(cartoon courtesy of pixabay.com)
(courtesy of pixabay.com)
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
Families of 9/11 victims are suing the Saudi government but the US government is withholding some details because “some of the records involve equities of other government agencies or foreign governments where coordination is required for those outside of the FBI” according to Assistant US Attorney Sarah Normand, speaking in a court hearing in May. In other words, the US government knows that Saudi officials helped some of the 9/11 hijackers but is afraid to roil US-Saudi relations by revealing the facts. This was reported in the Washington Post today by Devlin Barrett.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
It came out yesterday that the White House is taking $3.6 billion from military infrastructure (construction) projects to finance the Great Wall between the US and Mexico (so far, the construction has failed to add any new wall but has upgraded places with less than perfect barriers for less than a hundred miles of improvements. The infrastructure included many schools and replacement structures for places deemed unsafe in their current condition, as well as a reported $770 million that was to be spent in Estonia and Poland, adjacent to Russia, for things like ammunition bunkers as well as places to live for a couple of thousand troops– all this to be sacrificed after having been included in the budget for two or more years for a wall that will fall far short of expectations and is ripe for corruption.
In other words, [redacted] has specifically stopped programs in place since the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 to beef up Western defences in the most vulnerable states: Poland, Estonia, and the Baltic States, those that were in NATO anyway. These programs can be construed as important for Western defence against Russian aggression in front-line states. So stopping them is to Russian advantage, and against the partnership that the US, UK, and Germany have tried to forge with these small but warlike countries, whose legitimate claims to ownership of their own countries had been overwhelmed by the Warsaw pact in the Soviet era.
It is behind the scenes moves like these that really provide proof to the suspicious (or enlightened) onlooker that [redacted] truly is a Russian government agent.
(photo courtesy wikimedia)
per the Washington Post:
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” [redacted] said. “Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.”
If that was all he had to say, it would have been OK. But he went on to blame “fake news”, video games, mental illness, and call for “red flag” laws to prevent people with adjudicated mental illness from owning guns. Which would be good, but none of the mass shooters were recognized as ill before going on their rampages… He dropped any mention of background checks, although he had brought this up in his tweets.
At a minimum, universal background checks for all gun sales and transfers are needed. The handguns used in crimes in places like Chicago are often bought out of state; Indiana has looser gun laws than Illinois, and there is a lively trade in cheap handguns flowing from Indiana to Chicago. People who live in Chicago who want guns take advantage of the lack of background checks for private gun sales in Indiana. A similar dynamic exists in several large cities, like New York in relation to New Jersey. So universal background checks may actually make a slight difference.
Restrictions on sales of rifles with semi-automatic actions and removable magazines would have the most impact, if combined with mandatory buy-backs of those already in circulation. This would be political dynamite in the US and extremely expensive if successful buy-backs were implemented. I suspect that extremists would cause havoc if there were any attempt to remove such rifles from private hands in the US. This was done in Australia and New Zealand successfully, but there were far fewer rifles in circulation and a much less fractious population affected.
On the other hand, loosening restrictions on weapons of war would be welcomed by extreme gun enthusiasts. Allowing sales of hand grenades and grenade launchers, bazookas, recoilless rifles, suppressors (popularly known as “silencers”), even obsolete tanks, would make future massacres much more interesting.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
In the Washington Post, an article on the aftermath of the infamous “go back to your country” tweets describes the president’s thought processes when singling out the four first-term congresswomen of the colored persuasion for abuse. He instinctively saw the four as being isolated and different in a particularly racialized sort of way that allows a European to assume someone of African descent would somehow be amenable to “going back” to Africa. He calculated that they would be vulnerable to bullying and he then struck with or without considering the consequences, assuming that his backers, virtually the entire Republican Party, would follow along with him and without protest.
Since he has a limited imagination and limited vocabulary, he fell back on his usual catalogue of insults, but with a twist. Having been told of the Somali origin and Muslim faith of the one immigrant among the four who were told to “go back” (perhaps he only, at first, intended to refer to her alone) he decided to key on the items his advisors most abhorred: the instances in which she betrayed an insufficient degree of respectfulness to Israel by blurting out, “It’s all about the Benjamins” (with which the recipients of Sheldon Adelson’s largesse would agree) and confessing that there might be divided loyalties among the Israeli-American right wing, which there honestly might. Her transgression was more in the fact of who she was while she was saying it than in what she said, if you follow me.
To make a long story short, he told her, in most precisely bullying tones, to go back to her own country, as if that were even possible to say nothing of desirable, wise, or productive. To make this absurd demand, he ignored all the sweat and tears she had poured into qualifying as a US citizen while a refugee, and all the devotion to the principles of free speech, equality of opportunity (remember that?), and respectful dissent that shes espoused. He displayed his ignorance in a particularly ugly way by dismissing her political philosophy as if it were merely represented by blind hatred of the US.
She does have something to say that can’t be so easily dismissed. It is essential to objectively examine her proposals for potential usefulness and practicality and objectively determine their effects on constitutional norms. “To form a more perfect union” should become, abstractly, the moving target at which the Constitution fires, again and again, each time getting closer to the heart of justice.
There’s no end to the extremity of the lows that the president will not go to get a reaction from his base. Heaping cruelty on cruelty, always with a veneer of common-sense explanation for the disruption, is the norm. He told an entire research division of one of his distressed departments they had to pack up and move to Kansas City “because the cost of living in Washington DC was too high”; something like two thirds of them quit rather than accept a forced transfer from Washington DC to Kansas City.
He is sending batteries of Patriot missiles with about 2,300 men and a squadron of F-22 Stealth fighters (probably defensive interceptors) to Saudi Arabia, so he’s sure to expect significant Benjamins from Mohammad bin Salman. Perhaps he can arrange a few minor assassinations to round out the package deal– the Saudis have plenty of hatchet men. I wonder how our treasured armed forces feel about hiring out as mercenaries to a King who doesn’t share their vision of democracy nor their religious faith (and I hear some of them are very Christian.)
(image courtesy of pixabay.com)
Conrad Theodore Seitz 