Trump Administration

Mapping Trump’s Empire: Assets And Liabilities

February 20, 2018 James Petras, Unz.com Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Trump Administration

The US empire has substantially increased its scope and presence in several regions, especially in Latin America. The additions and enlargements include Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Central America, Peru and the Caribbean. The most important asset redrawing the empire in Latin America is Argentina. The US has gained military, economic and political advantages. In the case of Argentina, political and economic advances preceded military expansion. The US provided ideological and political support to secure the election of its client Mauricio Macri. The new Argentine President immediately transferred over $5 billion dollars to the notorious Wall Street Vulture speculator, Paul Singer, and proceeded to open the floodgates for a lucrative multi-billion dollar flow of financial capital.

No ‘Bloody Nose’ Strategy For North Korea, Says U.S. Official, Senators

February 19, 2018 Joe Gould, Defensenews.com Educate! North Korea, Trump Administration, US Imperialism

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has no strategy for a pre-emptive “bloody nose” strike against North Korea, according to two lawmakers and a Trump administration official. In response to reports that the administration is considering limited, pre-emptive attacks to rid Pyongyang of its nuclear program, critics have said the president lacks the authority for such an attack and that it would spark the war it’s meant to avoid. Republican Sen. Jim Risch and Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, said Thursday they and other senators had been told by senior White House officials on Wednesday that there was no such strategy. Neither senator identified the officials. The White House had “made it very clear there is no bloody nose strategy for a strike against North Korea,” Shaheen told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...

Trump’s Tax Cuts, Budget And Deficits: Recession 2019?

February 17, 2018 By Jack Rasmus, Telesurtv.net Educate! Budget Cuts, Recession, Tax cuts for the rich, Tax Reform, Trump Administration

Trump tax cuts and Trump’s budget will exacerbate U.S. budget deficits and debt and cause the central bank to raise interest rates even faster and higher. Lies and misrepresentation of facts have become the hallmark of U.S. politics in recent years more than ever before. Not just lies of commission by U.S. President Donald Trump and his crew, but lies of omission by the mainstream media as well. In Trump’s recent package of tax cuts for corporations, investors and millionaires, the lie is that the total cuts amount to US$1.5 trillion — when the actual amount is more than US$5 trillion and likely even higher. And in his most recent announcement of budget deficits the amounts admitted are barely half of the actual deficits — and consequent rise in U.S. national debt — that will occur. Even his US$1.5 trillion so-called infrastructure spending plan, that Trump promised during his 2016 election campaign, and then throughout 2017, amounts to only US$200 billion.

Close The Forever Prison At Guantanamo

February 16, 2018 Staff, Witnessagainsttorture.com Resist! Guantanamo, Protests, Trump Administration

It was with heavy hearts that we, as members of Witness Against Torture, listened to Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday evening. We heard him attempt to stoke fear in his listeners with wave after wave of references to terrorists and criminals. He began by linking terror to “illegal immigrants,” border walls, “chain migration,” and visa lotteries, before moving on to ISIS, Al Qaida, rogue regimes, unlawful enemy combatants and more. By the time he mentioned the prison at Guantanamo, he had already clearly connected the foreigner and the immigrant with the idea of danger in his listeners’ minds. He had already skillfully set the stage when he announced his executive order to keep open the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay. In Guantanamo, he reassured his listeners, we would “have all necessary power to detain terrorists — wherever we chase them down.”

Scholars For Social Justice Launches With 100+ Members

February 16, 2018 Staff, Portside.org Create! Academia, Higher Education, Research, Social Justice, Trump Administration

Scholars for Social Justice (SSJ) is a new formation of progressive scholars committed to promoting and fighting for a political agenda that insists on justice for all, especially those most vulnerable. We are clearly living in dangerous times with the election of Donald Trump and the empowerment of a set of rabidly right wing and racist forces. Trump, Pence and the Republicans have made it clear that not only will they usher in a radically conservative policy agenda threatening any incremental advances won under the Obama presidency, but more fundamentally reactionary right-wing supporters will directly target the rights, status and lives of people of color, Muslims, women, immigrants, LGBT communities, the poor, indigenous and differently-abled and all who have been forced to live on the margins in this country.

D.C. Police And Feds Partner With Hard Right To Convict Trump Protesters

February 15, 2018 By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet.org Educate! Police, Protests, Resist J20, Trump Administration

Washington, D.C., police and federal prosecutors have been collaborating with notorious right-wing groups known for fascist statements and using doctored videos to ambush their targets in an attempt to convict and jail protesters from President Trump’s inauguration. The question is not whether the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington, D.C., are working with Oath Keepers, a group of cops and veterans with rabid anti-government views, and Project Veritas, a far-right group known for fabricating accounts to ambush the media and the political left. The question is, how deep is the relationship between the police, federal prosecutors and these extremists? And in MPD’s case, are Washington police breaking the law, as its city council has passed laws barring them from spying on protesters or protest groups?

Strong Arguments For Prohibition Of Nuclear Weapons

February 15, 2018 By Gunnar Westberg, Peaceandhealthblog.com Create! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Nuclear Weapons, Trump Administration

Russian military writers have discussed the possibility of using “small” nuclear weapons if the country is attacked by an adversary with considerable conventional superiority. These “small”—Hiroshima-sized?—nukes would serve as a warning: we are prepared to defend ourselves with nuclear weapons. Such a discussion is to be expected considering the inferiority of Russia in conventional weapons. President Putin has hinted at such possibilities. However, no change in deployment, activation, upgrading, or maintenance of the “tactical” nuclear weapons in storage has been done, as far as we know, and no evidence is given in the NPR. A major problem is that there are frequent allegations in the NPR about the strategy of Russia, the main enemy, with no references—...

Worker Cooperatives Offer Real Alternatives To Trump’s Retrograde Economic Vision

February 13, 2018 By Sarah Aziza, Wagingnonviolence.org Create! Cooperatives, New Economy, Trump Administration, Worker Cooperatives

Announcing his presidency in 2016, Donald Trump promised the nation that he’d become “the greatest job president God ever created.” His plan to accomplish this rested on a retrograde economic vision that would “make America great again,” by restoring waning coal and manufacturing jobs, as well as putting an end to the alleged assault on American work by foreign immigrants and global competition. A year later, his attempts to realize this vision have largely consisted of backwards motion. In October, he rolled back the Clean Power Plan, arguing that carbon emissions regulations, rather than the widespread shift away from fossil fuels, were responsible for the decline of U.S. coal. While the striking of these environmental protections leaves the door open for corporations to exacerbate climate change, it has done little to uplift the so-called “Rust Belt,” where he garnered so much support.

Growing Danger Of Ecosystem Collapse And Trump’s War On Nature

February 10, 2018 By Curtis Johnson, Truthout.org Educate! Environment, Trump Administration

In 1992, 1,700 world scientists issued a prescient Warning to Humanity that "human beings and the natural world are on a collision course." They warned that human practices, if not checked, "may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know." The statement argued saving life as we know it meant transforming our species' interaction with nature; lowering greenhouse gas emissions and eliminating fossil fuel use, reducing deforestation, preserving biodiversity and lowering the human footprint on natural ecosystems. Last November, 15,000 scientists, the largest scientific grouping to ever co-sign and support a journal article, issued a Second Notice warning humanity.

Tillerson On Latin American Tour Calling For Regime Change In Venezuela

February 6, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net Resist! Latin America, Regime Change, Rex Tillerson, Trump Administration, US Imperialism, Venezuela

Representatives of more than 50 social and political organizations rejected the U.S. secretary of state's visit to Mexico, where he was declared persona non grata. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's first tour of Latin America got off to a rocky start on Friday with U.S. ally Mexico distancing itself from his suggestion that Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro could be toppled by his own military. Tillerson ruffled feathers across the region on the eve of his five-nation tour with comments in Texas defending 19th-century U.S. foreign policy in Latin America and suggesting the Venezuelan army could manage "a peaceful transition" from Maduro, Reuters reports. Both Maduro and his defense minister condemned the comments on Friday, and even Mexico – no friend of the Venezuelan government...

Trump’s Drone Kill Rate 80 Times Greater Than Under Bush

February 6, 2018 By Whitney Webb, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Drones, Trump Administration, US Imperialism

During the 2016 election, Donald Trump – quite successfully – managed to convince a sizable portion of the electorate that he would take a much more anti-interventionist stance, in terms of U.S. military entanglements abroad, than would his contender Hillary Clinton. Yet, throughout his first year as president, such differences have been few and far between. In particular, it has been Trump’s dangerous expansion of the drone war that has authoritatively destroyed any illusion that Trump would genuinely put “America first” — and put an end to dangerous military operations abroad that only serve to exacerbate the horrendously bungled War on Terror. For instance, after gutting the already lax regulations on drone strikes and giving the CIA free rein to kill whomever they choose...

The Democrats’ Half-Assed Answer To The Trump Tax Cuts

February 5, 2018 Max B. Sawicky, Jacobinmag.com Educate! Congress, Electoral Politics, Tax cuts for the rich, Tax Reform, Trump Administration

The Democratic Party brain trust is floating new ideas on taxes. Their economics are questionable and their politics are worse. From the heart of Barack Obama’s exiled brain trust comes Jason Furman, former head of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, with a proposal in the Wall Street Journal to “repeal and replace” the recent Trump/Republican tax cuts. How do his ideas compare to alternatives that might appeal to readers of this journal — not to mention the vast legions of Berniecrats and The Resistance. Furman’s analysis provides a useful window into the concerns of financial elites. To be fair, he takes aim at certain sources of tax relief for the rich, including those related to capital gains and “pass-through” entities (a form of business organization often used by medium-to-large-sized companies).

Liberal Totalitarianism And The Trump Diversion

February 3, 2018 Ajamu Baraka, Dissidentvoice.org Educate! Liberals, Trump Administration

The ongoing political circus in the capital of the world’s most powerful empire opens almost daily with a new act each day showcasing an even more bizarre and more revealing display of the internal rot of a culture and a political system in decline. The day before Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, the Russia-gate drama took an unexpected and dangerous turn with the vote by the House Intelligence Committee to release a now classified memo that alleges that senior members of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) may have misled the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court) in order to secure a warrant to engage in what Republicans assert is a politically motivated effort that spied on the Trump campaign before he won the 2016 election and attempted to undermine his presidency.

Trump’s Financial Arsonists

February 2, 2018 By Nomi Prins, Tomdispatch.com Educate! Finance, New Economy, Trump Administration

There’s been lots of fire and fury around Washington lately, including a brief government shutdown. In Donald Trump’s White House, you can hardly keep up with the ongoing brouhahas from North Korea to Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation, while it already feels like ages since the celebratory mood over the vast corporate tax cuts Congress passed last year. But don’t be fooled: none of that is as important as what’s missing from the picture. Like a disease, in the nation’s capital it’s often what you can’t see that will, in the end, hurt you most. Amid a roaring stock market and a planet of upbeat CEOs, few are even thinking about the havoc that a multi-trillion-dollar financial system gone rogue could inflict upon global stability. But watch out.

As Trump Unfurls Infrastructure Plan, Iowa Bill Seeks To Criminalize Pipeline Protests

February 2, 2018 By Steve Horn, Desmogblog.com Resist! Infrastructure, Iowa, Legislation, Pipelines, Protests, Trump Administration

The Iowa Senate has advanced a bill which critics say could lead to the criminalization of pipeline protests, which are being cast as “terrorist activities.” Dakota Access pipeline owner Energy Transfer Partners and other companies have lobbied for the bill, Senate Study Bill 3062, which opens up the possibility of prison time and a hefty fine for those who commit “sabotage” of critical infrastructure, such as oil and gas pipelines. This bill, carrying a criminal punishment of up to 25 years in prison and $100,000 in fines, resembles the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, a “model” bill recently passed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). That ALECbill, intended as a template for state and federal legislation, was based on Oklahoma's HB 1123...

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources