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Sat, 06 Nov 2021
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Black Cat

'Mad Maxine' put on notice: 'Careful what you wish for!' Trump slams Waters for urging harassment of officials

Maxine Waters

Maxine Waters
US President Donald Trump has fired another salvo on Twitter, this time aimed at California Congresswoman Maxine Waters' recent call for Americans to harass administration officials so that they have "no peace."


Comment: Apparently Waters doesn't take kindly to being confronted herself.


Map

Thierry Meyssan: The Trump/Kushner 'peace plan' is not what you think

kushner trump
© Reuters
President Donald Trump passes his adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner during a Hanukkah Reception at the White House in Washington, D.C., December 7, 2017.
We were wrong to believe that the US project for the Middle East was a peace plan for Palestine. Despite the communications from the White House, this is not what President Trump is seeking. He is approaching this question from a radically different angle than that of his predecessors - not attempting to render Justice between his vassals, as an emperor would, but to unblock the situation in order to improve the daily lives of the populations involved.
The Israëlo-Arab conflict, which was originally a late episode of the European colonial conquest, was developed in order to hinder Arab unity. It was no longer a case of affirming the strength of the Western powers in the Middle East, but of making sure that the Arabs did not constitute a bloc which could compete with them. At first colonial, the logic of the conflict became imperial by aligning itself behind the United States.

But today, the Western powers which have dominated the world for the last few centuries are in decline, while Asia, the bearer of other civilisations, has once again become the centre of the world. It follows that the pressure brought to bear on the Arabs is dwindling. It is in this context that President Trump is putting an end to the Cebrowski doctrine of the destruction of social and State structures in the region, and is attempting to pacify the Israëli conflict.

Donald Trump's personal team for international negotiations - composed of his faithful lieutenants Jared Kushner (his son-in-law) and Jason Greenblatt (ex-vice-president of his conglomerate, the Trump Organization) - therefore approach the Palestinian question from a geopolitical angle. Since they have no diplomatic experience, their plan is not to find a solution which satisfies all the protagonists, but to reduce the pressure on this population in order that they might live a normal life according to the ideal of the right to happiness as it is set out in the US Constitution. This is a major objective for Donald Trump, who intends to dissolve US imperialism and replace it with the logic of commercial competition.

Arrow Down

Race hysteria: CNN analyst wants DHS Sec. to eat only with her own race after antifa incident at DC restaurant

Kirstjen Nielsen
The latest instance of leftist rage is centered on the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" border enforcement policy, which has the inevitable result of temporarily separating children from the parents of illegal immigrants while they are processed and prosecuted prior to deportation.

One of the main targets for the leftist outrage is Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who found herself the subject of an incredibly rude protest while she attempted to enjoy a quiet dinner at a D.C.-area Mexican restaurant on Tuesday evening.

"How dare you spend your evening here eating dinner as you're complicit in the separation and deportation of over 10,000 children separated from their parents?" screamed one male protester while Nielsen sat in silence.

"How can you enjoy a Mexican dinner as you're deporting and imprisoning tens of thousands of people who come here seeking asylum in the United States? We call on you to end family separation and abolish ICE!" the protester added.

As noted, leftists and Trump-haters cheered the display of intolerance by the anti-ICE protesters who descended upon Nielsen in the Mexican restaurant.

Comment: The way things are going, it will be the Left who introduce a new form of racial and ideological segregation of American society. See also:


Bulb

'Trump as Hitler': The Left's strategic blunder will only benefit Trump - and they don't even realize it

Hitler and Trump
You knew it was coming. Eighteen months into the Trump administration and the president's ostensibly serious critics have finally broken the glass on the "Trump-is-a-Nazi" line of attack.

To be certain, there were previous allusions to this from media, Democrats and "Never Trumpers" - accusations of authoritarianism meant to implicitly draw the connection between President Donald Trump and Nazi Germany. Apart from the "over-woke," under-informed Hollywood set, however, critics largely managed to avoid making the explicit comparison.

Until now, that is, with the issue of family separations at the U.S. border dominating headlines.

But overwrought comparisons to the Nazis are both historically illiterate and an extreme strategic misstep. The president's critics have crossed a rhetorical line from which there can be no turning back.

That the Trump administration would be compared with Nazi Germany is not surprising. Accusations of "Republicans-as-fascists" long predate this administration. A Democratic congressman accused President Ronald Reagan of "trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from 'Mein Kampf.' " In more recent times, recall Keith Olbermann's tarring of President George W. Bush as a "fascist" in an on-air segment in 2008, an appellation also bestowed upon other members of the Bush administration.

Comment: The Trump-as-Hitler meme was always bound to fail, because the only way for it to work is for Trump to actually be Hitler, which is an absurdity. But his critics seem to actually believe it. They're suffering from a hysteria-induced hallucination. And ironically, because Trump isn't Hitler, the very accusation of such will be enough to actually play into Trump's hands in the long term, as Richarz points out above.


MIB

Hiding in plain sight: The NSA has spy hubs in eight US Cities

NSA 1
© Steven Day
The secrets are hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering, windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world's largest telecommunications networks - and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.

Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence - including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees - indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.

The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company's "extreme willingness to help." It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T's customers. According to the NSA's documents, it values AT&T not only because it "has access to information that transits the nation," but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T's massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.

NSA 02
Much has previously been reported about the NSA's surveillance programs. But few details have been disclosed about the physical infrastructure that enables the spying. Last year, The Intercept highlighted a likely NSA facility in New York City's Lower Manhattan. Now, we are revealing for the first time a series of other buildings across the U.S. that appear to serve a similar function, as critical parts of one of the world's most powerful electronic eavesdropping systems, hidden in plain sight.

Comment: See also:


Stop

Paul Manafort's defense team appeals judge's decision to put him in jail

Paul Manafort
© Drew Angerer / Getty Images / AFP
Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for Donald Trump.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's defense team has appealed a federal judge's decision to revoke his bail and send him to jail.

Manafort's attorneys on Monday filed a notice to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that they were appealing U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson's June 15 decision.

Jackson revoked Manfort's bail and ordered him jailed until his trial begins in Washington in September over charges filed by special counsel Robert Mueller alleging he attempted to tamper with two potential witnesses in the case against him.

Comment: Further reading:


Handcuffs

Feds warn Antifa must end ICE occupation or face arrest

antifa
© Jason Connolly/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Federal authorities warned Antifa members Monday to stop occupying an Oregon Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building or be arrested.

"Individuals who continue to obstruct the entrance of this federal facility will be subject to arrest and prosecution in federal court," a flyer Federal Protective Service agents distributed to Portland, Oregon, Antifa members reads. "It is unlawful under federal law to obstruct the entrances, foyers, lobbies, corridors, offices and/or parking lots of federal facilities."

Antifa has been camping outside the ICE building since last week and effectively shutting down the building. Federal authorities went into the building around 3:30 a.m Monday to secure the building.

Comment: Antifa's success in shutting down ICE's Portland office has led to copycat occupations around the country:
"We want to physically, through mass action, shut down ICE operations," says Kate Stenvig, an organizer with By Any Means Necessary. "We are enforcing Detroit as a sanctuary city."

More than a dozen protesters have camped outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Detroit, the field office for Michigan and Ohio, with the hope of shutting it down.

The organizers have been gathered outside the federal building at Jefferson Avenue and Mount Elliot Street since Saturday. They said they planned to stay for a week.

"We want to physically, through mass action, shut down ICE operations," says Kate Stenvig, an organizer with By Any Means Necessary. "We are enforcing Detroit as a sanctuary city."

The organizations involved are calling for a shutdown of the nation's detention centers, immediate reunification of children with their families, asylum for all immigrant parents detained trying to enter the United States, and the abolition of ICE.

The protest is one of several "Occupy ICE" demonstrations that have cropped up around the country in the wake of a successful Portland action that forced ICE to temporarily shut down its office there. As of Saturday, Occupy protests were also being held in New York, L.A., and Washington state.
Further reading: Portland: Ground zero for the next American civil war?


Bizarro Earth

Mad Maxine Waters

Mad Maxine
I landed late last night in Boston, and saw this news:
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is calling on her supporters to confront Trump administration officials and staffers in public amid widespread backlash to the President's zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration.

"Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up," Waters told a crowd in California over the weekend. "If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere."

Comment: Or perhaps these tactics serve the interests of those who want to see war among the American people. See also:
Crazy like a fox? Rep. Maxine Waters says "no sleep, no peace" for Trump admin due to immigration policy


USA

White House adviser Leonard Leo: Trump likely to take two more Supreme Court picks in the next few years

Donald Trump
© AP / Charlie Neibergall
Washington, DC - Fox News Sunday this week profiled Leonard Leo, who assists President Donald Trump and White House Counsel Don McGahn in the historic task of filling a record number of judicial vacancies. Leo predicts that President Trump will have at least two more opportunities to appoint originalists to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could define his presidency as a lasting legacy for the nation.

President Trump makes his own decisions picking federal judges, and McGahn is the senior adviser most involved in presenting those choices. But the president must fill almost 170 judicial vacancies - a historic high number - and McGahn has countless duties as the president's top lawyer, daily engaged in top-level decisions on the full range of domestic and foreign policies. He puts out the innumerable fires that any leading lawyer in the White House confronts as he helps manage the activities of 2.7 million federal employees spending a budget of $4 trillion leading a nation of 326 million citizens.

With all those demands, who advises McGahn on judges? While he has deputies and associates in the White House Counsel's Office and works with a team in the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice, no one plays a larger role in equipping McGahn to advise the president on judges than Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society.

Brick Wall

How much of what the Mueller probe uncovers will be made public?

Robert Mueller
© AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
In this June 21, 2017, file photo, special counsel Robert Mueller departs after a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington. America has waited a year to hear what Mueller concludes about the 2016 election, meddling by the Russians and _ most of all _ what Donald Trump did or didn't do.
America has waited a year to hear what special counsel Robert Mueller concludes about the 2016 election, meddling by the Russians and - most of all - what Donald Trump did or didn't do. But how much the nation will learn about Mueller's findings is very much an open question.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may end up wrestling with a dilemma similar to the one that tripped up fired FBI director James Comey: how much to reveal about Trump's actions absent an indictment against the president. Rosenstein, who lambasted Comey for disclosing derogatory information about Hillary Clinton despite not recommending her for prosecution, may himself have to balance the extraordinary public interest in the investigation against his admonition that investigators should not discuss allegations against people they don't prosecute.

Comment: That last sentence pretty much sums it up, if somewhat downplayed. After all the back and forth, the twists and the turns, the massively complicated shifting cast of characters, if the final findings of the Mueller probe are not released to the public, people are likely going to be a lot more than 'unsatisfied'.

See also: