Without Ethics or Empathy

Donald Trump has always considered himself above the law. Much of his bravado comes from his mentor and father figure, the infamous lawyer of the McCarthy Era, Roy Cohn. A man without ethics or empathy, Cohn could be counted on to always take the low road. He never admitted to being wrong, and invariably counter attacked when his misconduct was exposed. He worked tirelessly to get gays fired from their government position, all the while being a closeted gay himself. He died of AIDS, after having been disbarred for unethical and unprofessional conduct.

Few international leaders have been influenced by a more conniving person than the likes of Roy Cohn. Only Hitler had a worse gang of sycophants. Goebbels, the Minister of German propaganda, considered lying to the public a form of art. Goring, was notorious in his theft of fine art and jewelry, much of it stolen from his Jewish victims. And Himmler ran the SS, the group responsible for the "Final Solution."

Surrounding oneself with liars, thieves and miscreants makes one vulnerable to making terrible decisions. Hitler tried to conquer the world in a mixture of racism and poor judgement. And it looks like Trump may do the same. He has threatened almost every US ally with military invasions. He has sent his fleet of aircraft carriers around the world to prove his dominance and masculinity. From the genocide of the Palestinian people to the war crime of threatening other sovereign nations, Trump is a clear and present danger to life on Earth.    

Fred Nagel

 

Faster than anyone could have guessed

The US attack on Venezuela takes us back to the 1930s, when a pretentious and histrionic buffoon somehow become the head of the most powerful military in Europe. He claimed that other sovereign nations (Austria, Czechoslovakia, and finally Poland) really belonged to him and his Third Reich. Somehow Germany's richest industrialists (Krupp, I.G. Farben, Siemens, BMW, and Volkswagen) were there to fund his dream of making the Germanic race great again.

So is Trump now moving in a similarly dangerous direction? Like many authoritarians, Trump has moved much faster than anyone could have guessed. He has destroyed freedom of speech on most college campuses with his demands that criticism of the genocidal state of Israel is antisemitic. His Billionaire buddies have bought up a great deal of the nations' newspapers and TV stations (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdock, Marc Benioff, Larry Ellison, and John Henry). He has taken control of ICE, a private army paid for by the public. And Trump has greatly benefited from the weakest and most corrupt of any modern day opposition party. They are all on the same Israeli payroll.

Now the tyrant is making his list of the next countries to attack. He wants the military to increase its budget by half a trillion next year. And ICE has begun shooting protesters and calling them terrorists. We don't really need to understand the rise of fascism in the 30s. The takeover and destruction of our precious democracy is already upon us.

Fred Nagel

Military empires end up destroying their own people.

The United States is in a time of transition, from democracy to imperial rule. Of course, the overthrow of Venezuela was a long time coming. Trump wasn't the only president to shred international law and proclaim that anything the empire wants is fair game. No, our two party, one military industrial complex has been waging illegal wars for years.

Trump's overthrow of yet another country, however, is without the usual nuance or pretense. Perhaps he doesn't have the vocabulary to say things in more than one way. The US wants all the world's oil, so it is willing to destroy the Middle East to get it. Israel is our partner in crime, and no slaughter of the Palestinians is too much. No subterfuge here.

One change in US imperialism is the level of profiteering that our president is willing to take part in. He will be building gambling casinos on the bones of six million Palestinian people. A Gilded Age charnel house.   

Another aspect of this different direction seems even more dramatic. The rest of the world has come to expect naked imperialism from our country, so there is little change in their expectations. The "land of the free" will continue taking what it wants. No, this transition is about who runs the empire once it has committed itself to crimes against humanity. Like various authoritarian regimes in the past, the US will now be run by its billionaire class, freed from all the complexities of representative democracy. Welcome to a fascist America.

 

Planning and waging aggressive war

President Trump's recent threats against Venezuela, Columbia, Mexico and the United States Constitution have us all worried. Even Republicans see the dangers in attacking foreign countries and being subject to endless guerrilla wars. And these military invasions would be against all international law. According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, "Planning and waging aggressive war is considered the supreme international crime."

Who would want our country to commit such war crimes? I think we will have to look beyond our two party system to figure out why our country would do such things. It's certainly not the working class, whose children will be asked to fight these wars. It's not the small business owners, whose companies will be hurt. But there is a race of human beings that stands above the rest of us, the county's uber-rich. They live their lives on separate planets, these 900 plus US individuals whose net worth is over a billion dollars.

They buy yachts that are longer than football fields. They have armies of servants as well as an endless cadre of lawyers and accountants to keep them from having to pay taxes. They end up with more than enough money to bribe our Congress and President.

Elon Musk contends that empathy is the "fundamental weakness of Western civilization." He has no empathy, of course, and simply can't feel for anyone besides himself. Our billionaire class are moral monsters, always willing to wage war for profit.

Anyone with more that a billion dollars should be put in jail.

Fred

Made in America Blood Bath

Does every global atrocity eventually become yesterday's story? And from there do they shamefully creep into history books? We are responsible for up to 17,000 children who have been slaughtered, bombed, and starved to death by the best weaponry that the world has ever seen. Everyone has a role to play. The 2,000 bombs are made by General Dynamics and the drones made by Northrop Grumman. In fact it's a made in America bloodbath; how long can people bear keeping that in their minds?

The greedier the billionaires get, the more they plot to rob us of what we still have left: our healthcare, public education and Social Security. We got rid of the thieving Democrats, only to be plagued by the new fascist party led by a madman. It is no wonder so many of us are in the streets.

But our county is also remaking itself, from the defender of liberty to the merchant of genocide. What is worth saving when we are responsible for slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians? We are transforming ourselves into the apocalypse of death and all the world is witness.

Almost every member of Congress gets piles of money from the Israel Lobby (opensecrets.org). Ask your Representative just how much cash they are paid each year to look the other way. Our venal Congress is obsessed with blood money, and will never end the carnage on its own. Demand that Israel and the US end the holocaust of the Palestinian people. 
 

Starving the Children

The United States has reached a new low in its foreign policy. We are starving tens of thousands of children to death in Gaza. First we destroyed their schools and colleges. Then we blasted their houses into dust. We demolished all their hospitals and medical facilities, and destroyed their access to potable water. At this point, we have turned the Gaza Strip into a killing field, with millions of Palestinians digging through the rubble just to find their children.

Of course, there have been other holocausts in history. But even the Nazis tried to cover up their mass extermination of Jews and Romany. Towards the end of World War II, they buried millions in secret graves. Even the Nazis knew that their slaughter was beyond any boundaries of human kind. Even the Nazis knew enough to feel shame.

We, as citizens of the most powerful military empire the world has ever seen, have complete access to pictures and stories of this Palestinian holocaust. Our mainstream media doesn't dwell on it much, but the charnel house of Gaza isn't kept a secret. An internet search of "children" and "Gaza" will fill your mind with the unbearable images of our country's war crimes. Yet few in our government seem to care very much. They sit around and spout Israeli talking points while collecting their hundreds of thousands in bribes from Zionist billionaires.

And we are oblivious to what our government is doing, as we turn a blind eye to this wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people.

US Troops and Warships

US troops and warships are gathering in the Caribbean. It reminds me of my college years and the impending war against against Vietnam. Back then the big lie was that North Vietnam had attacked US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. It didn't really happen, although President Johnson went to Congress the next day and said that it had. 58,000 US soldiers were to die because of this fabricated story. So were over two million Vietnamese.

US troops and warships are on their way again. The big lie this time is that Venezuela is responsible for drug trafficking to the US. And the truth? Fentanyl is not made in Venezuela, and there are much better routs for sending drugs to the US. But lies don't matter when the US war machine decides it wants another bloodbath.

Our media has been repeating this lie for several years. Our beleaguered pedophile in chief needs a major distraction right now, and war against Venezuela fits the bill. His crazy tariffs and giveaways to his Gilded Age billionaires have brought our economy to the brink. Trump needs a war against Venezuela, with the world's largest oil reserves.

I was drafted in 1967, so I have seen the long term destruction of war on our society. I know Vietnam vets who have never fully recovered. I have witnessed the takeover of our democracy by the "Military Industrial Complex." The invasion of Venezuela will be yet another US war crime gone bad.