Passing Strange

Feb. 13, 2017, Washington, DC. Former conspiracy theorist and National Security Advisor Michael Flynn resigned today, making him the shortest serving National Security Advisor in American political history. We’re talking three weeks! And why, pray tell, would he go and resign so fast like that? Well, remember back in December when there was intelligence evidence that the Russian government had tampered with US Elections? And remember back in December how President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in retaliation? Well Michael Flynn called the Russian ambassador and told him not to worry (or retaliate) over these sanctions. Once Trump was President they would “take care of it.” Yeah. He did that treasonous shit. We know because our own intelligence recorded his freakin’ phone call, which Mr. Flynn was apparently too stupid to realize might happen (which made him such a fine candidate for National Security Advisor). Anyway, then he allegedly lied about it to Pence, who in turn vouched for him (or so the story goes). Another option is that Pence and Trump were in on it as well, and Mike Flynn is the fall guy ‘firewall’ between Trump and the greater Russian scandal that the Democrats have been screaming about since December.

February 12, 2017, Emerson, Manitoba, Canada. We all remember the stories and images from last summer as refugees from Syria and North Africa died in boats desperately trying to flee to Europe for political asylum. Since the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States, similar acts of desperation are now occurring at the US-Canadian boarder. Refugees from places like Somalia, Ghana, and Syria, worried about asylum plea rejections and the resulting deportations that will in many cases spell a death sentence, are braving sub-zero temperatures in high winds to cross prairie land covered in deep snow, from North Dakota and Minnesota into Manitoba. On Christmas eve two men from Ghana lost most of their fingers to frostbite crossing into Manitoba in -20F temperatures.

Between November’s elections and Feb. 7th, Manitoba’s refugee agency has assisted 91 people, which is more than they typically help in a year. On January 30th, Amnesty International wrote an open letter to the Government of Canada asking it to rescind designation of the United States as a “safe third country” for the purposes of refugee determination. This is aimed at keeping Canada from returning refugees to the U.S. where their asylum petitions will likely be rejected and they will likely be shipped off to their deaths.

Just yesterday the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested 21 refugees crossing the boarder at Emerson, Manitoba.  22 refugees were arrested crossing the boarder last weekend. This! People fleeing for their lives from the United States. This is new to me. So much for “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” This is really shameful and appalling.

February 8, 2017. Washington DC. Today the President of the United States attacked retailer Nordstrom on Twitter for discontinuing his daughter Ivanka’s brand. This is unprecedented. To make it “official”, he then retweeted his tweet from the @POTUS Twitter account. So now, we are to understand, businesses in the “free market” must be very wary about decisions they make about Trump brands. Nordstrom, by the way, said they dropped Ivanka’s line due to poor sales performance–which I think is their right (some shareholders might say “obligation”), yes? And notice that the President is not calling out unfair business practices in general, or by picking out a seemingly random but egregious example. He’s picking out a case where a Trump family brand is involved. Let’s not even pretend we’re avoiding conflicts of interest (i.e. corruption).

Think being attacked by the POTUS has no impact on businesses? There’s a marketing company in Austin Texas that created a robot that short sells stock based on Trump’s tweets, called Trump & Dump (they donate all profits to the ASPCA).

January 29th, 2017, American Airports. On Friday putative POTUS Donald Trump signed an executive order banning Muslim refugees and immigrants from select Muslim-majority countries. See the entry from January 27th below for the horrible details. The part of the order banning all citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen), construed by the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) to mean even people who have green cards, lead to detentions and deportations of people with legal approval (i.e., work visas) to live in the United States.

Several Federal courts, on behalf of several green card holders, quickly ordered a temporary stay on execution of the executive order pending legal investigation. In some cases, however, Customs & Borders officials refused to comply with the court’s orders. This refusal on the part of Federal law enforcement officials with DHS to follow a Federal court order is absolutely chilling. It’s a challenge, on the part of the Executive branch of government, to the authority of the Judicial branch of government. It fails to respect checks and balances, due process of the law, and ultimately the U.S. Constitution. It looks like what Yonatan Zunger described today as A Trial Balloon for a Coup.

January 28th, 2017, Washington DC. On Saturday, while many of us were freaking out about refugees and green card holders being detained in airports (due to an Executive Order shaped by neo-Nazi chief strategist Steve Bannon without formal National Security Council  input), Trump installed neo-Nazi chief strategist Steve Bannon on the Principals Committee of the National Security Council. The former Breitbart news chairman, we should recall, is the man that white nationalist propagandist Andrew Breitbart once described as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement. Well he’s now apparently graduated to being the Hermann Göring of the Trump Administration.
While this may seem rather boring and uninteresting compared to airport confrontations and protests, in the big picture it’s far more concerning. In the same Executive Order (National Security Presidential Memorandum 2) that installed Bannon on the Principal’s Committee, Trump also degraded the roles of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence by limiting their attendance. That’s right, the president’s military and intelligence counsel has been replaced by his ideological strategist, Nazi cabal-style (I wasn’t kidding about the Göring reference).

January 27th, 2107. Washington, DC. President Trump signed an Executive Order today relating to US immigration processes, and in the interest of homeland security, that created immediate seismic effects. The order imposes national and religion-based prohibitions on immigration, and suspends the US Refugee Aid Program. Emma Lazarus would surely weep, along with Lady Liberty, the Mother of Exiles. The executive order appears to have been drafted and signed with the most minimal consultations with affected agencies, jurisdictions, or Congress. As a result, its precise meaning and significance became immediately problematic, since there appears to have been virtually no implementation planning. Per Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, this suddenness and stealth was intentional, so as to catch our enemies unawares. However, it also caught all travelers, refugees and green card holders under previous policy “without a chair” when the music suddenly stopped; it potentially separates as many as 500,000 people from their loved ones, possessions, and lives, in some cases rendering them dispossessed without an understanding of their rights and options, and so subject to all manner of hardship and mental anguish. It also is unclear, at the time of this writing, whether it does or does not apply to green card holders and permanent residents, and if so, in what ways. The upshot of the order is that all immigration from an initial list of prohibited majority Muslim countries comes to a stop pending review of procedures related to necessary documentation, to resume when ready, with a priority for religious minorities only. There is every indication that the list of prohibited countries will increase as the process continues. The order also suspends the USRAP for 120 days for review of the program, with resumption thereafter once it is determined how to administer it to the (new) satisfaction of Homeland Security, and only for the countries which are deemed appropriate. The Executive Order and its mode of implementation sent a shudder throughout the world; European leaders issued public statements saying that the order was inconsistent with the norms and principles of democratic countries, and caused the USA to be in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

January 26th, Washington, DC. At the National Press Club today, it was announced by representatives of the Union of Atomic Scientists that the Doomsday clock had been set back 30 seconds, from three minutes to midnight to two and a half minutes to midnight. This is the closest the doomsday clock has been set to global apocalypse since 1953. Explaining the move, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board cited the rise in ultra nationalism, and the outcome of the US Presidential campaign, and now President Trump’s “disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.” The board criticized Trump further, saying that the his intemperate statements, lack of openness to expert advice, and questionable cabinet nominations have “made an already bad international security situation worse.” What does “America First” mean for global security arrangements, especially since Trump is apparently fully prepared to shred all post WWII assumptions? How can we expect any and all countries on earth not to seek their own nuclear deterrent if there is no reliable umbrella of security agreements? What about the admixture of resource conflicts and climate change added to this picture?

January 21, 2017, Washington DC. In the very first press conference on Donald Trump’s first full day as President, White House Spokesman Sean Spicer embarked on a childish rant about…about what? What do you suppose the first order of business would be for a brand new President? Spicer ranted about reports that Trump’s inauguration was poorly attended–having fewer attendees than President Obama’s inauguration in 2008. That’s right. It was obvious from the way Spicer ranted Trump’s venom ventriloquist dummy style–like some extended Trump tweet rant–that Mr. Trump’s feelings were hurt.

Discussing comparative photography of the Capital Mall with massive crowds (Obama’s) and somewhat less massive crowds (Trumps), Spicer ranted about floor coverings, fencing and ‘magnatometers’–so there! After stating that there is no basis for such a comparison, because “no one had numbers!”, that the National Parks Service doesn’t put any numbers out, and therefore that no one could possibly know how many people attended inauguration Trump v. inauguration Obama, Spicer insisted that Trump’s inauguration had the largest attendance in Presidential history. HAHAHAHAHA! No seriously. He did that. He told a bald faced lie (or as Kellyanne Conway would euphemize the lie the next day, he offered “alternative facts” –a new entry for your Orwellian lexicon). Spicer then proceeded to refuse to field questions from the press–like some extended Trump tweet. This is a press briefing?