BACKGROUND
1) “Excelentes en la destrucción, nulos como gobernantes; Cuando los abusos de la nueva Administración de Trump lleguen a la justicia, el daño causado será ya irremediable,” El País, el 29 de marzo 2025 (23:00 EDT);
2) Lluís Bassets, “Excellent in destruction, null (zero) as rulers; When the abuses of the new Trump Administration come to justice, the damage caused will already be irreparable,” El zpaís, March 29, 2025 (23:00 EDT).
BAXKGROUND
1) Editotial, “A Playbook for Standing Up to President Trump,” New York Times, April 6, 2025 (1:00 a.m. ET);
Who are these men who gleefully support and carry out the outrages, the illegal and unconstitutional actions of Trump?
We begin to realize, hopefully not too late, the truth of which we have neen warned for many years. Men and women are susceptible to the appeal of fascism.
Men welcome being told what to do. Men and women are happy to carry out orders to abuse other people. There may in fact be an inherent inclination to be cruel. Individuals may enjoy being cruel to other people, or even torturing them, or participating in a crowd that murders other people, sometimes in the hundreds or the thousands, and sometimes in the millions.
This inclination toward cruelty, this desire to obey an authoritarian leader, is part of our human DNA.
It is part of our human nature. Our human nature.
Only the civilizing influence of education, and the leading examples of civilized men and women can direct these evil inclinations and defend ahgainst our evil vulnerabilities, so that we follow the path of civilization, that we comport ourselves as civilized human beings.
It takes courage to stand up against a mob which is capitulating to an authoritarian leader.
Unfortunately, today we see little evidence of such courage among our political leaders, the leaders of big business, the leaders of big law firms, or the leaders of top,law schools and universities.
We are witnessing what in Germany in 1933 and afterwards was known as the Gleichschaltung. The great synchronization in which individuals and groups were forced to tune in to and get on the same frequency. Then it was the frequency of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Today it is the frequency of Donald Trump and his fascist mRepublican Party.
It is a deeply sad spectacle to behold.
These men and women, who have now been synchronized with the frequency of Donald Trump and his fascist Republican supporters, are gleefully carrying out the destruction of the government, of its departments and programs, with at best indifference and in all probability pleasure as they destroy the lives of human beings they don’t even know.
Think of the dismantlement of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the deaths of small children and of AIDS victims, who will die–and may already be dying–because the USAID-funded or supplied food and medicines have been cut off.
Who are tgese men and women, disciples of Trump, who take pleasure in cutting off the food and medicine tgat enables children and other human beings to survive, just to live?
Have they always been like this? Didn’t they care at some earlier point in their lives whether a baby lived or died? Do they understand how they are not only cutting off the supply of food and medicines to individuals whose lives depend on that food and those medicines, but tgey are also cutting off those people’s lives?
Who are tgese people executing tge commands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who take delight in tge great destruction derby which they are perpetuating?
Where did our civilization fail them, where did we fail them, that they could gleefully participate in such barbaric actions?
Who is responsible for their Gleichschaltung?
Is it not every individual who failed to speak out against what he or she knew was wrong, or evil?
Is it not everyone who failed to call out the truth when monstrous lies were told?
Who is responsible for this Gleichschaltubg in America?
Is it not every partner at a Big Law law firm who failed to stand up for truth and justice, who failed to speak out against Trump’s fascist threats to law firms, our justice system and the rule of law?
Is it not every big firm partner who caved in to Trump, or acquiesced in his or her Management Committee’s accommodation with the unconstitutional demands of Trump’s Executive Orders?
Is it not the leaders of every law firm which failed to file amicus briefs in cases brought by firms like Perkins and Coie which challenged Trump’s actions in Court?
Is it not every law school dean–particularly at the “leading” schools like Harvard and Stanford who refused to sign the following statement circulated by Berkeley Law School’s Dean Edwin Chermenensky?
Who are tgese men and women who gleefully execute the commands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk? Or who enable them to donso?
Who are these university presidents who fail to take a common stand with other universities whose funding is arbitrarily cut off at oresident Trump’s whim?
Who are these men who gleefully support and carry out the outrages, the illegal and unconstitutional actions of Trump?
Or who fail to stand up, who fail to speak out.
And who through their acquiescence enable them to do so?
BACJGROUND
1) Hamish de Breton-Gordon, “Whisper it, but the tide might just be turning against Putin; The American president has lost patience with the Russian leader – so has his own people,” The Telegraph, March 31, 2025 (4:55 pm BST);
This week’s contest for “The Best of the Worst” op-ed columns or news stories is hardly a contest, as Marc A. Thiessen–the winner of the last contest–has done it again with a mind-boggling example of how blind ideology can blind a columnist or analyst to the most obvious facts, the truth right in front of them screaming to be acknowledged.
See Marc A. Thiessen, “The Signal chat’s big takeaway? Trump has built an effective team. Americans got a fly-on-the-wall view of a group working together to execute the president’s policy,” New York Times, April 2, 2025 (6:52 p.m.EDT).
Signalgate, the chat on the commercial platform Signal regarding the imminent bombing of targets in Yemen, was perhaps the largest breach not only of operational security but also national security information and communication systems in memory.
See Malcolm Nance, “Breach: The Great Trump Signal Screw-up!; SignalGate May Be the Greatest Breach in History – I Put on my NSA Hat to Tell You Why,” Special Intelligence, March 26, 2025.
Thiessen’s takeaway:
Amid the outrage over Signalgate, one thing should matter most: The text exchanges have given Americans a window into the inner workings of a highly competent national security team carrying out a successful military operation on the orders of a decisive U.S. president.
…
Nothing embarrassing was revealed, no military operations were compromised, and no Americans were killed. Trump’s team executed a successful military operation. There was no “Team Pete” or “Team Mike” or any daylight between them. There was only “Team Trump.”
Team Trump indeed! Conducting the greatest security breach in recent recent memory. It turns out that at least 20 other chats on Signal had dealt with sensitive national security information.
The protestation of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other national security officials that no classified information had been discussed in the Yemen or other chats was so ludicrous that one had to wonder about the basic intelligence of those making the claim.
As to whether anyone should be fired or disciplined for this massive security breach, Thiessen concludes:
The idea that anyone on Trump’s team should be fired for this minor incident is absurd. And it’s clear that the inadvertent disclosure was also a blessing in disguise, because it showed the world what a well-oiled national security team faithfully executing the president’s policies looks like.
Thiessen is the hands-down winner of this week’s contest, and with this week’s entry he has become the leading contender for the Best of the Worst Award for 2025.
BACKGROUND
1) M. Gessen, “Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived,” New York Times, April 2, 2025 (5:04 a.m. ET);
Today, April 1, 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in a nationally-televised speech that he was withdrawing all Russian troops from Ukraine.
He explained that after he went to church to pray for Donald Trump, following the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13, 2024, he had begun to think of his own mortality and of his relationship with God.
Over the course of many months and conversations with Patriarch Kirill (Cyril and other high prelates of the Russian Orthodox Church, he had slowly come to understand that to kill innocent civilians in Ukraine was wrong and a major sin against God’s will.
A leader with such sins on his conscience, if not forgiven, would not be admitted to Heaven, he came to believe.
Putin began to earnestly study the Bible, including the New Testament and the Ten Commandments. He had not studied these texts since before he joined the KGB after his university studies.
A lawyer by training, Putin began to review the texts of the U.N. Charter and human rights treaties to which Russia was a party. He had not read these texts either, if ever, since before joining the KGB.
There he found that the bedrock principle upon which the United Nations was founded was the prohibition “of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” The Soviet Union had not only ratified the Charter, but had also played a key role in the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.
Russia was also a party to a number of U.N. human rights treaties or conventions. Tgese included:
–U.N. Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1967j
–U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
–U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child 1990)
–U.N. Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict 2001)
In thecarea of International Humanitarian Law, Putin found tgat Russia was a party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Protocols, as summarized by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), among others.
See ICRC, “Summary of the Geneva Conventions
of 1949 and Their Additional Protocols,” 2011.
Putin, in an epiphany which recalled Paul’s conversion on tge road to Damascas, decided tonseek forgiveness for his sins and to follow tge path of God.
As a first step, he has ordered tge withdrawal if all Russian troops from Ukraine as defined by its internationallt-recognized borders of 1991.
BACKGROUND
1) Harriet Barber, “Trump lashes out at Putin as Ukraine ceasefire talks stall; US president ‘p—ed off’ as Russian counterpart demands that Volodymyr Zelensky be replaced with transitional government:” The Telegraph, March 30, 2025 (8:09pm BST);
2) Adam Schiff, Schiff Notes
3) Norm Eisen and Rasha Rangappa, “coffee with the Contrarians,” March 31, 2025.
President Trump should be reminfed of thevwords in Aricle 2 paragrap 4 of the United Nations Charter, which provides:
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
…
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
Why does Article 2 (4) prohibit both the use of force and the threat the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”?
The answer is quite clear.In the recent experience of the founders of the U.N. in San Francisco in December 1945 was the annexation of Austria and its incorporation into the state of Germany in March 1936 (the so-called Anschluss) under the threat of military invasion, and the cession of the Sudetenland (German-speaking provines of Czechoslovakia) oursuant to the Munich Pact of September 30, 1938.
Trump’t threat to bomb Iran if tgey don’t agree to a nuclear settlement is a clear violation of Article 2 (4) of tge U.N,p. Charter, and also of ttge 1868 on-proliferation Treaty to which both Iran and the U,S. are parties.
BACKGROUND
1) “Putin propone sustituir a Zelenski por un Gobierno temporal auspiciado por la ONU y EE UU; Washington rechaza la idea del presidente ruso porque vulnera la Constitución ucrania y la voluntad de su ciudadanía,” El País, el 28 de marzo 2025.
BACKGROUND
1) Tom Nicholsm “The Trump Team’s Denials Are Laughable; The president’s officials must know that what they did in the Signal group chat was wrong—and dangerous,” The Atlantic, March 26, 2025 (3:26 pm);
2) Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris, “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signalb; The administration has downplayed the importance of the text messages inadvertently sent to The Atlantic’s editor in chief., The Atlanric, March 26, 2025 (8:19 am);
Malevolent incompetenxe
Donald Trumpmon his first day in office issued a decree which granted tge highestvsecurity clearance to anyone je ne named or the White House Counsel added yo the list, without any vetting. Elon Musk and his ream, and pro-Russian Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, as well as Defense Secretary Pail Hegsith presumably received such clearances without vetting. Vetting mihhybhave identified Hegseth drinking oroblems and Gabbard” pro-Russian and pro-Syrian actions and statements as problematical. Musk represents a huge security risk because of his investments and Tesla operations in China.
The biggest security risk, of course, is Donald Trump whois reliably reported to beca Russian asset.
The mind+boggling incompetence of Paul Hefseth and others who participated in the Signal chat hours before U.S. mikitarybaction against targets in Temen is malevolentmp because Trump demonstrably incompetent people like Hegseth abd Gabbard to key National Security positions with suchbdisregard forvqualifications as to amount to malice.
Now we must demand truthful ansers to the following question:
“What other chats on Signal ot other unsecured platforms did tgese and other national security officials engage in?