"Genius" Trump Thinks He Can Lie And Bullshit His Way Out Of The Latest War He Started With Iran

Must mention first that he's under the control of Israel and its ruler, Binyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu has spent about 20 years trying to drag the U.S. into war on Iran. He's finally succeeded.

Trump, his minions, and reactionary shouters online and in neofascist media have been pushing the Big Lie that Iran is building (or is about to build, or already has) nuclear weapons. The entirety of corporate media has effectively bolstered this lie by never pointing out that it is untrue, and by speaking of Iran's "nuclear program." That is a thoroughly dishonest fudge that misleads people into believing the Big Lie that it is a weapons program and NOT what it actually is, a uranium enrichment program. Which of course is necessary to someday HAVE  a weapons program, which Iran DOES NOT AND NEVER HAS HAD. 

But if you were REALLY worried about it, you wouldn't have killed the agreement reached by the Obama regime and Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany all on one side, and Iran on the other, which completely mothballed the enrichment of levels of concern, handed over the more highly enriched uranium, allowed for rigorous inspection, and was to be in force until 2030, allowing plenty of time for extension or a new agreement. Trump tore up that deal, and his successor, "Genocide Joe" Biden, didn't put it back. Hence Netanyahu is in charge. [1]

 Netanyahu tried vigorously to block the deal in the first place, even going to Congress at the invitation of Republicans (who controlled Congress at the time) to fulminate against it.

On February 28 Trump started his second war on Iran (the first was June 2025). This time the Iranians aren't allowing Trump to end it when HE wants. They learned from the last time, when they were successfully defeating Israel's missile defenses and should have pressed on. (I'm not on the side of the Iranian regime, let's be clear. I'm speaking objectively, what was a blunder on Iran's part that led to the current war, where Israel once again easily goaded Trump the Great Genius to attack again. As last time, this was done treacherously, in the middle of negotiations.)

So what is Trump doing now? Trying to lie and bullshit his way through, his lifelong behavioral pattern. Except now he's not some ripoff artist, incompetent casino owner, real estate hustler, TV actor, all around sleazy con man. He's president of the United States. 

Sheer idiocy that people voted for him. Criminal irresponsibility on the part of his enablers and abettors.

Trump is claiming Iran agree to most of the 15 points of his ultimatum (aka "peace plan," as the media, once again aiding and abetting Trump, is pretending it is). The ultimatum is a call for total surrender to all U.S. (i.e. Israeli) demands on Iran: completely dismantle its missile program and the factories for building them, completely surrender uranium enrichment (Iran is perfectly legal under international law to enrich uranium to a level well below weapons grade, which is 90% or higher), abandon its only allies in the world, the "terrorist" Houthis of Yemen, Hezbollah of Lebanon, and the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas. All the groups that resist murderous Israeli oppression. (It would be immoral to abandon them. Not that only morality is guiding Iranian policy. As with all nation states, morality plays little or no part in critical decisions. Or any decisions.) The other demands, all written by Israel, are equally maximalist. "Unconditional surrender," a term Trump has recently used as his goal with Iran, would be more to the point than "peace plan." Once again power establishment media aids and abets Trump's gaslighting by going along with his preposterous falsehoods.

Trump claims, absurdly, that Iran "gifted" him 8 tankers of oil. That's not trucks, that's those giant ships that carry millions of barrels of oil. The media didn't hoot at that and ridicule him. No, they acted like stenographers and dutifully repeated the claim without sarcasm, just slight doubt.  Hardly the correct response to such a whopping lie.

Trump continues to insist, OBVIOUSLY falsely, that he's in "talks" or "negotiations" with the Iranians. The Iranians, far more plausibly, deny this. After all, what happened the LAST two times they were talking with Trump's envoys? Treacherous U.S. military attacks on their homeland. So "the" media splits the difference, saying it's "unclear" what the actual situation is. Is it? How many decades of Trump publicly lying and bullshitting and conning and ripping off do you need to acknowledge reality? To tell the truth for once in your godawful existence, media propagandists?

We have the Pakistanis claiming to be mediating, acting as go-betweens for messages between the U.S. and Iran. that's plausible. But that isn't the U.S. and Iran "talking" to each other. That's indirect contact. Trump is lying when he claims to be directly negotiating with Iran. Anyway this is the guy who claims 1] Iran GAVE HIM 8 oil tankers of oil, and 2] ALREADY SURRENDERED to most of the demands in his "peace plan" ultimatum for unconditional surrender.

Iran is currently, and quite reasonably, demanding reparations for the billions of dollars (or whatever currency you want to measure it in) of damages to Iran (not to mention thousands murdered, and many more fated to get cancer thanks to Israel plowing up oil facilities unwisely located in Tehran which spread a carcinogenic plume of pollution over the city population of nearly 10 million (9.84 million -2026 estimate)- almost 10 million souls put in mortal danger by Israel.

Which means, ultimately by the U.S. Since every warplane and every bomb and every missile Israel has is a gift from the U.S. A gift, paid for by U.S. taxpayers. (I.e. by us, if you pay U.S. taxes).

Unfortunately the putative "opposition" party in the U.S., the Democrats, aren't in a good position to oppose Trump and Israel. They too are a wholly owned subsidiary of the State of Israel. They too have hated Iran since the overthrow in 1979 of the U.S.' favorite murderous tyrant, Reza Pahlavi, the "Shah" ("King") installed by the CIA on Eisenhower's orders in 1953. So what the Democrats  do is whine about "process," Trump should have CONSULTED them first, or BRIEF them. So they can feel IMPORTANT, they can feel like they MATTER, which they less and less do.

The REAL opposition party, the party that opposes U.S. imperialism and the corporate oligarchy that rules America is the Green Party. (There are other smaller parties less well organized nationally). They are rendered invisible to most Americans because "the media," the system of power establishment propaganda, is assiduously makes sure to NEVER EVER MENTION EVEN THE EXISTENCE of the Green Party.

So now we're in a slowly developing global economic crisis. In retaliation for Israel bombing its aluminum plants, Iran has struck similar facilities in the U.S. stooge nations on the Arabian peninsula. Aluminum prices are rising as a type. Michael Bloomberg Billionaire's propagandists are reporting that the World Trade Organization has become irrelevant. Trump's war has hit U.S. farmers, who are among his biggest supporters, hard, as this is just when they need to buy fertilizer, which is petroleum dependent and much of which comes from those same same Arabian peninsula nations. (As of this writing fertilizer prices are up 25%.

Well that's enough for now. Isn't it.

 1] The JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) was agreed by the nations I mentions above and Iran limiting Iran's enrichment to 3.67% for 15 years, until 2030. Weapons grade is 90%+. Seems like a good deal, not a terrible, dangerous one as Netanyahu and his puppet, Trump, insisted at the tops of their lungs.

Is Iran Still Holding Back From Vigorously Defending Itself, Or Are Its Weapons Not Accurate?

 It's a bit of a mystery to my why Iran, after scores of its top leaders have been murdered by Israel and its colony the U.S., and numerous atrocities committed- hospitals and homes targeted by Israel, a girls' elementary school hit with a double tap strike by the U.S. on the first day of the latest unprovoked surprise attack on Iran on February 28th, Israel blowing up an oil refinery site in Tehran, blanketing the city with toxic oil fallout which is going to cause a cancer epidemic in coming years- why Iran's response has been relatively feeble.

Why haven't the Iranians eliminated the genocidal maniac Binyamin Netanyahu? Why haven't they bombarded the Knesset, the prime minister's residences and offices, the secret police headquarters (Shin Bet, Mossad, and other various secretive military and other units), the airfields from which Israel launches its U.S.-supplied jets with their U.S.-supplied ordnance to devastate Iran? What about Dimona, Israel's nuclear weapons manufacturing plant and military reactor?

Israel has 5 or 6 desalinization plants that supply water. It would be fitting to destroy those plants, after Israel has eliminated potable water in Gaza, in order to spread disease and murder Palestinians en masse just as the Germans killed millions of Soviet prisoners of war and many of its victims in concentration camps.

Maybe the Iranian regime fears the reaction. Israel is like the Third Reich reborn. It has nuclear weapons. Good reason for restraint. And of course the U.S. is a mad dog empire under Trump.

This is the second surprise attack launched by Israel and its U.S. puppet while Trump and his accomplices pretended to be "negotiating" with Iran. First came June 2025, with death and destruction rained down on the Iranians by Israel and its U.S. colony. Then the February 28 war, which is ongoing. 

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been trying for 20 years or more to get the U.S. to attack Iran, thundering that Iran was about to get nuclear weapons. (Yes, the same lie for decades, now treated as fact by the accomplice U.S. media, including alleged opponents of Trump.) Now Netanyahu has realized his violent dream.

Every day, there is mindless chatter in U.S. media asking what the "goals" are of the U.S. and Israel, and are they the same? I don't know if the members of the bourgeois blatherariat are really that dumb or are just pretending to be. There is no mystery. Trump obviously wants to install a pliant regime in Iran. Israel wants to break Iran into several smaller, weaker countries, in pursuit of the goal it has had since its creation in 1948, regional hegemony. It needs to reduce Iran in size, geographically, economically, and in population, to achieve that goal. Besides Persians, Iran has significant populations of Kurds, Beluchis, and Aziris. Earlier this month there were stories in the U.S. media about provoking a Kurdish uprising. Israel claimed it could do this. But the Kurds, having been repeatedly used as a proxy army in various U.S. schemes and then double-crossed by the U.S., a history going back decades, apparently said No Thanks. (There is much easily accessible information online of what I'm talking about- just search "U.S. betrayal of the Kurds" or something like that to educate yourself.)

The people of Iran have suffered grievously ever since 1953. That is the year U.S. president Eisenhower ordered the CIA to destroy democracy in Iran and install a horrible dictator, Reva Pahlavi, the "Shah," (King). The CIA created one of the world's most vicious secret police forces for the Shah, SAVAK, which compiled a horrendous record of gruesome torture and murder. Amnesty International judged Iran under the Shah the world's worst violator of human rights. Until he was finally overthrown in a mass uprising in 1979, 250,000 Iranians were murdered by his regime.

Then after a too brief period of civilian rule, the Mullahs, led by their leader Khomeini, seized power and created the oppressive theocracy that controls Iran to this day. Having exterminated all possible organized opposition, the Shah left as his legacy the only organized force left in Iranian society, the Mullahs.

Today it is hard to discern a bright future for the people of that country. That makes especially cruel and callous and sick Trump's occasional throwaway lines about liberating or helping the people of Iran, about whom he couldn't give a fuck. Being a narcissist, he only cares about himself and those he considers extensions of himself.

 

What Next For Iran?

 If the U.S. and Israel succeed in the announced goal of ousting the Islamic regime, what will happen is Iran will break up. The Kurds will seize control of a region, and the Baluchis will seize another area, and declare their own nations.

The only way that could be prevented is by a U.S. ground invasion. Otherwise there is no armed force on the ground to prevent that if the regime is destroyed.

The U.S. plan, in an idiotic echo of the Bush regime scheme to impose Ahmed Chalabi on the Iraqi people, is to make the son of the late and hated dictator Shah of Iran the new ruler of Iran. But what men with guns will back him on the ground? He will need the U.S. army (and Marines and Navy SEAL terrorists, who will want in on the murderous "action") to put and keep him in power in Iran. The Voice of America is broadcasting Son of Shah's propaganda (in Farsi) into Iran. As if anyone there is listening, or would be inspired by his guff.

Breaking Iran into pieces is most likely what Israel would like best.This would mean three smaller, weaker countries in place of Iran. Israel is fanatically intent on being the regional hegemon, with the other states and people prostrate and helpless at its feet.

But since the only armed forces in Iran are tightly aligned with the regime, it seems unlikely that the regime CAN be toppled, not without an ARMED opposition. Apparently the CIA and Mossad haven't figured out a way to smuggle large numbers of arms into Iran without getting caught, and training up Iranian civilians in their use, and organizing them into people's militias. Absent that, the U.S. will have to invade the country to oust the mullahs from power. 

As an atheist, and a human to whom human rights are important, the Iranian regime is loathsome. Just as the regimes of such U.S. allies as Saudi Arabia, a repressive, vicious theocracy, is loathsome.

But let's remember how we got here. President Dwight David Eisenhower ordered a CIA coup in 1953 that destroyed democracy in Irao. The following year he ordered the same in Guatemala. In both nations the result was about a quarter million murders by the regimes. Iran had a revolution in 1979 which brought the current theocratic tyranny to power. Guatemala is still a death squad, fascist state, but with fewer death squad murders than in the past.The U.S. finds indigenous fascist forces and oligarchs to use to create its preferred fascist states.

Israel assassinated the Ayatollah, Khamenei, on the idiotic premise that this would cause the collapse of the regime. The mullahs are not dependent on him. He was 86 anyway. The regime didn't collapse when Khomeini, the first Ayatollah who took power in 1979, died. Just as the Israeli government wouldn't collapse if Netanyahu got his just desserts and was assassinated, or the U.S. government collapse if Trump was eliminated. Israel's and the U.S.' behavior drag the world down into a more barbarous state. Of course both these nations have horrible histories of many crimes, but one hopes for progress, not regression. 

One more thing: Trump is pretending he wants to free the Iranian people. Of course that is bullshit. He is a self-centered narcissist who could give a rat's ass about the Iranians. Here's a hint to how much the U.S. cares about Iranians: either the U.S. or Israel bombed a girls' school during the during the current aggression- on the very first day. They slaughtered 153 people (according to the Iranian foreign ministry). Not a peep in U.S. media, and whichever nation did it, it's accomplice in naked aggression didn't condemn it or even say don't do that sort of thing again.

The U.S. doesn't care about the Iranian people any more than it did in 1953. And Israel wants to break Iran into pieces. It wants all other nations in the Middle East to be as weak as possible, so it can be a regional hegemon until the end of time.

A demented fantasy every bit as psychotic as the Third Reich's was. 

The Political And Ethical Degeneration Of The U.S.- From Nixon To Trump

  Nixon had to resign or face certain conviction in the Senate after impeachment, just because the burglars he sent to tap the phones in the D.C headquarters of the Democratic National Committee got caught. Senator Barry Goldwater, a reactionary as close to a fascist as one can get without being one, personally delivered the news to Nixon in the White House that the jig was up, if he didn't resign, impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate (requiring 67 votes, which would include Republican Senators) was certain.

But Nixon's crimes look like mere peccadilloes compared to Trump's.

Trump sent a violent mob to invade the Capitol to prevent the certification of Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, as winner of the 2020 presidential election. He refused for several hours to call off the mob, ignoring the entreaties of Congresspeople telephoning him and of his daughter Ivanka in the White House. When, hours later, he realized his coup attempt had failed, he finally messages the mob to depart, which they instantly did- proving he controlled them.

He was recorded on a phone call to the state of Georgia's Secretary of State telling him to "find" votes for him to change the result in Georgia. He initiated scheme to have fake Electoral College Electors cast votes for him.

Yet the Senate acquitted him after he was impeached in the House, and a combination of feckless and dilatory prosecution efforts by Trump's successor Biden and his wan Attorney General, Merrick Garland, who was denied a Supreme Court seat by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (who refused to allow nomination hearings to take place for the last 11 months of Obama's term in office, an unprecedented, outrageous political power move which the Democrats insipidly accepted) and interference with the prosecution by Republican judges, especially those on the Supreme Court, which effectively immunized Trump for his seditious coup.

So one guy is basically ousted by his own party for tapping some phones, while the other guy can openly foment a coup, and furthermore delegitimize U.S. "democracy" and undermine its elections by loudly braying, year after year, that he actually won an election he lost and that the election was "stolen" from him. Stolen in Republican-controlled states too! And no consequences for him.

This is an arc of political and ethical degeneration of a nation and its political system.

I Sure Hope The Deep State, Or The Trump Regime, Doesn't Assassinate Zohran Mamdani

 There's been plenty of character assassination of the winner of the Democratic Party primary for that Party's candidate for New York City mayor, the general election to be held in November. When character assassination doesn't work, often the next step is physical assassination. (U.S. euphemisms for such murders include "elimination" and the CIA classic, "termination with extreme prejudice." Such coy killers!)

Trump has already threatened to take over New York City (with his dictatorial powers enabled by the Republican Supreme Court and Trump's puppet Congress) and to "investigate" Mamdani to try and strip him of U.S. citizenship and deport him. And if that doesn't work?

Trump has a record of personally ordering assassinations. (He's not unique among U.S. presidents in that regard. Many have done so. For example, Obama ordered assassinations at least once a week. Every Tuesday, he would review a list of potential "terrorists" to be murdered, and approve them for "elimination" or not.)  In his first term, Trump ordered the assassination of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general, Suleimani, on January 3rd, 2020, 17 days before the end of Trump's term in office. (Which he tried to violently extend.) This was done in particularly outrageous fashion, by bombing the general's plane as it landed in IRAQ, at the Baghdad international airport. But the U.S. has over two centuries of violating the sovereignty of others. (It invaded the British colony to its north, the current nation of Canada, in 1812.)  

Trump also ordered at least one assassination of an American citizen on U.S. soil, the anti-fascist warrior Micheal Reinoehl. Michael's crime was killing an armed fascist in a street confrontation. Trump ordered a U.S. Marshal's death squad to ambush Michael as he was getting out of his car and murder him. Eyewitnesses described the summary execution. Michael was not holding a gun and was slaughtered without any words spoken or shouted.

Murdering dissident Americans is nothing new in the U.S. It goes back at least as far as the murder of Joe Hill in 1915, and is a common occurrence. Obama oversaw some of these murders by Federal government agencies, including the Black Lives Matter online commentator Sandra Bland, and journalist Michael Hastings. The BLM movement was deemed a "terrorist" movement by the FBI, and came under the usual repression that social, economic, or political movements considered threatening to the established power structure always are subjected to. The FBI organized the murder of Bland. 

 Michael Hastings was an honest journalist (already making him an outlier in the U.S. propaganda system) who was reviled by his "colleagues" for reporting accurately on the comments and attitude of the fascist army general Stanley McCrystal towards the Commander-In-Chief, President Barack Obama. McCrystal encouraged contempt for Obama among his staff officers, as Hastings accurately reported. At the time of his death, Hastings feared for his life, telling confidants that he was working on an explosive story. (Maybe having to do with the fact that the Bush regime, in a conspiracy with the Saudi rulers, arranged the attacks of September 11m 2001, I wonder. It has been proven that the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan were demolished in controlled demolitions by military grade nanothermite explosives.) Control of Hastings car was seized remotely (it has been demonstrated that today's computerized cars can easily be hijacked over their wireless connections) and a bomb planted in the car was detonated. There are videos and witnesses to the event which leave no doubt. A handful of journalists did honest reporting on his, just local ones. (The "hit" occurred in Los Angeles, a place with a history of political assassinations, including the CIA-LAPD murder of Robert Kennedy in 1968 to prevent him from becoming president.) 

As I mentioned, Hastings, even though he had worked for Newsweek, was held in contempt by other power establishment journalists for "ruining" McCrystal's "career." They are such fawning devotees of militarists that they privilege a fascist general over the need of the president of the U.S. to command the respect of ranking officers. That in itself is very revealing.

Obama also ordered the murder of several Americans in Yemen, at least four. One was alleged Al Qaeda "propagandist" Anwar al-Awlaki. Two weeks after that, Obama saw a need to "eliminate al-Awaki's 16 year old son and the son's cousin as they sat in a cafe in Yemen. But it's okay to murder anyone you decide to label a "terrorist" (as the U.S. and Israel are currently going to Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians, Yemenis, and on and off, Syrians), and also anyone "connected" to these "terrorists:" family, friends, acquaintances.

Or just people living in the same building as the girlfriend OF a "terrorist." As was done a couple of months ago in Yemen. Remember the political brouhaha from a couple of months ago (I hope you do, it wasn't so long ago) when War Secretary Hegseth and then "National Security Advisor" Michael Waltz and others held a giddy pre-attack chat on a commercial communication platform, Signal, instead of on a secure government channel, and Waltz included in the chat the Zionist reactionary editor of The Atlantic Magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, who he's pals with. The Democratic Party's Congresspeople and the media aligned with the Democratic Party raised a hue and cry over "operational security" and how the lives of American military personnel were supposedly endangered. But there was no mention of what the mission was- to commit a crime of mass murder.

What happened was this. Since Israel's ongoing genocide and daily atrocities and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the Houthis of Yemen have fought to try and help the Palestinians by attacking shipping going to Israel. This of course is deemed "terrorism" by "Western" (i,e. white imperialist) powers like Israel, the U.S., European lackey governments and other lapdogs of U.S. imperialism like Canada. To fight back against Western imperialism is "terrorism," by the imperialists' definition. So a Houthi "militant" ("terrorist") allegedly part of the Houthi's military structure, was going to visit his girlfriend in her apartment building. Mossad, benefiting from the global surveillance network set up by and centered around the U.S. (which includes government entities like the NSA, and private corporations joined at the hip to the secret police state including Microsoft, Apple, Meta {Facebook Instagram etc.] and Amazon's cloud data operation) asked the U.S. to murder the "terrorist" and the other residents of the apartment building he was visiting. Which the U.S. duly did with an aerial attack.

Nobody in the alleged "opposition" party, the Democrats, or their aligned media, bothered mentioning any of this. To them, the Big Crime was allegedly jeopardizing the attack by using Signal, and by including Goldberg, who kept quiet until after the massacre of the residents of the apartment building, since as I said, Goldberg is a dyed-in-the-wool Zionist and U.S. imperialist down to his bones.

So in this incident, there is yet another in a never-ending series of examples of the deeply-ingrained immorality of the U.S. elite. And like all power elites, they have complete confident in their own virtue and righteousness as they commit their crimes.

Now, probably most Americans, or at least a large proportion of them, if they could read this, would reject it out of hand as alien, ideological raving. But it's just objectively factual. Having been indoctrinated from birth by a gaslighting media and educational system that substitutes a false reality for the real world, they are effectively brainwashed. But brainwashing can be undone. In this regard, the Internet has proven a significant source of information that has cracked the wall of establishment propaganda. But much suppression occurs there too. Unfortunately I have personal experience of this.

Trump Makes Good On His Gangster Threat Of Violence Against Iran

 Trump pretended to want a "deal" with Iran. What he wants is submission to his terms. So he has unleashed B-2 bombers carrying 14 30,000lb bombs on Iran, with a submarine attacking with Tomahawk cruise missiles for good measure. Trump brags that his violent aggression "has completely, totally obliterated" Iran's entire nuclear program, which is far from true. (As indeed is so very very much of Trump's obnoxious blather far from true.) His alcoholic rapist War Secretary, Peter Hegseth, crowed that "Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated." Really? Their ambitions? Probably not.

Trump had tried to fake-out the Iranians, having said he would make a decision about attacking in two weeks. But there are reports that the Iranians prudently removed some enriched uranium and equipment from likely target sites before the bombs and warheads struck.

Trump is solidly in the tradition of U.S. imperialist aggression. The history of the U.S. is a history of expansion and domination through violence. Starting with the subjugation and near extermination of the native Americans, the invasion of Mexico in 1846, ultimately stealng half of Mexico's national territory, the subjugation of Hawaii, the war with Spain in 1898, seizing Spain's "possessions" including Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and grabbing a chunk of Cuba for a naval base (and later prison and torture center) at Guantanamo Bay, the occupation of Haiti and the installation of the nightmarish Duvalier regime, the numerous coups that installed fascist (often times military), dictatorships, the war on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Obama coup in Ukraine in 2014, laying the ground for the eventual Russian invasion and war there- hey this is a long sentence and it is far from all inclusive! The point is, starting from day one, the U.S. has been an empire. Understand what empires are: they are criminal enterprises. Like the Mafia, they use force, violence, intimidation, and threats to extort wealth from others. In the case of imperialism, the labor and resources of other countries are unjustly exploited or outright expropriated.

Trump claimed he offered Iran a "deal." That is not true. He put forth an ultimatum. Iran is allowed NO nuclear program of ANY kind, AND must dismantle its ballistic missile program and destroy its missiles. It is already defenseless against constant Israeli aggression and war crimes. Iran was to be stripped of even its very weak means of retaliation against Israel's attacks.

"God Bless You All!"? What is up with the sick, phony piety? It's like Mafiosi attending Catholic mass. Wrapping criminality in the sham moral virtue of religion.

 

Trump As Netanyahu's Ventriloquist Dummy

Trump posted online this morning: "We [sic] now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran." A gloat over Israel's latest aggression against Iran. Presumably it's been Israel and Israel alone that has been bombing Iran and murdering top officials and nuclear scientists for almost a week now. Trump also says he wants a "total end" to Iran's nuclear program. (It's not a bomb program, it's a uranium enrichment program which creates fuel for nuclear power reactors. That's not an opinion, that's a fact according to U.S. intelligence and Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence/assassination agency.) Trump went on to boast about how great U.S. military weaponry and technology is. (Yes, with it, Israel and the U.S. can murder and destroy with impunity. Terrific. Lord Acton had a famous aphorism: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The corruption is both political and moral. The consequences are terrible for humanity.)

Trump has gone from resisting Netanyahu's demand that the U.S. join in a war on Iran, to threatening to murder the Ayatollah, Iran's Supreme Leader, and seems ready to bomb Iran's main uranium enrichment side under a mountain. Trump already sent B-2 bombers to the area for the purpose. 

Israel has been waging undeclared war on Iran for five days as of today. This has included murdering top Iranian government and military officials, with threats to murder the top ruler, the Ayatollah. 

A reporter asked Netanyahu if murdering the Ayatollah would escalate the "conflict." Netanyahu bellowed that "It would END the conflict!" How he figures that, I have no idea. It's typical Netanyahu supremacist bluster.

Israel has been drunk on its regional military supremacy for decades now. 

People seem to automatically, unconsciously even, have a simplistic attitude of Good Guys/Bad Guys, and one side has to be one, the other side the other, and whatever the "Good Guys" do to the "Bad Guys" is a good thing, including murdering them, because after all, they're "terrorists" and terrorists aren't humans, so it's a good thing to just kill them.

Of course this is mindless. Both Iran and Israel are loathsome political entities. I'm talking about their governments. But Israel is far worse because Israel has been committing the worst crime under international law and in terms of normal human morality, namely genocide, for over a year and a half now. (However, since 1948, Israel has been committing a lower grade genocidal campaign against the Palestinian Arabs, namely an attempt to deny and erase their identity as a people, which does constitute genocide under the international legal definition of genocide. Just as the Chinese regime is doing to the Uyghurs under its rule, brainwashing them in forced labor/torture camps and physically forcing them to renounce their culture, beliefs, dress, and family ties to make them into imitation Han Chinese. The Israelis of course have never sought to twist the Palestinian Arabs into Jews, but to banish them and kill large numbers of them, starting in 1948.

Trump cheaply and cynically evokes World War II, demanding "unconditional surrender" from Iran, and implicitly and not very subtly threatening the life of the Ayatollah by saying "we know where you are." 

Western propaganda ("news coverage") consistently omits the key fact that Iran does NOT have a nuclear bomb or warhead program, allowing people to be duped into believing it does.

Also NEVER pointed out, the key fact that if Iran HAD nuclear weapons, it wouldn't dare USE them against Israel, since Israel has hundreds of deliverable nuclear weapons, and the U.S. has thousands, some of which it would use on Iran if Israel for some reason didn't totally annihilate Iran itself if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

The whole thing about the imaginary Iranian nuclear weapons is to make sure there is never even a possible challenge to Israeli regional military supremacy. 

                                                                 A cruel demagogue, and also a sad, pathetic man.

 

Kristi Noem Taken To Hospital After An "Allergic Reaction"

 What is she allergic to? Human kindness? Common decency?

Noem is the puppy-murdering Trump-chosen head of the Bush and Congress-created "Department of Homeland Security," a grab bag of repressive U.S. government agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which goes by the appropriately chilling acronym, ICE. ICE are the masked goons kidnapping immigrants and rendering them without due process to places like a supermax prison in El Salvador, where the policy is to never free any prisoners, to Djibouti, to Guantanamo Bay, on Cuban territory forcibly seized by the U.S. in the 19th century, to Libya, to South Sudan, to Honduras, to wherever. ICE has been arresting local officials on bogus charges, most of which are immediately dropped. Trump regime ghouls have threatened to arrest state governors. (Among those who HAVE been arrested are the mayor of Newark, NJ, Ras Baraka, New York City controller Brad Lander, and U.S. Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, who has been absurdly charged with "assaulting" two ICE goons.)

This ghoulish woman had herself videoed at the giant dungeon created by Salvadorean dictator Nayib Bukele, where the Trump regime has been imprisoning immigrants kidnapped at random in the U.S. and rendered to foreign countries. And when U.S. Senator Alex Padilla tried to ask a question at a Noem "press conference," he was assaulted by goons under Noem's command, forced face down onto the floor, handcuffed and hauled away. 

 

This is certainly a new era in U.S. history. Perhaps a throwback to the 19th century, when Senator Charles Sumner was savagely clubbed over the head by a racist Southern Senator. Here is Wikipedia's description of that attack:

 -Representative Preston Brooks, Butler's first cousin once removed, confronted Sumner in the Senate chamber and beat him severely on the head, using a thick gutta-percha cane with a gold head. Sumner was knocked down and trapped under the heavy desk, which was bolted to the floor. Blinded by his own blood, he staggered up the aisle and collapsed into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat the motionless Sumner until his cane broke, at which point he continued to strike Sumner with the remaining piece. Several other senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Laurence Keitt, who brandished a pistol and shouted, "Let them be!" [Sounds like a planned, premeditated, conspiracy to assault and cause severe bodily harm.]

Sumner was severely injured and suffered lasting physical and mental harm. The criminals who assaulted him were not prosecuted, expelled from the Senate, or even censured. Instead Sumner's colleagues advised him to tone down his anti-slavery rhetoric!

Then as now, the U.S. is hopelessly reactionary.

We've just seen a fascist murdering a Democratic State Representative in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, and the shooting and attempted murder of Democratic State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, both shot multiple times, by the same fascist terrorist. This happened on June 14. In the U.S., violence, particularly lethal violence aimed at individuals, is overwhelmingly from the right. Often the perpetrators have state protection, as was the case for the Ku Klux Klan for decades.
 

 

U.S. Stock Market Traders Easily Manipulated By Crude Grifter Trump

We hear a lot of chatter about how Trump's mad tariff war on the entire world has wiped out wealth that was stored in the stock markets.  But what I haven't noticed is media attention to how easily Trump causes sharp daily rallies in stocks with a mere feint, a head fake of a comment implying some fabulous resolution to the tariff war he's started with the rest of the world that's going to happen. (When? Don't ask.) Starting with announcing a 90 day "pause" in imposing tariffs (excluding, crucially, China), having his Treasury Secretary, Scott "The Stock Market Whisperer" Bessent play Good Cop and periodically claim that "talks" are imminent, or maybe happening, or going to happen, or "a lot" of countries have "called" (always refusing to answer the question, "How many countries have called?"), and Trump making various vague statements that stock speculators for some strange reason find reassuring, like crying babies being shushed by having a pacifier stuck in their mouths, Trump and his accomplices have shown themselves able to cause sharp stock market rallies repeatedly over the past month. The low point for U.S. stocks was on April 8th, but since then the S&P 500 is up over 8% midday today, and the Nasdaq is up 10%, over 1,500 points. So for just over two weeks stocks have basically been in an uptrend, with ever sharper up days. 

Bessent was at it again today, opining that both U.S. tariffs on China and vice versa had to come down before talks could begin. (Notice the U.S., that is Trump, hasn't actually LOWERED the tariffs to facilitate talks. I guess they want China, which has lower tariffs (125%) on U.S. goods versus the 145% imposed on China by Trump, to go first. 

Here's an example of what a bamboozler Trump is, and how utterly STUPID U.S. financial markets are- that is, the people trading stocks all day, every day, are.

Today, Trump at about 11:20 am East Coast time, spewed a spray of empty blather about how great everything is going to be, how rich America is going to be, how "happy" everyone in the WORLD is going to be. Stuff he says year after year, just shilling as this grifter con man always does. But here's the key tell, to use a poker term:

Trump: "We are going to have a fair deal with China."

Reporter manages to inject a question into the Trumpian stream of consciousness rave: "Are you talking to them actively?"

Trump: "Actively? Everything is active." And he keeps talking, but not about China or negotiations or anything at all, just his usual repetitive upbeat con man blather. Notice how he evaded the question. The tell is that he dodged the question. He didn't say "Yes, we are talking to the Chinese." 

The U.S. isn't even in negotiations with China while exorbitant tariffs remain in place. (145% tariffs Trump imposed on Chinese imports, 125% ones China imposed in retaliation on U.S. imports to China.) Plus, Trump still won't stop lying and claiming that the tariffs will be paid by Chinese companies. That's not how tariffs work. Tariffs are paid at the point of entry to a country, paid by the importer. That is, whatever comes from China will be 145% more expensive for the U.S. importing company.

But the people who trade stocks apparently don't understand any of this. They are pushing stocks up hard today, as they also did yesterday. Another "reason" is not just what is misinterpreted as a softening of Trump's position on tariffs, or progress (!) in non-existent negotiations, but the fact that Trump changed his tune on Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell, who he had been publicly attacking for days because Powell isn't lowering interest rates. (Another Trump distortion of reality- the chairman of the Fed cannot raise and lower interest rates on his own. That requires a vote by the Fed Open Market committee, on which the chairman has only one vote.) Trump had been publicly threatening to "fire" Powell, which he does not have the legal authority to do, but as we have seen, Trump has been doing many illegal things since January 20 when he became president again, or rather dictator as he prefers, including firing officials illegally. Seeing that the stock and bond markets were upset, Trump stopped calling Powell a "loser" (the worst epithet there is in Trump's mind, a product of his pathological upbringing by his sick father, Fred)  and said he wasn't going to "fire" Powell after all. Or rather, he merely said he has no "plan" to fire Powell. Like he ever needs a "plan" for his arbitrary and vengeful acts. 

Yet for some reason, this typical Trump capricious (and meaningless, if you parse it like I just did) change of rhetoric completely reassured the financial speculators, and the stock market especially has been off to the races in an oingoing so-called "relief rally." (As of noon, the rally is off the highs but still up 2% to 3% in the major averages, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq..The DOW is a mere 30 stocks, so it is silly to use it as a weather vane.)

Given the relentless bias to drive stocks always higher, and the mindless chauvinistic optimism of American financial speculators, one must always assume that pushing U.S. stocks down is as hard as pushing an inflated ball underwater. It will always forcefully push upwards. The 1929-1940 stock market drought must be seen as an anomaly in the modern era. (The completely unregulated 19th century cannot be used for comparison. In that century, there was an economic panic or crisis or depression about every decade.)

                           "What, you BELIEVED that??"

Trump's Impossible Demands To Maybe Possibly Think About LOWERING His Globally Destructive Tariffs Somewhat- And the Trump Dictatorship

Elimination of U.S. trade deficits is the demand Trump has frequently repeated. That has been an obsession of Trump's for years.

He thinks trade deficits mean the U.S. is getting "ripped off." He constantly asserts that "We've been treated very badly for so long." No, trade deficits mean Americans get to live off the labor and resources of poorer (and not poorer) nations! Americans get to buy and consume products and food for much less than it would cost to produce domestically, get food that cannot be grown in the U.S. (like coffee and bananas), and American businesses get manufactured parts and products for less cost.

The other nations get dollars.

And what happens with the dollars earned by other nations? They go into funding U.S. budget deficits by buying Treasury bonds!

So how is the U.S. suffering? How is it getting "ripped off" and "taken advantage of by everyone for years," as Trump has complained for years, with great bitterness?  In fact, the U.S. has a great racket going.

Until wrecker Trump came along.

How will it be possible for, say, Vietnam, or Mexico, to NOT run a trade deficit with the U.S.? There is just too much that America as a country, as businesses, as people, want from those and many other countries, and not enough those countries can buy from the U.S. So it is an impossible demand. That means there is no plausible end in sight for the Trump tariff economic terrorism unless Trump suddenly flips his script and declares victory ("We won a great victory it's the biggest win in American history!" he'd brag in his run-on sentences style of speaking, or some such boastful blather.)

Trump has been falsely calling his punitive tariffs, intended to extort submission to his demands, as "reciprocal." Establishment media has been mindlessly parroting this fake adjective. They aren't reciprocal, because they aren't a response to any actions by the victim nations, and they are MUCH MUCH HIGHER than the tariffs those nations impose, which were in single digits until Trump started his economic warfare on the world. Trump imposed tariffs on every nation on earth, and on uninhabited territories as well.
 

A big "Fuck You!" to the World

Trump also demands that all other nations completely eliminate all tariffs on U.S. exports, and maybe he'll lower his tariffs, and on top of that eliminate all alleged "internal barriers" to U.S. exports in those countries as well as subsidies to their industries, be eliminated. (By the way, the U.S. does a lot of subsidizing of U.S. business. For example, the oil and gas business. Mining. Semiconductors. The list goes on.)

And it just so happens that a large proportion of the imports he whines about are imports by U.S. companies manufacturing their products in other countries to low the costs of production. Which is a good thing for Americans buying products and for workers in the producer countries who are provided income.

On the other hand, many American blue collar workers have been left in the lurch by this economic globalization of supply chains. To the shame of both U.S. parties of the ruling political cartel (Democratic and Republican parties) virtually nothing was done to help that class of worker.

The result is that they were ripe for the picking by a lying, deceitful, false-promising demagogue like Trump. Here's an example of the braying bombast typical of Trump, claiming he will deliver Great Things by his malicious, destructive actions: "We're going to become a wealthy nation again wealthy like never before." 

Nevertheless, even though Trump got around 74 million votes or so each time he ran, he NEVER won a free and fair election. In 2016, Hillary Clinton got about 2 million more votes than Trump, but the Electoral College, that anachronistic relic of post-colonial days, "elected" Trump president.

In 2020 Trump first tried to steal the election by getting state election officials to lie about the outcome after the votes were counted, then on January 6, 2021 sent a mob to invade the Capitol to prevent the formal certification of Biden as the victor in the Electoral College. The mob's mission included hanging Trump's vice president, Michael Pence, and murdering House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if they could get their hands on her.

Stunningly, and ominously, Trump was allowed to get away with this coup attempt by a combination of Democratic Party fecklessness and dilatory action, and the Republican Judiciary's protection of Trump, most crucially the Republican Party-controlled Supreme Court. These days Trump still bellows that the 2020 election was "stolen" from him, and now he adds that he should have simply stayed in office. 

And in 2024, as the journalist Greg Palast has documented with government data, several million black voters were either denied the right to vote at all, or had their ballots invalidated by Republican state officials. That made the difference between losing and winning for their Leader, Trump.

Trump has made himself a dictator, ignoring laws and court rulings about his kidnaps and renderings of foreign citizens legally in the U.S. to a prison in El Salvador, mass firings of government workers, shutting down entire departments and agencies created by Congress, impounding the funds appropriated by Congress, illegally firing key officials and purging the government of its internal watchdogs against corruption, such as Inspectors General.

So it is only logical that this dictator, Trump, and his accomplices, including the sinister Steve Bannon, are now saying that Trump will run for a third term, in blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids it. Given Republican control of enough states to swing the Electoral College result, it seems more likely than not that Trump can accomplish his monstrosity.

If that happens, we will have to say goodbye to the illusion of American democracy. It's past time to wake up from that 200-plus year dream
 

Trump Threatens Again To Seize Greenland From NATO "Ally" Denmark

 In his daily stream-of-consciousness rant today, King Trump threatened to send more U.S. troops to Greenland, obviously to affect an occupation of that sovereign Danish territory. And again, he insisted the U.S. needs to annex Greenland for U.S. "national security."  [1]

He also still says Canada would be "beautiful" as the 51th state of the U.S.

So the U.S. is threatening two members of the U.S.-created and bosses NATO military alliance with hostile seizures, in the case of Canada the complete extinction of that nation.

Yet media propagandists still refer to Canada and Denmark as U.S. "allies." Allies do not threaten allies territory, sovereignty, and continued existence as nations.

The assembled poodles pretending to be journalists meekly pretended all this is normal and reasonable.
Let me remind you, the U.S. has since World War II maintained military bases on Greenland. Denmark has been most cooperative about this. Also Greenland is inhabited by a civilian population. Of course what they might want doesn't figure in Trump's dictatorial mind.

Let me remind you, the U.S. has since World War II maintained military bases on Greenland. Denmark has been most cooperative about this. Also Greenland is inhabited by a civilian population. Of course what they might want doesn't figure in Trump's dictatorial mind.

It's about time the European lapdogs who run those countries stop pretending the U.S. is their ally and protector. Yet instead, they are racing to assure Trump that they will meet his outrageous demand that they spend the equivalent of 5% of their gross national products (their economies) on "defense." Which actually means buying weapons from U.S. weapons manufacturers. NATO requires "standardization" of weapons, which means for the expensive stuff, largely U.S. ones.

The U.S. doesn't spend 5% of GDP on the military (well, maybe if you count Veterans Affairs, part of NASA, the 2/3rds of the Department of Energy's budget that is for nuclear warhead assembly, disassembly, and research, and more here and there, it might approach 3%), nor should it. NO nation should mindlessly base its military budgets on a percentage of GDP. Instead it should evaluate potential threats, determine the military forces and equipment needed to deal with the threats and their costs, and appropriate the right amount of money. But to my knowledge, NOT A SINGLE POLITICIANS OR MEDIA JABBERER HAS EVER POINTED OUT THIS OBVIOUS FACT OR CHALLENGED THE % DEMANDS!! 

Just how mindlessly conformist are these elite jackasses?

Very conformist, apparently.

Trump can wave the "national security" magical wand to justify anything because that is EXACTLY how that phrase has been used for decades to justify U.S. aggression, U.S. repression inside and outside the U.S., and various U.S. crimes, AND the secrecy used to suppress awareness of these crimes from the American people. A good chunk of those people would support the crimes anyway, contrary to the delusions of leftists who think that if "the people only knew" the truth they would rise up in righteous anger blah blah. The fact that there are always large numbers of reactionaries, national chauvinists- aka "patriots"- racists, and fascists eludes leftists and is the reason that their favorite slogan, "The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated" is fatuous and dangerously misleading. The people are rarely united. The only times they are are during some wars.

"National Security" is NEVER DEFINED by those throwing it around. It really means U.S. POWER. Pure and simple, that is the real meaning. Whether talking about global domination, or suppression of domestic dissidents, that is what they do behind the veil of "national security." And only those with "security clearances," that is, those deemed to have the correct ideological mindset, get to know the details of the dirty crimes being committed behind the veil of "national security."

        He whom the Gods would make King, they first make mad. (Or maybe just drunk on power.)

1] Referring to Greenland, Mad King Trump said "We really need it for national security. Maybe we'll send more and more soldiers. What do you think of that Pete?" [Talking to Peter Hegseth, the alcoholic rapist Trump and the GOP Senators made Secretary of Defense. I did not hear an audible response from Hegseth.]

Stock Market Speculators Finally Get It Through Their Thick Skulls That Trump Isn't Bluffing About Tariffs

This afternoon U.S. stock markets suddenly nose-dived while Trump was announcing that ruinous 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada take effect tomorrow. Given Trump's oft-declared love of tariffs, and his use of them in his previous incarnation as president of the U.S., it was idiotic of the blockheads who drive stock prices hither and yon in manic-depressive fashion to have ever doubted him on tariffs.

One thing that needs explaining is why are the corporate bosses whose businesses stand to suffer greatly from the tariffs are so supine and acquiescent about this. The auto manufacturers make much of their car parts- like engines, rather important!- in Canada and Mexico. Their profit margins are below 10%. A 25% tariff means either they LOSE money selling cars, or the number of cars they sell drops by a lot because they have to hike the sale prices.

Then there are the high tariffs on imports from China, which Trump just increased. Many, many goods sold in the U.S., as well as parts for products, are still made in China. You just cannot erase a nation of 1.2 billion people which has developed a huge and extraordinarily diversified manufacturing base, from the U.S. economy.

Trump's fantasy is that the outsourcing of much U.S. manufacturing to cheaper labor sites outside the U.S., a massive movement that has occurred over decades, can be quickly put into reverse and thousands of new factories suddenly open inside the U.S.

It is an example of Trump's de facto dictatorial powers that U.S. corporate sector isn't in rebellion against this. Every other U.S. president has mostly catered to the whims of corporations and big capital. Occasionally they have to do things that displease that sector. Theodore Roosevelt had to break up some trusts. Franklin Roosevelt had to institute a thin social safety net (paid for by workers as well as companies). But there has never been such an assault on corporate interests as what Trump has been doing.

Very inconsistent of the corporations and their media propagandists. They used to scream "Socialist!" at the drop of a hat of any Democratic president proposed anything at all that tilted slightly progressive. But with Trump, it's grovel and kiss his ass.

But hey, that Putin is such an autocrat! All the rich "oligarchs" there tremble and survive only on his sufferance! How UNLIKE the "free and democratic" U.S.A.!

Trump To Ukraine- Your Rare Earth Minerals Or Your Life

On February 28, 2025, Career Extortionist Donald John Trump got unexpected resistance from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump had summoned Zelensky to the White House to sign an agreement to hand over to the U.S. (presumably U.S. corporations in favor with Trump) half the revenues from Ukraine's natural resources- the minerals, oil, natural gas. In return for- basically nothing. No guarantee of military aid, intelligence aid, nothing. Just a typical Trump move, vague rhetoric, nothing enforceable. Nothing Trump has any intention of enforcing. [1]

Trump's shakedown attempt failed, so far. Zelensky was describing his view of the history of the war with Russia. Trump didn't want to hear it. He laid into Zelensky, saying he doesn't have "the cards," meaning he's playing with a weak hand, while Trump held the, well, trump card of U.S. war support. (Recall that Trump in his previous go at being president, briefly delayed delivering military supplies to Ukraine in a clumsy effort to get information on the corrupt Biden family doings in Ukraine, which pro-Democratic Party media dismissed as "dirt" without mentioning the outrageous, openly corrupt deal that Biden son Hunter got from Ukrainian gas company Burisma- a seat on the corporate board for $50,000 a MONTH, for several years. That's a multi-million dollar not very well disguised bribe to the Biden family. Incredibly dishonest hiding of the facts by Democratic Party politicians and their media allies. Oh, and Trump was actually impeached by the Democrats for that delay. Needless to say, the Republicans, who have memories as long as their party symbol, the elephant, never forgot or forgave.)

In yesterday's meeting, Trump rebuked Zelensky for being "very disrespectful," and "you're not being thankful, and that's not a nice thing." (Trump always accuses people who stand up to him of being "not nice," and worse.) Trump's vice president, the slippery opportunist J.D. Vance, jumped on Zelensky, with an accusatory rhetorical question, "have you said thank you once," and then revealed a festering grudge, denouncing Zelensky for "campaigning for the opposition" (that is, Biden) last October. (Of course "campaigning for" is a matter of interpretation. Don't trust Vance's.)

Trump bellowed at Zelensky that he was losing the war, and using the fact that the Ukrainian military is dependent on U.S. weapons and ordnance, armaments that Europe cannot manufacture as leverage, his ranting made clear that Ukraine had no choice but to give in to Trump's extortion.

Or so Trump thought, and evidently had previously calculated.

Zelensky didn't back down, however, so he was effectively thrown out of the White House in front of the assembled media. The schedule joint lunch didn't happen.

Conveniently on hand outside the White House to verbally excoriate Zelensky was Trump's number one Senate stooge, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He rabidly attacked Zelensky, and insisted Zelensky would have to go unless he changed his attitude. (Graham often thinks he has the right to choose the heads of other nations' governments, a consistent imperialist impulse.) Among the things Trump's barking dog Graham said about Zelensky was "The way he confronted the President was over the top." All Zelensky did was try to talk back to Trump, a major offense when dealing with an Emperor-King.

 

Meanwhile USAID had cut off an infrastructure program in Ukraine, all USAID programs having been cancelled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the reactionary Florida Cuban Trump plucked from the Senate for a cabinet post, and Elon Musk and the fake "Department" Trump created, DOGE, for "Department Of Government Efficiency." A deceptive name for what should be called Artificial Department Of Government Dismantling Or Destruction, ADOGOD.

After leaving the meeting where he was dressed down by Trump and Vance, Zelensky posted Thank-Yous to Trump, America, and the American people, on Trump hitman Elon Musk's propaganda site, X (formerly Twitter). Zelensky has thanked the U.S. and Europe innumerable times during the war.

On Ukraine, Trump is right that it cannot win the war. However the way he wants to end it mirrors what he did in Afghanistan, when he negotiated with the Taliban, cutting the Afghan government completely out of the process, and leaving it to his successor, Biden, to pull the rug out from under the client regime that depended on the U.S. for its survival. That regime collapsed as soon as the U.S. hastily retreated, or "cut and ran," an oft-used expression in U.S. discourse by war mongers but was strangely absent in the Afghan case, when it perfectly applied in a very literal sense. The result of handing over that country to the medieval and deranged Taliban has been awful for the Afghan people, and especially horrendous for Afghan women, who are now banned from employment and education and virtually imprisoned as housework and breeding slaves in their homes. 

But Trump cannot totally cut the Ukrainian government out of the picture as it is much stronger than the Afghan regime and unlike that regime, has the support of its population which supports the war effort except in the eastern portions of the country, which seceded after the U.S. coup and was bombed and shelled by the Kyiv regime, which waged war on it, Russia supporting the secessionists. Europe also support Kyiv, although it will not be able to manufacture weapons and ordnance of the type and in the quantities the U.S. has been supplying. Hence Trump's arm-twisting of the Ukrainians.

Unfortunately the U.S. put Ukraine in this difficult position. Just a few days after the Russian invasion in February 2022, Putin initiated negotiations with Zelensky about an agreement to end the war, which at that point Russia's thrust to Kyiv was grinding to a halt. The U.S. immediately stopped that. British prime minister at the time Boris "Bojo The Clown" Johnson" immediately rushed to Kyiv to pull Zelensky away from the negotiation path. The talks with Russia were promising. 

Then Ukraine went on  to achieve victories in the war. In the fall of 2022 Ukraine was at its high point of military success. This isn't mere hindsight. The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest U.S. military officer,  general Mark Milley, said at that time that it wouldn't get better for Ukraine and this was the time to seek an end to the war. [2]

However, then-president Joe Biden was always an aggressive war monger in Ukraine for years. He rejected that option. So he doomed Ukraine to ultimate defeat. (As Obama's vice president, he pushed for weapons to be sent to Ukraine, but Obama demurred, opting for just training missions.)

There are larger ways in which the U.S. painted Ukraine into this corner. There was the U.S.-instigated fascist led coup of 2014, ordered by Obama, with high U.S. officials on the ground in Kyiv agitating, most notoriously Victoria Nuland of the State Department, and people like (now dead) U.S. Senator and rabid militarist John McCain.

And then there's the original sin. President George "Bush The Younger" Bush in 2008 strong-armed NATO, over objections from Germany and France, into declaring that Georgia and Ukraine would be brought into NATO. Russia immediately howled that this was intolerable. (The German chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel, says she knew this would never fly with Russia, but being a U.S. lapdog, as are all bourgeois European "leaders," she went along with the U.S. diktat.)

Most of the U.S. imperialist elite, being drunk on its power as usual, thought they could just shove it down Russia's throat, just as they had shoved down two earlier NATO expansions after the collapse of the Soviet Union down Russia's throat, betraying a promise made to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last, ill-fated head of the U.S.S.R., that NATO would not expand "one inch to the east" in return for the Soviets not to stand in the way of the absorption of East Germany by West Germany. (So-called "reunification," although by that time East Germany was a very different country from West Germany, just as Austria is different from Germany, regardless of the fact that all speak German. Hell, the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a bunch of other places all speak English. They're far from identical places.) William "Bill" Clinton expanded NATO in 1999, followed by another expansion by Bush and the notorious declaration at that 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, NATO having already planted its flag that far east. NATO was created as an anti-Soviet military alliance by the U.S., with the obligation on the U.S. to go to war with the U.S.S.R. if that nation attacked any NATO member.

Why is bringing Ukraine into NATO a red line for Russia? Because the U.S. could put nuclear ballistic missiles in that country, as it has nuclear weapons all over Europe, which could annihilate the Russian government and key targets in a few minutes. No one enjoys having a loaded gun pointed at one's head, even if the person holding the gun purrs that it's strictly for self-defense! That is a form of coercive leverage. Moreover, imagine if China overthrew the government of Canada and Mexico, and brought one of those countries into an anti-U.S. military bloc. The U.S. wouldn't wait 8 years to invade, as Russia did after the 2014 U.S. coup. It would invade in 8 days!

UK prime minister tried to make up for the Trump gang's brutal treatment of Zelensky the next day, March 1st, warmly welcoming him with a crowd to provide cheers. The U.S. move to abandon Ukraine also go the backs up of people in Ukraine.

The fact is, in various ways, Trump is effectively forcing Europe to move towards independence from the U.S., finally, 80 year after the end of World War II in 1945. Not that that's Trump's intent, just a positive byproduct of his hostile and economically destructive actions. (Did someone say, "Tariffs"?) So while the Democratic Party and the U.S. imperialist elite are aghast at Trump's baseball bat whacks at the U.S. alliance system, which the U.S. has totally dominated, I think it's about time that system broke down. I'm an anti-imperialist, you see. Because all empires are in fact criminal enterprises that use violence, the threat of violence, and various forms of coercion to subjugate other peoples and economically exploit them and their resources, often to extreme degrees. Empires are not "glorious," contrary to their propagandists, including many so-called historians.
=========================================================================
CODA AND FOOTNOTE 

In a sense, Trump's bullying of Ukraine is far from unique in U.S. imperialist history. It's just a throwback to 19th century type imperialism, which was cruder than what we've come to expect, at least in appearance. We did have the unprovoked invasion of Iraq by George Bush, and thousands of assassinations (including of Americans, some in the U.S.) by Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama.

But with Trump, you have a person who is a bully, with the power of the most powerful position on earth. That is not a happy combination. Oh, and he's currently using that power to deconstruct pieces of the U.S. government, including the IRS. That alone with make the Federal deficit worse. The pretend deficit hawks of the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) are onboard with that. The Trump-Musk regime has already fired several thousand IRS employees, including some in enforcement.

Every dollar spent on the IRS brings in more than a dollar in revenue. Every dollar spent auditing the rich brings in $6 in revenue. Those audits are now being virtually eliminated.

This is just greedy rich people cutting their taxes. While doing this, they and the lying corporate media pretend that the deficit is caused by Social Security and Medicare. That is one gigantic BIG LIE. Social Security and Medicare run annual SURPLUSES. Yes, by 2035 Social Security is expected to take in less in payroll tax contributions than it pays out. So it will make up the difference by tapping into its gigantic multi-trillion dollar trust fund. Big deal. That is not "bankruptcy," as demagogic politicians and dishonest media propagandists call it. And here's an easy fix: remove the cap on income subject to FICA tax so people who make millions a year in income (even a billion in some cases!) pay the tax on their full income. Right now poor people pay FICA starting on the first dollar of wages. (Unlike the income tax, there is no standard deduction under FICA.)

Those annual Social Security trust fund surpluses are spent by the government on other activities to reduce the annual deficit. Treasury bonds are placed in the trust fund in return. Of course those bonds then have to be paid off eventually, with interest, with other Federal revenue- income taxes, fees, tariffs, asset seizures ("forfeitures"), whatever.

This years-long attack on Social Security as the cause of deficits indicates that the rich oligarchs won't be satisfied until their taxes are set at zero, and they get even more hundreds of billions in government welfare than they already do every year. (Notice "welfare" is a dirty word in the U.S., and is only applied to the pittances grudgingly allotted to the very poor, mostly women with children, who are painted as undeserving parasites.)

Alright, this went off on some tangents, but they are connected and important to be aware of. I share my knowledge for free.

1] Speaking of Trump extortion, he recently extorted $15 million from the cowards running Disney Corporation, which owns ABC, a major pillar of the corporate propaganda system. ABC paid Trump to settle a completely meritless suit Trump brought for "libel," because on-air host George Stephanopoulos (a former Clinton regime figure) said Trump had committed rape. In the civil suit that one of Trump's rape victim's brought and won against Trump, the jury found that a sexual assault occurred, which the judge said was tantamount to rape. So this was an eminently defensible case for ABC. 

This is on the cowardly corporate execs. Or maybe cowardly misses the point. Disney, like all giant corporations, needs the goodwill of the Federal government to avoid friction in its obsessive drive for maximum profits lest that government throw sand in the corporate gears. Many regulations affect corporations. And these large corporations are rapacious in buying other corporations- which the U.S. Department of Justice can oppose by filing anti-trust suits to block the intended mergers. As in fact the Trump DOJ is doing right now to stop Hewlett-Packard Enterprises from buying Juniper Networks.

I guess the execs at those companies forgot to bribe Trump with campaign donations and/or gifts to his "Inauguration Fund." Or maybe Trump just didn't notice what the DOJ is doing. The Biden regime DOJ started objecting to the proposed merger in November 2024, a full 10 months after the merger was announced in January 2024, with an anticipated completion date in a year. Seems like a long time to wait to raise an objection. But the DOJ didn't file suit in court until January 30 of 2025, the eleventh day of Trump's latest term as president. Idiosyncratic for Trump, who makes a point of doing the opposite of whatever his Democratic predecessors did.

2] "U.S. scrambles to reassure Ukraine after Milley comments on negotiations," Politico, Nov. 14, 2022, for example.
 

 

 

 

Trump To The Republican Party Is Like Hitler To The Nazi Party

Both men had/have complete control of their respective parties. Both parties were/are effectively personality cults completely devoted to their respective Leaders. (Hitler was "Der Fuhrer," Fuhrer is German for leader, thus "The Leader.")

Trump has sent around a picture of himself wearing a crown. He's really shoving it in everyone's face. Because he knows he has impunity. The Congress is controlled by the Party he controls, so he cannot be impeached and removed from office. (Hell, the Republicans wouldn't even convict him after he was impeached for the violent coup attempt of January 1, 2021. Republican politicians in the Capitol had to flee for their lives. The Republican vice president, Pence, was in mortal danger.) And the Supreme Court paved the way for his dictatorship before the election, first by sabotaging the criminal cases against him for the coup and the theft of classified documents, then gratuitously declaring that the president of the U.S. CANNOT BE GUILTY OF A CRIME, as long as what he does is an "official act." That was the Nixon doctrine, "when the president does it, it's legal." That didn't fly back in the 1970s. Now it's official Constitutional Law, thanks to the Republican Supremacist Court.

Not the first time in history a "King" has crowned Himself.

 It's obvious that revolutionary changes are necessary. The Supreme Court has to be overthrown, for starters. But instead of revolution we're getting revanchism, an attempt to return to the 19th century. Trump pines for the 1890s, which he cites as a golden era. That's when the U.S. conquered the Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the far off Philippines, and assorted other Pacific and Caribbean islands. His hankering to absorb Canada and Greenland into the U.S. and "renaming" the Gulf of Mexico Gulf of America, Denali in Alaska as Mt. McKinley (his new second favorite president after himself) and threats to seize the Panama canal are all of a piece of anachronistic imperialism. It is a regression to an earlier form of U.S. Imperialism.

We've seen this kind of U.S. arrogance before. Drunk on power, our rulers think they can do anything. George Bush (Bush the Younger) thought the U.S. could "remake" the Middle East (and Afghanistan) more to his liking. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon tried to cut Vietnam in two and create a permanent client regime in the southern half.

The U.S. is certainly very powerful, but it has more success picking on very small and defenseless countries like Grenada (invaded by Reagan) or Panama (invaded by the Bush the Elder). And yes, it has won major wars- against Mexico (1846), a senile Spanish empire (1896), and with help (the World Wars against mostly Germany). 

The one thing on foreign policy Trump is doing right is trying to end the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, which is destroying Ukraine. THAT is the one thing the Democrats hate! They are fine with his support for Israeli genocide, and they don't actually oppose his anti-immigrant policy- which is really just an extension with much nastier rhetoric of the policies of Biden, and Barack "Deporter in Chief" Obama, who set a record for deportations (over 8 years) that Trump has yet to match (but give him time). But the Democrats (and Euroscum like UK prime minister Keir Starmer, who has criminalized anti-genocide protest in Britain) are determined to fight on to the last Ukrainian.

However, the way Trump is trying to end the Ukraine war is unethical. He's cutting the Ukrainians out of the process, same as he sold out the Afghan client regime by dealing only with the Taliban, stabbing the Afghan government in the back. In both cases, the parallel historical analogy is Munich 1938, when Britain and France sold out Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany at a conference from which the Czechs were banned (not invited- same thing). And yet, the Democrats haven't invoked that analogy. It is an analogy that has been speciously invoked ad nauseam to justify U.S. violence, subversion, and imperialist aggression innumerable times since World War Two, yet not now, when it is actually appropriate, with Trump! Amazing.

With Ukraine cut off from U.S. arms, that would leave the Europeans and the warmongering Keir Starmer, loathing British prime minister, to keep sacrificing Ukrainians if they so choose- Starmer has even said he'd send British "peacekeeping" troops to Ukraine.

But to return to the start of this essay: Trump To The Republican Party Is Like Hitler To The Nazi Party.

DEI Replaced By HIE

 Diversity Equity Inclusion flushed down the toilet by the racist Trump regime and the eager to conform and comply U.S. corporate bosses, replaced by HIE: Homogeneity, Inequality, Exclusion.

NYC Strongman Eric Adams Gets His Reward From Trump

 [Oh, by the way, we are now effectively living under a dictatorship, ruled by Trump and Elon Musk. I will get to that in another essay.]

Gangsters Rule The U.S., And Corruption Is The Norm.

That reality has been made apparent every day, starting on January 20, under the Trump regime.

Yesterday, the criminal New York City strongman mayor Eric Adams was rescued by Trump from the obviously true corruption indictment against him. The Trump Department of "Justice" ordered the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of NY to drop the charges against Adams for taking bribes from the Turkish government and illegal campaign contributions camouflaged to disguise their real sources. Adams' own emails show him conspiring in these crimes. But just to ensure that Adams continues to be Trump's loyal lapdog, the charges were dismissed "without prejudice," meaning that they can be refiled in the future, brought back to life as it were, giving Trump a weapon to hold over Adams' head.

Adams, aggressively self-promoting and very much a big fan of himself, summoned the media to record him praising Trump and referring to the aborted indictment as "this cruel episode." This puffed-up reactionary oppressor of anti-genocide protesters predictably preened himself yet again in public as is his habit, and continues to arrogantly believe he can be reelected as mayor this year. A truly nauseating prospect which hopefully will prove delusional on his part. Much more decent Democratic politicians are running against him for the party's nomination.

The evidence that Adams is guilty is indisputable. (At least by honest, rational people. Hey, some people dispute the Holocaust. And establishment drones pretend Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated JFK, and the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center, and Building 7, fell by magic.)

The handwriting for Adams to beat the rap has long been on the wall. Adams for months has been sucking up to Trump, attacking immigrants, parroting Trump's hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric, going to Trump's Florida lair, Mar-a-Lago, to kiss his ring, and attending his inauguration January 20 as an invited guest. Adams ordered his staff not to criticize Trump. Worse, he ordered all city workers to cooperate with the ICE terror raids hunting "illegal immigrants" the "murderers, rapists, worst of the worst" Trump claims they all are. (ICE- Immigration and Customs Enforcement.)

Adams' corrupt circle of confederates haven't been so lucky. Seven or more have been forced to resign- I've lost count- some for coercing sex from subordinates, and one just pled guilty to Federal charges. Guess they had nothing to offer Trump. Adams is on his third or fourth police commissioner, a member of the plutocratic class, a Tisch. Too bad New York State tolerates corrupt politicians. It could prosecute them, theoretically, under state laws.

 

 The Supremely Self-Satisfied New York City Strongman Eric Adams, Oppressor of Anti-Genocide Protesters.

 Trump himself is notoriously corrupt, as are many of his accomplices, like World's Richest Person Elon Musk, The Four Hundred Billion Dollar Man. Trump learned corruption from his father, Fred, who greased the palms of politicians like Mayor Abe Beame, who Fred was close with, in return for bending and breaking city rules.

Trump knows he's corrupt. That's why he fired a slew of Inspector Generals of government departments, and cashiered the heads of the Government Ethics Office and of the Whistleblower Protection Office. (Not that whistleblowers had great protection anyway. They were criminally prosecuted by the regime of Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama.)

Ironically, cynically, Trump constantly justifies his destruction of government agencies and functions by claiming they are "totally corrupt." That adds a layer of additional outrageousness to the destructive behavior of this malign, vicious, racist anti-human being.

Trump and his hatchet man Musk branded USAID "totally corrupt," a cesspool. This has been a pattern in their attacks on parts of the government they are destroying or coopting. Contrary to Trump's repeated assurances that he would protect Social Security and Medicare, his partner in crime Musk claims that those programs are rife with fraud, which is his justification for seizing control of the Treasury Department database, which makes the payments to recipients of those programs. How Musk and his dozen or so young fascist and racist computer nerds plan to uncover unworthy recipients among the 70 million is not explained.

But it is very easy to identify what is by far, in dollar terms, the place where you will find the overwhelming bulk of government waste and corruption.

The Department of "Defense," aka the Pentagon. 

Here's just one example of thousands, that I just read about. The U.S. military was using a system to coordinate aerial refuelings of planes from World War II. During operations over Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria there were 1,500 such refuelings every day. So military weaponry corporation Northrop Grumman was given a contract to modernize the system. After ten years, Grumman had scarfed up $745 MILLION in taxpayers' money, twice the original "estimate " (which are generally bogus in the war industry) and had produced nothing. 

At the time, there was an experimental procurement company named DIUx, set up as a sort of thimble to try to empty the bathtub of corruption. It managed to come up with an actual software solution that cut planning time for planning refuelings from several days to under 1 minute. Rather than being hailed, the Air Force and House staffers working on "defense" stubbornly resisted the innovation. Eventually it was forced through, but the DIUx people faced constant resistance and retaliation. [1]

Because you see, there is big money in military contracting corruption. Military officers and Congressional staff and politicians who play ball can expect to be lucratively rewarded later on. "Retired" generals and admirals commonly go to work for the corporations for high "compensation," and in addition some are paid by U.S. media companies to be shills for the military and its expensive, underperforming weaponry.

Here's an even very very much larger example: the trillion-dollar F-35 fighter plane. There is too much to describe about how this plane is a giant scam, the propaganda for it a pack of lies, how it falls short (to put it charitably) on all the fulsome claims made for it by the weapons makers and repeated by the media and politician parrots. Just go online and use duckduckgo or another search engine (or do you still use spyware Google?) and do some research on "problems with the F-35" or "criticism of the F-35." Lockheed Martin has failed to get the various systems and software to work on the plane. Pierre Sprey, a great warplane designer with credit for the F-16 (which defeated the F-35 in a mock dogfight) and the A-10 Warthog, an excellent close ground support plane being scrapped, its role now to be filled by the F-35, which it cannot do at all well, has been scathing in his critique of the F-35.

I will be surprised if fire-breathing Godzilla Trump and hitman Musk mess with the military-industrial-Congressional complex, however. (President Eisenhower was convinced to drop "Congressional," his original intent, from that famous farewell 1961 speech.)

 1] Source: "Rebooting the Pentagon," The New York Review of Books, February 27, 2025 issue.

 

New York Doctor indicted in Louisiana for abortion pills. Trump exercises dictatorial power, shuts down USAID. And Elon Musk has your Social Security Number now.

1]- If Louisiana can get their hands on her, the doctor  faces 15 years in a medieval type Louisiana prison and a $200,000 fine. The mother of the teenager who needed the abortion faces that fate.

2]- Trump shut down an agency created and funded by Congress, which he has no right- or legal authority- to do. Elon Musk, his de factor right hand man, called it a "criminal organization," and "radical left," -insane bullshit- and motivated Trump to take the illegal action. Trump said USAID "is run by radical lunatics." Of course it is an arm of U.S. foreign policy, that provides the parsimonious amount of NON-MILITARY foreign aid the U.S. provides. The agency goes back to 1961. The idea that ANY part of the U.S. government employs left-wing radicals is as preposterous as Hitler's claim that Germany didn't lose World War I, but was stabbed in the back on the home front.

One of the last hospitals in Gaza is shutting down- it received USAID funds.

20 million people around the world with AIDS are kept alive with medicines paid for by USAID. Maybe some other nation or nations or international organization will step into the breach. They better do so quickly, or there will be sicker people- and deaths.

Not that the white racists Trump and Musk care about murdering Africans.

These are just 2 of the important stories from the headlines feature of democracynow.org

For ten minutes, 5 days a week, of your time, you will be vastly better informed than you can be from relying on the power establishment's propaganda system if you follow headlines there. Plus they have longer stories on various topics. The website is very well oaid out, and their archive goes back years and the search function works very well- much better than I've experienced at the New York Times or the New Yorker, for example. 

Don't make me have to inform you of what's going on. Take responsibility for knowing what's going on in the world YOU LIVE IN.

Obviously the remedy here is impeachment and removal from office of Trump. But the Republican Party controls both houses of Congress, and the Republican Party has degenerated into a political cult with Trump at its head.

Some think mass protests are somehow the answer. In his last round as president, Trump ordered then Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to have troops shoot protesters in the legs. Esper refused. But Defense Secretary this time, Peter Hegseth, will be glad to. In fact, this time the order will probably be to aim at heads and chests.

Too bad the lame and feckless Democratic Party helped allow this situation. The Biden regime could have indicted Trump in early 2021 for the failed coup and theft of a massive amount of classified documents. Instead they dragged their feet for several years, by which time Trump rebuilt his popularity and the Republican-controlled Federal judiciary effectively stalled the cases until they were killed or dropped. 

For the story about Elon Musk, here's the link:

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/3/elon_musk_gov#transcript

 For more on the shutdown of USAID, go to:

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/3/usaid_shutdown

 

 

U.S. Media Obsession Of The Day: Military Helicopter Causes Fatal Airline Crash In Washington, DC

I say "causes," because a Blackhawk helicopter has no business "training" next to a very busy airport, where it collided with an American Airlines plane coming in to land. Both craft landed in a freezing cold river. There were no survivors. The U.S. media didn't say "caused," even though it obviously did. It's "under investigation." 

For many years now, the U.S. military can do no wrong in the eyes of the U.S. corporate propaganda system. 

And once again, I am struck by the contrast between the obsession with a relatively minor tragedy befalling some Americans (33 people on the airliner, 3 on the "chopper") and the ongoing atrocities being inflicted by Israel upon Palestinians. Which total U.S. support makes possible.

For one thing, there's the sham "ceasefire" in Gaza. Israel continues to murder Palestinians there, including young children.  (Democracynow.org reports these murders, as do other non-corporate media which are not part of the U.S. power establishment.) And there is no "ceasefire," not even the pretense of one, in the West Bank, where an ongoing pogrom with "ethnic cleansing" (a euphemism for violent expulsion of a population) is invisible in the U.S. propaganda system. Over the last 15 months, this campaign of Israeli annexation has killed close to a thousand Palestinians (men, women, children, the elderly- there are no exemptions), destroyed or stolen Palestinian property, crops, olive trees, sheep, homes. Cynical Joe Biden made a symbolic move about that- putting empty "sanctions" on a few notorious Israeli "settlers" (most of those creeps are from Brooklyn, NY), but since they doubtless have little or no U.S. assets and don't move capital through the international (U.S.-controlled) financial system, these putative sanctions are devoid of effect. Trump cancelled even those pretend sanctions immediately upon taking office again.

And in case you believe there's a "ceasefire" in Lebanon, I must inform you that like all Israeli ceasefires these days, it is one-sided. Israel lashes out violently whenever it feels like it. Having decapitated Hezbollah and devastated southern Lebanon (a recurring habit of Israel's) Lebanon is virtually defenseless against Israel the bully nation. (Oh, Israel keeps gobbling up more pieces of Syria too. Or weren't you informed by American "journalists"?)

The only response to any of the facts by the U.S.-Israeli power establishment is to brand their victims "terrorists" and people who mention the facts "anti-Semites." We're dealing with closed-minded imperialist fanatics, fanatics who are incorrigible.