| To: Les H who wrote (45006) | 2/17/2025 4:19:06 PM | | From: Les H | | | | Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, is the first of President Vladimir Putin’s strategic allies to leave him to make whatever exit from the Ukraine war he can negotiate with President Donald Trump.
Modi did this by saying as little as he could about Russia last week in Washington while preparing his own military, energy supply, sea lane and land route agreements with the US; altogether, according to Indian sources in Moscow, they enlarge India’s role in the escalating US war against China across the globe, and diminish Russia’s role significantly.
“I have been in constant contact with both Russia and Ukraine. I have also visited both countries,” Modi said beside Trump at the White House on February 13. “And many people are mistaken and they feel that India is neutral. I would like to clarify: India is not neutral. We have taken a side, and we have taken the side of peace…Ultimately, you have to come to the negotiating table, and India has constantly made efforts that there are talks that take place where both parties are present. It is only then that we will find a solution. The efforts being made by President Trump — I support them, I welcome them, and I would like that President Trump is successful as soon as possible so that the world is on the path to peace once again.”
This isn’t a statement of India’s support for Russia, according to Russian sources. It is not even India’s acknowledgement of the wars which the US and its allies are waging against Russia simultaneously on its western and eastern, northern and southern fronts. It’s India’s declaration that it aims to be on the US side in the multi-front war India is waging against China from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. It is also a proclamation by Modi against the Arab, Iranian and Muslim resistance to the US and Israel on the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf.
“The prime minister and I,” said Trump, “reaffirmed that strong cooperation among the United States, India, Australia, and Japan [the Quad], and it’s crucial really to maintaining peace and prosperity, tranquillity even, in the Indo-Pacific.”
“We will work together to enhance peace, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific,” Modi replied, “The Quad will play a special role in this. During the Quad summit scheduled to be held in India this year, we will expand cooperation in new areas with our partner countries.”
A veteran Indian source in Moscow explains: “Indians are very pleased with the anti-China stand of the US. The last two years of relations with Russians have been bruising for Indians and a lot of top oil and gas managers are exasperated with the Russians. They would do anything to stop doing business with the Russians – this is not because of the sanctions, it is the Russians themselves! [From Modi’s visit to Washington] there is the general take that we cannot be throwing our lot with Russians because they are so unreliable now and are junior to the Chinese. Putin might have brokered the Ladakh moment, but all in all Indians prefer to deal with the US now. For now we know that the Americans call the shots.”
Russia has been relegated. In Delhi now, Quad is major league; the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS are minor league.
“One thing that I deeply appreciate, and I learn from President Trump, is that he keeps the national interest supreme,” Modi said in his Oval Office remarks. “Like him, I also keep the national interest of India at the top of everything else.”
The Indian media have interpreted this as more than compensating for the American put-downs Modi registered. “The President did not turn up to greet [Modi] when he arrived at the White House; Trump snubbed him by doubling down on reciprocal tariffs…Elon Musk insulted him by bringing his children to a business meeting… In the age of trivialisation through social media tattle and trolling, all of this is of little consequence… The broad consensus among more seasoned analysts and experts is that PM Modi disarmed a rampant US President…and advanced bilateral ties…The visit was actually a tour de force measured in terms of impact and outcomes.”
John Heimer |
| | World Outlook | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Don Green | 2/17/2025 6:40:38 PM | | | | | | ‘This is a coup’: Trump and Musk’s purge is cutting more than costs, say experts
Robert Reich theguardian.com
In slashing staff and disabling entire agencies the administration is lacerating the structures of US democracy
Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s radical drive to slash billions of dollars in annual federal spending with huge job and regulatory cuts is spurring charges that they have made illegal moves while undercutting congressional and judicial powers, say legal experts, Democrats and state attorneys general.
Trump’s fusillade of executive orders expanding his powers in some extreme ways in his cost-cutting fervor, coupled with unprecedented drives by the Musk-led so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to slash many agency workforces and regulations, have created chaos across the US government and raised fears of a threat to US democracy.
Trump and Musk have also attacked judges who have made rulings opposing several of their moves after they ended up in court, threatening at least one with impeachment and accusing him of improper interference.
“In the US, we appeal rulings we disagree with – we don’t ignore court orders or threaten judges with impeachment just because we don’t like the decision. This is a coup, plain and simple,” Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, said.
Trump and Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s largest single donor, now face multiple rebukes from judges and legal experts to the regulatory and staff cuts they have engineered at the treasury department, the US Agency for International Development and several other agencies.
Incongruously, as Trump has touted Musk’s cost-cutting work as vital to curbing spending abuses, one of Trump’s first moves in office last month was to fire 17 veteran agency watchdogs, known as inspectors general, whose jobs have long been to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse in federal departments.
Those firings were done without giving Congress the legally required 30 days’ notice and specific justifications for each one, prompting mostly Democratic outrage at Trump’s move, which he defended as due to “changing priorities”, and falsely claimed was “standard”.
In response to the firings, eight of those inspectors general filed a lawsuit against Trump and their department heads on Wednesday arguing their terminations violated federal laws designed to protect them from interference with their jobs and seeking reinstatement.
The IGs who sued included ones from the Departments of Defense, Education and Health and Human Services.
Democratic critics and legal experts see Trump’s IG firings and Musk’s Doge operation as blatant examples of executive power plays at the expense of Congress and transparency.
“I think their claims that they’re going after waste, fraud and abuse is a complete smokescreen for their real intentions,” said Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
Likening Trump’s firing of the IGs to “firing cops before you rob the bank”, Whitehouse stressed: “It’s pretty clear that what’s going on here is a very deliberate effort to create as much wreckage in the government as they can manage with a view to helping out the big Trump donors and special interests who find government obnoxious in various ways.”
On another legal track opposing Trump and Musk’s actions, many of the nation’s 23 Democratic state attorneys general have escalated legal battles against Doge’s actions and sweeping cost cutting at treasury, USAid and other agencies.
For instance, 19 Democratic AGs sued Trump and the treasury secretary in February to halt Doge from accessing sensitive documents with details about tens of millions of Americans who get social security checks, tax refunds and other payments, arguing that Doge was violating the Administrative Procedures Act. The lawsuit prompted a New York judge on 7 February to issue a temporary order halting Doge from accessing the treasury payments system.
In response, Musk and Trump lashed out by charging judicial interference. Musk on his social media platform Twitter/X where he has more than 200 million followers charged that the judge was “corrupt” and that he “needs to be impeached NOW”.
Trump, with Musk nearby in the Oval Office on Tuesday, echoed his Doge chief saying: “It seems hard to believe that a judge could say, ‘We don’t want you to do that,’ so maybe we have to look at the judges because I think that’s a very serious violation.”
Legal experts, AGs and top congressional Democrats say that Trump’s and Musk’s charges of improper judicial interference and some of their actions pose dangers to the rule of law and the US constitution.
“The president is openly violating the US constitution by taking power from Congress and handing it to an unelected billionaire – while Elon Musk goes after judges who uphold the law and rule against them,” said Mayes.
Ex-federal prosecutors echo some of Mayes’s arguments.
“The suggestions by Trump, Musk and Vance that courts are impermissibly interfering with Trump’s mandate to lead is absurd,” said the former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, who now teaches law at the University of Michigan.
“Under our constitutional separation of powers system, each co-equal branch serves as a check on the others. The role of the courts is to strike down abuses of executive power when it violates the law. Comments disparaging the courts seems like a dangerous effort to undermine public confidence in the judiciary. If people do not respect the courts, they will be less inclined to obey their orders.”
Likewise, some former judges worry that certain judges could face violence sparked by the threats Musk and Trump have publicly made.
“While federal judges expect people to disagree with their opinions, I have long feared that personal attacks like those from Trump and Musk against at least one New York judge would expose them to harm and even death,” said the former federal judge and Dickinson College president, John Jones.
“Worse, judges are essentially defenseless when it comes to fighting the false narratives that are being promulgated because their code of conduct prevents them from engaging with the irresponsible people who make these statements.”
Legal experts too are increasingly alarmed about how Musk and Trump are exceeding their power at the expense of Congress, including some of the retaliatory firings by Trump against critics or perceived political foes.
A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration
Enter your email address
Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion
In one egregious case the IG for USAid, Paul Martin, on Tuesday was abruptly fired almost immediately after he issued a highly critical report warning of serious economic repercussions from the sweeping job cuts that Doge was making as it gutted agency staff.
Musk has blasted USAid, which doled out over $40bn in congressionally authorized aid in 2023 and consummated $86bn in private sector deals, as a “criminal organization” and an “arm of the criminal left globalists”. The agency’s mission is to provide humanitarian aid and fund development assistance and tech projects in developing countries.
“The firing of IG Paul Martin, a highly respected and experienced inspector general, on the day after his office released a critical report, risks sending a chilling message that is antithetical to IGs’ ability to conduct impactful independent oversight on behalf of the American taxpayer,” said the ex-defense department IG Robert Storch.
Storch, one of the 17 IGs Trump fired abruptly last month who has joined the lawsuit against the Trump administration, stressed more broadly that “IGs play an essential role in leading offices comprised of oversight professionals across the federal government to detect and deter waste, fraud, abuse and corruption.”
A former IG, who requested anonymity to speak freely, warned bluntly: “Trump and Musk are gaslighting the American people. No one should believe Musk and his troops have actually discovered billions of dollars of waste, fraud, abuse and ‘corruption’. If they had, we would know the specifics. They can’t provide them and they won’t. At most, they have seen things that may need to be explained, but they haven’t bothered to seek the explanation from anyone with relevant knowledge.”
Despite rising concerns about the powers assumed by Musk, Trump unveiled a new executive order in the Oval Office on Tuesday expanding Musk’s authority and mandate.
Trump’s new order requires federal agencies to “coordinate and consult” with Doge to slash jobs and curb hiring, according to a White House summary.
All agencies were instructed to “undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force” and limit new hires to only “essential positions”, according to the summary.
During the Oval Office meeting on Tuesday Musk spoke in grandiose terms about his mission with a few dubious and broad claims about frauds that it had uncovered, while declaring without evidence that it was what “the people want”.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, which have received billions of dollars in federal contracts in recent years, is wielding his new federal authority as a “special government employee” without giving up his private-sector jobs. Musk’s post is a temporary one that bypasses some of the disclosure requirements for full-time federal employees.
As Musk’s powers have expanded and Doge has done work in more than a dozen agencies, 14 state AGs filed a lawsuit in federal court in DC on Thursday broadly challenging Musk and Doge’s authority to obtain access to sensitive government data and wield “virtually unchecked power”.
The lawsuit argues that Trump violated the constitution’s appointments clause by establishing a federal agency without Congress’s approval.
At bottom, some legal experts and watchdogs say the threats posed by Musk’s cost-cutting drive that Trump has blessed, are linked to the record sums that Musk gave Trump’s campaign.
“After Musk reportedly spent close to $300m to help Trump get elected, Trump has been giving Musk what appears to be unprecedented access to the inner levers of government, including private and confidential information about individuals,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission who now teaches law at American University.
“Musk and his followers can use that access to help Trump kill or neutralize congressionally created agencies and rules that serve and protect the public interest, while ensuring the government protects and serves the ability of the wealthy to grow their fortunes.”
Other legal watchdogs fear more dangerous fallout to the rule of law from Trump’s greenlighting Musk’s Doge operation and agenda.
“President Trump has not only afforded Elon Musk and Doge extraordinary power over federal agency operations with little public oversight and accountability, but he has also done so at the expense of Congress and its constitutionally mandated power,” said Donald Sherman, the chief counsel at the liberal-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
“Trump enabled Musk’s capture of the federal government after illegally firing more than a dozen inspectors general despite Congress strengthening the laws protecting IGs less than three years ago … ”
Sherman noted that “what’s even more troubling is that congressional Republicans have been more than willing to cede their constitutional powers in service of President Trump and Elon Musk’s political agenda.” |
| | World Outlook | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| To: Les H who wrote (45009) | 2/18/2025 9:01:05 AM | | From: Les H | | | | The mad king of Kyiv: Why Zelensky can’t afford to end the war
by John Mac Ghlionn, opinion contributor - 02/15/25 3:00 PM ET
The Hill
Zelensky is Ukarine's Netanyahu.
A new government might open corruption case on Zelensky and others to reclaim badly needed funds for reconstruction. |
| | World Outlook | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| To: Les H who wrote (45013) | 2/18/2025 9:27:45 AM | | From: Les H | | | | Meeting in Paris is a flop: no agreement on sending troops for peace-keeping in Ukraine
Both Le Monde and The Financial Times this evening are reporting that the meeting earlier in the day of the heads of government of the most interested EU member states, the secretary general of NATO, the president of the European Council, the head of the European Commission and her Commissioner for External Relations to discuss their response to Trump’s request to list the number of units and equipment they are ready to deploy in Ukraine as peacekeepers and enforce a peace settlement with Russia ended only in discord.
To be sure, Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom said he was ready to deploy troops. The Swedes were more circumspect, saying they ‘do not exclude’ such a possibility. However, German Chancellor Scholz put a firm Nein! to the idea which he called ‘very inappropriate’ and ‘premature.’ Most surprisingly, the viscerally anti-Russian prime minister of Poland Donald Tusk also said his country is not ready to deploy. Tusk knows better than anyone else among his neighbors the might of the Russian armed forces and the wholly underprepared state of Polish military assets.
The meeting in Paris lasted 3 hours and appears to have adjourned without any joint statements, meaning it was a failure for Europe.
Where there are losers on one side, there are winners on the other side. The failure of the Europeans represented a victory for President Trump. When the moment came to ‘put up or shut up’ as poker players say in the States, Europe just shut up. Quite possibly this is precisely what Trump expected when he demanded not generalities about their values but solid commitments of men and materiel from the European allies.
Gilbert Doctorow
Next up is supposedly a 700 billion dollar aid package from the EU, probably spread over 10 years. It remains to be seen how much is intended to support the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian immigrants to EU member countries, and supply of weapons for the war.. |
| | World Outlook | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| From: tntpal | 2/18/2025 9:32:10 AM | | | | | | A Long History of Blaming the Jews
religiondispatches.org
The Jews killed JFK?
Message 35004425
The Jews exploit the holocaust?
Message 35029811
Maybe they faked the 6 million deaths?
--------------------------------------------------------
The Palestinian Grand Mufti, Yasser Arafat and Abbas = Nazism & The Palestine State
Yasser Arafat did not emerge as a product of immaculate conception. He had a mentor – the notorious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Writing in The Tower Magazine of November 2015, Edy Cohen describes, ” How the Mufti of Jerusalem Created the Permanent Problem of Palestinian Violence.” Cohen considers al-Husseini one of the most important figures in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict..
Consider his attributes [a] the founding father of the Arab national movement in Palestine the most important Nazi collaborator in the Arab world a political activist who worked tirelessly for the ethnic cleansing and physical destruction of the Jews in Palestine and in the Middle East as a whole and a fervent anti-Semite.
 
There was no Palestinian people or Arab Palestine then or at any other time in history.
The PLO, Arafat’s terror organization invented the false notion of a Palestinian Arab nation in their charter of 1964. Further, as a matter of historical fact the term “Palestinian” had always referred to the Jews of that area. The Palestinian Post was a Jewish newspaper which later became the Jerusalem Post. The Palestinian Brigade in the British army was a Jewish entity that the British formed to assist them in an effort to defeat the Germans invading North Africa, who were heading towards Palestine.
Through his meeting with Hitler in November, 1941, Amin al-Husseini, was able to join Nazi leader in restating their commitment to the “elimination” of any form of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. He was regarded by the Nazis as their key Arab ally with potential to be a head of state in Palestine. He remained in Germany until the Nazi defeat in may, 1945...
To this day, Palestinian leaders still revere the Mufti and embrace his policy of absolute rejectionist. When the Nazi’s were defeated, he found refuge with King Farouk in Egypt, his asylum being extended under the regimes of Maj. Gen. Mohammed Naguib and President Nasser. After WW2 his claims to leadership were wholly discredited and he was eventually sidelined by the PLO, losing most of his residual political influence. He died in Beirut, Lebanon in July 1974. [NY Times July 5, 1974]
A small sampling of the terrorist attacks which occurred during the tenor of Arafat and Abbas, inspired by al-Husseini follows:
September 05, 1972: Massacre in Munich, Black September Palestinian terrorists – 9 athletic hostages killed [+2 at commencement] 5 terrorists killed, 3 captured alive by 1992 – Israel assassinated all live terrorists.
Mar. 04, 1975: Savoy Hotel, Tel Aviv 3 civilians and 2 soldiers killed, 7 terrorists killed and many hotel guests and staff held hostage until resolution.
Mar. 09, 1978: Coastal Road massacre – Fatah bus high jacking, 38 Israelis including 13 children killed and 71 wounded prior to Israeli-Egyptian peace talks.
Sep. 1993 to Sep. 2000 following Oslo Accords, nearly 300 Israelis were killed.
Apr, 09 1995: Aliza Flatow and 7 Israeli soldiers killed on the way to Gaza when her Kfar Daron bus was detonated by a terrorist.
Nov, 20 2000: 3 children of Rabbi Cohen had legs amputated as a result of a Gaza school suicide attack.
Dec. 2000 : Al Aqsa Intifada 1,100 Israelis killed.
Aug, 09 2001: Sbarro pizzeria suicide bombing – 15 killed including 7 children and 130 injured, terrorist killed in blast.
Mar, 27 2002: Netanya Park Hotel Passover – 30 people killed and 140 injured [20 seriously] in Hamas suicide attack.
Sep, 09 2003: Cafe Hillel Jerusalem, famed Dr. Applebaum and daughter Nava among 7 Israelis killed in suicide bombing.
Mar, 11 2011: Itamar suicide attack – 5 family members killed while in bed.
The introduction to this paper demonstrates how less than credible individuals have positioned the Jewish people into a nation under constant siege as described by Connor Cruise O’Brian in his book of the same name.
Yet another item, which has largely impacted how Israel finds itself occurred at the conclusion of the Six Day War. As explained by Joshua Muravchik in his “Making David into Goliath – How the World Turned Against Israel.” His explanation, “No longer was it Israel verses the Arabs. Now it was Israel verses Israel verses the homeless Palestinians.”
Clever, very clever. It most certainly has worked very well for the “invented people.” It’s all about the magic word “Palestine”. Unlike, Iraq, Syria, Egypt et al whose sovereignty was recognized by the British as were “—non existing non-Jewish communities” besides “the Jewish people—“
Even the Grand Mufti admitted that the Jews did not steal land from Arab Palestinians when speaking at the Peel Commission on January 12, 1937.
“Of Course, the Palestinians are an ‘Invented ‘ People” - Jerome S. Kaufman
https://religiondispatches.org/a-long-history-of-blaming-the-jews/ |
| | World Outlook | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: tntpal | 2/18/2025 10:13:50 AM | | | | | | Hitler and the Nazis’ Anti-Zionism
During the Cold War the Soviet Union, its Warsaw Pact Allies and the Western far-left spread a variety of lies about the history of Zionism,
the most famous of these falsehoods being the assertion that Hitler and the Nazi regime were supporters of Zionism. It was a falsehood that fit well with another big lie of Communist Cold War propaganda,
namely that Zionism was itself a form of racism. If the latter were the case, it would make logical sense that racists such as Hitler supported Zionism.
The fact is however that Hitler and the Nazis despised Zionism and did all they could to defeat it...
Zionism became as embarrassing as the actual history of Nazi anti-Zionism. Neither fit into the dogmas of Communist anti-imperialism which, it appears, have now filtered into some ranks...
Anti-Semitism, like all forms or racism and religious hatred, is built on lies and distortions about the past and present. Around the world, London stands for worldliness, cosmopolitanism and often for an understanding of history. When the former Mayor of this city reveals how little he knows about World War II and Britain’s role in it, one has to wonder what has happened to the qualities we admire in British intellectual life.
First, Hitler despised Zionism. In fact he ridiculed the idea as he was convinced that the Jews would be incapable of establishing and then defending a state. More importantly, he and his government viewed the prospect of a Jewish state in Palestine as part of the broader international Jewish conspiracy which his fevered imagination presented as a dire threat to Germany. While (after robbing them of most of their possessions) the Nazis did allow some German Jews to leave the country in the 1930s in order to travel to Palestine, that policy was primarily driven by a desire to get the Jews out of Germany rather than to build a Jewish state in Palestine. By the late 1930s the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who later collaborated with the Nazis in wartime Berlin, had informed German diplomats stationed in Jerusalem that the entry of Jews into Palestine from Germany was angering local Arabs. For reasons of their own, the
Nazis cut off Jewish emigration in 1941 to pursue their goal of murdering Europe’s Jews. This ignorance about the implications of the Holocaust is stunning. As the Israeli historian Anita Shapira has pointed out, it is only a half-truth to say that Israel was founded because of the Holocaust. The other half of the truth is that literally millions of Jews in Europe who might have contributed to the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine could not do so because the Nazis had murdered them. The Holocaust itself was an enormous blow to the Zionist project.
fathomjournal.org
----------------------------------------------
The above article counters some of the claims made in the article below -
-----------------------------------------------
Palestine Hijacked: How Zionism Forged An Apartheid State From River to Sea By Thomas Suárez
Off Guardian |
- from this article -
...In January 1933 when Hitler came to power as German Chancellor, there were international calls for a boycott of German goods and services, supported by prominent Jews and Christians. The boycott caused a severe blow to the Reich’s economy.
But an agreement with Hitler was arranged by Zionists to circumvent the boycott and provide Germany with needed capital, with Hitler allowing German Jews with sufficient wealth to emigrate to Palestine in return for their purchase of German goods and equipment, a quid pro quo arrangement that provided Germany with a propaganda win by claiming the boycott-breaking deal was made by Jews. Four years later, Adolph Eichmann, on a trip to Palestine, was involved in a follow-up effort with the Zionist terrorist militia, the Haganah, and its representative Feival Pokes, for the Nazis to pressure German Jewish groups to urge Jews to go only to Palestine and no other countries. |
| | World Outlook | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| |
