Outlaw,Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
I have not always agreed with you, but I am very sorry to see you go. Still, I respect your dedication to the ideals this country was founded on. Perhaps, someday you will return. Until then ...
Outlaw,
I have not always agreed with you, but I am very sorry to see you go. Still, I respect your dedication to the ideals this country was founded on. Perhaps, someday you will return. Until then ...
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
---
Many thanks for the kind comments…..but maybe my disappointment with people like slapout who supported Trump is the disappointment that many Americans can no longer tell what is or is not simple common sense….
Maybe my advantage is having actually lived….and been around real and upfront in your face historical events from two cultures and languages…..AND that I have lived…worked and partied hard in two cultures and speak three languages and the most important point…I have a passport and have travelled this globe both for the government and for myself…
I have learned from years in Germany what is fascism and how it starts which we see again raising it’s ugly head here….and it is far more important to me to push back on that development….than worrying about a group of people who voted for a racist….sexist.... vengeance driven male who broke numerous laws along the way and who might in fact be tied deeply to Russia…
AND this is important…..he burnt bridges inside an already divided nation which he failed to realize that by 2040 will no longer be “white” and male…….BUT WAIT that is exactly what he played to and he told those listening to him…nothing but pipe dreams as he can on the economic side not deliver on a tenth of what he said he would do.
WHAT he has unleashed is far more dangerous that Putin…..he wants to turn back the clock to the 50s that will never return and what many do not understand….a person who has stated what he has CANNOT simply change tones…just like a tiger cannot lose his stripes…..
Those that voted for his change and were angry about the status quo failed to realize that it was the same exact political party that has effectively blocked anything in DC for EIGTH FULL years……
WHAT Americans have been bad about is understanding history their own and the world around them….
Check the date of the Trump announcement to the world 9/11/38 here in Germany……..and the start to that event looks….feels ………and is exactly what Trump preaches and practices…..
The demos that many started yesterday who voted against him under the guise of “He is not my President”……is a deep sign of what they believe he will not do …..unite instead of dividing….
BTW…think about it…..the same security requirements for an average American to get the TS/SCI would have been denied on the actions of Trump and his finances for the last 20 years…..AND he has his finger on the nuclear button….AND we just give it to him……NO questions asked..sad really.....
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 11-10-2016 at 05:30 AM.
TC.....just a side comment....there is a bitter and deep war already ongoing on the cyber side and where my company has been dealing with the dark net for over three years now and through that work I have constant contact to German and French agencies...where they have "known me " since the 80s where I interacted with them on the interrogation/CI side of the house.
One thing those that supported Trump and YES even Trump himself forgets is that one can only work with "others" when there is a level of "trust" between the members of that group...AND the second thing is "WORDS spoken by someone in power" are taken a full and complete face value especially when coming from an American...by European leaders in general.
My previous and current work has earned me that right of "trust" and believe me EU agencies have a hard time extending that "trust" to Americans who they believe correctly always take but never give back...
Over the last two days there has been in my discussions with them a constant and not so subtle conversation of just how much will be shared with the US in the coming Trump years.....
WHY...BECAUSE from a CI perspective they view Trump as being "compromised" by the Russian foreign intel service SVR....based on his years of parties and women and his known "interests"....THEY would have never missed the chance to "compromise Trump"....and hold that "compromise materials for later use"...that was how the KGB worked and the current SVR is no different believe me.....many seem to think that the Cold War ended and you can party hard with women..drugs and alcohol in Moscow as if you are in say San Francisco or Berlin on a Saturday night.....ain't so.....THEY also knew his money needs and business growth needs and that he wanted to build a Moscow Trump Tower.
WHAT many US voters do not fully understand is that the level and intensity of Russian intel collection and activities by their FSB/SVR FAR surpasses that of the Cold War....they are aggressive and everywhere these days due to the ease of travel which was not there in the Cold War days...AND we in the US has simply "slept through this intel war" in the believe..."it ain't that bad"....
There is now a deep "distrust" of the new US President I have never seen before in all my years of dealing with Europeans as a whole...they truly do view him as "compromised" especially when one looks at his verbal support of Putin...his business and money funding activities in Russia...his selling of expensive property to Russian oligarchs a usually money laundering method for them....and the closeness of two of his first key advisors to Russia one of which had direct and confirmed business ties to a well known Russian spy master...ALL red flags in their eyes...so why would they share information on Russian activities with the US knowing that information has the possibility of then heading on to Russia....actually agree with them...
Trump ranted and called out...the EU trade policies...called out and critiqued NATO leaving NATO to wonder aloud if the US was a partner at all....AND ESPECIALLY called out Merkel and critiqued her openly... FOR over 18 long months.
Today the first polling has come in from Germans and French where 2/3rds of those asked view Trump as a danger to world peace and a danger to Europe...especially a danger to Germany/Germans...
I have never ever seen that before in my 50 odd years or so here.....
Secondly...when the EU announced that they were thinking of redoing NATO and flipping it into a EU Army...Obama and company roundly critiqued that decision as did many US policy wonks in DC....as being reduntant aned not necessary...
BUT this morning the EU Commission President openly stated it is time to start the process as it is apparent from Trump's FP statements he is no longer interested in nor supporting NATO and Juncker stated it is time to form a EU Army to defend both Europe and defend their foreign policies....
WHAT Trump totally forgot BUT how could he have known as he is a construction and real estate businessman...NATO's only one time use of Article 5 signed off by all NATO members was "in the defense of the US after 9/11"....
If one looks at the comments yesterday by the German FM....Merkel and her Vice Chancellor... I have never seen such bluntness.....
1. You are a superpower the world's strongest on the military... economic...political and social side AND you have a responsibility to lead.... as a superpower you cannot simply retire....
2. They openly warned between the lines that Trump must adhere to those common values that Europe thought existed between them and the US....fairness.....trust....protection of civilian liberties and basic human rights.
3. The US will now under Trump go which ever way they want to without consulting Europe...as Trump has repeatedly stated US first and last over everything else.
Europe critiquing the US on their need to hold to the protection of civil liberties and human rights.....strange right???
BUT when you hear Ryan stating yesterday that Trump was given a "mandate" alarm bells ring in Berlin/Paris....as they fully know that he had the lowest Electoral College votes in decades barely over 270---276---and he did not win the popular general election voting thus he does not effectively speak for more than 49% of those who voted not 49% OUT of the entire US population.....
The word "mandate" in European ears means your party took 60% or more on the general popular vote.....the word "mandate" that Ryan is using awakes in their minds the word....."tyranny " ........AND believe me that is exactly what Ryan meant......the 49% that voted for Trump dictating to the remaining 50% percent of the population what will be done in their name....
Meaning Trump threatened to jail Clinton for so called corruption (after EIGHT different congressional investigations found ABSOLUTELY nothing at a cost of millions of US taxpayers money and he basically threatened to deport 11M starting after he takes office....so if he promised that to his "followers" WILL he follow through? Heck his followers wanted to kill Clinton and hang journalists....THAT tone is fascist ...plain and simple....
Secondly will Trump eliminate "free speech" long one of the core US beliefs....WHY..... did not his followers hear him state over and over the media is corrupt....is against him...lies and.. ..and the US needs the same liable laws as the UK so the free press cannot openly critique a leader without threat of being sued....
YES he stated it over and over BUT it appears no one listened except his followers...
That is why I said the "US stands on the edge of a smiling and benevolent fascism"....all under the guise of democracy....ALL the elements are now in place BUT does the public see it coming....no they do not....
WE now have a US President with absolutely no political background..........knows virtually nothing about world politics and security issues...has never served in the military..has damaged directly the US civmil relations by belittling US Generals and how they are attacking Mosul as he Trump knew how to do it better it seems.....AND repeatedly claimed the electoral process was "rigged" BUT he says he will get the best and brightest to advise him......so we no longer have a President ...we have a Presidential Council leading the US that was not elected..........
BUT a major question that his followers DID NOT answer was......WHAT happens if in the IRS audit he is found to have via fraud directly violated tax codes and laws......do those same followers excuse his behavior because that is what business people do Or do they demand his impeachment.....
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 11-10-2016 at 09:14 AM.
LASTLY will Trump park all of his businesses into a required "blind trust" what he cannot control nor can members of his family THAT all Presidents before him have done...in order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest just as he accused Clinton and the Clinton Foundation of not doing and then quoting all of the Russian controlled WikiLeaks leaked emails.????
NO he will not....
WHY he has repeatedly stated he does not play by the normal political rules and those rules do not apply to him WHEN he did not release his taxes as we where in theory to dumb to understand them was his response.....his followers should always remember that Trump and his son's statement....."we the people who have been filing income taxes for years"..."are to dumb to understand his"....
European view of what he will continue to do with his businesses....
Putin: Recognize the theft of Crimea!
Trump: No.
Putin: You can build a Trump Hotel next to the Kremlin
Trump: Crimea is Russia.
REMEMBER Trump did state that he would recognize the Russian military annexation of Crimea in one of his debates....AND he was asked that directly yesterday by one of the Russian MPs in Crimea....to do exactly that..."recognize Russia ownership of Crimea"....
Last edited by davidbfpo; 11-19-2016 at 12:55 PM. Reason: Remove duplicate post
Europe, Alone in Trump’s World by Mark Leonard via @ProSyn
http://prosyn.org/q4iOTg7
Popular vote:
Hillary: 59,236,903 votes
Donald: 59,085,787 votes
The people elected Hillary, the system elected Donald
FAR from being a "mandate" in the eyes of those 59,236, 903 voters....
BBC Breaking News
✔
@BBCBreaking
Donald Trump protests:
* Demonstrations in US cities
* Chants of 'not my president'
* NY, Chicago, LA, Oakland
http://bbc.in/2eEFPDc
THIS will haunt Trump for the coming four years....meaning the verbal grave he dug between him and those that voted against him.....not to include his requesting his followers to "take care of Clinton via the 2nd Amendment" or his countless comments about Mexican rapists and Muslims...will not be so quickly forgotten IF at all for the next four years....
White Americans have to get use to the simple fact that by 2040 "white" will be a minority and this coupled with a deep male dislike for a woman President played a far greater role in this election that what Trump followers keep claiming ..."economy and jobs"
AT no time did Trump ever really go into his plans for the economy and or jobs other than using big words and generalities....so one would have though his followers would have demanded far more details be they votes...so in the end it was not immigration as that was the just smokescreen just as immigration and the EU was a smokescreen for the UK Brexit that was really all about the effects of globalization....
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 11-10-2016 at 09:41 AM.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/co...showthread.php
Europe, Alone in Trump’s WorldLONDON – Alone again. Since World War II’s end, Europe has looked at the world through a transatlantic lens. There have been ups and downs in the alliance with the United States, but it was a family relationship built on a sense that we would be there for each other in a crisis and that we are fundamentally like-minded.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 11-19-2016 at 12:56 PM. Reason: Quote reduced
Slapout...something you and many Trump supporters have largely either directly supported and or silently approved.....the fought for in 1776 for the right to vote as an American WHICH today if you are even a poor white....black...or minority YOU are still being robbed of your inherent right to participate in US elections by a very determined group of Republican politicians/Republican State Governors....far right white surpremists/nationalists ie KKK and company and outright racists...ALL fearful of power of the single ballot..AND losing their jobs....
That is why I worked for over 50 years defending the US from enemies near and far so you and I both can vote and express our desires/ideas "freely without fear" AND I am 3000% against taking that right from others regardless of their skin color ...religious beliefs and or political leanings....AND yes even I support the right for a KKK member to vote his beliefs......even though I heartily dislike his politics....
THAT is what makes the US so different from say Russia....which claims you also have the right to vote and to free speech...that is until you critique Putin and get FIVE years for being a terrorist......OR you are a Ukrainian living in now Russian annexed Crimea claiming your Tartar rights to vote in the Ukrainian elections....arrested and given two years of prison for even attempting to vote...
Trump won Wisconsin by 27,000 votes. For perspective, 300,000 registered voters in WI lacked strict voter ID
https://www.thenation.com/article/th...of-2016/?nc=1#
EXAMPLE of a Germany "who learned the democratic process from Americans at the end of WW2".....
Every German and I mean every German and registered foreign national with a residence visa carries a government issued bio metric ID card..AND YES even refugees carry an ID card..issued every five years.
On election day you simply go to your local poll station show them your ID card...they compare it to the voting database list for your area where you are registered....you get a ballot and off you go.....takes usually five to seven minutes....there are no extensive requirements placed on you by the government such as in Wisconsin or North Carolina to name a few US States....you are a citizen...carry an ID card and are on the voting registry...
IN say Wisconsin....you can only get it from a central location and have to produce some form of ID that says you live somewhere...BUT what if you are poor and have no firm location and or you do not have a mailbox address or you do not pay utilities to get a bill with your name?????
NO one in a Germany which instituted the US democratic election processes AFTER the WAR would ever think of trying to gerrymander voting districts to favor one party or person over another...where you live is your precinct period end of story and who wins is who wins and that then demands from politicians that they maintain a regular contact to their individual precincts in order for voters to know them over the year until the next elections......that is why German politicians and their parties have offices in their voting distinct offices where anyone can walk in and ask questions or file complaints....
Even homeless people in Germany have ID cards and can vote at a central voting area for say homeless people without a firm address....
HOW many US voters have ever met on the street and or in the supermarket their House Representative and or Senator on a regular basis?....NEVER...
THAT my friend is one of the inherent failures inside the current US so called democracy....that leads to widespread voter alienation and dislike for government...and politics in general.....
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 11-10-2016 at 10:18 AM.
Trump named an honorary Russian Cossack. Those are the folks who literally whipped Pussy Riot, so a perfect fit https://themoscowtimes.com/news/trum...cossack-56070#
…
Last edited by davidbfpo; 11-19-2016 at 12:57 PM.
I had a post about President Trump, the unknown unknowns:http://brownpundits.blogspot.co.uk/2...-unknowns.html
Excerpts:...I don't think Trump is particularly racist or sexist (relative to most 70 year old males, of any ethnicity) and he is obviously socially liberal compared to traditional Republicans. But the possibility is there that this shallow man (more or less socially liberal, a conman, ignorant) will be manipulated by his newfound advisers into disasters (initially abroad) that could have endless branching and mutating unintended consequences here and abroad. That could be a truly transformative crisis.. Racism and the rise of the KKK (real and imagined) are small potatoes compared to the storms that could potentially be unleashed in the world...Muslims, being intimately connected to the worldwide crisis in very direct ways, will likely face the consequences within the USA too; but the crucial point is that the whole ####storm is likely to proceed along tracks that are occasionally parallel, but mostly completely unconnected with the identarian postmarxist postmodern worldview that dominates the elite Eurocentric Left today...Incidentally, if the ordure does hit the fan (I hope it does not, i hope the much maligned current world order survives or at least, has a soft landing), then Blacks and Latinos, like other citizens, will fight for America. I suspect that the fantasy worldview that emphasizes supranational and subnational identities well above national ones will prove very flimsy; flimsier even than "class solidarity" proved to be in the first world war...the elite Left's freakout about the KKK and the coming age of Jim Crow is not completly wrong, but misses the biggest threats and their likely consequences. Which is not to say that no connection can be made between racism and the international order, but the race-obsessed post-truth glasses of the new postmarxist Left do get them into endless wrong turns and dead-ends in terms of priorities to be tackled
..But having taken him seriously, we still have what his own chief strategist calls "a perfect vessel", waiting to be filled. But with what? Partisan commentary almost necessarily has to try and freak-out their support base for or against the incoming administration, and may be grossly exaggerated. But there are some grounds for thinking it may not be business as usual. My preference is clearly for business as usual (because I tend towards the belief that change will happen anyway, but it is better if it happens slowly and imperceptibly; of course, this is not how providence sometimes operates, so real life can and does deviate from my personal desires) so I personally will be relatively at ease if Trump turns out to be mostly talk; relying on distractions and culture wars to keep his constituency from noticing that nothing has changed for the better in their life, in short, just another modestly corrupt Republican administration; consistent in serving the short-term interests of the "top 1%" , willing to damage the long term interests of America (and the world at large) if it means more profits in the short term, and more than likely, losing the next election. Hopefully without terminally tarnishing the dignity and gravitas of the office of President.
It may turn out this way. Which will be unpleasant, but life will go on until the next election and then perhaps the next (modestly corrupt) Democratic administration. Such is the best case scenario. And I hope this less than exciting outcome does come to be.
But suppose it is not business as usual? Then I am looking for insights about two scenarios:
1. World War Z. The big changes will start abroad in this scenario, and most will probably be unintended. We will soon have a National security adviser who thinks that war against Islamism (or as he prefers to call it, Islam) is the defining feature of the world today. Without getting into any long discussion of whether this is true or not, look at it this way: there is no competing Islamic civilization out there in terms of unity, material progress or military strength. Even if we imagine (as Islamists sometimes do) that superior fellow-feeling and social organization (a patriarchal but otherwise egalitarian religion, resistant to culture-destroying postmodern memes; their view, not mine) means that they win in the long term, even Islamists recognize that in the short or medium term this "victory" involves getting invaded by competing infidel powers with better artillery and missiles.
So let us imagine Flynn has his way. What would such a war look like? His views are frequently incoherent and it is by no means clear where they will end up. e.g. he seems to regard IRAN (not Pakistan, Turkey or Saudi Arabia, the big three Sunni hopes) as the main threat and regards Russia as both threat and ally. There is just no rational way to predict what happens next based on these reported views... The US would presumably want to smash any and all Islamic counties that don't cooperate, but isn't it then a given that China, Russia and the US would also compete against each other in this new "scramble for Africa" (the Muslim world being only one order of magnitude more capable than Africa, while the big three are several orders of magnitude more materially capable than any Muslim country)? Who will line up on what side? Will it be mostly covert, low intensity warfare or will things spin out of control (the "scramble for Africa" being followed by World War One)? What about India? Japan? Latin America? The Baltics? Poland? Ukraine? This is a very complex system. Start a disturbance at a few critical points and the transitions can become totally unpredictable.
Think about it this way and it is easy to reach the comforting conclusion that this scenario is so nightmarish that "saner heads will prevail". The current international order will survive. I certainly hope so, but then again, that is probably what many sane people thought in 1913. I look forward to your thoughts.
2. From Dawn to Decadence...to collapse?
The amazing rise of Western civilization and its steadily increasing dominance of the globe in the last 500 years have given it an aura of inevitability and permanence. Not in terms of particular nationalities (particular powers rise and fall), but in terms of intellectual paradigms and visions of reality. But alongside this dominance are well established currents of doubt, pessimism and rejection, from Ivan Illych to Dugin (and even, in a way, Bannon). I am not including the currently fashionable postmarxist postmodern current in Western universities, with its rejection of tradition, authority and "dead White males" and its glorification of identity politics and not so critical "critical studies". This current seems just the next (last?) stage within the Western tradition itself; more a sign of its bankruptcy than the vision of an alternative (simply put, because it's major themes seem to have such tangential,incidental, and minimal, contact with actual biology, history, culture or science). Anyway, without getting too far into this potentially book-length debate , suppose this really is terminal decadence, then what comes next?
The unknown unknowns get really interesting at that point.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 11-29-2016 at 10:23 PM. Reason: Link added and quote marks
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