Donald trump. what is your take on him?

[mattiasNYC]

I agree, it's all been said now.  If Trump does something worthy of another thread, someone will start one.

DaveP

It'll take, what, a week at most?

 

[bluebird]

Yea but at least the new posts will be more specific and current. This one is just too broad and is gonna keep going forever. Its like a sick monster dragging itself through a puddle of poo. Let's put it out of its misery.

 

[tands]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa2x1iJJ7W0

So, some more about this clip, from memory. The guy doing most of the talking tortured and then killed more than a thousand people, the CIA started them off with lists. The quiet guy in black flinching and wincing has just told him his father was one of the people killed, that as a kid he found him after, beside the road, which inspired the guy to go on his big talk there. These guys are gangsters, part the dominant political party which is made up of the dominant gangsters. They have no fear of being arrested or charged with anything, as they control the entire government. Here's the terrace where the guy killed the people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZqEzIEWzPk

The newly released files underline the US embassy’s and state department’s early, detailed and ongoing knowledge of the killings and eagerness to avoid doing anything that would hinder the Indonesian army. Historians had already established that the US provided lists of senior communist party officials, radio equipment and money as part of active support for the army.

The documents specifically mention mass killings ordered by Suharto, a general who within months would seize total power and rule Indonesia for more than three decades, and the pivotal role in carrying out the massacres by groups that today remain Indonesia’s biggest mainstream Muslim organizations: Nahdlatul Ulama, its youth wing Ansor and Muhammadiyah.

A 21 December 1965 cable from the embassy’s first secretary, Mary Vance Trent, to the state department referred to events as a “fantastic switch which has occurred over 10 short weeks”. It also included an estimate that 100,000 people had been slaughtered.

In Bali alone, some 10,000 people had been killed by mid-December, including the parents and distant relatives of the island’s pro-communist governor, and the slaughter was continuing, the cable said. Two months later, another embassy cable cited estimates that the killings in Bali had swelled to 80,000.

The release of the documents coincides with an upsurge in anti-communist rhetoric in Indonesia, where communism remains a frequently invoked bogeyman for conservatives despite the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly three decades ago and China’s embrace of global capitalism.

Discussion of the 1965-66 period that departs from the Suharto era’s partly fictional account of a heroic national uprising against communism is still discouraged. A landmark symposium last year that brought together ageing survivors of the bloodbath and government ministers sparked a furious backlash.

“The mass killings of 1965-66 are among the world’s worst crimes against humanity, and our country’s darkest secret,” said Veronica Koman, an Indonesian human rights lawyer. “The 1965-66 survivors are all very old now, and I’m afraid that they will not see justice before they die. Hopefully with these cables coming to light, the truth can emerge and perpetrators can be held accountable.”

Indonesia’s Muslim mass organizations are among those reluctant to face scrutiny for their role, which in the fevered atmosphere of 1965 was characterized by Islamic leaders as a holy war against atheists.

Under the direction of the army, the Muslim organizations Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah were enthusiastic participants in mass murder, carrying out indiscriminate killings as well as organized executions, according to the documents. They also mention the army’s recruiting of Catholics to help with its extermination campaign in central Java.

A December 1965 cable from the US consulate in Medan, Indonesia, reported that preachers in Muhammadiyah mosques were telling congregations that all who joined the communist party must be killed, saying they are the “lowest order of infidel, the shedding of whose blood is comparable to killing chicken”.

A detailed four-page report covering mid- to late November 1965 by the US embassy’s political affairs officer, Edward E Masters, discussed the spread of mass executions to several provinces and the role of youth groups in helping to solve the “main problem” of where to house and what to feed PKI prisoners. PKI is the Indonesian acronym for the country’s communist party.

“Many provinces appear to be successfully meeting this problem by executing their PKI prisoners, or killing them before they are captured, a task in which Moslem youth groups are providing assistance,” the report said. A cable from earlier in the month mentions an estimated 62,000 prisoners in the province of Central Java alone.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/17/indonesia-anti-communist-killings-us-declassified-files

 

[tands]

In fact, American government employees did not just stand by – but were deeply complicit with the Indonesian killings.

The CIA helped to lay the groundwork for the 1965 coup by mobilizing Muslim and regional separatists to overthrow the Socialist President President Achmed Sukarno, who had threatened to expropriate U.S. owned rubber plantations and oil companies.

The CIA also created a police mobile brigade as a counterweight to the military when it was still loyal to Sukarno, and mobilized “goon squads” that were to be activated in case the communists attempted to seize power.

CIA agents working under the cover of USAID, including possibly Barack Obama’s mother Ann Dunham, provided information on the political affiliation of villagers in the countryside while USAID’s Office of Public Safety assisted in the modernization of record keeping functions through police training programs, which aided in the creation of blacklists.

In a post-retirement interview, Robert Amory, the CIA’s Deputy Director from 1952-1962, commented that the “groundwork done there [with police training] in Indonesia may have been responsible for the speed with which [the Suharto coup]…. was wrapped up.” (See Jeremy Kuzmarov, Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American Century. Massachusetts, 2012, ch. 5).

These comments suggest an important level of complicity with the mass killing going beyond merely allowing them to happen.

In the early 1970s, records show that the CIA resumed arms shipments to the police through CIA front companies and helped Jakarta’s chief of police, Benny Soebianto, locate arms dealers in Western Europe and Japan.

Rockwell Standard had delivered 200 light aircraft in the midst of the genocidal killings and Stanvac (later Exxon-Mobil) increased payments to the Indonesian army’s oil company, Permina, headed by an ally of Suharto instrumental to the coup.

Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco subsequently became Permina’s chief contractor for oil and liquefied natural gas projects, and developed a telecommunications network in Papua New Guinea and copper mine on the Indonesian port of New Guinea. (See Sally Denton, The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World. Simon and Shuster, 2016)

Goodyear Tires meanwhile used slave labor from death camps to harvest its rubber on plantations that Sukarno had threatened to expropriate. (See Peter Dale Scott, “North American Universities and the 1965 Indonesian Massacre. http://apjjf.org/2014/12/50/Peter-Dale-Scott/4234.html)

The Times in its article attributes U.S. intervention in Indonesia to the domino theory and fear that Indonesia would fall to communism when U.S. troops were already stationed in Vietnam.

This analysis obscures how American strategic planners valued Indonesia far more than Vietnam because of its oil and mineral wealth, and its geographic location next to the principal lines of communication between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The use of proxy forces to consolidate a client government would in turn become a model for covert operations in Cambodia in 1970 and Chile in 1973, where ample blood was also spilled.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/american-complicity-in-indonesian-killings-runs-deep_us_59e81584e4b0153c4c3ec537

Also.

http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20282:Cables-Show-US-Complicity-in-Indonesia-Genocide

 

[tands]

WASHINGTON ― Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority is canceling its controversial $300 million contract with Whitefish Energy Holdings to restore the island’s hurricane-ravaged electrical grid, officials announced Sunday.

Ricardo Ramos, executive director of PREPA, said at a press conference he would honor Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s Sunday morning request to terminate the business deal, which has raised questions from several lawmakers and government agencies.

“I want to clarify, so it’s very clear, that the cancellation of this contract does not respond to an acceptance that there was something outside of the law or out of line with [PREPA’s] procedures of emergency contracts,” Ramos said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Friday that it had “significant concerns” over PREPA’s decision to award Whitefish the contract earlier this month and would be conducting a review.

Whitefish, a two-year-old firm based in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s Montana hometown and financially backed in part by a major donor to President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, had just two full-time employees when Hurricane Maria hit the island more than a month ago.

Language in the contract ― a full copy is here ― appeared to give Whitefish a sweetheart deal as the people of Puerto Rico struggle to recover from the devastation of the hurricane.

The contract stated that, “In no event shall [government bodies] have the right to audit or review the cost and profit elements.” That gave Whitefish wide discretion and privacy over how it used $300 million in U.S. taxpayer money.

It also waived “any claim against Contractor related to delayed completion of the work,” which means the government couldn’t do much if Whitefish dragged out its job restoring electricity to the 3.4 million Americans living on the island.

-

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/puerto-rico-power-whitefish-contract-zinke_us_59f60718e4b03cd20b823156?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

 

[Matador]

Paul Manafort and Rick Gates charged with 12 counts including money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the US:

Former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort Charged In Russia Probe

Also, Trump Foreign Policy advisor George Papadopoulos pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his dirt on Clinton:

Trump Campaign Adviser Met With Russian to Discuss Hacked Clinton Emails

I wonder if these were the 'really great people' he's referred to knowing during the campaign?

 

[JohnRoberts]

I have already been ignoring this thread and especially posts from a small handful of members.

If forum members want moderators to take action, report the specific posts you find objectionable (since I don't read them all I don't notice).

It seems the Trump administration should be a newsworthy topic for thoughtful discussion but this thread has deteriorated into typical social media personal back and forth.

IMO locking this thread will not magically change problem member's behavior.  Since the rules do not prohibit talking about politics, I expect a new thread about the current administration to reappear almost immediately. So what is the point of locking this one?

I was proud of the polite and thoughtful discourse we used to enjoy around here...  I guess the larger cultural divisiveness in social media has finally landed here too.

I repeat, if a post is breaking the rules report it.... 

I am evidence of how easy it is to ignore posts from some members.  8)

JR

 

[mattiasNYC]

I wonder if these were the 'really great people' he's referred to knowing during the campaign?

It probably is. He is seemingly unprincipled outside of self-gain, which is a trait that a lot of his supporters appear to share with him.

 

[tands]

https://twitter.com/andsat/status/923623085026066432

 

[dmp]

If forum members want moderators to take action, report the specific posts you find objectionable

There's no forum policy on spamming threads with irrelevant or off topic posts (like endless links to twitter).
That's what ruined the thread in my book. No commentary, just copy paste or links.
If this spread to the rest of the forum it wouldn't just ruin political discussion.

Thoughtful discussion used to go on, but when there's talking and no listening, there's no point

 

[bluebird]

+1

tands PLEASE cut the spamming down dude. Whats interesting is your opinion from your mouth in response to other peoples opinions. Or if you have something on your mind, start a new topic.  Its ok to annoy people with creative commentary directly from your brain, but links after links after links is boring...Thats why the Brewery exists, to break up the daily boredom a little. We're not changing the world here...Just farting around.

pretty pretty PLEASE?

 

[dmp]

So back onto original content:

It's been a very interesting week for President Trump with 2 indictments (Manafort+Gates) and 1 guilty plea (George Papadopoulos). The guilty plea for lying to investigators by  Papadopoulos appears like it may go further.
The stolen (hacked) emails of the DNC and the subsequent use for attack propaganda through 2016 was the crime.  Reportedly, Papadopoulos knew about the stolen emails from Russian sources before they were public and so did the Trump campaign.
Carter Page might be next. He is on record as having met with Russians and may have been involved in the 19.5% stake  in Rosneft, the Russian oil giant.  This sale worth millions is know to have happened after the election and may have been quid pro quo for lifting sanctions.  It may not amount to treason, but it seems like it might.
It will probably go on for months or years but as the string is pulled, the more the story will unravel.
Also, read an interesting tidbit about criminal activity in Presidential administrations. In the past half century, there have been 120 criminal indictments, 89 convictions, and 34 prison sentences in Republican administrations.  In Democratic, the numbers are MUCH lower 3, 1, and 1.

 

[G-Sun]

Haven't been following the thread, I'll just throw in m2c:

The Trump-Russia-thing seems all made up to me.

Distraction and people in power being afraid of Trump,
as they don't have control over him as they've had with the last presidents.
So, they just make something up.

Of course not a fan of Trump,
but I'm even less fan of the MSM/political status quo

 

[mattiasNYC]

So back onto original content:

It's been a very interesting week for President Trump with 2 indictments (Manafort+Gates) and 1 guilty plea (George Papadopoulos). The guilty plea for lying to investigators by  Papadopoulos appears like it may go further.
The stolen (hacked) emails of the DNC and the subsequent use for attack propaganda through 2016 was the crime.  Reportedly, Papadopoulos knew about the stolen emails from Russian sources before they were public and so did the Trump campaign.

Some of this US/Russia issue appears to me to be more of an issue of power struggle rather than anything else. However:

Carter Page might be next. He is on record as having met with Russians and may have been involved in the 19.5% stake  in Rosneft, the Russian oil giant.  This sale worth millions is know to have happened after the election and may have been quid pro quo for lifting sanctions.  It may not amount to treason, but it seems like it might.

That to me looks really, really bad. The question I guess is just how far it goes and who knew what and when.

Also, read an interesting tidbit about criminal activity in Presidential administrations. In the past half century, there have been 120 criminal indictments, 89 convictions, and 34 prison sentences in Republican administrations.  In Democratic, the numbers are MUCH lower 3, 1, and 1.

Assuming that's true, and I see no reason to doubt you, the interesting thing is how parties and their voters often represent themselves. Law and order and tough on crime etc seems to be the domain of one group more than the other, so the numbers are... 'curious'.

As far as Trump is concerned this whole story just reaffirms that Trump does not have good judgement, and that his supporters don't either. It shows the value in a candidate actually not being an outsider, or at the very least having a clear lineup of reliable people in line should he/she win the election. This whole "I want to change things up" mentality is incredibly gullible in my opinion.

I mean, imagine in January; what will the list of people that left the Trump team look like? It's not going to be flattering.

 

[mattiasNYC]

To add on numbers and crime;

Swedes who voted for the far-right Sverigedemokraterna, the xenophobic party, gave as part of their choice the party's desire to curb crime among immigrant and "non-Swedish" groups. Now, if you were to guess which party has most politically active members convicted of crimes.....

 

[bluebird]

This whole "I want to change things up" mentality is incredibly gullible in my opinion.

Well that's whats so funny, nothing has changed so far. How long do people stay gullible?

 

[tands]

How is it gullible? Trump being president killed the TPP, at the time the dearest object of neoliberal desire, the crowning achievment of Obama's residency. They shut him down, and every other third way dem creep. They won, and killing TPP was definitely to their benefit, and mine. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/on-safari-in-trumps-america/543288/

And no, bluebird, to answer your question, I don't take requests from you.

The report surprised me when I read it. Despite the great variety of views the researchers and I had heard on our tour, the report had somehow reached the conclusion that Wisconsinites wanted consensus, moderation, and pragmatism—just like Third Way. We had heard people blame each other for their own difficulties, take refuge in tribalism, and appeal to extremes. But the report mentioned little of that. Instead it described the prevailing attitude as “an intense work ethic that binds the community together and helps it adapt to change.” (Third Way disputes these characterizations of its report.)

This supposedly universal belief in the value of hard work was the researchers’ principal finding from their trip to Wisconsin. “It is their North Star, guiding their sense of what is right and wrong, inside and outside of WI-3,” the report states. In the face of challenges, from school budget cuts to factory closures, the community had responded “with a fierce work ethic and a no-nonsense attitude.”

We had certainly heard some of that, but it wasn’t all we heard. In many cases, the report presents only one side of an issue about which we’d heard varying views. For example, it quotes a local employer who sang the praises of automation, but none of the union members who worried about jobs disappearing. It quotes a technical-college instructor proclaiming that crises in the education system create opportunities, but none of the public-school teachers who saw their classrooms gutted by voucher programs.

The report is short, covering only three big takeaways from the seven listening sessions Third Way conducted. The first is the importance of hard work; the second is the need for a strong workforce. The third, described in a section entitled “Just Get the Hell Out of My Way,” is locals’ purported antagonism to big government. “Whether the question is about immigration or banks, taxes or welfare, the people we spoke to generally felt that government policies were irrelevant to their daily lives,” it states. This view is made to sound like one that was broadly expressed, but in fact, we mostly heard it in just one session—the group of curmudgeonly farmers. Almost all of the quotations in this section are drawn from that group. There are no quotations from the people we met who were pro-government, such as the teachers and laborers and activists, who voiced concern that local, state, and federal government ought to be doing more to take care of people.

According to the report, the community’s “biggest frustrations” are “laggard government and partisan squabbling.” “The idea that such bickering can be tolerated in D.C. is appalling to most,” it states. The good people of western Wisconsin, Third Way found, wanted nothing so much as a society where people could put aside their differences. The report quotes a man who said, “We come together on projects and solve problems together.” It doesn’t quote any of the Wisconsinites we met who expressed partisan sentiments or questioned the prospect of consensus.

 

[bluebird]

And no, bluebird, to answer your question, I don't take requests from you.

Ahhh now that's the tands I like 8)

 

[mattiasNYC]

Isn't that what got the last President elected????

I do have to guess some people who voted in this context again are hoping this context comes up next election....

There is a difference between voting for a politician with the intent of getting change, and a billionaire businessman with zero political experience who's a constant  liar, again expecting change. And no, I'm not under the illusion that change is easy or whatever, or that there's a huge difference between mainstream Republican and Democrat politicians.

 

[mattiasNYC]

We New Yorkers are glad Uzbekistan was on the list of "travel-ban nations".

I guess it's protected us from all those Venezuelan terrorists though....