will happen when you're nuts.

Give him a quart jar of Prozac and Gorilla TV and he'll be fine.))

These commentators who think Trump is sane or even playing '5 dimensional chess' oughta have their keyboards revoked.

******

U.S. hubris-driven blunders transform the entire complexion of the wider war

Alastair Crooke

July 15, 2025

Trump continues to be seized by the delusional view that his Israeli-centred vision could all be accomplished merely by ending the genocide in Gaza.

The big issue emerging from the U.S.’ 22 June strike on Iran – second only to ‘wither Iran?’ – is whether in Trump’s calculus he can ‘rhetorically impose’ the having “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme claim long enough to both restrain Israel from hitting Iran again, yet still allow Trump to pursue his show-stopper headline, ‘WE WON: I’m in charge now and everybody is going to do what I tell them’.

These were the key conflicting issues that were to be hammered out with Netanyahu during his White House visit this week. Netanyahu’s interests essentially are for ‘more hot war’, and thus differ from the Trump ceasefire general stratagem.

Implicit in his ‘In-Boom-Out & Ceasefire’ Iran approach is that Trump may imagine he has created the space to resume his primary objective – that of instituting a broader Israeli-centric order across the Middle East, devolving upon trade deals, economic ties, investment and connectivity, to create a business-led West Asia, centred on Tel Aviv (with Trump as its de facto ‘President’).

And, via this ‘Business Super Highway’, to strike further beyond – with the Gulf States penetrating into BRICS’ south Asian heartland to disrupt BRICS connectivity and corridors.

The sine qua non for any jumpstart to a putative ‘Abraham Accords 2.0 of course – as Trump clearly understands – is an end to the Gaza War; the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza; and the Strip’s re-construction (none of which seems to be in realistic reach).

What emerges rather, is that Trump continues to be seized by the delusional view that his Israeli-centred vision could all be accomplished merely by ending the genocide in Gaza, but with the world watching aghast as Israel continues on a hegemonic military rampage across the region.

The most obvious flaw to the Trump premise is that a chastened Iran somehow has been achieved by Israeli and American strikes. It is the opposite. Iran has arisen more unified, resolute and defiant. Far from being relegated to watching passively from the sidelines, Iran now – in the wake of recent events – resumes its place as a leading regional power. One that is readying a possibly game-changing military riposte to any further strikes by either Israel or the U.S.

What is ignored in all these western claims of Israeli success, is that Israel chose to bet all on a surprise ‘shock and awe’ strike. One that would overturn the Islamic Republic at a stroke. It didn’t work: the strategic objective failed, and it produced the opposite outcome. But the more fundamental point is that the techniques used by Israel – that required months, if not years of preparation – cannot just be repeated again now that their stratagems have been fully exposed.

This White House misreading of the Iran reality signals that the Trump Team allowed themselves to be deceived by Israeli hubris in insisting that Iran was a house-of-cards, primed to collapse completely into paralysis upon the first taste of the Israeli sneak decapitation ‘muscle’ on 13 June.

This was a fundamental error – in a pattern of similar errors: That China would capitulate to the threat of imposed tariffs; that Russia could be coerced into a ceasefire against its interests; and that Iran would be ready to sign an unconditional surrender document in the face of Trump’s threats post-22 June.

What these U.S. blunders speak to – apart from a consistent divorce from geo-political realities – is western weakness masked behind hubris and bluster. The U.S. Establishment clings to its fading primacy; but in doing it so ineffectually, it has instead accelerated the formation of a potent geo-strategic alliance intent on defying the U.S.

The consequence has been the wake up call to other States occasioned by the western slide towards stratagems of outright lies and deceit: The ‘Spider Web’ operation against the Russian strategic bomber fleet on the eve of the Istanbul talks and the U.S.-Israeli sneak attack on Iran two days before the expected next round of U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks, have increased the will-to-resist by China, Russian and Iran particularly, but more generally it is felt across the Global South.

The entire complexion of this war to retain America’s dollar primacy has been irreversibly altered.

All are ‘on guard’ as they see evidence that, with the expectation of NATO’s defeat in Ukraine, the West is ramping up the new Cold War on many fronts: in the Baltic Sea; the Caucasus; the Iran periphery (via cyber attack), and of course via escalated financial war across the board. Trump is again threatening to sanction Iran and any State purchasing its oil. On Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would impose a new 10% tariff on “any country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS”.

Naturally, States are preparing against this escalation. Tensions are rising everywhere.

Azerbaijan (and even Armenia) are being weaponised against Russia and Iran by NATO powers and Turkey. Azerbaijan was used to facilitate Israeli drones launched into Iran, and its airspace was used too by Israeli aircraft to circle into the Caspian Sea in order for Israel to launch stand-off cruise missiles from Azeri airspace over the Caspian Sea at Tehran.

Iraqi Kurdistan, Kazakhstan and the Baluchi borderlands have been used as platforms to infiltrate sabotage units into both Russia and Iran to pre-position missiles and drones and sabotage units for asymmetric warfare.

On the other flank of this escalating war, Trump is racing to land a string of ‘trade’ agreements across the Pacific, including with Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. The aim being to build ‘a cage’ of special higher tariffs around China’s ability to use ‘trans-shipments’ – that is goods imported into other States from China, which are then re-exported to America.

The U.S. set the precedent via Vietnam, with a 40% tariff on trans-shipments that is precisely double the 20% levy on Vietnamese-made goods.

Except that Trump’s ‘shock and awe’ strategy of imposing tariffs to regain industrial activity and to keep the rest of the world subject to dollar hegemony is not working: First Trump was forced to announce a 90-day moratorium on Liberation Day Tariffs in the hope that 90 deals would be struck in the interim – yet only three ‘framework agreements’ were settled. So the Administration is now forced to extend the moratorium yet again (to 1 August). Bessent, U.S. Treasury Secretary, has said that many of the 90 states originally tariffed did not even try to contact the U.S. to work out a deal

The ability to financially punish people for not doing what the U.S. says is drawing to a close. The alternative to the dollar network exists. And it is not a ‘new reserve currency’.

The alternative is the solution envisaged by China: a fusion of Fintech retail payment platforms with banking and Central Banking digital frameworks, based on block-chain and other digital technologies. (The U.S. cannot replicate this approach – as Silicon Valley and Wall Street are at war with each other, and won’t co-operate).

As Will Schryver noted wryly a couple of years ago —

“The empire’s seemingly endless string of hubris-driven blunders has rapidly accelerated the formation of what is quite arguably the single most potent military / economic / geostrategic alliance seen in modern times: the tripartite axis of Russia, China, and Iran …

“It has astoundingly managed to jump from the frying pan of a regional proxy war against Russia into the fire of a global conflict that all three of its steadily strengthening adversaries now view as existential”.

“In my considered opinion, this is almost certainly the single most inexplicable and portentous series of geopolitical blunders in recorded history”.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/ ... wider-war/

******

Don’t point fingers. Don’t ask evil questions.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence 16 Jul 2025


Workers install a permanent Alligator Alcatraz sign. The facility is within the Florida Everglades, 36 miles west of the central business district of Miami, in Collier County, Florida. , Florida, on Thursday, July 3, 2025. AL DIAZ

This was a one in One Hundred Year Event!
One in Five-Hundred Year Event!
One in One Thousand Year Event—
Biggest, baddest— worst-est ever!

This was a one in One Hundred Year Event!
One in Five-Hundred Year Event!
One in One Thousand Year Event—
All we can do is prey—and Drill, baby drill!

In the Lone Star State, mass casualty events are
Football games. Games played for fossil fuels—sudden death
Over … time as droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes,
Flash floods chant dire warnings, “We will, we will, rock you!”

In the Lone Star State, mass casualty events are
Football games. And our children are 5th round draft choices—
Cut—or carted off fields so sponsors’ and owners’ overstuffed
Pockets stay as swollen as Guadalupe River banks

But you’ll be fine. Be grate again— when your
Children get to Heaven. No tariffs in heaven! Get on
With your lives! Go out and get Crypto— And get on
With your lives! Get Bitcoin— And get on with your lives!

Don’t ask evil questions. Don’t point fingers! Your children
Are in a better place. Price of eggs won’t be half as high in
Heaven! Go out and get some Crypto— And get on with
Your lives! Get Bitcoin— And get on with your lives!

Don’t point fingers! Don’t ask evil questions. Of course we’re
First Responders. Responding First, Populate “Alligator Alcatraz;”
Responding First, Big Beautiful Bill the 99%; DOGE— FEMA,
NOAA and DEI—fire anyone Black, competent, or rocking seniority.

Responding First, Meddle in Mexico; Rename The Gulf of Mexico.
Monkey with Canada as 51st state. Strong-arm Panamanians over
Their canal. Gangster Greenland; Bully Brazil over
Internal matters; And ship shackled Venezuelans to El Salvador.

Responding First, partner killing Palestinians. Bomb Yemen.
Strike Somalia. Incite suicidal trade war with China—Ride
Wall Street’s bull— like a tariff roll-a-coaster. Terrorize Chicago
Children; Mess with LA’s mayor; Wreck Cali’s Economy!

Don’t point fingers! Don’t ask evil questions.
All we can do is weigh on you—
Prey on you. All we can do is
Pray for you—We can’t pay for you!+

https://blackagendareport.com/dont-poin ... -questions

******

It was not possible to make peace
July 16, 17:14



House Speaker Johnson said that Trump and Musk's reconciliation never happened. He acted as a mediator, trying to achieve at least a partial end to the conflict, but Musk changed his phone number and did not answer his calls. In general, the rift has not gone away, they just dampened the open manifestations of the conflict, such as Trump's threats to check Musk's business and Musk's accusations against Trump in the context of the Epstein case.

In fact, this time the camp of Trump's closest supporters is falling apart even faster than in 2017. As last time, the neocons and the "tea party" will come to replace them (and some of them have already come).

P.S. I don't believe in Musk's "America" party at all. After the initial hype, the topic has clearly fizzled out.
P.S. Republicans in Congress have become a wall in the way of the publication of Epstein's files. The topic of "Kennedy assassination documents" has completely disappeared from the agenda.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9958315.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

THREE RATIONAL CALCULATIONS BY TRUMP’S MEN THAT THEY CAN WIN THEIR WAR AGAINST RUSSIA, OR ESCAPE VOTER BLAME IF THEY LOSE IT



By John Helmer, Moscow@bears_with

About President Donald Trump, certifiable maniac isn’t an expletive – it’s a clinical diagnosis.

In the neurological and psychiatric evidence that has been accumulating about Trump over many years, there is the medical history of Alzheimer’s Disease which runs in his family: his father was first diagnosed at age 86 and died at 93; his older sister died of it, aged 86; and at least one cousin died of the same, aged 84. Since the President has just turned 79, there is reason to anticipate similar onset of symptoms and cause of death for him.

Trump thinks this himself, according to Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist and the President’s niece. She has published a case history of the President in 2020 which Trump’s lawyers failed to suppress in court. Last week, she published a new symptom of what she calls the acceleration in Trump’s cognitive decline: he cannot tie his own shoe laces. This claim has already been pursued by online investigators who have been reporting Trump’s lace-ups which appear from the photographs to be tied permanently and a mysterious right shoe several sizes too large.

The evidence of Trump’s incapacity to understand the Russian end-of-war terms, as he expressed himself in the July 14 press session with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, was reported here.

Listen to the new evidence that Trump has failed to register the “new idea, new concept”, presented last week by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid; click.

When Trump and Rutte accuse President Vladimir Putin of failing to negotiate seriously, the record reveals the opposite. Negotiating on the Ukraine war with Trump is proving to be impossible because Trump isn’t serious. That’s not his political decision; it’s his neuro-psychiatric handicap.

“You really gave him [Putin] a chance to be serious to get to the table to start negotiations,” Rutte said to Trump on Monday. “Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio, we all try to help you. But you’ve now come to a point where you say, well, hey, you know, you have to — you have to get serious.” Trump agreed, replying: “We actually thought we had probably four times [agreed] the deal.” Five times over, Rutte repeated that the Russians aren’t serious. Trump repeated himself: “We’re going to go for a period of time. Maybe he’ll start negotiating. I think we felt, I felt, I don’t know about you Mark, but I felt that we had a deal about four times and here we are still talking about making a deal.”

Trump’s recall was that the terms of his deal had been accepted by Putin; he didn’t recall what Putin’s terms were. He is revealing he cannot comprehend the difference between the US and Russian negotiating positions; he hasn’t so much rejected the “new idea, new concept” from the Kremlin as not to have understood it. This isn’t Trump’s negotiating tactic – it’s cognitive incapacity camouflaged by the threat of force to compel Putin’s capitulation.

The first test of Trump’s rationality is the Mary Trump test – an Oval Office press conference in which Trump demonstrates how he ties his shoe laces.

The second test requires Russian counter force. This is the Oreshnik decision-making point for Putin, when there is no longer any point to negotiating because the US side aims at escalating its arms supplies to the Ukraine battlefield and encouraging the Germans to join in long-range missile attacks on the Russian hinterland, including Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In the Russian decision-making now under way, there is an attempt to find the rational calculations in what Trump is meaning; that is to say, what Trump’s advisors, constituents, and officials are calculating when he himself is incapacitated. The first of these, Russian sources believe, is that the Trump escalation is a pitch to prevent Trump’s domestic voter base, the MAGA enthusiasts in the battleground states which won the presidency for Trump last November, from deserting him.

The second calculation is that Russia is militarily and economically vulnerable to a combination of escalation of attacks inside Russia and sanctions on the oil trade outside. This is the strategy of the “bigger bear”, announced on CNN this week by former Trump and Biden Administration warfighter, Brett McGurk: “the Russians approach diplomacy as a bear approaches a dance. The bear knows it will determine when and how the dance ends, unless the other dance partner proves itself to be a bigger bear. Sometimes, it helps to be the bigger bear. In the context of Ukraine, like Syria, while the United States is a far more powerful country than Russia, Putin believes that he has the upper hand in such localized conflicts due to Moscow’s determination and consistency contrasted with Washington’s perceived lack of focus, stamina and shifting politics through election cycles. Correcting that perception is a first principle for effective diplomacy with Moscow, and the approach outlined by Trump yesterday offers the chance to do exactly that.”

The third rational calculation, Russian sources believe — as do some US analysts — is that by supplying the Ukraine battlefield through Germany, the UK and Norway with a combination of Patriot anti-aircraft defence batteries and long-range offence missile systems like the Typhon, the Trump Administration will escape having to face a US taxpayer revolt in Congress over the multi-billion dollar cost of direct US arms supplies to Kiev regime.

According to this scheme too, Trump would have an alibi if the Oreshnik decision is taken by Putin, and if the US weapons are defeated in the collapse of the Zelensky regime. Trump would blame the Germans, repeating his line: “don’t forget, I’ve just really been involved in this for not very long and it wasn’t initial focus. Again, this is a Biden war. This is a Democrat war, not a Republican or Trump war. This is a war that would have never happened.”

Follow the new podcast with Nima, broadcast on Wednesday afternoon.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1CLU29YbUA

On the voter test, the new US polls, both nationwide and in the election-tipping battleground states, are showing that voter disapproval of Trump’s performance hit a peak of 52.4% (national poll average) on May 1; approval was 45.3%; the negative gap was 7.1 percentage points. Since then approval has improved modestly and the gap has narrowed to 5 percentage points (pp).

It would not be irrational for Trump to be told, and for him to think, that he’s gaining in the polls. In Trump’s mind, this turns into aggression. He believes his attack on illegal immigrants is a major vote winner; the polls are showing higher nationwide approval and shorter negative gap of just 2.8 pp. On Trump’s foreign policy, however, the negative gap is 11.1 pp and on Israel’s war in Gaza, this is 7.4 pp; both measures indicate higher disapproval for Trump’s foreign war and peacemaking line than his overall performance rating.

On the key domestic issues, the gap is much more hostile towards Trump. On his economic performance, the negative gap is 11.6 pp; on inflation, the gap is 20.2 pp.

Trump’s response is to declare (and repeat) war on the Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell. “I think he’s terrible. I think he’s a total stiff…You talk to the guy, it’s like talking to a nothing. It’s like talking to a chair. No personality, no high intelligence, no nothing.”


Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/ ... val-rating Compared to Presidents Bush (2005) and Obama (2013) at the same stage of their terms, Trump’s current approval rating is no better -- fractionally lower than Bush’s and almost identical to Obama’s.

These are national poll indicators. In the battleground states, there is fresh evidence that the MAGA voters are losing trust in Trump. According to Newsweek’s poll summary reported on July 10, the President’s “approval rating has taken a hit in key battleground states he narrowly won in 2024…In Michigan, where Trump edged out a victory by 2 points in November, his approval rating is now slightly underwater: 48 percent of voters approve of his performance while 49 percent disapprove, putting him at a net -1. The drop is even sharper in Wisconsin, where Trump won by just 1 point in 2024 but now faces a 5-point deficit in approval. Just 46 percent of Wisconsin voters say they approve of the job he’s doing, while 51 percent disapprove. The polling raises doubts about Trump’s standing with the voters who helped deliver him a second term. If the trend continues, Democrats could regain ground they lost last cycle, reshaping the 2026 midterms and the broader balance of power heading into 2028.”

In an election technology, vote-counting analysis of these data, Trump is being told to double-down, and under no circumstances be seen to retreat. Accordingly, inside the Kremlin, where this technology is second nature, Trump’s profanities, insults towards Putin, and escalation of the war are played down. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov expresses this line in public. Replying to the reports of Trump’s recent threat to attack Moscow, Peskov said: “Such rhetoric has been circulating for quite a while. All this most often turns out to be fabricated, though sometimes serious [information] leaks appear, including in media outlets we used to consider highly reputable.”

Trump then retreated publicly himself. “He shouldn’t target Moscow,” he said hours after Kiev had leaked his telephone conversation with Vladimir Zelensky. “No, we’re not looking to do that.”

Q&A WITH TRUMP, AIRPORT PRESS GAGGLE, JULY 15, 2025


For full text, click on source: https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/tra ... y-15-2025/

In a second press gaggle two hours later, Trump also fell back to the line that if his new escalation moves fail, the Germans will be to blame, and the US will still profit financially from selling the weapons. “Question: Why do you think his [Putin] opinion will change in 50 days when it hasn’t over the last six months? Donald Trump: A lot of opinions change very rapidly. Might not be 50 days, might be much sooner than 50 days. Question: Well, to that end, when do you think the first Patriot missiles, some of these weapons that our allies supply — Donald Trump: They’re gonna, uh, they’re already being shipped. Question: From what countries? Donald Trump: They’re coming in from Germany, and then replaced by Germany. And in all cases, the United States gets paid back in full.”

At the Kremlin, Peskov announced that the only irrationality he can detect is not displayed by Trump but by the Europeans. “What we are observing so far is that the Europeans are displaying a completely aggressive militarist stance, declaring their intention to spend enormous funds to purchase weapons, to further provoke the continuation of war. Of course, it is very hard to predict anything amid such an emotional state, bordering on irrationality, which reigns on the European continent.”

Peskov added that President Putin is still hoping to postpone the Oreshnik decision. Responding to the weekend announcement by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius that the German-made Taurus missile will not be supplied to the Ukraine, Peskov said the Europeans “still have some sense of reason left. This is just business. The deliveries have continued all along, and no one ever stopped them. It’s simply a matter of who pays”.

On the possibility that Trump has decided to send US-made missile systems like the long-range Typhon through Germany or the UK to the Ukraine, for launching against Russia, Peskov said: “This topic remains high on the agenda. Of course, we are following all relevant reports closely.”

The Kremlin spokesman added the Oreshnik warning: “The nuclear doctrine remains in force, as do all its provisions.” This is Russian for — Don’t strike Russia’s nuclear missile bases, land, sea or air, or else.

Or else in Russian is Орешник (Oreshnik).

NOTE: The lead illustration is by Ed Wexler and was first published in 2019 by Cagle Cartoons.

https://johnhelmer.net/three-rational-c ... more-92085

******

Trump's Epstein Finale Puts Country at Critical Crossroads
Simplicius
Jul 17, 2025

Something very odd is happening with Trump and the Epstein case.

It’s a topic pundits have churned to mud and one I was not keen on wading into, owing to the general banality of it all. But at this point, with Trump’s increasingly cagey rhetoric, I can’t help but react to the ominous odor of his actions.



(Video at link.)

We’ll dispense with recounting the entire chronicle of Trump’s erstwhile Epstein interest juxtaposed against his abrupt about face—one that, some have noted, directly followed Netanyahu’s state visit.



And when I called the topic banal before, I meant only in the sense of how tedious the discussions had gotten, and how predictable it had become for most commentators to feel the need to insert their twopence into the fray.

I tried to resist the urge as long as possible—but things have come to a head. Contrary to its surface banality, the topic is actually of existential relevance. Because it dovetails with things which strike at the very heart of the rot eating away at America.

Trump’s apparent coverup of the Epstein case symbolizes several important things, all of which are critical to the Republic.

(Paywall with free option.)

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/tru ... ts-country

******

Kremlin Is In Panic ...

... Russians rush to buy supplies and overwhelm grocery stores, shelves are empty. The unconditional surrender to the US is getting ready in Moscow, including Trumps triumphant entrance in Moscow through Triumphal Arc on Kutuzovsky Avenue, then parade of the US Army on the Red Square and solemn transfer of all Russian military technology to the US. After that, Trump is led to the Lenin's Tomb and is declared the master of the universe and the greatest artist of the deal and then declared 2025-2089 Nobel Prize Winner. Then the Secret Service dude knocked on the door and asked--Mr President, are you awake. It is breakfast rime.



http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/07 ... panic.html

******

The Great Hoax
July 17, 11:26



"The Epstein files are a big hoax created by the Democrats" (c) Trump

That is why Trump promised to publish Epstein's files during the elections and does not want to publish them now.

Trump also called what is happening with Epstein's files a "witch hunt" that must stop. Although de facto it is a hunt for pedophiles from the American establishment. And this topic will not disappear so easily. As well as questions regarding Epstein's connection with Israeli intelligence agencies that collected dirt on representatives of the American establishment.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9959328.html

Google Translator

******

Socialist Party of Malaysia demands Trump invitation be withdrawn, calls him a genocide enabler

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has been vocal against Israeli war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and even demanded Israel’s expulsion from the UN.

July 16, 2025 by Abdul Rahman


Prime Minister Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim receives a courtesy call from the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, at the Parliament Building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. July 10, 2025. Photo: Izzuddin Abd Radzak/Office of the Prime Minister

The Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) condemned Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim for inviting US President Donald Trump to the country, calling it a betrayal to the Palestinian people who have faced the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza for almost two years now.

The statement, released by Choo Chon Kai, a central committee member of the PSM on Tuesday, July 15, claims that Trump’s invitation undermines all efforts by the government and the Malaysian people to express solidarity with Palestine.

PSM claimed that the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza would not have been possible without the active support of the US, both in terms of political backing and military supplies, and therefore Malaysia must not play host to the genocide enablers.

“There shall be no business as usual with the US administration until the world has put an end to the genocide against the Palestinian people,” PSM demanded.

“Genocide enablers”
Over 57,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women, have been killed and hundreds of thousands wounded in the Israeli war on Gaza which began on October 7, 2023. Israel has continuously bombed the besieged Palestinian territory, indiscriminately targeting houses, hospitals, schools, and other civilian infrastructure, displacing almost all of the pre-war Gaza population. It has also imposed a blockade on the supply of humanitarian aid into the territory, starving people and causing further deaths due to lack of medicine and other essential supplies.

Recently, the US and Israel co-launched an aid program in Gaza, after blocking the UN and other aid agencies. The US-Israeli aid program has been accused of facilitating fresh killings of hundreds of Palestinians while they seek aid at these distribution sites.

The US has blocked various ceasefire resolutions in the UN Security Council and suppressed countries, movements, and even individuals from expressing their disapproval of the Israeli actions in Gaza.

The US continues to supply billions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel to carry out its military operations in Gaza and several other neighboring countries, such as Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.

The US, under the Trump administration, has also cracked down on the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some other officials war criminals for carrying out systemic violations of human rights in the Palestinian territory.

Trump has threatened to depopulate Gaza and has arrested students leading protests against Israel’s crimes. It has recently sanctioned UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese for her documentation of Israel’s war crimes and atrocities.

Hypocrisy of Malaysian government
Malaysia has been a vocal critic of the Israeli war and has even officially supported South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the ICJ. Ibrahim has repeatedly called for Israel’s expulsion from the UN over its repeated violations of resolutions and war crimes in Gaza.

Malaysia is also a member of the Hague group which is hosting a summit in Bogotá, Colombia, on July 15-16, seeking an urgent end to the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The Hague group was formed in January to follow and implement ICJ verdicts on the war in Gaza.

PSM notes that “the Trump administration has shown its unwavering support for Israel’s expansionism and recently joined Israel’s war against Iran” by directly bombing its nuclear facilities in complete violations of international laws.

“A top government leader who enabled and supported genocide, like Donald Trump, should be treated as a persona non grata rather than invited as a guest for a money-wasting diplomatic show,” PSM asserted.

Trump was invited by Ibrahim himself, who made the invitation to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week. Trump was also invited to join the ASEAN-US summit in October.

“It is also a sheer hypocrisy for a government to express solidarity with the Palestinian people while posing friendly gestures to the accomplice of the genocidal crime against the Palestinian people,” PSM underlined in the statement.

“We urge the government of Malaysia to retract the invitation to Donald Trump to visit Malaysia. We also called upon the government of Malaysia, as the chair of ASEAN this year, to cancel the ASEAN-US Summit as a symbolic protest against the US complicity in the genocide against Palestinian people.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/07/16/ ... e-enabler/

[blindpig]

A 'Bawdy' Diversion

The media, and Donald Trump, have found the great summer diversion of 2025.

The Wall Street Journal reports (archived):

It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump.
Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
...
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

The letter concludes: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

In an interview with the Journal on Tuesday evening, Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture. “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” he said.

“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”

He told the Journal he was preparing to file a lawsuit if it published an article. “I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else,” he said.

And suing he will:

Trump said he had personally warned the Journal’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its editor in chief, Emma Tucker, that the letter was “fake” before the report was published, calling the story “false, malicious, and defamatory.”
“President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal,” Trump wrote on social media hours after the Journal published its report.

In the immediate wake of the report’s publication, the White House rushed to decry it as false. Vice President JD Vance said on X it was “complete and utter bullshit” — echoing the expletive Trump used this week to describe the Epstein news cycle. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt — whom Trump said had also told Tucker the story was “fake” — called it a “hatchet job article” and claimed the outlet “refused to show us the letter and conceded they don’t even have it in their possession when we asked them to verify the alleged document.”

Trump's denials are so strong that I believe the letter is his.

Not that it matters.

I doubt that there is a large file about whatever Epstein has done. If there ever was such it has by now been destroyed by the powers and services involved in it.

Ghislaine Maxwell is currently sitting in jail for trafficking teenage girls under the legal age to have sex with Epstein. There is no hard evidence (but their well payed-off assertions) that these girls were pushed to have sex with other people. There is no hard evidence that Epstein was blackmailing those people.

It seem likely though that both has been the case.

However neither has anything to do with a letter Trump wrote (or maybe didn't write?) in 2003.

It is just entertaining fun to divert the people from all the other bad stuff the U.S., under Trump, is currently - domestically and internationally - actually doing.

Posted by b on July 18, 2025 at 12:34 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/07/a ... .html#more

******



Trump Has Completely Dropped His “Populist” Act

The lesson will keep on repeating until it is learned.

Caitlin Johnstone
July 17, 2025

It’s so funny how Trump has stopped even pretending to be a populist. As soon as he was re-elected he was just “Yeah okay so Israel comes first and forget everything I said about free speech and the Ukraine war is continuing and there will be no Epstein investigation, fuck you.”

It has long been obvious to anyone with half a brain that Donald Trump is just another Republican swamp monster playing on public discontent with the status quo to win votes and support, but it is genuinely surprising how completely he has stopped pretending to care about fighting the deep state and sticking up for ordinary Americans as soon as he got back into office. He’s just dropped the populist schtick entirely and is giving the finger to anyone who complains.

The president has been aggressively and repeatedly demanding that his entire base shut up about Jeffrey Epstein and move on after years of MAGAworld fixation on the story, bizarrely going as far as claiming that interest and attention on the Epstein files was a concoction of the Democrats. He is doing this even as his Department of Justice releases a video which it claims disproves conspiracy theories that the sexual predator was murdered in his prison cell — but the video is edited and missing minutes of footage.


This happens as the Financial Times reports that Trump is now encouraging Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to ramp up deep strikes into Russian territory and asking whether it would be possible to hit Moscow. This would be the same President Trump who falsely promised on the campaign trail that he would end the Ukraine war in “no longer than one day.”

After pledging to restore and protect free speech in the United States, Trump has been aggressively stomping out speech that is critical of the state of Israel and its genocidal atrocities, scoring yet another win for government censorship on Tuesday with Columbia University’s announcement that it is adopting the IHRA definition of “antisemitism” which conflates criticism of Israel with hate speech against Jews, in accordance with the wishes of the Trump administration.

After promising to “restore peace, stability, and harmony all throughout the world,” Trump has bombed Iran, poured weapons into Israel and Ukraine, backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its numerous acts of war against its neighbors, slaughtered hundreds of civilians with a savage bombing campaign in Yemen, and conducted dozens of airstrikes in renewed operations in Somalia, all while leading the nation into the era of official trillion-dollar Pentagon budgets.

In 2023 Trump proclaimed that “if you put me back in the White House… I will totally obliterate the deep state.” In 2025 he’s advancing pretty much every longstanding deep state agenda in the book.

Every single part of Trump’s platform where he could have claimed to be standing up for the little guy against the powerful has been completely flushed down the toilet in the first six months of his second term, leaving only a standard George W Bush Republican in its place. If you wanted tax cuts for the rich and cruel treatment for immigrants then Trump is still your man, but if you were hoping he’d benefit ordinary Americans or do anything to drain the swamp in Washington he’s just peeing on you and writing a wall of text on Truth Social explaining why the pee is actually rain.

Which again should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. No real change will ever come from either of America’s two power-serving major parties.

But what’s so funny is people are probably just going to fall for it again. Trump’s base is very upset about the Epstein thing and many of them might actually abandon Trump himself, but you know next election cycle someone like Tucker Carlson or JD Vance will run on his platform and these suckers will swallow it hook, line and sinker. I actually said this on Twitter the other day and got multiple people telling me that actually Tucker Carlson getting elected would be a major blow to the deep state, so you know they’re already primed for it. They can’t wait to fall in line behind the next phony Republican populism scam.

Whatever. People will be fed whatever slop they keep asking for. The lesson will keep on repeating until it is learned.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2025/07 ... ulist-act/

******

The All-Round Madness of Trump’s Tomato Tariffs
Posted on July 18, 2025 by Nick Corbishley

The Trump administration accuses Mexico of “dumping” tomatoes on the US — something the US would never dream of doing with the agricultural goods it sends to Mexico (sarc).

The Trump administration continues to escalate its economic war against its largest trade partner, Mexico. In recent weeks alone, Washington has imposed potentially fatal sanctions on two smallish Mexican banks and a brokerage house, which were quietly paused last week; it has implemented a 3.5% tax on the remittance payments US-based migrants, many of them Mexican, send home; and it has escalated its raids on migrants, many of them also Mexican.

Now, to cap things off, Washington just imposed a 17% tariff on US imports of tomatoes, almost all of which come from Mexico. As Bloomberg notes, the move comes just days after Trump unveiled plans to impose a 30% tariff, beginning Aug. 1, on many Mexican products that don’t fall under the USMCA agreement he negotiated in his first term.

The Trump administration accuses Mexican farmers of unfairly “dumping” (i.e. selling at an artificially low price) tomatoes on the US market — something the US would never dream of doing with the agricultural goods it exports to Mexico, if you’ll excuse my sarcasm.

“Mexico remains one of our greatest allies, but for far too long our farmers have been crushed by unfair trade practices that undercut pricing on produce like tomatoes. That ends today,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a statement. “This rule change is in line with President Trump’s trade policies and approach with Mexico.”

Mexico’s Sheinbaum government begged to differ, arguing that market share won by Mexican tomato farmers in past decades is a result of “the quality of the product, and not any unfair practice.” She also said the tariff would probably have limited impact on the exports of Mexican tomatoes to the US given the scale of US dependency. She’s probably got a point.

A Long Time Coming

For its part, the Florida Tomato Exchange (FTE), a lobby that represents the state’s growers, packers and shippers and enjoys close ties to the Trump administration, welcomed the move, stating that “the playing field will finally be levelled” for U.S. growers.

The FTE has waited a long time for this moment. The first time it accused Mexican farmers of “dumping” practices was back in 1996, just two years into NAFTA. In response, Mexican farmers agreed to set a floor price on tomatoes in a bid to ensure that US farmers were not being undercut. In return, the US suspended an investigation into the Mexican farmers’ alleged dumping practices.

Since then four rounds of agreements have taken place, the last one in 2019. But the times for normalised trade relations between the US and Mexico appear to be well and truly over.

As with so many of Trump 2.0’s trade policies, the tariffs on Mexican tomatoes are likely to backfire, with the price ultimately being paid by US consumers. Two out of every three tomatoes consumed in the US come from Mexico, according to official figures.

Since the signing of NAFTA in 1994 the market share of US tomatoes has slumped to 30% from 80%, according to the Florida Farm Bureau, while imports of Mexican tomatoes have increased four fold. The tomato trade between the two countries is now worth close to $3 billion.

“There is no way that Florida can supply the local market in terms of quality, quantity and price; impossible,” Antonio Ortiz-Mena, a Mexican expert in geopolitics and professor of international trade at Georgetown University, told BBC Mundo. In addition, “there are U.S. companies that have investments in tomatoes in Mexico, not only because of the low labour costs but, above all, because of the climatic conditions and economies of scale. So they will also be affected.”

Tons of Floridan tomatoes have already gone to waste as a result of Trump’s tariffs and migration crackdown, as WSVN Miami reported in mid-May:

With tariff talks top of mind, South Florida farmers say they’re in trouble. Crops are rotting on the vine and they’re blaming the ongoing trade wars and immigration changes. What does this mean for the future of our food? 7’s Heather Walker investigates.

Perfectly good tomatoes are being plowed over — instead of picked. It’s a sad scene happening in South Florida.

Heather Moehling, President, Miami-Dade County Farm Bureau: “You can’t even afford to pick them right now. Between the cost of the labor and the inputs that goes in, it’s more cost-effective for the farmers to just plow them right now.”

Although the tariffs on Mexico did not came into effect for goods compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, including tomatoes, the threat of tariffs alone was enough to disrupt the U.S. market:

“The Mexican industry exported, in some cases, double and triple the daily volumes to beat being subject to the 25 percent tariff in February and March and the 10 percent tariffs in April. That just devastated our markets in the U.S.,” [Tony DiMare, president of DiMare Homestead, which owns over 4,000 acres of tomato farms in Florida and California told WVSN].

Farmers say President Trump’s tariffs and the threat of tariffs have caused thousands of acres of tomatoes to go to waste because the price to pick and pack them costs more than what the tomatoes are selling for this year.

Changes in immigration are also taking a toll, with many pickers afraid to go to work.

Homestead farm worker: “Many workers have left, others are leaving now… A lot of people are really afraid and sometimes they come, sometimes they don’t come and the harvest is lost because it cannot be harvested, so that’s why so much produce is lost.”

The Trump administration is already aware of the strain its erratic policies are having on the nation’s farmers. In April, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that her agency is preparing a contingency bailout plan for farmers should the trade wars continue to escalate.

“We are working on that. We are preparing for it. We don’t believe it will be necessary,” Rollins said.

In other words, US citizens could end up paying doubly for Trump’s tariffs, first through higher prices at the checkout and secondly through bailouts to US farmers. Meanwhile, on the Mexican side of the border concerns have been raised that if Trump’s tariffs are effective in bringing down US imports of Mexican tomatoes (a big “IF” for reasons already outlined), one possible beneficiary will be the drug cartels, which Trump claims to be waging total war against.

BBC Mundo (machine translation):

“Mexican tomatoes are going to become cheaper, but the question is how companies are going to deal with this problem. They are going to have to reduce their workforce, they are going to have to rethink how many hectares they are going to plant,” said Faustino Delgado, a leader of the agricultural workers union.

Most of the industry, moreover, is in Sinaloa. The so-called “Sinaloa red pearl” is produced there. Agro-export land coexists alongside land belonging to of one of the most important drug trafficking cartels in the world.

Over the past year, a war between factions of the Sinaloa cartel has put the state on tenterhooks and a curfew is currently in place in the capital, Culiacan. The roads where the tomatoes comes out, in addition, are on the front lines of the battle.

“A tariff like this exacerbates the problems driving Mexican workers to either want to migrate to the US in search of opportunities or to swell the ranks of organized crime,” Ortiz-Mena says.

The potential fallout of a tomato tariff extend far beyond the commercial realm.

Pot, Meet the Mother of All Kettles

Perhaps the maddest — and most maddening — aspect of the Trump administration’s imposition of sanctions on Mexican tomatoes is the stated justification, or pretext, for doing so: namely, that Mexico’s farmers are “dumping” tomatoes on the US market. In doing so, it seeks to paint US famers as victims of underhand market practices by their Mexican competitors.

However, when it comes to dumping (i.e. selling at an artificially low price) agricultural produce on the international markets, no one, with the possible exception of the EU, comes close to the US’ heavily subsidised farmers and Big Ag corporations. For decades the US has destroyed the livelihoods of millions of farmers around the world by unleashing on to the global markets surplus produce at below-cost price.

One of the biggest victims is Mexico. Over the years, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy has published reports tracking the incremental harm US dumping of basic agricultural staples has done to Mexico’s ability to feed itself. From its 2023 report, Swimming Against the Tide: Mexico’s Quest for Food Sovereignty in the Face of U.S. Agricultural Dumping:

In 1994, NAFTA eliminated most of the trade restrictions Mexico had used to protect its farmers from foreign competition, and in 16 of the 28 years since, the U.S has dumped corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and cotton exports into Mexico at prices 5%-40% below what it cost to produce them. In turn, Mexican producers of these crops experienced prices drops of 50%-68% in the 12 years after NAFTA took effect. From 2014 to 2020, U.S. exports of priority food crops came into Mexico at unfairly low prices, undermining the incentives for Mexican farmers to increase production.

The US was able to do this by continuing to subsidize agricultural producers even after NAFTA while Mexico’s government pulled most of its subsidies. Mexico’s political class, in thrall to neoliberal ideas such as economic liberalisation, privatisation and “free” trade, showed scant interest in safeguarding, let alone developing, the country’s internal market. The government had already begun slashing subsidies to Mexican famers over a decade before NAFTA.

As a result, it became all but impossible for small and mid-sized producers to compete with producers from the US once NAFTA once signed. Inevitably, Mexico became increasingly dependent on the US for staple crops like corn, beans, wheat and rice. Once the birthplace of maize, Mexico now imports roughly half of the corn it consumes, almost all of it from the US.

At the same time, it has significantly increased its exports to the US of tomatoes, chiles, avocado, coffee, grapes, strawberries and water melon. But it’s the staple crops that matter most.

Salgado Uberto Salgado Nieto, a researcher at the Institute of Economic Research, points out that the the main consequence of NAFTA, almost certainly intended, “was the loss of food sovereignty, because the large producers [that were left standing] were not geared at producing basic grains for the Mexican diet such as corn and beans, but at producing avocados, berries and tropical fruits that are in high demand outside the country.”

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that the threshold at which a country becomes what it calls “food-vulnerable” is when as much as 25% of its food supply comes from abroad. According to a study published by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, by 2011 Mexico was sourcing 50% of the food it consumes, especially basic grains, from abroad, mostly from the US. By 2021, the figure had reached 57%.

When the government of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sought to reverse this trend by prioritising local production of staples and banning US-grown GM corn for human consumption, the US resumed its dumping of corn. As Timothy A Wise and Stewart A.L. James reported in January, export prices were on average 14% below production costs between Aug 2023 and Dec 2024:

U.S. corn dumping had been at pause as U.S. export prices skyrocketed above production costs amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a trend protracted further by the Russia-Ukraine war’s impact on world grain markets. But dumping is now back, with a vengeance.



This resumption is not unique to corn, though we focus on it here as a particularly relevant case study. Our earlier report documented U.S. agricultural dumping in a number of other commodity markets including soy, wheat, cotton, and rice. It seems clear that the resumption of corn dumping is symptomatic of a broader trend across several crops. And USDA projections show that low prices will likely persist in coming years.

In other words, while the Trump administration accuses Mexico’s tomato growers of dumping their produce on the US, US growers are doing exactly the same thing with corn in Mexico, and could well be doing the same with other staple foods in the near future. Also, as readers may recall, when

Alienating the US on the Global Stage

In sum, not only are Trump’s tariffs on Mexican tomatoes likely to fuel higher prices for US consumers, they could also push agricultural workers in Sinaloa into the welcoming arms of the drug cartels or even towards the increasingly militarised US border. The way things are looking in Florida, some of them may even be allowed across, if only to pick a few days worth of tomatoes before being raided by ICE.

Meanwhile, the latest tariff threats exacerbate economic uncertainty while further alienating the US — and its partners — on the global stage.

As we noted last week, Trump’s threat to impose 50% tariffs against Brazil days after President Lula spoke openly about dedollarisation at the BRICS summit is likely to work in Lula’s favour and against the interests of Trump’s close ally in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. Lo and behold, the New York Times just reported that Trump’s Brazil tariff threats have rekindled support for Lula while the Bolsonarists who allegedly called for the tariffs are being widely denounced as traitors.

Admittedly, Mexico’s Sheinbaum government is far more constrained than Brazil in terms of how it can respond to Trump’s threats, for an assortment of reasons: Mexico’s geographic position, so close to the US, and its geopolitical reality, so far from the “Global South”; its near-total dependence on the US economy; the highly asymmetrical nature of its relationship with the US; and the constant, overhanging threat of US military intervention.

But even Sheinbaum may soon have to throw caution to the wind. Recent polls suggest that her cool, calm approach to Trump may be losing appeal among voters as Trump escalates his attacks.

This may explain why Mexico agreed to participate in the recent BRICS summit, for the first time ever, as well as why it is now seeking to forge closer ties with its USMCA partner, Canada, with a view to aligning their strategies for negotiating with Trump. As readers may recall, in the days immediately following Trump’s election in late November, senior Canadian politicians were calling for Mexico’s removal from USMCA. Now, they are looking for a rapprochement. Once again, Trump is excelling in his accidental role as the great global unifier.

*******

And again "Epstein-gate"
July 17, 2025
Rybar

" Are Congressional Republicans Rising Up Against Trump? "

The scandal surrounding the “Epstein lists” in the US shows no signs of stopping, and the Republican Party is once again suffering the brunt of its reputational and political damage.

This time, the Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson stirred up trouble, calling for full public access to the Epstein case materials and calling on the Justice Department to declassify and publish all documents on the case.

Johnson also backed the idea of calling Ghislaine Maxwell to testify before Congress. She is a former girlfriend of Epstein's who is currently serving time for her role in sex trafficking. Johnson believes she could shed light on the crimes and perhaps uncover new names and circumstances.

And while some believe Johnson has started a riot, the truth is that such stories are not about him - he has recently demonstrated loyalty to Trump and played a major role in promoting his legislative initiatives.

It is possible that the summoning of Maxwell is an attempt, coordinated with the White House, to arrange a “ controlled explosion” ( for example, to promise Maxwell something in exchange for “correct testimony” ) and put an end to this matter.

https://rybar.ru/i-snova-epshtejn-gejt/

Google Translator

Or a 'limited hangout. Worth considering...