TBR News March 20, 2019

Mar 20 2019

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8

Washington, D.C. March 20, 2019:”From trailer parks all across America one can hear cheering and applause over the New Zealand mosque attacks and the revelation that the killer praised American President Trump for his anti-immigrant views.

Trump is a well-known bigot and he has used his views to garner votes and support for that portion of the American population that would like to cleanse America of all but white, and Christian, citizens.Trump, during his first, and hopefully last, term in office has behaved like someone in serious need of psychiatric counseling.

As his opponents begin to close in on him for his thoroughly dishonest business dealings, Trump will in desperation become even more deranged until at last, there will be silence in the trailer parks and black wreaths will be seen on many doors.And cries of rage from the back ward of a clinic for the rest and rehabilitation of the mentally unraveled.”

 

 

  • New Zealand Suspect’s Actions Are Logical Conclusion of Calling Immigrants “Invaders”
  • New Zealand mosque attacks suspect praised Trump in manifesto
  • Trump calls top aide Kellyanne Conway’s spouse ‘husband from hell’ in Twitter brawl
  • Yale psych prof: If Trump weren’t president he would be “contained and evaluated”
  • Donald Trump Is Racist in Public. Michael Cohen’s Testimony Shows He’s Racist in Private, Too.
  • Trump faces legal issues for the rest of his presidency, no matter what Mueller finds
  • Protesters in Yellow Vests Invade UK Attorney General’s Office
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

New Zealand Suspect’s Actions Are Logical Conclusion of Calling Immigrants “Invaders”

March 18, 2019

by Murtaza Hussain

The Intercept

Brenton Tarrant, who stands accused of killing 50 adults and children at two mosques in New Zealand last week, wants us to know what inspired his actions. Before livestreaming his massacre of Muslim worshipers, he composed a lengthy document that proudly advocates the murder of innocent people in the name of racial purity. The manifesto is predictably disturbing. It is the work of a nihilist who sees a world so bleak and hopeless that it could be improved through acts of mass murder. There is one word in the 74-page document, however, that stood out to me: “invader.”

Tarrant’s words are both lucid and chillingly familiar. His references to immigrants as invaders find echoes in the language used by the president of the United States and far-right leaders across Europe. And that is why it would be a mistake to dismiss them as the incoherent ravings of a madman.

His manifesto is difficult to read. I felt compelled to analyze his words at length, however, because as a nonwhite Westerner — a Muslim no less — I’m one of the “invaders” that he speaks about. There have been calls to simply ignore what Tarrant wrote. While understandable, it is naive to think that ignoring people like him will make their demands go away. Upon reading his manifesto, I must emphasize that the sentiment he expresses — that people like me are outsiders who really belong in some other place — is increasingly common.

The document is based on a key underlying premise known as the “Great Replacement” theory: that nonwhite people living in Western countries are aliens on a mission to plunder and replace the populations of Europe and North America. In the faces of immigrants trying to raise families and build peaceful homes, Tarrant sees unarmed invaders bent on conquering his racially pristine homeland. There are no individuals in his worldview, just faceless masses of “us” and “them.” The latter group is to be kept at a distance at all costs. He approvingly cites the deterrent effect of killing their children.

For those wondering where Tarrant was radicalized, the answer is right out in the open. It is in our media and politics, where minorities, Muslims or otherwise, are vilified as a matter of course. Tarrant’s beliefs reached a violent praxis that I assume many of his fellow travelers would find hard to stomach. But his claims about disastrous birthrates and floods of immigrant invaders are practically banal at this point. Such rhetoric animates the policies of Donald Trump, who has revived a medieval response to “invaders,” promising to contain them behind a giant wall. It comes from the president’s political supporters who openly espouse the same “Great Replacement” theory that motivated Tarrant’s massacre.

This rhetoric about foreign pollution also emanates from the mouths and pens of supposedly liberal public figures. In 2006, the “New Atheist” writer Sam Harris wrote an article claiming that within 25 years, France was on course to have a majority-Muslim population, even if immigration were to stop tomorrow. This demographic shift would mean nothing less than an end to democracy itself, he argued. (Harris did not deem it necessary to provide a citation for his ludicrous population projections.) Tarrant’s manifesto reads like a shortened, albeit more violent, version of the popular 2017 book “The Death of Europe,” by British author Douglas Murray, who argued that immigration had already effectively destroyed European society.

In short, Tarrant’s writings reflect a worldview that is not just confined to the dark corners of the internet, but is openly expressed in media and politics. His alleged actions are the logical conclusion to the rhetoric of “American Carnage” and “The Death of Europe” promoted by prominent figures across the globe.

Tarrant writes that his breaking point came while traveling through France. There, he was overwhelmed by the number of “invaders,” whose black and brown faces he encountered in every city and town. Judging from his words, he didn’t pause to consider that most of these people were in fact not foreigners but the children of people who have lived for several generations in France. They are people who know no home but that country. Tarrant describes being overtaken by emotion when seeing a wartime cemetery, which he views as the resting place of a previous French generation that fought “invaders.” It apparently never occurred to him that the majority of the World War II-era Free French Army, which liberated France from the Nazis, consisted mostly of black and North African colonial soldiers. It is the descendants of these people whose presence caused Tarrant, an Australian tourist, such heartache that he, according to his manifesto, “broke into tears, sobbing alone in the car.”

As we consider the attacks in New Zealand, it is important to understand that Muslims are an easy target for racist violence. They are an unpopular minority in Western countries. Some analysts, even as they condemned Tarrant’s alleged, murders, expressed sympathy with his reasoning about Muslims. This reaction seems to be exactly what Tarrant was counting on. In one section of his manifesto, he makes clear that all “high fertility immigrants” are the enemy, but that he chose to target Muslims because, “they are the most despised group of invaders in the West, attacking them receives the greatest level of support.”

Killing Muslims is only the first stage in the plan he lays out, however. The ultimate goal is changing the demographic makeup of Western countries through a more general program of ethnic cleansing that also targets blacks, Jews, and Asians. “The invaders must be removed from European soil, regardless from where they came or when they came. Roma, African, Indian, Turkish, Semitic or other,” Tarrant writes. Among his stated influences are the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik and Dylann Roof, who murdered nine African-American parishioners at a South Carolina church. Tarrant makes clear that he is not a Christian in any religious sense. His only consistent belief is a genocidal intention to remove the “other,” whether by murder or expulsion.

Though he acted alone, Tarrant ominously claims in his manifesto to have received blessing for his attack from a clandestine far-right organization. Sympathizers with his motives exist in huge numbers, he writes, including in the military and police apparatuses of Western states. So far, no evidence has emerged to corroborate this claim, but looking at the news, it seems entirely plausible.

In his writings, Tarrant makes clear that he has no problems with Muslims who live in their own homelands, nor with Jews, as long as they live in Israel. He simply wants them out of the West. “How they are removed is irrelevant, peacefully, forcefully, happily, violently or diplomatically. They must be removed,” he writes. It is unlikely, of course, that these people will leave their homes voluntarily. The United States and Europe are where they raise their families, pay taxes, attend schools, and contribute their labor to society. To insist that they to “go back” to an imaginary homeland on a distant continent, therefore, is to insist on genocide and ethnic cleansing.

When faced with such an implacable and fanatic demand, it is important to take it seriously. I fear there will be more men like Brenton Tarrant, Anders Breivik, and accused Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, particularly while those in power respond to their messages with a wink and a nod. In the face of such an enemy — that demands that one literally abolish oneself — the comforting idea of compromise evaporates. Racist attacks have continued since the New Zealand killings, including a number of violent assaults. In the face of this reality and the struggles ahead, it seems important to recall a popular Jewish mantra in the face of Nazi oppression, which carries renewed meaning today: “We will outlive them.

 

New Zealand mosque attacks suspect praised Trump in manifesto

Suspected gunman behind the Christchurch rampage dubbed the US president ‘a symbol of renewed white identity’.

March 19, 2019

AlJazeera

The Australian-born suspect who shot and killed dozens of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand, has published a manifesto praising US President Donald Trump and Anders Breivik, the Norwegian white supremacist who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011.

The 74-page dossier, which has been described by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison as a “work of hate”, hailed Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose”.

The 28-year-old, who is now in police custody, also claimed that he had “brief contact” with Breivik and had received a “blessing” for his actions from the mass murderer’s acquaintances.

The dossier stated objections to immigration and multiculturalism and decries the “decaying” culture of the white, European, Western world.

Earlier on Friday, at least 49 people were killed and 20 others seriously wounded in shootings at two mosques in Christchurch in the worst attack in the Pacific Island country’s modern history.

The majority of the victims were shot at the Al Noor mosque, while the rest were killed at another mosque in suburban Linwood.

The Muslim worshippers had congregated for Friday prayers, Islam’s holy day of the week.

Trump, whose rhetoric is sometimes aligned with the far-right in the United States, condemned the “horrible massacre” in a post on Twitter.

“My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The US stands by New Zealand for anything we can do,” he wrote.

Moments before, his spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: “We stand in solidarity with the people of New Zealand and their government against this vicious act of hate.”

“The United States strongly condemns the attack in Christchurch. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” she added.

Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, described the shootings as a “well-planned terrorist attack”, and said this is one of the country’s “darkest days”.

In addition to the Australian-born man, three other suspects, including a woman, have been arrested, according to Mike Bush, New Zealand’s police commissioner.

Live stream

The main suspect also livestreamed his rampage on social media.

The New Zealand government said it could be illegal to share the video, which showed the gunman repeatedly shooting at worshippers from close range.

The Facebook Live video, taken with a camera that appeared to be mounted on the gunman’s body, shows a clean-shaven, Caucasian man with short hair driving to the Al Noor mosque.

He enters the building and fires repeatedly at worshippers as he moves from room to room.

AFP determined the video was genuine through a digital investigation that included matching screenshots of the mosque taken from the gunman’s footage with images available online showing the same areas.

In the video, the attacker parks his car next to the mosque and gets out of the vehicle with a rifle. He slowly goes to the boot of his car and retrieves another firearm.

He then walks into the compound of the mosque and fires at a person standing near the doorway before dropping the rifle and shooting repeatedly with the second weapon as he moves inside.

The gunman fires dozens of bullets at people trying to run away or lying down in huddled groups in corners of the rooms.

The framing of the video, which shows only the gunman’s hands holding the gun as he shoots and reloads, is eerily similar to the style of a first-person shooter video game.

The Facebook account that posted the video was no longer available shortly after the shooting. The Twitter account of the same name was quickly suspended.

“Police alerted us to a video on Facebook shortly after the livestream commenced and we quickly removed both the shooter’s Facebook and Instagram accounts and the video,” Facebook said in a tweet.

“We’re also removing any praise or support for the crime and the shooter or shooters as soon as we’re aware.”

‘Disgusting’

A spokesman for New Zealand’s interior ministry said the video is likely to be classified as objectionable content under local law, and could be illegal to share.

“The content of the video is disturbing and will be harmful for people to see,” he said. “This is a very real tragedy with real victims and we strongly encourage people to not share or view the video.”

In the aftermath of the attacks, Australian Senator Fraser Anning published a statement where he blamed immigration and Muslims.

“The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration programme which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place,” Anning said.

“The truth is that Islam is not like any other faith. It is the religious equivalent of fascism. And just because the followers of this savage belief were not the killers in this instance, does not make them blameless.”

The Queensland senator’s comments were condemned by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who expressed his repulsion.

“The remarks by Senator Fraser Anning in blaming the murderous attacks by a violent, right-wing, extremist terrorist in New Zealand on immigration are disgusting,” Morrison said on Twitter.

“Those views have no place in Australia, let alone the Australian Parliament.”

“….the shooter also talked about American conservative commentator and political activist, Candace Owens being the primary figure of inspiration for him to carry out the attack. “Yes the person that had influenced me above all was Candace Owens. Each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights and her own views helped me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness. Though I will have to disavow some of her beliefs, the extreme actions she calls for are too much, even for my tastes,” the manifesto read.

Owens is the director of communications at the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA, who is known for her pro-Trump stance and her criticism of Black Lives Matter and of the Democratic Party…..” msn

 

Trump calls top aide Kellyanne Conway’s spouse ‘husband from hell’ in Twitter brawl

March 20, 2019

by Alison Frankel and Steve Holland

Reuters

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump refused to let go of his feud with White House aide Kellyanne Conway’s spouse on Wednesday, calling George Conway a “husband from hell” and prompting Conway to renew his accusation that Trump is mentally unfit for his office.

“The president seems determined to prove the point I’ve been making,” Conway told Reuters in response to the president’s latest Twitter broadside.

Of all the brawls Trump has waded into, his back-and-forth with Conway, a lawyer who specializes in litigation, has been one of the more eyebrow-raising in Washington.

Trump relied heavily on Kellyanne Conway, a longtime Republican pollster and strategist, to help steer his presidential campaign to victory in 2016. She is a trusted member of his White House inner circle.

In a tweet, Trump wrote that George Conway is upset that he did not get a job in the Trump administration.

But the Washington Post quoted Conway – who is with New York-based law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz – as saying he actually turned down an offer to head the Justice Department’s Civil Division.

In a morning tweet, Trump wrote, “George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!”

Trump has been expressing his irritation with Conway in response to the lawyer’s recent suggestion the president was suffering from a mental condition such as narcissistic personality disorder and is unfit to serve as president.

Conway suggested the diagnosis in response to a torrent of tweets unleashed by Trump last weekend laying bare his grievances with, among other topics, Fox News Channel’s weekend anchors and the late Senator John McCain.

Conway on Wednesday posted a brief response on Twitter commenting on Trump’s latest tirade: “You. Are. Nuts.”

In a brief telephone interview, Conway dismissed any suggestion that he and his wife have a book or movie deal about their situation.

“Zero. Zilch. The suggestion is absurd,” he said.

He also said he is not fearful about his personal safety as a result of his tiff with Trump. “Most of the unsolicited emails I’ve gotten have been positive,” he said.

Conway declined to comment on the fight’s impact on his career and refused to say anything at all about his marriage.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reporting by Steve Holland and Alison Frankel; editing by Jonathan Oatis

 

Yale psych prof: If Trump weren’t president he would be “contained and evaluated”

Psychiatrist and editor of “Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” says “a lot worse will happen” if Trump is not removed

February 22, 2019

by Chauncey DeVega

Salon

At the center of the chaotic maelstrom that is the Trump presidency is the question of Donald Trump’s mental health. His public behavior (and, by most accounts, his private behavior as well) is that of a man who is a compulsive liar and malignant narcissist, is paranoid, lacks in impulse control and lives in an alternate reality of his own creation.

Donald Trump has recently declared a “national emergency” in order to further expand his power and gut American democracy and the Constitution in the service of his radically destructive right-wing agenda. But in reality it is Donald Trump who is the actual national emergency, an obvious threat to this country and the entire world.

Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe recently revealed that officials in the Justice Department discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from power. Yet it also may be true that Trump’s apparent mental health problems are actually helping him to remain in power and to control his supporters.

How are mentally unwell leaders more dangerous than leaders who are “merely” criminals? How have the American people become so numb to Trump and the Republican Party’s assault on American democracy and the common good? How is dangerous behavior normalized in an unhealthy society — such as ours? How are Trump and his movement affecting negatively the mental and physical health of the American people?

In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with Dr. Bandy Lee. She is a psychiatrist at Yale University and a leading voices among the growing number of mental health and other medical professionals who have been trying to raise public awareness about Donald Trump’s mental health. Lee was lead editor of the bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”

Many members of the pundit class and other observers are stuck in a cycle where they continue to be “shocked” by Donald Trump’s outrageous, anti-democratic and likely illegal behavior. In many ways this is all very anti-climactic. Trump is highly predictable. Are you in any way surprised?

What is happening with Donald Trump is what me and my colleagues predicted several years ago. Nothing is a surprise, but of course, the urgent situation continues because no one is doing anything about it. This is what is putting so many people on edge in the United States and around the world.

How is Donald Trump’s mental health central to the destruction, cruelty and chaos he engages in?

When a person’s mind is pathological we know that it is going to create a lot of chaos and danger. That’s precisely what Trump’s pathology has done. When I or other mental health professionals say that we need to stop him, it is not stopping the person Donald Trump per se, it is actually freeing Donald Trump from the pathology that gets him, and the country, in trouble.

Have the American people become habituated to this crisis? With any other president and given the many dangerous things this man has done, he would be removed from office and there would be mass protests. Somehow Trump hangs on and he’s still remarkably popular.

Allowing a mentally impaired president to remain in power is much more dangerous, as compared to having a president who is just a likely criminal. Studies have shown that delusional leaders are more effective at beguiling others and then getting them to agree with them and go along with their plans and goals than a leader who is just or merely a criminal.

That is highly counterintuitive. Why is a mentally unwell person with power more dangerous than someone who does not possess such attributes?

The common idea is that when someone is mentally impaired that they are somehow disabled. But that is not always the case. When a person is cognitively disabled it may empower some of the more primitive emotional forces to take over. Those primitive forces can be far more powerful than any rational decision-making.

From the “MAGAbomber” to the Pittsburgh synagogue mass murder to more minor acts such as the attack on a journalist at Trump’s rally in Texas recently, it would seem that the American people have lost the capacity to remember. This is a state of  “organized forgetting” where one heretofore unacceptable action is forgotten very quickly because another one soon takes its place. How is this happening?

Human beings are malleable creatures. We adjust to many different kinds and levels of pathology. Why? We actually live in a pretty violent world. As such we are very adaptable. This is how a society can have immense amounts of pathology and many different kinds of atrocities can occur — and yet the population adjusts. As a person or society falls into a more pathological state, an individual or populace starts to actually feel that things are not that wrong. Our ability to recognize that something is a problem starts to diminish, as a person or society falls ever more deeply into the pathology and collective sickness.

What is this stress doing to the American people?

Research shows that stress levels are the highest in our memory — actually higher than any time since World War I. If you think of all the crises that have happened in that time period, we are actually in a worse state. We know that anxiety levels are 70 percent higher than two years ago. This is according to research from the American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association. We know that public mental health is deteriorating. This is shown by the drastically increasing murder rate and epidemics of suicides that the United States is experiencing now. Unfortunately a population becomes habituated to such things. We become more numb to the stress levels. People become jumpier and more anxious and looking for comfort.

The more the population is suffering, for example, the more vulnerable they will be to the false beliefs that Mr. Trump propagates, and be more convinced they are true. The rest of the population then becomes exhausted from having to deal with those people and catching up with Trump’s lies and untruths.

The public is also less likely to be worked up about something that would have outraged them in the past. Trump’s supporters are simultaneously becoming more and more entrenched. They believe Trump. Trump has conditioned his public to believe him and nothing else — not even their own eyes and ears. Trump’s supporters were already vulnerable to begin with. Their sense of individuality and becoming fully human emotionally and intellectually has not been allowed, because of some set of adverse circumstances.

This is when someone like Donald Trump has a great advantage because he can tell people what they want to think and believe. They will believe Donald Trump not because what he says rings  true to them but because they need to believe in and depend on someone. Trump’s supporters need to be able to trust in someone who is bigger, stronger and more capable than they are. Here is the problem: Who would proclaim such things? Only people who are looking to manipulate and deceive. There is a pathological symbiosis between Donald Trump and his supporters.

Consider Trump’s “national emergency,” which is of course based on a lie. This outcome was a fait accompli. Because of Trump’s malignant narcissism and his other apparent mental health issues he could not resist declaring a “national emergency.” The grandeur and attention are too attractive to him and his ego to say no.

I think you are being very astute. I think at this point his pathology is so obvious to those who can see what is actually occurring in America that one does not need to have a degree in psychology to be able to tell what Donald Trump will do next.

Trump is under a lot of stress and he needs to project himself as strong and decisive. Trump wants to make full use of his executive power, and he’ll continue to push the limits. Remember that he has had two years with absolutely no checks and balances. He is now used to exercising power and not having any limits placed on him. To have limits now placed on him now is extremely frustrating for him.

This is why someone with Donald Trump’s mental impairments possessing so much power is such a dangerous state of affairs for the United States and the world. Trump is going to abuse his powers even more than he has already. There will be no limit on what Trump is willing to do in terms of abusing his power as president.

Is there any internal governor that tells Donald Trump, “No, do not do this, this is a bad idea”?

That is what he is lacking. Donald Trump does not have internal boundaries or the ability to engage in limit setting. This is why with individuals such as Donald Trump the first step in treatment is to set limits and contain the person, because they’re incapable of containing themselves. As much as people with such a condition are going to resist and complain, they actually feel more reassured when limits are placed on them. Why? Because of their internal feeling of chaos, having no boundaries and feeling so out of control. What has taken place so far during the whole of Trump’s presidency is the opposite of what we need to do for correct treatment.

Donald Trump needs to have limits set on him, be urgently evaluated, have access to weapons taken away. Then we need to figure out the least restrictive means of containing him. The containment has to come from the outside. Giving a sick person such as Trump what they want and what they’re demanding is exactly the wrong thing to do, for both the sake of the person as well as society.

You have had White House insiders reach out to you privately for advice about Donald Trump’s mental health and their fears about what he might do. Now Andrew McCabe has confirmed that there have been serious conversations about invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove Trump from office. What were you thinking when this information was made public last week?

I recently came back from a national symposium on the 25th Amendment. The original author of the 25th Amendment was there as well. There are currently some conundrums with the 25th Amendment, because the procedure was created so that it would not be invoked frivolously. But the problem with the 25th Amendment is that the most incapable presidents would not appear so obviously disabled. Cognitive impairments such as paranoia or delusion are far more dangerous than negative impairments, for example, someone who is unconscious or withdrawn. But cognitive impairments are more likely to appear as an actual political choice even as they cause more damage to the country and world.

I think there needs to be an equal dialogue between medical professionals, legal professionals and political leaders about the 25th Amendment and when it should be invoked.

If there were public hearings about Donald Trump’s mental health and fitness for office, what evidence would be presented in favor of removing him?

A great amount of evidence has already been revealed. Donald Trump does not seem to be able to take in advice or important information. He has shown an inability to process that information and apply it to the world as it actually exists. Trump has not shown an ability to think about consequences before he makes rational, reality-based decisions that are not unduly influenced by impulse or his emotional needs.

These are just some of the basic requirements for having proper mental capacity and Trump has not shown them. Some of the most important aspects of mental capacity seem to be absent in him. A standardized procedure to test Trump’s mental capacity and health, one that is done in person, is currently advisable. We could then quantify the level to which Donald Trump is mentally incapable. There are standardized procedures for assessing mental health which are performed every day, and in every community in this country.

Given both Trump’s public behavior as well as other information about his private behavior that has now come to light, if he were a private citizen how would this situation be handled differently?

If Donald Trump were anyone other than the president of the United States, he would already be contained and evaluated. We actually have all the information to make that determination, because when a mental health professional is assessing dangerousness they do not depend upon a personal interview because such tests are unreliable. The person being assessed  is likely to hide the very things that the mental health professional is trying to find out.

The way you assess dangerousness in real life is by consulting the people who are around a person and who have had close contact with him or her. There are now plenty of reports from those who have worked in the White House and who have had contact with Donald Trump which suggest that something is wrong with him.

We also know the result of Donald Trump being president is that he has actually been dangerous. Hate crimes have escalated. Trump has also dramatically escalated the rates of violence in America. There was the Trump MAGAbomber, the lethal attack on journalists in [Annapolis, Maryland,] and the anti-Semitic attack at the synagogue. All these are traceable to either the ideas or the stances that Mr. Trump has made. Moreover, ABC News has reported that there are at least 17 court cases where the defense has actually cited Mr. Trump as the cause of the defendant acting in violent and assaultive ways. We know that Donald Trump is dangerous. Empirical data shows this. It is no longer in question.

All of the violence, including the geopolitical instability that exists right now, was very much inevitable. Those mental health professionals who have been sounding the alarm about what Trump would mean for the country and the world could have told you on day one — or before — of Trump’s presidency that this was all going to happen. Everything that we argued and demonstrated in our book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” has borne out to be true. I am telling the world right now that a lot worse is going to happen if Donald Trump is not contained.

In terms of Trump’s “national emergency,” how much worse are matters going to become? What would you warn the American people to be prepared for?

I think what we need to be most afraid of is the inability of so many people to see Donald Trump and what he has done and is doing as a problem anymore. We’re already immensely habituated. Trump pulled out of the nuclear arms agreement with Russia and we’re so busy attending to the next emergency that we have forgotten about it. A fuse has been lit for nuclear catastrophe. We as a country cannot continue to push our luck. The way Trump’s psychology works is that he is very attracted to nuclear weapons and nuclear war. Trump will play all his cards and go all the way to show how strong and invincible he is. The more Trump is shamed or humiliated the more he will go in that direction. This is why this moment is so dangerous with Donald Trump.

As the Mueller investigation is drawing to a close and the Democratic Party is exercising its oversight, and he’s losing his supporters, the dangers of a nuclear war or some other kind of devastating war are going to accelerate. Trump is declaring a fake national emergency in order to create more emergencies and crises. A rational person can be defeated through logic. Trump is pathological. He simply overwhelms rational people. That is how he overcomes them.

The end of the world, the end of humankind, none of that will matter with a person like Donald Trump when his sense of self is imperiled.

Is there any way to reach Donald Trump’s supporters to convince them of the danger in which he has put this country and the world? Is that wasted energy? Can Trump’s supporters ever be reached by appeals to reason or fact?

I think that Trump supporters are reachable. In fact, I think very few of them are totally unreachable. However the way to reach them is not with facts. It is not with the truth. It is not through showing them that they are wrong. I have actually communicated with a number of Trump supporters. They would write me at first, angry at me for what I’ve been saying about Donald Trump. But once you develop a personal relationship with them, a very human relationship, and they recognize that you are genuine and that you care, that is what really matters. Although I cannot really convert Trump’s supporters from their beliefs, they come close to questioning their initial positions. I would say that human connection is the most powerful way to reach Trump’s supporters. They are so hungry for that kind of caring and attention.

There are many social problems in America, such as income and wealth inequality. Unfortunately the country’s leaders and many of its voters have been doing the opposite of what is needed to heal the society. America has been growing sicker and sicker. This is why so many of America’s citizens and voters were attracted to an impaired leader like Donald Trump in the first place. The way that we heal society and prevent another Donald Trump from rising to power is to improve the many social inequalities in the United States.

 

Donald Trump Is Racist in Public. Michael Cohen’s Testimony Shows He’s Racist in Private, Too.

February 27, 2019

by Gabrielle Bruney

Esquire

President Trump has a long history of public racism, but according to Michael Cohen, he’s even more openly bigoted behind the scenes.

The president’s former personal lawyer and fixer, who plead guilty last summer to charges of campaign finance violations and fraud, is testifying before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. Copies of Cohen’s planned statements to Congress were given to the press Tuesday night, and contained numerous explosive allegations—among them, that Trump is loudly racist.

“The country has seen Mr. Trump court white supremacists and bigots,” says Cohen in the statement. “In private, he is even worse.”

He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a “shithole.” This was when Barack Obama was President of the United States.

While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way. And, he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid.

While Cohen is a known liar, his allegations about Trump’s racism are in keeping with a pattern of bigotry from the president that spans decades. As president, Trump has largely pursued a political agenda of racism towards Latin Americans and Muslims, he also has a long history of bigotry towards African-Americans.

In the 1970s, Trump’s real estate company company discriminated against black potential renters. (According to The New York Times, one superintendent said that he had been instructed to note applications from black apartment seekers with “C,” for colored.) In the ‘90s, he took out full-page ads in New York newspapers advocating for the death penalty for five black and Latino teens accused of raping a white woman. Even in 2016, he insisted they were guilty—though they’d been exonerated more than a decade earlier.

Trump built his 2016 campaign on the “birther” conspiracy theory, insisting that President Obama was born in Kenya, and throughout his presidency has missed no opportunity to demean the intelligence of his black critics. Multiple sources told The Times in 2017 that Trump had said immigrants from Nigeria live in huts and that Haitians “all have aids.”

Publicly, Trump has attempted to push the narrative that he is a friend to black people, often overstating the African-American employment rate under his presidency and citing questionable polling data concerning his popularity among his black constituents.

 

Trump faces legal issues for the rest of his presidency, no matter what Mueller finds

February 22, 2019

by Chris Megerian

Los Angeles Times

President Trump is likely to celebrate if the final report from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III echoes Trump’s relentless claims of “no collusion” with Russia — or at least doesn’t outline a criminal conspiracy between his 2016 campaign and the Kremlin.

No matter what Mueller concludes, the president remains in considerable legal jeopardy.

The Russia probe spawned a web of federal, state and congressional inquiries into virtually every aspect of Trump’s career — the company that bears his name, the campaign that won him the White House, the inauguration that celebrated his improbable victory, and the administration that he currently leads from the Oval Office.

Prosecutors in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Washington and Virginia are all pulling at threads that the FBI started unraveling two years ago. Legal problems, and possibly further indictments of Trump’s friends and aides, are likely to shadow the president for the rest of his White House tenure.

“Once you turn over one stone, there are a host of other matters that come to light,” said Bruce Udolf, who worked for the independent counsel’s office that investigated President Clinton. “And you start turning over those stones as well.”

In addition to the 34 people charged by Mueller, other crimes have been uncovered in other jurisdictions.

The U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, for example, successfully prosecuted Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, for hush money payments to two women who claimed they had affairs with Trump. He pleaded guilty to two campaign finance violations, among other crimes.

Prosecutors from the same office also have issued subpoenas for records from Trump’s inauguration, including how the inaugural committee spent a record $107 million. The U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, based in Brooklyn, is reportedly conducting a related probe.

So is the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., where a lobbyist, Sam Patten, has already pleaded guilty to helping a Ukrainian oligarch illegally buy tickets to Trump’s inauguration.

And the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia has charged an Iranian American businessman in illegal lobbying on behalf of Turkey, a case that grew out Mueller’s prosecution of Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn.

State officials are also digging into Trump. In December, the New York state attorney general forced the Donald J. Trump Foundation, once billed as the charitable arm of the president’s business empire, to dissolve and give away remaining assets under court supervision.

The attorney general, Barbara Underwood, accused the foundation of “functioning as little more than a checkbook” for Trump’s business and political interests, and of “a shocking pattern of illegality” that included unlawfully coordinating with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Her office also has pursued a lawsuit that could bar Trump and three of his adult children from the boards of other New York charities, as well as order them to pay millions of dollars in restitution and penalties.

State authorities also could blunt Trump’s ability to pardon allies because his power extends only to convictions under federal law.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is preparing state criminal charges against Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, to ensure he goes to prison even if the president pardons him for federal crimes, several media outlets reported Friday. Manafort has been convicted in two federal cases brought by Mueller.

In Congress, newly empowered House Democrats are rolling out investigations into Trump’s unreleased tax returns, a controversial proposal to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, the White House’s handling of security clearances for classified information, and more.

“Once the oversight process kicks in, you never know where it’s going to end up,” said Jim Manley, a former senior Democratic aide on Capitol Hill. “With Democrats in control, no one can expect that they know how this is going to play out.”

Trump has slammed the congressional probes as “presidential harassment.” Democrats are going “nuts” while “looking at every aspect of my life, both financial and personal, even though there is no reason to be doing so,” he tweeted.

Congressional investigations can fizzle out in partisan finger-pointing. But some uncover real scandals and snowball into direct threats for the White House.

“Investigations take on a life of their own, and they usually end up much broader than what they originally looked at,” said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University.

The independent counsel appointed to investigate Clinton in 1994 started with a suspicious real estate transaction in Arkansas, for example. Four years later the office finished by probing the president’s affair with a White House intern, a scandal that led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House.

Watergate, the mother of all scandals, began with a bungled burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972. It ended two years later with President Nixon resigning from office and many of his top aides in handcuffs.

“Every time we developed one lead, another one came along,” said Rufus Edmisten, who served as deputy counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee

The Russia investigation has also produced unexpected leads, especially from Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer.

After he pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations for the hush money payments, Cohen told the court in New York that Trump had directed the illegal scheme, the most direct accusation yet that the president was personally involved in a crime.

The escalating investigations in New York have alarmed Trump’s allies.

“I think that the Mueller investigation is not the president’s biggest problem,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former U.S. attorney, said recently on MSNBC. “Southern District of New York’s investigation has always been much more dangerous.”

Some prosecutions have pierced the murky world of foreign lobbying, which was loosely scrutinized before Mueller was appointed.

Flynn, who was forced to resign as Trump’s national security advisor after lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, later admitted to working as an unregistered foreign agent for Turkey during the 2016 campaign.

“Arguably you sold your country out,” a judge told him in December.

The Flynn investigation spawned another case. Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia recently charged Flynn’s former business partner Bijan Kian with conspiracy and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Turkey. He has pleaded not guilty.

Also under indictment is Kamil Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman who hired Flynn’s firm and has denied that Ankara played any role in the contract.

A different scheme was unearthed while Mueller prosecuted Manafort and Rick Gates, the chairman and deputy chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign, for money laundering, conspiracy and other crimes related to their work as political consultants in Ukraine.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, a prominent law firm that worked with Manafort, agreed in January to forfeit $4.6 million from the project.

The Southern District of New York is also scrutinizing some of Manafort’s former colleagues, including former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig, longtime Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta and former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber. No charges have been filed.

 

Protesters in Yellow Vests Invade UK Attorney General’s Office

March 19, 2019

Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) – Protesters wearing yellow vests invaded the office of Britain’s Attorney General in central London on Tuesday.

Television footage showed them outside the building waving flags and the London Evening Standard reported they were chanting “we want a new Attorney General”. It was not immediately clear what prompted the protest.

“Police were called at 1.45pm to reports of protesters inside the Attorney General’s office,” London police said on Twitter. “Officers are on scene and dealing. No arrests at this point

,

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

March 20, 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. 43

Date: Friday, October 25, 1996

Commenced: 3:45 PM CST

Concluded: 4:15 PM CST

 

GD: Good afternoon, Robert. Everything going well for you? How was your doctor’s appointment?

RTC: Well, no results but I am resigned to being old, Gregory. When you get to my age, you’ll count the day as wonderful if you can open your eyes in the morning. How is it with you?

GD: It goes. Moving to Illinois was not the best of ideas but my son left me little choice. It was move or else.

RTC: Or else what?

GD: He would leave and I would be stuck with a huge rent for a big house with a swimming pool that he insisted we have but he only used once. I used it all the time but I had to clean it and with all the trees and the occasional drowned squirrel, it was a wonderful addition that I would never want again unless I was rich enough to afford a weekly pool service. Of course the scumbag neighbors wanted their filthy kids to use it but I said that was not possible. I told them my insurance forbade it but actually, who wants an army of screaming little assholes using the pool as their private toilet?

RTC: Sounds like you put your Scrooge hat on this morning.

GD: Actually, I like kids. If you barbecue the small ones, they go well with a pitcher of Jack Daniels.

RTC: For God’s sake, don’t ever say that around a Jew or you’ll go stone deaf from the screaming.

GD: Oh, I know you’re right about that one. It’s a little like saying that you’re looking for a chink in someone’s armor and Asian-Americans start shouting. And never call a spade, a spade.

RTC: Yes. We live in an artificial society, Gregory. Our primitive selves still heft the vanished club with which to smite other cave-dwellers.

GD: In the Mueller book, I made reference to the fact that we now have nice-nice titles for people. I said we call janitors ‘sanitary engineers’ and that Mongoloids are now called ‘differently abled.’ And some reader wrote a nasty letter to my publisher about this which he forwarded for my comment. She said she was horrified and repulsed by the use of the Mongoloid idiot implication. Her little Timmy was the sweetest child on earth and I ought to be thrashed for calling him this terrible, forbidden name.

RTC: Did you reply?

GD: Oh yes. I wrote to her that having read her letter with sorrow because she was stuck with a retard, I suggested, very pointedly, that she ought to put some chlorine in her gene pool.

RTC: (Laughter) Gregory, you didn’t.

GD: Why not? Hell, the Greeks knew something about genes and they left their retards out on the mountainside to either die slowly or more quickly when the animals got them. Keeps the race clean if you follow me. Now, we let the innates breed and they are filling what passes for civilization with all kinds of lopsided mongrels. Malthus doesn’t mention eugenics but I feel that the herd should be thinned and the best breeding stock put in a separate pen to avoid two legged goats or chickens covered with fur.

RTC: You sound like a Nazi. As I recall, we had that Dr. Mengele on the payroll. Down in South America where we wanted him to do work on breeding superior people.

GD: Jesus H. Christ, Robert, talk about infuriating the Jews. If they ever found out about that delightful fact, all their newspapers, magazines and television stations would do terrible damage to the CIA. My grandfather was a Nazi but I am not.

RTC: Over there?

GD: No, here. A member of the AO in good standing.

RTC: Pardon?

GD: The Auslands Organization. Party members residing outside Germany. He was a banker with close connections to the Schreoder people in Cologne. Party member since 1923.

RTC: Well, the CIA is now full of Jews so if they find that out, they will do more than keep your books out of the bookstores.

GD: I suppose if I turned my back on them, I might have some trouble. They don’t like confrontation and love to work in the dark or through surrogates. They hate the Mueller books, not because Mueller was anti-Semitic but because he is presented as a human being. To professional Jews, all Germans are evil. Little children of eight were trained to visit the concentration camp in their neighborhood and toss screaming Jewish babies into the giant bonfires that burned day and night.

RTC: Now I know you’re joking.

GD: Of course but that sort of silly crap is very close to what they do.

RTC: Of course it’s to make money and gain moral superiority. ‘Oh Mr. Salesman, my whole family died in the gas chambers. Terrible. Can you give a poor survivor 50% off on that couch?’

GD: Robert, that’s very unkind. True but unkind.

RTC: I remember when they attacked the Liberty and were killing Americans. Deliberate of course and the Navy sent aircraft to wipe them out. Johnson found out about this and stopped the flight. Why? He didn’t want to offend Israel.

GD: What about dead Americans?

RTC: Pales into insignificance when balanced against the vital needs of precious Israel. At the time, they were murdering captured Etyptian soldiers and they didn’t want us listening in so the tried to sink the ship.

GD: And Pollard…

RTC: Oh my, yes and even now they want us to liberate him. They made him an honorary member of the Knesset and put big bucks away for him in a private account. And this for an American who was stealing important secrets and giving them to what was supposed to be an ally.

GD: Did you ever read the Bunche report?

RTC: Ralph Bunche. The UN man?

GD: Yes. After the Jews murdered Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross and one of their royal family, solely because he refused to allow them to butcher Arab farmers, they killed him and Bunche, who was on Cypress dealing with refugees, was given his job. The UN prepared a chronology of violence in Palestine from ’44 until ’48…day by day. A wonderful chronicle of arson, murder, kidnapping, poisoning and God alone knows what atrocities. Blowing up hotels full of people and so on. I got a copy from an Army friend and if you like, I can send you a photo copy.

RTC: That I would like to see although there’s nothing I can do about it now.

GD: And when you were in the CIA?

RTC: I never liked dealing with those people. Jim Angleton loved them and kissed their asses but I never trusted any of them.

GD: Especially our allies?

RTC: Oh no, they are not our allies. If it weren’t for the fact that Jews have lots of money and own almost all the newspapers and TV stations, we wouldn’t be so eager to kiss their hairy asses, believe me.

GD: Well, the wheel turns, Robert, and one day there will be a reckoning of sorts. I don’t forsee enormous gas chambers being built in Detroit but the public can get very unpleasant when it gets angry.

RTC: But without the papers and TV and with political correctness in full swing, I can’t see mobs in the street burning down kosher meat stores.

GD: Who knows the way the wheel turns?

RTC: But don’t put any of this into future books, Gregory. Not a good idea. You will be accused of masterminding the assassination of Lincoln.

GD: Well, they may have the newspapers but there are other avenues. I remember once when I was giving a lecture, some old bitch came up to me afterwards and began telling me how her whole family had been turned into lampshades and soap at Auschwutz. She dared me to respond but I did.

RTC: And? God help us all, what did you say?

GD: Why, I said my uncle had died at Auischwitz during the war. She blinked and asked me if he were a Jew.

GD: I told her no, he was not. I said he got drunk on the Fuehrer’s birthday, fell out of a guard tower and broke his neck.

RTC: My God, you have balls, Gregory. What did she do?

GD: I think she swallowed her false teeth. However, everyone around us started laughing so not everyone was mad at me. She waddled off before I could tell her about the new German pizza oven that seated four.

RTC: Gregory, do let us change the subject. Suppose some Jewish FBI agents were listening to this?

GD: I would offer a special bargain on hand soap. I could set up a booth at a fair with hand soap in piles and a sign saying ‘Find a Relative!’ over it. Probably not a good idea. They would ask me for a 50% discount. Oh, by the way, to change the subject…

RTC: Thank God…

GD: Yes. Did you know that the British Prince Consort, Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, was a German, not a Greek. He also had been a uniformed member of several Nazi organizations before he joined the Royal Navy. His brother had been a member of the SS and his sister had been a German nurse so they never got invited to the royal wedding. His uncle was Prince Phillip of Hesse who lived in Italy where he married their Crown Princess. He was Hitler’s art dealer in Italy. Phillip is related to the last Empress of Russia, the German Kaiser  and others. His uncle was a general in the SA. I have a snapshot of him in his Hitler Youth uniform, dagger and all, with a friend of mine when both were at a Hitler Youth rally. I would imagine the IRA would love to buy that one.

RTC: I had heard something about this. Phil is a nasty piece of arrogant work. Anthony Blunt…

GD: I know all about his going to Germany and hiding references to Phillp’s Nazi past. That’s why he never got arrested when he was exposed as a Russian spy.

RTC: You do get around, Gregory.

GD: If we got together, I could tell you lots of interesting facts, Robert. Well, enough evil for the moment. My dog is making go outside noises so I had best leave you. I will call you later, OK?

RTC: Salud.

 

(Concluded at 4:15 Pm CST)

 

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

 

 

2 responses so far

  1. Charles Anderson

    Since I never got the copy I paid for, I am still nevertheless interested in obtaining a PRINT COPY of the Crowley confessions, even if I have to pay a second time. Please advise.

  2. ‘Confessions?’ We have ‘Conversations with the Crow.’ Someone else handles book sales so write me direct at adroyster@hotmail.com and I will follow this up. ADR

Leave a Reply