Sections
Introduction
1. Summary
2. Crisis
Files
A. Selections
from July 4, 2018
Introduction:
This is a
Nederlog of Wednesday,
July 4,
2018.
1. Summary
This is a crisis
log but it is a bit different from how it was until 2013:
I have been
writing about the crisis since September
1, 2008 (in Dutch, but
since 2010 in English) and about
the enormous dangers of surveillance (by secret services and
by many rich commercial entities) since June 10, 2013, and I will
continue with it.
On
the
moment and since more than two years
(!!!!)
I have
problems with the company that is
supposed to take care that my site is visible [1]
and with my health, but I am still writing a Nederlog every day and
I shall continue.
2. Crisis Files
These are
five crisis files
that are mostly well worth reading:
A. Selections from July 4, 2018:
1. Asylum Seekers on U.S.-Mexico Border Are Waiting for Days
in the Hot
Sun, Told the U.S. Is “Full”
2. Former US Envoy to Moscow Calls Intelligence Report on
Alleged
Russian Interference
‘Politically Motivated
3. How To Prevent Future Trumps
4. Ban Tear Gas
5. The End of German Politics As We Know It
The items 1 - 5 are today's
selections from the 35 sites that I look at
every morning. The indented text under each link is quoted from the
link that starts the item. Unindented text is by me:
1. Asylum
Seekers on U.S.-Mexico Border Are Waiting for Days in the Hot Sun, Told
the U.S. Is “Full”
This article is by
Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! It starts with the following introduction:
As the Trump
administration accuses migrants of illegally entering the United
States, Democracy Now! went to the international bridge in Brownsville,
Texas, and found asylum seekers waiting for days in the hot sun after
being told the United States was full. We are guided by Christina
Patiño Houle, director of the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network,
and Michael Seifert of the ACLU. We also
speak with Juanita Valdez-Cox, longtime farmworker organizer and
executive director of La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE),
about the separation of families at the border, and attempt to
interview an official at Case Padre, the Southwest Key detention center
housed in a former Walmart.
I have said over a year
ago - see my Welcome to the NUSA! - that the USA with the nomination of
Donald Trump (who is both a neofascist
and a madman - and if
you don't
think so you don't have my very strong anti-fascist background,
nor are you a psychologist) has entered the
neofascist empire, and I think it now definitely has, after
kidnapping over 2000 small
children from their parents.
Also - incidentally - the above statement by Goodman that they "found asylum seekers waiting for days in the
hot sun after being told the United States was full" shows the lies and the sadism of the
American police, whom I shall presume to believe that, really, as
exceptional and white Americans, are supermen
compared to the
unexceptional brown sub-humans
they so clearly love to
abuse in a sadistic
way.
Here is more from the article:
AMY
GOODMAN: The Department of
Health and Human Services is refusing to disclose how many migrant
children separated from their parents at the border they’re still
holding. Last week, the HHS Secretary Alex
Azar said 2,047 separated minors were still in the care of the Office
of Refugee Resettlement. But the department has refused to give updated
numbers, even though the Trump administration is facing a July 10th
court-imposed deadline—that’s next Tuesday—to reunite all separated
children under the age of 5 with their parents. Two weeks later, all
children must be reunited.
Meanwhile, the separated
children continue to be sent around the country from the border.
Precisely. And many
of
these children are between 4 and 10; they don't speak
English; they are
forcibly separated from their parents; and their addresses
after forced
separations seem to not exist.
Here is more from the sadists at a
bridge:
LAURA GOTTESDIENER:
(...) So, she had waited on one bridge and been told the U.S. is not
allowing anybody in. So then she, finally, after about a day and a
half, went to the next bridge, and they told her, you know, “The U.S.
is full. You have to wait.” She had some hopes, because the Border
Patrol was letting in about a family a day. This is one of the major
international points of entry and legal ports of entry.
Then there is this
sadistic
sickness:
AMY
GOODMAN: You’re talking
about a 9-month-old child and a 1-year-old child alone, separated from
their parents.
JUANITA
VALDEZ-COX:
Yes. They are in this detention center, but the parents are not there.
And when the congressmen went in to see that, when they come back out
and talk to the community, we had a meeting with them. They are
the—they tell us what they see. And this is what they were seeing. Now,
we put together what the congressmen see and the phone calls we get of
parents that are looking for their children. Many times they can get a
hold of a relative, and the relative comes to LUPE
or to other nonprofit organizations and says, “We need your help in
finding our children.” And so we know that this is happening. We know
that they’re being separated. And the other thing that is just
heartbreaking is to see that when the children crying, yes, they can
feed them, and, yes, they can change their diaper, but they’re not
allowed to—they’re not allowed to pick them up and to hold them and to
soothe them.
AMY
GOODMAN: They’re not
allowed to hug them?
JUANITA
VALDEZ-COX:
No, not at all, because, apparently, the government wants to be careful
about, I think, child abuse. Isn’t that ironic? They’re already
doing—they’re already doing the worst thing that could happen to the
children. And so, this is the situation that we’ve been going through,
maybe for the last six or eight months, since this administration
started that “zero tolerance” policy.
As I have said: The
U.S. government has abducted
and kidnapped over
2000 children between 1 and 15, because their parents were trying to
flee horrors in their countries.
Here is how the
govermental sadists
and neofascists
at the borders act:
AMY
GOODMAN: We’ve come to the
Southwest Key Programs facility, where up to 1,500 children, migrant
children, are being held in cages inside. We want to know what’s going
on. We asked to speak to a supervisor. The sheriff’s deputy, security
all came out in their golf carts wherever we came, to this vast
facility, very few windows, and the windows we see are blacked out.
There are barricades up that say “keep out.” We asked to speak to a
supervisor. They said they could only give us a phone number. That
phone number, no one answered. Then we were able to leave a message.
When we left the message, a while later someone did call back and said
we’d have to call the Office of Refugee Resettlement. They said,
possibly, we could get an interview in the next 10 to 14 days. We
called the number they left, and there’s no answer. Again, this is
where up to 1,500 children are being held. The barricades say “keep
out” and “private property.”
AMY
GOODMAN: “Private
property.” The children, private property, detained in cages inside.
And once again: The U.S. government has abducted
and kidnapped over 2000 children
between 1 and 15, which it
abuses sadistically because their parents are fleeing from horrors in
their own countries.
This is Trump's Neofascistic United States of America. And this is a recommended article.
2. Former
US Envoy to Moscow Calls Intelligence Report on Alleged Russian
Interference ‘Politically Motivated
This
article is by Jack Matlock on Consortiumnews. Jack Matlock is
a former U.S. ambassador to Russia. It starts as follows:
Did the U.S.
“intelligence community” judge that Russia interfered in the 2016
presidential election?
Most commentators seem
to think so. Every news report I have read of the planned meeting of
Presidents Trump and Putin in July refers to “Russian interference” as
a fact and asks whether the matter will be discussed. Reports that
President Putin denied involvement in the election are scoffed at,
usually with a claim that the U.S. “intelligence community” proved
Russian interference. In fact, the U.S. “intelligence community” has
not done so. The intelligence community as a whole has not been tasked
to make a judgment and some key members of that community did not
participate in the report that is routinely cited as “proof” of
“Russian interference.”
Yes indeed - and if you want to
know some more on Jack Matlock, there is a link above. And I suppose
that I am one of the relatively few commentators who does not
(seriously) believe that "Russia
interfered in the 2016 presidential election", and I don't because I know about computers, I know
about
politics,
I know about evidence, and I know
about lying, deceiving and
propagandizing,
and also there were some very well-informed former
employees of the NSA, who said the same, and whom I read early.
And Matlock is right in what he said, and here is more:
This report is
labeled “Intelligence Community Assessment,” but in fact it is not
that. A report of the intelligence community in my day would include
the input of all the relevant intelligence agencies and would reveal
whether all agreed with the conclusions. Individual agencies did not
hesitate to “take a footnote” or explain their position if they
disagreed with a particular assessment. A report would not claim to be
that of the “intelligence community” if any relevant agency was omitted.
The report states that
it represents the findings of three intelligence agencies: CIA, FBI,
and NSA, but even that is misleading in that it implies that there was
a consensus of relevant analysts in these three agencies. In fact, the
report was prepared by a group of analysts from the three agencies
pre-selected by their directors, with the selection process generally
overseen by James Clapper, then Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
I think that is also quite true,
and Matlock is quite right this was totally different how
things went when he was ambassador of the USA, in Russia.
Here is some more, about the agencies involved:
As I was recently
informed by a senior official, the State Department’s Bureau of
Intelligence Research did, in fact, have a different opinion but was
not allowed to express it. So the January report was not one of the
“intelligence community,” but rather of three intelligence agencies,
two of which have no responsibility or necessarily any competence to
judge foreign intentions.
(..)
The second thing to
remember is that reports of the intelligence agencies reflect the views
of the heads of the agencies and are not necessarily a consensus of
their analysts’ views. The heads of both the CIA and FBI are political
appointments, while the NSA chief is a military officer; his agency is
a collector of intelligence rather than an analyst of its import,
except in the fields of cryptography and communications security.
I think this is also correct.
Here is more, this time about the report:
Let’s put these
questions aside for the moment and look at the report itself. On the
first page of text, the following statement leapt to my attention:
“We
did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on
the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is
charged
with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of
foreign actors; it does not analyze US
political processes or US public
opinion.”
Now, how can one judge
whether activity “interfered” with an election without assessing its
impact? After all, if the activity had no impact on the outcome of the
election, it could not be properly termed interference. This
disclaimer, however, has not prevented journalists and politicians from
citing the report as proof that “Russia interfered” in the 2016 U.S.
presidential election.
As for particulars, the
report is full of assertion, innuendo, and description of
“capabilities” but largely devoid of any evidence to substantiate its
assertions. This is “explained” by claiming that much of the evidence
is classified and cannot be disclosed without revealing sources and
methods. The assertions are made with “high confidence” or
occasionally, “moderate confidence.” Having read many intelligence
reports I can tell you that if there is irrefutable evidence of
something it will be stated as a fact. The use of the term “high
confidence” is what most normal people would call “our best guess.”
“Moderate confidence” means “some of our analysts think this might be
true.”
Quite so: You can't say
there was Russian "interference" when you don't make "an assessment of the impact that Russian
activities had" (but the proven
liar Clapper and his mates did); and you can't speak of
"evidence" if "much of the
evidence is classified and cannot
be disclosed without revealing sources and methods" (but
the proven
liar Clapper and his mates
did), and I guess Matlock is
quite correct in his further criticisms as well.
Here is the last bit that I quote from this article:
Prominent American
journalists and politicians seized upon this shabby, politically
motivated, report as proof of “Russian interference” in the U.S.
election without even the pretense of due diligence. They have
objectively acted as co-conspirators in an effort to block any
improvement in relations with Russia, even though cooperation with
Russia to deal with common dangers is vital to both countries.
Yes, I think that is correct.
Also, I add that Mother Jones, which supposes itself to be a
non-
mainstream source of information, mostly follows Clapper. In any case:
This was - I think - an interesting article by a formed U.S.
ambassador
to Russia, that is recommended.
3. How
To Prevent Future Trumps
This
article is by Robert Reich on his site. It starts as follows (and no: I
do not do titles that are wholly written in capitals):
Why did so many working
class voters choose a selfish,
thin-skinned, petulant, lying, narcissistic, boastful, megalomaniac for
president?
It’s important to know,
because we need to stop more Trumps in the
future.
The answer lies in the
interplay between deep-seated racism and
stagnant and declining wages. Both must be addressed.
Really now? Well... I
think Reich has a point, but it does not explain (at
all, in fact, or that is what I think) why "so many working class voters choose a
selfish,
thin-skinned, petulant, lying, narcissistic, boastful, megalomaniac for
president".
In fact, most
of the "many working class
voters" who voted for Trump
did not (and for
the most part do not) see that Trump is "a selfish,
thin-skinned, petulant, lying, narcissistic, boastful, megalomaniac for
president", and think
instead he is unselfish, proud, calm, truth speaking, normal and not
at all narcissistic or megalomaniac person they love as
president.
And what is the
explanation of that fact? I am sorry (but I am an academically educated
person who does come from the lower - proletarian - class, which I do
know quite well) but my explanation is that the majority of all
Americans are stupid, ignorant, conformist wishful thinkers who lack
all the talents to make them see themselves for what they are.
But Reich either does
not think so - and in fact almost no American
journalist addresses the
problems of stupidity,
ignorance,
conformism
and wishful
thinking at
all, ever - or indeed (for Reich is an intelligent
and well-educated
man) or pretends he does not think so.
What he thinks is the
explanation
is this:
What changed was the
economy. Since the 1980s, the wages and
economic prospects of the typical American worker have stagnated.
Nearly 80 percent now live paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks
have grown less secure.
Meanwhile, all the
economy’s gains have gone to the richest ten
percent, mostly the top 1 percent. Wealthy individuals and big
corporations
have, in turn, invested some of those gains into politics.
As a result, big money now
calls the shots in Washington –
getting subsidies, tax breaks, tax loopholes (even Trump promised to
close the
“carried interest” loophole yet it remains), and bailouts.
As I started with
saying: Reich has a point. But he does not explain how forty
years of successive setbacks of a major part of the American
population, while all that the time the 1% of the rich got
enormously
richer, can be true - and Reich is right that these are the facts -
without a major part of
the USA's population being stupid,
ignorant,
conformist
wishful
thinkers who lack all the talents to make them see themselves for
what
they are.
Here is the ending
of
Reich's column:
We also need ways to
finance these things, such as a carbon tax,
a tax on Wall Street trades, and a progressive tax on wealth.
To accomplish all this we
have to get big money out of politics.
Even if “Citizens United”
isn’t overruled, big money’s influence can be limited
with generous public financing of elections, full disclosure of the
source of
all campaign contributions, and a clampdown on the revolving door
between
business and government.
Trump isn’t the cause of
what’s happened to America. He’s the
consequence – the product of years of stagnant wages and big money’s
corruption
of our democracy combined with a long legacy of racism and
bigotry.
If we really want to stop
Trump and prevent future Trumps, we
will need to address these causes of Trump’s rise.
Well... yes and no:
Yes, these themes are important. But no, I do not
consider the
probability that they will be realized high, for if you really
want to stop Trump, and Reagan, and Bush Sr. and Bush Jr., to name just
the Republican presidents that were elected (or forced on the
public, for neither Bush Jr. nor Trump had a majority of ordinary
votes), then you will have to do
something about the stupidity, ignorance, conformism and
wishful
thinking
that move the thoughts and desires of very many
Americans, and to do that you have to - radically
- improve
education.
But in Holland
education has been mostly ruined between 1965 and 1977 (since
when you can get an M.A. with an IQ of 105) and something similar
happened in the USA, so I expect some improvements - possibly,
that is
- roughly by the time I am a mere 108....
4. Ban Tear
Gas
This
article is by David Swanson on Washington's Blog. It starts as follows:
Tear gas is among
the least of the problems facing those who care about the murder and
destruction of war. But it is a major element in the militarization of
local policing. In fact, it is widely deemed illegal
in war, but legal in non-war (although what written law actually
creates that loophole is unclear).
Like blowing people up with
missiles from drones, shooting people for being Palestinian, holding
people in cages for decades without charge or trial on a stolen corner
of Cuba, or zapping people with tasers for being African American, the
legality of firing tear gas or mace or pepper spray at people —
regardless of whether it harms or kills them, as it often does — is
believed by many to hang on whether or not the action was part of a war.
I more or less agree
with this, although I do not see this happening soon, and my
reason is
that I have been in many demonstrations, and did not like tear gas at
all, in part because it is between unpleasant and quite painful, in
part because it is wholly unspecific (and thrown at people who tend to
demonstrate, without their having done something illegal, personally),
and in part because I simply don't like to be gassed by either
the
police or the military.
Here are some of the -
rather crazy - distinctions that are at work:
The distinction is a
bizarre one in a number of ways. First, no current wars are themselves
legal. So drone murders don’t get to be legal if they’re declared to be
part of a war.
Second, state militaries
openly wage war against governments, non-governmental groups, amorphous
categories of people, and even against tactics or emotions (terrorism,
terror). When a government wages war against distant people, such as
the U.S. government in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, etc.,
it is theoretically forbidden to use tear gas (even while using napalm,
white phosphorous, and far more deadly weapons that are not chemicals).
But when the same government wages war against people it claims belong
to it (sending National Guard troops to both foreign wars and New
Orleans, Ferguson, Baltimore, etc., and not just Guard but also police
troops armed and trained by both the U.S. and Israeli militaries) it is
supposedly allowed to use weapons that are too evil to use abroad.
Yes, I believe that is both
correct and fairly crazy. Here is Swanson's proposal:
So, here’s what I propose.
- The illegality of war
under the UN Charter and the Kellogg-Briand Pact be recognized.
- The legal standards on
practices too evil for war be understood to apply universally to all
human endeavors. In fact, nothing in the Chemical Weapons Convention or
other treaties says otherwise.
- Those standards be
steadily expanded to encompass more evil.
By dropping the “war time”
vs. “peace time” distinction, in this way, we could lose the notion
that by somehow being part one and part the other a death camp like
Guantanamo escapes the legal restrictions of both. By making everywhere
“peace time” rather than “war time,” and treating war as merely the
greatest of all crimes, we would not be granting governments special
wartime powers, but rather stripping them of those for good.
Well... as I said, I would
like it if tear gas (and mace and pepper spray) were forbidden, but
I do not think it will happen (before a socialist
revolution). Also, I think David Swanson is - at least - fairly
naive about laws.
5. The
End of German Politics As We Know It
This
article is by Alexander Neubacher on Spiegel International. It starts
as follows:
When young children quarrel
with their parents, they often think about running away from home for
good. I'll teach those parents of mine! German Interior Minister Horst
Seehofer seems to be pulling exactly same kind of infantile tantrum. If
Angela Merkel doesn't do what he wants, he'll quit. And for a moment on
Sunday evening, it seemed like he was about to do exactly that.
The drama that unfolded in
Germany as the weekend came to a close was nothing short of a farce.
Seehofer, who is the head of the conservative Christian Social Union
(CSU), the Bavarian sister party to the Chancellor Angela Merkel's
Christian Democratic Union (CDU), set a new standard of childishness
for German party leaders. Why would he announce his resignation only to
reverse course a short time later the way he did?
It had been, Seehofer later
said, an offer to Merkel. If so, it's a rather misguided offer. Why,
after all, should the chancellor -- why should anyone, for that matter
-- have any interest in Seehofer remaining in office?
I am Dutch (which
borders on Germany), but I had no idea who Horst Seehofer
is. Well... as the last link
shows, he is a professional politician, rather like many
Dutch
professional politicians, who are professional politicians
because
their parents are very wealthy (although in Holland that
is never
clarified), while they themselves had no talents for science, nor
for
art, nor for civilization.
And thus they become "professional politicians", whom electors will see
around forty years, while they get richer and richer,
and get more and
more vague but well-paying functions.
Anyway... that is enough
about Seehofer and score upon scores of Dutch professional politicians.
Here is what Seehofer (and, it seems, most of the current
European
politicians) wants:
Nevertheless, the message
sent by Brussels was clear: European refugee policy will now focus on
sealing the continent off from migrants and deterring them from coming
in the first place -- precisely what the CSU has
been demanding. Merkel brought enough back home to provide Seehofer
with a face-saving way out of the conflict.
Precisely: Europeans
are real human beings, with rights and good incomes (especially if
they
are not black nor muslim), but non-europeans are more like
sub-humans,
for they are not rich, are often not white, and may be muslims, and
such "persons" simply do not
belong between the superhuman Europeans.
I know - especially -
German politicians do not like terms like "superhumans", but
that is
effectively their policy: "We Do Not Help Non-Europeans (And Do Not
Want To See Them)".
Here is the Spiegel's
ending:
The fallout from Sunday
night's drama will have consequences that go far beyond the
power-sharing agreement. It could have dramatic consequences for
Germany's entire political party system. The center-left Social
Democrats (SPD) have already sunk to below 20 percent in public opinion
polls. And the CDU itself is now headed in the same direction.
I do not know whether
this is correct.
[1]
I have
now been
saying since
the
end of 2015 that
xs4all.nl is systematically
ruining my site by NOT updating it within a few seconds,
as it did between 1996 and 2015, but by updating it between
two to seven days later, that is, if I am lucky.
They
have
claimed that my site was wrongly named in html: A lie.
They have claimed that my operating system was out of date: A lie.
And
they
just don't care for my site, my interests, my values or my
ideas. They have behaved now for 2 years
as if they are the
eagerly willing instruments of the US's secret services, which I
will
from now on suppose they are (for truth is dead in Holland).
The only
two reasons I remain with xs4all is that my site has been
there since 1996, and I have no reasons whatsoever to suppose that any
other Dutch provider is any better (!!).
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