TBR News March 18, 2019
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8
Washington, D.C. March 18, 2019:” The methodology of personal security: Never leave your cell phone out if you want to have a personal or important conversation with someone.
The other side can always listen in so keep a small box lined with sheet lead (found in hardware stores) and kept closed.
In the house, be sure to unplug from the cable connection your TV set if you have important visitors. Just unscrew the connection (which can be reconnected when guests have left)
And if you send out mail, always use a false return address on the package or letter because the FBI has the USPS scan all packages and mail.
If you have a meeting with someone in public, choose a restaurant that has loud background music playing because surveillance devices get jammed with noise. There will be more later.”
The Table of Contents
- Why an unbuilt Moscow Trump tower caught Mueller’s attention
- Beto O’Rourke raises $6.1 million on first day, topping Sanders and all other rivals
- The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
- Over 1,000 Hate Groups Are Now Active in United States, Civil Rights Group Says
- Violent Round Robin letter to right wing Trump American support groups
- Official Government Disinformation Methodology
- French PM plans new security measures after Champs Elysees rioting
- French government admits security ‘flaws’ in Paris riots
- All Trump would do after Brexit is force UK to import American goods for US benefit
Why an unbuilt Moscow Trump tower caught Mueller’s attention
March 18, 2019
by Jan Wolfe
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An intriguing area of focus in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Kremlin’s role in the 2016 U.S. election is a proposed Moscow real estate deal that Donald Trump pursued while running for president despite denying at the time any links to Russia.
The special counsel has revealed in court filings numerous details about the project, which never came to fruition. Further information has come from Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer who was instrumental in the negotiations, in congressional testimony and in his guilty plea to a charge of lying to Congress about the project.
Mueller’s team said in a December 2018 court filing that “the Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government. If the project was completed, the Company (the Trump Organization) could have received hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues.”
The project is significant because it shows Trump was chasing a lucrative business deal in Russia at the same time that President Vladimir Putin’s government, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, was conducting a hacking and propaganda campaign to boost his candidacy. The project also coincided with Trump’s positive comments as a candidate about Putin and his questioning of U.S. sanctions against Russia.
Mueller is preparing to submit to U.S. Attorney General William Barr the report on his investigation into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia and whether the Republican president has unlawfully tried to obstruct the probe. Trump has denied collusion and obstruction. Russia has denied election interference.
Here is an explanation of the Trump Moscow tower project and what the president has said about it.
WHAT IS TRUMP’S HISTORY IN MOSCOW?
Trump, a wealthy New York real estate developer, had discussed expanding his business empire into Russia for more than three decades. In 2013, after visiting Russia and hosting his Miss Universe pageant there, he wrote on Twitter: “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next.” The Trump Organization’s longtime partner in the project was Felix Sater, a Russian-born, Brooklyn-raised real estate developer, according to company emails released to congressional investigators.
WHAT WAS THE TRUMP TOWER MOSCOW PROJECT?
Trump in October 2015 signed a non-binding letter of intent to move forward with a Moscow tower project with a Russian development firm. The firm, I.C. Expert Investment Co, agreed to construct the skyscraper, and the Trump Organization agreed to license its name and manage the building’s operations. The letter of intent described a building in a Moscow business district with 250 luxury residential condominiums, at least 150 hotel rooms and a luxury spa.
Sater, who has served prison time in the United States for assault and later became an FBI informant on organized crime, assured Cohen in a November 2015 email he could get the Russian government to support a Trump property in Moscow
“I know how to play it and we will get this done. Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this,” Sater told Cohen in that email.
Trump had announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015.
In testimony last month to the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee, Cohen said Sater came up with a “marketing stunt” of offering Putin a free penthouse in the tower to drive up unit prices, “no different than in any condo where they start listing celebrities that live in the property.”
Cohen’s House testimony portrayed Trump as keenly interested in completing the deal even as he campaigned for president. “Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project,” Cohen testified.
In his guilty plea, Cohen admitted he had lied to Congress in a 2017 letter that claimed he had only discussed the negotiations with Trump three times and that the project talks ended in January 2016. Cohen said he lied to Congress to minimize links between Trump and the project and give the false impression that the proposal had ended before key early milestones in the 2016 race to determine the Republican presidential nominee.
Cohen in his guilty plea said the project was discussed within the Trump Organization multiple times and that he spoke with Sater about obtaining Russian governmental approval as late as June 2016, after Trump had clinched the Republican nomination.
WHY DID THE NEGOTIATIONS END?
Legal filings in Cohen’s plea deal did not make clear why the negotiations ended. But June 2016 was the month when the Washington Post first reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the Democratic National Committee’s computers, a cyber operation that was a key part of Moscow’s interference in the presidential race, as described by U.S. intelligence.
One of Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, indicated in January 2019 that the Moscow tower discussions had continued through the November 2016 election, though he later backtracked.
WHAT HAS TRUMP SAID?
Trump’s public statements about business dealings in Russia have evolved over time. In July 2016, Trump told a news conference: “I have nothing to do with Russia.” Nine days before becoming president, Trump wrote on Twitter, “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”
In November 2018, after Cohen’s guilty plea, Trump told reporters that in 2016 he was in a position “to possibly do a deal to build a building of some kind in Moscow.” Trump added, “There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business. And why should I lose lots of opportunities?” Cohen told the House panel Trump made clear to him that he should lie about when the negotiations ended.
Trump and his allies have called Cohen a liar trying to reduce his prison time after pleading guilty to a series of federal criminal charges.
WHAT ROLE DID TRUMP’S CHILDREN PLAY?
Cohen told the House panel that he briefed the president’s son and daughter, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, about the tower negotiations. Donald Trump Jr., an executive at the Trump Organization, told Congress in September 2017 he was only “peripherally aware” of the talks during the campaign. Ivanka Trump, a former Trump Organization executive, told ABC News last month she knew “literally almost nothing” about the project, saying there were “40 or 50 deals like that were floating around, that somebody was looking at.”
Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham
Beto O’Rourke raises $6.1 million on first day, topping Sanders and all other rivals
The Texas Democrat, who built an impressive fundraising operation last year against Ted Cruz, has sworn off all PAC donations.
March 18, 2019
by Alex Seitz-Wald
NBC
WASHINGTON — Beto O’Rourke raised $6.1 million in his first 24 hours as a presidential candidate, according to his campaign, surpassing Bernie Sanders and every other 2020 Democrat who has disclosed their figures.
O’Rourke’s campaign announced Monday that he had taken in $6,136,763 in online contributions in the day after declaring his candidacy Thursday morning.
“In just 24 hours, Americans across this country came together to prove that it is possible to run a true grassroots campaign for president — a campaign by all of us, for all of us, that answers not to the PACs, corporations, and special interests but to the people,” O’Rourke, who has sworn off PAC donations of any kind, said in a statement.
That’s a strong showing for the former Texas congressman who lost a Senate race last year to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, while setting a new fundraising record.
O’Rourke’s campaign provided only the topline fundraising number, not more detailed information that other campaigns have disclosed, such as the number of donors and news donors, the size of the average contribution, the geographical diversity of contributors, and how much money he’s raised since the first day.
The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
March 18, 2019
by Dr. Peter Janney
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.
Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.
After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.
The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.
When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..
A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.
The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.
Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks. ”
Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.
Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication.
Conversation No. 6
Date: Sunday, March 31, 1996
Commenced: 8:35 AM CST
Concluded: 8:47 AM CST
GD: Hello, Robert. Did you get in touch…or did Corson get ahold of you?
RTC: No, actually, Gregory, I was in touch with him. What do you tell Bill to get him so rattled?
GD: Nothing particularly.
RTC: Did you mention drugs by any chance?
GD: Actually, no but he did.
RTC: He initiated the conversation on that subject?
GD: Yes. About three days ago. He asked me what I knew about allegations, get that, allegations, that the CIA has some involvement with drugs.
RTC: Keep going.
GD: I detect some unhappiness.
RTC: You do but it’s not aimed at you. Let me get this clear here. Bill initiated a conversation with you about drugs? Am I correct there?
GD: Absolutely. He wasn’t very subtle about it, either.
RTC: Try to remember exactly what he said.
GD: He started out…he said that there were rumors being spread that the CIA was connected in some way with large scale drug smuggling. He wanted to know if I had been talking about it and if I had, where had I gotten the information. I asked him to be specific and he got coy with me. He did say, and I recall this very clearly because it was only a few days ago, he asked me if you and I had talked about it.
RTC: And…?
GD: What do you think? What we say goes no place, not even a hint. I told him that you and I had never discussed this….
RTC: Thank you…
GD: Yes, and then I asked him if I should bring this up to you. I said I would tell you Bill was asking about this. He got very agitated then and told me not to say a word to you because he didn’t want to upset you.
RTC: (Laughter) Oh, well, you did a good job. But was he explicit in his comments about drugs? I mean the who-what-why and when?
GD: No, he actually told me nothing but he wanted to know what I personally knew and if I knew anything, where did I get it?
RTC: That figures.
GD: And I mentioned the KMT General and his flight to Switzerland. He jumped on that and asked me if I got that from you. I told him Kimmel told me.
RTC: (Laughter) Sweet Jesus. That’s putting the cat in the hen house. What did he say to that?
GD: He sounded like he was having an asthma attack.
RTC: I’ll bet he was. You turned it back on him, didn’t you?
GD: I think so. I wonder why he thinks I’m stupid?
RTC: People underestimate you.
GD: Yes, and at the same time they are overestimating themselves. What’s this all about, if I dare ask?
RTC: Drugs are a very sensitive issue with certain departments of the CIA. Very sensitive. It’s well known you and I talk and they are frantic to find out what we’re talking about. Of course if they tapped our phones, they might find out but by Bill asking you that, it’s obvious they have not tapped our phones. If I caught them playing their stupid games with either of us, they would be better off to move to Iceland and fish for flounder or whatever. No, that was a fishing expedition. That I know certain things is bad enough but that I talk to you, the author of the evil Müller books, is something else. No, they wouldn’t dare tap my phone. If they did, as I said, there would be blood running all over certain office floors when the hit men left. No, they’re guessing and the Kimmel business was a shrewd hit. I think he’s into this. He views you as an interesting but unstable person to whom one ought not to be at home when you call.
GD: I have always been civilized with Kimmel and, I think, very helpful in giving his family any papers that might help them about the Admiral.
RTC: Never expect gratitude from such as them, Gregory, and never turn your back on them either. Drugs? Fine. Tell me something, Gregory, where does heroin come from?
GD: The Salvation Army kitchens?
RTC: Be serious.
GD: Heroin comes from opium just as cocaine comes from coca plants.
RTC: Wonderful. And where do we find opium, or rather where does it come from?
GD: The sap of opium poppies. Found in Turkey in places but now getting under control there and mostly in Afghanistan.
RTC: You get a big ‘A’ on your card. Yes, Gregory, opium comes from Afghanistan. And who is very powerful in that country?
GD: The CIA?
RTC: Funny. Who?
GD: The Taliban.
RTC: Yes and do you know who founded that organization of cut throats and killers? We did so they could make trouble for the Soviets. And we trained them and armed them, Gregory which was a terrible mistake.
GD: You should read history, Robert. A poor, tribal area with savage guerrilla people who will fight any occupying power and when they kill them off, they will fight each other.
RTC: That was a first class mess there. Yes, they went after Ivan and then took our weapons and training methodology and took over the country. A nest of vipers.
GD: And all yours.
RTC: Don’t rub it in. There will be serious trouble there, mark my words.
GD: My bet is that they’ll go after Pakistan and when they take over that country…by the way, doesn’t Pakistan have nuclear weapons?
RTC: Oh God, I am so happy I’m retired. Ah, but the drugs. Yes, to be clear on it, I ask you another question. Where do all the drugs in the States come from?
GD: China white heroin comes to this country from, obviously, China. The Chinks smuggle it into Canada using cargo containers that dock on Vancouver Island. That’s one source I know about personally. The bulk of the rest comes up from Mexico.
RTC: Yes, but it isn’t processed there.
GD: No, in Columbia. And smuggled into Mexico via Chaipas and up to our border and the veins of the needy.
RTC: How do you know these things?
GD: Never mind.
RTC: And is there a question here, Gregory?
GD: Of course, Robert. We know about opium, or yen shee as the Chinks call it, being grown in Afghanistan and we know it’s processed into heroin in Columbia. The obvious question is how the stuff gets from a land-locked country to Columbia? The answer is that someone, or some group, transports it there. By boat? By aircraft?
RTC: Both. Boat from Pakistan and plane from Afghanistan itself.
GD: Yes. And who does this? The Afghanistan navy?
RTC: No there is a special branch of the Company involved in this and has been for decades. A large part of our secret budget comes from this. Of course, we do not sell it but we do supply those who both refine it and eventually sell it.
GD: Where and when do you get your cut?
RTC: After it’s refined in Columbia. You see, we also own the refining facilities which we lease out.
GD: And cocaine?
RTC: Well, if we do one, we can always do the other.
GD: Jesus wept. And why would Bill get his withered balls into such an uproar?
RTC: They don’t want you to get your hands on this. It’s bad enough for you to talk about prominent Nazis working for us let alone this drug business. Be very careful where you put your feet, Gregory. You are dealing with a minefield and I will have to ring off now because I have to talk with Bill. No offense but he has to be told to go and lie down in the corner or I’ll lock him in his cage.
GD: Why I thought he was your friend.
RTC: Bill is useful but Bill has an exalted opinion of himself and it’s time I let the air out of his balloon. So I do appreciate this talk and even more your handling of the subject. We don’t need to discuss this and if Tom the Arrow shirt boy gets onto this with you, keep your mouth shut and change the subject. Oh and do tell me if he does.
GD: Absolutely. I hope I gave Bill the right answers.
RTC: In this business, Gregory, there are no right answers.
GD: Yes. We have only the quick and the dead.
(Concluded at 8:47 AM CST
Over 1,000 Hate Groups Are Now Active in United States, Civil Rights Group Says
February 20, 2019
by Liam Stack
The New York Times
The number of hate groups in the United States rose for the fourth year in a row in 2018, pushed to a record high by a toxic combination of political polarization, anti-immigrant sentiment and technologies that help spread propaganda online, the Southern Poverty Law Center said Wednesday.
The law center said the number of hate groups rose by 7 percent last year to 1,020, a 30 percent jump from 2014. That broadly echoes other worrying developments, including a 30 percent increase in the number of hate crimes reported to the F.B.I. from 2015 through 2017 and a surge of right-wing violence that the Anti-Defamation League said had killed at least 50 people in 2018.
“We’re seeing a lot of bad trends,” Heidi Beirich, the director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in an interview on Wednesday. “There are more hate groups, more hate crimes and more domestic terrorism in that same vein. It is a troubling set of circumstances.”
Ms. Beirich said the increase in extremist activity tracked by her team began in earnest in the early days of the 2016 presidential election, when anxieties over immigration helped propel President Trump to the White House. Before that, she said, the number of hate groups had fallen for three straight years.
“Trump has made people in the white supremacist movement move back into politics and the public domain,” Ms. Beirich said. “He is a critical aspect of this dynamic, but he is not the only reason why the ranks of hate groups are growing. The ability to propagate hate in the online space is key.”
The center said in a statement that most hate groups in the United States espoused some form of white supremacist ideology, including neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederates and white nationalists. It said the number of white nationalist groups jumped by almost 50 percent, to 148 in 2018 from 100.
For the purposes of its study, the center said it considered any organization whose leaders, activities or statement of principles attacks an entire class of people to be a hate group. Violence is not a prerequisite.
The center’s findings run parallel to a report on extremist-related killings in the United States that was issued last month by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
That report said that right-wing extremism was linked to every extremist-related killing the group tracked in 2018, at least 50, and that jihadist groups were linked to none. It said that made 2018 the deadliest year for right-wing extremism since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
The law center and the Anti-Defamation League both pointed to the killing of 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in October as a symptom of the increasingly combustible mix of anti-immigrant sentiment, violence and online conspiracy-mongering.
“The white supremacist attack in Pittsburgh should serve as a wake-up call to everyone about the deadly consequences of hateful rhetoric,” Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the president of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement accompanying its report. “It’s time for our nation’s leaders to appropriately recognize the severity of the threat and to devote the necessary resources to address the scourge of right-wing extremism.”
But the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment had also created “an equal yet opposite reaction,” the Southern Poverty Law Center said. As the number of white supremacist groups rose, so did the number of radical black nationalist groups that espoused anti-white, anti-Semitic or anti-gay and anti-transgender views.
The center said the number of those groups had risen to 264 in 2018 from 233 in 2017, but it noted that the influence of black nationalism in mainstream politics was highly limited.
It did, however, point specifically to comments by the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who the center said echoed white supremacist myths of a looming white genocide in his rhetoric about President Trump, whom he has accused of “planning genocide” against African-Americans.
Mr. Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam have been connected to a continuing controversy surrounding the anti-Trump Women’s March organization, two of whose national leaders have been accused of sympathizing with Mr. Farrakhan and privately expressing anti-Semitic opinions.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which is based in Montgomery, Ala., has tracked domestic extremism since 1971, but in recent years conservatives have accused it of politicizing its findings and falsely labeling right-leaning organizations as hate groups.
The group paid $3.4 million to Maajid Nawaz, a British campaigner against Islamic extremism who sometimes works with conservative anti-Muslim politicians, after it included him on a list of anti-Muslim extremists in 2016. Richard Cohen, the center’s president, said in a public apology that the inclusion of Mr. Nawaz on the list had been “wrong.”
Violent Round Robin letter to right wing Trump American support groups
This is a copy of an email that has been circulating among far-right political action groups. It is worth the reading because it shows threats of violence against anti-Trump citizens and groups
Round Robin letter to right wing Trump American support groups
America was founded in 1620 by Religious Dissenters, True Christians, who fled from secular persecutions in England. They set up a religious community in Plymouth Bay and flourished greatly.
But in subsequent years, America drifted away from her True Christian origins and became a nest of Secularism. Americans have turned away from the One True God to worship Mammon and materialism! Self-indulgence has replaced self-discipline and the cell phone has replaced Our Lord Jesus Christ in daily importance!
But rejoice in your hearts because the True Disciples of Christ have organized to save America from Secular Humanism and hedonism and we are now at the very gates of the True Kingdom of Heaven on earth! The True Disciples have begun their Sacred Mission by gaining virtual control over the Republican Party in almost every state in the Union, have elected a President of our One True Faith, have filled the halls of Congress with Representatives of both the people and Christ the Lord! We are well on our way to reestablish the True Christian nation, under God Almighty, that was founded in 1620.
After years of suffering the watering down of American society by the uni-sex, uni-race forces, America finally has a President who recognizes the vital importance of a white, Christian society and whose aim of cleansing America of alien elements is the true aim of true Americans.
An army of former, imported black slaves, an even larger army of dark-skinned rejects from Central America have flooded America, bringing drugs and a lower standard of living with them. The imported slaves have become the foundation of a degenerate society, devoted to producing an army of welfare children with the brains of chickens.
Donald Trump was elected by the white, and concerned, citizens of this country to cleanse the national stables of impacted filth and return America to her rightful position as leader of the Free World.
Forced integration, gay rights, civil rights, feminism, minorities, taxes, and other issues can be viewed as the result of the American Republic jumping the tracks during the Civil War and being out of control.
Now, with the advent of a True Christian as a President of the United States, we Christians stand closer now to establishing a truly Christian-based government in this country since 1620!
By faith and determination, we have placed many of our people into the ranks of the Republican Party; have organized local elections to put our members on vital school boards where they can, and have, successfully supplanted the false Darwinism with the Divinely Inspired Biblical Creationism.
We have elected members to serve in Congress who are sensitive to our needs and wishes but we need far more in order to establish a firm majority.
Since 2016 dozens of True Christians, by Presidential order have been placed in key positions within the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Drug Administration and on commissions and advisory committees where they have made serious progress.
The earlier God-sent Bush Administration established one of the most righteous sexual health agendas in the Western world.
But the reawakening of America is being blocked by the enemies of the True State who are fearful that our President and his supporters will ruin their plans for global integration so their answer to this is to fight our President and his legion of the righteous, to block, and eventually destroy his goal to make America great again. But his enemies do not realize the growing control and spiritual influence of True Christians in establishing strict control of the American political and educational realms.
Now danger appears and the enemies of white America are working under cover to control and destroy the actions of our President. Rumors in a lying press, many devious plots being launched and plans drawn up to break the President, return to globalism and open our borders to a flood of criminals and degenerates who detest the American system and bring with them disease and drugs. What is to be done?
The true Americans and the loyal supporters of our President must unite and fight against the common enemies of white Americans.
Unite and organize so that by your strength, and your weapons, you can show the enemies of the True State that the armies of True America, by the same force of arms that made America a great country under George Washington, can once again drive out the alien trash and reestablish America as the true leader of the world.
What a man cannot say in words, his gun can say in action.
The bullets of the Lord will cleanse this country of the Liberal Democrats, sexual degenerates and racial trash that have brought America to the brink of destruction.
Copies of this call to arms were sent to activist organizations in the United States.
Official Government Disinformation Methodology
March 18, 2019
by Christian Jürs
Prior to the event of printed, and later television, media, it was not difficult for the world’s power elites and the governments they controlled, to see that unwelcome and potentially dangerous information never reached the masses of people under their control. Most of the general public in more distant times were completely illiterate and received their news from their local priest or from occasional gossip from travelers, The admixture of kings, princes and clergy had an iron control over what their subject could, or could not hear. During the Middle Ages and even into the more liberal Renaissance, universities were viewed with suspicion and those who taught, or otherwise expressed, concepts that were anathema to the concept of feudalism were either killed outright in public or permanently banished. Too-liberal priests were silenced by similar methods. If Papal orders for silence were not followed, priests could, and were, put to the torch as an example for others to note.
However, with the advent of the printing press and a growing literacy in the population, the question of informational control was less certain and with the growing movements in Europe and the American colonies for less restriction and more public expression, the power elites found it necessary to find the means to prevent unpleasant information from being proclaimed throughout their lands and unto all the inhabitants thereof.
The power elites realized that if they could not entirely prevent inconvenient and often dangerous facts to emerge and threaten their authority, their best course was not censorship but to find and develop the means to control the presentation and publication of that they wished to keep entirely secret.
The first method was to block or prevent the release of dangerous material by claiming that such material was a matter of important state security and as such, strictly controlled. This, they said, was not only for their own protection but also the somewhat vague but frightening concept of the security of their people.
The second method was, and has been, to put forth disinformation that so distorts and confuses actual facts as to befuddle a public they see as easily controlled, naïve and gullible.
The mainstream American media which theoretically was a balance against governmental corruption and abuses of power, quickly became little more than a mouthpiece for the same government they were supposed to report on. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, most American newspapers were little better than Rupert Mudoch’s modern tabloids, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing but during the First World War, President Wilson used the American entry into the First World War as an excuse for setting up controls over the American public. Aside from setting up government control over food distribution, the railroads, much industry involved in war production, he also established a powerful propaganda machine coupled with a national informant system that guaranteed his personal control. In 1918, citing national security, Wilson arrested and imprisoned critical news reporters and threatened to shut down their papers.
Wilson was a wartime president and set clear precedents that resonated very loudly with those who read history and understood its realities.
During the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt, another wartime leader, was not as arrogant or highhanded as Wilson (whose empire fell apart after the end of the war that supported it) but he set up informational controls that exist to the present time. And after Roosevelt, and the war, passed into history, the government in the United States created a so-called cold war with Soviet Russia, instead of Hitler’s Germany, as the chief enemy. Control of the American media then fell into the hands of the newly-formed Central Intelligence Agency who eventually possessed an enormous, all-encompassing machine that clamped down firmly on the national print, and later television media, with an iron hand in a velvet glove. Media outlets that proved to be cooperative with CIA propaganda officials were rewarded for their loyalty and cooperation with valuable, and safe, news and the implication was that enemies of the state would either be subject to scorn and derision and that supporters of the state and its policies would receive praise and adulation.
The methodology of a controlled media has a number of aspects which, once clearly understood, renders its techniques and goals far less effective.
Mainstream media sources (especially newspapers) are notorious for reporting flagrantly dishonest and unsupported news stories on the front page, then quietly retracting those stories on the very back page when they are caught. In this case, the point is to railroad the lie into the collective consciousness. Once the lie is finally exposed, it is already too late, and a large portion of the population will not notice or care when the truth comes out. A good example of this would be the collusion of the mainstream media with the Bush administration to convince the American public after 9/11 that Iraq had WMDs, even though no concrete evidence existed to prove it. George W. Bush’s eventual admission that there had never been any WMDs in Iraq (except chemical weapons which the U.S. actually sold to Saddam under the Reagan / Bush administration) was lightly reported or glazed over by most mainstream news sources. The core reason behind a war that killed over a million people was proven to be completely fraudulent, yet I still run into people today who believe that Iraq had nukes…
Unconfirmed Or Controlled Sources As Fact
Cable news venues often cite information from “unnamed” sources, government sources that have an obvious bias or agenda, or “expert” sources without providing an alternative “expert” view. The information provided by these sources is usually backed by nothing more than blind faith. A recent example of this would be the Osama Bin Laden audio tapes which supposedly reveal that the Christmas “Underwear Bomber” was indeed Al-Qaeda:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/osama-bin-laden-addresses-president-obama-audio-tape/story?id=9650267
The media treats the audio tape as undeniable fact in numerous stories, then at the same time prints a side story which shows that the White House cannot confirm that the tape is even real:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60N16I20100124
If the White House cannot confirm the authenticity of the tape, then why did the media report on its contents as if it had been confirmed?
Calculated Omission
Otherwise known as “cherry picking” data. One simple piece of information or root item of truth can derail an entire disinformational news story, so instead of trying to gloss over it, they simply pretend as if it doesn’t exist. When the fact is omitted, the lie can appear entirely rational. This tactic is also used extensively when disinformation agents and crooked journalists engage in open debate.
Distraction, and the Manufacture of Relevance
A recent push for an audit of the Federal Reserve was gaining major public and political support. Instead of reporting on this incredible and unprecedented movement for transparency in the Fed, the MSM spent two months or more reporting non-stop on the death of Michael Jackson, a pop idol who had not released a decent record since “Thriller,” practically deifying the man who only months earlier was being lambasted by the same MSM for having “wandering hands” when children were about.
Dishonest Debate Tactics
Sometimes, men who actually are concerned with the average American’s pursuit of honesty and legitimate fact-driven information break through and appear on T.V. However, rarely are they allowed to share their views or insights without having to fight through a wall of carefully crafted deceit and propaganda. Because the media knows they will lose credibility if they do not allow guests with opposing viewpoints every once in a while, they set up and choreograph specialized T.V. debates in highly restrictive environments which put the guest on the defensive, and make it difficult for them to clearly convey their ideas or facts.
TV pundits are often trained in what are commonly called “Alinsky Tactics.” Saul Alinsky was a moral relativist, and champion of the lie as a tool for the “greater good;” essentially, a modern day Machiavelli. His “Rules for Radicals” were supposedly meant for grassroots activists who opposed the establishment, and emphasized the use of any means necessary to defeat one’s political opposition. But is it truly possible to defeat an establishment built on lies, by use of even more elaborate lies, and by sacrificing one’s ethics?
Today, Alinsky’s rules are used more often by the establishment than by its opposition. These tactics have been adopted by governments and disinformation specialists across the world, but they are most visible in TV debate. While Alinsky sermonized about the need for confrontation in society, his debate tactics are actually designed to circumvent real and honest confrontation of opposing ideas with slippery tricks and diversions. Alinsky’s tactics, and their modern usage, can be summarized as follows:
1) Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.
We see this tactic in many forms. For example, projecting your own movement as mainstream, and your opponent’s as fringe. Convincing your opponent that his fight is a futile one. Your opposition may act differently, or even hesitate to act at all, based on their perception of your power.
2) Never go outside the experience of your people, and whenever possible, go outside of the experience of the enemy.
Don’t get drawn into a debate about a subject you do not know as well as or better than your opposition. If possible, draw them into such a situation instead. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty in your opposition. This is commonly used against unwitting interviewees on cable news shows whose positions are set up to be skewered. The target is blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address. In television and radio, this also serves to waste broadcast time to prevent the target from expressing his own positions.
3) Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
The objective is to target the opponent’s credibility and reputation by accusations of hypocrisy. If the tactician can catch his opponent in even the smallest misstep, it creates an opening for further attacks.
4) Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
“Ron Paul is a crackpot.” “Dennis Kucinich is short and weird.” “9-11 twoofers wear tinfoil hats.” Ridicule is almost impossible to counter. It’s irrational. It infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage. It also works as a pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
5) A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
The popularization of the term “Teabaggers” is a classic example, it caught on by itself because people seem to think it’s clever, and enjoy saying it. Keeping your talking points simple and fun keeps your side motivated, and helps your tactics spread autonomously, without instruction or encouragement.
6) A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
See rule number 6. Don’t become old news. If you keep your tactics fresh, its easier to keep your people active. Not all disinformation agents are paid. The “useful idiots” have to be motivated by other means. Mainstream disinformation often changes gear from one method to the next and then back again.
7) Keep the pressure on with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. Never give the target a chance to rest, regroup, recover or re-strategize. Take advantage of current events and twist their implications to support your position. Never let a good crisis go to waste.
8)The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
This goes hand in hand with Rule #1. Perception is reality. Allow your opposition to expend all of its energy in expectation of an insurmountable scenario. The dire possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.
9) The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
The objective of this pressure is to force the opposition to react and make the mistakes that are necessary for the ultimate success of the campaign.
10) If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counter side.
As grassroots activism tools, Alinsky tactics have historically been used (for example, by labor movements) to force the opposition to react with violence against activists, which leads to popular sympathy for the activists’ cause. Today, false (or co-opted) grassroots movements use this technique in debate as well as in planned street actions. The idea is to provoke (or stage) ruthless attacks against ones’ self, so as to be perceived as the underdog, or the victim. Today, this technique is commonly used to create the illusion that a certain movement is “counterculture” or “anti-establishment.”
11) The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem. Today, this is often used offensively against legitimate activists, such as the opponents of the Federal Reserve. Complain that your opponent is merely “pointing out the problems.” Demand that they offer a solution.
12) Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. The targets supporters will expose themselves. Go after individual people, not organizations or institutions. People hurt faster than institutions.
The next time you view an MSM debate, watch the pundits carefully, you will likely see many if not all of the strategies above used on some unsuspecting individual attempting to tell the truth.
Internet Disinformation Methods
Because the MSM’s bag of tricks has been so exhausted over such a long period of time, many bitter and enraged consumers of information are now turning to alternative news sources, most of which exist on the collective commons we call the internet. At first, it appears, the government and elitists ignored the web as a kind of novelty, or just another mechanism they could exploit in spreading disinformation. As we all now well know, they dropped the ball, and the internet has become the most powerful tool for truth history has ever seen.
That being said, they are now expending incredible resources in order to catch up to their mistake, utilizing every trick in their arsenal to beat web users back into submission. While the anonymity of the internet allows for a certain immunity against many of Saul Alinsky’s manipulative tactics, it also allows governments to attack those trying to spread the truth covertly. In the world of web news, we call these people “disinfo trolls.” Trolls are now being openly employed by governments in countries like the U.S. and Israel specifically to scour the internet for alternative news sites and disrupt their ability to share information.
Internet trolls, also known as “paid posters” or “paid bloggers,” are increasingly being employed by private corporations as well, often for marketing purposes. In fact, it is a rapidly growing industry.
Trolls use a wide variety of strategies, some of which are unique to the internet, here are just a few:
1) Make outrageous comments designed to distract or frustrate: An Alinsky tactic used to make people emotional, although less effective because of the impersonal nature of the web.
2) Pose as a supporter of the truth, then make comments that discredit the movement: We have seen this even on our own forums — trolls pose as supporters of the Liberty Movement, then post long, incoherent diatribes so as to appear either racist or insane. Here is a live example of this tactic in use on Yahoo! Answers.
The key to this tactic is to make references to common Liberty Movement arguments while at the same time babbling nonsense, so as to make those otherwise valid arguments seem ludicrous by association.
In extreme cases, these “Trojan Horse Trolls” have been known to make posts which incite violence — a technique obviously intended to solidify the false assertions of the notorious MIAC report and other ADL/SPLC publications which purport that constitutionalists should be feared as potential domestic terrorists.
3) Dominate Discussions: Trolls often interject themselves into productive web diicussions in order to throw them off course and frustrate the people involved.
4) Prewritten Responses: Many trolls are supplied with a list or database with pre-planned talking points designed as generalized and deceptive responses to honest arguments. 9/11 “debunker” trolls are notorious for this.
5) False Association: This works hand in hand with item #2, by invoking the stereotypes established by the “Trojan Horse Troll.”
For example: calling those against the Federal Reserve “conspiracy theorists” or “lunatics”. Deliberately associating anti-globalist movements with big foot or alien enthusiasts, because of the inherent negative connotations. Using false associations to provoke biases and dissuade people from examining the evidence objectively.
6) False Moderation: Pretending to be the “voice of reason” in an argument with obvious and defined sides in an attempt to move people away from what is clearly true into a “grey area” where the truth becomes “relative.”
7) Straw Man Arguments: A very common technique. The troll will accuse his opposition of subscribing to a certain point of view, even if he does not, and then attacks that point of view. Or, the troll will put words in the mouth of his opposition, and then rebut those specific words. For example: “9/11 truthers say that no planes hit the WTC towers, and that it was all just computer animation. What are they, crazy?”
Sometimes, these strategies are used by average people with serious personality issues. However, if you see someone using these tactics often, or using many of them at the same time, you may be dealing with a paid internet troll.
Government Disinformation Methods
Governments, and the globalists who back them, have immense assets — an almost endless fiat money printing press — and control over most legal and academic institutions. With these advantages, disinformation can be executed on a massive scale. Here are just a handful of the most prominent tactics used by government agencies and private think tanks to guide public opinion, and establish the appearance of consensus:
1) Control The Experts: Most Americans are taught from kindergarten to ignore their instincts for the truth and defer to the “professional class” for all their answers. The problem is that much of the professional class is indoctrinated throughout their college years, many of them molded to support the status quo. Any experts that go against the grain are ostracized by their peers.
2) Control The Data: By controlling the source data of any investigation, be it legal or scientific, the government has the ability to engineer any truth they wish, that is, as long as the people do not care enough to ask for the source data. Two major examples of controlled and hidden source data include; the NIST investigation of the suspicious 9/11 WTC collapses, in which NIST engineers, hired by the government, have kept all source data from their computer models secret, while claiming that the computer models prove the collapses were “natural”. Also, the recent exposure of the CRU Climate Labs and their manipulation of source data in order to fool the public into believing that Global Warming is real, and accepting a world-wide carbon tax. The CRU has refused to release the source data from its experiments for years, and now we know why.
3) Skew The Statistics: This tactic is extremely evident in the Labor Department’s evaluations on unemployment, using such tricks as incorporating ambiguous birth / death ratios into their calculation in order to make it appear as though there are less unemployed people than there really are, or leaving out certain subsections of the population, like those who are unemployed and no longer seeking benefits.
3) Guilt By False Association: Governments faced with an effective opponent will always attempt to demonize that person or group in the eyes of the public. This is often done by associating them with a group or idea that the public already hates. Example: During the last election, they tried to associate Ron Paul supporters with racist groups (and more recently, certain Fox News anchors) in order to deter moderate Democrats from taking an honest look at Congressman Paul’s policies.
4) Manufacture Good News: This falls in with the skewing of statistics, and it also relies heavily on Media cooperation. The economic “Green Shoots” concept is a good example of the combination of government and corporate media interests in order to create an atmosphere of false optimism based on dubious foundations.
5) Controlled Opposition: Men in positions of power have known for centuries the importance of controlled opposition. If a movement rises in opposition to one’s authority, one must usurp that movement’s leadership. If no such movement exists to infiltrate, the establishment will often create a toothless one, in order to fill that social need, and neutralize individuals who might have otherwise taken action themselves.
During the 1960’s and 70’s, the FBI began a secretive program called COINTELPRO. Along with illegal spying on American citizens who were against the Vietnam conflict or in support of the civil rights movement, they also used agents and media sources to pose as supporters of the movement, then purposely created conflict and division, or took control of the direction of the movement altogether. This same tactic has been attempted with the modern Liberty Movement on several levels, but has so far been ineffective in stopping our growth.
The NRA is another good example of controlled opposition, as many gun owners are satisfied that paying their annual NRA dues is tantamount to actively resisting anti-gun legislation; when in fact, the NRA is directly responsible for many of the compromises which result in lost ground on 2nd amendment issues. In this way, gun owners are not only rendered inactive, but actually manipulated into funding the demise of their own cause.
6) False Paradigms: Human beings have a tendency to categorize and label other people and ideas. It is, for better or worse, a fundamental part of how we understand the complexities of the world. This component of human nature, like most any other, can be abused as a powerful tool for social manipulation. By framing a polarized debate according to artificial boundaries, and establishing the two poles of that debate, social engineers can eliminate the perceived possibility of a third alternative. The mainstream media apparatus is the key weapon to this end. The endless creation of dichotomies, and the neat arrangement of ideologies along left/right lines, offers average people a very simple (though hopelessly inaccurate) way of thinking about politics. It forces them to choose a side, usually based solely on emotional or cultural reasons, and often lures them into supporting positions they would otherwise disagree with. It fosters an environment in which beating the other team is more important than ensuring the integrity of your own. Perhaps most importantly, it allows the social engineer to determine what is “fair game” for debate, and what is not.
Alinsky himself wrote: “One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.”
One merely needs to observe a heated debate between a Democrat and a Republican to see how deeply this belief has been ingrained on both sides, and how destructive it is to true intellectual discourse.
Stopping Disinformation
The best way to disarm disinformation agents is to know their methods inside and out. This gives us the ability to point out exactly what they are doing in detail the moment they try to do it. Immediately exposing a disinformation tactic as it is being used is highly destructive to the person utilizing it. It makes them look foolish, dishonest, and weak for even making the attempt. Internet trolls most especially do not know how to handle their methods being deconstructed right in front of their eyes, and usually fold and run from debate when it occurs.
The truth, is precious. It is sad that there are so many in our society that have lost respect for it; people who have traded in their conscience and their soul for temporary financial comfort while sacrificing the stability and balance of the rest of the country in the process. The human psyche breathes on the air of truth, without it, humanity cannot survive. Without it, the species will collapse in on itself, starving from lack of intellectual and emotional sustenance. Disinformation does not only threaten our insight into the workings of our world; it makes us vulnerable to fear, misunderstanding, and doubt, all things that lead to destruction. It can lead good people to commit terrible atrocities against others, or even against themselves. Without a concerted and organized effort to diffuse mass-produced lies, the future will look bleak indeed.
French PM plans new security measures after Champs Elysees rioting
March 17, 2019
by Leigh Thomas
Reuters
PARIS (Reuters) – France’s prime minister will present plans on Monday to crack down on rioters, his office said, after a new flare-up of violence linked to the yellow vest protest movement.
Rioters ransacked stores and restaurants while lighting fires along Paris’ Champs Elysees avenue on Saturday as they clashed with police.
Cutting short a weekend ski trip, President Emmanuel Macron returned to Paris late on Saturday for a crisis meeting with ministers at which he ordered decisions to be taken rapidly “so this doesn’t happen again”.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s office said the latest violence showed current security arrangements were “insufficient”.
“Drawing conclusions from these shortcomings, the prime minister will present the president tomorrow with measures necessary to adapt the security forces stance so they can act with firmness at any time,” it said in a statement.
Cleaners swept up broken glass, while shop owners boarded up smashed windows on Sunday after the worst unrest in central Paris since violence peaked before Christmas in a weekly series of protests.
Vandals left hardly a storefront or cafe unscathed on Saturday, breaking windows and looting luxury stores as they clashed with riot police.
BUILDINGS TORCHED
Rioters also set fire to an upmarket handbag store and badly damaged Fouquet’s restaurant before setting fire to the famous brasserie’s canvas awning.
Two newstands were burnt to their metallic frames and in a nearby street a bank branch was set on fire, badly damaging the building and apartments above it.
“I’m not a tourist but if I were, I would be quite surprised if I arrived in Paris to find the Champs Elysees in such condition,” a pensioner who only gave his name as Serge told Reuters TV.
“People often talk about the ‘City of Lights’, the ‘Fashion Capital’ and all that, but all you can see is destruction, rubbish, protests, burnt kiosks,” he added.
Police estimated that 10,000 people joined the latest yellow vest protest in Paris and Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said a hard-core of about 1,500 was intent on causing trouble.
“We’ve got to be able to stop these people, I don’t know how, but that’s what we’ve asked the prime minister,” Jean-Noel Rheinhardt, who heads a committee representing businesses on the Champs Elysees, told BFM TV.
French government admits security ‘flaws’ in Paris riots
The French finance and interior ministers will face senators this week, as the government grapples with the chaos and disorder of the recent “yellow vest” protest. President Emmanuel Macron has vowed a strong response.
March 18, 2019
DW
France’s government faced harsh criticism on Sunday, in the aftermath of an arson and looting rampage perpetrated by demonstrators during a “yellow vest” protest in Paris the day before.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe acknowledged the existence of security “flaws,” which he said the government would work to rectify.
French police appeared overwhelmed during Saturday’s protest, as demonstrators ran amok on Paris’ famous Champs-Elysee Avenue. So-called black bloc protesters vandalized a popular upscale restaurant, luxury stores, a bank, a chocolatier and several newsstands.
Retailers said that some 80 shops and businesses were affected. Authorities responded with tear gas, stun grenades and water cannon, in an attempt to repel protesters.
“Analysis of yesterday’s events highlights that the measures taken were insufficient to contain the violence and prevent wrongdoing,” Philippe said.
French President Emmanuel Macron cut short a skiing trip to return to Paris, where he vowed “strong” action in response to the disturbances in the capital.
Figures from across the political spectrum blamed Macron’s government for not being able to control the situation. Paris’ socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said on Sunday that she was waiting for “an explanation” from the government, adding that she was “really angry” at the “unprecedented violence”.
“We should be able to master a situation like the one we have just witnessed,” she told Le Parisien newspaper.
Search for solutions
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire is set to host a meeting on Monday with trade groups, business groups and insurers, to discuss the economic impact of the protests, his office said.
Last month, Le Maire estimated the economic impact would slice 0.2 percentage points off France’s economic growth.
On Tuesday, the finance minister will face questioning from two French Senate committees over Saturday’s events. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner will also have to attend hearings in the Senate over the protests.
The hearings are meant to discuss “the means put in place to deal with these disorders.” Lawmakers noted the resulting downgrade in France’s trading situation and “economic attractiveness,” as a consequence of the disruptions on the street, the Senate said in a statement Sunday.
All Trump would do after Brexit is force UK to import American goods for US benefit
March 18, 2019
by Ken Livingstone
RT
Donald Trump is not only the worst president of my lifetime, he’s also the rudest. Although he’s supported the idea of Britain leaving the EU, he’s now complained about Theresa May’s handling of the issue.
It may be that his views have been influenced by the fact that he’s a friend of Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump tweeted: “They will soon be calling me Mr Brexit.”
On Thursday, March 14, during his meeting with the Irish prime minister, Trump said: “It’s a very complex thing right now, it’s tearing a country apart, it’s actually tearing a lot of countries apart, and it’s a shame it has to be that way. But I think we will stay right in our lane. I’m surprised at how badly it’s all gone from the standpoint of a negotiation.
“I gave the Prime Minister [Theresa May] my ideas on how to negotiate it and I think she would have been successful. She didn’t listen to me and that’s fine. I think it could have been negotiated in a very different manner, frankly.”
Trump has also opposed another referendum, saying: “I don’t think another vote would be possible because it would be very unfair to the people that won.”
His views on a second referendum are influenced by the fact that he wants to negotiate a trade deal between America and Britain, saying that for the first time in decades “we can do a very big trade deal with the UK.”
The Irish prime minister then intervened to point out that he was disappointed that Brexit is happening, but warned: “I think it will be a few years until the UK sorts itself out, but in the meantime the European Union is available to talk trade with the US.”
I have never known a time when the House of Commons was in such chaos, with the government defeated again and again in crucial votes about Britain’s future relationship with the EU. Theresa May had faced the biggest defeats in the House of Commons of any prime minister in the last hundred years, and it’s having a huge impact on her personally. She now seems to loathe many of her Tory MPs and the body language between her and Chancellor Philip Hammond looks like their relationship is over, which is pretty devastating for Britain because unless the prime minister and the chancellor have a good working relationship, it can be catastrophic for our economy.
The one thing on which MPs agreed is that there should be a delay in Britain leaving the EU. Two years ago, parliament voted for Britain to leave on March 29 this year, but little progress has been made on the terms on which Britain leaves. The issue now is whether our exit will be delayed to the end of June or, as many EU leaders want, extend it for another two years.
It is possible that parliament might find a majority for a second referendum on whether to leave on the pathetic terms May negotiated or whether we remain inside the EU.
Although the people voted by 52 percent to 48 percent to leave, all recent opinion polls show there would now be a majority of eight or 10 percent in favor of remaining. No one would be surprised that the change in public opinion is not down to what politicians have been saying, but has been triggered by the warnings of Britain’s business community.
The Institute of Directors said that we have ‘parted with reason’ a long time ago, and the British Chambers of Commerce warned that our economy was “still firmly in the danger zone” because no one had agreed on the reason for the extension. Adam Marshall, its director general, warned: “Once again businesses are left waiting for parliament to reach a consensus on a way forward and are losing faith that they will achieve this. In the meantime, firms are continuing to enact their contingency plans, anxiety amongst many businesses is rising, and customers are being lost.”
The British Retail Consortium warned that we were on the knife edge of a no deal and the value of the pound continued to fall as parliament continued to waffle.
Prime Minister May has lost control of her government with eight cabinet ministers voting against her proposals to extend the Article 50 leaving date. Over half of all her MPs voted against her on this. Amazingly, her Brexit secretary voted against the motion on Brexit even though he supported it in a debate in the Commons earlier that day.
It’s not just the Tories that are split. Out of almost 250 Labour MPs, only half a dozen voted to leave during the Referendum. This was not because they love the EU bureaucracy, but they feared it would damage our economy and cost their constituents jobs. But the majority of Labour MPs represent constituencies that voted to leave and many of them have respected that view and voted accordingly. That did not stop 24 Labour MPs voting against their party’s policy last week. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sacked four of his shadow ministers in response.
Theresa May has proposed that our exit be put back to June 30, and this allows her to cancel Britain voting in the elections for the European Parliament. But if the extension goes beyond that date she will have to allow a vote to elect our members of the European Parliament because of the existing laws that govern this. President of the European Council Donald Tusk has called for an extension going on long beyond the three-month period Theresa May has proposed.
By the time you read this, Theresa May will have tried to get her limpid Brexit deal through parliament, although it has already been rejected twice. It is also likely that Labour will vote for a second referendum if it can’t get a general election.
Many Labour MPs are campaigning for a ‘Norway Plus’ deal which would mean Britain stays in membership of the EU single market, meaning that we are governed by the rules of the EU but lose our veto over what those rules should be.
One of the worst problems is the border between the Irish republic and Britain’s Northern Ireland. The real fear is that this could become a haven for people smuggling goods across the border because there are no border checks. If there were border checks, this would damage the living standards of the people of Northern Ireland and could undermine the Good Friday agreement peace deal that Tony Blair negotiated with the IRA just over 20 years ago.
The problems that have torn the British government apart are the legacy of the fact that during the referendum both the Remain and Leave campaigns lied and made ridiculous predictions. Right-wing Brexiteers promised that leaving the EU would see a wonderful transformation of our economy including about £250 million ($331 million) extra each week for the NHS, and those voting for Remain predicted an immediate disastrous recession.
The truth is that the British economy has limped along since the referendum and the biggest damage to our economy has been a huge slump in investment because firms aren’t prepared to invest until they know whether they are going to face painful tariffs in trade between Britain and the EU.
What motivated most of the Brexiteer Tory MPs was that if we leave the EU, they will be able to abolish the regulations that protect the pay and working conditions of the poorest, with workers facing increased hours and shorter holidays.
The simple fact is that no nation has walked away from such an important economic unit before. The European economy is bigger than America or China, so no one could be certain of the long-term consequences. It was all guess work.
What no one was told during the referendum was the fact that in the year before the EU was created at the end of the 1950s, 16 percent of West Germany’s imports came from Britain. In the years that followed, as we remained outside the EU, those exports slumped by half to just eight percent in the year before we joined. Seven years later, West Germany’s imports from Britain had risen to 18 percent.
The idea that we will be able to get from Donald Trump a trade deal that can compensate for the slump in our trade with the EU after we leave is nonsense. All Trump will do is force us to import American goods for America’s benefit. We will be no better off.
Although May is blamed for mishandling this, the real villain is the former prime minister David Cameron. For him to have called a referendum without commissioning research to find out what the consequences would be is unbelievable. But fortunately for him, he’s not going to suffer as he continues to live a comfortable life which he inherits from the wealth made by his ancestors who ran part of the slave trade.
Ken Livingstone is an English politician,and he served as the Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008. He is also a former MP and a former member of the Labour Party.
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