The Trump presidency

[editor]

Oh dear:

In a speech at the U.S.S. Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, on Monday, Trump referenced the use by ISIS of social media as a recruitment tool. He recommended a discussion with Bill Gates to shut off parts of the Internet.

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

Donald Trump wants to 'close up' the Internet

*old but worth noting.

 

[editor]

And look: http://gizmodo.com/amazon-sells-out-of-1984-as-america-decides-to-read-a-g-1791658901

 

[Smangus]

This year's must have present!

 

[Yossarian]

It's not that they want this to happen but it would be real easy to stumble into a conventional confrontation with a very burly US backed NATO if Putin explores Trump's weaknesses with a little bit of their cheeky Hybrid Warfare or things get a bit too clever in Syria.

Of course if you subtract the US NATO isn't really worth shit. The Russians would have a very high level of conventional deterrence and massive nuclear superiority. They might not try to stroll off with Warsaw again as my Polish friends are prone to suppose but the fairly rational Tzar Putin won't last forever and their are some really crazy types in Moscow just as irrational and jumpy as Trump is.

Yep - Trump had a paranoid and aggressive stance on Russia before he started running for president, seems likely that he'll revert to it now that he's in charge and anything less than full cooperation from Moscow could be interpreted as disrespect.

 

[hash tag]

I suppose it is better to have your excuses at the ready White House confuses British PM's name with PORN STAR in embarrassing gaffe

 

[bimble]

And look: http://gizmodo.com/amazon-sells-out-of-1984-as-america-decides-to-read-a-g-1791658901

 

[CrabbedOne]

I suppose it is better to have your excuses at the ready White House confuses British PM's name with PORN STAR in embarrassing gaffe

And the Kleenex.

 

[ska invita]

The Breitbart take on Theresa May is hilarious and the comments are delightfully deranged.

Britain's Theresa May in U.S.: Islam is Peaceful, Globalist Orgs Good, Climate Change Priority

I really hope this is the line that Bannon is feeding Trump ahead of the meeting.....

 

[DotCommunist]

and while committing to the destruction of the Islamic State, she failed to mention the name of the group, choosing instead the term “Daesh” — a word preferred by politically correct types and most notably popularised by former Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama.

This is an outright lie. One among many there, but this one is particularly stupid

 

[DotCommunist]

Kerry can't even say it right ffs

 

[bimble]

Asking the internet what the word globalist means didn't help much.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Kerry can't even say it right ffs

Neither can the French who started using the cod Arabic insult first.

 

[DotCommunist]

Asking the internet what the word globalist means didn't help much.

I suspect it means what you think it means in dog whistle terms.

 

[DotCommunist]

Neither can the French who started using the cod Arabic insult first.

I thought it was their immediate enemies who first called IS that?

 

[butchersapron]

I thought it was their immediate enemies who first called IS that?

The Syrians no longer exist. Forget them. Only states their leaders and their foreign offices and military and their plans exist.

 

[2hats]

Flashback to the DPRK...

 

[CrabbedOne]

I thought it was their immediate enemies who first called IS that?

Yes, ironically it's a Syrian Baathist invention I believe that then spread. The French were the first to garble it though as I recall and where promoting it as an alternative to ISIS.

Dahes one of the Arabic words the groups acronym in Arabic sounds like means basically "trouble maker". I recall the Kashmiri Indian police refer to Pakistani backed Salafi-Jihadis that they were at war with as "rascals" which is rather more stylishly defiant.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

Blackshirts on the streets.

Bystanders Cheer on Police as They Break Up Anti-Trump Protest in OR

 

[camouflage]

Such optimism in the face of rather a lot of prior bad behaviour does tend to lead to nasty surprises. I find very little of it in Poland but then they have very good reasons to be scared of their old grabby enemy.

Chechnya really was part of the Russian Federation so fair game for a long campaign of mass slaughter when it tried to leave. Not the first time the Chechen people have been brutalised by kindly Mother Russia. Attempting to mash the Chechens into submission has been going on since the 18th century. The GWOT malarkey is just window dressing for business as usual.

After the well documented Little Green Man shenanigans in their backyard the Ukraine Russian hybrid warfare is hard at work in Syria. They now appear to be engaged in carving into zones influence with the neighbours intent on leaving the awful Assad regime to thrash the useful bits into submission. It's basically Sykes-Picot II but because its got a Russian flag on it that's OK for some folks. Meanwhile Assad appears set on reconquering the place and goes off reservation every time the Russians try talks. Together with that the Iranians plainly fancy using the Golan for a bigger ruck with Israel which will probably bugger the Russian red handed version of "peace making". We made Syria much worse by interfering via proxies but that does not mean the other guys are not really awful cunts running up the butchers bill as well.

That's the Russian variety of imperialism in the 21st century multi-polar world. The Kremlin does not seem like a passive victim of doddery old NATO but a great power once more advancing its interests by all means possible. Dusky horde fearing idiots like Trump focus on annoyances like IS the Kremlin certainly doesn't. They quite correctly see the US as an existential threat whatever Trump's intent.

Optimism... what on Earth...

Anyway, Lady Camouflage is Polish and according to her the general mood in Poland right now is not one of fear and loathing towards Russia, you'd certainly think that if anyone had a grudge against the Rus it would be the likes of Poland. More worryingly it's the West and what they think of as our 'liberalism' the Pols are spending more and more time having a go at. I say worrying as this is involved in their ugly shift to the right, increasing islamophobia and homophobia and of course the ever present looming darkness of the strip-women-of-body-sovereignty Katolic Church. The West has really fucked up in that part of Europe if Poland is anything to go by, the neoliberalism, the attempt to dump the victims of our various interventions on them, not to mention the economic-migrant victims of the general squeeze on the economies of the Global South. Anyway not to thread-jack, but according to one Polish person I know taking the mood of the folks back home and the Polish media generally the thinking is "The Russians think like us really, it's them Westerners we have to watch out for". No doubt that will eventually filter through Polands prevailing well-monied pro-NATO faction and what happens then... who knows. It could all have been so much better. It continues to get right up my nose when people refer to the Globalist Right as "Leftwing/Progressive" in comparison to Trumpian/Farage/LePen-ish Nationalist Right. Really it only makes sense to call the crap Clinton was dishing out "Liberal" if you mean the Liberty of Wall Street. If it's not addressing poverty, and all the racism/sexism/homophobia/stress-migration that poverty empowers then what the fuck has it to do with Liberty in social terms? Anyway, rant stop and back to your er... points.

Chechnya, didn't our man in Moscow Yeltsin kick that one off? then it got worse when Jihadist took over and started spreading the love? It's so hard to get hold of decent information on that whole thing in the West, no mention made of Western involvement in that one but it's not like we don't have previous for that sort of thing (Mujahadeen and that). Not to justify the waging of war, but by the same token you can't just give a pass to helping to start wars on the sly in the first place. I mean, look at Syria, Assad Assad Assad, barrel-bomb-barrel-bomb barrel-bomb all day long, how it started? Impossible to say let's not talk about that look over there. No surprise really, British and French history being what it is while the US was busy with genocide, slavery and manifest destiny it's no surprise that we've had a hand in the rivers of blood flowing from the Middle East when they tried to do whatever it is they did we had a problem with (Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, the list gets longer). The GWOT campaign is just window dressing for our same old imperialism, pretty obvious when much of the time we turn out to be involved in the funding and training of jihadi maniacs in the first place as they're pretty good at attacking islamic societies for us, Sunni Principality anyone? No problem with that. Nobody's history looks good fella, Russia has a history of bloody wars raged and hundreds of thousands dead and so do we. Just frustrating to see that as the old saying goes "history has shown that mankind learns nothing from history".

"Hybrid-Warfare" is a buzz term from the same glossy playbook as "Fake News" and "Alternative Facts", whatever happened to good old "War", "Propaganda" and "Lies"? I can say straight up, the Little Green Men that emerged from their base in Crimea and prevented what could have been a very messy situation for the Crimeans and a very rapid on-ramp to WW3 for the world (imagine fascist gangs running around terrorising not just the majority Russian Crimean civilians but also the families of Russian military personnel leading to a much messier and bloodier series of events than the situation we've been assiduously ignoring elsewhere in East Ukraine). Either Putin and his staff are fucking geniuses or they we're just very lucky and clever enough to not waste it, but almost literally not a shot fired and Russia didn't get caught in an ugly bear-trap as was so obviously expected and hoped for by their ill-wishers... plus Crimea finally got the long voted for re-unification they've wanted all this time. Fair play to em I say, if only we could achieve our ends so bloodlessly, if only we had ends that we're so agreeable to the affected populations!

Russia isn't the passive victim of zombie-NATO it's true, they've pretty effectively actively defended themselves and been successful in doing so in a manner that hasn't escalated disastrously so far, we should all be glad about that. Even having a NATO member shoot down a Russian jet they managed to turn around to their advantage, the result being Jihadi's having their asses handed to them. Can't be sad about that little detail at least, fuck their "We'll be back" graffiti.

As for Russian Imperialism, Psykes-Picot II, Assad wanting to "reconquer Syria" and take the Golan Heights so they can wage war on Israel... I'm reminded of the year I spent with a schizophrenic as a flatmate back in uni. Nice chap really, never did me any harm anyway, had some funny ideas though. The key was to accept that he felt the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was "his fault" for example, and guide him away from any sharp objects. You don't hold a military command do you by any chance?

 

[camouflage]

Oh dear, the state department has resigned US State Department's entire senior management team quits

Good, the previous State Department hadn't done the world much favours, but sadly many of those positions will be refilled.

My suggestion? Abolish the State Department and run it all by Quango, why not.

 

[ska invita]

Anyway not to thread-jack, but according to one Polish person I know taking the mood of the folks back home and the Polish media generally the thinking is "The Russians think like us really, it's them Westerners we have to watch out for".

I dont know, suspicion of Russia still runs deep, its a core platform at the heart of the current government, and a small expression of it was the warm public welcome (well, thats how it was widely reported) given to recently arrived US troops . That matches my expectations. Suspicions about Russian sabotage around the Smolensk plane crash were still a live factor in the last elections IIRC.

 

[Cloo]

Question out of interest. Unsurprisingly, everyone is going ‘OMG! Look at all these awful things Trump has enacted/good things he’s struck down in his first week’; do we know he is doing more of this than, say, George Dubbya? I assume the answer is yes but I don’t know for sure because I have no idea what other Republicans have done

We do know the Bush signed for the Abortion gag thing, as all Republican prezzes recently have done so, but presumably it’s possible he trashed loads of civil rights and environment stuff and supported lots of bullshit stuff as well, but this was before social media when we were able to access this knowledge easily and also when people (or white people at least) weren’t as aware of or in engaged in civil rights.

This is no way to say we shouldn’t panic about this odious and evil bastard, but I don’t know how he compares to the ones before him. It seems likely he’s enacting more retrograde, ill thought out crap than usua; because he’s a total narcissist who just assumes he’s correct on everything and it there’s nothing more to say on the matter and he’s not going to actually listen to people who do know stuff. If there's one thing worse than a lying politician, it's one who actually believes their lies.

 

[ska invita]

Signing an executive order is one thing, and it being enacted is another...

 

[camouflage]

Trump Strategist Steve Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Mr. Bannon said during a telephone call.

“I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

Mr. Bannon, who rarely grants interviews to journalists outside of Breitbart News, the provocative right-wing website he ran until last August, was echoing comments by Mr. Trump this weekend, when the president said he was in “a running war” with the media and called journalists “among the most dishonest people on earth.”


Send the interns
Put your most junior people in the White House briefing room. Recognize that the real story is elsewhere, and most likely hidden.

A second message was to the press. You will be turned into hate objects whenever we feel like it. We can do that to you without providing right of reply because… what are you going to do about it? Small mistakes quickly corrected will be treated as evidence of malicious wrong doing by the entire group. (And you deserve that.) We are not bound by what you call facts. We have our own, and we will proceed to put them out regardless of what the evidence says. It’s not a problem for us if you stagger from the room in disbelief. We’re not trying to “win the news cycle,” or win you over. We’re trying to demonstrate independence from and power over you people. This room is not just for briefings, announcements and Q & A. It’s also a theater of resentment in which you play a crucial part. Our constituency hates your guts; this is the place where we commune with them around that fact.


Fox Philadelphia anchor suspended for saying Conway 'good at bull----'

A Philadelphia television morning show host was suspended Thursday after saying President Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway was "good at bullshit."

The reprimand came after Fox 29's "Good Day Philadelphia" co-host Alex Holley asked Mike Jerrick and two guests on set what Conway meant when she said "alternative facts" earlier in the week.

well, at least he's honest. sort of... in a way.

 

[Yossarian]

Question out of interest. Unsurprisingly, everyone is going ‘OMG! Look at all these awful things Trump has enacted/good things he’s struck down in his first week’; do we know he is doing more of this than, say, George Dubbya? I assume the answer is yes but I don’t know for sure because I have no idea what other Republicans have done

He's signing executive orders at about the same pace Obama did in his first week, Clinton and Dubya went a lot slower and worked with Congress more.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Was just going to say Bannon is the media, the twat, and a level lower than the one hes insulting

He's a Goebbels manque, attempting to bully the media into compliance with his narrative.

 

[skyscraper101]

Embarrassing White House spelling blunder confuses UK PM with porn star

A daily guidance and press schedule from the office of the press secretary said: "In the afternoon, the president will partake in a bilateral meeting with United Kingdom Prime Minister, Teresa May"[sic].

It missed out the "h" in the Premier's name, despite spelling it correctly elsewhere.

Teresa May is in fact a soft porn actress and glamour model who starred in a video for Smack My Bitch Up by The Prodigy.

 

[Old Spark]

He's signing executive orders at about the same pace Obama did in his first week, Clinton and Dubya went a lot slower and worked with Congress more.

But in the end Obama had no choice as he didnt have the votes in Congress -unlike Trump.

Many of the things he has signed can only happen if Congress approves the money .Imo for a while they will let him carry on,playing to his supporters, but eventually some Republicans will dig in and refuse to support.When and over what we will have to wait and see.

 

[Pickman's model]

He's a Goebbels manque, attempting to bully the media into compliance with his narrative.

he's certainly clubfoot in mouth

 

[Pickman's model]

.