[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
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[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
WASHINGTON: At times it has seemed as though this presidential campaign was occurring in some alternate universe. Up is down, no means yes, day is night.
Donald Trump’s tweets, speeches, interviews, debate statements, news conferences and off-the-cuff remarks — that is, pretty much every utterance made during his waking hours — have been a source of hyperbole at hyper-speed. His misstatements have been so ubiquitous that Hillary Clinton’s slippery words often slithered right on by unnoticed.
Trump made pernicious use of fictional numbers, concocted certain events and both contradicted and mispresented his earlier self.
Clinton took actual facts and went beyond them, promising more than she can deliver, cherry-picking numbers and otherwise standing for the lawyerly Washington tradition of paying partial heed to reality while bending it to her advantage. Cautious by nature, she was most inclined to stretch facts to their snapping point when on the defensive about her email practices, which was often. Clinton’s defensive position, in essence: The dog ate my homework.
With Election Day finally, nearly upon us, some lowlights from both candidates:
For Trump, day is night
On Clinton’s approach to borders: “She wants to let people just pour in. You could have 650 million people pour in and we do nothing about it. Think of it. That’s what could happen.”
The facts: For this to happen, every other country in the Americas, from Mexico south to Chile’s southern tip, and a chunk of Canada would have to empty its entire population into the US.
But wait, there’s more.
Trump said that under Clinton, this could happen “in one week.”
This was no a slip of the tongue — at several events he’s spoken of 600 million coming in under Clinton; at another, 650 million. This doesn’t faintly resemble anything Clinton has proposed for the US (population 325 million).
Trump is riffing off of a leaked Clinton speech to bankers in which she spoke of her dream of a “hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.” The remarks in context suggested an interest in free commerce, not necessarily the free movement of people. But no one is talking about packing whole populations from other Western Hemisphere countries into the US like sardines.
Numbers are always pliable in the political arena; for Trump they are often whatever he wants them to be. He routinely overstates the US trade deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, no matter how many times he’s called on it.
On the battle of Mosul, Iraq, and other operations against Islamic State militants: “Whatever happened to the element of surprise?”
The facts: Many generals agree with Trump that it is folly to tell ISIL that it is about to be attacked. But those are armchair generals. Real ones tend to see the value in pre-announcing a major offensive.
In the case of Mosul, signaling an assault in advance was a way for Iraqi forces to warn civilians in the city and to encourage a resistance movement to weaken ISIL before the battle began. Moreover, any element of surprise had been long lost; preparations for the battle began more than a year ago, with the US part in it under close scrutiny by Congress.
More broadly, Trump’s theory that secrecy should surround all such operations reflects a lack of understanding of how this battle against ISIL has developed over the past two years, as well as certain obligations to keep Congress informed. Basic decisions like when to assault Mosul are left to the Iraqi government, because it is the Iraqis who will have to govern the place when the fighting is done.
The US wants the Iraqis to own the Mosul problem – both militarily and politically — so they don’t repeat the mistakes that allowed ISIL to capture the city in the first place.
Mosul was the obvious last major target of an Iraqi counteroffensive against ISIL, whose ability to defend the city had been undermined by months of US airstrikes against its leaders and financial and military resources. Surprise was not an option.
When Clinton accused him of calling climate change a hoax invented by the Chinese: “I did not. I did not.”
When asked about telling people on Twitter to check out a sex tape: “It wasn’t ‘check out a sex tape.’”
The facts: On these and other occasions, Trump has blithely denied making statements he plainly made — even though he was caught on tape making them.
In a 2012 tweet, he wrote: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.” He later claimed he was kidding, but he’s also repeated the claim that climate change is a hoax, and one that benefits China. In 2014: “Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!”
During this campaign, he also tweeted “check out sex tape and past” of former 1996 Miss Universe Alicia Machado, whom Clinton discussed in a presidential debate as an example of Trump’s derogatory comments about women.
Machado, a Clinton supporter, criticised Trump for body-shaming her by calling her “Miss Piggy” when she gained weight. Was there a sex tape? In a manner, yes. Machado was filmed in a 2005 Spanish-language reality show in bed with a man; no nudity is seen but she said they were having sex in the footage.
Trump: “I was against the war in Iraq, because I said it’s gonna totally destabilise the Middle East. … I was opposed to war from the beginning. … “I would not have had our troops in Iraq.”
The facts: Trump publicly supported the war before it started and praised its early progress. He’s insisted otherwise uncountable times, despite the record.
It’s true he wasn’t a cheerleader for the March 2003 invasion. For example, he said a few months before the war that the economy and North Korea were bigger problems. But that’s hardly opposition. In September 2002, he told Howard Stern on the radio, when asked if he would back an invasion, “Yeah, I guess so.” Days after the invasion, he said it “looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint.”
Moreover, Trump offered support for a hypothetical invasion of Iraq in his 2000 book, suggesting he would favor a pre-emptive strike if Iraq were viewed as a threat to national security.
Trump did turn against the long-running war before many in Washington did. But that does not show the foresight he claimed when campaigning against Republican primary rivals who backed the invasion and when campaigning against Clinton, who voted in the Senate for the war. He was not against it when the decisions were being made about whether to start it.
Trump: “I watched when the World Trade Centre came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering. … It was on television. I saw it.”
The facts: This early head-scratcher, from November 2015, helped set a pattern of tall tales that would continue through the campaign. It also fed into one of the signature insults of a campaign full of them — when Trump appeared to mock the disabilities of a New York Times reporter whose recollections from New Jersey after the 9/11 attacks did not support his own.
No video or other proof of large-scale celebrations of the falling towers by Muslims in New Jersey ever emerged.
Serge Kovaleski of the Times, who was working for The Washington Post in 2001, reported in the week after 9/11 that authorities in New Jersey detained and questioned “a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks.”
Kovaleski has a congenital condition that restricts joint movement. In a speech, Trump went after the “the poor guy, you oughta see this guy” — making jerking gestures and taking a mocking tone.
Trump later denied he was imitating Kovaleski and further claimed “I have no idea” who he is and didn’t know of his condition. But Kovaleski said he had met Trump repeatedly, in face-to-face face interviews and at news conferences, and “Donald and I were on a first-name basis for years.”
On why he continued to raise questions about Barack Obama’s country of birth even after the president produced his birth certificate in 2011: “Nobody was pressing it, nobody was caring much about it.”
The facts: Trump himself continued to press false theories about Obama’s birthplace after they were debunked. His claim that the matter faded when the birth certificate came out belies his efforts to keep the myth alive.
“Was it a birth certificate?” he asked in a 2012 interview. “He was perhaps born in Kenya. Very simple, OK?” Trump said in 2014. “Who knows about Obama?” Trump asked in January 2016.
Clinton: The dog ate my homework
“For those of you who are concerned about my using personal email, I understand. And as I’ve said, I’m not making excuses. I’ve said it was a mistake and I regret it.”
The facts: She has made a variety of excuses on the way to a grudging acknowledgment that her use of a personal server and email for State Department business was wrong.
She’s said she used personal email because she wanted the simplicity of a single digital device, although it turned out she carried several devices. She said her email practices were “approved” when they were not — they merely had not been expressly prohibited at the time for the secretary of state.
She said she didn’t understand that material marked with a “c” that passed through her personal communications system meant it was confidential. She said other secretaries of state did it first. That’s partly true, but in a limited way and not with their own servers. She said she never passed on classified material in her system. The FBI found she passed on three email chains with information that had classified markings in the body of the emails; the State Department contended two of those chains held unclassified material.
On the Trans-Pacific Partnership: “I did say I hoped it would be a good deal.”
The facts: Clinton heartily supported the Pacific trade deal in speeches around the world as secretary of state; she did not merely hope it would turn out well. Clinton declared in Australia in 2012, “This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field.” Similar speeches elsewhere affirmed her belief that the deal, still under negotiation, was “groundbreaking,” ”exciting” and “embodied” 21st century standards.
That position became awkward if not untenable in her Democratic primary race against Bernie Sanders, a foe of the deal, and she turned against it. Her less-than-detailed explanation: The deal as finally negotiated did not measure up to her standards for protecting US wages, jobs and national security. Yet the final deal contains some of the strongest labor protections of any US trade agreement.
The subject became Exhibit A in the case made by critics that she lets political currents, instead of personal conviction, guide her.
A hacked email from Clinton adviser Joel Benenson may have inadvertently lent weight to that suspicion. “Do we have any sense from her what she believes or wants her core message to be?” he asked. “Sanders has simplicity and focus.”
Clinton: “I don’t add a penny to the national debt.”
The facts: Not true, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It estimates her increased spending in areas such as infrastructure, more financial aid for college and early childhood education, would increase the national debt by $200 billion over 10 years. That is far less than their estimate for Trump, who they predict would add $5.3 trillion over 10 years. But it’s plenty more than a penny.
One for the road
Trump to Clinton: “You’ve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.”
The facts: The Islamic State group did not exist for almost all of Clinton’s adult life. She’s 69. ISIL is 4.
The team began with the “unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel,” which it said is “based upon shared values of democracy, freedom of speech, respect for minorities, cherishing life, and the opportunity for all citizens to pursue their dreams.”
Point two, said the team, is that “Israel is the state of the Jewish people, who have lived in that land for 3,500 years. The State of Israel was founded with courage and determination by great men and women against enormous odds and is an inspiration to people everywhere who value freedom and human dignity.”
Remember, these are campaign points of the GOP presidential candidate for the United States. The election is next Tuesday.
Point three: “Israel is a staunch ally of the U.S. and a key partner in the global war against Islamic jihadism. Military cooperation and coordination between Israel and the U.S. must continue to grow.
It goes on. And on. Frankly, it sounds a lot like a real ally is supposed to sound.
Another promise included in the platform is the pledge by Trump to “ensure that Israel receives maximum military, strategic and tactical cooperation from the United States, and the MOU will not limit the support that we give. Further, Congress will not be limited to give support greater than that provided by the MOU if it chooses to do so…”
Of special interest was the was the pledge to oppose efforts to delegitimize Israel, impose discriminatory double standards against Israel, or to impose special labeling requirements on Israeli products or boycotts on Israeli goods.”
In addition, Trump pledged that if he is elected, his administration “will ask the Justice Department to investigate coordinated attempts on college campuses to intimidate students who support Israel.”
But the real kicker came in the following related list of points:
“A two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians appears impossible as long as the Palestinians are unwilling to renounce violence against Israel or recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Additionally, the Palestinians are divided between PA rule in the West Bank and Hamas rule in Gaza so there is not a united Palestinian people who could control a second state. Hamas is a US-designated terrorist organization that actively seeks Israel’s destruction. We will seek to assist the Israelis and the Palestinians in reaching a comprehensive and lasting peace, to be freely and fairly negotiated between those living in the region.
“The Palestinian leadership, including the PA, has undermined any chance for peace with Israel by raising generations of Palestinian children on an educational program of hatred of Israel and Jews. The larger Palestinian society is regularly taught such hatred on Palestinian television, in the Palestinian press, in entertainment media, and in political and religious communications. The two major Palestinian political parties — Hamas and Fatah — regularly promote anti-Semitism and jihad.
“The U.S. cannot support the creation of a new state where terrorism is financially incentivized, terrorists are celebrated by political parties and government institutions, and the corrupt diversion of foreign aid is rampant. The U.S. should not support the creation of a state that forbids the presence of Christian or Jewish citizens, or that discriminates against people on the basis of religion.
“The U.S. should support direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians without preconditions, and will oppose all Palestinian, European and other efforts to bypass direct negotiations between parties in favor of an imposed settlement. Any solutions imposed on Israel by outside parties including by the United Nations Security Council, should be opposed. We support Israel’s right and obligation to defend itself against terror attacks upon its people and against alternative forms of warfare being waged upon it legally, economically, culturally, and otherwise.
“Israel’s maintenance of defensible borders that preserve peace and promote stability in the region is a necessity. Pressure should not be put on Israel to withdraw to borders that make attacks and conflict more likely.
“The U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish state and Mr. Trump’s Administration will move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
One week ago, Trump told American voters in Israel at a video rally outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, “My administration will stand side by side with the Jewish people and Israel’s leaders to continue strengthening the bridges that connect not only Jewish Americans and Israelis but also all Americans and Israelis. Together, we will stand up to enemies like Iran bent on destroying Israel and her people. Together, we will make America and Israel safe again.”
Hana Levi Julian
About the Author: Hana Levi Julian is a Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition to her years working in broadcast journalism.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 03 November 2016 15:31.
TNO, “Suit against US/Israel Aid Advances”, 3 Nov 2016
The potentially precedent-setting lawsuit against the U.S. Government for its blatantly illegal aid to Israel has advanced another step forward, the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) has announced.
A federal court judge has granted a motion amending the original lawsuit to include additional evidence of the defendant’s—the U.S. Government’s—unlawful activities.
Acting Israeli National Security Adviser Jacob Nagel (l) and U.S. Undersecretary of State Tom Shannon—both wearing U.S.-Israeli flag pins—during the Sept. 14 signing of the Memorandum of Understanding giving Israel $38 billion in U.S. military aid over a 10-year period. Photo credit IRmep.
Executive Order 13526 prohibits classifying information as “secret” in order to engage in unlawful activities, in this case gagging information about Israel’s nuclear weapons program in order to provide massive foreign aid to Israel.
Timing of aid disbursement. Over the past decade Congress has included illegal [Memorandums of Understanding] MOU aid to Israel in December omnibus spending bills. The judge must issue an injunction before then. She must also block funding if additional bills seeking to provide aid beyond MOU amounts become law.
How files similar to those sought by IRmep on Israel’s nuclear weapons are “disappearing” from UK national archives.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s leaked confirmation that Israel had 200 nuclear weapons.
The mere fact that the lawsuit—based on a 1976 U.S. law which forbids aid to any nuclear-armed state which has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—is still alive, is an indication that the Jewish lobby has so far been unable to suppress it.
Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but is a known nuclear power and recipient of U.S. aid. Most recently, the Jewish lobby-controlled U.S. government signed a new $3.8 billion per year “aid” deal to Israel, in open violation of the 1976 law once again.
The controlled media has, to no one’s surprise, almost completely suppressed news of the suit, and the granting of the amended motion.
Above: How Jewish lobby works: Anti-Defamation League chief Jonathan Greenblatt, right, head of a so-called “civil rights” organization, was one of the enthusiastic attendees at the signing of the $38 billion handover to the Jews-only state of Israel. The Jewish state, which Greenblatt and the ADL of course support, has racially-based immigration and citizenship policies, and builds walls to keep out non-Jews—all policies which Greenblatt and Jewish lobby opposes in America and all European nations.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 02 November 2016 07:39.
Jeffrey Goldberg: lobbyist for operation clean break
TNO, “New Editor of Atlantic Exposed”, 1 Nov 2016:
Jeffrey Goldberg, the new editor of the Atlantic magazine—which endorsed Hilary Clinton—has been exposed as a fanatic Jewish Supremacist who was one of the driving forces behind the fake news stories leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
Despite demanding Americans adopt liberal policies, Goldberg served as an Israeli Defense Force prison guard who admitted to beating Palestinian prisoners.
According to a report in South America’s Telesur news service, Goldberhg “is so far on the fringe that even other staunch Zionists criticize his overzealousness.”
One of Goldberg’s most famous quotes was his comment on the eve of the invasion of Iraq that “in five years, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.”
Goldberg was appointed chief editor of the 159-year-old Atlantic Magazine, one of the most famous journalistic institutions in U.S. history.
The openly-Zionist Goldberg moved to Israel nearly 25 years ago and served in the Israeli Defense Forces. Since then, he has been the opening speaker for numerous Zionist functions, including the American Jewish Committee conference and Zionism 3.0, Telesur reported.
“Most garishly, he worked as a prison guard at Ktzi’ot, Israel’s largest detention camp for Palestinian political prisoners, where he boasted of helping beat Palestinian political prisoners.
I have worked in national security my entire life. Most of that has been in the intelligence community surrounded by classified information. For twenty years, I worked undercover in the Central Intelligence Agency, recruiting sources, producing intelligence and running operations. I have a pretty concrete understanding of how classified information is handled and how government communications systems work.
Nobody uses a private email server for official business. Period.
Full stop.
The entire notion is, to borrow a phrase from a Clinton campaign official, “insane.” That anyone would presume to be allowed to do so is mind-boggling. That government officials allowed Hillary Clinton to do so is nauseating.
Classified and unclassified information do not mix. They don’t travel in the same streams through the same pipes. They move in clearly well defined channels so that never the twain shall meet. Mixing them together is unheard of and a major criminal offense.
If you end up with classified information in an unclassified channel, you have done something very wrong and very serious.
Accidentally removing a single classified message from controlled spaces, without any evidence of intent or exposure to hostile forces, can get you fired and cost you your clearance. Repeated instances will land you in prison.
Every hostile intelligence agency on the planet targets senior American officials for collection. The Secretary of State tops the list. Almost anything the Secretary of State had to say about her official duties, her schedule, her mood, her plans for the weekend, would be prized information to adversaries.
It is very difficult, in fact, to think of much of anything that the Secretary of State could be saying in email that we would want hostile forces to know.
As we wait for more information on the latest revelations, let’s quickly note what we already know Hillary Clinton did.
While Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email address for official business. Instead of using a State Department account, she used a personal email account, housed on a private server located in her home in Chappaqua, New York. The Department of State exercised zero control or oversight in this process. No government security personnel were involved in protecting them.
When the House Select Committee on Benghazi asked to see these emails, the Department of State said they did not have them. Clinton’s lawyers then went through all the emails on her server. They turned over 30,000 emails they decided were work related and deleted all of the rest.
Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 30 October 2016 15:44.
WP, “Clinton aide Huma Abedin has told people she doesn’t know how her emails wound up on her husband’s computer”, 29 Oct 2016:
Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has told people she is unsure how her emails could have ended up on a device she viewed as her husband’s computer, the seizure of which has reignited the Clinton email investigation, according to a person familiar with the investigation and civil litigation over the matter.
The person, who would not discuss the case unless granted anonymity, said Abedin was not a regular user of the computer, and even when she agreed to turn over emails to the State Department for federal records purposes, her lawyers did not search it for materials, not believing any of her messages to be there.
That could be a significant oversight if Abedin’s work messages were indeed on the computer of her estranged husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner, who is under investigation for allegedly exchanging lewd messages with a 15-year-old girl. So far, it is unclear what — if any — new, work-related messages were found by authorities. The person said the FBI had not contacted Abedin about its latest discovery, and she was unsure what the bureau had discovered.
According to federal law enforcement officials, investigators found thousands of messages on Weiner’s computer that they believe to be potentially relevant to the separate, Clinton email investigation. How they are relevant — or if they are significant in any respect — remains unknown.
Here’s what happened after the FBI said it would examine newly discovered emails linked to Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
When they where informed of FBI re opening the investigation due to Weiner.
Weiner and a lawyer for Abedin did not return messages seeking comment. Clinton has called on the FBI to release more information and predicted nothing would emerge that would change the FBI’s conclusion that no charges were appropriate against her.
FBI Director James B. Comey wrote in a letter to lawmakers Friday that investigators would take “appropriate investigative steps” to determine if any of the messages contained classified information or if they could somehow advance the Clinton probe in another way.
Jeffrey Goldberg: lobbyist for operation clean break
