THE TRUMP DOCTRINE: Appeasing Tyrants, Freeing terrorists and Endangering Allies to Achieve Maximum Chaos in a Post-Diplomacy World

By Mark | October 13, 2019

When Donald Trump announced last week that, at the request of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, he would be pulling back American troops stationed in Syria, everyone knew exactly what would happen. We knew that our allies, the Kurds, would be wiped out by the Turks. And that’s exactly what’s happening right now.

Richard Engel, from NBC News, reported yesterday that Turkish-backed Arab militias had apparently started executing Kurds. And, today, we’re starting to see footage of the ethnic cleansing campaign… Dead children. People being ambushed and murdered in cold blood… I was tempted to share photos, as I think everyone should see what we’ve allowed to happen in our names as Americans, but, out of respect for the dead, I’ll leave it to you to search on-line. If you’re so inclined, though, I’d encourage you to look for images of Havrin Khalaf, the General Secretary of the Syria Future Party, who was murdered yesterday in an ambush by jihadi mercenaries in the employ of Turkey. The car of the civil rights leader was attacked in Ahrar as-Sharqiya on the M4 road near Qamishli.

That, in itself, should be enough, I would hope, to get most Americans to stand behind Senator Schumer tomorrow, when he demands a Senate vote to reject Trump’s reckless and shortsighted troop withdrawal. But, it’s not just that Trump, for whatever reason, has decided to forgo the counsel of foreign policy experts, and remove U.S. troops so that our allies can be killed. In doing so, he’s also making us less save here at home. As Schumer said in his press conference this morning, Donald Trump “(is) undoing years of work to curb ISIS, and making America much more susceptible to terrorism by his actions.” And, here, with more on that, is a excerpt from today’s New York Times story about how Trump’s hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops led to the escape of several hundred imprisoned ISIS combatants and sympathizers.

But, fear not, America. Donald Trump says that they’ll be killing our allies, and not us… “They’re going to be escaping to Europe,” not the U.S., he told members of the press yesterday.

For those of you who still aren’t convinced, Stephen Miller says that these escaped ISIS terrorists can’t hurt us as our border is impenetrable.

[In related news, here’s footage of teenage girls scaling Trump’s new, magical border fence in 15 seconds.]

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point… We are in a very bad place as a nation, and things are rapidly getting worse. Donald Trump has made it his mission to acquiesce to every dictator and strongman in the word, putting aside any consideration for the wellbeing of our allies, the safety of our citizens, or the strategic interests of the United States. If we’re lucky enough to live through this, it’s going to take generations to reconstruct our democratic institutions, as our State Department has been gutted, and our Department of Justice turned into an extension Trump crime syndicate. Our credibility as a nation is gone. Our allies are in disarray. And authoritarianism is on the rise across the globe. Donald Trump has done in three short years what Nazi Germany and the USSR could not. He’s almost brought the ambitious American experiment to an end.

Posted in History, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 35 Comments

The creation of a global movement for preserving life on earth… right here, right now

By Mark | October 13, 2019

In a perfect word, people would do the right thing just because it was the right thing. They would give money to the people of Bangladesh without George Harrison having to produce a concert, and they would have marched to demand clean drinking water for the citizens of Flint without Mark Ruffalo calling them into the streets. We don’t live in a perfect world, though, and big, successful social moments have always been driven, to a large extent, by popular culture. People don’t just do the right thing because it’s the right thing. For most folks, there also has to be something in it for them, even if it’s just the possibility of meeting someone cute, or getting a cool selfie. At the very least, you have to offer them something interesting. The Yippies, for example, made it fun to protest the Vietnam War by attempting to levitate the Pentagon. And the Kent State massacre stayed in the hearts and minds of Americans in large part because Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were inspired to create an anthem for the masses.

I don’t get the sense that things are happening in the same way right now, though. Maybe it’s because of how fractured things are these days, and how we no longer consume media from the same sources, but it doesn’t feel as though culture is really driving big issues the way it once did. I mean, Will and Grace and Ellen get a lot of credit for bringing us to a point in American history where we were able to embrace the idea of gay marriage, but one wonders why, for instance, we’re not seeing more movement on the popular culture front when it comes to the subject of climate change. Al Gore made waves with An Inconvenient Truth, and celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio are doing some things, but I just don’t get the sense that anything is really breaking through the way that it did in the past, with gay rights, civil rights, the Vietnam War, or even our response as a nation to Apartheid in South Africa. On those fronts, it felt like popular culture was unified in pushing us in the right direction.

Maybe the topics were easier for people to wrap their heads around. Or maybe, with the three big networks giving way to political media companies like Fox, there just aren’t the same opportunities. Or maybe it’s just because Donald Trump demands so much of our damned attention. Whatever it is, it just doesn’t feel like the same opportunities exist. Or, who knows, maybe it is happening and I’m just not seeing it, as I don’t really buy new music, watch TV, or even listen to the radio anymore.

Maybe the kids, inspired by people like Greta Thunberg, and emboldened by the Climate Strike, will begin forcing culture to give them what they want. Or, better yet, maybe folks will begin making their own media, and taking everything out of the hands of our corporate gatekeepers, who clearly don’t care all that much about climate change. And there are encouraging signs… Take this brilliant new Fatboy Slim remix of the song “Right Here, Right Now”.

I want more of this. And I want it everywhere. I want zines. I want music. I was teach-ins. I want civil disobedience. I want a TV show about a young, pissed-off, wise-cracking solar panel installer in rural America… I want engagement on every level. And I want it to be fun… Speaking of which, have you heard the term “civil discobedience” yet?

Posted in energy, Environment, Mark's Life, Media, Observations, Pop Culture, Rants, Sustainability, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Elizabeth Warren’s response to Facebook’s refusal to stop running false political ads

By Mark | October 12, 2019

A few days ago, as you may have heard, Facebook made the decision to run an ad produced by the Trump campaign which had been proven to be false. While other media companies, like CNN, made the decision not to run the ad, which falsely suggested that Joe Biden, while Vice President of the United States, had offered Ukraine $1 billion in foreign aid in exchange for firing a prosecutor that was investigating a company tied to his son, Facebook made the call to accept nearly $718,000 in ad revenue from the Trump campaign, and run it.

Facebook, when asked to remove the ad by the Biden campaign, pointed to corporate policies, instituted this past September. According to those policies, the company no longer prohibits ads that contain “deceptive, false, or misleading content, including deceptive claims, offers, or methods.” While Facebook does bar ads that have been “debunked by third-party fact checkers” or “organizations with particular expertise,” they said, that does not extend to political advertisements. “Ads from political candidates,” the company says, “are ineligible for fact-checking.”

Well, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren — taking advantage of this Facebook policy allowing lie-filled political ads — just initiated a campaign of her own on the social media site. The ad calls attention to the fact (not really) that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had officially endorsed Donald Trump in the 2020 race.

Obama administration staffer Ben Rhodes had the following to say about the Warren ad. “This is so smart,” he said. “It’s past time for more scrutiny of how FB puts profit over democracy while hiding behind empty language about openness when it’s a media and advertising platform.”

I was hopeful that Facebook, in the wake of what happened in 2016, would put systems in place to ensure that they’d never again be put in a position where their platform was being used to spread disinformation campaigns intended to sew discord in the United States. But, clearly, that’s not going to happen.

It would take me some time to do it, and it wouldn’t be easy, but I’ve almost made up my mind to disentangle my life from Facebook once and for all. I know it’ll mean that I’ll get left out of social things even more often, and probably lose track of what my family members and old friends are up to, but I can no longer be a party to Facebook’s continued refusal to step up, take responsibility, and do the right thing. [If broadcast television networks can find a way not to run false political ads, how can it be that a company that makes $16.6 billion a quarter in ad sales, can’t put systems in place?] And it pains me to say this, not just because I know it’ll make my mother sad to see me disappear from Facebook, but because, by not being on Facebook, I’ll no longer be able to step in when people I know are sharing debunked conspiracy theories about things like Elizabeth Warren’s fondness of male prostitutes and the like, but, at some point, you just have to walk away, and stop being part of the system.

Posted in Mark's Life, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 61 Comments

Placing himself above the law, Donald Trump says his administration will not cooperate with Congress

By Mark | October 8, 2019

In a letter to House leadership, White House counsel Pat Cipollone today made it clear that the Trump administration has no intention of complying with Congressional requests related to the recently launched impeachment probe of Donald Trump. Cipollone, in his letter, referred to the probe as “illegitimate” and said that the actions taken by House Democrats violated “the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent.” None of this, of course, is true. We know for a fact that the President of the United States, by his own admission, requested that a foreign head-of-state initiate an investigation into a U.S. citizen, and it’s the constitutional duty of the Congress to investigate and provide oversight.

This refusal to participate in Congressional hearings is, of course, itself grounds for impeachment, as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham once explained so eloquently to the American people.

[It’s not the job of the President to tell Congress what it needs, Graham said in 1998, but to “comply (and) provide the things (Congress needs) to provide oversight.”]

Shortly after Cipollone’s letter was made public, the White House press secretary (who, by the way, hasn’t given a press briefing since assuming the role in June) issued the following statement, which begins with the laughably false statement, “The President has done nothing wrong, and the Democrats know it.”

The whole thing is both ridiculous and illegal. They’re just adding impeachable offenses on top of impeachable offenses at this point. But, I guess, as long as there’s not a single Republican willing to come out and say that he or she intends to join the Democrats in actively pursuing a serious investigation, Trump is just going to keep going, hiding behind the flimsy excuse that this is nothing more than a “partisan” attempt to undo the will of the American voters. I know it’s a lot to ask, but one would hope that, eventually, a Republican like Will Hurd, a former CIA officer, might summon the courage to move beyond handwringing and actually do something to help protect our democracy at this time of constitutional crisis… And we are officially in constitutional crisis.

Posted in Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Does EMU have a clear and consistently enforced policy on the carrying of firearms on campus?

By Mark | October 8, 2019

In 2017, the state of Georgia passed a law allowing guns to be carried on campus. To date, I don’t believe there have been any instances of gun-carrying students thwarting terrorist attacks. Today, a University of Georgia student did inadvertently shoot himself through the leg while studying Chemistry, though.

Coincidentally, at roughly the same time this Chemistry student in Georgia was protecting himself from his own leg, a reader of this site – a person who refers to himself as Wobblie – left the following comment, after having exchanged words with an armed Eastern Michigan University student.

Just had an experience that encapsulates much of the rot that is 21st Century America. Was at the UM Credit Union that is in the EMU Student Center. While standing there I looked over at the guy next to me and saw he was packing a semi-automatic handgun. I looked at him again and saw he was not uniformed. I informed the clerk that there was a man who was openly carrying a firearm. She was totally clueless as to what I was saying. I accosted the man/child about openly carrying in a bank within an educational institution. He responded, “It is concealed”. Just how stupid is that? I’m looking at his gun and he maintains that it’s concealed – and this is someone who is evidently a college student. I called the EMU Police to inform them. The dispatch operator did not know there was a bank in the student center. Our culture is doomed. I am beginning to think it is hopeless.

First, yes, there is apparently a UM Credit Union branch office on the EMU campus. And, second, yes, EMU does have a rule prohibiting weapons on campus… As for whether or not EMU actively enforces the rule, I can’t say. If anyone with firsthand information would like to leave a comment, I’d appreciate it. I’d like to know, among other things, how EMU officers are trained to respond when incidents like these are brought to their attention. It doesn’t sound as though, at least in this case, the issue was taken very seriously. And I’d like to know if that’s the norm… Also, I don’t have any artwork for this post, so, if you’d like to draw an EMU student carrying a gun, or something, I’d appreciate it.

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