Donald Trump insults Americans and allied nations but Russia gets a pass

Fake news isn't a new concept - Hitler called it 'lügenpresse'- writes Andrew Sullivan in NewYorkmag.com

The anti-American behavior of Donald Trump is alarming, all the while his cult supporters, who are victims of mass hypnosis, just can't hear the urgency.  Mayday! General quarters!  

General Quarters! Mayday! Republicans will have to take responsibility for ruining our national security and cruelly dismantling domestic, humanitarian, social safety net programs. Somewhere in this mess is a convoluted Trump to Putin secret code, ie, "Russia if you're listening!"

Donald Trump insulted China by calling the President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan before he was inaugurated; but, he said, she is the person who called him.  (Daaaaaling, it's not you, it's me....excuse).

Donald Trump insults Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto by insisting on building a wall in Texas for the purpose of keeping out Mexican immigrants. Fortunately, President Nieto said, "México no pagará por el muro". In other words, "hell no!". Nieto cancels visit to Washington DC, by mutual consent, says Donald Trump. (Daaaaling, let's agree to disagree!)

Donald Trump hangs up during a telephone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, because he disagrees with an agreement about the US accepting refugees.  (Daaaaling, this is clearly an irreconcilable difference!)

Now, on February 18, 2017, Donald Trump invented a false story about a terrorism attack in Sweden, knowing there was no such incident! Clearly, an insult to the Swedish people, but I'm pretty sure Vladimir Putin was chuckling. (There's not much trust between Sweden and Russia because, frankly, the Swedes know better.)

On the other hand, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB operative and an expert at co-opting spies, is really an okay buy with Donald Trump. There's absolutely no problem with Russia's illegal invasion of the Ukraine, seizing the Crimea or saber rattling about borders with Scandinavia.  Oh, by the way, it's an annoyance to know there's a Russian spy submarine cruising along international waters along the coast of Connecticut because Donald Trump could easily just take care of the situation if he really wanted to do so, or so he says.

Unbelievable! Why is Donald Trump's relationship with Putin so chummy, when this bizarre camaraderie is clearly smoking with the stench of treason?

Of course, the question is about the motive, writes Andrew Sullivan in NewYorkmag.com.

Why on Earth would any campaign for president be in constant, secret touch with the intelligence agents of a hostile foreign power?

I cannot know. Maybe Flynn is a rogue loner. It’s also possible, I guess, that the Trump campaign just wanted to keep in touch with the intelligence services of one of this country’s nemeses, if only to wish them Merry Christmas — five times in one day. It’s also conceivable that Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort’s deep ties to the Putin regime were utterly irrelevant to the sudden amendment, this past summer, to the GOP party platform that removed a call to send arms to Ukraine. It’s also possible, I suppose, that deep down I’m straight.

But there’s one explanation that chills me even more than a foreign power’s potential blackmail over an American president. And it is that Trump and Putin are natural allies in their fight against the postwar, U.S.-led international order that has kept the peace for 70 years. Putin and Trump, after all, share a Bannonite foreign policy: a robust defense of nationalism; a view that NATO is obsolete; support for far-right parties throughout Europe; and the goal of smashing the European Union so that Russia can once again extend its tentacles into Eastern Europe, and the U.S. can play one European power off another. 

Maybe Putin has kompromat (short for literally "compromising material") on Trump’s actions, but no such motivation is even needed, writes Sullivan. Trump and Putin want to form a pincer movement to destroy what we have known for a long time as the West.
Trump and Putin want to form a pincer movement to destroy what we have known for a long time as the West.

Their domestic politics also have disturbing parallels. Trump would love nothing more, it seems to me, than to be an American Putin, treating the country as he long treated his own corporate fiefdom. He once explained he admired the autocrat because Putin has “great control over his country.” Like Putin, Trump would love to control the media. Like Putin, he has developed a leadership cult, devoted to the masses. Like Putin, he believes in a government that has “killers.” Like Putin, he threatens his geographic neighbors. Like Putin, he has cultivated an alliance of convenience with reactionary religious conservatives, to shore up his power. Like Putin, he believes there’s no moral difference between American democracy and Russia’s.  Like Putin, Trump is enriching himself by public office. And, like Putin, he has targeted a minority as a scapegoat — Putin targeted the gays to gin up support while Trump targets the Muslims and Mexicans. And as Putin has RT as his conduit, so Trump has the Murdoch empire.

I feel like I know Stephen Miller, the youthful Montgomery Burns who lectured the lügenpresse last Sunday morning in his charm-free Stakhanovite baritone. I feel like I know him because I used to be a little like him. He’s a classic type: a rather dour right-of-center kid whose conservatism was radicalized by lefties in the educational system. 

No, I’m not blaming liberals for Miller’s grim fanaticism. I am noting merely that right-of-center students are often mocked, isolated, and anathematized on campus, and their response is often, sadly, a doubling down on whatever it is that progressives hate. Before too long, they start adopting brattish and obnoxious positions — just to tick off their SJW peers and teachers. After a while, you’re not so much arguing for conservatism as against leftism, and eventually the issues fade and only the hate remains.

Stephen Miller - lügenpresse

Think of it, in some way, as reactionary camp. 

Think Ingraham and Coulter and Yiannopoulos (Breitbart News aka "barfcart-news". They're reactionaries in the classic sense: Their performance-art politics are almost entirely a reaction to the suffocating leftism that they had to endure as they rose through the American education system. 

As a young, lonely conservative in college, I now wince at recalling, I threw a Champagne party to welcome Reagan’s cruise missiles to Britain. Of course I knew better — and could have made a decent argument for deterrence instead of behaving like a brattish dick. But I didn’t. I wanted to annoy and disrupt the smugness around me. If you never mature, this pose can soon become your actual personality — especially when you realize that it can also be extremely lucrative in the conservative-media industrial complex. 

I think of Ann Coulter, whom I met recently, backstage at Bill Maher’s show. What struck me was her sincerity, searing intelligence, and grasp of the facts. In another universe, she could have become a reasoned defender of a sane conservatism. Instead she ended up writing In Trump We Trust. In exactly the same way, Miller really is a product of Santa Monica and Duke — their living, breathing, raving antibody.

Steve Bannon, on the other hand, is quite something. I’ve read and reread his 2014 speech at the Vatican to see if I can find any coherence in it, and I confess I failed. It’s a hodgepodge of melodrama, hysteria, and a defense of some kind of “enlightened capitalism” along Judeo-Christian lines, in the face of an imminent Islamist takeover of the planet. It’s the 1950s versus jihad, an attempt to convey the gist of the entire Drudge Report every day and turn it into a thesis. He argues that we are just “at the very beginning stages of a global conflict” that could eradicate 2,000 years of Western civilization. It reads like the apocalyptic, paranoid fantasies of someone who writes letters to the editor, single-spaced, in all caps.

Now, go check out this Vice journalist’s impression of Bannon in 2014. It does not reassure: “He’s buzzing with intensity, with two pens clipped to his shirt collar. Over the next 90 minutes, he barely touched his food and never took off his coat.” He just prattles endlessly and manically on. Among the gems that emerge from the conversation: Ebola requires a massive immigration crackdown or we’re all going to die; ISIS is plotting to assassinate the Pope; and then this calm overview: “The world is in a meltdown right now. I mean, the world is on fire. And all of a sudden it’s going to dawn on people, this is not a problem for guys in the Middle East. This is a problem for you in Kansas City.” You begin to realize that he called himself a “Leninist” for a reason.

It took me a while to get into HBO’s The Young Pope. I kept waiting for it to have a relationship with some believable version of reality — and then a kangaroo kept bouncing around the Vatican. At first I couldn’t understand what was metaphor and what was plot, what was dream and what was supposed to be real, what was a miracle and what wasn’t. In the first few episodes, the Trump analogy — of an unhinged novice accidentally finding himself in a position of supreme power — did the unforgivable thing of failing to distract me from the anxiety besieging Washington.

But if you let the series just lull you into acceptance, its themes are powerful. The filmmakers understand how attractive the most rigid orthodoxy can be for the young. Abandoned by hippie parents as a boy, Jude Law’s youthful Pius XIII insists that the Church needs to turn inward and embrace mystery and fear and obedience again. He’s Benedict XVI with charisma. His vestments twinkle and shimmer; the slippers remain ruby-red; and the full papal regalia is only slightly mitigated by the Holy Father’s inspired chain-smoking. He starts out as a vindictive, sadistic, and arrogant narcissist acting out his deeply buried childhood traumas (can we ever get away from Trump?). But he is also, the series slowly reveals, some kind of a saint. His prayer is like a controlled seizure of concentration. He performs quite astounding miracles. 

And in time, people of the modern secular world, at first repelled, find themselves drawn to him, smiles on their faces, relieved at last to be in the presence of divine authority, any authority that can make sense of their world.

I’ve often wondered if saints are actually like that: not holy in a conventional sense, and certainly not “nice” — but often unpleasant, antisocial misfits who are only subsequently seen for what they truly were.

Do you remember the days when president Obama predicted that at some point in his presidency, the “Republican fever would break”? It never did of course. If anything, it kept getting worse — from birtherism to jeopardizing the U.S.’s credit rating to Benghazi and then those fricking emails. But it occurs to me that the fever could only really break if the Republicans were no longer in opposition and were actually confronted with the difficult project of running the country. Yes, I know we’ve been hoping for this for years, chasing phantasms as the crazy gets crazier, but could the fever be finally breaking right now? The Republican base’s talk-radio politics, their Breitbart alternative facts, their railing constantly about Obama’s various alleged iniquities — none of that is enough to actually govern. But that is all they have known for so long. At some point, the Republicans are going to have to raise the debt limit; they are going to have to pay for the wall; they’ll have to replace the ACA with, well, er, something quite fabulous. They have no excuses anymore, after all.

And yet, lo and behold, Republicans seem paralyzed. (MaineWriter opinion here- Republicans are victims of mass hypnotic hysteria caused by Trump cult negative charisma.)

Legislatively, they are at a standstill, and the ACA endures and becomes more popular. There is no magic cure for bringing back blue-collar jobs. They will surely divide over tariffs. Even tax reform could be a liability if it isn’t directed at those low-earning core Republican voters, rather than Trump’s fellow plutocrats (and good luck with that). All the rabid rhetoric against Obama’s essentially moderate policies, in other words, is beginning to dissipate into thin air. Yes, they can deregulate. Yes, they could borrow even more to goose the economy. But it’s going to be fumes before too long. Maybe this is how the fever eventually ends — when, instead of constantly ducking responsibility, they actually have to take some.

Catholics and Lutherans

Surely, I hope this religious rapprochement is meaningful, but the ordination of women will surely be a central dividing issue.

I recall when a clergy friend told my husband and I that there would be Mr. & Mrs. Bath Towels in Roman Catholic rectories before we would ever see women ordained as priests. In retrospect, his prediction is now reality.

LUND, Sweden (October 31, 2016) — 

Francis’s words at a joint prayer service at the city’s eleventh-century cathedral to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Luther’s protest at Wittenberg in 1517 are the most positive yet.

Pope Francis marked the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation by travelling to secular Sweden on Monday and encouraging Catholics and Lutherans to forgive the "errors" of the past and forge greater unity, including sharing in the Eucharist.

Pope Francis in Sweden

Francis and the leaders of the Lutheran World Federation presided over an ecumenical prayer service in the Lund cathedral, the first time a pope has commemorated the anniversary of Martin Luther's revolt with such a symbolically powerful gesture.
Francis quoted Luther and praised him for having restored the centrality of Scripture to the church.

"The spiritual experience of Martin Luther challenges us to remember that apart from God, we can do nothing," Francis said.

Francis and the Lutheran federation president, Bishop Munib Younan, drew sustained applause at the end of the service when they signed a joint declaration pledging to improve relations through dialogue, while working together to heal conflicts, welcome refugees and care for the planet. The goal of the theological dialogue, the statement said, was to bring Catholics and Lutherans together at the Eucharistic table.

Disputes over whether Catholics and Lutherans can receive Communion in one another's churches remain an obstacle after five decades of theological talks.

The Protestant Reformation started in 1517 after Luther nailed 95 theses on the church door in the town of Wittenberg, denouncing what he saw as the abuses of the Catholic Church, especially the sale of indulgences.

Pope Leo X excommunicated him, but the church couldn't stop his teachings from spreading throughout northern Europe or the world. As Protestantism spread, religious wars erupted, including the Thirty Years War in 1618-48, one of Europe's bloodiest conflicts.

In Sweden, Catholics who rejected the new Lutheran faith were punished with deportation or death.

As a result, the pope's visit to Sweden to kick-start the yearlong Protestant anniversary initially raised eyebrows. But the Vatican and Lutheran church both insisted the event was no celebration of Luther's revolt. Rather, they stressed it was a solemn commemoration to ask forgiveness for the schism and rejoice that relations have improved in the last five decades.

Francis' visit "is proof of how far we have come ecumenically over the past 25-30 years," said Lisa Valkehed, a Lutheran watching the Lund event at a nearby arena.

In alternating prayers in the Lund cathedral, the Catholic and Lutheran leaders lamented the divisions and guilt of the schism and asked forgiveness for the deaths and pain that their divisions caused over history.

"We have the opportunity to mend a critical moment of our history by moving beyond the controversies and disagreements that have often prevented us from understanding one another," Francis said. "We too must look with love and honesty at our past, recognizing error and seeking forgiveness, for God alone is our judge."

His appeal was well-received.

"It cannot just be Pope Francis, who put action behind the words that Catholics and Lutherans must get closer to each other," said Ewa Siekierski, a Danish Catholic who crossed over from Copenhagen into Sweden to see the pope. "We — ordinary Catholics — must also do ours for it to become a reality."

After the Lund event, the Vatican and Lutheran delegations rode together on a bus to attend an event highlighting both churches' peace-making and humanitarian efforts. 

An Indian environmental activist, a Colombian peace-maker, a Burundian refugee and a South Sudanese refugee athlete topped the list.

Francis continues his visit on Tuesday with a Catholic Mass in the Malmo sports stadium, added in at the last minute after Sweden's tiny Catholic community balked that Francis was ignoring them and coming only for the Protestant commemoration.

Years ago, Francis spoke harshly of the Protestant reformers. But in the run-up to the trip, he has had only words of praise for Luther. He recently called the German theologian a reformer of his time who rightly criticized a church that was "no model to imitate."

"There was corruption in the church, worldliness, attachment to money and power," Francis told reporters this summer.

They are the same abuses Francis has criticized in the 21st-century Catholic Church he now leads.

(No mention about the Lutheran privilege of ordination of women clergy.)

Lobster Wars - will Maine lobsters need passports?

"The idea that somehow lobsters are going to jump out of their tanks and crawl into the sea and survive just doesn't make sense," 

As though the world isn't already consumed with the desperation of transient immigrants, now Maine lobsters are among the victims.
This culinary speciality is taking on an immigrant label, similar to millions of displaced humans!

Should Maine lobsters be issued culinary passports to prove they are free of diseases?

Maine Lobsters in Swedish water?  "How'd they ever get in?"

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree slams Sweden for proposed Maine lobster ban

Mar 18, 2016 Press Release
"Ban on export of lobsters to Europe totally unwarranted"

Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree had harsh words for Swedish officials who have asked the European Union to ban the import of Maine lobster.

"This is a complete overreaction on the part of Sweden. We have safely exported live lobster to dozens of countries for decades, and even if it's true that a few Maine lobsters have been found in foreign waters, regulators need to look at the problem more carefully and not just jump to conclusions."

Pingree questions how Maine lobsters may have ended up in waters off the coast of Sweden.

"The idea that somehow lobsters are going to jump out of their tanks and crawl into the sea and survive just doesn't make sense," Pingree said. "Some reports have suggested that it's actually consumers who have bought lobsters and thrown them in the ocean. Whatever the cause, EU officials should figure out what's really happening before jumping to any conclusions."

The Guardian reports

Invasion of the American lobsters: Sweden asks EU for help

Swedish environment ministry says Maine lobster could wipe out European species with deadly diseases

Oversexed, overfed and over here: that, in a nutshell, is what the Swedes think of the American lobster from Maine, New England. It may be much sought after in restaurants but Sweden does not want the American crustacean to darken EU waters in case it spreads diseases and kills off its smaller cousin.

The Swedish environment ministry on Friday asked the EU to list the Maine lobster as an invasive species and ban the import of the live creatures.

While the more cynical may see the Swedish move as disguised protectionism, such concerns are not entirely misplaced. 

Wildlife experts say the American lobster, which may also be slightly larger and different in colour to the native European lobster, brings dangers to European lobsters.

“They pose several potential risks for native species, competing for space and resources, they can interbreed with local species and produce hybrid species, which we don’t know will be viable or not,” said Dr Paul Stebbing of the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture science.

The Swedish environment ministry says more than 30 American lobsters have been found along Sweden’s west coast in recent years and that they can carry diseases and parasites that could spread to the European lobster and result in extremely high mortality.

British experts say there have been 24 confirmed reports of the American lobster in UK waters in recent decades. They are not believed to be reproducing, although this is possible. Sightings are believed to be as a result of the deliberate release or escape of specimens from captivity.

As for American lobsters in Swedish waters, the environment ministry said: “We have reason to believe that lobsters are put in coastal waters perhaps for later consumption. Some of the American lobsters found by fishermen in the sea outside the west coast of Sweden were still wearing rubber bands round their claws with the exporting company name on the rubber band.”

The Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association is jittery at any European ban as the export of lobsters to the EU is worth $134m (£93m) annually.

“It is an important trade so this is concerning,” said Beth Casoni, executive director of the association, adding that it would mobilise US lawmakers and scientists to refute claims that American lobsters spread disease. “If they found 30 American lobsters over eight years, how is that an invasion,” she said.

Casoni also faulted European residents for releasing American lobsters into the wild: “They are the ones breaking the law. We don’t buy European species and let them free.”

Sweden has approached the EU commission, the EU’s executive body, under the EU’s invasive alien species regulation, which came into force last year. Such species are considered to be one of the major causes of biodiversity loss; its cost to the European economy is estimated to be at least €12bn a year in areas such as health care and animal health costs, crop yield losses, fish stock losses and damage to protected species.

EU scientists will consider Sweden’s request at the start of next month. Other examples that are already on the list to be adopted in the coming weeks are red swamp crayfish, American grey squirrel and Sosnowski’s hogweed.

If the EU’s scientific forum approves Sweden’s submission, its inclusion will have to be considered at the invasive alien species committee (comprised of member states representatives) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Ugh! Unfortunately, Maine Lobsters are now included among the world of desperate transients!

Lobsters in Sweden?  How'd they ever get in?  

Laura H Crews as Aunt PittyPat. "Yankees in Georgia! How'd they ever get in?"

Malala is one voice for all Muslim babies girls and women who need a courageous voice

Pakistani child education activist Malala Yousafzai rightfully received the universal recognition she deserves when the Nobel committee in Sweden announced her as the recipient of the Peace Prize, to be presented jointly with Kailash Satyarthi, a Hindu, who is an Indian child rights campaigner.

Malala Yousafzai 

Malala is one important voice who speaks for the education and human rights of all Muslim women. She speaks like a visionary or mystic, but her message is simple. Muslim women, who are too often forbidden to go to school, as well as all other females, have the right to access education.

"One child, one teacher, one book & one pen can change the world." Malala Yousafzai.

At only 17 years old, Malala is the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately, her Pakistan homeland hasn't made any supportive public comment. 

So, Pakistan has a chance to demonstrate humanitarian courage and recognize Malala for receiving this tribute, but the nation remains eerily silent.  Unbelievable, but many Pakistani people even express disdain about their heroine Malala.

Pakistan harbored the terrorists who executed journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002, and protected Osama Bin Laden from justice, the Al Qaeda leader who perpetrated the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Nevertheless, rather than demonstrate remorse for maintaining reticence in the face of terrorism, the nation appears, instead, to be ignoring their courageous native daughter Malala, who is receiving the highest honor any citizen of the world can achieve. Clearly, something must be terribly wrong with the morality of the Pakistani people who cannot appreciate Malala's courage.

The teenager was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen in October 2012 for campaigning for girls' education. She now lives in Birmingham in the UK.

Malala said she was "honoured" to receive the award, saying it made her feel "more powerful and courageous".

She revealed she found out the news after being called out of her chemistry class at her school in Birmingham.

"I'm really happy to be sharing this award with a person from India," she said at a news conference.

Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, paid tribute to Malala's achievements.

"Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzai, has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education and has shown by example that children and young people too can contribute to improving their own situations," he said.

"This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls' rights to education."

The committee said it was important that a Muslim and a Hindu, a Pakistani and an Indian, had joined in what it called a common struggle for education and against extremism.

Congratulations Malala. We love you. The world loves you. May your status as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize help to rescue oppressed women who feel they have no voice. 

Through your heroic example, in defiance of death itself, you can help these women of the world to be empowered and to change the world for the better.