Trump Using Typical War Propaganda

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Trump’s Use of Navy SEAL’s Wife Highlights All the Key Ingredients of U.S. War Propaganda

http://portside.org/2017-03-02/trumps-use-navy-seals-wife-highlights-all-key-ingredients-us-war-propaganda 

PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION

This is standard fare in U.S. war propaganda: We fixate on the Americans killed, learning their names and life stories and the plight of their spouses and parents, but steadfastly ignore the innocent people the U.S. government kills, whose numbers are always far greater.  

Glenn Greenwald

The Intercept

March 1, 2017

 

During his Tuesday night address to the U.S. Congress, President Trump paid tribute to Ryan Owens, the Navy SEAL killed in the January commando raid in Yemen that Trump ordered.

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Trumpaclysm

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From our media ally TomDispatch.com
The Art of the Trumpaclysm 
How the U.S. Invaded, Occupied, and Remade Itself 
By Tom Engelhardt
It’s been epic! A cast of thousands! (Hundreds? Tens?) A spectacular production that, five weeks after opening on every screen of any sort in America (and possibly the world), shows no sign of ending. What a hit it’s been! It’s driving people back to newspapers (online, if not in print) and ensuring that our everyday companions, the 24/7 cable news shows, never lack for “breaking news” or audiences.

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Inequality

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INEQUALITY IS NOT JUST AN ECONOMIC ISSUE, BUT A HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE. EXTREME INEQUALITY IS THE ANTITHESIS OF HUMAN RIGHTS(Philip Alston)
[Taken from ‘From Disparity to Dignity: Tackling Economic Inequality Through the SDGs’, Human Rights Policy Brief, CESR, November 2016. I found this briefing to be a gold mine of what I call iron laws. I wanted to share them with you in case you have not had the opportunity to read the full document –which I highly recommend. I do apologize for the length and compactness of this Reader].

US_Politics

A Cry of Pain From Standing Rock

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Introductory note From Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun:

Last night I received an urgent call from a spokesperson for the courageous Water Protectors at Standing Rock. In pain and shock, they reported vicious assaults on them even as they planned to depart their camp where they held their months-long attempt to protect the waters near their homes from corporate forces who decided to build a pipeline that will likely pollute the Native Americans’ water supply. As I listened, my eyes filled with tears and my heart ached as I recognized that we in the U.S. are once again betraying Native Americans, remnants of a people who were the victims of US genocide for the past several hundred years. The media has been largely ignoring their ongoing efforts and current atrocities. We spiritual progressives need to insist that US and global media give much more attention to this story, even as we recognize that the level of outrageous actions and positions taken by the Trump Administration have unleashed violent acts by individuals against people of color, Muslims, and Jews that rightly commands media attention as well.

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US Hypocrisy on Yemen

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By Jonathan Marshall

Only a few months ago, interventionists were demanding a militant response by Washington to what George Soros branded “a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions” — the killing of “hundreds of people” by Russian and Syrian government bombing of rebel-held neighborhoods in the city of Aleppo. Billionaire currency speculator George Soros. (Photo credit: georgesoros.com)
Leon Wieseltier, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former New Republiceditor, was denouncing the Obama administration as “a bystander to the greatest atrocity of our time,” asserting that its failure to “act against evil in Aleppo” was like tolerating “the evil in Auschwitz.”

How strange, then, that so many of the same “humanitarian” voices have been so quiet of late about the continued killing of many more innocent people in Yemen, where tens of thousands of civilians have died and 12 million people face famine. More than a thousand children die each week from preventable diseases related to malnutrition and systematic attacks on the country’s food infrastructure by a Saudi-led military coalition, which aims to impose a regime friendly to Riyadh over the whole country. “The U.S. silence has been deafening,” said Philippe Bolopion, deputy director for global advocacy at Human Rights Watch, last summer.

Editorials & Actions

Pence at Dachau Concentration Camp: Not Merely Hypocritical

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Editor’s Note:  The Israeli right and their allies in the U.S. have used the technique of bringing young people to Nazi concentration camps as a way of communicating them the message “this is why Israel must be given blind support–because without it, we will again be mass murdered.” Now will Netanyahu’s American allies in the Trump Administration follow Vice President Pence and use supposedly pious visits to concentration camps to legitimate their oppressive policies–meanwhile not publicly chastising their own supporters who have engaged in antiSemitic, racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, sexist,  and xenophobic acts and discourse (how could they chastise these when the former publisher of our country’s most open to these attitudes alt-right  Breitbart News media is now Trump’s primary White House advisor?). We in the liberal and progressive world should hold our own commemorations of the Holocaust, and talk honestly about the causes that led to the Holocaust and the ways that the memory of the Holocaust is now being misused by the elites of power and their favorite bullies and contemporary inheritors of Hitler’s logic: the belief in power over ethics, which is really a way of saying, the overthrow of God or spiritual and religious consciousness and embracing the notion that might makes right (alas, already flourishing in some corners of the religious world). So we at Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-Without-Walls will sponsor such a gathering in the San Francisco Bay Area Sunday April 23rd, 2017–and if we can find someone who will live-stream it, we will make it available to you for whatever it costs us to do that. Meanwhile, please read Warren Blumenfeld’s powerful article below on Pence’s visit to Dachau.

Editorials & Actions

Trying to take down Trump for his failure to support a new Cold War with Russia. Why?

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https://consortiumnews.com/ 2017/02/15/progressives-pile- on-flynns-ouster/

Consortium News       February 15, 2017

Progressives Pile on Flynn’s Ouster

President Trump is so despised by progressives that many are rallying behind neocon-driven demands for a New McCarthyism to silence those who object to a costly and dangerous New Cold War. They are in effect making an alliance with the most war-mongering parts of the U.S. establishment. They are, in effect, buttressing incredibly dubious notions of U.S. victimhood and demonizing official enemies with the result of increasing U.S. militarism and the likelihood for confrontation with the other nation that could destroy the planet a hundred times over. By Sam Husseini

Many liberals and so-called progressives are stoked that President Trump’s National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, resigned over accusations surrounding his discussions with a Russian ambassador while Trump was president-elect. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-California

Congressional Democrats want to use this to go after Trump. Rep. Nancy Pelosi: “After Flynn resignation, FBI must accelerate its investigation of the Trump Administration’s Russian connection.” Even before Flynn’s resignation, Rep. Maxine Waters did a segment on “Democracy Now:” “Trump Should Be Impeached If He Colluded with Russians Ahead of Election.”

There’s certainly reasons to want to see Flynn go — he recently put Iran “on notice” while the White House tried to gin up the case against Iran.

Editorials & Actions

Trump as Narcissist

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Editor’s note: The article below by MIchael Brenner, cleverly presenting an argument for why Trump should be analyzed as a clinical narcissist,* is not atypical of the kinds of analyses that have been floating around on the internet. Brenner is obviously a talented thinker and  his reasoning at many points is solid.     Nevertheless, I believe the direction of this and other similar responses to Trump is deeply misguided, even if 1000% accurate, for the following reasons:

1. . I strongly oppose attempts by people to use psychiatric diagnoses to stigmatize the public actions of public figures.

Editorials & Actions

The Case for a Progressive Version of Patriotism while Fighting Trumpism

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Editor’s Note:  From the start of Tikkun magazine close to 31 years ago, we’ve been trying to convince people on the Left that we should be embracing and celebrating all that is good in the U.S. even as we critique what is not. Lets understand its appeal both in the U.S. and around the world as a compensation for what is so hurtful in the global impact of capitalist consciousness. The center of capitalist ideology is its self-justifactory fantasy that the system is based on a meritocracy, so that those who are making it are successful solely because they deserve that success. The hurtful consequence is that most people who haven’t “made it” are taught that this is their own fault–and that causes great deal of pain for a large swath of people who end up blaming themselves, not understanding that it is the whole class structure that guarantees that only a small section of people will ever move up the class ladder. No wonder that they turn to right wing forms of  religion and nationalism, because in those communities they are accepted as valuable just because they are a creation of God (in the religious world) or as a member of nation x, y or z (in the world of nationalism).

Editorials & Actions

America Third by Michael Klare

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America Third 
Donald Trump Is Giving the Phrase “Multipolar World” New Meaning 
By Michael T. Klare

If there’s a single consistent aspect to Donald Trump’s strategic vision, it’s this: U.S. foreign policy should always be governed by the simple principle of “America First,” with this country’s vital interests placed above those of all others.  “We will always put America’s interests first,” he declared in his victory speech in the early hours of November 9th.  “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first,” he insisted in his Inaugural Address on January 20th.  Since then, however, everything he’s done in the international arena has, intentionally or not, placed America’s interests behind those of its arch-rivals, China and Russia. So to be accurate, his guiding policy formula should really be relabeled America Third. Given 19 months of bravado public rhetoric, there was no way to imagine a Trumpian presidency that would favor America’s leading competitors. Throughout the campaign, he castigated China for its “predatory” trade practices, insisting that it had exploited America’s weak enforcement policies to eviscerate our economy and kill millions of jobs. “The money they’ve drained out of the United States has rebuilt China,” he told reporters from the New York Times in no uncertain terms last March.  While he expressed admiration for the strong leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he decried that country’s buildup of advanced nuclear weapons.

Editorials & Actions

Through the Looking Glass How Can We Recognize Our Friends in the Mixed-Up World of Donald Trump?

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By Rebecca Gordon

(an article from our media ally TomDispatch.com)

You know you’re living in a looking-glass world when former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks out against one of Donald Trump’s executive orders. He’s a good example of how past adversaries of movements for peace and justice are lining up against our current adversary, the new president. The United States, Cheney told radio host Hugh Hewitt, should not exclude people from our territory on the basis of religion.  That was just a few days after Trump had signed an executive order entitled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” Such a move, said Cheney, “goes against everything we stand for and believe in.”

In the same interview, Cheney revealed the origins of his personal affinity for Muslim refugees. His own ancestors, he said, arrived on this continent to escape religious persecution. “They were Puritans,” he explained, adding, “There wasn’t anybody here then when they came.”  No one?

Editorials & Actions

Sometimes even a sociopath speaks truth

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Editor’s note: here is a perspective on some of Trump’s statements that may help us understand why some people continue to see him as a champion challenging the mush of the establishment. What the author below fails to see is that the truth he expressed below is mixed with so many other distortions (e.g. about the threat of terror from Muslim immigrants) that it has the effect of legitimating the lies that regularly pour out of the mouths of our president and his advisors. Dear All,​

Trump again states obvious fact. In response to Bill O’Reilly, who calls Putin a killer, Trump looks O’Reilly straight in the eyes and responds:

“What do you think, our country’s so innocent?” 
“You think our country is innocent?” 

“Well, take a look at what we’ve done…a lot of people were killed…there are a lot of killers around, believe me”

American journalists and politicians are willfully pretending to be innocent and unaware of the glaring facts of mass murder and displacement of millions by their leaders to achieve political agendas. Trump is going to call it as he sees it.

Editorials & Actions

Reflections on Trump from a UK rabbi

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THE PEOPLE VS. TRUMP
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah
 

A ‘Reality TV’ star has become President of the United States. Is it a joke? When ‘President Trump’ was featured on ‘The Simpsons’ in the year 2000 the spectre was supposed to make us laugh – and perhaps also, to make us think… Can we ever know what the future holds?

Editorials & Actions

Rabbi Lerner Dialogues with Keith Ellison, candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee

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Editor’s note: Tikkun magazine, as a non-profit, does not endorse candidates for public office nor do we affiliate with any particular political party. We are the voice of Jewish, interfaith, and secular humanist spiritual progressives who seek a world of love and justice. To fully understand what we have in mind, please read www.tikkun.org/covenant and join our interfaith and secular-humanist-and-atheist welcoming NSP–Network of Spiritual Progressives. We do, however, take an interest in the discourse that exists in the liberal and progressive world, and so wanted to interview one of the candidates for the position of chair of the Democratic National Committee, Congressman Keith Ellison, who shares some of the concerns that have been raised by Tikkun and the NSP over the course of the past thirty years. So this is one of many dialogues that Rabbi Lerner has had with Congressman Ellison over the course of the past twelve years.

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The Clear and Present Menace of SciLence

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The Clear and Present Menace of SciLence

David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM
FollowDavid L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM 

Founder, True Health Initiative

 

I heard from a public health colleague this week, whose work and time are partly funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that the CDC did not want to be acknowledged as a funding source in a research paper addressing gun violence. Apparently, CDC scientists have marching orders to be more concerned about unflattering facts about gun violence, than about gun violence itself. That’s ideology 1, epidemiology 0. The score does not improve after that. In high-profile media coverage you have likely seen, we learned that the Trump Administration had, in an early indication of its ominous priorities, effectively issued gag orders to the USDA and the EPA. Apparently, we the people are to be kept uninformed not only about guns, but also about such matters of minor importance as our food supply, and the environment. And perhaps everything else, too, since the White House message to the press was: just keep your mouth shut. The new normal, apparently, is to stand our ground- except where facts are concerned. We want no part of those. Let’s be clear, silence where science ought to be is a grave threat to us all. Those of you who are avowed fans of science as I am need no convincing. To anyone else: well, there is no one else. Just about everyone is a fan of science, it’s just that some don’t realize it. Everyone using the Internet; everyone who has ever flown on a plane or driven across a suspension bridge; anyone who has ever gone out to enjoy the spectacle of a perfectly predicted eclipse or meteor shower…is a fan of science. So, too, is everyone who has ever thrown a light switch. Apparently, the switch is being turned off in the White House to keep disquieting facts in the shadows. The EPA, for instance, told us about lead in the water in Flint, Michigan. In a world where the EPA is muzzled, we might still be in the dark about that. The USDA tells us about food-borne outbreaks, and recalls. Silence, in this case, aids and abets the designs of salmonella.