Donald Trump 23
Domestic terrorism in the terrorist state
Domestic terrorism in the terrorist state
The search for notoriety, the need to be heeded, social inequalities, anger, desperation, racial hatred, coexist in a country that dominates the world through the greatest expression of violence, war. All this and more underlies those who pull the trigger in the streets, schools and workplaces of the United States.
Published: Sunday 29 May 2022 | 12:05:15 am.
Author:
Juana Carrasco Martin | juana@juventudrebelde.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Tuesday’s devastating mass shooting in Uvalde – a small Texas town where the victims were 19 students between the ages of seven and 10 and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, where the majority of the student body is Latino and poor like the perpetrator himself – put the spotlight on this weekend’s National Rifle Association (NRA) annual meeting in Houston, Texas.
The pro-gun lobbying group’s convention was being held starting Friday some 300 miles from the scene of the tragedy, and that day would feature appearances by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and former President Donald Trump, all Republicans.
The NRA has successfully “lobbied” Republican members of Congress – to many of whom it contributes juicy donations during their election campaigns, as it does to more than a few Democrats – to reject any bill that would restrict access to guns, including a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and also to reject a bill that would apply background checks to all gun sales.
Texas is an excellent supporter of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and last year passed a law allowing people to carry handguns without a permit or training in their use.
On Thursday – as the family of Irma Garcia, one of the two teachers killed in Uvalde, announced that the teacher’s husband of 25 years and father of her four children, had died of a heart attack as a result of the tragedy – Senate Republicans blocked the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act.
The legislation would have created an interagency task force within the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to analyze and combat the infiltration of white supremacists into the military and federal law enforcement agencies.
It was an attempt to respond to an earlier shooting, just ten days before the one in Texas, at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that left ten people dead, most of them Black, and was perpetrated by a young white, racist, right-wing extremist, tragic event that was described by President Joe Biden as an act of terrorism that should no longer be allowed.
Senate Democratic Majority Leader, New York lawmaker Charles Schumer, said before the vote, “The bill is so important because the mass shooting in Buffalo was an act of domestic terrorism. We have to call it what it is, domestic terrorism. It was terrorism that fed on the poison of conspiracy theories like the white replacement theory,” and he saw it as an opportunity to curb gun violence, but his call for Republican support to begin debate failed.
A clear political dividing line put those of the political parties above the interest of safeguarding a society. Not a single Republican said yes to the measure, arguing that it would open a door to inappropriate oversight of political groups and create a double standard for groups on the extreme right and left of the political spectrum.
Some of those men, supposedly public servants, called it an “insult” to police officers, and labeled it a plan by Democrats to “name our police as white supremacists and neo-Nazis.”
It is obvious to recall the degree of impunity that police brutality has generally enjoyed, one of the most serious, enduring and controversial human rights violations in the United States as confirmed by human rights organizations, a national and institutionalized problem, expressed in unjustified shootings, severe beatings, lethal chokeholds during arrests, and other unnecessarily harsh physical treatment, where the victims are generally Blacks and Latinos.
Right-wing extremists threaten US civil war
Right-wing extremists threaten US civil war
By David Brooks
January 6, 2022
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Pro-Trump protesters storm the grounds of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, USA, January 6, 2021.
The increasing political violence promoted by anti-immigrant extremists is threatening a “civil war”, as part of their strategy to regain national political power.
The threat of political violence, even armed, is open and explicit, broadcast daily on social networks, radio, television by right-wing forces sheltered by a Republican Party now subordinate to Donald Trump and his allies.
Authorities, from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and other intelligence and national security agencies repeat that the greatest threat of “terrorist” violence in the United States comes from extremist US forces, many clustered around white supremacy and anti-immigrant doctrines , including neo-Nazis.
Racist symbols and references prevail in rallies and communications of these forces, such as the flag of the pro-slave Confederation of the First Civil War, along with neo-fascist images and slogans. Many were carried by some of those who participated in the assault on the Capitol on January 6.
“It seems that a civil war will be inevitable” and “we will have a civil war in the streets before Biden is president”, were some of the multiple versions of this type of message that flooded social networks at the end of the 2020 presidential election.
According to a new investigation by ProPublica and the Washington Post, more than 650,000 such messages were uploaded to Facebook threatening civil war, executions of politicians (including Trump’s vice president and the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives) and others. of violence, between the day of the presidential elections, in early November, and January 6 with the assault on the Capitol.
Those messages have not stopped, more than a year after the elections, while Trump and an overwhelming majority of Republicans – including several legislators – continue to promote the version that Joe Biden won by a large fraud in which undocumented people participated.
The majority of Republicans, according to polls, reject that the assault on the Capitol was an illegal act, and consider instead that it was a legitimate protest against “tyranny”, and even against “radical left Democrats.” Some, including legislators, refer to the more than 700 arrested for their participation in that assault in terms of “political prisoners.”
Trump insists on employing rhetoric designed to justify political violence, calling anyone who disagrees with him an “enemy” of the homeland, and for this he even uses the now outdated, but apparently still effective, rhetoric of the cold war.
The House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States, in emergency recess before the entrance of protesters supporters of President Donad Trump to the Capitol, the headquarters building of the federal Congress in Washington. Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP
Democrats, including Biden, “are vicious, violent and brutal on the radical left,” Trump wrote to his supporters a few days ago, criticizing the handling of foreign and domestic policy stating that “they are letting criminals and murderers into our country. country ”, referring to migrants. He concluded: “friend, this is what happens in communist countries and dictatorships. I will never stop fighting to save America. “
In other words, this is not a political dispute between opponents, but a struggle to “save” the country from the “enemy”.
This rhetoric is directed at the same forces that not only express their willingness to use violence, but are also armed. At least 23 million firearms were purchased in 2020, an increase of 64 percent compared to 2019 (other estimates estimate a total of 40 million weapons purchased by 17 million people). In 2021 millions more were added to that citizen arsenal in which there were already more than 300 million weapons (there are no official figures). Most buyers identify as either Conservative or Republican. Although before the most frequent justification for its purchase was for hunting or sports use, that has changed, as many more argue that it is for “self-defense” or citizen protection against “abuses” by governments.
Furthermore, at political rallies, demonstrations and marches, Trump supporters and / or right-wing groups proudly display their weapons. Some have used them with fatal effects, others have appeared in protest actions where they threaten opposition politicians, even in government offices, from the Capitol, in Washington, to official state facilities.
Political analysts continue to express surprise that, suddenly, a significant sector of this country is apparently ready to dispute the policy with bullets. “The idea that people would take up arms against an American election has gone from being utter nonsense to something we have to prepare for,” Professor Adam Winkler of the University of California, Los Angeles, told Newsweek. expert in arms and constitutional law.
The House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States, in emergency recess before the entrance of protesters supporters of President Donad Trump to the Capitol, the headquarters building of the federal Congress in Washington. Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP
“America today, again, is headed for civil war … the political problems are both structural and immediate, the crisis is long-term and accelerating,” said commentator Stephen Marche, author of the new book The Next War. civil, to The Guardian. He pointed out that the political system could collapse due to a crisis of legitimacy, nurtured by a right wing that promotes violence to conquer power.
Democrats, including Biden, “are vicious, violent and brutal on the radical left,” Trump wrote to his supporters a few days ago, criticizing the handling of foreign and domestic policy stating that “they are letting criminals and murderers into our country. country ”, referring to migrants. He concluded: “friend, this is what happens in communist countries and dictatorships. I will never stop fighting to save America. “
In other words, this is not a political dispute between opponents, but a struggle to “save” the country from the “enemy”.
This rhetoric is directed at the same forces that not only express their willingness to use violence, but are also armed. At least 23 million firearms were purchased in 2020, an increase of 64 percent compared to 2019 (other estimates estimate a total of 40 million weapons purchased by 17 million people). In 2021 millions more were added to that citizen arsenal in which there were already more than 300 million weapons (there are no official figures). Most buyers identify as either Conservative or Republican. Although before the most frequent justification for its purchase was for hunting or sports use, that has changed, as many more argue that it is for “self-defense” or citizen protection against “abuses” by governments.
Furthermore, at political rallies, demonstrations and marches, Trump supporters and / or right-wing groups proudly display their weapons. Some have used them with fatal effects, others have appeared in protest actions where they threaten opposition politicians, even in government offices, from the Capitol, in Washington, to official state facilities.
Political analysts continue to express surprise that, suddenly, a significant sector of this country is apparently ready to dispute the policy with bullets. “The idea that people would take up arms against an American election has gone from being utter nonsense to something we have to prepare for,” Professor Adam Winkler of the University of California, Los Angeles, told Newsweek. expert in arms and constitutional law.
“America today, again, is headed for civil war … the political problems are both structural and immediate, the crisis is long-term and accelerating,” said commentator Stephen Marche, author of the new book The Next War. civil, to The Guardian. He pointed out that the political system could collapse due to a crisis of legitimacy, nurtured by a right wing that promotes violence to conquer power.
Hitler returns from the afterlife
Hitler returns from the afterlife
One of the last crimes of the multimillionaire Donald Trump has triggered worldwide and domestic condemnation, at the same time as it once again proves those who warned that Hitler was back because of the racist, ultra-right-wing, xenophobic, nationalist and isolationist positions of Trump were right
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
An angry crowd caused disorder in the U.S. Congress on Jan. 6. Photo: EFE
Five fatalities, at least a dozen injured police officers, 70 people charged, more than 125 files opened, rewards of up to $50,000 for information about fugitives from justice, damages in the millions for the multiple destructions inside the facilities of the U.S. Congress, a newly-militarized city with more than 25,000 troops and walled up in the face of new threats, are the results of the quantitative analysis of the scandalous assault on the Capitol on January 6.
One of the latest crimes of billionaire Donald Trump has triggered world and internal condemnations, while giving reason, once again, to those who – since his unexpected electoral victory in 2016 – warned that Hitler was back due to his racist positions, ultra-rightists, xenophobes, nationalists and isolationists of the new president, who associated him so much with the fascist, that he also made intentional use of lies to trap the will of millions in Germany and try to bring the world to its knees.
A January 14 Los Angeles Times editorial reflected that, although Trump has never really led the far right, it fell in love with him after finding common ground in his rhetoric, which explains why 74 million supported him in 2020 after seeing his “authoritarian impulses” on display for four years in office.
One week after what many have called “a historic act of domestic terrorism,” media around the world are alternating news of the global pandemic’s resurgence and its current increased threats. These are impacting Americans with record numbers of 4,300 deaths a day, and with the horrors surrounding the acts of violence that shook Washington and U.S. democracy, following the president’s call to prevent, by force, the legislative recognition of Joe Biden’s triumph as president-elect.
While the sessions in Congress for the second impeachment against Trump are taking place in a Capitol that looks like a military camp, with soldiers sleeping in hallways, rooms and staircases, police closures are proliferating throughout the city, in response to indications, detected by the FBI, of new armed rallies before Joe Biden’s inauguration, not only in Washington, but in all 50 states.
The proclivity to allow disorder and let it go has generated suspicions and accusations. It was clear in recent days that the mobilization would attract thousands of people, the security apparatus was surprisingly small. Some wondered whether it was “mere incompetence or a strategy” that was premeditated. Then came the version that when the Capitol Police asked for help from the Department of Defense, led by people with no credentials other than their total loyalty to Trump, it imposed severe restrictions on the mission of the District National Guard, which had no riot gear or ammunition.
Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy alleged that Congress did not ask for riot control assistance and was concerned about the image that the presence of uniformed personnel in the building might convey, despite the fact that, until then, President Trump had not shaken his hand in sending in the military when those protesting are Black Lives Matter supporters.
This time the Pentagon took almost three hours to authorize the deployment of riot police and National Guard reinforcements,. While congress members and senators were being evacuated, the building ended up being taken over by the rebels. Among the garbage and the disorder caused, racist insignias and symbols appeared next to Trump’s hats and flags, and a large gallows with the rope prepared: “Let them cut off their heads,” read a banner, according to local correspondents.
OLD SUSPICIONS
Two months before the Trump’s coup against Congress, US columnist and Nobel Laureate in Economics, Paul Krugman, analyzed in his commentary The United States: A Failed State, the possible impact of Trump’s electoral failure. He predicted “that we are in serious trouble. Trump’s defeat would mean that, for the time being, we would have avoided falling into authoritarianism; and yes, the risks are that great, not only because of who Trump is, but also because the modern Republican Party is that extreme and undemocratic.”
Krugman denounced, during the 2020 election campaign, the Republican strategy based on false conspiracies and trying to scare voters by talking about bad things that are not happening, through “damn lies and Trump rallies.”
The day after the election, another New York Times commentator, Thomas Friedman, wrote an article entitled In the Election, There Was a Loser: America, a view that held that “we have just lived through four years of the most divisive and dishonest presidency in American history, one that attacked the two pillars of our democracy: truth and trust. Donald Trump has not spent a single day of his term trying to be the president of all the people and he has broken the rules and shattered the norms in a way that no president has dared; like last night, when he falsely warned of electoral fraud and called on the Supreme Court to intervene and stop the vote, as if such a thing were even remotely possible.
Using the social network platforms, the stands as President and the freedom of expression as an alibi, Trump and his serial manipulators fomented hatred, attempted against migration, undermined confidence in the democratic processes and fed populism and authoritarianism, taking advantage of the macabre techniques of Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda of Adolph Hitler’s Germany. Goebbels used the media to offer biased information, to multiply invented, unreal things, and to make people believe them as unquestionable truths, to expand, to inflame and to manage the genocidal Nazi ideology. More than seven decades later, Trump’s media terrorism took advantage of the fact that today lies reach further, faster and more people than ever before, with technologies.
The end? A broken country, a questioned democracy, a diminished, isolated international authority; a polarized, nervous, fractured society, which appeals more and more to drugs and medicines in the face of so much stress. It is no less concerned with the violence and terrorism generated by the hatred engendered and fueled by Trump, who lived by the lie. The fascists of yesterday and today confirm that delirium is also a deadly virus.
Related information
Showcases of “democracy” with which the United States has pretended to give lessons to the world are broken.
Dr. Salvador Capote on Biden vs. Trump
Biden vs. Trump
By Dr. Salvador Capote
October 14, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Trump and Biden pursue the same goal: to liquidate the Cuban Revolution. Trump embodies the hard line that is expressed in economic, commercial and financial suffocation, without ruling out the military option. Biden is on “Track 2”, the track of cultural and media penetration, of corrupting USAID and NED money, of diversionism, consumerism, and siren calls. Cuba can face both challenges, since it is very possibly the most politically aware people in the world.
It is the people of Martí and Fidel, whose courage and capacity to resist have been proven a thousand times over. But to face the line of the hawks in Washington would cost a lot of blood, in fact it has already cost a lot in the suffering of the Cuban people because of the blockade.
Facing the Obama line, represented by Biden for now, is in the long run the most subtle and dangerous, but we Cubans are aware of the danger and we know how to face it.
With the Biden administration, we could breathe and, if they take their knee off our neck, in a very short time we will demonstrate that to achieve the well-being and happiness of human beings there is no other option than socialism.
Biden and Cuba
Biden and Cuba
By Jorge Gómez Barata
September 9, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
For stating that: “If I won the elections, I would take up Barack Obama’s policy towards Cuba…”, Joe Biden, candidate for the presidency of the United States, does not need any more to settle the doubts regarding the government and the Cuban people.
Giving continuity to Obama’s Cuban policy expresses the will for détente that would configure a platform to bring positions closer, define agendas and propitiate a climate from which it is possible to advance, not only towards what Cuba wanted, but also towards what Barack Obama preferred. He considered the policy followed by the previous administrations obsolete, including the blockade that, according to his creed, instead of isolating Cuba, isolated the United States”.
Obama was neither a friend nor an ally of Cuba, but rather a president of the United States who, saving the asymmetries and the historical disagreement initiated by the Platt Amendment, as well as the insurmountable ideological differences derived both from the anti-communism in force in US policy and the aggressiveness in the face of the Revolution, worked to replace the hostility between the United States and Cuba with neighborliness.
Nobody discovers anything new when they observe that, as the political head of the empire, Obama would like a change in the orientation of Cuban policy, for which he set up premises, different from the aggressive policies of his predecessors. Obama chose options that were closer to the battle of ideas preferred by Cuba. Obviously, there are also Cubans who would applaud a socialist United States, but that does not mean that they would make such a commitment a political objective.
Whatever may be said, Barack Obama was the only US president who, in the 118 years of Cuba’s republican history, spoke with the national authorities on bilateral issues on an equal footing. He did this without prior conditions, without demands and without meanness, which had been a hope of the Cubans and a brilliant conquest of the Revolution. Besides, he is the only one who visited the Island and fraternally talked to the people and the authorities.
Raúl Castro, who added political sagacity and diplomatic skill to his firmness in the defense of national sovereignty and socialist principles, saw the moment when an opportunity opened up and, with integrity and flexibility, took advantage of it. He took steps towards meeting the political coherence of Barack Obama, reaching a common ground on which it was possible to understand each other and move forward until diplomatic relations were re-established.
The flexibility and political stature allowed both to understand that: differences do not prevent civilized coexistence. From Biden, I expect nothing else… I hope he wins. See you there.
Death Over the Factories of Death
Death Over the Death Factories
War industries, U.S. priorities for economic reopening in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, as Pentagon budget continues to rise madly.
August 10, 2020
By Juana Carrasco Martín
juana@juventudrebelde.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
It could be the agricultural implement factories, but that is not the case. They should increase protective measures for workers in the meatpacking industries, for employees in supermarkets, or for agricultural workers, but that is not their intention either.
There isn’t even an equal standard for health-care workers, and Blacks and Latinos are infected with the new coronavirus three times more than their white counterparts, according to a New York Times analysis of the records of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The study also found that minority workers were 20 percent more likely than white workers to care for suspected or confirmed Covid-positive patients. The rate rose to 30 percent specifically for Black workers. In addition, they also reported inadequate or reused protective equipment (PPE) at a rate 50 percent higher than that reported by white workers. For Latinos, the rate was twice that of white workers.
Although the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is not over, and, on the contrary, there is a resurgence of infections in those states that prematurely relaxed or lifted restrictions on social or physical distancing – to be more precise – those that set about economic movement brought, in not a few cases, a priority that projects good times for… the Pentagon and the war industry.
U.S. military personnel, seen outside the overflow hospital at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan last month. The Pentagon has issued interim guidance advising caution pursuing recruits who have been hospitalized previously with COVID-19.
Nor is Eisenhower taken into account
The reality surpasses logic in the Trump administration. Making money continues to be the interest and not the care of people’s lives. That is why national security is being relieved, leaving aside a total battle against the enemy SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and continuing to bet on a war, or all the necessary ones, anywhere in the world against a supposed enemy that allows them to manufacture bombs and war equipment of all kinds.
When the numbers of infected and dead in the United States are terrifying -4,941,796 people infested, so probably this Sunday it will reach five million-, Congress has already discussed the Pentagon’s budget. We remember that independent Senator Bernie Sanders, published an opinion in The Guardian, in which he presented a true picture, a warning and a call:
“At this unprecedented moment in America’s history–a terrible pandemic, an economic crisis, people marching across the country to end systemic racism and police brutality, growing inequality of income and wealth, and an unstable president in the White House–now is the time to bring people together to fundamentally alter our national priorities and rethink the very fabric of American society.
The fact is that they approved $740 billion in spending and ignored Sanders’ proposal to cut 10 percent and target it to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged in the U.S. population, which would have been $74 billion for housing, education and health care, essentially. And the Vermont senator cited a Republican hero, General Dwight Eisenhower, who said in 1953 “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired means, in the final sense, a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its workers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The current situation is much more critical: a quarter of the U.S. population is living from paycheck to paycheck, and now from the pandemic subsidy check, which in July has not yet been approved by Congress; between 22 and 40 million fear eviction for not being able to pay the rent, 40 million also live in poverty, and 87 million lack adequate health insurance.
Sanders is not the only one busy with waste. California Democratic Representative Ro Khanna is proposing that money for the “modernization” of intercontinental ballistic missiles go to research on the anti-Covid vaccine. California Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee is calling for a $350 billion cut in the war budget.
Even Eisenhower could not change the military-industrial complex of which he warned, and even less do Sanders, Khanna and Lee, although they appeal to the emergency caused by the new coronavirus, when the President of the country, Donald Trump, daily minimizes the magnitude and lethality of the pandemic and only takes advantage of it to lead the situation in order to be re-elected next November.
Among his most recent manipulative expressions are assuring that children “are practically immune” to COVID-19, and almost assuring that they will have a life-saving vaccine by November 3 – election day – because he is pushing it with all his might, even though he says it is not to win at the polls, he wants to save lives?
Trump, who has long sought exclusivity on potential vaccines, announced in May that the huge task of delivering the vaccine will be in the hands of the military in conjunction with the CDC. At the time he said it would be at the end of the year, but the circumstances surrounding the election campaign, which are not in his favor, have led him to make the hasty declaration that in November he has the salvation of the world in his hands?
The military and COVID-19
There is a reality, in these dramatic times and when the number one enemy should be the pandemic. The Department of Defense is not accountable for its expenditures, while its contractors are making huge profits, as always, under the cover of a circumstance long highlighted by critics of the system. The main recipients of war industries’ contributions to their respective election campaigns are the members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
To make matters worse, the new coronavirus has served to compensate arms manufacturers for alleged losses in profits as well. For example, General Electric, which has laid off 25 percent of its workforce, received $20 million to expand its development of “advanced manufacturing techniques,” and Spirit Aerosystems received $80 million to expand its domestic manufacturing after laying off 900 workers.
Some analysts warn that military expenditures could be reduced if the billions spent on the new Cold War with China were not available; if the Pentagon’s requests to buy the controversial and clearly imperfect F-35 fighter planes from Lockheed Martin were not met; or on Trump’s new warrior invention, the Space Force.
Included in the waste is General Dynamics Electric Boat’s $126 billion nuclear submarine program, the new Ford class aircraft carrier built by Huntington Ingalls for $13.2 billion, and its launch system that remains unlaunched but earns a profit for General Atomics. By the way, Bloomberg reported that the ship’s toilets are frequently clogged and can only be cleaned with specialized acids that cost about $400,000 per flush…).
The clogging is greater in those Pentagon priorities, when it becomes known from a June article in Tom Distpach, that in February 2018, the Government Accountability Office, which to some extent oversees federal spending, warned that the Defense Department’s health care system lacked the capacity to handle routine needs, let alone wartime emergencies, and within the ever-increasing military budget, military health care has grown next to nothing.
The 41,361 individuals linked to the Department of Defense, both military and civilian employees, infected with COVID-19, and in a staff mostly in the 18-24 age range we have not found the recognized number of deaths, will they be the humane and disposable part of that budget “oversight”?
It’s Not the Economy, It’s the Virus
It’s Not the Economy Anymore, Stupid. It’s the Virus
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The renowned American opinion columnist and distinguished professor at New York University Graduate Center, Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in international trade and economic geography, summarizes in an article entitled “The Deadly Delusions of Mad King Donald”, published yesterday, the precarious situation in which the American nation is being talked about.
A month ago it was still possible to hope that the impulse of Donald Trump and the Trumpist governors of the Sunbelt states to relax the social distancing and reopen businesses such as restaurants and bars, even though they may not have any of the reasons to do so safely, might not have absolutely catastrophic results.
At this point, however, it is clear that everything the experts have warned of as likely to happen, is happening. The new daily cases of Covid-19 are running two and a half times longer than at the beginning of June, and are increasing rapidly. Hospitals in the early reopening states are under terrible pressure. National death totals continue to decline with the drop in deaths in the Northeast, but are increasing in the Sunbelt. And the worst is surely yet to come.
A normal president and a normal political party would be horrified by this turn of events. They would realize that they’ve done something wrong and that it’s time for a course correction. They would begin to take the health experts’ warnings seriously.
But Trump, who began his presidency with a defiant complaint about “American carnage,” doesn’t seem completely disturbed by the number of victims of a pandemic. It presages killing more Americans than have been killed over the past decade and aims to double that number by the week with the full reopening of schools in defiance of existing guidelines.
Without even calling on Americans to protect each other by wearing masks, or setting an example by wearing one himself, how can we make sense of Trump’s pathologically inept response to the coronavirus?
There is an underlying core of absolute cynicism: clearly, Trump and those around him don’t give a damn how many die or suffer lasting damage from Covid-19, as long as it works in the arena of electoral politics. But this cynicism is wrapped in multiple layers of deception.
Regardless of what one thinks of George W. Bush’s response to September 11 and how Bill Clinton faced stubbornly high unemployment, Trump inherited a nation at peace and in the midst of a long economic expansion that continued, without visible change in that trend, after he took office.
Then came Covid-19. Another president might have seen the pandemic as a crisis to be dealt with. But that thought never seems to have crossed Trump’s mind. Instead, he has spent the last five months trying to get back to where we were in February, when he was sitting on top of a moving train and pretending to drive it.
“This helps explain his strange aversion to epidemic masks: they remind people that we are in the middle of a pandemic, which is something he pretends everyone forgets. Unfortunately for him, and for the rest of the population, positive thinking will not make a virus go away.
However, that’s where the second layer of deception comes in. By now it is clear that the cynical decision to sacrifice American lives in pursuit of political advantage is failing even on its own terms. The rush to reopen produced big job gains in May and early June, but voters were not impressed; their poll still showed the worst. But this year, it’s not the economy that determines, stupid, it’s the virus.
And now the rise in infections may be causing the economic recovery to stall. In other words, the strategy of “ignoring and cursing the experts and going full steam ahead” seems silly and immoral. But Trump, far from reconsidering that he is deepening the hole he is increasingly in, just as he continues to spin the dial on racism despite the fact that it is not benefiting him politically.
Incredibly, as hospitalizations are increasing, he continues to insist that the increase in reported cases is just an illusion created by the increase in evidence.
So what can we do? You may ask Trump – who has another six months left in office if he stays on after January 20 (God save us all). And it is already clear that he will not change course, no matter how severe the pandemic. “We are all passengers at the mercy of a mad captain who is determined to destroy his ship,” Krugman concludes.
July 13, 2020
This article can be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source
The gesture that makes Trump uncomfortable
The gesture that makes Trump uncomfortable
The protests against racism, supported in different latitudes of the planet after the assassination of George Floyd, have also gained strength in the field of sport
Author: Alfonso Nacianceno | nacianceno@granma.cu
June 10, 2020 00:06:46
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Donald Trump attacked the Black football players, members of the well-known NFL, because a group of them were kneeling on the ground to hear the national anthem, in protest against racial segregation.
U.S. law requires the military to perform its usual salute. All other citizens, including athletes, must remain standing, facing the national flag, with their right hand resting on their heart, while the anthem is played.
By not following this guideline in different facilities, Trump, although there was no clause in the NFL regulations, pressured the organization’s directors to punish all players who expressed themselves in this way against racism and inequality.
In light of the current events in the convulsed American scene, when this Tuesday would be the burial of George Floyd in the middle of the incombustible protests, the United States Soccer Federation (US Soccer) will open a debate to on ending the controversial rule of prohibiting its athletes from taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem, the spokesman of the entity confirmed.
If the rule were to be repealed, it would immediately cease to have any effect. The measure came to life when Megan Rapinoe, four-time U.S. women’s national team champion and Golden Ball winner, knelt on the field in solidarity with American footballer Colin Kaepernick, who in the same gesture in 2016 sparked the anger of Trump, who pushed him out of the NFL
Rapinoe’s solidarity with the expelled player was the reason used by the president to radicalize the ban on kneeling on the ground.
The protests against racism, supported in different latitudes of the planet after the murder of George Floyd, have also gained strength in the field of sport, an important aspect of American national life. This is not only because of the rivalry that exists between the teams of disciplines that are widely followed by the population, but also because athletes are symbols that awaken empathy.
The quality of Black athletes in the United States is internationally recognized; many have been the protagonists of feats remembered throughout the world. Today, even though major competitions have been halted by the pandemic in that country, it is to be hoped that, when they return to action, there will also be a revival of protests in the stadiums, and knees on the grass.
What Trump Would be Capable Of
What Trump Would be Capable Of to Get Re-elected
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Humanity will always remember, with sadness and pain, the tragic way in which the hostilities of the Second World War ended in the theater of operations in Asia and the Pacific.
On August 6, 1945, the United States airlifted and exploded an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing 80,000 people in a treacherous manner. This figure increased to 200,000 by 1950 due to the persistent effects of nuclear radiation.
After that horrendous crime against humanity in Hiroshima, instead of showing their repentance by putting an end to such actions against civilians, the political leaders of the United States continued their efforts to dominate the world with the threat of the use of the atomic bomb for their own interests.
On the second occasion, they did so over an even more populous city, Nagasaki, where President Harry Truman became the murderer of some 300,000 additional human beings.
The message was obvious and clear: The United States possesses a terrible weapon and is willing to use it against any nation that opposes its world domination.
The government of Japan at the time was a military dictatorship nominally headed by an Emperor who had crushed all democratic dissent, outlawed the country’s Communist party, and pursued a very aggressive foreign policy against its neighbors.
In December 1941, the Japanese empire-which had occupied a considerable portion of the coasts of China, Korea, and the French colonies of Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) by committing atrocities in much of the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia)-attacked Hawaii, an American possession.
But despite those initial victories, by 1945 Japan was already a defeated empire. It had lost its oil reserves and its naval fleet had been destroyed. Nazi Germany, its greatest ally, had surrendered in May 1945.
In June 1945, the government of Japan had communicated to the neutral governments of Sweden and Switzerland, as well as to its strongest opponent, the Soviet Union, its desire for peace. Their sole condition for surrender was that its emperor remain the nominal head of the Japanese state.
Notwithstanding the above, there are many who even today, 75 years after that monstrous fallacy, accept as true the lie with which the then-American President, Harry Truman, justified the use of the atomic weapon after the genocide. “We have used the atomic bomb to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands of young Americans.
That horrendous lie – that Japan’s willingness to end hostilities with an almost unconditional surrender that would have saved humanity tens of thousands of dead, wounded and material resources – was the lethal weapon used by the U.S. government to needlessly prolong the war for a few days in pursuit of its spurious goals of global domination.
Since then, the U.S. has continued to prepare a huge military potential for that purpose. It has adopted a doctrine of pre-emptive war, and planned the militarization of space. After the events of September 11, 2001, they unleashed on its own territory the “war on terror”, which was used to justify attacks around the world and a permanent state of war. Now, the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons is increasingly lowered and their use always seems only a matter of time.
For some decades now, the world has been living in the shadow of the probable nuclear outcomes of the “conflicts” that Washington unleashes anywhere in the world. Their goals are either to impose or prevent any free trade agreement by violent means, to overthrow the governments that it calls “failed” and the popular movements that resist the global corporate empire; to promote the plundering of oil and other resources in the weakest countries, or other unspeakable ends.
With an idiot as characterized by his lies and tricks as Trump that the American population currently suffers as President, Humanity has no choice. It must resign itself to waiting for a phenomenon of popular intelligence among the citizens of that great nation, one that that will prevent the magnate from being able to manipulate his election once again, with whatever ignominious recourse he has to appeal to violate the popular will.
Things are much more dangerous in the highly-charged environment that racism has created these days, with the vicious murder of Black American citizen George Floyd by a white police officer in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
June 1, 2020
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
Trump’s Trick for Afghanistan Withdrawal
Trump’s Trick for Afghanistan Withdrawal
Published: Saturday 29 February 2020 | 10:53:30 pm.
By Leonel Nodal digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Signatories of the Peace Agreement in Afghanistan; Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, leader of the Taliban delegation and Zalmay Khalilzad, representative of the United States Author: Reuters Publicado: 29/02/2020 | 10:33 pm
Presidential candidate Donald Trump had to rub his hands together when he learned in detail the real situation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. That would be a strong campaign theme for him to win the White House.
Trump’s election promise in 2016 would be as close to the national will as possible: to end America’s endless wars abroad.
Barack Obama could not win it, even with the deployment of more than 100,000 soldiers in the Central Asian country between 2010 and 2012, at a cost of 100 billion dollars a year. Better to think of another way out.
The Pentagon had a guarded diagnosis, which the current head of the Defense Department, Mark Esper, recently simplified into a lapidary phrase: the war in Afghanistan is “still” in “a state of strategic impasse. In other words, lost, with no chance of military victory.
The $760 billion spent on the war in Afghanistan from October 2001 to March 2019, plus an additional $240 billion in additional spending, according to official figures, should be honored, but without losing face or completely sacrificing the business it represented for its war industry allies.
The publicity challenge for re-election in 2020 would be to make good on the promise of troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, but keeping up appearances, without winners or losers.
Trump changed the position maintained until then by Washington of refusing to speak directly with the Taliban.
With his high sense of political opportunism and dominance of the publicity show, the only winner of the bloody confrontation would be Trump, the architect of peace.
In October 2018, Trump gave the green light to secret negotiations with Taliban representatives in Doha, the capital of Qatar. In early September 2019, he even prepared – in complete secrecy – a spectacular “end of the war in Afghanistan” ceremony at the presidential residence at Camp David, where historic international agreements were signed.
However, the death of a US soldier in an attack in Kabul on 5 September led to an abrupt breakdown in the negotiations.
The talks “are dead,” he said in a theatrical tone, but without abandoning his secret intentions to resume dialogue.
However, The Washington Post warned last December that Trump was eager to announce the first redeployment of 5,000 troops, which some sources said was already in place, and was pressing for “a complete withdrawal before the 2020 election.
Washington would manage a “reduction of violence” and seal the end of hostilities between the United States and the Taliban. This would be followed by the negotiation of an “inter-Afghan” agreement.
It took 18 months of talks in Doha to end 18 years of war against the Taliban, the longest in U.S. history. On Saturday, February 29, the two sides signed a peace agreement that will pave the way for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, in exchange for a series of solid guarantees from the Taliban to the United States and its allies.
In his new, revised version of “withdrawal,” released during his trip to India earlier this week, Trump said the United States is trying to reduce its troop levels in Afghanistan to 8,600 and “we will make a decision on what the final outcome will be.”
“We’re not really serving as a military force, but as a police force,” he said, “and we’re not a police force, they (Afghans) have to police their own country.
The president made it clear that even after a possible withdrawal of troops, the U.S. will maintain its presence in Afghanistan. “We will always have intelligence, they will have other things there,” Trump said.
What the president is hiding is that the background to the negotiations has been the pure and simple defeat of the world’s greatest war power. After 18 years of resistance, the Taliban is today stronger than before, with a stranglehold on more than half of the country’s territory.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani himself said this year that more than 45,000 members of the security forces have been liquidated since he came to power in 2014.
U.S. troops counting the days Afghanistan. Photo: Reuters
Afghanistan’s security force has a shortfall of 79,000 men, and official sources reveal that they are losing troops faster than they can replace them. In addition, the country’s income is insufficient to pay the bill for its own security forces. And that’s a doorway back to the United States.
TheTaliban’s chief negotiator, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, who expressed his satisfaction with the peace agreement signed between the United States and the group in Doha, which he called a historic moment for the country.
The agreement was officially signed by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy leader of the Taliban, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for reconciliation in Afghanistan, in the presence of representatives from more than 30 countries, including U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“After 20 years of war imposed on Afghanistan by U.S. and NATO forces, a peace agreement was signed today between the Americans and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” Stanekzai said, adding, “According to the agreement, all U.S. and NATO forces must leave Afghanistan within 14 months of the signing of the agreement.
Donald Trump is trying to transform a military disaster into a political-diplomatic peace victory, which as of February 15, 2020, left 2,448 U.S. soldiers dead and about 20,500 injured in action.
The damage suffered by the Afghan nation and people due to imperial intervention and the desire to establish a regime submissive to its interests characterizes one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes in history, with more than half a million civilians killed and tens of thousands injured and wounded.
With next November’s elections in mind, Donald Trump is trying to capitalize on the gruesome U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as his own victory and trump card in his quest to screw himself into the presidential seat for four more years.
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