Alternative Visions – Old Elites Step Up Attack on Trump – 02.17.17

Dr. Rasmus discusses how the intensifying attacks on Trump administration represent an historic internecine conflict between old and new wings of the US ruling elites and not ‘democracy vs. fascism’. Rasmus offers an analysis of the first month of the Trump regime and its growing conflicts with the Media, the ‘deep state’ 17 intelligence communities, federal state bureaucracies, and political parties of Democrats and moderate Republicans. Revisiting his November article ‘Tameing Trump’, Rasmus explains the meaning of last week’s firing of NSA Flynn, Trump’s backtracking on China, his reassuring Canada and Japan prime ministers on trade, and his revisiting of his muslim country travel bans. How the Flynn affair was a warning ‘shot across the bow’ for Trump to back off his proposed foreign policy changes with Russia and NATO. How the US spends $700billion a year subsidizing NATO and Europe and how US control of NATO is key to control of Europe politically and economically. The policy areas of conflicts between Trump and the old elites. Rasmus explains how old neoliberal elites (media, parties, spy agencies, state bureaucracies) continue to build a case on Trump and either ‘tame’ him or dump him—but only after he delivers on massive corporate-investor tax cuts, deregulation of healthcare and banks, and checking his trade initiatives. The grass roots base of Trump vs. old elites is discussed.

Daniel Lazare – Hillary Clinton’s ‘Exceptionalist’ Warpath

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the most right-wing presidential candidate of all? The answer used to be Donald Trump, famous for his naked bigotry toward Mexicans and Muslims. But that was before Hillary Clinton supporters took a page from the old Joe McCarthy handbook and began denouncing their Republican opponent as “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation” or arguing …

Saul Takahashi – Japan’s Descent into Authoritarianism

The appointment of Tomomi Inada as Japan’s Defence Minister, and the lack of tough questioning of Inada from the domestic media, is yet another indicator of how far Japan is in its descent into authoritarian rule under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Inada is a longstanding rightwing extremist with a history of expressing nationalistic and militaristic views. She said in 2006 that …

Brown University – War deaths reach 173,000 in Afghanistan, Pakistan

The combined, cumulative death toll of war in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001 is 173,000, with 183,000 others seriously injured, according to a new study. The Costs of War, based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, released the data on the human costs of a decade and a half of war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The …

Tom Engelhardt – Donald Trump Is the Mosquito, Not the Zika Virus

Graduates of 2016, don’t be fooled by this glorious day.  As you leave campus for the last time, many of you already deeply in debt and with a lifetime of payments to look forward to, you head into a world that’s anything but sunny.  In fact, through those gates that have done little enough to protect you is the sort of fog …

David Sheen – Extreme Takeover: Why Many Are Calling Israel’s New Government the ‘Most Racist’ in History

With the announcement that hard-right Avigdor Lieberman would soon use his powerful position as Minister of Defense in the Israeli cabinet to advance additional anti-democratic legislation, members of the old Israeli political establishment could scarcely contain their apprehension. “Lieberman is the new Kahane [3],” read the title of an op-ed by a former two-time Israeli minister, a reference to the founding …