Steve Bannon, senior advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, makes a call outside Trump Tower on Friday, Dec. 9, 2016, in New York. CREDIT: AP Photo/Kevin Hagen.
Several days ago, along with many other people, I posted about Bannon and the NSA. That’s very frightening news, and boy, is it ever bad news. Unfortunately, that post didn’t get the views it should have. People not only need to know about this, they need to understand just how unprecedented and momentous this move is, and how it’s going to have one hell of way of taking us straight into Naziland 2.0.
As noted in previous posts, the recent executive orders have been written and pushed out by Bannon and Miller, including the ban on Muslims. Trump is but the hand that obeys and signs. All anyone has to do is tell him [Trump] that something is his idea, and that he’s a super genius, and he’ll sign anything.
Authoritarianism experts and national security analysts are seriously disturbed by top White House adviser Steve Bannon’s newfound position on the National Security Council (NSC) principals committee, which further deepened the influence of his ethno-nationalist ideology on the Trump administration.
Multiple reports have also named Bannon as the driving force behind a series of hard-right executive orders from President Donald Trump’s desk, most notably the widely criticized Muslim ban order. The ban was “obviously an Islamophobic dog whistle,” according to Cas Mudde, an associate professor at the University of Georgia who studies radical right wing movements, and indicative of Bannon’s en
Bannon has largely followed up on Trump’s populist campaign message by delivering nativist and populist policy instructions without bothering to consult the National Security Council staff.
“He is running a cabal, almost like a shadow NSC,” an unnamed intelligence official told Foreign Policy. The official had originally kept an open mind about the incoming Trump administration, but FP reported he is now “deeply troubled by how things are being run.”
The directness of such decrees and the lack of input from advisers has done little to mitigate concerns that the Trump administration exhibits authoritarian tendencies.
Now Bannon’s malevolent world view — he is the person most responsible for turning Breitbart into a platform for the white nationalist “alt-right” — will have even greater influence over pressing matters of national security. Both the Muslim ban and Bannon’s prior remarks suggest he will use his NSC post to advocate belligerence to the global Muslim community.
If you aren’t scared, there’s something wrong with you, especially in light of Trump’s loose attitude about using nuclear weapons. Trump thinks sabre rattling is fun, and he has little sense, if any, about going too far.
[…]
Bannon’s emnity toward Islam is part of a holistic, nationalist ideology that shares plenty of common ground with the thought of Russian philosopher and uber-nationalist named Aleksandr Dugin, one of the white nationalist movement’s favorite traditionalist thinkers.
Bannon’s words and ideas seldom appear in the media firsthand, but a speech he delivered at the religious right wing Human Dignity Institute in the summer of 2014 revealed some of how he views the world. In his remarks, he spoke of Julius Evola, an Italian traditionalist philosopher who had a hefty influence on the political ideology of Benito Mussolini.
That should be enough to wake people up, and scare the shit out them, but I’m afraid there are simply too many people who truly don’t have a problem with any of this, and will slide willingly into the boiling pot of dictatorship.
Via Think Progress.
Demonstrators holds banners and signs as they protest during a march in downtown Washington in opposition of President-elect Donald Trump, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana.
As people critical of President Trump’s Muslim ban flocked to airports this weekend to show their support for immigrants and refugees, one major airport decided to crack down on protesters.
Denver International Airport (DIA) began enforcing a rule on Sunday that requires anyone interested in demonstrating to submit an application seven days in advance. The regulation was challenged by protesters, including one who recorded a video criticizing Denver Police Commander Tony Lopez for violating his First Amendment rights.
There’s more about the Denver situation at the link.
But the movement toward limiting protesters’ free speech rights is not confined to the terminals of DIA. In anticipation of an active protest movement during Trump’s administration, multiple Republican-controlled states are currently pushing for legislation that would discourage and even criminalize nonviolent, public demonstrations.
In Minnesota, a billpassed a Republican-controlled committee last week that would allow cities to sue protesters in order to collect money to pay police forces required at the demonstration. Lawmakers drafted the legislation in response to massive Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in the state after a police officer shot and killed Philando Castile.
This sounds very much like what happened here in nDakota and the water protectors. People will get bilked for money, and I’d put odds on that money being used the way it was here, to purchase military toys for cop shops. All the better to threaten you with, my dear. Being able to sue anyone who protests will have the very chilling effect of shutting down effective protests, because too many people will not be willing to face such a consequence; most people can’t afford to face such a consequence. Allowing a lawsuit against people for exercising their constitutional rights, does that sound like a democracy to you? Speaking of picking pockets…
And in Michigan, Republican lawmakers are attacking both unions and protesters by pushing legislation that would increase fines against picketers to $1,000 per person per day of a picket and $10,000 per day for an organization or union involved in the picket. The bill passed the state House of Representatives in December, but was set aside by the Senate.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that will be an end to such legislation though, it won’t be.
Taking a different tactic, four other states are considering anti-protest laws that would target demonstrators who protest on the streets, according to The Intercept. The bills have all been introduced in the last few months as responses to high-profile protests by Black Lives Matter activists and opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline that shut down highways.
The Intercept summarized the bills that Republican lawmakers have proposed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Washington, and Iowa:
In North Dakota, for instance, Republicans introduced a bill last week that would allow motorists to run over and kill any protester obstructing a highway as long as a driver does so accidentally. In Minnesota, a bill introduced by Republicans last week seeks to dramatically stiffen fines for freeway protests and would allow prosecutors to seek a full year of jail time for protesters blocking a highway. Republicans in Washington state have proposed a plan to reclassify as a felony civil disobedience protests that are deemed “economic terrorism” … And in Iowa a Republican lawmaker has pledged to introduce legislation to crack down on highway protests.
“This is a marked uptick in bills that would criminalize or penalize protected speech and protest, and every person should be alarmed at that trend,” she said, calling the bills unconstitutional. “We should also be alarmed by the attitude they betray, which is that when Americans get out into the streets and make their voices heard — recently, in record numbers — their elected representatives’ response is not to listen to those concerns but to attempt to silence and criminalize them.”
“That goes against the very fabric of our constitutional democracy, and legislators introducing these bills should be ashamed,” she added. “To try to silence those who are speaking up right now is a betrayal of American values.”
Yes, they should be ashamed, but they aren’t. That’s because there is no democracy anymore. Gone, vanished, set on fire and up in smoke. Silence people, quash dissent, order compliance. If you can’t see where we are headed, it’s because you refuse to see.
Full article at Think Progress. Mano Singham has a post up about the revival of an old quash favourite: COINTELPRO. Oh, such bad news.
A crowd welcomes passengers as they exit customs at Dulles International Airport in Virginia. CREDIT: Jack Jenkins/ThinkProgress.
Our dictator ordered a ban, called it a ban. The ban was on Muslims, every country except those the dictator does business in, which was terribly convenient. People have been upset, and rightly so, there were many protests, still are, over the chaos and cruelty being inflicted on people. The thin-skinned tyrant now has his little cadre of hench people trying to spin it, in an attempt to expunge the word ban in favour of “extreme vetting”. Someone should point out that the switch doesn’t make the ban sound any less of a ban, or in any way, better. Use of the word extreme isn’t going to help. We already know that Trump is extremely unstable, and this latest round of idiocy and alternative facts is accomplishing nothing outside of emphasising the lies, bullshit and instability.
During his Tuesday press availability, Trump administration Press Secretary Sean Spicer insisted that the travel ban implemented by President Trump via executive order last Friday isn’t actually a ban at all.
“It can’t be a ban if you’re letting a million people in,” Spicer said, referring to the fact that Muslims who don’t hail from the seven Muslim-majority countries included in the ban can still travel to the U.S. “If 325,000 people from another country can come in, that is by nature not a ban… that is extreme vetting.”
Emphasis mine. This is open pandering to willful idiots, bigots, and nazis everywhere. And all the willful idiots, bigots, and nazis are swallowing this massive lie whole.
Spicer’s explanation prompted reporters to refer back a tweet posted by Trump on Monday morning in which he referred to his travel ban as a “ban.” Trump also referred to it as “a very, very strict ban” on Saturday.
In fact, in a White House press release distributed Sunday, Spicer himself referred to the ban as “a 90-day ban.”
But during Tuesday’s press availability, Spicer insisted that any confusion over whether or not Trump’s executive order constitutes a ban is the media’s fault.
“He’s using the words the media is using,” Spicer said of Trump’s tweet. “I think the words that are being used to describe it derive from what the media is calling this. [Trump] has been very clear that it is extreme vetting.”
Ah yes, it’s the media’s fault, natch. Thing is, no one in media could have reported on this at all until the Dictator and his gleeful goons implemented the ban, taking everyone, including half of those in government, by surprise. It was the implementation of a ban. It was called a ban. In action, it’s a ban. The executive order: ban. Ban, ban, ban, ban, ban. This is not the fault of media, it’s the result of a faulty brain and ginormous ego.
Likewise, because non-Muslims from the seven countries included in Trump’s travel ban are banned from entering the U.S. and because Muslims from other countries can still enter the country, Spicer and Trump supporters argue that Trump’s action doesn’t represent a “ban.”
The actual facts are as plain as the nose on your face, but those supporting Trump have not only swallowed this, they believe it, and are pushing this fancy all over the place. “It’s temporary, not a ban!” “It’s just vetting, to keep us safe!” and so on. These people are proud to be xenophobic assholes.
But Trump has been clear about his intentions all along. His December 2015 statement “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on” is still on his website. And during a Fox News appearance on Saturday, Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani said that Trump’s executive order stemmed from a desire to ban Muslims, but to do so with the veneer of legality.
“So when [Trump] first announced it, he said, ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up. He said, ‘Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally,’” Giuliani said. “And what we did was, we focused on, instead of religion, danger — the areas of the world that create danger for us. Which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly legal, perfectly sensible. And that’s what the ban is based on. It’s not based on religion. It’s based on places where there are substantial evidence that people are sending terrorists into our country.”
But Giuliani’s comment about “areas of the world that create danger” being the basis for the ban is belied by the facts. As the Wall Street Journal reports, of the 161 people charged with jihadist terrorism-related crimes or who died before being charged since 2001, only 11 were identified as being from the seven countries included in Trump’s executive order — Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia.
The veneer of legality. Yeah. A spray on veneer, like a choking cloud of Aquanet. All this to catch nothing. There are terrorists here, but they aren’t at any airport. We have plenty of homegrown terrorists, and there’s a sadistic terrorist sitting in the highest office of the land.
Via Think Progress. This morning, I watched the advert Budweiser is going to air over the Superbowl (American Football), and if you think you need some insight into how Trumpoids think, along with their terrifying inability to think, head over and skim the comments.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Corey Perrine.
Just one here, head over to Think Progress to see, in the faces of people, and in their own words, how families are being ruthlessly torn apart for no good reason.
Roozbeh Aliabadi, a former consultant and soon-to-be PhD student in international relations, told ThinkProgress that the order is keeping him from his wife, who lives in Iran.
Roozbeh said he met his wife there about a couple years ago. They had a legal marriage in Iran in June of last year, and decided to hold off on having a small ceremony with friends and family until his wife was able to come to the states.
Her application for permanent residency was approved on January 17, just three days before Trump’s inauguration, and they were informed that she needs an immigrant visa to enter the country. But since Trump’s order, it’s no longer clear that she will be able to come at all.
“We wanted to start our life together. She’s an architect, I was in consulting business, soon-to-be PhD student. We can’t do it,” he said. “I haven’t seen my wife for about seven months, and this, in a way, gives us two options. Number 1: I have to move out of the U.S. Or we have to get divorced. I don’t think the latter is an option.”
“If this continues, he’s not forbidding people to come over here. He’s essentially kicking out a lot of families from the U.S.,” said Roozbeh. “I’m very sad, very heartbroken by what he did.”
“I told my wife, Mr. Trump gave me another reason to love you more. This is definitely not going to change our relationship. It might make it physically more distant, but we’ll get through this as well.”
More at Think Progress.
Toddler Trump, by Sham.
Everybody’s talkin’ about it, the firing of Sally Yates. Before I head into town today, I want to take a somewhat different focus on this – language. Language is important. When you can’t look at the person saying something, language provides all the vital clues we need to analyse information received. Here it is, click for full size:
This goes right back to the post on Trump’s constant assertion that he’s smart, super smart, genius smart, the smartiest of the smarty pants, the bigliest IQ ever, and his complete lack of a vocabulary, in spite of all that smart. The article linked in that post goes into detail, including analyses of Trump’s favourite words, of which, one is the word weak. I’ll concede that Trump is smart in the same way Wile E. Coyote is smart. Trump is no Roadrunner.
What concerns me in the above missive though, is the use of the word betrayal. Trump’s order isn’t, and wasn’t legal. Ms. Yates didn’t betray her office, or anyone else, but that’s language that is highly disturbing. When you use betrayal, traitor and traitorous is far behind. In a post yesterday, I asked people to note the use of the word comply. All these not so small signals are mounting up to be a screaming red alert. The fact that we’re now under a fascist dictatorship could hardly be more clear, and that’s being advertised, loud and clear at every opportunity. There is no “reasonable” in this, there’s no “necessary” either. What is there is yet another Trump Toddler Tantrum, screaming in disbelief that anyone could have the spine to not only disagree, but stand up to him. Ms. Yates was fired, not disappeared, but it’s only been two weeks. This is not going to get better.
The language is there. The signs are not only there, they are screaming. It’s full red alert, and that fact is going to slip right by way too many people. There’s already a move across the land to shut down any and all who protest. Here in my state, it’s been made legal to run down protesters. Hundreds of protesters and journalists in Washington are sitting under felony charges. Protesters in Denver were told they didn’t have a permit to exercise free speech legally. And so on, and so it is going. We are moving inexorably into a state where the words betrayal and comply are going to have a terrible weight, and the sword of Damocles is upon our heads. Speak now. Speak loud. Be Strong. Be Brave. Reject Silence. I understand scared. I’m scared. I’m wearing those pants into town today, into the heart of nDakota. Yeah, I’m fucking scared, but you all give me courage, and I wrap that around me like a cloak, and keep that strength and love and trust close.
Photo illustration by Sagmeister & Walsh. Set painters: Colossal Media.
The rethuglicans were floating on a wave of frenzied victory, assured in their ability to bend Trump to their will. They could finally institute all the terror, hatred and bigotry they wanted, and maybe finally get that theocracy, too. As well as the unfettered ability to be as corrupt as they wished. Unfortunately for them, the taste of fear is on their tongues.
Rather than the hoped-for collaborative new relationship between the White House and Congress, GOP officials complain that Trump is brushing aside their advice, failing to fully engage on drafting tough legislative packages on tax reform and Obamacare, and bypassing Congress by relying on executive actions, something they frequently complained about under President Barack Obama.
At the same time, Trump’s unilateral moves continue to blindside Republicans and direct the national focus toward topics many in the party would rather avoid, whether that’s how to pay for building the border wall with Mexico, warming ties with Russia, investigating false claims about voter fraud or, most recently, implementing sweeping new policies on refugees and visas.
Just about anyone could have told you that it’s not possible to control a narcissistic maniac with delusions of grandeur. It’s not as though any of that were some kind of secret, you all knew this well before hand, but you just couldn’t resist the chance to eat the country whole.
Today marks the birthday of Fred Korematsu, a man who never gave up his fight for justice, even though it was a fight he needed to pursue for decades. His bravery, his light, his dedication should light a fire in all of us, renewing our personal commitment to see justice done, and to protect, help, and fight for those being victimized. Too many Americans are more than content to let the ruinous and immoral past repeat itself, while remaining blissfully ignorant of history. Just a bit here, the full story is at Think Progress, and of course, at http://www.korematsuinstitute.org/.
Here are six comments from Japanese Americans that have an important message for the Trump administration to learn from:
Fred Korematsu, 2004
No one should ever be locked away simply because they share the same race, ethnicity, or religion as a spy or terrorist. If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans, then these are very dangerous times for our democracy.
George Takei, actor and civil rights leader, 2014
When I was a teenager, my father told me that our democracy is very fragile, but it is a true people’s democracy, both as strong and as great as the people can be, but it is also as fallible as people are. And that’s why good people have to be actively engaged in the process, sometimes holding democracy’s feet to the fire, in order to make it a better, truer democracy.
Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA), former congressman, 2015
Even after we were released, I, along with other Japanese-Americans, faced anti-Japanese slurs and insults in a post-World War II America. We developed a sense that somehow we had done something wrong. It was my father who helped me realize that our “crime” was simply being of Japanese ancestry. In a post-Pearl Harbor craze, this lineage was sufficient for the federal government to pass orders to detain and imprison an entire segment of American society — we were guilty solely by association.
Dr. Satsuki Ina, Professor Emeritus, California State University, Sacramento, 2015
I was born behind barbed wire 70 years ago in the Tule Lake Segregation Center, a maximum-security prison camp for Japanese-Americans in Northern California. My parents’ only crime was having the face of the enemy. They were never charged or convicted of a crime; yet they were forced to raise me in a prison camp when President Franklin Roosevelt signed a wartime executive order ultimately authorizing the incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent. We were deemed a danger to the “national security” and incarcerated without due process of law.
Paul Ohtaki, businessman and journalist, 2008
People don’t believe this. If you go beyond — maybe a few states here — they don’t believe that the United States had a concentration camp! They don’t call it that. You can call it what you like, but they put people in who are entitled to every citizen right of anybody else. People don’t believe that!
Fumi Hayashi, Cutter Laboratories, 2006
When you see pictures of black men hanging from trees, and I don’t know how we can do things like that to each other. Sometimes I think if I were on the other side of the fence, would I go to Tanforan [a temporary incarceration camp to hold Japanese Americans] with a whole bunch of buckets and soap? Do I have that kind of something inside of me — that I would do something like that for other people? It’s a big question mark. I can’t say that I would, because I think it’s more comfortable to write a check or even worse, just do nothing.
Chizu Iiyama, activist, social worker and educator, 2009
I don’t have advice. I just say to learn from your own — to study and learn about your history; history of our government and history of all these things that happened. If you are a minority person, learn your history, so you’ll know again what happened in the past so you’ll be sure to deal with the present in a more enlightened way.
There’s a very interesting article up at Raw Story about Trump’s never ending insistence that he’s smart. So smart, super smart, bigly smart! It’s a low level annoyance, because it’s obviously not true, and as pointed out in the article, most people who are smart have no particular need to say so. That said, there are people who are, at least, technically smart, who seem to have a pathological need to parade that fact, and I’ve always found that to be nothing more than insecurity. When you’re a kid, it’s not fun being the egghead. Maybe that’s changed, I don’t know, but back in the day, you’d get ganged up on for being a smarty pants, so mostly you didn’t go around bragging or anything. Just tried to stay invisible in the corner, with your stack of books behind you. I don’t care about IQs, those are meaningless, and as for grades, well, those aren’t exactly a reliable indicator, either.
Smart is what you do with it. People who are curious, who read, and delight in a lifelong love of learning, that’s smart. People who are capable of thinking beyond all the tropes, clichés, stereotypes, and other bullshit, that’s smart. And so on. I love reading, I’ve had my nose in a book since always, and for me, people that read, I find them to be reassuring and comforting. And generally speaking, not only willing to think, but they love to think.
Trump doesn’t read. At all. That disturbed me no end when it first came out, and it still does. His compleat lack of a vocabulary disturbs the hell out of me too, I’ve often commented on the fact that he talks like a child. Bush Jr could barely string a sentence together, and he looks like a bloody rocket scientist next to Trump. “That’s the big stuff.” That’s what he says about major governmental decisions and policy. Anyone who is capable of thinking is left wondering “what does that mean?” Turns out, lately, what that means is “look what a big bully I am! Do what I say!” A stupid, unthinking, short-sighted bully, that’s our dictator. As the criticisms and doubt amp up, Big Bully Donny is going to get a whole lot worse. It’s barely been two weeks, and already…
Anyone who feels compelled to boast about how smart he is clearly suffers from a profound insecurity about his intelligence and accomplishments. In Trump’s case, he has good reason to have doubts.
Trump has the kind of street smarts (what he calls “gut instinct”) characteristic of con artists and hucksters, but his limited vocabulary, short attention span, ignorance of policy specifics, indifference to scientific evidence, and admitted aversion to reading raise questions about his intellectual abilities; his capacity to absorb and analyze information and ideas.
Many observers have noted that Trump has a difficult time expressing himself and speaking in complete sentences. A linguistic analysis by Politico found that Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level. A study by researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University compared last year’s Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in terms of their vocabulary and grammar. Trump scored at a fifth-grade level, the lowest of all the candidates.
Some might suspect this is not an intellectual shortcoming but instead Trump’s calculated way of communicating with a wide audience. But Tony Schwartz, who spent a great deal of time with the real estate developer while ghostwriting his book The Art of the Deal, noted that Trump has a very limited vocabulary.
Anyone who has ever bothered to skim what Trump supporters have to say, in letters, comments, tweets, what have you, there’s a noted similarity in smarts. And that’s frightening. You don’t need to be a bloody genius, but most people should at least want to be able to think, and to be able to parse things correctly, and have the means to communicate effectively.
The appeal to stupidity and ignorance is a dangerous one, and it has already proved to the be the match which set the fire.
The article is here.
Here’s a fine example of happy to be stupid and ignorant Americans:
“I feel that if a Muslim woman wants to move into this country, she needs to leave her towel home,” Bill explained. “Because the reason this country is here and safe today is because of Jesus Christ.”
It’s a hijab. Simple word, not at all hard to learn. It’s not a towel, it’s a head covering, much like those rags on your heads, oh, I mean hats. While you probably should always have your towel, that’s a universe thing, per Douglas Adams. That’s one of those book things.
He continued: “We were one nation under God. The Muslims are into Allah.
:Bangs head into wall: PLACEHOLDER. The word “god” is generic, it does not point to any particular god, that requires a name. It means ‘supreme being’. Allah means “god”, yep, ‘supreme being’. In point of fact, it happens to be the same fucking god, and I’m damn tired of pointing that out. Abrahamaic based religions: Judaism, Islam, Christianity. Same books, same god, different interpretations. And there was no “one nation under god” until genocidal assholes found their way to Turtle Island, and of course that sort of shit was reinforced during the cold war. For Chrissakes, learn something. If willfully stupid people are going to insist on being stupid, the least you could do is shut the fuck up. Try to read a book or something.
Oh, and what was our super genius president doing yesterday, as one crisis after another was unfolding? Having a private screening of Finding Dory.
CNN producer Kevin Liptak revealed on Sunday that the president’s family had chosen to screen Finding Dory, Pixar’s film about a cartoon fish who is torn apart from her family and placed in a public aquarium.
No words.
Stephen Miller appears on CNN’s State of the Union (screen grab).
Although White House adviser Stephen Miller has quickly emerged as a fall guy for this past weekend’s chaos at major American airports, he nonetheless appeared on CBS’s This Morning to paint the Trump administration’s travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries as a massive success.
Oh sure. Absolute chaos, people trapped in airports, crying, wondering if they will ever be able to see their families again, people trying to commit suicide out of despair, yeah, that’s success alright! Godsdamned evil fucking nazis, who call this orgy of hate a “success”. :spits: As noted in a previous thread:
So many people in this country are just fine with this evil. They can’t even manage to think for 5 fucking seconds – who in the hell wants to be a refugee? No one, that’s who. Leaving your home, uprooting your whole life, struggling, facing bias and hatred, having to start all over again? Yeah, sure, people do that sort of thing just for fucking fun.
If you’re one of the people okay with this demonstration of stupidity and cruelty, congratulations, you’re officially a fuckwit.
Miller also said that the Trump administration will, over the next month, develop screening procedures to ensure that only foreigners who “love” America are allowed into the country.
“We’re going to take the next 30 days to develop a new set of screening protocols to try and ensure that people entering our country, particularly on a permanent basis, truly love and support the United States of America,” he said. “There’ll be a 60-day period where countries will be asked to comply with the new directives. Countries that are in compliance will have regular, ordinary and routine migration with the United States.”
Oh, well that’s not Orwellian at all, no. “I do declare I love America in the most bigly, yugely way possible! I love America more than anything!” Talk about sickening. If you’re not up on your history, I suggest you do some reading, stat. Fascists and Nazis just adore this sort of disgusting bullshit. Note that little “comply” up above, too. When dictators and tyrants start tossing “comply” around…Yeah.
Miller then went on to say that the administration’s overall goal is to make sure people who are intolerant of others’ differences shouldn’t be granted entry to the United States.
“It only makes sense that we engage in some kind of selections process that prioritizes the entry of people who, as the order stated, don’t hold bigotry, hatred or violence against any sexual orientation, against any race, or against any particular class of people,” he said.
:chokes; sputter: Oh please! Christ, I can’t take this sort of shit first thing. uStates, a country founded on intolerance, hatred, greed, genocide and theft, and hasn’t gotten any better. Now we’re the country of love and tolerance? We have now surpassed Orwell, and that is no mean feat. FFS, I can’t even, I oh fuck. This godsdamned country, where hate and bigotry reign supreme, where cops murder people of colour at will, where the government is still trying to finish the genocide of Indians, where a host of stupid white people spew toxic bigotry every moment of the day, where half the states still defend fucking slavery, and the flag symbolizing it’s glories, a country where LGBTQ peoples are assaulted and murdered, and where the government tries at every turn to legislate their bigotry and hate, *deep breath* a country that is so damn stupid they still try to teach creationism, a country where half of the people are attempting to legislate all women into the untrustworthy, subhuman slut category, shoving their damn noses into our pants at every turn, vile, evil, immoral, fanatical christians who think they have the right to oppress and glory in hate, and that barely covers it.
Aaaaaaauuuuuuugh. I will be screaming in fury all damn day. Unfuckingbelievable.
Via Raw Story.
President Hassan Rouhani.
Iran said on Saturday it would stop U.S. citizens entering the country in retaliation to Washington’s visa ban against Tehran and six other majority-Muslim countries announced by new U.S. President Donald Trump.
“While respecting the American people and distinguishing between them and the hostile policies of the U.S. government, Iran will implement the principle of reciprocity until the offensive U.S. limitations against Iranian nationals are lifted,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.
“The restrictions against travel by Muslims to America… are an open affront against the Muslim world and the Iranian nation in particular and will be known as a great gift to extremists,” said the statement, carried by state media.
Look, a president with brains! It’s nice that Iran has a president who can easily recognize that the current xenophobic excess of uStates will indeed be a gift to extremists of all stripes. It would be really nice if uStates had a president who could think. Alas.
Earlier on Saturday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said it was no time to build walls between nations and criticised steps towards cancelling world trade agreements, without naming Trump. … “Today is not the time to erect walls between nations. They have forgotten that the Berlin wall fell years ago,” Rouhani said in a speech carried live on Iranian state television.
I think it’s past time for world leaders to start naming Trump, loudly and clearly. The fucking asshole is a clear and present danger to the whole world, and yes, I know people choose their words with care because Trump is also a maniac who might just decide to let missiles fly in a fit a pique, and sensible people don’t want that, but eternal tip-toeing isn’t going to work, either. The Berlin wall has been on my mind ever since Trump started hollering about walls. FFS, that wasn’t all that long ago, what in the hell is wrong with people?
“Today is not the time to erect walls between nations. They have forgotten that the Berlin wall fell years ago,” Rouhani said in a speech carried live on Iranian state television.
“To annul world trade accords does not help their economy and does not serve the development and blooming of the world economy,” Rouhani told a tourism conference in Tehran. “This is the day for the world to get closer through trade.”
I agree. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with the wannabe god emperor idiot.
Rouhani, a pragmatist elected in 2013, thawed Iran’s relations with world powers after years of confrontation and engineered its 2015 deal with them under which it curbed its nuclear programme in exchange for relief from sanctions.
Oh, how nice it would be to have a sane and sensible person in office.
Full story here.
Used with permission from the Islamic Center of Victoria.
A Texas mosque was set on fire just hours after Trump signed an executive order restricting migration from Muslim-majority countries.
The Islamic Center of Victoria was set on fire around 2 a.m. on Saturday, according to localreports.
Victoria Fire Marshal Tom Legler told the Victoria Advocate he had no theories about the cause of the fire, but he is seeking assistance from state and federal fire investigators.
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On Sunday, the center plans to hold a public prayer service in the lawn to “pray for peace & safety for all.” The center said it will be rebuilt with love, and it has already started a GoFundMe fundraiser for financial support to do so.
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Since the election in November, there has been an increase in hate crimes across the country. In the one month following the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center found over 1,000 reports of hate incidents. ThinkProgress is keeping a stricter record of targeted incidents, and we have still found almost 250 incidents of hate. A significant number of these are anti-Islam in nature.
The fire in Victoria comes just three weeks after an Islamic Center under construction in Austin was set on fire and destroyed.
The full story at Think Progress. I read this right after checking a conversation at Pharyngula, where people are still fiercely arguing against punching Nazis, and fully defending their right to speech, because talking about killing all black people, having a dreamy white state, or ethnic cleansing, well, it’s just talk, and that’s okay. Some people in that thread are still behaving as though ‘merica was still this great democracy, so it will be okay. No, it won’t be okay. There is no democracy, it’s gone. Oh, there’s still a partial skeleton of tattered and deliquescent bones, but they are falling fast. Nazism is being defended and normalised not just by all the Joe Q. Publics’, but liberals and lefties all over the place. We must be nice! We must be better! We must do this the right way! I have one thing to say to all that: Fuck No.
I am sick to death of this “we must be better” crap. I’m not better for refusing to stand up to nazis speechifying about the horrors of non-white, non-hetero people. I’m not better for turning my head away when I see someone targeted by nazis. I’m not better for defending the rights of nazis to talk about how wonderful nazism is, we just have to get rid of all those people. I will say this straight out: I am one hell of a fucktonne better than anyone who is being a handwringing milquetoast over the rights of fucking nazis. I will fight, openly, every inch of the way. I will not stand by along a road which will end up littered with bodies. I will not be complicit. I will not condone. I will shout down nazis at every opportunity. Fuck them. They do not have any right to speech as far as I’m concerned, because it’s all hate, and it’s incitement. A person in that thread stated that speech was not action. That’s not true. Of course speech is an action, it’s an attempt to communicate. Only an idiot would consider all speech benign. Speech, as wielded by nazis, is an incitement, an incitement to horrific actions.
We are past trouble here in the States. Everything you thought you knew, forget it. We are in a dark, lost age, and while this terrifies me personally, I refuse to shut my eyes to what is happening right in front of my face. I will stand, no matter how much I may tremble, and I will try to help and protect all those who are nothing more than fuel for the fire in the eyes of nazis and racists everywhere.
Trump’s little nazi, Bannon, is everywhere. I’m surprised Trump isn’t trying to clone him. Now it’s Nazi NSA.
Meanwhile, Trump signed a presidential memo directing the Pentagon to submit a plan within 30 days to defeat the Islamic State, an effort to make good on his campaign promise to more aggressively confront Islamist terrorism than his predecessor did. … As he signed his directive at his desk in the Oval Office, Trump said, “I think it’s going to be very successful. That’s big stuff.”
Jesus Fuck. I still can’t believe we have a president who talks like a toddler.
Counseling Trump in the effort will be Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist whose influence inside the administration is expanding far beyond politics. In a separate presidential memo, Trump reorganized the National Security Council to, along with other changes, give Bannon a regular seat on the principals committee — the meetings of the most senior national security officials, including the secretaries of defense and state.
That memo also states that the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will sit on the principals committee only when the issues to be discussed pertain to their “responsibilities and expertise.” In the previous two administrations, both were included as regular attendees.
The White House thinks the changes will make the NSC more adaptive to modern threats. Trump said the changes would bring “a lot of efficiency and, I think, a lot of additional safety.”
The changes affirm the ascent of Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart, a conservative website that is popular with white nationalists, who has emerged as Trump’s political consigliere and the keeper of the president’s populist flame.
I think it’s fairly clear who the new president actually is, and it’s not Trump. Trump is an easily manipulable puppet. The Nazis are here and in charge.
Full story at Washington Post.
Think Progress is also covering this unprecedented move, noting that even that asshole Bush jr never went so far, and in fact, went to considerable trouble to keep Rove away from any and all NSA meetings. Let that one sink in a little.
And don’t forget about Bannon:
Bannon has a history of anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and bigoted comments, and has openly disparaged Jews and minorities and has called women “dykes.” Both the Klu Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party cheered his appointment to the White House. Bannon also reportedly had a major role in crafting key parts of Trump’s Muslim ban, including the fact that the ban also applies to people with lawful permanent residence.