TRUMP is seriously dangerous

[82_28]

One thing I noticed in the two times I think he uttered it was that he said "God Bless the United States" and not the customary God Bless the United States of America. Just something I noticed. I don't know if it means anything. But I noticed it.

[seemslikeadream]

has he stopped talking yet...

[Luther Blissett]

The tone of the whole thing was just bizarre. Almost as if the whole thing was designed to sound historical, like they were creating an artifact for future historians.

[Elihu]

Last night, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks et al, Mark Cuban, was asked on the Colbert show if he thought Trump was worth 10 billion. He responded something like "yeah if I loaned him 9.5 billion".

he hasn't done too well with the team these last few years

[JackRiddler]

Last night, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks et al, Mark Cuban, was asked on the Colbert show if he thought Trump was worth 10 billion. He responded something like "yeah if I loaned him 9.5 billion".

he hasn't done too well with the team these last few years

Whatever, he's no doubt right in his assessment of Trump's actual "fortune."

[seemslikeadream]

Mike Pence on the “American Heartland” and the Holy Land
By contributors | Jul. 22, 2016 |

By Shalom Goldman | ( Patheos )
The Republican Party platform, posted last week, gives the American-Israeli relationship considerable space. Pundits in the U.S. and Israel have duly noted the absence in the platform of any reference to a “two-state solution”—a phrase that appeared in the 2012 Republican platform but has now become identified with the Democratic Party and the State Department tenures of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Republicans are by inference rejecting the elusive “two-state solution,” though both the Israeli and Palestinian governments endorse the concept—though not, it seems, its implementation.
pence2
To students of the intersection of religion and politics what is most striking in the Republican platform is the strong religious language describing Jerusalem as “the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish state” to which the U.S. embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv. This phrase, with its direct echoes of Benjamin Netanyahu’s pronouncements, was missing from the 2012 platform.
Democrats too, despite many challenges from the Left at party meetings, have spun a positive view of Israeli Jerusalem, though in less theological language. Jerusalem, the Democratic platform claims, is “the capital of Israel, an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”
Equally significant in the Republican platform is the thus far unremarked upon assertion that “support for Israel is an expression of Americanism.” Like the platform’s language about Jerusalem, this elevates the relationship with Israel from the realm of the political and diplomatic to the realm of eternal verities and, one may say, to the realm of theology.
One would be hard pressed to find a better representative of that “eternal” and “biblical” approach to Israel and to other burning American issues now dividing the country than Governor Spence of Indiana. Seen from a religious studies perspective, Pence’s elevation to the rank of vice-presidential candidate seems much more serious and weighty than a last-minute choice that Trump allegedly tried to undo at the last minute. As Trump’s choice of Mike Spence came only three weeks after Trump’s 21 June meeting with nearly one thousand conservative Christians in New York City, the decision and its wider implications call for careful analysis.
At that June meeting in New York, Israel—and America’s commitment to it—was the subject of much speechifying, theologizing, and evangelizing. Accompanying that pro-Israel rhetoric was its current corollary, the fear of Islam. Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr., son of the founder of the Moral Majority and president of Liberty University, told the assembled faithful that “Mr. Trump is a bold and fearless leader who will take the fight to our enemies and to the radical Islamic terrorists.” Trump, in turn, let the assembled worthies know where he stood on Israel. Vowing to “restore faith to its proper mantle in American society” (yet another odd Trumpism), Trump said, “I’m 100 percent for Israel.” But the candidate couldn’t let it rest at that. The implication that the current president wasn’t for Israel needed to be made explicit. To hammer the point home, Trump said, “I can’t imagine Bibi likes Obama too much. He’s totally forsaken Israel.”
At the 21 June meeting, the organizers announced the formation of two working groups: the Evangelical Executive Advisory Board and the Faith and Cultural Advisory Committee. As the Washington Post reported, “the meeting was a display of many old-guard conservative Christian leaders.” In attendance, and on the podium, were James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Ralph Reed, founder of the Christian Coalition; and Jerry Falwell, Jr., president of Liberty University. In his welcome to Trump, former Arkansas governor and former presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee told the candidate, “I don’t think anyone here expects you to be theological today. I want to put you at ease. I don’t think anyone here thinks that we are interviewing you to be our next pastor. You’re off the hook on the deep theological questions.”
Governor Pence, in contrast, is much more at home among Christian conservatives and no doubt more conversant with “the deep theological questions.” And if he becomes vice president and lives “a heartbeat away from the presidency,” the voters—both those who opposed Trump and those who voted for him—will quickly become aware of Pence’s deeply conservative ideas and intentions. Not that any of this is secret. A look at his voting record in the House and his record as Indiana governor tell the story. Against gay rights, reproductive rights, and environmental activism, Pence is also highly critical of any opposition to the American wars in the Middle East. According to the New York Times, Pence, who has made numerous trips to Iraq, denied assertions made in 2005 that the intelligence used to back the U.S. invasion was questionable. “There was no manipulation,” he told reporters. “The war in Iraq was just, is just, and the freedom of the teeming millions who established a constitutional republic one week ago supports that conclusion.”
In December 2014, Pence spent nine days in Israel on a Christmas pilgrimage sponsored by John Hagee’s Christians United For Israel. Katie Glueck, Politico’s astute correspondent, noted at the time that “Israel has become a routine stop for politicians with national ambitions,” and that the Indiana governor’s long sojourn in Israel was “a move sure to stoke speculation about his presidential ambitions.” While in Israel, Pence was invited to address a meeting of the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce. And here too he invoked the heartland image. “As governor from the heart of the heartland I say with conviction: Israel is not merely our strongest ally in the Middle East. Israel is our most cherished ally and a beacon of hope in a troubled region of the world.”
At the conclusion of that 2014 visit Pence recorded a video message to Netanyahu in which he promised to continue the “partnership” with Israel. “I would pledge to you from my vantage point in the heart of the heartland … that not just during this very special time of the year for people who share my tradition, but all throughout the year, that an appreciation for the state of Israel and the partnership between the state of Israel and America has never been stronger,” Pence told Netanyahu.
And on his return to Indiana, Pence issued a proclamation stating that “Hoosiers have cherished our relationship with the people of Israel for generations.” With remarkable consistency Pence, throughout his political career (twelve years in the House of Representatives before he was elected governor), has described himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.”
Mike Pence’s conversion story bears telling here: raised in a Catholic family he found the Catholic Church of the 1980s too liberal and sought a more rigorous theology and practice. Christian Reconstruction provided the structure he sought, and the supporters of that ultra-conservative ideology helped propel Pence into Indiana politics.
As religion scholar Julie Ingersoll noted in her 2015 book Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction, this branch of evangelical thought advocates “dominion theology,” a biblical worldview that points to the ways in which humanity is to exercise dominion over creation, and especially over people for whom they deem themselves responsible. Under the intellectual and organizational leadership of Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001), Reconstructionists, in Professor Ingersoll’s words, “laid an intellectual foundation that would shape the twenty-first century Christian subculture, developing what would become the religious right’s critique of the American social order, and plotting strategies to bring about change.” Rushdoony advocated the institution of “Biblical Law” in the U.S. “You can have two kinds of law,” he told an interviewer. “Theonomy—God’s law. Or autonomy—self-law. That’s what it boils down to. And autonomy leads to anarchy, which is what we are getting increasingly.” To counter this “anarchy,” Rushdoony advocated a very long-term plan, one that promoted Christian home schooling as an alternative to “Godless public school education.” Though his ideas might sound very abstract to those not theologically oriented, they take on a greater reality and urgency when we look at the support currently given this movement by the Koch brothers and other funders of the Christian right.
Denominational labels seldom transfer well across religious boundaries. The Reformed churches, for example, have little in common with Reform Judaism, and the Jewish Reconstructionist movement is in many ways the diametrical opposite of Christian Reconstructionism. The Jewish movement, with its emphasis on Jewish peoplehood and the progressive and pragmatic ideas of Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, is the most liberal of American Jewish denominations. Christian Reconstructionism, on the other hand, is the most conservative of evangelical movements.
But at the current strange political moment these radically different movements, one Christian, the other Jewish, both profess loyalty to Israel and its government. And that profession of loyalty, often expressed as “love of Israel,” has become the most powerful cross-denominational factor in contemporary Jewish life.
To move from the abstractions of religious thought to the political arena: CNN’s Dana Bash has reported that Trump was so unsure about Mike Pence that at midnight on Friday he asked top aides if he could get out of it. But I think that this is a bluff: from the standpoint of appeal to evangelicals, Pence is a brilliant choice. And I would make a similar claim about the joint appearance of Trump and Pence on 60 Minutes on Sunday night. Pence may have acted like the silent and meek partner, but in the larger scheme of things he is the important player.
So, while Donald Trump plays the clown—or the arrogant aspirant to the monarchy—Mike Pence and his supporters, energized by a deeply conservative theological-political agenda, are now a step closer to the corridors of power. And for many who share Pence’s political agenda, professions of loyalty to the State of Israel and its “eternal and indivisible capital” seem to have talismanic power.

[seemslikeadream]

Trump’s New GOP Cheers Homosexuality And Boos God. I’m Done.
Posted at 10:00 am on July 22, 2016 by streiff


The RNC Convention has turned out to be pretty much the Star Wars bar scene that a lot of us thought it would be. It was totalitarianism on parade. The convention of the party that defeated Soviet communism... yes, Democrats, during the last decade of the Cold War your party might as well as have had an open alliance with the USSR... threatened dissenting delegates with physical violence. Parliamentary procedures that were worthy of a typical Third World sh** hole potemkin legislature were used to ram through rules that ensure the Republican party remained an oligarchy.

But it wasn't the abuses of power that was the final straw. It was the repudiation of the founding principles of the nation and everything the GOP has told us it stands for that is the most stunning achievement of the past week.

In the early days of the Republic, John Adams famously wrote, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." The logic was clear. Without a firm grounding in Christianity and the morality that springs from Christianity, the US Constitution simply can't work. That common language has to exist in the electorate otherwise we descend rapidly into a society where we are governed by out base instincts not by our better angels. The Democrats fell here years ago, adopting sexual license and perversion and covetousness of the wealth accrued by others as planks of their party platform.

Now the GOP is there.

Last night, Peter Thiel spoke. I don't know a lot about him other than I refuse to use PayPal because of the egregious political causes it underwrites.

...Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom. This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?

Of course, every American has a unique identity. I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all I am proud to be an American. I don’t pretend to agree with every plank in our party’s platform; but fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline, and nobody in this race is being honest about it except Donald Trump.
Quite honestly, I am not very interested in Thiel's lifestyle choices and who puts what where when he's in bed with some sweaty, hairy man. It might be of interest to him but it is actually irrelevant to much of anything else. (Quick. How many speakers said 'I am proud to be straight'? Who would have cheered if they had?)

The culture wars Thiel derides are not "fake." Thiel knows this. Thiel is an active and enthusiastic warrior, himself. Thiel's own company, PayPal. is happily involved in harassing and punishing anyone who will not agree that sexual perversion is the new black. The same people that think it is fine to have an adult male using the same locker room as your daughter are the same people who call 50-plus million dead babies a "choice." They are called Democrats. Many nations have come back from economic collapse. Never has a nation recovered, absent major trauma, from moral collapse. Without morality a society stops being trust-based and at that point the "rule of law" becomes the "rule of the judge you own." What Thiel is advocating, as is Trump, is the rule of money, by money, and for money. What Thiel is advocating, and you will see Trump do this to because he has never signed onto anything to do with religious freedom, is using the power of the federal government to advance the cause of immorality by demanding that anyone opposed unilaterally disarm.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Thiel was wildly cheered.

It’s been a great week for gay escorts in Cleveland.

Male prostitutes contacted by The Post said business is booming and Republican National Convention attendees — most of them married — are clamoring for their services.

“Business has been way better. I’ve seen 10 clients so far,” one male escort said.

“Most of them were first-timers. You could tell they were nervous, but once they became more comfortable, they seemed to be having a good time.”
Compare and contrast the behavior of the audience when Ted Cruz spoke.

When Cruz said this, he was booed:

And to those listening, please, don't stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.
Think about the implication. The delegates knew that a) they are not voting their conscience, b) that they don't trust Trump to defend our freedom, and c) they know Trump will not be anymore faithful to the Constitution than he has been to any of his battalion of wives and mistresses. But they are voting for him anyway and they are offended that they are being called out for their craven cowardice and amorality. And instead of being shamed into silence at the magnitude of their own betrayal of the nation, they try to shout down the messenger.

When Cruz ended his speech, Erick made this observation:

Listen for yourself. They’re chanting “Endorse Trump” until Cruz says “God bless you,” at which point they start booing.


It is hard to listen to this and not recall the words of Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput:

“Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be. And America has no special immunity to becoming an enemy of its own founding beliefs about human freedom, human dignity, the limited power of the state and the sovereignty of God.”
This is a party that is unmoored from the history of the nation and its own history and from common decency. This is a party that worships nothing but celebrity, wealth, and ephemeral power that is held not for the purpose of moving the nation forward but for merely the sake of holding power. This is a party that has decided it is tired of being the "stupid" party and it wants to be another "evil" party.

Until this party rids itself of Trump and his acolytes, I'm done with them.

[Agent Orange Cooper]

from Antiwar.com...

Trump Enrages the War Party
He’s challenging 70 years of US foreign policy – and they hate him for it!

by Justin Raimondo, July 22, 2016


This election season is so much fun because Donald Trump keeps enraging all the right people – and his timing is perfect. Just as the Republican convention was at its height, with his running mate up there on the podium perorating about the alleged threat of Vladimir Putin, along comes Donald with an interview in the New York Times that has the War Party yelling and screaming bloody murder. The head of NATO; the foreign policy pundits; even some alleged “non-interventionists” – they’re all aghast that Trump is questioning the supposedly sacred tripwires that commit us to going to war if Lower Slobbovia invades Upper Slobbovia.

It started with this article, in which Trump’s views on NATO, the Turkey coup, and other matters were summarized, but it caused such a commotion that the Times published the entire interview, and it is really a sight to see – good news for us anti-interventionists, and very bad news for the internationalists, i.e. the entire foreign policy Establishment.

It starts off with Times reporter David Sanger trying to bait him into attacking Paul Ryan, who, he says, “presented a much more traditional Republican, engaged internationalist view of the world.” Sanger reminds him of his previous comments on NATO: that our shiftless “allies” need to start paying their fair share of the costs of the alliance. Sanger adds in Korea and Japan, and ask: what if they won’t pay? What then?

Trump’s answer is vintage Trump: “Then yes, I would be absolutely prepared to tell those countries, ‘Congratulations, you will be defending yourself.’”

He is challenged by Sanger – who asks most of the questions, by the way – who avers that our system of alliances is in our interests as well, because of “trade.”

Does Sanger imagine Russia going to somehow stop trans-Atlantic commerce? It isn’t clear, but Trump comes back at him by saying it’s “a mutual interest” – in which our NATO allies are not doing their part. Stopped in his tracks – because even President Obama, as well as traditional Republicans like Robert Gates, have complained that our allies aren’t paying – Sanger reverts to the default interventionist argument:

“Even if they didn’t pay a cent toward it, many have believed that the way we’ve kept our postwar leadership since World War II has been our ability to project power around the world. That’s why we got this many diplomats …”

Trump’s answer is perfect:

“How is it helping us? How has it helped us? We have massive trade deficits. I could see that, if instead of having a trade deficit worldwide of $800 billion, we had a trade positive of $100 billion, $200 billion, $800 billion. So how has it helped us?”

Here Trump has stumbled on the dirty little secret of the post-World War II security architecture so beloved by our elites: for the privilege of paying for their defense, and in effect militarily occupying our allies-cum-satellites, we allow them to flood our markets with tariff-free goods, while they wall off their markets with trade barriers and subsidies. As the Old Right economist and prophet of empire Garet Garrett put it at the dawn of the cold war, it’s a peculiar sort of empire in which “everything goes out and nothing comes in.”

cont'd @ http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016 ... war-party/

[backtoiam]

That was a good article cooper. One thing Trump gets right is the fact that these trade agreements are pure theft from the people. We have an enormous number of old people hitting retirement and they don't have a damn thing to show for it.

These people sacrificed their entire life busting their ass 8 to 16 hours a day. They were promised a share of their hard labor in their old age and they got fucked nine ways to Sunday. Social Security has been raped and the payout compared to the profit made on the labor is peanuts.

The prospects of young people being able to get a decent job are shit at best. Now we have hundreds of thousands or millions of destitute desperate people looking for a better future flooding into the country that will not be able to find a decent job too which further stretches the safety net.

I would like to believe that these trade agreements are one thing Trump might actually cancel so that americans and migrants alike could get on their feet, earn a decent living, and have a retirement that does not include the possibility of being homeless and starving.

However my cynical mind doubts he is serious. My cynical mind also doubts he would be allowed to accomplish this even if he is serious.

The fuckedupness of this whole situation is, well, its just fucked up. The future of an entire planet of people has been stolen.

[seemslikeadream]

if Trump is elected and then is impeached ...because he will be a convicted felon after he is elected .....this man Mike Pence will be president

The Creeping Dominionism Of the Religious Right
SUBMITTED BY Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 5/5/2010 2:38 pm
I have to admit that I am not sure if I can seeing the rise of dominion theology more and more among the Religious Right because it is a) becoming more prevalent or b) it has always been there but I am now aware of it and therefore noticing it more.

As we noted recently, Janet Porter's entire May Day 2010 prayer rally was built around "7 Mountains" theology; the idea that Christians are to take dominion over, literally, seven specific facets of modern life in order to wrest control away from Satan and his demonic spirits so that Christians can put them to use in bringing about God’s kingdom on Earth: (1) Business; (2) Government; (3) Media; (4) Arts and Entertainment; (5) Education; (6) Family; and (7) Religion.

Porter's rally featured dozens of Religious Right leaders, all repenting and praying for one of these specific mountains. Some of them, like Cindy Jacobs, clearly subscribe to 7 Mountains theology, but others - like Tony Perkins, Mat Staver, Rick Scarborough, Rob Schenck, and Bryan Fischer - may or may not, but that didn't stop them from participating in this event, though it did lead VCY America to drop Porter's radio program because of her increasing involvement with this sort of dominionist theology.

Today, while watching the Family Research Council's pre-National Day of Prayer webcast, I noticed that the last half-hour or so was given over to attendees gathering in small groups and praying specifically for each one of these same 7 Mountains in five minute intervals.



In fact, the official mission from the National Day of Prayer Task Force appears to be 7 Mountains-based (with the one exception being that the Task Force appears to consolidate arts and entertainment under the "media" title and adding the military to fill that open spot):

The National Day of Prayer Task Force’s mission is to communicate with every individual the need for personal repentance and prayer, mobilizing the Christian community to intercede for America and its leadership in the seven centers of power: Government, Military, Media, Business, Education, Church and Family.

The Task Force is run by James Dobson's wife Shirley and includes not only 7 Mountains co-founder Bill Bright's wife Vonette on its leadership committee but also dominionist/New Apostolic Reformation mastermind Peter Wagner on its "board of reference," along with several members of Congress: Representative Michele Bachmann, Representative Lincoln Davis, Representative Bob Goodlatte, Representative Mike McIntyre, Representative Mike Pence, Representative Joseph Pitts, and Representative Chris Smith.

Now, in a semi-related development, I noticed that last week Pat Robertson's CBN hosted its annual "Week of Prayer" which featured two dominionist preachers and Lou Engle associates: Dutch Sheets and Che Ahn.

Sheets was co-organizing the now-canceled Wilderness Outcry event with Engle and wrote the foreward to Engle's "The Call of the Elijah Revolution," while Ahn is a co-founder to Engle's TheCall and co-wrote "The Call Revolution" with Engle. In that book, Ahn reports that he first met Engle back in the 1980s when Engle was a seminary drop out who was mowing lawns for a living until, believing him to be a prophet, Ahn gave him a job in his church where all he had to do was pray and fast.

Like I said, I am not sure if this dominionist/7 Mountains theology is becoming more widespread among the establishment Religious Right or if it has always been there and I am just starting to notice it more.

But if places like VCY America are going to be dropping associations because of this creeping dominionism, they might soon find themselves parting ways with a significant number of groups within the so-called mainstream of the Religious Right.

Mike Pence: Radical Christian Extremist
July 15, 2016 by Michael Stone
Mike Pence, Trump’s VP pick, is an anti-science, anti-women, anti-LGBT, religious extremist.
Dangerous Religious Extremist
Earlier today presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump named Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate. Pence is Sarah Palin without the charisma, a conservative Christian nightmare who rejects the separation of church and state, and places his Christian faith above the U.S. Constitution.
Pence is fond of saying he is “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order,” and has repeated the self-description often. He is a dangerous religious extremist who dreams of a Christian theocracy.
Anti-LGBT
Pence is a rabid homophobe who wants to deny civil civil rights for LGBT people. Last year, as Governor of Indiana, Pence signed a draconian religious freedom bill into law that actively promoted discrimination against LGBT people.
Indeed, Time reports Pence has a long history of demeaning gays and promoting discrimination against the LGBT community. In the past, Pence has claimed that gay couples signal “societal collapse;” opposed a law that would prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in the workplace; opposed the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; and, more recently, he rejected the Obama administration directive on transgender bathrooms.
Yet Pence’s faith based hatred for the LGBT community is only the beginning of his deranged agenda.
Anti-Women
Pence is anti-women. Pence supports so-called personhood bills that would criminalize abortion nationwide. In addition, Right Wing Watch reports Pence has spearheaded congressional efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, even if it meant shutting down the government; signed anti-abortion measures into law in Indiana; and rallied opposition to President Obama’s effort to roll back prohibitions on stem-cell research.
Anti-Science
Pence is anti-science, and refuses to accept evolution or climate change.
Pence is a climate science denier. Media Matters reports:
On the February 21, 2014, edition of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, host Chuck Todd asked Pence if he is “convinced that climate change is man-made.” Pence responded: “I don’t know that that is a resolved issue in science today.” Moments later, Pence added: “Just a few years ago, we were talking about global warming. We haven’t seen a lot of warming lately. I remember back in the ‘70s we were talking about the coming ice age.” Pence similarly stated on the May 5, 2009, edition of MSNBC’s Hardball that “I think the science is very mixed on the subject of global warming,” as ThinkProgress noted. However, according to NASA: “Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.”
Pence also refuses to accept evolution. Confronted by Hardball host Chris Matthews in 2009 on evolution, Pence obfuscated on the issue, made appeals to God, and ultimately refused to acknowledge the scientific truth of evolution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQMakgyEK90

MATTHEWS: Okay, you want to educate the American people about science and its relevance today. Do you believe in evolution, sir?
PENCE: Do I believe in evolution? I embrace the view that God created the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that’s in them.
MATTHEWS: Right. But do you believe in evolution as the way he did it?
PENCE: The means, Chris, that he used to do that, I can’t say. But I do believe in that fundamental truth.
Bottom line: Pence is a dangerous religious extremist. If given the chance, Pence would make the United States a Christian theocracy.

Mike Pence Has Led a Crusade Against Abortion Access and LGBT Rights

[seemslikeadream]

Trump campaign manager’s Ukrainian clients have Panama Papers connections

By Adam Weinstein and Laura Juncadella

GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump sent shudders through US foreign policy circles and the international community this week, when he suggested that, as president, he might not fulfill America’s promises to defend NATO members against a Russian attack. That departure from historical American policies, and Republican wisdom, came days after the Trump campaign reportedly softened the GOP platform’s hardline stance against pro-Russian rebels fighting to control Ukraine.

Those moves were less surprising to critics of Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who for more than a decade has cultivated business ties to pro-Russian politicians and industrialists in Ukraine.

Now, Fusion has learned that the names of several of Manafort’s connections appear in shell company records from the notorious Panama Papers and the Offshore Leaks, troves of information on offshore companies unearthed in recent years by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

From Washington to Kiev

After several fairly conventional decades in conservative American politics, Manafort won headlines in 2007 for his paid work rebranding former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych and his “Party of Regions” as mild-mannered reformers. That was no small feat for Yanukovych, a Ukrainian politician who had been described by the New York Times‘s Kiev reporter as “a divisive figure reviled by some here as a shady reactionary and Kremlin pawn,” and who was driven from power in 2005 amid allegations he’d tried to rig his re-election with Russian help. (His election opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, fell ill due to poisoning during the campaign — a mystery that still goes unsolved.)

“The West has not been willing to move beyond the cold war mentality and to see this man and the outreach that he has extended,” Manafort told the Times of Yanukovych.

Manafort’s efforts paid off: Over the next several years, the Party of Regions gained power in the legislative and judicial branches. By 2010, Yanukovych had made a stunning comeback, again winning the presidency, and overseeing a regime that held on to power by funneling government money to his “Family” of oligarchs and party apparatchiks. As a 2007 US embassy cable describing the Party of Regions inner circle put it: “Ukraine’s history is marred with non-transparent privatizations that have benefited a few well-connected insiders.”

Some of those party insiders were banned from travel to the United States or faced visa delays, based on allegations that they supported the pro-Russian forces who’ve occupied Eastern Ukraine since a 2014 popular uprising deposed Yanukovych, who remains in exile in Russia. Some of them have clear connections to Manafort. And some of them, or their relatives and associates, also appear in records of shell companies in the Panama Papers or Offshore Leaks.

As Fusion and its partners in the Panama Papers investigation have previously reported, there are benign reasons for individuals to set up offshore shell corporations. But the anonymity they provide owners, and the lack of transparency into where their money originates and is headed, make them attractive vehicles for funneling ill-gotten gains, concealing wealth, and sidestepping regulations and sanctions. A recent World Bank study of 213 major global corruption cases found that 70 percent of them involved the use of at least one secret corporation to hide true ownership.

It is unknown whether Manafort had any involvement with these shell companies; Fusion’s messages requesting comment from Manafort and the Trump campaign were not returned.

The Caribbean candy company

Manafort’s earliest engagement in Ukrainian affairs appears to have come in 2005, when he advised Rinat Akhmetov — the country’s richest man — on strategic communications for one of the billionaire’s many companies. But the pro-Russian Akhmetov quickly paired Manafort with his political ally, Yanukovych, for an image makeover.

Akhmetov, whose personal and political fortunes were allegedly enhanced by government funds and organized crime, does not appear in the Panama Papers — but his older brother, who stays out of the public limelight, does. Leaked records show that Igor Akhmetov was one of several secret beneficial owners of “Konti Confectionary Limited,” incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in 2014 and seeded with 23.4 million euros. The other beneficial owners included Boris Kolesnikov, another Yanukovich party insider and childhood friend of Rinat Ahkmetov’s who in 2007 praised Manafort as ‘one of a lot of good people” consulting Ukraine’s politicians.

The sour $26.3 million telecom deal

Many relationships Manafort made in Ukraine spilled over into US business relationships. These include Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who has been called “Vladimir Putin’s favourite industrialist.” Deripaska, who is barred from US travel over alleged organized crime ties that he denies, partnered up with Manafort in 2007 to form a Cayman Islands-based investment company. Deripaska reportedly paid Manafort’s firm $7.4 million in fees, then invested $18.9 million to buy a Ukrainian telecom firm. But Deripaska eventually pulled out and asked for that money back; according to a lawsuit filed in Virginia by Cayman liquidators, Manafort never returned the cash. A lawyer for Manafort, Richard Hibert, did not answer Fusion’s request for comment, but he told Yahoo in April that Manafort had been deposed in the case, which is ongoing.

As Fusion’s reporting partners in the McClatchy DC bureau reported last April, Deripaska shows up in the Panama Papers as the secret owner of a Mongolian coal company formed in the British Virgin Islands that sold part of itself to another of Deripaska’s Russian metal companies in 2006. Deripaska’s mother, Valentina, is also listed in the ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks as a beneficial owner of the BVI-incorporated “Bennet Select Corporation,” whose activities are unclear.

The billion-dollar firm that couldn’t pay its employees

In another lawsuit against Manafort and several associates, former workers in company he formed with an ex-Trump real estate employee allege that they didn’t receive their promised salaries. That company, according to court filings, set up a billion-dollar US-based property-investment vehicle for Dmitro Firtash, another controversial Yanukovych insider and billionaire. The filings allege that Manafort and Firtash also worked together on other deals, including an abandoned $850 million plan to buy the Drake Hotel in New York.

Firtash is now wanted by authorities in Washington on suspicion of bribery and organized criminal activity; he was arrested in Austria in 2014 and the US has sought his extradition since. (His company has called the charges a “misunderstanding.”)

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BERLIN, GERMANY - SEPTEMBER 08: A visitor walks past paintings by Pablo Picasso during a preview for foreign journalists at the "Von Hockney bis Holbein, die Sammlung Würth" ("From Hockney to Holbein, the Würth Collection") exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau on September 8, 2015 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition will be open to the public from September 11 through January 16. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Today in Panama Papers: Works of art, political backlash, bank CEO resigns

Firtash is listed in ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks database; he set up an offshore holding company in 2006 for assets related to his government-aided businesses.

He also has business ties to what the ICIJ calls one of the Panama Papers’ key “malefactors,” Ukrainian mob boss Semion Mogilevich — a man the FBI once called a “global con artist and ruthless criminal” implicated in “weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale.” According to an internal State Department cable, Firtash told the US ambassador to Ukraine “that he needed, and received, permission from Mogilievich when he established various businesses.”

Big government in Russia and Ukraine

Observers have long argued that one basis for most of these Russians’ and Ukrainians fortunes was their support for Yanukovych — and Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s desire for close coordination between the Moscow and Kiev regimes. Both times Yanukovych gained the presidency of Ukraine, Putin offered him incentives to keep the country in Russia’s orbit; those incentives included an eye-popping $15 billion aid package in 2013.

That same year, Forbes Ukraine reported that Yanukovych had taken advantage of relaxed government rules to award a lion’s share of state contracts to his inner circle. Two of the top contract-winners are former partners of Manafort’s: Akhmetov and Firtash. In the first 10 months of 2012 alone, they had raked in contracts worth billions of dollars.

In early 2014, just before Yanukovych and his cronies were thrown out of power for the last time — and several months before Akhmetov’s brother and other party associates set up the candy company listed in the Panama Papers — Akhmetov alone had won 31 percent of Ukraine’s state contracts, according to Forbes.

A murky record

How much money did Manafort make for his years of work on behalf of some of Ukraine’s richest, most influential pro-Moscow billionaires and politicians? The answer is unclear; consultants don’t have to publicly disclose their fees. Such campaign consulting relationships can typically command seven- or eight-fee figures. Department of Justice records show only that in 2008, Manafort hired the communications firm Edelman to lobby for Yanukovych’s party for $35,000 a month; the company collected $63,750 on the contract in the first half of that year.

Manafort “told a congressional oversight panel in 1989 that his firm normally accepted only clients who would pay at least $250,000 a year as a retainer,” according to Bloomberg View.

Manafort, the Trump campaign, Firtash, Deripaska, and Rinat Akhmetov did not respond Fusion’s requests for comment; Igor Akhmetov and Mogilevich could not be reached for comment, their whereabouts unknown.

Panama Papers
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39684&hilit=panama+papers

[seemslikeadream]

Wednesday, 20 July 2016 05:53
The GOP Nomination of Donald Trump Is a Legacy of White Settler Colonialism

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

A 21st-century white self-proclaimed billionaire became the official 2016 presidential nominee of the Republican party on Tuesday night. Pundits have relentlessly speculated about how it came to be that a candidate so brazen in his misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, foreign policy ignorance and factlessness could succeed in obtaining the Republican nod to run for president.

There are many factors that resulted in the Trump nomination -- including the savvy use of his celebrity status and understanding of contemporary television (combined with Twitter) as an entertainment medium -- but the fact is, he is a racist carnival barker, and his racism is at the center of his rise to the pinnacle of leadership in the Grand White Party.

I was listening to the Thom Hartmann Program a couple of weeks ago. Hartmann, as I recall, had a guest on who referred to Trump's use of a technique mastered by Dick Nixon, known by the acronym FIBS. FIBS stands for a political strategy based on fear, ignorance, bigotry and sneering. That about sums up Trump, doesn't it?

However, if you had to take one element of "FIBS" and identify it as the key to Trump being crowned the GOP presidential nominee, "bigotry" would lead the list by a long stretch. Of course, bigotry evokes and is reinforced by fear, ignorance and sneering. Still, the pedestal upon which Trump's triumph rests is raw, seething, hateful racism.

We've discussed this before on BuzzFlash, but it is an appropriate time to repeat that Trumpism is a legacy of white settler colonialism. After all, the United States may have declared independence from Britain in 1776, but it continued the Eurocentric colonial policies based on the notion that white people were superior in civilization, intelligence and the divineness of their souls. After 1776, the US rose as an economic and geographic power largely because of its near-decimation of Indigenous peoples and its widespread enslavement of Black people. As we have pointed out, while slavery was legal in the South, much of the North's wealth was also based on the results of slave labor. Enslaved people produced, for example, cheap cotton that made the products of the New England textile mills less expensive than similar products from other Western nations.

Meanwhile, European colonialism in Africa and elsewhere was murderous, brutal and economically exploitative. To justify the European colonial policies, leading thinkers of the time, so-called scientists, religious figures and other members of the intelligentsia propagated a notion of whiteness -- which became embedded in European colonialism -- in which non-whites were seen to belong to an inferior, primitive race. The founders of the United States included many slaveholders (Washington, Jefferson, etc.), as well as many others who accepted the notion without question that Black and Indigenous people were inferior and not entitled to be treated as humans. US white settler colonialism is a direct descendant of merciless European white settler colonialism.

The line from white settler colonialism to Donald Trump's populist support among people who believe the US should become "white again" is not a thin thread; it's more like a thick corded rope. Yes, it is 2016, and slavery has long been abolished in the US. However, the notion of white superiority is now running up directly against the changing demographics of the United States, which is becoming an even more racially and religiously diverse nation. That -- along with white middle- and working-class economic stress -- created low hanging fruit for Donald Trump. He stepped in and inflamed the fear of "the other." He lets his followers know that he condones white privilege as being a doctrine to be proud of. He gives them license not to be bound by an "elite" notion of "political correctness."

On July 13, The Washington Post ran an article detailing that -- according to a recent poll -- "Donald Trump is getting zero percent of the black vote in polls in Pennsylvania and Ohio." Upon first look, that is an astonishing rejection of Trump by Black voters in those two states. However, although Trump may not use the rhetoric of George Wallace as far as race is concerned, Black voters are hearing Trump loud and clear. Trump is the embodiment of the political legacy of white settler colonialism -- and an authoritarian symbol of white privilege. His campaign cap may say "Make America Great Again," but, of course, Trump's true message is "Make America White Again."

Donald Trump's Acceptance Speech Reconfirmed His Fascist Authoritarianism

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT


Donald Trump asserted in his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination that only he can "fix" the violence and terrorism that he says is threatening individuals in the United States. His campaign has largely been based on inciting fear of "the other" among white Americans. Now that he has lit that fire among his supporters and unleashed a hideous bonfire of hate, he is positioning himself as the authoritarian (just call it fascist) solution to the frenzied fear that he has created among his supporters.

In his remarks in Cleveland (see transcript here) Trumped promised:

I have a message for all of you: The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon, and I mean very soon, come to an end. Beginning on January 20th, 2017, safety will be restored.

The Guardian US observed, as have other news sites and journalists, that Trump is bringing back the Nixonian "law and order" code wording for keeping the nation white through hyper-aggressive policing:

In his warnings of “crime and violence” and his solemn pledge that “I am the law and order candidate," Trump sounded notes eerily similar to Richard Nixon’s campaign rhetoric in 1968.

Then, in the aftermath of consecutive summers of widespread riots across the US, Nixon ran as the candidate of “law and order...."

Amid a backdrop of terrorist attacks and police shootings, the celebrity billionaire seized on the theme of law and order as a potential rallying cry for a party bruised by internal feuds and a chaotic convention....

“Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence personally, some have even been its victims,” he said.

The “police shootings” Trump alluded to were not indiscriminate killing of Black people by police, but rather the shooting of police. This allusion adds to the racist tinge of his campaign and bolsters his incessant claims that the violence in the United States is caused by "those others," meaning people of color and Muslims. Trump sprinkled the threat of terrorism throughout his speech to bolster the incendiary image of a nation under siege.

As BuzzFlash recalled yesterday, we heard a guest on the Thom Hartmann program assert that Trump was following Nixon's playbook of employing FIBS, the exploitation of fear, ignorance, bigotry and sneering. In doing so, Trump gave a nomination speech that presented himself as the sole person able to reduce the bigotry that he has whipped into a frenzy. Indeed, in his speech he stated, "Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it." Ah, the words of a true caudillo. Franco, Mussolini and Pinochet couldn't have said it more accurately to characterize the "strongman" political leader.

On July 20, journalist and author Eric Alterman wrote:

What is on display at the RNC in Cleveland is the Republican id. We always suspected it would look something like this. But even though it reared its ugly head on occasion on Fox News or in Congress -- on the lips of some right-wing preacher or billionaire hedge-fund manager.....

Well thanks to Donald Trump and his followers, the jig is up. Melania Trump’s plagiarism of Michelle Obama was just about the least offensive thing one heard from the podium on Monday night. The rest was a near orgy of hatred, racism, sexism and ethnocentrism. Rudy Giuliani has always presented himself as an avatar of “law and order.” This has been a conservative mantra for half a century. We always suspected it was code for the suppression of African-Americans and now we know. Ditto all this talk of “Judeo-Christian” values. It’s a code for Islamophobia and oppression.

"Law and order" were the key code words for Nixon's Southern strategy that finalized the conversion of the deep South from voting Democratic in presidential elections to voting Republican. The words sent the message that Nixon would seek to keep people of color “in their place.” Now, in Trump’s mouth, the same words signal a similar orientation toward both people of color and Muslims.

An Illinois Trump delegate, according to Raw Story, "was sent home to Illinois after using an offensive racial slur in a Facebook post suggesting police should shoot black protesters." Lori Gayne, the delegate, had used a racial slur when writing on Facebook about law enforcement officers "guarding" a GOP gathering on the patio roof of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with high-powered rifles: “Our brave snipers just waiting for some N------ to try something. Love them [the police]."

Gayne may have been told to return to Illinois, but she candidly embodied the "id" of the GOP convention and party that stayed behind. Trump has been masterful at exploiting this visceral racism and intolerance into a festering, hateful following. Last night, he told them that he is the only person who can protect them from the fears that he has so mercilessly exploited. He is their strongman, their unilateral leader, their authoritarian great white hope.

[backtoiam]

seemslikeadream said

if Trump is elected and[b] then is impeached ...because he will be a convicted felon after he is elected .....this man Mike Pence will be president[/b]

They all are, or could be on a moments notice. What makes him any different than the rest? He had to be vetted to get through the net and inner club and obviously he got vetted. I see no difference between him and the rest of the beasts.

I tried for six hours so far today to talk to a real live person from the social security administration. No luck yet. I am still listening to the non beautiful elevator music six hours later.........................I paid for years. What I get is elevator music in return. I don't like elevator music.

[seemslikeadream]

he is a religious asshole who thinks he can shove his Theocratic Dominionist Reconstructionist fucking dick up my vagina set up house keeping and stay there...and they all aren't like that

[backtoiam]

He is just another rich puppet. He will produce shit. Literally........