Donald's First: the Presidential Tour

Donald is wrapping-up the first of what promise to be some very exciting trips to see some really great people in some very interesting places. He'll be jetting home after he reads the riot act to the sluggards of NATO who have fallen behind in their dues. At Mar-a-Lago there's no free lunch, there are membership fees too - why shouldn't that happen everyplace else?

                                                     The Chinaman's free lunch


The 'outing' began with a trip to Saudi Arabia and a meeting with the Arab summit.   It turns out that was the best place he could have started.  Not only were the Shriners really great people, they also gave him a very special decoration and let him get in on a tribal dance. then they let him tell all the Muslims what he thought about making them greater.  His advice;  "Kick them Out!"

                                             The beheadment sword dance

 Never one to beat around the bush, Trump out-war-Presidented the last two in making America's message very, very clear.  No more  'If your people shoot at my soldiers,  they'll die"  or "Show us the evildoers"  Trump 'nut-shelled' it in a way that could be easily-committed to memory: all Muslims have to do to get ahead in the  new American World is 'Kick them out'. Kick out Al Qaeda, or ISIS or Hezbolleh, kick out Nusra Al Shams, Black September, Fatah, Hummis - any evil-doing organization - 'kick them out' into the street and into  the gun sights of waiting Apache jockeys.  Like  'good guys' have been trying to get them to do for almost 20 years.   Problem for Donald is that he's neither a Muslim, nor as far as most Muslims are concerned, a particularly 'good' guy himself.   They applauded and eyed-up his nearly naked women - I'd bet  a lot like General Dreedle's WAAC, - but I wouldn't hold back on dessert waiting for them.

                            I think I can get this into a crack, they let you do that if you're famous

 After that it was back to his roots - everybody knows that 'real' life on Earth started in Jerusalem.  Which was where the Israelis thought Don would announce the latest US embassy.  Dumb bugger wouldn't do it.  Even though the good guys got ISIS to claim they'd tried to put a permanent period on Ariana Grande's spectacular career, all he would do was add them to his 'loser' list. So aside from a few moments spent communing with the trillions of shekels traded at temples of times past and having the ladies pay their respects separately,  Donald only got a cheap yarmulkeh from the Jews. They were probably chuffed about the Saudis becoming a 'first world military' all of a sudden.

Off to Rome and the Holy Father - fap!  The Pope didn't even offer him a 'red hat' like the dozen he passed-out the day before. Something like that and a title 'Prince of the Church' would have been a great great honor for Trump. And he didn't get one. The wall just gained another three feet.

Finally off to NATO and then back to the G7 in Italy.  Both of those are potential losses,  for the NATO gang aren't going to go for his 'Kick 'em out' thing any more than the Arabs did. The G7 could be a real disaster - since Trump has held free trade with anybody, including the G7, as something almost as desirable  as a case of shingles.



The NATO 'shove' - a Bromance is born - even Presidentress Grabheraitus of Lithuania loves the Trumpster. This from one of America's best 'peeple readers'.

Bomba Grande in Manchester. Coal to Newcastle?

While 'bringing coal to Newcastle' was always given as an example of uselessness, somebody bombing a kids' concert like the one in Manchester is just the kind of thing that makes me want to give up more of our freedoms in return for being better-protected.  Coming out of the Manchester event - along with the 'normal'   flood of condolences and castigations of 'world terror' - are the standard calls for even tighter security, and in Britain's case the need for an incumbent  Prime Ministerial candidate for election,  to step forward and display the kind of leadership that was missing last week before anybody know something like this would happen.

Adding to the news coverage are a number of strangely dissonant side-stories:  stories of 'missing' children who seem to have disappeared in the glut of 'helping' that followed the blast. Or reports of disappeared children who obviously haven't, or victims who aren't.  There has been an outbreak of social media 'spoofing' laid at the doors of a new phenomenon - 'the Internet hacker' - obfuscating the message that 'real' news services are trying to get out to us, when they're not interfering with a democratic election - like the one underway in England. Meanwhile this: "In the early hours of the morning of the 23rd May – approximately 02.35BST   NDTV via the Washington Post stated quite categorically that:

“U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, identified the assailant as Salman Abedi. They did not provide information about his age or nationality, and British officials declined to comment on the suspect’s identity.”

This was published at a time when British police and security services were refusing to make any statements as to who they thought the perpetrators were because, at the time, they were "dealing with the immediate aftermath of the event." - taken from the Center for Global research site.  Is this about 'the US leaking secret info ' - ie the Brits knew who did it and informed the US within 4 hours of the incident?

Theresa May, the Tory candidate who has been a large part of the recent governmental 'austerity' program, (which has removed almost 20 000 police from British streets over the past 8 years) is calling for a military deployment of 5 000 troops 'on the street' - I assume in Manchester.  The last time such a military deployment happened there,  it resulted in the Peterloo Massacre - and early attempt to 'put down'  the earliest seditious labour unions.  17 days before election day?   3 days of mourning and  a fortnight to 'take action',  gets Jill elected Prime Ministress - Putin couldn't have done it better.

                                                                         Peterloo


Deployment - Squaddies  to Scotland Yard

And to the Palace

This is REAL terror I tell ya!

The larger picture.

The culprit:  US security forces identified him and he 'was known to them' - not well enough.
Ooops!

The Libyan connection - to a NATO sponsored Anti-Ghaddafi group

   
      The Perps Brother - after arrest in Libya - not ISIS or AQ - NATO-sponsored 'freedom fighters'

Canada's Mission Civilitrice

Let's go kill some Tuareg scumbags!  Tuaregs? Aren't they a snazzy VW SUVs?  And what's scummy about a fine automotive prawduct like that?  Other than providing Canada's military with the danger pay bonus to actually buy one, maybe, there's not much 'scummy' at all.

While we may not be there yet - Mali is one of those places being considered for the peace-keeping ministrations of he CAF - others being locales in west Africa, eastern Europe or perhaps a return to Kandahar.  We haven't made up our  mind just what our response to the  NATO allies holding the line against a terroristic insurgencies in Africa is going to look like. Personally I think we had best take the example of Greece - another valued NATO ally - and tell 'the alliance' to go 'naff' itself.  Killing Tuaregs isn't going to do Canada, or NATO, any good.

Tuareg 'terrorism'

The Touareg - the original 'blue men'  of National Geographic cultural pieces - are an African tribe of the central Sahara area.  Long a powerful and influential trading tribe - like many  other African peoples they fell afoul European colonialism. In the Tuareg's case it was essentially French Colonialism,  although there are a sizable population in northern Nigeria (British)  and Southern Libya (Italian)   they didn't run as afoul as other tribes until fairly recently.  Like other tribes they found themselves split into foreign 'nationalities' when the gerrymandered boundaries of the imperial administrative districts became 'national borders'.  Usually well-organized, armed and willing to fight, the Touaregs were an 'asset' to any government smart enough to get them on-side. Nigeria for instance - largely used muslim northerners  in their armed forces to suppress rebellious Christian southern tribes and keep government hands on the nation's oil wealth. The Biafran revolt was largely put down by such fighters.  Now the Touaregs, perhaps aggrevated by  a seemingly incompetent series of corrupt governments, and the burgeoning presence of 'anti-terrorist' western forces in the region, raising-up and training essentially Christian armies to fight muslim terror,   have been trying to establish themselves as independent of the various nations in which they live for the past 15 years or so. In only one area - predominantly muslim CAR are the Touaregs a force fighting in support of the government. Should the CAR forces be used , as seems to be the plan, to suppress 'terrorism' in neighbouring areas , they could be faced with fighting other Touaregs. We seem to think they'd like  to do that for us.

France has been heavily involved in 'stabilizing' the  former members of its African empire from the time of independence in the 70's.  It fought a brushfire war with Libya's Ghaddafi over territorial claims to Chad back in the 80's and it has maintained 'training forces' all across the Sahara region.   Because Canada has a francophone population - and some bilingual military units - it is thought they might be a good fit. Given the kind of force deployed to Afghanistan - mixed in so very many ways - it's highly unlikely that language is going to make much difference. We could deploy a Muslim unit but they too, might as well be peace-keeping/training on the moon.

                             
                                         French Bases in North Africa

Canada has maintained a small Special Forces training mission in Niger - at last until fairly recently.  At least as far as being part of  NATO's 'Operation Flintlock' in 2014.

What Makes Canada SOOOO great?

According to Heather Mallick , a Toronto journalist who is "so in love" with Canada on its one hundred and fiftieth birthday this year, is the same kind of stuff that makes Canada ever so much better for real people than that cacaphony of 'democrazy' lying just to its south - especially, don't we all know,  how Canada has so wisely managed its 'abortion issue'.

She had this to write in Toronto's Daily Star

Heather on what makes Canada so great

Heather was almost pious in her praise of the handful of NDP 'activists' who appeared with their own signs and a demand to de-hoist the "anti abortion" banner that had been raised to mark the occasion by the Ottawa City Council.  That affirmation  of somebody's freedom  not to be insulted by a flag was not 'Trumpian? Nor is the demand to outlaw the 'devisive' issue and punish its adherents?

The Flag - It's 'up and down'

 The  20th  annual   Life March in Ottawa  taking place this weekend must have triggered a post-traumatic something in Heather, for she  has been able to crystallize her thinking thus: Canada is about every woman's right to have her womb tumor, her unwanted alien, her life destroyer removed absolutely free and (with the help of an agreeable Obstetrician or surgeon)  up to  the moment of delivery. And anyone who would stupidly, I imagine,  continue to show-up to state the opposite is well "Trumpian" and representative of everything evil in America and most cetainly Canada too if we were draconian assholes - which we are not. I thought there were other greater evils than somebody having to travel out of state, or to Canada - or to have to pay for their pregnancy termination.

                             Another wanted child  protesting but probably not bussed-in

 Abortion actually used to be a criminal offense in Canada - but so were many other things now accepted as legitimate. There were Canadians protesting abortion before Trump made his first 10 million, Heather,  and there will be Canadians protesting abortion after he's hit the Presidential Hall of Fame.  For you see, Heather, for all our civilization, the termination of 175 000 lives  every year (the last time the statistic was recorded 5 years ago) flies in the face of 'abortion as social panacea', the 'solution' that would remove 'the need for itself' , sold to Canadians when the 'industry' was eastablished.

 Like any right-minded establishment,  abortion in Canada is, perhaps, the most common medical procedure and costs the health care system billions in annual expenditure.  Rather than 'reducing a need' it seems to be creating an ever-growing one.  What's really wrong with this, Heather, is that Canadians have never had, and are still denied, a voice on this 'divisive' issue.  Most Canadians are stuck between the true believers on both ends of the issue and would have it regulated,  were not such as yourself so shrill in castigating those who don't see things your way - those who would qualify this particular 'right' - as some sort of ignorant primitives willing to chase women down with the proverbial coat hanger and abort them themselves. There used to be a law against such people but not any more. - for now they are all caring and 'scientific' and use hi-tech to do the same old 'dirty' job.   Abortion is no longer a law of the land, in Canada, and there lies the rub.  Soviet Russia and China -  bulwarks of women's 'rights to choose', did not have so draconian a procedure for terminating a fetus  as does enlightened Canada.

One would think that now that  a full generation is grown up in the age of liberalized abortion all those happy, wanted children that resulted from the 'choice'  would be making a change. But as Heather says there is something seemingly 'wrong' with them being bussed to Ottawa to celebrate life and give thanks that their mothers weren't having a few 'bad days' 17 - 20- 25  years ago. Or maybe she wishes they had been aborted,  leaving the best kind of Canadians the ones who 'don't care'  or don't want to be reminded that, in Canada, a 'mother'  killing a baby before its born is no crime. Afterward that's a different story.  But why?

                                  Wanted children protesting after being "bussed -in"

It must be like a US refugee reaching the magical Canadian 'border' where, all of a sudden, good things happen that don't happen any other place, any other way.  Maybe our abortion laws are another reason they're 'running' here - one might expect to see more pregnant ladies, no?

I imagine that Heather is equally 'down' on repression,  but something tells me that, shy of a ban on such 'protests',  she might not mind the annual 'Life March' being swept-off the street by machine gun fire - oh to be in such a benighted land for a moment.

Another Big Fat Conspiracy

How did Putin steal the US Presidency from Hilary Clinton?  The short answer is 'We don't know."

 The more nuanced answer is that 'we do know' because a private internet security company in California has detected traces of what he calls a Russian hacking group busting into the DNC server and stealing email. He also detected 'Russian' hacking in an attempt, he claims, to make electronic voting machines on Illinois  register a different vote than was entered. And then there is the Wikileaks dump of email relating to Hilary Clinton on a number of different issues - released shortly before the vote. Along with what is claimed to be a constant barrage of 'false news' written in Moscow and published in US media,  there is, according to a 12 page Security report on the subject, a clear and present indication that Putin has been personally doing the 'hokey pokey' with America.

 This has been maintained as the fundamental understanding of 'what's up' and has been further extended and expanded to an investigation that Trump was in cahoots, or was possibly being blackmailed over some micturating prostitutes, with or by Moscow to gain the throne and then sell America down the  proverbial (or in Bennie Arnold's case the Hudson) river.


A meeting with the Russians this weekend past has provided the latest grist for that mill and US median has been chunnering that Trump blabbed the 'down and dirty' on some very tip-top secret US 'intel' about an  ISIS to change civilization.

It just so happened that the same day this story broke - so did another - a report on the mysterious death of a Democratic IT worker called  Seth Rich.  Rich was found, dying of two bullet wounds, on a Washington street early last year.  His death, ascribed by police to a botched robbery in which nothing was stole, n has been investigated by a man hired by the Rich's family.  That investigator is now claiming to have been told by police and FBI contacts that Rich's laptop, sequestered by police as part of their investigation. reveals details of possible contacts over a period of time between Rich and Wikileaks. For there has long been a counter story to the 'Putinic plot' to 'bolshoi' America, that someone inside the Democratic party was releasing their communications.  We know for fact that much of the damaging information about Clinton , released late in the campaign and which caused the FBI to announce an investigation - was released by the NYPD after they seized a laptop belonging to Jeffrey Wiener (look at my dick fame) - the husband of Clinton's personal assistant Huma Abedin - and on which they found an amount of Clinton/ Democratic party material.

An upcoming release of further information , it was claimed , would detail some of this contact with Wikileaks.  Wikileaks founder Julian Assange went on record to talk about this slaying and while making no admissions that Rush was his source, nonetheless offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of Rush's killer.

If any of this is correct it could indicate that he conventional wisdom governing America, its government and its foreign policy in regard to Russia is, essentially, like the WMDs of the BushCo era,  another load of bunkum and hooey causing great destruction and accomplishing little or nothing.

This story is well detailed on Mnar Muhwesh's  alternitive news site Mint  Press.

Mint Press Investigation

Suppose they gave an Atrocity and nobody Noticed?

In all the revolving hoopla that is America to-day:  pseudo-medicare and fired pols - interspersed with what the Kardashians are doing,  or the odd military celebration, we forget that Syria is still the object of somebody's desires and Assad a target for regime change.

 We thought that Trump warning the Norks by cruising an obscure airfield in Syria was the end of it.  But America's interests stretch further afield - the Marines are IN northern Syria working with their 'free Syrian Allies' and making a buffer zone to keep the Turks from killing our  other pals the Kurds. The US is also on Syria's eastern border moving in, with the Kurds, toward Raqqa and, in the south, trying to drive on the outpost at Dier Ez Zor - the place accidentally bombed last December to accidentally 'pave the way' for ISIS taking the Army base it hadn't been able to capture in 5 years of trying. And then there are the security pistoleers hanging out in Jordan.

Messier 'operations'?

You may recall one of those being killed in a 'green on green incident not all that long ago. At one time it was just another training cadre working at developing contractors in the finest pseudo shoot- 'em-up 'village' that real bucks could buy. An Xbox 'experience' on 100 percent scale, with live ammo.

But it seems that somebody has brought a significant force of US armor to the Syrian border in the Kingdom - just as the FSA in the area decided it had the balls to take the market town of  Dara'a . Turns out it didn't and couldn't - at least after Assad transferred a couple of his best units there to give them some resistance. So the 'coalition' force sits, scoping the battle by drone and binocular, Waiting, waiting, waiting..

 'Waiting for what?' you might ask. A Syrian  invasion of Jordan?  Highly unlikely. The Syrians have, until very recently,  managed to ignore the freedumb fighters of the south front. There are too many 'uninvaded' rebel parts of Syria, that are far more important than starting a war with the King of Jordan.

What they're waiting for is another 'outrage'  - Assad gassing his people again - thumbing his nose at somebody 'dutiful' and then invading Syria to save it.  If the soothsayers are right that outrage is going to happen within days and the target zone will be in east Damascus - and area being fought over by two 'rebel groups' while Assad's forces watch for the opportunity to eliminate both. A 'peace' was in the works just a couple of days ago - with the rebels to be removed to rebel territory.  But, hey, a good gassing doesn't let peace get in the way.

(It seems that the east Damascus scenario has changed significantly in the last week. After a protracted period of fighting between 'Free Syrian' forces themselves, in the enclave, it was announced two days ago (May 15) that large numbers of the rebel forces were being transported out of the City to other rebel held areas. These transfers of populations, like the one described further below) are a 'hall mark' of the apparent lack of brutality in the Assad regime's crack down on his people.  But he could I imagine gas somebody, somewhere ,to cause that  US invasion.)


 The US has been distracted by domestic issues and Russia.  It has China to worry about and the Norks are making people crazy with their  threats and bad behavior.  It's just right for another white helmet sneak attack.

rescuing their victims


America did miss the last 'sneak attack'.  That happened a couple of weeks after the gassings - during another one of those peace exchanges. It targeted pro-regime Syrians and was carried out by our freedom-fighting allies. It killed a lot of babies but 'crispy critters' and busted buses don't have the same photogenic 'jolt' as little clean faces, dead for no reason other than Assad's 'hate' and craziness.

Another similar evacuation, yesterday, of the northern town of  Taqba and involving ISIS forces surrendering positions controlling a Euphrates River dam there, was derailed when US helicopter gunships reportedly  intercepted and destroyed the ISIS column that had been released by Kurdish forces in return for a peaceful surrender.

Report in the Independent