Wednesday, June 20th, 2018
Stephan: Trump sees withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council, as a way to support the rightwing Israeli government. This is important to the christofascists, and conservative Jews, although for different reasons. But to the rest of the world this is a further act of self-castration. The timing could not be worse. It further diminishes the stature of the United States throughout the world, and will change the way Americans are assessed and treated in other countries. Our involvement in the world is shrinking.
“For too long the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias,“ said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
Credit: Mary Altaffer/AP
The United States will withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council, an entity it has long accused of being biased against Israel and giving cover to rights-abusing governments, the Trump administration announced on Tuesday.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, announced the decision, a move that essentially reverts the U.S. to the stance it took during the George W. Bush administration, which declined to join the council. Haley and Pompeo‘s announcement came a day after the U.N.’s human rights chief, in a speech to the council, criticized President Donald Trump’s immigration policy decisions that have led his administration to separate families apprehended after entering the U.S. illegally.
“For too long the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias,“ Haley said.
It wasn‘t immediately clear […]
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Wednesday, June 20th, 2018
Hiroko Tabuchi, - The New York Times
Stephan: This is one of the clearest examples of Neo-feudalism in the modern day. The Kochs are not fools and it is a great mistake to dismiss them. They have a world view, and, they have discovered the principles of social change I wrote about in The 8 Laws of Change. They have hired neuroscientists, and physicians, done the same research I have done, and reached the same conclusions. This is how to create social change. Only they serve the dark side of the force, as it were.
Tori Venable, Tennessee state director of Americans for Prosperity, left, helping volunteers in Nashville prepare for canvassing against a mass-transit proposal.
Credit: William DeShazer for The New York Times
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A team of political activists huddled at a Hardee’s one rainy Saturday, wolfing down a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. Then they descended on Antioch, a quiet Nashville suburb, armed with iPads full of voter data and a fiery script.
The group, the local chapter for Americans for Prosperity, which is financed by the oil billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch to advance conservative causes, fanned out and began strategically knocking on doors. Their targets: voters most likely to oppose a local plan to build light-rail trains, a traffic-easing tunnel and new bus routes.
“Do you agree that raising the sales tax to the highest rate in the nation must be stopped?” Samuel Nienow, one of the organizers, asked a startled man who answered the door at his ranch-style home in March. “Can […]
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Wednesday, June 20th, 2018
Tana Ganeva, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Welcome to America.
An undocumented immigrant family from Guatemala talks to a volunteer after their arrival to Announciation House, an organisation that provides shelter to immigrants and refugees, in El Paso, U.S. January 17, 2017.
Credit: Reuters/Tomas Bravo /File Photo
Joining a chorus of critics as diverse as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and former First Ladies Laura Bush, Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray denounced President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, which has resulted in 2,000 kids being forcibly separated from their families — including a little girl with Down’s syndrome whose father is a legal U.S. resident.
“We strongly urge the U.S. government to reconsider this policy,” Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Tuesday. He called the Trump administration policies “cruel and inhumane,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Videgaray, who’d recently spoken to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, cited the case of a ten-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome. She was split from her mother and brother when the family tried to enter the country and they were sent to […]
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Wednesday, June 20th, 2018
John B. Alexander, - Daily Kos
Stephan: John Alexander is a retired senior Army officer whose focus for years was the geopolitics of social change. He is an old friend and long time SR reader. Here is his very well researched and thought through essay on what is happening to us. I am placing his essay last because I wanted you to read the first three stories to emphasize his points. They are living examples of what John is writing about.
Who are you? If asked, most Americans would respond, “We are the good guys.” That would be a popular self-image, but one that reality and facts call into question. Famed Harvard political scientist, Samuel Huntington, is most noted for his classic work, Clash of Civilizations addressing the post-Cold War realignment of power.[i] Lesser known is his prescient book, Who Are We? Published in 2004, immigration was the theme, but the bottom line was that we are no longer who we were and that the America dominance of white Anglo-Saxon influence was in jeopardy. Specifically, Huntington noted the effects of the influx of Hispanic cultures and language. That alone has struck fear in too many people.
The historic gateway into America from Europe is marked by the Statue of Liberty. Held in the welcoming sculpture’s arms is a famous poem that reads in part, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”[ii] Not mentioned, but inferred by many Caucasian citizens is, “As long as they […]
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Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate Economist and Op-ed Columnist - The New York TImes
Stephan: Paul Krugman in this column lays out a line of reasoning that closely parallels my own. He sees clearly that the monster in the White House is destroying what made America special, replacing it with the lies, corruption and sheer nastiness that always define authoritarian bullies.
Trump the monster
The U.S. government is, as a matter of policy, literally ripping children from the arms of their parents and putting them in fenced enclosures (which officials insist aren’t cages, oh no). The U.S. president is demanding that law enforcement stop investigating his associates and go after his political enemies instead. He has been insulting democratic allies while praising murderous dictators. And a global trade war seems increasingly likely.
What do these stories have in common? Obviously they’re all tied to the character of the man occupying the White House, surely the worst human being ever to hold his position. But there’s also a larger context, and it’s not just about Donald Trump. What we’re witnessing is a systematic rejection of longstanding American values — the values that actually made America great.
America has long been a powerful nation. In particular, we emerged from World War II with a level of both economic and military dominance not seen since the heyday of ancient Rome. […]
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