Month: January 2025

Great! not to be confused with DSM-5 070 (news addiction).
Now, Michael, as a co-founder of the DRM, tell me, do you have both my books?

Start thinking about incentives we can give donors to the movement.

E.g.,

For the $200/month pledge level,two T-shirts, both books, a coffee cup, and one book per month to give to your friends.Plus discounted pricing for additional copies of the books.

For the $100/ month pledge level, one T-shirt, both books,a coffee cup, and one additional book every three months to give to your friends.

For the $50 / month pledge level, both books and a coffee cup.

For the $25/ month pledge level, one book and a coffee cup.

Obviously, I need to give more thought to this.

The Democrats could have done this in 2021 when they had a Senate majority.

But they were asleep at the week.

The thoroughly-corrupt Supreme Court we have now is the result.

To rebuild American democracy, this “nuclear option” exception must be reversed.

The Supreme Court’s decisions which must be reversed:

Trump v. Anderson (2024) (14th Amendment, paragraph 3);

U.S. v. Trump (2024) (presidential immunity for “official acts”);

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010);

McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014)

SpeechNow.org v. FEC (2010) – D.C. Circuit opinion which building on Citizens United oaved tge way for creation of super PACS.

BACKGROUND

1) Banjamin Quénelle, ‘Trump croit, comme Poutine, que la vocation des forts est de dévorer les faibles’; Dans un entretien au Monde», le professeur de relations internationales à Sciences Po Zaki Laïdi estime que « l’Europe ne pourra jamais rien entreprendre qui aille à l’encontre » des intérêts américains. Propos recueillis par Benjamin Quénelle
Le Minde, le 11 janvier 2025 (modifié à 16h32);

2) Benjamin Quénelle, “‘Trump believes, like Putin, that the vocation of the strong is to devour the weak’; In an interview with Le Monde, International Relations professor at Sciences Po Zaki Laïdi believes that “Europe can never undertake anything that goes against” American interests.
Interviewed by Benjamin Quénelle,” Le Monde, January 11, 2025/(updated at 4:32 pm);

BACKGROUND

1) “Von der Leyen nicht zu Trump-Vereidigung eingeladen – Xi Jinping schon,” Die Welt, den 10. Januar,2025;

2) “Von der Leyen not invited to Trump swearing-in – Xi Jinping was,” DiecWelt, January 10, 2025;

Donald Trump has lost no time insulting the 27 member states of the European Union, including our most important BATO allies. He has sbubbed the president if the European Commission, Ursula van der Leyen, while he has invited the President of China, Xi Jinping, to attend his inauguration on January 29.

Whether a conscious slight by Donald Trump orthe product of the incompetence of the people he has named to theWhite House staff, the slight is inexcusable.

Not even out of the starting blocks, atrumpmhas shot himself in the foot for no apparent reason.

This unforgivable blunder is likely to be a foretaste of much worse to come.

It recalls Trump’s shooting the finger to NATO by ordering his new Secretary if State, Rex Tillerson, to skip a NATO summit and to proceeddirectly to Moscow instead.

Todaywe REPRISE the cokumn in The Trenchant Observer we wrote at the time, on January , 2017.

Refecting a strong intuitive feeling I had this morning, today i purchased the internet domain “Trump47imoeachment.com”.

***
March 21, 2017 Trump Orders Tillerson to Skip NATO summit, Travel to Moscow Instead

Originally published in The Trenchant Observer March 21, 2017. Reprinted in The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2017 (2024), Chapter 17, pp. 60-62.

News that Rex Tillerson would skip an upcoming NATO foreign ministers meeting and travel instead to Moscow is the kind of news that produces a “What the f…?” reaction, almost too grotesque and unbelievable to be true.

But it is true.

To be sure, Vladimir Putin has been lying low, not engaging in any particularly egregious behavior (except in the eastern Ukraine), but apparently he and Donald Trump have concluded it is now safe to proceed with pro-Russian actions.

This is the second big pay-off to Putin since Trump became president on January 20, 2017. The first was an easing of U.S. sanctions against Russia to enable the Russian FSB (successor to the KGB) to resume collecting licensing fees for imported cell phones and other electronic equipment. Trump administration officials justified this as a mere “technical adjustment”, but in fact it was a favor to the very agency that was involved in intervention in the 2016 campaign and elections in the U.S., and also the agency alleged to have compromising information on Trump (kompromat) as alleged in the Christopher Steele “golden showers” dossier.

See “’Technical adjustment’ on Russian sanctions may involve more than meets the eye,” The Trenchant Observer, February 2, 2017.

Beyond the salacious details about Trump allegedly cavorting with Russian prostitutes (which Putin boasts are “the best in the world”), the Steele dossier alleges that Putin himself ordered the Russian intervention in the U.S. elections, and that there was active collusion and cooperation between the Trump campaign and individuals around Trump and Russian officials.

While news media have generally reported that the allegations in the Steele dossier cannot be corroborated, in point of fact a number of details in the dossier–though not the details of the “golden showers” episoode–have been confirmed by intelligence officials speaking on background. Moreover, the dossier was a raw intelligence product. One would not expect that all of its details could be corroborated, given the nature of Steele’s sources.

See

1) Andy Towle, “Rachel Maddow: Details of Trump-Russia Dossier Keep Checking Out as its Author Reemerges from Hiding,” Towleroad, March 8, 2017 (8:15am).

2) Rachel Maddow, “More Pieces Of Donald Trump Russia Dossier, ” MSNBC, March 7, 2017,, found on YouTube here;

Reflect for a moment on the message Trump is sending to our NATO allies, Russia and other countries.

Consider also the message Trump is sending to voters in countries like France who will participate in elections such as the French presidential election, where Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National, with Russian financial support, is running on a pro-Russian platform.

Days after meeting with Angela Merkel of Germany, now the embodiment of the liberal military and political order based on the United Nations Charter, and for many the current leader of the Free World, Trump is doubling down by snubbling NATO and giving Russia a great propaganda victory.

What Trump is doing is anathema to foreign policy experts who understand the importance of not bowing to a dictator who engineered an unprecedented attempt to throw the 2016 presidential election to Trump, and to also influence the Congressional elections, and who has invaded and currently occupies part of the Ukraine.

The greatest irony is that Trump’s actions come at the same time that the FBI director, James Comey, has confirmed in Congressional testimony that Trump and his campaign are the current subjects of a counter-espionage investigation into cooperation and collusion with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign.

As for Tillerson, we should recall how he strained credulity by testifying in his Senate confirmation hearings that he had not discussed Russia with Trump.

See

John Nichols, “Rex Tillerson’s Jaw-Dropping Testimony Just Completely Disqualified Him,” The Nation, January 12, 2017.

Perhaps the best that can be said for Tillerson is that he is either oblivious or indifferent to the symbolism and impact of his actions toward NATO and Russia. Otherwise, he looks like a willing tool of the Trojan horse candidate who has become the pro-Russian president of the United States.
 

BACKGROUND

1) Robert Kagan, “TRUMP IS FACING A CATASTROPHIC DEFEAT; If Ukraine falls, it will be hard to spin as anything but a debacle for the United States, and for its president,” The Atlantic, January 7, 2024 (1:04 PM ET);

At T-12, Trump minus 12 days. we need to ask what will happen if Russia wins its war of aggression against Ukraine.

For a comprehensive analysis of the current situation regarding the war, with realistic consideration of military and political realities, see Robert Kagan’s article cited above.

Few policymakers and analysts have thought much about the consequences of such a Ukrainian defeat at the hands of the Russians.

Most avoid the thought by entertaining the illusion that there can be negotiations that could lead to a ceasefire or some kind of a settlement. They argue among themselves about the potential terms of such a ceasefire or settlement, despite the fact that neither Vladimir Putin nor Ukraine is interested in such negotiations.

Vladimir Putin has been absolutely clear. His conditions for entering negotiations amount to total capitulation on the part of Ukraine.

Wolodymyr Zelinski appears to be open to territorial concessions, but his statements in this regard must be read as a brilliant maneuver to get on the right side of Donald Trump. The Ukrainian constitution prohibits any “territorial concessions”.

Moreover, peremptory norms of international law prohibit terms in a peace settlement recognizing the acquisition of territory by military force or even its temporary occupation due to the illegal use of force in violation of Article 2 paragraph 4 of the United Nations Charter, the bedrock principle on which the United Nations is founded. Any trreaty or agreement violating these norms of peremptory international law would be void ab initio under international law, and have no legal effect.

Political leaders know these facts.They are deliberately lying to their populations and to each other by holding out the possibility of a negotiated solution to the conflict.

They can negotiate with themselves about agreements that would leave Russia in control of conquered territories until the cows come home, but they are only blowing smoke in the air. They are only lying to each other and to their populations.

Not one of these political and military leaders and analysts has addressed in any detail the situation that would exist and the consequences that would follow if the leading powers ignored these bedrock principles of international law and the U.N.Charter.

These leaders and analysts are unwilling to face the hard realities of the Ukraine war. To do would require determined and energetic actions, including preparations for a war that may last decades (or at least until Putin leaves the scene); the imposition of sanctions against Russia that would really hurt those imposing them; and an all-out effort to persuade or coerce the nations of the so-called Global South to join the regime of international sanctions against Russia.

To face the hard realities of the Ukraine war would require countries to move toward establishing wartime economies that could sustain the production of munitions and advanced weapons systems over the course of a long and drawn-out war.

Finally, to face the hard realities of the Ukraine war would require recognition of the fact that our military forces, our soldiers, NATO soldiers, might need to become directly engaged in the war to prevent a Russian victory. This requirement, moreover, could become urgent very quickly if the Ukrainian forces begin to falter.

This is a sobering reality. So was the reality facing England, France, and other democratic countries in Europe in 1938 and 1939. They temporized. They delayed. They harbored illusions that peace could be ensured by negotiating an agreement with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, as British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister tried to do in Munich in October 1938.

As late as May 1940 Chamberlain and Foreign Minister Lord Halifax sought to negotiate a separate peace with Germany. Fortunately, Winston Churchill successfully resisted their entreaties.

The world and the U.S. need a leader of the caliber of Winston Churchill to lead us through the coming years of war with Russia.

Instead, we have Donald Trump.

We can only hope that we will be surprised.