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Trump versus US Establishment groupthink on Russia - some observations

Michael Averko
Strategic Culture Foundation
Wed, 16 Aug 2017 17:48 UTC
trump putin handshake
© Whitehouse.govRussian President Vladimir Putin meets with U.S. President Donald Trump at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017.
The disagreement between US President Donald Trump and his main critics on Russia lingers on.

In a July 31 MSNBC segment, former US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul said that Trump was tame in his reply to the Russian government measures taken against US diplomatic interests in Russia. For McFaul, what earlier happened to Russian diplomatic staff in the US is apparently okay, unlike the Russian retaliation, which came months AFTER the US-based Russian diplomatic personnel were penalized. McFaul misleadingly underscored that Trump's playing nice with Putin hasn't worked.

Actually, the tough talk and sanctions against Russia haven't worked. Trump's effort at improving relations with Russia has been greatly stonewalled. This surely isn't an act on his part. In line with the predominating Capitol Hill and US mass media groupthink, it'd be politically convenient for him to fully acquiesce to their line - something he hasn't done. Some related matters caught my eye.
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Bad Guys

Apologists for left-wing violence: Yahoo News gives Antifa thugs a glowing endorsement

Ian Mason
Breitbart
Tue, 15 Aug 2017 00:00 UTC
Antifa
© Trump Conservative
Yahoo! News followed up the weekend's violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, with an uncritical portrayal of one of the groups most deeply involved: violent left-wing "anti-fascist" street gangs, collectively known as Antifa.

Yahoo! reporter Caitlin Dickson penned a gushing paean Monday for the "secretive movement of combative leftists" who "seek to destroy" "authoritarian movements" with "direct action." The piece even included a photo of a large group of smiling happy warriors, unarmed and fists raised in righteous indignation at the "white supremacists" they would confront.

According to Ms. Dickson, "[A]ntifa's origins can be traced back to Europe in the 1920s and 30s. Since the end of World War II, antifa activity has ebbed and flowed along with that of neo-Nazis, skinheads and other hate movements that have sprung up around the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States."

In fact, as the avowedly Marxist-socialist periodical Jacobin magazine explains in a much more honest, if not less enthusiastic, appraisal, Antifa, originally known in its native Germany as Antifaschistische Aktion, was founded as the militant wing of the German Communist Party. In the 1930s, it was known to be every bit as violent as its Nazi opponents. After World War Two, Antifa groups re-formed in Germany to collaborate with Soviet communists on subduing the country and rooting out its past to create a new socialist utopia. They were active in Communist-controlled East Germany until that country's Stalinist leadership got fed up, broke the groups up, and sent many of their leaders to gulags.

Comment: Antifa: A left-wing terrorist group in the blood-soaked Bolshevik tradition

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Dollars

Russian Economy Minister: Economy is slowly reducing its dependency on the dollar


RT
Wed, 16 Aug 2017 17:46 UTC
rubles dollars
The Russian government is taking steps to reduce the value of transactions using the American currency in the country, according to Economic Development Minister Maksim Oreshkin.

"There is a big trend toward the de-dollarization of the Russian economy. The central bank has taken some very important steps against loans in foreign currencies," the minister said on Wednesday.

Data from the Central Bank of Russia shows 60 percent of Russia's external debt in August is in US dollars, the lowest since 2014.

Experts say foreign sanctions and central bank policy are making loans in rubles more attractive than in dollars. Rates on ruble deposits are also more attractive than foreign currencies.
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Bullseye

What about the 'Alt Left'?: Trump Charlottesville comments send Twitter into meltdown


RT
Tue, 15 Aug 2017 16:33 UTC
Trump emphatic
© Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
During a combative news conference, President Donald Trump asked if the "alt left" had "any semblance of guilt" for the deadly protest violence in Charlottesville, what he called "a horrible moment for our country."

Trump has seemingly yet to recover from widespread criticism on his initial comments Saturday, after a woman was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia, while counter-protesting an alt-right march attended by white supremacists and white nationalists. At the time, the president condemned violence from "many sides," and amid a backlash Monday, he specifically called out neo-Nazis.

On Tuesday, during a heated news conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan that was meant to focus on infrastructure, Trump spent most of the time critiquing reporters who asked why it took him so long to issue a stronger statement.

Comment: What everyone left out (even RT) was that the President clearly stated he didn't want to make any comments, let alone judgements, on the Charlotteville debacle without getting a full picture of the event. Sounds reasonable. And having gotten that full picture, he found fault with both sides, which seems pretty evident on the various videos. He did not let the press goad him into a corner, but condemned violence itself, regardless of who is committing it.

Full press conference (Charlottesville questions begin at 7:30)



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Dollar

US government collected record amounts of personal and payroll taxes through July 2017; still runs $566B deficit

Terence P. Jeffrey
CNS News
Mon, 14 Aug 2017 18:05 UTC
income taxes USA july 2017
The federal government collected record amounts of both individual income taxes and payroll taxes through the first ten months of fiscal 2017 (Oct. 1, 2016 through the end of July), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.

Through July, the federal government collected approximately $1,312,691,000,000 in individual income taxes.

At the same time, it collected $976,278,000,000 in Social Security and other payroll taxes.

Prior to this year, fiscal 2015 held the record for individual income tax collections through July. That year, the Treasury collected $1,309,431,860,000 (in constant 2017 dollars) in individual income taxes in the first ten months of the fiscal year.
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Info

Dinesh D'Souza: Democratic Party invented white nationalism

Nick Givas
The Daily Caller
Mon, 14 Aug 2017 17:11 UTC
dinesh d'souza
Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza said during a Monday interview that the Democratic Party is responsible for inventing white nationalism.

"Let's remember that this whole concept of ethnic nationalism is a left-wing idea. The Democratic Party invented white nationalism and the Democratic Party invented black nationalism," D'Souza said on "Fox and Friends."

Many have criticized President Donald Trump for not being specific enough in his condemnation of white supremacist groups during his press conference. D'Souza tried flipping the script to say the Democratic Party stoked the flames of identity politics for years, and are partially responsible for the backlash.

"Interestingly today, the way that the progressive Democrats have constructed their multi-cultural totem pole, they encourage every form of ethnic nationalism except white nationalist," he said. "Somehow the white guy is not welcome at the multicultural picnic."


Comment: D'Souza is alluding to history he deals with in his work, for example in his Hillary's America documentary.

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Control Panel

Oliver Stone and the big picture: The Deep State is a bigger problem than Trump's comments on Charlottesville

Nick Holdsworth
The Hollywood Reporter
Tue, 15 Aug 2017 11:07 UTC
Oliver Stone
The director spoke about the U.S. political system during a master class at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Oliver Stone has said in response to the Charlottesville riots that the problem is not President Donald Trump, but "the system" in America.

The director, whose latest work is a four-hour series of televised interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin that aired on Showtime in June, did not specifically criticize Trump when asked for his reaction to the weekend's events in Charlottesville, Va., during which one woman died and several people were injured after a car plowed into non-violent demonstrators.

Speaking Tuesday during a master class at the Sarajevo Film Festival following a screening of his movie Snowden, Stone said he had not been in the U.S. for some time but was following events.
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Bullseye

Trump condemns murder of Charlottesville protestor, then asks when Cultural Revolution will see Jefferson and Washington monuments torn down


RT
Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:27 UTC
jefferson memorial
The Jefferson Memorial: Will Leftists tear this down too?
US President Donald Trump has denounced the driver of the car that smashed into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. He also defended his top adviser Steve Bannon and challenged media for not reporting on the violence fully.

Trump, who was in New York to announce a new executive initiative on infrastructure, took questions from the media about Saturday's events in Charlottesville, when one person was killed and 19 were injured when a car reportedly driven by one of the participants in the right-wing rally ran into a crowd.

"I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that the statement I made was correct," Trump said, when reporters asked him why he waited until Monday to denounce neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan members present at the rally.

Comment: Here's Trump's Q & A with the press at Trump Tower yesterday:


Whether by design or not, Charlottesville has had the effect of reinforcing the vice congressmen put in by Trump shortly before going off on their month-long vacation. He's trying to kickstart America's much-needed trillion-dollar infrastructure investment project, while the far-left and its Deep State backers are actively trying to tear down statues and take their Cultural Revolution to the next level.

Tucker Carlson discussed this on his show yesterday:




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Chess

White House names longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks director of communications

Mark Moore
NY Post
Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:49 UTC
hope hicks
© Getty Images
Hope Hicks, a longtime aide to President Trump, will be named the new White House director of communications, according to a report Wednesday.

Hicks, 28, will fill the post left vacant after Anthony Scaramucci was fired by White House chief of staff John Kelly last month, the New York Times reported.

She is now the director of strategic communication and had been a spokeswoman for Trump during the presidential campaign. Before that she worked for the Trump Organization.

Scaramucci was ousted after he gave a profanity-laced interview with New Yorker magazine in which he attacked then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon.
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Light Sabers

Top EU negotiator mocks UK's post-Brexit Customs plan as "fantasy"


RT
Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:33 UTC
eu flag
© Yves Herman / Reuters
Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt has mocked Britain's plan to temporarily remain as part of the customs union and seek trade deals with other nations after it leaves the bloc as a "fantasy."

The government unveiled plans on Tuesday to continue with the current customs arrangements for at least three years after Britain officially leaves the EU in 2019. It confirms the UK will ultimately leave the system but proposes a "temporary customs union" to ensure a "smooth and orderly" transfer.

Brexit secretary David Davis has also insisted the government would "negotiate and sign" agreements with other countries once the EU withdrawal is complete, whatever the nature of any transitional period after 2019.

Verhofstadt said no deal could be struck on the UK's future trading relationship with the bloc until agreement had been reached on Britain's divorce bill and citizens' rights.
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