Tag: donald trump

US President Donald Trump’s decision to move American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem threatens to destabilize the entire region for generations to come

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President Donald Trump’s quite literal bombshell decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem threatens to destabilize a region already teetering on the brink of chaos.

Such choice may just spark the final fire in the Middle East.

Moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has long since been in Mr. Trump’s wish list. He even made a campaign pledge out of it. Israel supported the idea all along, but previous US presidents had enough common sense to defer such move, recognizing the potential for catastrophic consequences in the region if it came to pass.

Trump’s decision has been received with dismay, widespread condemnation, and fierce criticism worldwide. Palestinian organization Hamas has gone a far as saying that Trump ‘has opened the gates of Hell’ by publically and internationally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Elsewhere, Iran has issued a statement to say that it is likely to spark a fresh uprising.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile referred to the decision as a ‘historic landmark’.

Historical background

Jerusalem is, and has been for a long time, a divided city.

Jerusalem’s east side -the Old City- had been under Jordanian rule up to 1948. Israel occupied it by force during the Six Day War in 1967, and annexed in 1980, in a move that sparked international outrage. The issue remains that, under the laws of the Geneva Convention, any territory that is occupied by military means does not have international recognition of ownership. Therefore, controversy still rages about which side owns Jerusalem’s east side.

Why Jerusalem is at the center of such division? Both Israelis and Palestinian claim the city as their capital. This has been a source of tension for generations. There are deeply entrenched fracture lines running just beneath an uneasy truce that Mr. Trump’s decision threatens to shatter with a single stroke of the Presidential pen.

Officially endorsing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will have several, quite severe and far reaching consequences. It will put a swift end to the protracted peace process in the region, for starters, which will likely lead to renewed waves of violence.

Also, it will mean that President Trump has taken it upon himself to determine the fate of such troubled city, ignoring the plight of millions, and unileraterally blasting decades of careful negotiations. Eighty six countries have embassies in Tel Aviv. None in Jerusalem.

Almost 900,000 people live in this contested urban enclave, roughly split in 37% Arab and 61% Israelis. They live in the knowledge that their version of peace rests on a knife’s edge, and Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is likely to cause that dormant blade to cleave the region for good.

 

Anthony Scaramucci booted from the White House after just ten days on the job

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Anthony ‘The Mooch’ Scaramucci is no longer the White House communications director. And having spent less than two weeks on the job, he’s not likely to be missed all that much.

The axe fell on the wealthy former hedge fund impresario earlier today, in a move that shocked many but surprised few. The axeman? The White House’s brand new Chief of Staff, no-nonsense retired Four-Star General John F. Kelly of the USMC.

It had been a relatively quiet two weeks inside the corridors of power at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., by the the current Administration standards at least. The chaos and the uncontrolled dive seemed to have righted themselves, for a while at least. Critical mass appeared to have been averted.

Then, a few short days after launching an expletive-laden tirade against Reince Priebus, The Mooch found himself on the firing line.

Fast-talking Scaramucci entered the White House riding a high horse, wearing aviator glasses with a Top Gun-esque blue tint, and boasting to report directly to his idolized boss, gunning for anyone suspected to have leaked information to the press. He took aim at Reince Priebus, who resigned last Friday ‘to give Scaramucci a clean slate.’

No such luck for Scaramucci, however. The once fawning Mooch was escorted out of the White House today, out of the job he had longed for since the Boss rose to power in the last election.

And Scaramucci is not just out of a job. He is out of a marriage too, as his wife filed for divorce ‘because he had turned into a Trump sycophant.’

Enemy of his own state: The end of the Trump era is nigh

 

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‘I hope you can let this go’

So President Trump allegedly told the now ex-FBI Director James Comey, referring to the bureau’s probe into Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. ‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,’ Trump was quoted as saying in a private meeting with Comey. ‘He (Flynn) is a good guy.’ Comey was cleverly selective with his answer. ‘I agree he is a good guy.’

That one sentence, which essentially amounted to a thinly veiled attempt to shut down an FBI investigation into Flynn’s murky liaisons with Russian personnel, is likely to become Trump’s political epitaph.

The revelation that the 45th President uttered these words came in the form of a memo written by Comey, on foot of the alleged conversation that took place during a meeting back in February, exactly the day after Flynn resigned. Comey was reportedly shocked that the President would ask something that could be interpreted as intimidation, and took down notes after the meeting ended. Comey wanted to ensure that a paper trail existed, as current notes taken by an FBI agent usually hold up in court.

James Comey’s habit of writing down conversations that may later come into question was well known among his associates. In this case, such work practice may very well bring about the end of Donald Trump’s Presidency.

Despite Trump’s attempts to derail the probe into Flynn’s activities, the investigation continued. Indeed, a federal grand jury in Virginia has recently issued subpoenas relating to material involving Mr. Flynn.

Trump shoots himself in the head, politically speaking: The firing of James Comey

Donald Trump pressed the nuclear button and fired Director Comey on May 9th, immediately sending shockwaves across Washington. The official reason given for the man’s dismissal quoted Comey’s work performance, particularly in relation to the controversial decision not to prosecute Hilary Clinton over the use of public email servers during her presidential campaign. According to Clinton, Comey’s intervention costed her the election, and Trump had nothing but admiration and praise for Comey at the time.

But things had changed by May 10th: ‘He wasn’t doing a good job,’ Trump said about Comey on that date, a day after the drama began to unfold.

The official reason notwithstanding, the White House was thrown into disarray over the issue 24 hours later, as conflicting reports about the reason for Comey’s dismissal began to emerge. One spokesperson after another attempted to justify the President’s decision to get rid of Comey, to little avail.

So intense was the fallout that the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, was seen hiding from the press to avoid questioning. This would later be lampooned by Melissa McCarthy’s portrayal of Spicer on the SNL show. A newspaper went as far as saying that Spicer ‘hid in the bushes.’ The paper was later forced to issue a retraction to change ‘in‘ for ‘among.’

Yet, all attempts to protect the President would be swiftly dismantled by the President himself, when he revealed during a TV interview that he targeted Comey over the probe into collusion with Russia during the presidential campaign.

Trump said during the interview that ‘this Russia thing‘ was one of the reasons he fired Comey, adding that the whole Russia issue was a ‘made-up story.’ This revelation pretty much destroyed whatever little credibility the White House had managed to hold on to up to this point. To add insult to injury, Trump referred to Comey as “a showboat” and “grandstander.” Both the press and the Trump camp were left aghast at the statement.

Architect of his own demise: Trump reveals classified information to Russia

When it comes to torpedoing his own tenancy as President of the United States, nobody does it better than Trump himself.

Still reeling from the Comey scandal, the latest shot under the White House’s waterline came in the form of highly classified intel openly spoken about in the presence of Russian representatives.

The top secret material, relating to an intelligence operation against ISIS, was discussed in plain English during a meeting between Trump and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Trump was on a roll at the time. The fateful meeting took place less than 24 hours after the termination of FBI Director Comey.

The White House, and the intelligence community as a whole, was left speechless after Trump’s blunder. The President’s basic competence was quickly called into question.

Trump’s fundamental ignorance about history is well documented. The President, a self-confessed TV addict, openly admitted that he believed Frederick Douglass to be still alive and that ‘he is doing an amazing job,’ for example. And he has also made some bizarre comments about the Civil War.

But despite these obvious academic shortcomings, one would think that Trump, as a security-obsessed American and as President, would have enough intellect to mind his mouth when it comes to matters of national security. Not so, apparently. The untold damage caused by the security breach is likely to ‘cost American lives,’ according to security analysts.

Obstruction of Justice and possible impeachment

It is hard to see Trump’s alleged attempts to meddle into the Flynn investigation first, and then into the probe of whether or not Russia had any role to play in the presidential election, as anything other than interfering into the FBI’s and Department of Justice’s dealings with these matters.

Comparisons have been drawn between these issues and the Watergate, the scandal that culminated in Richard Nixon’s resignation on August 9, 1974, days before an imminent impeachment.

Back then, journalists and law enforcement organizations untangled a complicated trail of illicit activities that led all the way to the White House.

With the scandal out in the open, Nixon and a few other top political associates were accused of obstruction of justice, after it emerged that Nixon planned to use the CIA to stop an impending investigation by the FBI.

Nixon was pushed into a corner, and with the threat of impeachment looming closer, he chose to resign. Though later pardoned for his involvement in the shady affair, the Watergate legacy stayed with Nixon until his death in 1994.

Impeachment proceedings have been initiated against several US presidents, though only two -Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton- have ever been successfully impeached.

There are now sufficient grounds to impeach the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, in light of his alleged intervention in the FBI’s affairs, and the recent alleged leak of classified information.

The seventh trumpet is about to blow for Mr. Trump.

Two minutes to midnight: The specter of nuclear war awakens

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The Doomsday Clock almost stopped in 1962. At the height of the Cold War, and with Soviet ballistic missiles close to being deployed on Cuban soil, the world teetered on the brink of nuclear annihilation during a tense 13-day stand-off between the two superpowers.

Diplomatic solutions ultimately ended the stalemate, and sanity prevailed. The world breathed a collective sigh of relief as the nuclear weapons were stood down.

In the intervening years, a number of armed conflicts have erupted in the Middle East and elsewhere, but the very localized nature of these bloody struggles never reached the potentially Armageddon-esque consequences of the missile crisis in 1962.

Fast forward to 2017, and enter Kim Jong-Un, supreme leader of th DPRK, and Donald Trump, President of the United States.

These two guys talk tough, sizing each other up, engaging in a perilous game of international stakes, juggling the fate of the world in their hands.

And it so happens that the countries that these two oversized school bullies represent are highly militaristic in nature. The US’ military might is unrivalled, yet the North Koreans are not short of a gun or two, and could certainly give the US a run for their dollar.

North Korea, a secretive, reclusive, and by Western standards at least, very much ‘poor’, justifies its disproportionate spending on army matters by purporting a constant threat of invasion by ‘foreign’ forces. And the country has a particular bone to pick against the United States.

Background

The seeds for the current tensions in the region were sown almost seven decades ago, when North Korea invaded its southern neighbour, firing the first shots of the Korean War.

Aided by China and the Soviet Union, North Korean troops pushed ahead and brought South Korea to almost defeat. In light of the dire situation, the US came to the assistance of South Korea and helped stabilize the situation with an amphibious assault at Inchon, which effectively cut off the north’s supply lines.

From then on, fighting on the ground continued on a more or less equal footing, with the struggle concentrating around Parallel 38, the ‘unofficial border’ between the two Koreas.

War in the air was a totally different matter, however. The US Air Force mercilessly pounded North Korea from above, turning many of the country’s villages and towns into rubble. The country’s capital, Pyongyang, saw about 75% of its surface pulverized, for instance. The sustained bombing campaign resulted in as much as 400,000 victims.

After signing an armistice in 1953, the two Koreas remained technically at war, with regular acts of aggression by the north over the course of the decades.

Kim Jong-Un, the current ruler, has not forgotten the savage bombardment that his country was subjected to, and in a way, he seeks retribution.

Nuclear deterrence

Kim knows recent history well. He is fully aware that the ultimate fate of most dictators is swift popular justice backed by the US from the shadows, as was the case with Muammar Gaddafi in Lybia, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. His main goal is the
preservation of the regime, and the only real means to do so is the possession of nuclear weapons, something that both Lybia and Iraq lacked, with dire consequences for their leaders.

Nuclear weapons are a powerful bargaining chip in the international game of war. If you have them, you are in the Big League, on a level playing field with the US and some of the other big boys.

Kim has been steadily ramping up his country’s nuclear development program despite continuous sanctions by the UN. Past US administrations toyed with the idea of military action against North Korea, but all thought better of it.

Chemical weapons

North Korea’s arsenal, while it may lack nuclear warheads -for now, at least-, is mighty indeed. Its long range artillery is well within striking distance of hitting the South Korean capital, Seoul, just short of 40 miles away from the border. It is now also known that Kim’s regime owns, or is capable of producing, chemical weaponry. And it’s not afraid to use it, it seems. North Korea is widely suspected to be behind the assassination of
the leader’s half brother in Kuala Lumpur airport earlier this year, using the nerve agent VX.

President Trump’s administration is aware that any military intervention will trigger hard retaliation. North Korean officers have recently made very public remarks to say that the US faces ‘all out war’ if it engages in ‘reckless’ military actions against their country.

Nuclear war

President Trump recently ordered an ‘armada’ to steam towards North Korean waters. The Carl Vinson (CSG-1) carrier group is now on station just off the Peninsula.

North Korea regarded this move as an act of overt provocation, and responded with a tirade of bellicose rhetoric. The recent US’ Tomahawk strike in Syria was likely done as a way of showing that the US means business. US Vice President Mike Pence said that the era of ‘strategic patience‘ sported by previous administrations is now at an end.
During a press conference held at a very symbolic location near Parallel 38, Mr. Pence added that “President Trump has made it clear that the patience of the United States and our allies in this region has run out and we want to see change.

“We want to see North Korea abandon its reckless path of the development of nuclear weapons, and also its continual use and testing of ballistic missiles is unacceptable.”

In other words, the US is ready and willing to engage militarily in the region.

The nuclear specter, remote and largely theoretical for many years, is now back in the public domain as a palpable possibility.

The nuclear giants have been sleeping in their silos for far too long.

‘Trumpxit’: Or how Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations drowned in a groping quagmire

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Donald Trump is a dead man walking, politically speaking. In fairness, no man dubbed ‘groper-in-chief’ could ever dwell in the Oval Office.

Mr. Trump’s campaign, already tainted in numerous ocassions by lewd, offensive, and inflammatory rhetoric directed at women and ethnic minorities, and particularly Mexicans, has now imploded altogether over his brash comments regarding how he treats women.

‘Grab them by (their genitals),’ Mr. Trump appears to say in a 2005 recording that surfaced recently. ‘When you are a star, they let you do it.’

Mr. Trump appeared to be unaware that his microphone was on as he spoke candidly about his treatment and regard for women. He was on bus alongside TV- and radio host Billy Bush, on his way to the Days of Our Lives set, where he was due to appear in a cameo.

The audio records Trump speaking about his attempt to seduce a married woman. It is unclear when the alleged seduction took place, but the conversation was recorded after Trump married his third wife, Melania.

Trump says “I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it,” talking about the married woman.

After the revelatory audio surfaced, Trump issued a very rare televised apology, in which he says that “I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.”

In his video apology, he continues “I’ve never said I’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not. I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them. Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am.”

The forced apology did very little for Trump, other than reaffirm his own hypocritical view of the world. It looked awkward, stilted, and artificial, and was delivered reluctantly and with as much honesty as a charlatan offering the elixir of life from the back of his one-horse cart.

Staunch, heavyweight Republicans swiftly moved to withdraw their support for the Trump camp. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who took over Trump’s role in The Apprentice, led the way. He publically announced that he “will not be voting for the Republican candidate.’

Former Republican canditate John McCain, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also announced that they would not support Trump’s candidature.

The ‘groper-in-chief’ himself strenuously emphasized that he will not quit the race after the incrimatory audio surfaced.

He is due to face off against Hillary Clinton in a second live debate later today, but the damage to his aspirations is clear, irreparable, and terminal.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king: Donald Trump weaponizes Denis O’Brien and fires a broadside against Hilary Clinton

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Anything goes in the high-stakes game of world domination. Presidential hopeful Donald Trump has seen fit to use the name of Ireland’s very own Denis O’Brien in an attempt to discredit his nemesis, Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Trump issued an open letter on his website linking Ms. Clinton with Denis O’Brien’s less-than-diaphanous financial dealings around certain offshore places in Central America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands, among other high-profile issues.

Trump’s poison letter goes into exquisite detail about the sizeable donations that Mr. O’Brien has made to the Clinton Foundation, the funding for O’Brien-owned Digicel (a mobile phone provider that operates in 33 separate markets around Caribbean, Central America, and Oceania regions) for its Haiti operation, the Esat Digifone controversy, and of course, Siteserv, another of O’Brien’s business ventures that just happened to win the tender for the installation of hundreds of thousands of water meters across Ireland.

The missive, titled ‘Follow the money’ dubs the Irishman ‘another corrupt Clinton friend.’ Given Mr. O’Brien’s propensity to launch legal actions like a child throws tantrums, it’d be interesting to see if he’d take on the likes of Donald Trump.