Month: February 2025

Three weeks into the second Trump administration, one thing is clear: To limit chaos domestically and internationally, the wrecking ball-in-chief must be removed from the Oval Office.

The sooner the Democrats start working in unison to achieve this goal, the sooner the ship of state will becstabilized, tge sooner Trump’s and Elon Musk’s destruction derby will be stopped.

More than democracy and the rule of law in the United States are at stake.

The questiin facing tge Democrats is hiw much more destruction will take place before they wake up and mobilize to act in unison tn remove the President from office.

We argued on January 29 that it was not too soon to speak of 47’s removal.

***

Is it too soon to speak of removing 47?

It is never too soon to think of the steps that might be necessary to defend our democracy. We are talking about a president who has already led an attempted coup d’état. He is not entitled to a presumption he will act legally or in good faith.

A prudent course would be for the Democrats to start gathering the evidence and building the case for 47’s removal. Then, as each new outrage adds elements to their brief, they should be engaging their Republican counterparts in conversation.

As the “high crimes and misdemeanors” mount, the day may come when their Republican colleagues’ fear of a lame duck president diminishes, and they start thinking about the future, and even national security and the national interest.

Of course, Vice-President J.D. Vance represents a considerable risk himself. He appears to be guided mainly by extreme personal ambition. But while he appears totally unprincipled, to date he does seem to be rational. Whether he aspires to be a dictator or not is unknown.

Is it too soon to be speaking about the removal of 47?

As non-Nazi Germans who lived through the first months of 1933 could attest, it is better to be too soon than to be too late. As they did in Germany in January, February, and March1933, events can succeed one another very quickly in some circumstances.

There is always the possibility of an extraordinary, unforeseen event.

Like a Reichstag fire.

BACKGROUND

1)”WÄHREND EINER RAZZIA: Russischer Sänger stirbt nach Fenstersturz in St. Petersburg,” Die Welt, den 8. Februar 2025?

2) “Russian singer dies after window fall in St. Petersburg,” Die Welt,February 8, 2025.

So many prominet Russiansvare falling out of their windows to their deaths that one has to seriously question the design of the windoes from which citizens keep falling.

This is a problem leading Russian schools of architecture should br working on as top priority.

Given the fact that many of the victims are highly educated, often with degrees from Russia’s most prestigious universities, “contributory victim stupidity” can be ruled out as a major cause of these tragic accidents.

Behind closed doors, officials are seriouslyinvestigating the possibility that Russian window design may be at fault. It is well known that Soviet and more recently Russian window design has not kept pace with the latest developmentin home and office design and construction in tge leading Western countries.

Soviet and Russian window design, often unchanged since the 1920’s, been blamed for similar accidents, which increased sharply beginning in Lenin’s and Stalin’s times.

Parycularly noteworthy in the present case is that the victim fell out his window while a police raid on his apsrtment was underway.

Experts cite this happenstanceascsyggesring the desirability of a change in police protocols for raiding an apartment.

One of the:first things the police should do, according to these experts. is to close the windows.

BACKGROUND

1) Timothy W. Ryback, “THE OLIGARCHS WHO CAME TO REGRET SUPPORTING HITLER; They helped him in pursuit of profit;Many ended up in concentration camps,” The Atlantic, February 6, 2025 (7 a.m. ET);

BACKGROUND

1) Camilla Tominey, “Let’s celebrate: Donald Trump is vaccinating the West against the woke mind virus
Whether it’s gender ideology or border control; The president has torn through years of bizarre, divisive groupthink in a matter of weeks,”:The Telegraph, February 7, 2025 (6:10 pm GMT);

How do we judge actions by Donald Trump which are aimed at goals we share, at least in part?

How dowe judge the actions of a dictator ang goals accomplished by dictatorial means, even if we share the goals of the actions in whole or in part?

Unless we’ve lost our moral compass, unless we’ve lost our bearings, we don’t celebrate the dictatorial actions of a tyrant, or goals achieved by dictatorial means.

Camilla Townley, in tue article cited above, falls into the unpardonable trap of praising the acts of a dictator, or would-be dictator.

That weakens the case against the dictator, opening the door to justifications for supporting a tyrannical regime. E.g.,”But…he has done good things…”

Like Adolf Hitler, who built the Autobahn in Germany.

One must always judge the achievement of goals by the means employed to secure them.

With Tominey, and many others, we need to go back to democratic basics, and remind tgem and everyone else of the core tenets of democracy and the rule of law.

Summarily dismissing DEI employees without due process of law is no way to proceed, however much we may disagree with DEI policies.

BACKGROUND

1) Timothyy Snyder, “Of course ut’s a coup,” Thinking about…, February 5, 2025 (6:31 a.m.);

2) Olga Lautman, “Trump’s Diversion Tactics; Stay Focused on the Hostile Takeover of the U.S. Government,” UnmaskingvRussia, February 5, 2025 (8:37 a.m);

Timothy Snyder: “of course it’s a coup.”

It’d hard to know whether journalists at leading newspapers are just stupid, orvwhether their compromised editors are keeping them from reporting what is really going om. Olga Lautman and Timothy Snyder help tell the real news stories of the day.

On February 4, Donald Trump again revealed his manipulating the press. His latest shiny object was his preposterous proposal that the U.S. take over Gaza and rebuild it, after all of the i habitants had left.

Almost all of the journalists fell for the bait.
a week earlier Elon Musk demobstrated his iwn brilliance at such legerdemain, with his Nazi salute at a gathering of right-wing supporters. The press corp all ran off to cover the Nazi salute, failing to report much less investigate Musk’s power grab and progressive takeover of the government’s computers and the information stored in the.

A careful reading of Trump’s Executive Order on Dope would have revealed what was going on, as we reported here.

Are journalists just stupid, or are their editors keeping them from reporting and investigating the really important news?

Or is tge fact that articles are now wrutten bybteams if four or five reporters? The other day the New York times reported that Musks team members had passed background checks and been vetted for security clearsnces. They failed to note that for a security clearance all you needed was for Trump or the White House Counsel to add your name to a list, and that Musk’s team was hired bypassing all regular hiring procedures.

Reporters at major newspapers, with a few exceptions, are failing utterly at reporting not only the immediate details but also what is really going on.

BACKGROUND

1) Stéphanie Maupas (La Haye, correspondance), “La Cour pénale internationale, menacée de sanctions par les Etats-Unis de Trump, s’inquiète pour son avenir; La CPI tente de se préparer aux sanctions promises par l’administration en réponse au mandat d’arrêt émis contre Benyamin Nétanyahou. Le premier ministre israélien doit être reçu à la Maison Blanche, mardi 4 février,” Le Monde, le 3 février 2025 (14h51);

2) Stéphanie Maupas (The Hague, correspondent), “The International Criminal Court, threatened with sanctions by Trump’s United States, worries about his future; The ICC is trying to prepare for the sanctions promised by the administration in response to the arrest warrant issued against Benyamin Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister is to be received at the White House on Tuesday, February 4,” Le Monde, February 3, 2025 (updated at 2:51 p.m.);

BACKGROUND

1)Le Monde avec AFP,”La fin annoncée de l’USAID, l’Agence pour le développement international, liquidée par Elon Musk et l’administration Trump; Le premier pourvoyeur d’aide humanitaire dans le monde va « fermer », a déclaré le multimilliardaire Elon Musk. La Maison Blanche a rappelé que ce dernier ne prenait pas de décision sans son accord. Des experts ont mis en cause la legality de cette décision,” Le Monde,le 3 férier 2025 (modifié à 21h01);

2)

3) Julien Bouissou, “CHRONIQUE: Aux Etats-Unis comme en France, c’est toute la philosophie de l’aide au développement qui est menacée; La baisse des fonds destinés à l’aide au développement montre un changement des objectifs politiques poursuivis autour de ces dépenses, observe Julien Bouissou, dans une chronique au ‘Monde’,” Le Monde, le 4 février 2025 (8;30 h);

5) Jukien Bouissou, “”In the United States as in France, it is the whole philosophy of development aid that is threatened; The decrease in funds for development aid shows a change in the political objectives pursued around these expenses, observes Julien Bouissou, in a column in the Le Monde,”, Le Monde, le 4 février 2025 (08:30 am);

1) WTO agreements
2) U.S. law
–any escape cla uses in U.S. law?
–Invocation of National Security exception
3) WTO dispute resolution body